Chapter Two

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The sun is starting to brighten the sky by the time Tansy arrives outside of Sheila Bennett's house in Mystic Falls

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The sun is starting to brighten the sky by the time Tansy arrives outside of Sheila Bennett's house in Mystic Falls. She lets out a breath and straightens her jacket. It's taken her almost 14 hours to get here. Muggle travel is so much slower in comparison, but it would have taken her longer to arrange travel the magical way. It's late now. But Sheila would have understood the whole travel thing. She's hoping that her old professor has stayed up to let her in. Because she doesn't really feel like camping on the porch until later in the morning. She hopes that Sheila's couch is comfortable because she might just collapse as soon as she sees it. She takes a deep breath, then raises her fist and knocks on the door. The door swings open after a few moments to reveal one of Tansy's most beloved professors. She really did love her classes with Sheila Bennett. She had a great way of teaching them that some of the other professors lacked. Sheila smiles brightly at Tansy, despite the early hour.

"Thank you for coming" Sheila offers fondly. "And so soon....you know you could have taken a few days...a week..." Sheila ushers Tansy inside, closing the door behind her.

"Well, I had nothing else going on so..." Tansy shrugs a little and gives her a smile. Her life has been incredibly boring since the end of the war. She went back to school and had her only uneventful year of study, she graduated and then has been organising a house. That's hardly a scratch on the excitement levels of earlier years. She was grateful for it for a while. But when her life has gone 100 miles an hour since she was 11 years old, it's hard to adjust to 10 miles an hour.

"Would you like some tea?" Sheila asks her. "Or would you prefer to go straight to bed?" Tansy turns and gives her a small frown. "I set the study up with a cot" She admits softly. "I wasn't going to allow you to sleep on the couch after you came all this way to help...."

"Professor" Tansy whispers softly and grateful that she's being so thoughtful. Tansy was just expecting a couch. She would have been okay with just the couch.

"Tea?" Sheila repeats her first question. Tansy lets out a breath and shakes her head.

"Sleep..please" She pleads. She's exhausted. The stress of being so submerged in the muggle world, worrying about her flights, worrying about her suitcase and trying to plan a sort of lesson plan for Bonnie. It's just been a long day and she is ready to crash for the rest of the morning and likely most of the day. She's got to get used to the new time zone.

.....

It's just a room with a cot bed and desk along with a bookshelf filled with books on magical subjects. It's almost enough to remind her of her own room back at Grimmauld, almost. Sheila's house smells more like nature and herbs and that is a whole lot better than the smell that lingers in the old Black house.

"Have you been busy since you graduated?" Sheila asks her, Tansy snorts a little and shakes her head.

"Not really" Tansy answers as she sets the suitcase on the bed. "I've just been cataloguing at Grimmauld" She looks at Sheila. "The Black family has a lot of magical artefacts they shouldn't have"

"I can imagine" Sheila states and then softens. "How is Harry?"

"He's good" Tansy offers warmly. "He's an Auror now, so you know...he's kept busy...." Sheila can clearly hear the underlying statement there. Harry is kept so busy that Tansy has been left alone a lot. She isn't very good at being alone. Gets too wrapped up in her own head and she's had a lot to think about and dwell on in recent years. She was the same at school. Whenever she was stressed or scared and alone, she would just sink into herself. And with the losses she has suffered. It wouldn't be all that surprising to find that something in her broke. She lost family and friends. People she deeply cared about. It's been tough on her entire generation. Those kids that lived through the second war are never going to be the same again. They lost their teen years to pain, suffering and darkness. None more so than Harry and Tansy. They will both have wounds that might never heal.

"I'll let you rest," Sheila tells her. "We can catch up once you've....adjusted" Tansy hums in agreement as she sits on the edge of the cot. She is so tired. Sheila leaves the room, letting Tansy get settled in. Once the door closes, Tansy glances at the window where the morning sunlight is starting to shine through. She wiggles her fingers and the curtains close, basking the room in darkness. She lets out a breath and closes her eyes. She should change out of her clothes, but she is too exhausted to get up again. She draws her leg up as she opens her eyes. She at least has enough energy to take her boots off. She leans over her knee to untie the laces on her boots, before switching legs to untie the other. Then kicks them off and flops back onto the bed.

"Ow," She complains and then pushes herself up to untangle her hair from her earrings, then takes them off. There is no way she will be able to sleep in her hoops. She sets the earrings on the floor next to her boots before she collapses back and closes her eyes, not even bothering to get into the bed properly. She's going to ache when she wakes up, but she is too tired to care right now.

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