Tagging: Alistair Lancaster
Minerva Khulik had always been a quiet person, the only time she had ever really anything to say was when she felt she was in the right or that someone else was very much in the wrong or when she wanted to reply to a professors question at school or as had come to pass eventually in her first year - when she had wanted to speak with the friends she had made. The memory of those friends was what had gotten her through her horrid second year, an entire school year whereby she had only made it to the train, spent two days in the school before managing to get herself ill. The matron at the school had no idea how she had contracted the infection but she had been removed from the premises immediately and sent to a quarantined ward at St. Mungo's hospital. Minerva had not even been allowed to return home in case she infected her younger siblings or parents.
Eight months she had been violently ill, the most horrendous blisters all over her body and for a while she had even became confused and presented with some small memory loss that the healers had thought she might actually have the more severe strain of spattergroit, Cerebrumous. Thankfully it had only been the many potions she had been taken that had caused such side effects and within a few days, Minerva only displayed the disgusting purple blisters. She wished at times however that she could well forget this postules that infected her body and face. By the end of April it seemed as if she were finally well on her way to recovering and by May she was allowed home again.
She was much paler from all her time sequestered in the hospital and if someone looked closely, beneath the dabbed foundation that her mother applied, one could still see the faint scars left behind from the infection itself. Minerva had never cared about how she looked before but having turned thirteen, with her hormones all over the place and a keen sense of how she was miles behind all her peers at school, she was very conscious of everything about herself. Her anxiety which had been like a shroud upon her all her life, was now part of her skin tone.
To cheer her up, her parents had decided to have her write to each of her professors to see if she would be allowed to catch up on her lessons and exams of her second year, she couldn't bear the thought of falling behind or having to move back a year entirely, so she really did hope that she could spend her summer break catching up on everything. To cheer her up even more, her parents took her along to the careers fair in Obsidian, so that she could perhaps decide on a backup future career for herself if her library idea didn't work out. Minerva believed strongly in her idea, so didn't have the same skepticism as her parents did and Elly had believed in her idea too, which mattered a great deal to Minerva. She did go along to the careers fair though, not to humour her parents in any way but to wander about, mingling with people who the Minister for Magic thought were inspiring individuals for the younger generation. She hoped that it would give her some clue as to what elective subjects she should take as well, for in all her incarceration that had been something she had been unable to think about all year.
Wondering through the throng of students and interested people, Minerva began to browse some of the stalls, listening in to part conversations as stall holders explained their particular careers and students asked many and varied questions. With a pale grey wizarding robe about her, Minerva pulled the hood up about her face and turned to move on to the next stall, she wasn't quite ready to bump into anyone she might know but she was also afraid of what anyone she did know would say about how she looked now. Would her friends even remember her? She hadn't been able to write to a single one, it had hurt too much to write and for months she hadn't been able to speak because of the boils along her jaw and cheeks. Would they think she had forgotten them? Did they even know why she had left without a word? With a sigh Minerva wrapped her arms about herself as she moved on to the next stall, fear of returning to Hogwarts and seeing Norton, Elly and Alistair again was quickly mounting within her.