Chapter 2

Not wanting to stay any longer, I made my way back to my quarters. To my dismay, I run into the arms of William Whimsby, a sixth-year student of my least favorite founder with short red hair and a few freckles on his nose. He was a bit taller than me and grinned down at me. Before he opened his mouth, I already knew that the next few minutes would be annoying. 

"Charly, what a coincidence that I see you here. I was just about to get something for lunch. Do you want to accompany me? Or if you have already eaten, would you like to go for a walk with me? The weather is quite nice."

"William, how often do I have to tell you to not call me Charly? And no, I don't want to eat with you!"

"I'm deeply sorry, my dear Charlotte Elenore Humblehill. Am I right to assume that you would want to go for a walk then?" asked William with a sheepish grin. I hated that grin. I hated his attitude; he was far too pushy and seemed to make it his daily mission to invite me to dinner, a walk, some shopping, playing chess, or one time he even directly asked me if he could kiss me. I didn't know if I should really blame him for the last thing, as I was sure it was Conrad Windsor's fault, because I overheard him and his friends making fun of William while observing the situation from a "safe" distance. I don't know how they managed to get William to ask it so confidently; I also didn't care. William was annoying, and that was the end of the matter. The greatest problem I had with him was that he always pretended to know me... to understand me, when he didn't even know who or what I was.

"William, really. What do you think you will accomplish by annoying me? You know that doing this will only make me angry; why don't you finally give up?" I asked, not expecting to get a real answer.

"Charly, all I ever wanted was that you give me a chance. Is that really too much to ask for? One date?" answered William and surprised me with that. It wasn't the first time I had asked him the exact same question, but it was the first time he appeared so vulnerable and honest. Something had changed.

"One date? And then you will never bother me again if I don't want to?" I asked him almost regretting it before I even spoke it but his puppy eyes had gotten me before I even knew it. His expression immediately turned into a smile from ear to ear. A little freaky if you asked me, but like his earlier expression, it seemed honest.

"Yes, one date, I promise. But you have to give me a real chance." He answered quickly, as if he feared that I would change my mind. I didn't know how fair of a chance I could give him if I didn't really like him, but I guess not sending him away with a few sentences and spending a few hours with him would be honest enough.

"Okey, one evening. Next week on Friday." I sighed silently as William literally jumped into the air. I needed to admit that it was nice to see someone so happy to just spend time with you, but I didn't want to give him any hopes. Give me any hope.

"Yes, Friday is great. Do you have anything you want to do? Anything you like?" asked William, taking me by surprise.

"What? You ask me out for four or five years and don't even have a plan when I actually say yes?" I voiced my thoughts.

He looked at me a little embarrassed. "Well, it's not like I don't have any ideas, but every time I asked you for something specific, you declined, so I decided years ago that I would ask you what you want or like."

That was the dumbest thing I ever heard, and yet somehow I could understand him. The only problem was that I couldn't really answer him. Sure, I could tell him that I want to stay away from the sun, but anything beyond that? That was difficult, and I had to properly think about it. It wasn't that I had planned to ask him out or accept his invitation when I left my room this morning, and I never gave the topic much thought, which reminded me that he was an idiot for making me choose something.

While I thought about it, he stared at me, full of anticipation. It made me nervous, if I was honest. Couldn't he be a bit more sensible? I was thinking about what I wanted to do on my first date. After three minutes of silence between us, I surrendered.

With puppy eyes, I asked him, "got any suggestions. I honestly don't know."

I don't know what I expected, but I assume his dumpfounded face should have been far up on the list.

After a few seconds, that dumbfounded face turned into a small giggle. "Well, I heard that people like to watch the stars together or like to take a long walk and simply talk. It doesn't need to be something too special. I would say it's the person you do it with that makes it special. So how about you just show me your favorite spot in Toadwits and we talk a little? Maybe we can do a small picnic together." He said, but from the sweat that flowed down his forehead, I guessed he feared that I would just decide not to go on a date with him. But he underestimates how enticing the promise of eternal peace from his advances was.

"Let's make it like that. I will pick you up on Friday at 8 pm and prepare a picnic basket while you pick the location." he said still sweating.

I nodded. "Yes, but remember. Only one date, and you leave me alone after that." I needed to remind him that he shouldn't get too hopeful. I mean, he was a nice guy even though he was annoying, but it just would never happen between us, and as annoying as I thought he was, I didn't wish him an unhappy life.

What I said obviously had the desired effect as his jumpy steps returned to almost normal steps.

After he left, I returned to my quarters without further ado. I picked up one of Uncle Severin's books about potions and started to brew a sleeping potion. It was something I always wanted to try. Not the brewing but the potion itself. As potion was one of the few subjects I could study without many problems, I was quite good at that.

After cleaning the cauldron after brewing a batch, I laid on my bed, and slowly sipped a vial, and closed my eyes.

