antebellum [t. riddle]

iv.

october 1944

sicaria's first week of classes went better than she could have hoped for. peoples curiosity of her was only heightened, seeing as most people had only seen her with tom riddle and albus dumbledore, and this fascination of the student body made it easy for her to talk to more people. she also spent a lot of time with venus, but that was less for companionship and more for her explanation of different social classes (sicaria used legilimency on her and saw no connections to grindelwald, so she thought it fair not to interrogate her). she had yet to conduct any interrogations, but as she met people, her priority list only grew. she had names upon names of people who were outstanding from the rest, whether it be by money, popularity, or blood status, all of which were traits of the average grindelwald supporter. 

it was a long list. she had to figure out a way to narrow it down. she couldn't interrogate the entire student body. perhaps she could create a formula, taking into account all the factors that made one person more likely than another to be in leagues with a dark wizard.

she had a menagerie of different tactics to add to her list of persons of interest. she would purposefully bump into people, framing it as an accident, and take note of their reactions. she would act as though she was lost, and ask for directions, and note how kind or how rude the person was to her. it reminded her of new york, but she kept herself busy enough so she would not have time to be homesick. she noticed how people spoke, walked, and interacted with their fellow students but also their teachers. each little difference conveyed something deeper about the character of the person. of course, the list was broad, but she had to start somewhere.

also, any boy with the boldness to flirt with her was added to the list. 

as venus explained to her, boys at hogwarts were competitive when it came to women. sicaria was new merchandise for each boy at the school to try to acquire. she was new, and interesting, and seen with riddle, which "upped her market value" as venus so obscenely put it. the boys were tired of the same witches they had known since they were eleven, and sicaria was certainly out of the ordinary. these sentiments only rekindled her deep-seated hatred for men. it was somewhat of an unspoken competition, to see which wizard would be the first to have a breakthrough with her. she was everyone's new interest, and she used it to her advantage. ask not what you can do for misogyny, but what misogyny can do for you.

this dynamic made her reflect on her previous relationships. she lost her virginity at fifteen in the back closet at a macusa gala. andre. he was the son of one of the department heads, and they snuck off together sometime during the night when neither of their parents were paying attention. she never saw him again. then there was reggie. she dated him for two months before her parents decided that he was a distraction and forced her to break up with him. she didn't but then her parents threatened him, and he broke up with her a week after. it was only a few months later that her parents died. on the one year anniversary, she went to 'celebrate' one night at a muggle club and met a waitress by the name of natasha. they had a series of hookups lasting for about a week until she got whisked away to dallas, texas for macusa. she'd slept with one man and one woman since natasha, but she couldn't remember their names, nor how recent they were aside from they definitely happened after she turned 18. she wondered if andre had saw himself as using her, though their brief encounter was decidedly mutual.

sicaria was a beautiful witch, but the constant male attention was not something she was particularly used to. most were just sly flirts, and offerings to help guide her around the castle and help her with homework. some seemed to make a spectacle out of it, talking to her while his friends laughed and pointed behind him. it took everything in her power to not hex the boy and all his friends, but she remembered that she had to keep up her act. cursing people was clearly not the best way to make herself approachable, so she settled for telling the boy to go fuck himself.