S U M M E R“You don’t
have to go.”
Willa’s bottom lip trembled and she stared over at her brother with worried, weepy eyes. Silas kept his gaze ducked but she could tell he was holding his breath for her response. Her fingers curled around the letter in her hands, one she had been meaning to tear up and toss away since it had come in the post...if you could call an owl swooping through an open window, the post...
“Maybe you can go instead,” she offered. Willa pushed the letter toward her brother. He was only a little taller than her, surely he could fit in the robes they’d bought. “I can tell them I want you to go instead of me.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Silas said, though his eyes had lifted from the grass to look toward the letter. “Daddy said I’m like him. He said I don’t have magic.”
“I don’t think I do either,” Willa whispered, her fears getting the best of her as her lips trembled. Silas’ eyebrows went high and his forlorn expression wiped away.
“Don’t be silly.”
He put out a hand and placed the letter on the ground between them, the Hogwarts seal glinting in the summer sun. Silas took Willa’s hand and he pressed her palm to the ground.
“Come on, do it. I know you can.”
She bit her lip, scared of both being able and unable to perform what she now knew was magic. She had always thought...it had been her secret…
Shutting her eyes, Willa imagined a trio of daisies, maybe a few more so that she could weave their stems into a crown. Underneath her palm she felt the tickle of their petals and the warmth of something new and exciting, and her lips upturned.
“Willa…”
She opened her eyes and had to blink a few times to take in the wonder about her. The grassy knoll they’d been sitting upon was now covered in white daisies, freshly blossomed from her own hand. Willa looked at her fingertips before looking at Silas and found that her brother was staring at her with great awe.
“You
do have to go,” he said, plucking one of the daisies to put in her hair.
F A L LWilla curled her quilted blanket around her, feigning illness for the roommates who were making their way toward the Hogsmeade carriages. Halloween weekend in the small village was supposedly spectacular, and she had every desire to go...but…
She pulled the blanket over her mouth and nose as she stared irritably at the wall. Willa didn’t want to
believe that Grant Montague would truly try to lock her up in the Shrieking Shack, but he’d already stuffed her in a closet this week and his brother had made similar remarks, so…
It was better safe than sorry, wasn’t it?
She believed, perhaps, that if she got to sleep early, she wouldn’t feel the sting of missing out on all the fun. Her idea was proving wrong as hearing the excitement out in the corridors of the dorm was making her feel worse. Willa pulled a hand out from under her blanket to pull her curtains shut, but stopped mid-tug at sound of a light tapping on glass.
Craning her neck to look toward the windows, Willa was surprised to see an owl nearly devoured in the grass, staring at her with a quizzical expression. She slipped out of bed to open the window, using a bit of strength to pull it wide enough to fit through the package(!) that the owl had brought.
After offering a treat in thanks Willa dropped into the large chair she’d been standing on, surprised that she had received post, at this hour, and of this size. Her fingers danced along the funny stickers placed all over it, the twine knot and bow, and it did not take her long to figure out who the package was from.
Happy Halloween! the letter inside started, and Willa could hear her brother’s voice,
You probably have better costumes with magic, but I was cleaning up the attic and found some of mum’s old clothes from the supposed good ol’ days and thought you might like to have them. Send pictures, okay (and wizard candy, that stuff was good last year!)Willa placed the letter on a side table as she lifted up the beaded vest, feeling the nostalgia of her childhood rushing back to her. A great warmth filled her and she wondered---
“I’m going to come, wait for me!” she exclaimed as her roommate came back into the room, having forgotten their coin purse. Willa jumped to her feet, clutching the post box to her chest. “One minute, okay? I’ve got a costume and everything!”
W I N T E R“No, no,
no! Silas, you
can’t!”
“Look what they did to you, Willa!”
She tugged her arm into her chest, wishing for her robes so that she could hide the bruising,
wanting to hide away her entire self from her brother’s glare, which was a stark contrast to the bright and shiny Christmas tree standing tall behind him.
