❝ MERLIN'S GHOST! ❞
❝ I MEAN, YOU'RE NOT WRONG. ❞
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Albany Bronwen was no Chosen One by any means, but being haunted by the ghosts of the greatest sorcerer of all time and a former king had to count for something, right?
❃ in which a lone...
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"THREE WEEKS."
Albany sighed, burying her face into her hands. She sat criss-cross before her pin board in the dormitory; she hadn't ever used it as much as she was using it this year. This time was a little less exciting than the last, when she had been planning her revenge prank - unless you counted impending doom as exciting, which she did not.
"Three weeks until the first task," she whispered to herself again. "Three weeks to prepare."
The problem was, she needed a lot more than three weeks. Going into a dangerous task to face an unknown obstacle armed with only her wand sounded horrible as it was, and then she had to take into account how bad she was at magic. Charms? Yikes. Transfiguration? Ghastly. Defense Against the Dark Arts? Don't even start. She was thoroughly screwed as things stood, and she had nobody to go to for help.
Faith had advised her to let the Weasley twins approach her first, but Albany found that she wasn't giving them the chance. In Potions class, Roger Davies returned to be her partner. In the hallways, she avoided them at all costs. Truth be told, she wasn't sure what she was more scared of: confronting them for the first time since shit hit the fan, or the possibility that they might not come back at all.
She couldn't well go to Merlin and Arthur, either. She had toyed with the idea of asking them for help, Merlin being an all-powerful wizard and Arthur a great warrior, but there were numerous reasons that put a swift end to the thought. One, she was too proud to come crawling back to them after the terms they had left on, and Faith had suggested she just forget about them anyway. Two, she wasn't actually sure how to call them back. Before, saying Merlin's name might have caught his attention, but this felt different. As though instead of waiting for her on the sidelines, they had abandoned her completely.
Faith wasn't much help either; though she was a decent student, she was far too distracted by gossip and her lack of patience made her a pretty terrible teacher. She far preferred letting Albany in on the latest news of the relationships and arguments between their classmates to discussing the tournament, no matter how desperate Albany got.
And Albany was getting desperate.
She still had to write to her parents and break the news. She had to deal with seeing her name on the chest of every other Slytherin with the anti-Potter badges going around. She had to mend her shitty broken friendships she had ruined, and tell Rita Skeeter and her photographer to fuck off at least once a day. And that was all quite minor in comparison to her looming death.
"Hey, Al."
Faith's voice broke through the thick and disorientating fog of her mind, and Albany slumped, certain that the girl was raising an eyebrow at her posture without glancing back to see her face. Faith's return to the dormitories meant class was starting again. Class that was harder than she thought it had ever been, because she was so distracted with bigger things.
