You can hinder me, but you'll never stop me

The Emotional Range Of A Teaspoon Put To Work

Neville was working hard on the exercises Jay had given him. Even though he didn't know the purpose of some. Like walking a balance beam. As he was doing now. And he was really terrified of falling. Why wasn't he questioning Jay's teaching mechanics? Life seemed more fun without the constant threat of falling a meter and a half, at least in his opinion. In Jay's opinion however, apparently any height wasn't high enough. He based that hypothesis on the fact that she loved the balance beam, and often times had the room transform so that there were platforms hanging from chains on the ceiling that made him feel sick just looking at it. He almost had a hard attack the first time he saw her casually jump from platform to platform, each wiggling like they were going to fall.

He sighed and carefully turned around on the beam once more to make his way back to where he just came from. He had to admit though, after a week of doing just this and block punches, along with running every day, he could feel the difference. What once took him a lot of encouragement to do, such as even get on the beam, now took just a few words of encouragement from Jay. On top of that, it was becoming gradually easier to walk back and forth on the beam, even if he were still terrified.

On his left Jay was on another balance beam, standing in a handstand on the very edge of it, folding herself neatly in half as she tried to get her feet on non-existing ground in front of her, before going back to her handstand.

His hands were stretched wide apart on both sides of his body, and they still ached from the punches he'd thrown at the sand sacks the day before, his arms an irritated red from continuously making the same movements against the imitation opponent.

"Jay?"

"Hm?" She answered, keeping her focus on the position she was in.

"Don't you think you should, you know, talk to Charlie? Or Severus?" He asked, putting all his Gryffindor courage to the test.

She flipped back with a cartwheel, looking so practiced that it seemed completely effortless when she did it. It looked as easy as breathing to her, he thought. "What makes you think that I need to talk to them?" She asked, genuinely surprised at his question.

"Well-" He gulped as he miss stepped, and almost fell off. Once he regained his balance, he continued, "Well, Charlie might be an idiot, but he's your brother. Besides, do you think he meant to hurt you? Because I don't think so." He let it sink in for a moment, and from the guilty look on his friend's face, he knew he'd hit a nerve there.

"I know I shouldn't take it personally, that he didn't do anything, or tell anyone. I guess I can't blame him for that. He probably didn't even know that what our parents did was wrong." She sighed. Running a hand through her hair, Neville could almost feel the frustration rolling off of her in waves. "But still, I don't know why! I don't know why I blame him, even just a little bit... It's not like I told anyone, like I did anything about it."

"It wasn't your fault Jay. You didn't ask for this, but-"

"But neither did Charlie." She interrupted him.

"Exactly."

She ran her hand over her sweaty forehead. "Why is my life always such a mess?" She smiled sadly. "I'm possibly the worst person at talking about feelings. Like, my teachers at my previous school suggested I seek treatment for what they suspected was some type of communication disorder. They thought I was autistic." She snorts. "Having the one person whose terrible at talking -in general that is- need to have these types of conversations... it's a miracle you're still around. I'm not someone whose easy to be friends with, I know that. And they weren't exactly wrong about the autism. At least as far as I can tell."

Neville looked wide eyed at his friend, "What are you talking about?" He couldn't imagine not having her as a friend, weird as she was.

She chuckles a bit, looking amused at Nev, which he doesn't get. "Yeah, I'm not very normal in any way, sorry to break it to you, but you're friends with an absolute weirdo."

He sorts. "I know you're a weirdo. I've seen you jump off platforms any sane person wouldn't even attempt to climb like it was nothing, and I've seen you take down guys twice your size and weight." He shakes his head, and Jay laughs at that, the pure desperation he manages in one look. "Nah, I meant, like, what's autism?"

"What do you mean, what's autism?"

He sends her an exasperated look. "Like, what is it? Never heard of it."

Surprised, Jay turns to face Nev again. "Wait, you don't know what autism is?"

"No?" He smiles as his answer immediately throws Jay into, what he calls encyclopaedia-mode.

"Autism is an collective diagnostic name for people whose brains work differently than others." She explains as simple as she can.

"That's possible?" He asks, and Jay at first thinks he's joking.

"Yeah? I mean, most of the time it's nothing bad. It can be hardly noticeable, but also make a person's life extremely hard. I myself think I fall more into the Asperger area." She informs him. "It's a lighter form of it, and you can learn and speak well, but oftentimes find it hard to understand language or what other people feel or think."

"Wait what?" He looks a little lost at that.

She fiddles with a strain of hair, and breathily answers. "Well, it's what I think anyway. I've never had a test to prove it, so I don't know how ligament of a diagnose it is." She hesitates a bit, but then decides to tell him more. "You know how I sometimes don't respond immediately? I have to repeat in my head sometimes what it was you said, before I can understand it."

Nev had noticed that, he'd just thought she was finishing something, or finishing some train of thought before she answered. He nodded silently, recognising that it had to be hard to tell that.

"Also, the silences I sometimes have in the middle of a sentence, I use them to make sure that what I'm about to say won't be taken the wrong way by someone." She keeps looking down. "It... it can be, well, hard. You know, people get annoyed when you have to ask them to repeat something for the third time, especially when they're certain that you've heard them."

Suddenly Neville remembers a herbology class in which Jay once asked a classmate four times to repeat something, only to look for help with him. He was the one who gave the girl the shears that were behind Jay that the girl kept asking for her to pass. "Like that time with the shears in herbology?"

"Yeah. Exactly like that."

"Oh." He's silent for a bit, trying to process what she just told him, and deciding that a library search on autism and Asperger is definitely going to be in his planning in the upcoming week.

"So, you know it can be quite hard to understand a person's point of view for me. I know now that Charlie was not trying to be a douche, but just didn't know any better."

"Well, what's the problem then? Can't you just talk to him?"

"And say what? Sorry I've unreasonably, silently hated you for the bigger part of our lives? Let's make up?"

Nev rolls his eyes, before realizing that she might mean that. How did he become the expert on emotions? His emotional range was about the same length as a teaspoon in his opinion. "Uhm, well, maybe don't do that? Just like, ask him to study together sometimes, Merlin knows he needs all help he can get."

"And then what?" She looks honest-to-Merlin so lost. "What would we talk about? What- what do I even say?"

"Okay, first of all, don't talk about your parents. Talk about you and Charlie. Talk about something that you could do together? That would probably be a good idea. Second, don't force it. If you have nothing to say, then say nothing and let him talk." What else could he say? Jay was definitely taking mental notes on this. Honestly? She and Charlie needed to make up. If she ever had to go back to the Potters, at least then someone was there for her. "Third, ask him about his perspective, about how he saw it, and then explain how that made you feel. Even if those feelings seem unreasonable now."

"Why am I not supposed to talk about our parents?" She asked.

He tries to explain, "This is about you and Charlie. Not about them. Yeah they have the main role in the story, but so do you two. Does that explain it?"

She still looks a bit confused, but nods anyway. "You know what? I think I'll try just that. Put my Gryffindor courage to use."

He smirks, relieved that she's going to at least try. That would be good enough for now.