When at last I thought I had him forever, he slipped through my fingers again.
When at last I thought I could find that ray of sunshine in the sudden storm, it disappeared behind even darker storm clouds.
There was no way I could continue chasing th...
"She kept saying she was 'searching for herself'..."
"We've always been close. Now Bea's like a stranger."
"You know what it's like to be close to a sibling who suddenly...isn't there."
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If not for a thing called reality, I would have dissolved into thin air a long time ago.
All night, the conversation with Penny in the Three Broomsticks kept haunting me in my sleep, echoes of Beatrice's change magnified in my dreams. Tears kept brimming behind my closed eyelids, stinging my eyes, blurring my vision, as everything finally crumbled away. The more time had passed, and the more I caught up with everyone, the worse the situation seemed to be. No one was able to cope from the previous year, the previous curse. Recklessness, vengeance, bonds severed with a careless snip of the scissors--everyone's minds were plagued with at least one of those.
Rakepick set off more than just a spark in my anger that evening. She had pulled the trigger on the gun that went through everyone's chests.
Funny, how fast the blood spreads.
When next I woke, I found sticky, dry tears clinging on my face, my throat stinging with miniature knives. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and putting on my glasses, and got dressed quickly in the empty dormitory. My sight eventually lingered on the small stuffed Puffskein Beatrice gifted me just last year, and my eyes stung yet again from the tears that began to flow, unbidden, over my face.
Last year. It seemed like a lifetime ago that we were all placed under a false blanket of security, when we thought that we were all going to be in good hands with an expert. How could we have been so stupid to believe her plan? She tore us all apart. She left us all in the dust. All of this now seemed like a plague that is unavoidable. Those affected probably couldn't be reversed anymore. There was no cure for this epidemic.
"How could we be safe when the professors could be the bad guys?"
How could anyone be safe anymore, the way things were going?
---
Murmurs and whispers filled the corridors as I headed out to the courtyard at lunch, a little concerned when I noticed that my sister wasn't in the Great Hall. Could the bullying for her have gotten worse? I didn't anticipate everyone else picking on her because she had remained unspoken for so long in the halls of Hogwarts--and yet there she was, another possible target for Rakepick and 'R' to exploit.
Couldn't everyone just leave us alone?
Moments later, I reached the courtyard to see Andre and my little sister chatting away near the fountain, my sister holding up a little notepad while writing and listening to Andre.
"Hey," I said with a wave. "What's up?"
Little Em grinned at me and waved back in return. "Hey, Clara. Andre was just giving me some advice on how to look and feel great at Hogwarts. Not that the bullying's getting any worse, but you know. Just some general tips and all."