I felt the still-hot potion flow down my throat, but even after a few minutes, I didn't feel any different. While my eyes were closed, it was only so because I had closed them, not because I was asleep. "Maybe a second one would do the trick." I thought to myself and gulped down another one. Still nothing. After an hour, the batch I had brewed had disappeared into my stomach, but I didn't feel any change.

After another half-hour of boring waiting in the last hope that the potions would show an effect, I decided that I was just wasting time and could instead be more productive, so I read the books I had already read a dozen times. The books about the magic curses in Toadwits. And when I said magic, I didn't mean something like potions or herbology, but real magic. Transfiguration was the most interesting topic, in my opinion. Sure, levitating something was cool, but transfiguring a chair into a dancing pig was something no other magic could ever beat. It was the only good thing about Uncle Gregor. The man had humor and knew how to use magic to entertain. After finishing the chapter about transfiguring a spoon into a knife, I decided that the spell was so simple that I could give it a try.

I opened my drawer and pulled out my wand. The wand was bone white, slightly curved, and really, really pointy. And that is not only on one end but on both. I held the wand in my hand and waved it around a little, just to get the feel of it. The price I paid to get the wand was honestly far too high, considering its usability. I also didn't use the wand very often for obvious reasons, so despite our undeniable connection, my own wand felt unfamiliar to me.

After some time weighing my wand, it was time to try it. I pointed my wand at the spoon and cast the spell.

Nothing. Not even a pointier end of the spoon. No sharper edges, nothing.

I sighed. I knew it would work. At least not like that. But was it really worth the price to change a spoon to a knife for a few minutes? The answer was yes. Yes, I wanted to use magic. I desired it with every fiber of my being. I didn't want to just watch anymore. I didn't want to stand on the sidelines. I wanted to do what everyone, even the people in their second year, could do.

I grabbed my wand tightly. So tightly that the skin on my knuckles tensed and my pale skin became almost transparent. While grabbing the wand, its pointy end drilled into the palm of my hand. I could see the blood drops forming on my closed fist before falling to the floor, but that didn't matter to me.

I cast the spell again, but this time the spoon transformed into a perfect knife.

I couldn't even smile at my creation before I felt my vision blur and the nausea take over. I tried to puke into my trashcan, but nothing came out. I know that nothing could come out as I hadn't eaten in quite some time, but for some reason, the attempt to regurgitate something that wasn't even there reduced the nausea.

I knew that I needed to eat something. I had a secret stash of beef jerky just for emergencies like this, but the problem was getting there. In my infinite wisdom, I had placed the box with the beefjerky at the height of my head on the shelf. Something that was unreachable at the moment. Or so it seemed until I practically climbed up my shelf of schoolbooks and pulled the box down.

The box opened as it hit the ground, and the beefjerky flew everywhere. I didn't care, and grabbed the first piece I could grab and put it in my mouth. Then I grabbed the second and a third.

After five minutes, the blurry vision lessened a little, and I started to feel better.

Knock Knock

"Hey Charlotte, I just wanted to thank… What are you doing on the ground?" My mother entered the room. As always, my mother, best seer in the world, always opens the door at the most embarrassing moments.

I gulped down the last piece of beef jerky and tried to put on an innocent smile.

"Cleaning?!" I lied shamlessly.

"And what do you intend to clean with your greasy fingers? Even your dress got dirty. Charlotte, what did you do?" asked mother, but not before flicking her wand to clean me up.

"I'm sorry, mom." I said knowing my mother would become a little softer if I called her mom.

She helped me up and sat me on the bed before sitting down next to me.

"Is it because your brother is having his ceremony tomorrow?" asked my mother, her intention to help obvious.

I wanted to answer, but it felt like I had a lump in my throat. "Mom, I… I know I can do it. I…" I couldn't finish the sentence as, unnoticed by me, tears had started to stream down my face and my mother had taken me into a comforting hug.

"I just want to be like everyone else mom. Why why can't I be like them? Why was I born like this?" I cried. Mom was right. Seeing that my brother would start to learn magic tomorrow just made me realize what I can't do, what I can't have.

"Sh, Shht, It's fine. It's okay to cry. It's okay to be sad. Just promise me that you won't try that alone again. You know I can help you. You know that I will always be there for you," said mother patting my back, but this made me even more sad.

"I c-c-c-can't, m-m-mom, I w-w-won't. I d-don't want to h-h-hurt you. You've d-d-done so much for me, h-how could I d-d-do s-s-something like that to y-y-y-you?"

"It's okay, Charlotte. It doesn't hurt. Not as much as seeing you like this."

I didn't know how long we just sat on the bed, not saying anything after that anymore. We both knew that we had different opinions on the matter and that I wouldn't compromise, no matter how sweet the temptation was sometimes.

