Are wands even enough anymore?!

Prettier When Angry

The small abandoned cabin in the middle of the Forbidden Forest groaned beneath the unforgiving winds and who knows what lurking outside. It wasn't ideal, but it was safe from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears. No sane student would even think of coming this far up to eavesdrop.

"What if we try and communicate? We can at least try, right? At least like that we'll know if my theory is right or not." Alicia insisted, crossing her arms as her cold voice echoed through the stone walls.

"...that would..." Nicholas started, but I interrupted him shamelessly.

"We could ."

This made all of them freeze and stare at me in disbelief. I just shrugged in response: "The lady has got a point. If we want to find our girl, what we need to do first is to make sure she's alive . We're not some heroic lads to start chasing after cold corpses just to bury them, after all. After that... we can try and establish some sort of communication with her. That will be much better than shooting in the dark."

...

Sebastian was the first to speak: "Then let's find our girl."

***

The days seemed to bleed into each other. Day or night, it mattered little for the girl. Sleep was impossible.

When she did find herself dozing off, the screams of her past love would wake her up instantly, making her very articulations jolt and her bones fear. The difference from day and night was now a small golden ray of light creeping unwelcomed through the curtains, as if taunting and mocking her with promises of a life that's moved on without her. A life that has moved on without him .

But she couldn't keep up. How could she, when she didn't even deserve to breathe?

Losing her fingers meant a constant reminder of what she'd seen, of what she'd done to the only boy who ever looked at her beyond her name. She couldn't even bring herself to look down at her mutilated hand.

One thing.

She had one thing going on for her, and that was to be beautiful. She should have expected that it'd be swept away from her like all the others.

Viktoria did little more than rot in bed now. She barely ate, barely moved at all, and when she was seen in the livingroom it'd be because she'd suffocate herself in her own room. Her lungs screamed in protest, her legs longed to move, to shift, to do anything other than just... be.

It didn't matter.

On day nine of being home, she gathered the courage to look in the mirror.

Ann found shards of glass in the bathroom the very next moment she got home.

Luckily for her remaining mental health, Viktoria didn't stare long enough at her own image for her to actually process the state her right eye was in. She only briefly saw a thing that scared her and made it disappear. Nothing more.

That's right... it wasn't real.

As long as nobody saw her in this state, half sightless even without bandages, left hand half mangled, she would still beautiful. So long no more than the heartslabyul idiot-duo and her roomates saw her. She could still preserve whatever shred of dignity and reputation she had left!

That's right, she could–

But do you deserve to?

No she didn't.

Were she to have just minded her own business , she wouldn't be half the woman she was now. Her mind would still be clear, and she wouldn't be a disfigured girl! When her father were to see her, he'd make sure to finish her for good.