Author's Note: Happy 2018! This was written for Hogwarts Challenges (as per usual). I still don't own anything!
Task (Charms): Write about someone wishing something or someone away.
Word Count: 300 - 3,500
2018 Fanfic Resolutions: Founders Era
If you wished something hard enough, it comes true.
At least, that's what Helga has been taught. Each time she rummages through her thoughts she pulls up the same old adage, the words that her mother and her grandmother spoke seriously each time that she wished illness upon someone. She knew that it had been meant as cautionary; it was something told to young girls when they said something ridiculous. But Helga, sweet and kind, was certain that she held a sort of power in the palm of her hands. If she wished it, it would come true.
It hurt even worse when she realized that she was right.
They had set up a school, together, and had mentioned how they would split the children up. Helga didn't think that they needed to, but Rowena, always wise, stated that she believed it would help them learn better.
She should have told them, then, that she had seen Salazar's twinkling eyes, the way that he seemed just a bit too eager for them to agree.
I will take the wisest, Rowena had informed them, brisk and calm. They will not require for me to choose my words carefully.
Salazar had let out a laugh, his fingers grazing at Rowena's hip as he stood beside her. Helga felt her heart quake with jealousy, but she doesn't speak. I will take the pure and the cunning, he insists. For they will understand ritual and secrets.
She thinks that's rather ironic of him— he comes from Muggle stock. She thinks its to impress them all with his words. There's no way that he had thought so blindly.
I will take the brave and bold, Godric exclaims. He is never quiet, and he moves too closely to Helga. She takes a step to the side, disturbed, but he continues to speak like it doesn't bother him. Who else is worth teaching?
And they turn to her, and she sees Salazar's grin, and she wishes deeply that he would leave, that he would go away, that he would disappear. But Helga knows that Rowena would be upset, that Godric would be furious, so she simply inclines her head. And I will teach the rest.
They were idiots, the lot of them, looking for a way to rule the world. Rowena, their Athena, had said that it would be best to rule through their students, and Helga followed blindly. She would follow anywhere that Rowena led, though, so she isn't quite sure that her opinion is sound.
It isn't long before Rowena and Salazar are forever entwined, though they never quite tie the knot— she did ask, once, if they were going to, and Rowena had seemed so shocked at the question that she had dropped the apple in her hands. Helga tried not to seem so happy at that, but she knew that her lips had curled into a bright smile and her breath had hitched.
They were together, but not really. They were just…
Helga spent more time staring daggers at Salazar than she did batting away Godric's attempts at pushing something.
He wasn't safe. He wasn't good, he wasn't kind, and he wasn't worth it. They weren't really friends, not in the way that she was friends with Godric and Rowena. They were just the briefest of acquaintances, passing words in the hall as they swept towards their respective classrooms.
Maybe it was because they were so alike: they had the same heart, they had the same level of the school. They had twin subjects: she had her Potions, he had Herbology. They both clung to a woman with wind in her eyes and vengeance in her heart.
It could have been her, hopelessly tied to Rowena. She held her hands in fists when they passed, she held her breath and squared her jaw.
She said nothing, but her head repeated the mantra over and over and over.
Go away go away go away go away.
She just didn't think that it would work.
She didn't think that Rowena and Godric would be so upset.
She didn't think that it would hurt her, too.