I just lied on her lap while she kempt my hair with her hand. My tears have long since dried, and with that, my mood has returned to normal.

It was only then that I noticed the tired eyes of my mother. I realized that even if I didn't need sleep, mother definitely needed to, and I was preventing her from getting it.

"Mom, please, you need to go to bed. You can barely keep your eyes open." Instead of answering, mother just gave me an exhausted smile. I know she would have stayed the night with me if I hadn't noticed, but I didn't want to become more of a ballast than I already was.

"Mom, Pev will be sad if you sleep during his ceremony; you need to go now." Thankfully, that moved her. But not after giving me one last hug and a good night kiss on my forehead. Mother always forgot that I'm not ten anymore, but because of what happened earlier, I decided to not complain about it.

After mother left, I sneaked into the kitchen to restock my beef jerky stock. I also realized that I should probably take a bath. While I don't sweat and mother cleaned me up earlier, a bath just gives you a different feeling of cleanliness. Something that magic couldn't substitute. To add to that, quite a few of my tears had soaked my hair, and the traces of what happened were also still visible on my face. For anyone else, that wouldn't have been so dramatic, but my tears were a little special. So special in fact that one could rank their usefulness just below the tears of a phoenix. And while my tears couldn't bring someone on the brink of death back to full health, they could stop the aging process for one week per teardrop. At least that what mother and I assumed after some simple tests. Luckily, no one knew about this, and I wanted to keep it that way, or people would probably hunt me down.

So to stop any accidents from happening, I let in the bath water and waited a little. It was the bath that was usually used by the prefects, or, as I and my brother called them, the little spies.

I didn't understand why they would get their own bath at first and why this bath needed to be so great, but I guess they wouldn't be able to convince the students to take the jobs otherwise. After a few minutes, the steam was filling the bath as hot water flooded the tub. Enough steam to cover the face of the stupid mermaid that was printed on the mosaics of the bathroom wall. Uncle Gregor's taste sometimes was really lacking, and I honestly don't understand why Uncle Severin let him design so much in the castle. At first, I thought it was because Uncle Severin had lost a bet, as they usually bet on stupid stuff to win stupid stuff, but Mother told me that even though the castle was originally in Severin's family possession, he wanted the castle to represent the personalities of all founders.

When the tub was almost full, I began to undress. I folded the blue dress and laid it where it wouldn't get wet. On my way to do that, I noticed myself in the big mirror.

I flinched a little as I saw myself naked. Or to be more accurate, because I saw the long, nasty scar that covered my left arm from hand to elbow. I went a little closer to the mirror to look at the scar. I wasn't sure if I imagined it or if the scar had become a little less prominent since I last looked at it. I didn't have the hope that the scar would ever become even close to invisible, like the one on my right knee, but it was still good to see it growing back, even if just a little.

I turned a little to the side so that my damaged arm wasn't visible anymore. I liked my slender figure, even though I had to agree with mother that maybe I really should eat a little more as a few ribs were faintly visible. I placed my hand a there and could immediately feel that I really should follow up on this plan.

Then my attention turned to my chest. I had no hope for my chest to grow anymore, but if I were honest with myself, I didn't want that anyway. I had seen a few of the guys geezing at the girls who had really large breasts and knew that this wasn't the attention I wanted to get. I was perfectly happy that my were just a bit bigger than a full hand from myself. The perfect size, I would say. And what would I need them for anyway. It's not that I planned to have any kids. I didn't even know if I was able to have kids.

For some reason, that reminds me of William. The poor boy had wasted all those years on me only to get a single date. A date that wouldn't lead to something more. I pitied him a little, but it wasn't as if I ever gave him any reason to have hope, and he knew that my mother wouldn't agree to an arranged marriage. Of that, I was sure, as mother had made it quite clear after many had requested my hand before my failure at the ceremony. Well, even after that, a few had asked, but they were mostly those who just wanted to earn some goodwill from mother.

Fine, I just managed to pull my mood down again just by thinking about the past. Future me, stop doing that.

I took one last glance at the mirror before I stepped into the bath. My white hair began to cover the surface of the water. I loved seeing my hair float on the water like that, but it usually didn't last long before the hair was soaked and sank. I sat down, played, and enjoyed the quiet a little. I also dove a little, as the bathtub was large enough for that. I loved the feeling of being completely under water. All noises I would usually be able to hear would disappear, and only the things happening in the water were really noticeable. It lets me feel like a huge burden has been taken from me.

I spent a few hours in the bath thanks to the heating enchantment Aunt Seraphina had placed on the bathtub. I hadn't felt so refreshed and relaxed in years. Even though my hands were so wrinkled that they looked like those of an old woman, and even though I hadn't checked, I was sure my feet looked that way too.

