Losing Faith

𝟓

𝐍 𝐎 𝐕 𝐄 𝐌 𝐁 𝐄 𝐑.
Two hours before the party.

—

"I'll kill you, Harris." Astoria's furious voice echoed off the walls of their room as the door swung open and a girl with disheveled hair and glittering eyes rushed in, her cheeks flushed with anger.

Faith winced, either at the way Astoria had called her, because she hated having her last name shortened, or because Astoria had been too loud and hadn't explained anything yet, just kept glaring at her.

"Can you at least explain why?" Faith's voice was calm — she continued to look at her clothes, and it didn't seem to bother her in the least.

Astoria was also her friend, but recently, they had become more distant from each other, and this did not go unnoticed. But none of the girls spoke about the reasons.

"I just got a letter from my mother." Astoria said, and to confirm her words, she threw a piece of parchment on the bed, which was decorated with the smooth lines of her mother's handwriting.

"And?" Faith raised an eyebrow in response, not even looking at the letter. She kept her composure as usual, sounding calm and confident, her questioning gaze going from the girl across from her, from head to toe, and from Astoria's look, everyone could tell that she was even angrier.

"It says here that I will not go to France as an exchange student, because guess who will go there instead of me?" She spread her arms wide with a sarcastic and slightly nervous smile, glancing between Faith, Nicole, and a few other students who were crowding the entrance to the room, "Faith Silver-Harris!"

She exclaimed, madly baring her teeth in a wide grin, but then her face twisted again in a grimace of anger.

"How could you do this to me? You knew perfectly well that I'd been dreaming about this for the last two years, and what did you do? Were happy for me as a friend? Supported me? No, you stole my place, you stole my opportunity, you stole what was mine!" The girl's voice had increased by several octaves, and now her eyes were sparkling with tears that were about to spill out of her eyes — she felt resentful that the one who had been considered her friend for so many years had trampled on her and her dream.

Faith didn't move a muscle — she stared at Astoria with a stony expression, not reacting to her hysteria, but then her lips curled into a sinister grin that quickly turned into a kind one. Nicole felt lost, she didn't understand what was going on between them and what was causing the split in their friendship — what was causing Faith's behavior.

"I didn't steal anything that was yours. We're friends, aren't we? And friends don't do that." Her voice was unnaturally kind, her words paused as if she were talking to a child, her olive-green eyes seemed to shoot Astoria with hints that no one, including her, could understand.

"You're probably just not good enough to go to such a prestigious school, and they chose someone more promising. Nothing personal, Astoria, but maybe you can try to improve yourself?" Faith then said, shrugging one shoulder and pursing her lips slightly. There was something... suggestive about it, something she seemed to want to convey to Astoria, but Astoria was too engrossed in her anger to notice.

She chuckled nervously, closing her eyes for a second, then lunged at her friend, wrapping her trembling hands around her throat.

"Improve myself?" Her voice was low, but ominous, touching Faith's skin, which still kept a straight face, "Why don't you shut the fuck up for once in your life, Harris? I'm tired of you attacking me for no reason, I'm fucking tired of you."

"Can you just calm down? Both of you." Nicole came out of her daze after everything that had just happened there and approached the two girls, trying to push them away from each other, "Come on, Greengrass, let her go."

"Then why did you continue to cling to me and this pathetic semblance of friendship until this letter? If you're tired of me, why didn't you just leave me the fuck alone?"

All Nicole's attempts to subdue them were futile, they both simply ignored her, continuing to stare at each other with furious glances — Faith's face finally showed emotion, she seemed to break under the weight of the unspoken words.

"After all, I thought we were friends, and I kept hoping that this phase of yours would pass, but I won't take it anymore. Go to France, study in my place, leave everything and everyone behind, I don't care, I'm not a part of your life anymore." She hissed the last words and stormed out of the room, leaving Nicole at a loss, and Faith with an expression of tension on her face that quickly changed to a slight smile, as if this was exactly the outcome she had expected.

"What was that all about?" Nicole asked, looking from the closed door to Faith, who had already stripped off her clothes to change into the dress she had chosen.

"Haven't you heard? She's not a part of my life anymore, end of discussion. Get dressed, if you don't want to run around the room like a madwoman, because you don't have time to do anything." Faith waved her off, and sat down on the chair in front of the mirror, running a comb through her wavy chestnut-colored hair.

And Nicole knew that it wasn't just because of France, Faith had long since begun to push Astoria away from her, and now, she seemed happy that everything had turned out this way — one of the strongest and longest friendships on Slytherin, which nothing seemed to be able to destroy, was shattered to smithereens.