antebellum [t. riddle]

xvi.

november 1944

the following days were torture. physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

no matter how much her body had ached for it, she did not get even a wink of sleep that night. she was too busy thinking about how every friendship she had built had been destroyed in a matter of minutes. she took more potions so that her hands would stop shaking. 

you need to go to the hospital wing.

she sent a reductor curse at her closet, blasting it to pieces in anger. i hate macusa, this is all their faults. 

sicaria sat in the bay window of her room, looking out into the freezing lake. she thought long and hard about how the events of tonight and how they would shape her future. 

she laughed scathingly at herself. her future. this was her own damn fault for getting attached to people who would forget about her in a matter of months once macusa pulled her out. she couldn't let herself have any more emotional liabilities. she had to protect them, and to protect them, she had to protect herself. it would have been better if they never met. 

the decision not to tell dumbledore any of this was a quick and easy one. she had no idea how he would react, and she realized quickly that she didn't want to know. as much as she loathed riddle, snitching on him was not the revenge she wanted. 

you don't need revenge. you're a professional, stop acting like a child. 

she sent another reductor curse to her bed, and then her bathroom door, and then the wall just above her dresser. why don't i get to be a fucking kid? why does everyone in this school get to torture me as i watch them get to be kids?

frustrated tears fell down her face, and all she wanted to do was beat her skull into the wall until it cracked and bled out. an emotional outburst like that would only lead to another psych evaluation, and she didn't need a medical professional to tell her what was wrong with her. she already knew. 

she pressed her head against the glass as she waved her wand and repaired all the damage she caused. it was like she was never there. she promised herself again, that there would be no more slip ups. 

but again, she was wrong.

•••

it had been two days from the incident when it finally dawned on her. 

she spent those days consistently downing calming draughts and energy potions to get her through the day. her worsening condition had been making it harder to function. her memory was getting inconsistent, and she constantly forgot to cast glamours on herself so she wouldn't look like a walking corpse. professor silva told her to go to the hospital ("you look like death, ms. edwards. it's ruining the aura of my greenhouse."), but she had more important things to think about. whatever was wrong with her would pass eventually, and she'd deal with it until it did. 

"are you alright, edwards?" rosier had whispered to her as silva dismissed them from class. she ignored him.

she knew what was wrong. she couldn't admit it to herself. 

it would go away in a few days, it always did. 

sicaria had managed to avoid every single one of the boys outside of class, not for lack of trying on their part. she really didn't know how she was supposed to react to a situation like that aside from distancing herself from them. she would have to stay away until she could resolve the situation, but every time she tried to think, there were too many holes that confused her. she resorted to disillusionment charms to get them to leave her alone, pestering her with apologies. why were they apologizing?