Before we start, just know i have uploaded a new video! you can find the link in my bio as always </3

The woman looked around, a feeling of helplessness suddenly hitting her: she'd been hopeful (for one, glorious second), that the cause had finally been won, and that her hated Maester was at last going to be defeated and brought to prison – or, worse to worst (or better to best?) die in the attempt of defending himself.

Instead there he stood, her wand – the wand she had longed to use for so long (ten years or more!), but had never dared to – in his hands, which made her feel like her actual body was filthy.

Her eyes lingered on the narrow stick: she remembered the day she'd received it very well, by Mr. Ollivander himself ("A heart of Dragon strings, flexible..."). Then, she'd stopped using it for some time, and had been tricked into believing that it wouldn't work again unless she were to spend more time among her similar – her relatives.
"Tricked", because that counsel had given her nothing but the utmost pain and sorrow.

The tasks the wand had been given, ever since that day, were such dull and simple ones, that she had ended up believing that it had, in the end, lost some of its original powers – and that the loss was mostly due to the lack of connection with her, its rightful owner.

Connection. The word echoed inside her head, aimlessly – but even then, why was aimlessly automatically a bad thing?

She looked up: that word (that simple, sweet word) had awaken something up, something that had been dwelling within herself. Her eyes met with many silhouettes, – silhouettes of young people, of innocent and naïve nature – but there was one that stood out. A slender, flexible, courageous one that had been gifted with incredible reflexes – reflexes she reckoned she knew quite well. Connection.

I can't let this happen, she thought weakly. I can't. And I won't.

Quick as a shadow, she got up and smoothly reached the back of the man she'd been forced to consider her Maester. He himself had positioned there where he was now standing only few seconds earlier, and from his dry, elongated lips some words of threat had just hissed. He was about to cast some terrible curse: his tension, the vibration, the red sparks that had started to pop out of the very point of the wand; all seemed to lead to that conclusion.

But that conclusion was yet to be unchangeable. Extremely silent, – she was afraid that even the lightest of breaths would've given her away – her leg swung up towards her wand, and right when the man had begun to raise it up, it hit it powerfully enough as to have the Maester's hand open in pain, letting the wand drop to the ground.

With a flash of anxiety, she reached for it, and breathed again only when she finally felt it safe between her fingers.

But the worries were yet to be over. "GET HIS WAND!", she screamed, at the top of her lungs, and she had just started to move to go grab it when one of the silhouettes she'd so carefully observed just a moment earlier – to be more specific, the silhouette – immediately ran towards the stick and grabbed hold of it just in time for it to escape the man's hands.

"Step back", said the voice belonging to the silhouette, making slow and controlled steps ahead that were forcing the man to back up.

Understanding that, most likely, a better situation would never come around twice, the woman also got her shaky body on her feet and pointed her wand right at the man's back – and soon enough, not only that was being directly threatened: the other students that had suddenly broken in had advanced too, and had encircled the old man from all sides.

"Yield" the first voice talked again. "You're alone, abandoned. Yeild before something worse happens".

"Oh, and would you be the one to make that happen?" the man smirked, mockery clear in his voice. But besides that, nothing else. The usual confidence that seemed to ooze out of him was nowhere to be grasped. Yes, go ahead, tell us how good you are, thought the woman. Your deeds will then tell the unsaid.

"You don't know anything" replied the boy the voice belonged to: despite the words he'd used, there wasn't any sign of superiority within them. "I don't really care what you say, you know? You could be standing on your knees, begging for forgivingness, or boasting even louder than what you're doing now – and I would not care less. You mean nothing to me; so, really: yield. Yield because unless you do, I won't hesitate to end you".

The grotesque tone the speech had acquired at last took the woman back: could it really be that the guy did not feel even the slightest bit of pity? And, most importantly, was he really going to go beyond the pale, should the man's arrogance arise even higher?

"Minho, slow down" commented one of the students, who was standing on his left. At the hearing of the name, the woman's heart dropped. Too many coincidences... too many... but are they coincidences?

"I will not yield to you", replied the man, a smirk plastered on his face. Then, a series of hisses started to come out of his mouth – hisses the woman had grown to be acquainted to, and that (although she could not understand their meaning), she knew were inevitably correlated to the Horned Serpent her Maester had – from what he'd let slip from time to time – educated.

The woman started to look worriedly around her: whenever the snake would be called, good things were never to be expected. She saw (and heard), in fact, the creature stirring and starting to slowly crawl towards them, but a second (and, this time around, most unexpected) series of hisses blocked it, leaving everyone surprised – the Maester included.

The boy (Minho) who had spoken up, looking at the man faking a visible and rhetorical puzzleness: "How come, you did not understand me? When you were ordering our dear friend to attack us all mercilessly just a moment earlier?"

"You... how..." for the first time, the Maester's stoic confidence seemed to be crumbling.

"Me nothing" answered coldly the student. "The Serpent is not under your cruel orders anymore, just accept it".

The reply the man's body gave to those words was enough for the woman to decide it was now the time to end it. "Enlacio", she whispered, and "Stupefy!" and before he knew the Maester was now trapped in magical, unbreakable chains. The former servant allowed herself a smile of satisfaction: that spell had always been one of her best ones.

She looked up to the boy that had so bravely handled the situation until then (the body of the Maester, that had been blocking their view before, was now laying stunned on the ground). Longingness and melancholy were already impregnated in the words she was about to let out, when other voices – sounding more scared, rather than nostalgic; and anxious, rather than sweet – anticipated hers: "Changbin! Changbin! Hey – CHANGBIN!"

A boy (he couldn't have been much older than fifteen) had appeared from the hole on the left-sided wall, and was now advancing quickly towards them. Three other boys were following suit.

"We saw someone's Patronus", she heard a boy explain. "And we came here as soon as possible. But what has happened? Who's on the floor?" he looked around a little more "why does he look like he's passed out?"

"Why is the serpent fucking chilling on the right side corner, should I add!" replied the first boy who had come, looking at the creature.

"Ahem... that's exactly what I would like to know" answered the boy who had first pronounced Minho's name.

The woman let out a sigh: all those words of happiness, of love, of affection – they would have to wait. All the guys there deserved an explanation. "I will tell you everything there is to know", she said, loud enough for everybody to hear. "But I'll have to start from very, very long ago".

~🤍~
hello, your least favorite stay is back🥺

i'm sorry for this one-week break, but my wifi was not working on my pc so i couldn't upload anything :,(

anyways, hope you enjoyed this chapter. the next ones goona explain a lot of things so do look forward to it!!

Vic🌙.