Magic comes in all different forms, though until now - not like this.
Wanda Maximoff is born a witch. Albus Dumbledore finds her amongst the wreck of her obliterated apartment in Sokovia and takes her back to England; to Hogwarts. But she is not lik...
It takes me far too long to realise I'm drowning - to realise that the darkness is choking me, forcing itself down my throat in hot, angry surges of grief. I try to wrestle against its strength but the hunger I have refused to satiate for three days pulls me back, tying my limbs down with a wicked laugh. I don't know where it came from, I don't know how it managed to slip through all of this screaming, burning black mass around me, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Help me, I can't shout, free me, I can't beg.
There's just lies - lies, lies, lies and cages of my own making, cages of my father's making.
I hate him. I hate the mess he's left me in, I hate that he never cared enough to put something in place to protect me. That he lied and fed me stories of endless glory and safe resplendence. That he's the reason I'm going to fail and when I fail I'm going to die and when I die mother will die and when she dies I'll have failed again. Again and again and again. Failure after failure.
I hate that I'm weak. I hate that I'm struggling. I hate that I'm scared. I hate that I'm not him - that I'm not him - not him - not him-
"Wanda!" I'm tugged upright by a warm, jolting hand, the bedcovers falling away from my chest, "Wanda, are you alright?"
"Yes." I say automatically through a gasp of breath, "Yes, I- I-"
But I'm panting so hard I can't finish my sentence, lurching back and forth with the force of each breath. There's bile in my throat and a surging, greedy hunger that doesn't belong to me nestled in the pits of my stomach - my head spins and I thread my fingers into my hair, trying to still it.
I fight back the urge to gag.
"What happened?" Hermione asks, her face swimming before my eyes.
Her voice is soft and concerned as she leans forward on the bed, her long curly hair gleaming in her wandlight. She's pushed the crimson curtains of my four-poster bed open, pale silver light sifting through the window behind her from the wallowing full moon.
It's several hard swallows before I'm sure that I'm not about to be sick and can look her in the eye without feeling that awful dizzying sensation again, "Bad - dream - I think." I reply, my voice a foreign rasp even to my own ears. "Did I - wake - the others?"
"No," she says, her eyes pinning me with an anxious stare, "Are you sure you're alright?"
No.
My heart races as I search for a reply, "I don't know... I don't know what I was seeing - I can't remember..."Anger, pain, fear, a desperate, aching hunger... I shake my head to clear it, twisting and untwisting my burning hands in the duvet, "It was like I was in someone else's head for a moment but it's... it's fading... the memories are vanishing."
The second I say the words, I realise the instantaneous truth. It wasn't just a nightmare, it wasn't just a figment of my imagination - it wasn't me full stop.
Hermione starts in mild alarm, "Who?"
I blink and struggle to glean an answer from the mess of panic already draining from my memory-
Water, running water and pale, trembling hands-
But nothing else, no indication at all of who those hands belonged to or whose voice I heard in my head, "I don't know," I answer quietly, honestly, "I think... I think they were drowning - drowning and trying to call for help." I watch the darkness swirl around our figures as Hermione lowers her wand, concern saturating her aura so strongly it makes my head spin and my stomach tighten. "I don't- maybe it wasn't real." I say to quieten her worry, to still her own spinning thoughts.
Her brown eyes glance away from me - then back again - "Or maybe someone needs help," she whispers, goosebumps rippling in a visible wave along her bare arms. I watch as she tugs at the bottom of her nightdress, the material a dusty pink, and says, "Maybe... they feel trapped by something-" a gasp, "What if-"
I lean forward onto my knees, spearing my mind through the stone of the girls' dormitory tower and into the boys'. "They're fine," I tell her, reeling my magic back in and watching the red recede from the reflection in her eyes, "Currently experiencing a varying multitude of fictional quidditch matches that all end with Gryffindor beating Slytherin."
An immediate, slightly bemused frown creases her forehead, "Both of them?" she asks.
I fail to fight the smile, "Both of them." I confirm.
Sometimes Harry and Ron might as well be the same person, it's weirdly frequent how often their thoughts and feelings are aligned. Though as of late, I'm glad for the things that make them different - the things that mean Harry would never do what Ron is doing, seemingly without conscience.
To steer my own anger away from the surface, I stretch my arms out and take Hermione into them, holding her close to me just to remind myself that she's still here, that she's alright and I'm alright and Harry and Ron are alright.
That whoever that person was, it was not one of them.
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sorry for the long wait! it's exam season 😫
will be back to regular updates hopefully by the end of June - thank you for your patience if you're still reading this!
and here's a wanda gif <3
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