antebellum [t. riddle]

lvi.

february 1945

fleamont potter was nothing if not a gryffindor.

he seemed to take it personally that he was not a better duelist in their pair, constantly working to better himself. sicaria had hexed a group of boys who continued to call potter the 'weak link'. he got his revenge by disarming both boys in their next duel in class.

sicaria and potter won their second and third duel in only a matter of minutes. the two pairs they dueled seemed not to put any effort in, considering that one did not even raise their wand once merrythought allowed them to begin.

sicaria did eventually get around to interviewing julian murdoch, but like many of the children who attended this school, none of his information was substantial. he was just a pureblood supremacist who came from a long lineage of pureblood supremacists. naturally, he'd fall in line with grindelwald's ideologies, though murdoch seemed to think that his methods were too tame.

this information did not satisfy vota.

the woman had begun to grow impatient with sicaria, seemingly not realizing that there were a limited number of students in the school, and even fewer of them actually had information on a world-renowned terrorist. there was nothing for sicaria to do except research and yet, they still did not want to take her out of hogwarts.

eileen seemed to be entering lost cause protocol with sicaria, realizing that the girl was far too stubborn and far too wronged to even consider staying with macusa once the vow expired. with that fact in mind, vota decided that she'd try to get as much use out of sicaria as possible while she still could.

they'd be sending her on missions now.

eileen circled around sicaria like a vulture with her talons out— looking for anything to grab on to. sicaria had been the life jacket that eileen's career clung to, and she needed sicaria in order to continue climbing within her department.

as of right now, all sicaria did, day after day, was research. she continued to come up short, and boredom quickly consumed every aspect of her life. she went to her classes, did all her work, and sat in her dorm alone every single day. it had been a full month of this lifestyle and it was wearing sicaria down. she glanced at herself in the mirror once and was almost surprised by the state of herself.

she felt hollow— empty almost. it was a familiar sensation, one that felt like the dull ache of a knife carving out her arteries. it was slow, and she pleaded for the invisible hand holding the blade to cut faster, because the sooner the organs were gone, the sooner she'd stop bleeding.

sicaria was losing what made her human. anger and passion and love and fight and fear all made her feel alive. she no longer created chaos— only living in a world surrounded by other people's madness. it was supposed to hurt, but it didn't. it should have been overwhelming, but it wasn't.

she couldn't feel those so much anymore.

she was a walking corpse.

the feeling itself was muted and bearable and she was somewhat numb to it, but when she thought about what she was losing—

it was excruciating.

she had never felt pain like this— pain as beautiful as having the only thing she had ever desired at her fingertips and having to rip it away from herself.

she could feel nothing anymore; nothing except the desire to feel something.

and eventually, she did, though it had taken an almost frightening amount of time.