Atropos → george weasley

i. strange girl

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one

strange girl

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It wasn't as though Ottilie's parents had unrealistic expectations for her first year of primary school. They were entirely at peace with the fact she wouldn't be finishing her first day with friendship bracelets weighing down her wrists.

They presumed she would keep to herself for a few days. Then, they hoped, after her classmates were somewhat acclimated to her...unusual disposition...a particularly friendly child would attempt to strike up a conversation. Her parents envisioned this intrepid future socialite inquiring, perhaps, about Ottilie's stuffed woolly mammoth toy named Walter. Or maybe they would compliment her on the vinyl blue morpho butterflies decorating her backpack.

Something like that. Her class was large. Someone would take pity on her.

One friend didn't seem like asking too much.

Just four years old, Ottilie sensed they were hiding their disappointment when she completed her first week friendless. Not only that, but she had uttered not a word to any of her classmates in all that time. Nor had they to her.

She did not resent her parents' distress, though she did know from the start that their expectations were too high. She was certain that she would not be making friends within the first week and there was no reason for her to assume that anything would ever change.

No one in Ottilie's class was going to ask her about the butterflies on her backpack.

Sure enough, she went another week eating lunch in the school's too-bright, dusty library accompanied only by a book from home. She spent the third week the same, entirely silent apart from Tuesday when she irately corrected a girl in her alphabet group who erroneously believed that the letter S directly followed the letter P.

Just that exchange, which left the girl nearly in tears, solidified Ottilie as someone whom one should avoid at all costs. Her peers thought she was weird before (she knew because some of the boys in her class had told her so), which was bad enough. But being both weird and mean secured her in her role as a social pariah.

Ottilie didn't really mind. She'd always felt content keeping to herself with her nose in a book.

It only got worse.

By the end of her first term, she'd traumatized Finn Edsell so thoroughly, just her physical presence could bring him to tears.

Newly five years old at the time, Ottilie sensed she did not yet possess the life experience to fully comprehend the implications of her power over the boy. All she knew was that, as long as she could make Finn Edsell cry only by looking at him, he no longer dared to steal her things from her. This was good.

What was not so good was that, in the process of achieving this power, Ottilie got into big trouble. After the kid was finished wailing, he declared to their teacher that Ottilie had captured him as a prisoner in the school's boiler room. Thankfully, Ottilie had a good alibi: She was nowhere near the boiler room when it happened.

Despite this, Finn was committed to his story. His shouts about her guilt had been done through tearful shrieks so loud Ottilie could hear them all the way in the headmistress's office after their teacher, Ms. Vasquez, carried him down the hall.

Ms. Vasquez saw fit to have a meeting with the children's parents.

At dusk on that frigid December day, Ottilie found herself standing before her school's unfriendly metal doors. Her mother was gently pulling off the blue mittens her grandmother had knitted for her birthday. Her father was standing behind her, holding her stuffed woolly mammoth for her while her mother peeled off the girl's new puffy winter coat.