Closed Familiar Connections

[Indira Khatri]

Indi was hoping that by sitting at the Ravenclaw table it would be enough to throw her sister and cousin off her scent. She had foolishly hoped that when they all got to school they would avoid her like the plague. She knew if she was in their position the last thing she would want to do was hang out with some older student, who was a apparently boring or whatever Anisha had called her last. She tried not to listen if she could help it. But Indi's plan had backfired considerably when Weston started to ask her questions about her family and how they were related. She should have kept it simple and just said Raafe was her cousin and just her cousin, but she had tried to be funny and said that he was Anisha's cousin but her cousin once removed and it had unleased a whole new wave of questions. With a heavy sigh Indi reached into her bag and got out a piece of parchment. "Will it help if I draw it out?" she asked, annoyed. But only because she was spending even more time thinking and talking about her family. She usually loved spending time with Weston but she wanted this conversation to be over as soon as possible.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Ever since meeting Anisha, Weston had been looking forward to seeing her at Hogwarts. He had so many questions for her. Anyone related to Indi had to be awesome (even if Indi said otherwise). So Weston had been incredibly surprised when there had been not just one Khatri, but two at the Sorting Ceremony. At first he had assumed that Raafe was some secret brother Indi had been hiding, but then Indi had explained that Raafe was their cousin. Except he was a different kind of cousin to Indi than Anisha, which made zero sense since they were sisters.

"I guess...?" Weston said when Indi offered to draw out the different relationships. "I just don't get how he can be from a different generation if he's only—" he paused, counting out the years in his head, "—five years younger than you." He hadn't entirely understood Indi's explanation about the whole "cousin once removed" stuff, but he was pretty sure she'd said something about different generations. "Also, does that mean you and Anisha are part of different generations? Wait, no, that doesn't make sense." This all felt like some weird logic question he couldn't puzzle out.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi sighed and could practically see the gears ticking slowly in Weston's head as he tried to work out what she was even talking about. She pinched the bridge of her nose and tired to think of the easiest way to go through this and decided to start with the first of his questions. "Well our mom is the youngest of her siblings and my uncle had kids pretty young." she began and started to draw out her family tree starting with her grandparents and then her uncle's all in a row, ending with her mom. She frowned a bit when he got caught up on her and Anisha being in different generations. Sometimes it felt like that but she shook her head. "No. But we have different dads which complicates things a bit." she said, her tone a bit sharper. Not that she meant it. But her pen snagged on her parchment as she wrote and nearly tore a hole when she was adding her dad to the family tree followed by her step-dad. All she really knew of her dad was his name. She never really thought about him much and was happy to ignore him as much as he ignored her. Besides she had a dad technically and she was fine with that. She could hardly remember a time without him.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston watched as Indi started to sketch out a family tree. He had always been a visual learner, but seeing all the names of her uncles next to her mum's name only confused him even more. "But aren't they still in the same generation?" he asked, tracing the line of siblings with his finger. "And wouldn't all their children be in the same generation too?" Or was Indi implying that Raafe was not one of her uncles' kids? Weston barely noticed the change in Indi's tone as she started to add her dads to the family tree. He was too busy trying to remember their conversation two winters ago. "Your stepdad... He's the one who was presenting at that conference in Singapore, right?" He frowned. "Or was it your dad? No, wait, it was your mum, right?" Weston couldn't quite remember the details. At the time, he had been preoccupied with the revelation that Indi had a secret sister.