As soon as the Minister of Magic had arrived, Nerissa noticed; she had spotted him not too far from where she sat, standing in the crowd with a few children near him. Her eyes widened and a sudden feeling of panic and fear took over her, “No, no, no,” she hissed. She had known that it would be risky coming to watch the Hogwarts Express take off for the year, but she certainly hadn’t considered the possibility of running into the Minister. The redhead thought of standing and darting away from the place, but she knew that such an action would only draw attention to herself, and that was the last thing that she wanted to do at such a time.
"Hello Essa. How are you?" Nerissa jumped, clearly frightened out of her wits and turned her head around so that he could see who was standing behind her- though she had known as soon as she had been greeted by her old nickname; Andrew had made the name up for her, and she couldn’t remember anyone else calling her by that name. Nerissa parted her lips to speak, but she was still having trouble breathing because of how startled she had been to hear someone’s voice so close to her, and decided to wait a few seconds before attempting to speak.
The train whistled, signaling that it would only be so much longer before it started up and began its journey to Hogwarts with all the little children and a few of the professors on it. Nerissa took this as her cue to reply to the man before her, “Andrew, you look well…” she said in a quiet voice, though it had changed much since the years the two of them had spent the most time around each other. Nerissa’s eyes darted about Andrew’s face; he had changed much, but she could still recognize him as the boy she had met at Hogwarts so many years before.
Nerissa remembered that the Minister was near and quickly looked over in the direction where she had last spotted him, only to see that someone was blocking her view. She nodded, good, that meant that he couldn’t see her either. The women turned her attention once more to Andrew, “I’m sorry, you’ve caught me at a very bad time…” she added in the calmest voice she could muster.