Ali couldn't help but think that while it would be annoying and upsetting not to be able to remember anything that happened in your past, maybe it was actually for the best in some cases: including his own. Maybe not knowing anything was best to keep him safe or something. In her uncle Harry's case, he as purposely kept in the dark until it was actually time for him to know the truth about everything, and even then he was only told what he needed to know. And apparently, this had all been for his own safety. And while she didn't understand the reasoning behind that, she knew that it all worked out in the end, but it did result in the death of quite a few people. She actually wasn't that big of a fan on her uncle. And he was only her uncle though marriage after all.

"Have you ever through that maybe it'll be by trying to ignore it that you'll actually remember?" she suggested. Of course, she didn't really know his situation and she wasn't sure how much of it that she actually wanted to know about, but it was the first thing that came to her mind when he said that it made it hard not to think about. "A watched pot never boils." She warned him. Her mother had said this exact phrase to her in French more times than she could count; Un pot ne se résume jamais regardé. Ali often found it difficult to feel sorry for people, so even when he talked about his time in the orphanage, she didn't really change her attitude towards him. Everything happened for a reason in her opinion. "But then you can be anyone that you want to be. You can start over anywhere and no one would know anything about you." She shrugged, it didn't seem so bad, it was decently close to her plan. When he looked back with a smile and noticed how far behind she had fallen, she stopped and she gave a small smirk in reply. "How gentlemanly." She teased and continued her climb.

A shake of his head. "I wish that worked. Unfortunately after two years the Healers admitted that what ever was done was done with dark magic inside my head. Whatever restrictions that were imposed, until they are met I can access nothing from my life before Hogwarts. It has been sealed away and can not be unlocked easily. I wish it was possible to find out what methods the man did, but I have no way of knowing. He did it to keep me from having somewhere to run to or for they tell me. I wish I didn't remember the pain of being experimented on after though." Being force fed potions to see how they reacted to his inside had been a horrible feeling, but now he knew enough to know how much damage the wizard could have done to him during that time and that was enough for separate nightmares!

A shrug, but he knew there was some truth in what she said even if not quite the same as she meant it. "True, and maybe that is what happened to the others, but how many times in class have we heard about famous orphans or those without relations? A big fat zero it seems from what I have read." A sigh for it was not a positive thing. "I still plan to try, but it's not encouraging. If you see me back next year I will be relieved really for it means I have survived with no funds or support. So far no luck in getting any sort of job though, probably because I am a student still." Starting over? He hadn't really managed to start yet from what he believed, but he thought she meant well in the statement.

A flush up his neck as she teased. "Well I hope it was not a surprise that I could be one at least. I guess I was thinking more about what I said and less about my company. My apologies. No woman should ever be ignored." A slight head bow as he said it, though he only meant with respect. Let her take it as she thought, he wasn't admitting he was interested so much as what was polite. Besides, she was clearly not interested that way and she broadcast it fairly effectively.

ALIETTA MARIE KRUM

"So you think that your memory will come back at some point in your life? After something happens to make it come back?" She asked. He had mentioned that the healers didn't think anything could be done until the restrictions had been met, so it made sense for her to ask. This situation was seeming to get more and more complicated by the minute and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. She didn't really care. She rarely cared about anyone, but a part of her felt that she should care. But caring about people was a lot of work, and more often then not, when you started to care about people would be the moment when they left and left you alone to feel as though it had just made a very serious mistake. She had experienced that one to many times to ever let it happen again. She cared for most of her family of course, and Katrina, her best friend, but that was basically it. "So then why worry about it? Why not just wait and enjoy the present if there's nothing you can do to change the past or prepare for the future?"

"You've heard about Harry Potter, I mean sure, he had those muggles but from what he's told me, I'd be willing to be he'd almost have rather been put in a wizard orphanage." Ali couldn't imagine not knowing that she was magical until her Hogwarts letter had arrived. Actually, her Beauxbatons letter had come before her Hogwarts letter had, and her Durmstrang letter had arrived shortly after, but her father refused to enroll her in Durmstrang, believing that it would be too tough for his little princess, and she herself has refused to go to Beauxbatons, so her parents agreed to send her to Hogwarts with her cousins. "Isn't chivalry another Gryffindor trait?" she teased him with a smirk. "Possibly the only one that I appreciate." she finally managed to catch up with him.

A look of concentration then, as if her words didn't quite match up in his mind before he spoke again. "I hope so. Imagine going your whole life knowing it was a lie because you never recaptured who you really were. I mean, I might have siblings, family somewhere who know nothing of what happened to me. Heck, I could go to school with one and if they don't recognize me I would never know! That's kept me awake a few times I can tell you..." His hand came up as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying not to get wound up in it again, that feeling of desperate loss. She asked him why he worried then and he felt like he couldn't be entirely honest with her since it seemed irrational to be so obsessed about it. He sighed before looking back to her.

