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IT HAPPENED SO QUICKLY nobody knew what to think. Not until the blood started running, staining where Frank Geller's skull had slammed against the marble statue, trickling down the nape of his neck in thick rivulets, slicking the ground where he lay, concussed and disoriented, in a crumpled heap at the foot of the gargoyle on its stone pedastal. Not until Frank let out an agonised groan, glossing a hand over the back of his head, fingers coming away slicked with crimson. Not until he started screaming that he couldn't see, that everything was redredred and he couldn't see and it hurts it hurts it hurts.
Then the fingers started pointing. Purgatory triggered. Someone always had to take the fall. One might imagine a squabble of tongues erupting between two sides on warring perspectives. All rapid-fire venom, volcanic debate: he started it, she started it. His fault, her fault. If he hadn't said this, maybe she wouldn't have shoved him. If she hadn't shoved him, maybe he wouldn't be half-dead in the middle of the corridor.
But that wasn't what had happened.
There were two sides to this story, but it was one against too many. One, being Sawyer barely holding her own, and too many, being everybody else standing in the corridor at the time of her offence. Students, professors, prefects, ghosts, everybody.
And not one of them had taken her side.
Nobody would've believed her then, even if she told the truth. That she hadn't meant to push him that hard. That he'd said something she didn't like. Everybody knows you don't return a snide comment with a broken skull and a throbbing concussion.
Looking back now, it still feels so surreal, like a fever dream she'd wake up from in a cold sweat and forget about later in the day. Now, even if someone asked, she couldn't tell them the catalyst, the trigger on her temper. All she could remember was the moment it all went south: something snapping inside, the static roar of her blood, the black tinging her vision, the cacoethes. A maniacal need to hit back. There were times she couldn't fathom whether the events that'd transpired were real or not. Some sickened part of her didn't want to try differentiating the two.
When the Sorting Ceremony had concluded, all the first years were escorted out by House prefects, herded out of the hall like dumb sheep pouring into the hallways. To the Common Rooms, someone had said, every House had their own personalised set of dorms in different areas of the castle. Hufflepuff's was located near the kitchen, so that was where Sawyer and the rest of the first years she'd been grouped with were heading.
Everyone else was already scurrying off to attend to other business, leaving the mystifying magic of Hogwarts to introduce itself to those who hadn't yet been acquainted. For a brief moment, Sawyer wondered if that meant the novelty of magic might've worn off. But the more rational side reasoned that the older students must've seen it all already, and were probably more occupied with other things than a bunch of first years who hadn't yet received any assignments. Some of the more naive and dazed first years squalled and gasped in wonder at the animated paintings, the torches lining the walls that seemed to flare to life as they trickled past, a river of wide-eyed freshmen, and the many stone and marble statues that may or may not be moving in periphery.
