The boy nodded, shutting his eyes and backing away from the table. The skin of his neck began to pull taut as it seemed his body dropped away, an unidentifiable organ rolled an inch, out of the luminance of the flickering lamp.
Matveev chuckled, "Perfect."
———
Hogwarts — Dec 1940, 3rd year
The Ravenclaw girls' dorm had to have woken up from the loud shriek at four in the morning. It was a third year girl called Twyla with her hair in frizzy, uneven pigtails, that rushed up out of her bed to see her roommates on the floor, creating quite the commotion.
A rust-haired girl she knew as Jocelyn had tumbled out of bed yelling and asking what was going on. Twyla knew she wasn't the one that had caused this. Then there was Marica, who still laid fast asleep in bed. She wasn't the one either.
Her other roommate she wasn't as close to as she was with the others. She wasn't necessarily a quiet girl, she had her friends who she was sociable with, yet she never went out of her way to further any relationships, especially with those that didn't know her. She would never force it. Her name was Lestari, and Twyla knew she was quite clever, one of the top in the classes they shared. Despite being outgoing, perhaps the reason she stayed distanced from Lestari was because she was scared.
It wasn't the first time the girl had woken up with screams, someone's hellish nightmare disrupting everyone. And nine times out of ten, it was Lestari sobbing into her pillows afterward. Twyla's eyes immediately darted to the girl's empty bed, then to the spot on the floor where she thrashed and clawed at her skin in a state of panic.
"What happened?!" Twyla jumped toward the girl, joining her on the floor, "Lestari, what's the matter?"
"—I was.. My arms were gone—," She gasped between sobs, "I don't want to disappear forever..."
"Disappear? What are you talking about? You're right in front of me," Twyla furrowed her brows before clutching the girl's arms tightly, "I can feel your arms in my hands. They're right here, silly."
"You don't understand— it happened and... now I'm going to be like that forever."
Twyla looked at the other girls as the dorm door slammed open, to the view of a group standing outside in curiosity.
"Come." She grabbed Lestari's hand and pulled her up to her feet, "Let's leave everyone to go back to sleep."
She shoved through the girls with her hand tightly pulling Lestari in behind her. They continued down the corridor until they entered the quiet common room.
"Everyone's so nosy. You can tell me now.. if you'd like." Twyla leaned against the wall with a smile, "Like we aren't even friends but I wouldn't tell anyone—,"
"I woke up as a snake." Lestari seemed to have calmed down now and concentrated on her breaths.
"Surely—,"
"It wasn't a dream. Do you know what a maledictus is?" The girl looked to Twyla with a grimace, "My family was cursed ages ago and now all the women in the bloodline get snake transformations. They get more often, and more often until it becomes uncontrollable and the female becomes a snake permanently. And we don't die in this form. I'd be a snake forever, do you know what I mean??" Lestari scrunched her face up as awaited the girl's reaction.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry. I never would've imagined that to be the case.." She replied with a deep sigh.
Lestari opened her eyes to watch her, "It was my first transformation. I'm sorry if I scared you. I just wanted to talk about it."
four : toulouse fields
Start from the beginning
