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Four. A Thousand Cuts
𓃵
Circe had only felt it once before—the lightning strike. It started with thunder in her stomach, an aggressive fluttering like thousands of butterflies, then the gunshot through her heart and lungs. She couldn't breathe.
A late afternoon in autumn with a cool breeze ... Her Transfiguration textbook lay open on a tree stump, and the wind was flicking inquisitively through its pages. He was coming back from the Quidditch pitches with some of the other Beauxbatons visitors. Up ahead, waiting to receive them stretched an avenue of trees, their branches and orange leaves interlocking overhead. Tall, broad, and full, in a light blue (and, quite possibly, silk) uniform with a matching hat, and swinging a brand new Nimbus, he moved in and out of pockets of fuzzy, fawny, dying sunlight. He laughed—head back, with tautened throat. Circe watched him pass, in her coal-coloured robes and muddy shoes, with her tear-stained notepad, her fountain pen.
Something happened at first sight: Lightning, thunder, cloudburst, sunshine, rainbow. The meteorology of love at first sight ...
She had been first to wake up in her dormitory the morning after detention with Umbridge. Judging by the sleepy silence and the freshly minted look of that beam of sunlight, it was just after daybreak. The only sound apart from the distant twittering of birds was the slow, deep breathing of Parvati in the bed next to her. She dressed quickly and departed the dormitory for the school grounds. Making straight for her favourite spot by the edge of the Black Lake, under the shade of an old oak tree, Circe settled herself down comfortably and took out her tattered packet of cigarettes.
Smoking was something she didn't necessarily approve of, or like to do, but sometimes she couldn't help it. It was either nicotine or confessing to Madam Pomfrey (and herself) that something inside her was deeply wrong and in need of sedating. Umbridge had brought it out of her: weakness. She reminded Circe of her grandmother, Walburga. It was her who set this entire nightmare in motion.
Footsteps sounded behind her. She expected McGonagall and a stern lecture, or perhaps the groundskeeper had found her, but it was none other than Mika Macauley who drifted across the dewy grass as though she frequently did alone.
"Morning," Mika said brightly as she sat down.
"Can I help you?"
"I thought you might've been lonely."
"Well," Circe muttered, "you thought wrong."
At this, Mika's expression became disgruntled and she looked away. Circe didn't think she had it in her, the ability to feel anything other than apathetic contentment. Maybe she hadn't seen it at first with all the beauty and blondness, the little speck of rot, but now that she looked closer—there it was.
