Blood Magic ✤ George Weasley ✓

76 - The Ballad of Anastasia Vasiliev

musical mood: let it be - the beatles

The Patil twins didn't return back to Hogwarts, after their father's murder. No one could blame them. Cass couldn't imagine what they were going through. Sai had been so kind to her, if not a bit eccentric, when they'd spent a week together in Westminster over the summer. It had perhaps been one of the best weeks of her life, and it broke her heart that such a kind soul had lost his life, and in such a horrific way.

Like Connor, Ana was a place she refused to allow her mind to touch, for the rest of break, though it was considerably harder to do so when she returned back to school. Sitting on the train, thinking about the last conversation her and Ana had, it was impossible to not sob her eyes out. At least she was alone, having refused to sit with her other classmates, and didn't have to suffer the humiliation of publicly crying.

She skipped the feast, the mere concept of eating causing her stomach to churn with nausea, and instead headed up to her dorm. Though her journey was cut off when she entered the common room, and Henry stepped in front of her.

"Shouldn't you be at the feast?" Was the first thing he asked.

"Shouldn't you?"

"I'm not hungry." He shook his head. "We heard about what happened to Ana. I'm so sorry, Cass."

She wanted to say it was alright, that it wasn't his fault, so he had no reason to be sorry, but for some reason, she couldn't. Because it wasn't alright, it never would be alright. Instead, she asked, "How's Theodore?"

He shook his head once more. "He's...well, I don't think you want to know how he is."

"I do. He's my friend. I care about him, I want him to be okay."

"Cass, this is Ana we're talking about. She was Theodore's everything. After he read what happened, I had to talk him down from drowning himself in the Black Lake. He tried to go on the frozen ice, and break through it."

"Oh Merlin." She ran a hand through her hair, trying to steady her breathing.

"I don't think he'll ever be okay again." He pressed his lips together. "I don't know if I will be either, not for a while, at least. Ana, we never were close, but Merlin, was she wonderful."

Tears began to prick at Cass's eyes, and she quickly blinked them away. "She was, wasn't she?"

It felt strange, referring to Ana in the past tense, with words like were and was, and not is and are. It felt wrong, it didn't feel real.

"Cass, if you need anything, you know you can come to me, right?"

"Thank you."

"Do you need to talk?"

She shook her head. "I'd rather just go to sleep. Thank you, though."

"Of course." He gave her a sad smile that she didn't bother to reciprocate. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

She nodded, before making her way up to her dorm. Fiddling through her bag, she reached inside, finding her stash of calming droughts and taking one, two, three, four, enough until she was dizzy from the liquid flooding her system. Somehow, though it was hard for her to so much as stand on her two feet, she made her way to her bed, collapsing into it and pulling the blankets up to her chin.

She dreamt of fire.

*

The Ravenclaw vs Slytherin Quidditch match wasn't cancelled, for Merlin knows what reason. One would think that the murder of a Hogwarts student would have more of a mourning period - there had been a significant one for Cedric, after all, but outside of Ana's close friends, no one seemed to care all that much. Was it because she was a muggleborn? Perhaps because she was a foreigner? Merlin knows Great Britain didn't take well to those born elsewhere, be it muggles or wizards alike.