“It was an accident!”
Silas scoffed, “Yeah, that piece of shit ‘accidentally’ grabbed you hard enough to make your whole arm purple,
sure!”
Willa held back the panicked thought that she believed Reid’s brother had slathered something on his palm before he'd grabbed her in the queue to the Hogsmeade carriages and that was why the swelling hadn't gone down. She'd hidden the ghastly purple mark under her sleeve during the train ride home, hoping that it would have gone down by the time she reached London, but it was the same as it had been seven hours ago.
“There’s nothing to do about it now,” Willa muttered and she flinched when her brother whirled on her with disbelief on his face.
“There sure is! You need to have mum or dad owl the damn school and tell them what’s going on!” Silas threw up his hands, “Hell, I’ll do it!”
“It’ll make everything
worse!” she cried out. “They’re horrible already and I
don’t tattle!”
“It’s not tattling if---”
“
Silas!” Willa grabbed her brother with both hands, causing her to wince greatly as a streak of pain rushed up her arm. “Please,
please don’t say anything! It’s fine, I’m
fine, it’ll go away! They won’t stop if I say something, they won’t, they’re horrible people, it’ll only---it’ll only make it
worse and---and I can’t---”
Through her bleary eyes she watched her brother’s angered expression fade and he put his hands to her shoulders. “Okay, okay, I won’t---I won’t tell mum or dad.”
“Promise!”
“Be cool, Willa! I promise, okay? I promise,” he said. Looking defeated, Silas unclenched her fingers from his shirt and delicately held up her arm. He let out a great sigh at size of the bruising. “Mum just brought home some healing remedies from the market, I can get them.”
Willa’s eyebrows rose and she scrunched her nose. “Can’t we just put ice on it?”
Silas shrugged. “Some of mum’s remedies work.”
She blinked a few times up at her brother, her uncertainty evident. Silas let out a soft chuckle.
“You go to school to learn witchcraft and you’re doubting the power of some old hippie’s healing crystals?”
S P R I N GShe threw her arms tightly around her brother and smiled at the sound of his laugh.
“Hey, grad!”
“I can’t believe it,” Willa breathed, dropping back to the ground. The bustling station of King’s Cross had always felt overwhelming, but today s
She lifted her face up to the clouds with the hope that the rain would wash away all that plagued her.
It didn’t.
Willa dropped her chin and avoided the puddles as she made her way home.
---------
“It was me. I killed him.”
Willa felt herself untying at the seams. She hunched forward, staring at the therapist’s feet, unblinking as her heart began to race. Weeks of these sessions had brought her to this point. She had been spilling the stories about Silas, about her childhood, about all that she’d stuffed away and now she was at the end, she’d reached the end of her stories, the bottom of the barrel, what laid underneath it all.
“I killed him. I’m the---I’m the----I’m the reason my brother---that my brother---is dead.”
“Why do you think that?” her therapist said, the calmness of his voice causing Willa to feel even more unnerved. She’d just admitted to being the cause of a lost life, how could he remain in a nearly neutral state?
“I never should have gone to Hogwarts. If I had never gone---if the Montagues had never known---if I hadn’t---if I hadn’t…”
“Lived your life?”
Willa’s fuzzy, distorted gaze pulled up from the ground to stare across the office. Sun streaked through the room and split his face into shadowed strips.
“You deserve to be here, Willa. You’re allowed to enjoy your life for more than moments at a time.”
She found herself shaking her head in disagreement, in disbelief, in the confusion that somehow her therapist knew that she clung to the happiness that found her but that it always seemed fleeting. It was her fault that it never stayed, it was what she deserved, she didn’t...do the right thing...
“You can’t forgive yourself for something you didn’t do. You didn’t kill your brother. He’s not dead because of you.”
“But---”
I never should have
It had just cost her many sickles to sit in absolute silence for forty five minutes