"Two reasons really. First because there is always the hope that if I keep thinking on it I might think of a solution which could help as hard as that is to believe. But mostly because stopping thinking about it seems like laying down and just giving in and I don't want to. That just feels wrong as if I admit death without trying, does that make sense? I don't want to go down without a fight, without making an effort, even though the odds are against me!" There had to be something that could reverse all this! Although it was a fantasy of his that some girl would capture his attention and that through her he would have a solution while she distracted him entirely, but the odds were so much more against that happening it wasn't worth dwelling over!

But he could dream.

She mentioned Harry Potter but from an angle he hadn't really ever heard much about. "Oh really? They must have been truly terrible then." Although everything about hat he had heard about Harry Potter said 'long chances' and 'nearly hopeless odds' for most of it. There was a boy who had been stuck in the middle of everything seemingly unprepared, but he had pulled off a miracle hadn't he? "I think if you are an orphan the dreams are the only way of coping really, imagining to yourself a rescue from it or discovering what happened was part of some amazing story you just don't know the ending of yet. Otherwise you break down and give up hoping for a chance. I just don't want to give in on that chance, it feels like betrayal of myself if I do."

Now he looked at her longer for a moment as she caught up, smiling amused as she spoke about chivalry. "Well then, glad I have something redeemable in me then. And you are right, of course, it is a house trait." As if she had brought it to his attention he put his arm out for her to take with a sardonic smile and a slight head bow. "Shall we continue then, my lady, in a more comfortable mode for you? Heavens knows let me try to make this ordeal for you as pleasant as possible..." In that moment he was quite charming, offering her some control over the outcome to some degree, but part of that was also pushing his own issues aside to give her his focused attention.

ALIETTA MARIE KRUM

Ali's life was so different. He wanted to know his siblings. She purposefully ignored her siblings most of the time and pretended that they didn't exist so she wouldn't have to fulfill her sisterly obligations and watch over them, something that she still unfortunately did anyway. Her sister might be one of the most annoying human creatures on the face of the Earth, but if someone were to disrespect her, they were disrespecting her entire family, and while Ali liked to think of herself as the black sheep, she still had that blood bond with them and still felt pain when they were pained. She knew she wasn't the only black sheep, though. Her sister Adelina had been placed in Gryffindor while both she and her brother had been rightfully sorted into Slytherin. Neither of her parents had gone to Hogwarts so there was truly no obligation to be in any specific house, but she could tell that her father identified most with Slytherin qualities while her mother identified most with Hufflepuff qualities. Yet, Adelina had been placed in Gryffindor. And Ali hated Gryffindors.

"Well I mean, he didn't know anything about magic for 11 years until his Hogwarts letter came. He didn't know anything about his parents or his other family other than the fact that they were dead. Imagine the shock of knowing nothing about this world: our world until we were 11. I can't imagine how Mudbl- Muggle borns would deal with it." Ali had nothing against those who were muggle born. She didn't really care to much about blood type or status, what she cared about was how a person presented them self. So she had stopped herself from using the derogatory term. It was out of place. "They say to dream is the only way to escape reality. I say actions speak louder than dreams." she said. She saw dreams as a distraction. A pointless minor escape. If you wanted to change something, dreaming about it wasn't going to get you anywhere. When he offered her his arm, she looked at him skeptically, then laced her own through his. This was so out of character, but they still had two flights of stairs to climb to get to the Hospital Wing and she wasn't sure if her body could get their on her own. She would have been fine in the forest, she would have been long sat with her egg by now. She noticed his charm, though it didn't affect her. She wouldn't be able to see him in that way. He was almost the opposite of whom she envisioned for herself, but she would accept him for now. "Who ever's idea it was to put the Hospital Wing on the third floor was sort of an idiot, wasn't he?" She sighed.

Listening, he had to admit to having thought about her point before. "Yeah, very confused. I spent two years nearly in St Mungo's letting them try to fix that spell in my head. I can't imagine how anyone could have handled Hogwarts the first day alone. They gave me books to read in the wing and then when I wasn't there the orphanage gave me lessons to get ready. That helped a ton. Still, I can not imagine being muggleborn." How much of a complete turn around would one have to make to deal with it? Yet they did it every year here again. She spoke about dreams and he smiled, wistfully. "And for me dreams make reality worth dealing with. Especially when there are no actions to take."