When I returned to my room, I realized that I hadn't even picked the right dress for Percival's ceremony yet. I never wore the same dress two days in a row. It somehow made me feel dirty, even though mother would clean my things once a day.

I looked at my red dress. I had never worn it, even though I liked it. It made me look confident, and I would even say sexy. Damn it, I looked really hot in the thing. It matched my scarlet eyes perfectly, and the contrast to my skin and hair gave me the aura of someone who got what she wanted even at the cost of blood. Which was actually my problem with the dress. It made me look like a crazy but hot psychopath. Something I didn't want to be or become.

The psychopath part came from the fact that it was the only dress that didn't cover my arm. Maybe I should wear this dress when I go out with William. Yeah, it will probably frighten him. I should definitely do that. But I probably won't.

That didn't solve my problem for today, though. Think, Charlotte, think, what can I wear to a ceremony where many people with blown-up egos want to show off their children.

Ah damnit, you can never go wrong with something classical. I pulled out a dress mother had bought me for my sixteenth birthday party. Becoming sixteen was kind of a big thing because you officially became an adult at that point, but if someone asked me to live on my own, I would fight with my teeth and claws because I definitely didn't feel like an adult and I liked living with my mother. Another reason I was happy that my mother let me have the choice in my marriage, as I would be living in some random dudes, probably a noble considering mothers standing, house with the only task of giving him an heir.

My cousin Helena, was in that kind of situation. I mean, she was trying to fight off that situation. I was really lucky mother found me as a baby and not Aunt Seraphina. While she didn't push her own daughter into the knife, she is not helping her either even thought she could.

The Baron, her self-proclaimed fiancé, was far worse than William, in my opinion. His father was a friend of Uncle Severin and had taken on some noble duties in the Nowitz world, the world of no-witches and no-wizards, but he had died shortly after the Baron's birth because some Nowitzes had attacked him when he was visiting another noble to discuss some trades. They had at first pretended to be friends and then stabbed him into the back. Probably the only way a Nowitz can kill a fully grown wizard.

Uncle Severin has been taking care of the Baron since then. At least he occasionally assisted him for the sake of his old friend. The other students under Uncle Severin were a little jealous of that attention and then named him after his Nowitz title. Ironically, the title Nowitzs would die for was used to defame someone in Toadwits. Their smear campaign was so successful that I honestly forgot his real name. Something with Gil… Gilbert? Gilderoy? Gilford? I honestly don't care; he is the Baron, and he is an idiot. He had abused Uncle Severin's goodwill quite a lot and was abusing other students. He didn't cross certain boundaries, but that didn't change the fact that he was mean and used to getting what he wanted. A dangerous combination, if you ask me, and Helena was suffering because of that.

Anyway, not my problem at the moment; I should quickly change, or I will miss breakfast.

Well, I missed breakfast. That dress was far too difficult to change into without help. Who came up with something like that? Cords that needed to be closed from behind. Do they assume anyone has servants these days? Anyway, now I'm here, and I will not go before I have eaten something. And that is definitely not because I used magic to tie the cords and can barely stand just now. To my luck, tying some cords is not as magic-intensive as transfiguring a spoon.

Luckily, my mother and my dear brother had noticed my absence and packed a plate for me. I know that my brother helped because a few things on the plate were absolutely disgusting, and mother knows I wouldn't even eat them if I was about to die. Normally that is, just now I would have eaten anything just to get the feeling in my feet back.

While I was stuffing myself to the point where I wished I could untie the cords of my dress, the others started to decorate the hall. The tables were moved so that they would form rows, and over each row were banners that presented the four Founders.

A red tiger with a little sword in its mouth on black ground for Uncle Gregor Lionheart. A Honey Badger with golden stripes on caramel brown for Helga Humblehill. A Mole with big glasses on blue ground for Aunt Seraphina Nightquill and last but not least a Snake with far to big eyes that was eating a book for Uncle Severin Salamand.

Normally, the tables were moved around on a regular basis, and the students of each house intermixed. It was just for the entrance ceremony that people were divided by that, so that the new students would get to know the people they would live with from then on better than someone from another house. This method has been used since the third year of Toadwits. The four founders were far too annoyed to have students want to change the house because "their best friend was in another house." Just separating the students on the first day like that had reduced the number of these cases to almost zero. The only few exceptions were a few people that knew each other beforehand, but usually they integrated fast into their new houses as well, so it became more bearable for most.

After finishing my meal, I naturally helped mother and the others. And this was something I could do almost as well as someone who could use magic, because I was far stronger than your usual girl. Lifting a table? No Problem. Lifting a carriage? Well, that was a problem, but I was working on it.

With all four founders helping, the castle looked magnificent within a few hours. I had seen William in the meantime, and he had waved at me like an idiot, but I thought I would be able to endure it for one more week. Or six days eight hours plus the time we need for that date thingy.