She gave him a skeptical look and he smiled, enjoying the moment. Still, she took his arm and he made the next flight much easier for her with his easy strength. There was no illusion here; neither thought the other was someone they could consider dating nor in being close, but the illusion of this allowed them to make the next bit much easier to deal with. Despite the fact opposites attract, he had already seen enough to know he wouldn't be except physically; she was pretty to look at but definitely a different outlook on life. "Not really many options there, it had to be Hufflepuff, wouldn't it? But it might have been a late addition too and they had to put it somewhere they hadn't already filled. Who knows what they were thinking back then as an infirmary couldn't have been all that advanced in the first place, right?"

Surely healing had come along way since those days?

Making sure to keep to the middle of the stairs where she could easily touch the handrail, Walker continued up tying to keep his pace to match hers so she didn't have to speed up for him. Knowing he had already said he had never dated he explained "We had to take etiquette classes at the orphanage. I think about half my dorm needs to have them shoved down their throats." And honestly, most of the guys in school only remembered them when trying to get a girl to go to bed with them. And that reminded him of something he should offer whether she wanted it or not. "So is there something I can do to make up putting you through this? I know you don't see the point to it so you should get something out of all this."

ALIETTA MARIE KRUM

"I think that's what prefects are supposed to be for. Especially for the first years." Ali said when he agreed that he couldn't imagine how anyone with no prior knowledge of the wizarding world would feel on their first day of Hogwarts alone. "Prefects are supposed to Shepherd the first years and show them where to go and how to do things." she would imagine that without the prefects, the first years would just wander aimlessly until someone came along and helped them. She always thought that perfects were annoying, and she still felt that way, honestly. But she understood their purpose. He said there was no action to be done and she shrugged a little. "There is always a way to change your fate. I found mine. I'm sure you'll find yours when you're ready for it." she insisted, though she began to become upset with herself. She didn't want to get invested in this bloke.

"I think it would have been stupid to open a boarding school without a hospital wing straight from the start. I guess it makes sense to have it where it is, because then it's almost equal distance from the towers and the basements, but it just seems like stairs weren't the best ideas. Though, I suppose there are charms and such for that." She shrugged. She wasn't in need of those such charms, she was just trying to work out the thought process of whomever had designed the layout of the school. "I'd be curious to know how many of those in your dorm are related to me." She rolled her eyes. She loved all of her cousins, but that didn't mean that she hated Gryffindor any less. And, she only really saw them outside of school over Christmas, that was the only Holiday that her small little family spent with the Weasley's, and even then it was only part of the day. Her Slytherin cousins she approved of much more. Albus Potter was one of her best friends and most trusted confidants. She shook her head at his last question, "I don't think there's really anything to be done. The healer will give me a potion for the pain and a cream for the scars and bruises and send me back down to the dungeons." She'd just have to lay low tonight and go back out to her dragon tomorrow, when, hopefully, he wasn't around.

Ah yes well, prefects. "True. I'm so used to just keeping an eye open for them because of rules that I forget about how helpful they were in the first few weeks. Man, just trying to think about ever having looked that young is a real stretch." She spoke about taking action and he gave her the first real glance of distaste. Not for her specifically, more so like the idea and what it meant. "All right, here's the problem and maybe then you'll see the issue. Whatever magic he used, it can only be unlocked by whatever qualifications he put on it. That's why they kept me in Mungo's for two years trying to figure out how to unlock the magic. I don't think like him so that makes it pretty damn near impossible to figure out what he set it for. The odds are high I may never run across it even accidentally."

He shook his head. "I'm not giving up, mind you, but I don't see much chance of success at that one. I'd need someone very dark minded to have much chance, right? Fancy me hanging out with people like that and getting help which I can't pay for?" In school they both knew that would mean her house and no, the odds were pretty against him finding someone from the darker crowd interested in doing charity work. Nor would he probably like the prices that were quoted at him for helping him out. Lions and Snakes had a history of not getting along and the friction he had already experienced with her so far underlined that. Their current speech felt more like temporary truce. So far. Her point about the stairs made him double take at her, and then glance down. "Oh say, that does make sense. But they have the locomotor charms so they don't really need the castle to do stuff as well I guess."

That would work so well, a reverse of the spell on the girl's dorm stairs. A reverse ramp? Or the steps move up like an escalator?

Her comment about relatives caused another glance. "Different last names? I thought most families ended up in the same house." A study of her face from the side now that he had the excuse; she was pretty after all though he didn't know she had a genetic advantage there too. "I can't say that any faces ring a bell, but I'll keep an eye open mostly out of curiosity now." He personally agree with her statement about the nurse, but wondered why then she had been so resistant to him from the start. Wouldn't it have been easier to go along and prevent him being ever suspicious in the first place? She clearly knew enough about his house to peg what his reaction would have been at least in general.

ALIETTA MARIE KRUM