"I see it! A lost little soul tied to the in between! Who has done this to you child? Who? Who?! You must flee! You cannot remain here! Find the gate! Find your way home quickly! Before malevolence finds you! Before malevolence findssss youuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!...Oh I'm sorry were you asking me something?"

-Professor Sybill Trelawney

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Chapter 39: Sara

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The stars looked so beautiful this deep into the forest. This large expanse of dark blue littered with small diamonds…made me think of my first Gala dress. It was an event for wealthy witch families donating to charitable causes for magic users in developing countries. I craned my neck back to stare at them, completely aware of how the light of the bonfire danced across my neck. I pride myself on knowing my angles. It's taken a lot of practice. My first year at Hogwarts, I'd stare in the mirror for hours and practice making facial expressions in the mirror. How to smile without showing too many teeth. How to perfect a cute confused face.

Men love a confused Blonde.

A dark shadow blocked that 6th year boy's view of me. I looked up to see Rachel Haskins, a fifth-year friend of mine, staring down at me with a perturbed look on her face. "Am I ugly?"

I would not snort. I do not snort. But a brief laugh in surprise- one imbued with the perfect amount of condescension- escaped me. "Fishing for compliments?"

"I mean it!" She took a quick look around and poked her well-endowed chest out just a bit. Lucky bitch. "Am I crooked?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Am? I? Crooked?"

"No!"

"Then why hasn't Antonio so much as looked at me all night?"

I shrugged and glanced away. "Maybe he's an ass man." Rachel slapped my shoulder and plopped down next to me with her sulking mopey face. She dug into her bra, since her pants had false pockets, and pulled out a small tube of- "Bitch put that away! Mixed company!"

"Relax. Everyone here is super chill. Want a bump?" I weighed my options. It was very late. The sun would be coming up in a couple hours. I still had to finish my Transfiguration Essay and turn in my Guru assessment of…ugh…that little McGowen cow. And I couldn't do that if my mind was literally somewhere else. Not that it would take too much thought. Candidate number 12 fails to grasp the significance of the process. She cheats her diet, adaptability is lacking, and she is likely to graduate without a crown despite early success. Beginner's luck at best. What more beyond this was necessary. If it hadn't been for Cedric Diggory, I never would have hitched myself to this rotten wagon. The girl was a dunce. She was pudgy in the belly but deceptively skinny arms and legs, little to no core strength, zero discipline, not a feminine bone in her boiled egg shaped body, and stiff as a board. If the fastest runner won the crown, she'd be a shoe in. A lot of good running will do when you can't run from a fight. There is so much talent in her blood. She was born with it all at her fingertips. Money, psychic ability, wandless magic- she had everything! She could easily pay to fix her unfortunate appearance.

And she would need to.

I stood and set down my beer by a log. "I'm going to head back."

Rachel's sight and stood, linking arms with me. "I'll come with. Everyone fun never came back from the Mandala." A cold shiver over took me but I never missed a step. My mind briefly drifted back to last year, stumbling upon the Mandala by mistake. I wouldn't ever return there.

I appreciated Rachel walking with me through the forest and I do know she must have felt obligated to do so. As a Guide, my station outranked hers as a handler for one of the sacred candidates. She had to make sure I made it back to school grounds in one piece given the very recent and very lethal dangers inhabiting the forest. Fae were good for scoring Dag or Dagda Powder but they were incredibly dangerous. No amount of partying with them would ever negate that fact.

There wasn't much Rachel could do for me that I could not do for myself but two wands were always better than one. So, I listened to her complain about how no one wanted her and how the fifth and sixth year boys were trash and she needed a seventh year man. We returned to school grounds, careful to avoid Filch's usually patrol route, only to have Rachel point out something interesting in the distance. Up ahead, making their way out of the castle, was Candidate 12. "Isn't that you bad egg?" Rachel chirped.

I nodded, curious as to where she was sneaking off to so early in the morning. It almost looked from here like she was wearing her work out gear. And those fucking shorts. "Go on ahead," I said, already following after the first-year. "I'll meet you in a bit." Rachel looked hesitant to go, whether out of obligation or nosiness, but in the end she shrugged and jogged inside. "I'm going to take a bath with Fatima and take a power nap!"

I made sure I followed silently enough until she came to a stopping place in a more private area partially closed off by bushes. She sat down and unfolded a piece of torn parchment and stared at it for a bit. After she read it for what seemed like forever- the poor thing- she leaned down and started stretching. She was stiff but she strained, and I immediately recognized it was the stretch we practiced a couple days ago. I stayed and watched her move into the next one like a clumsy newborn deer. Beginner's luck at best. Was I wrong? Had this dummy quietly been plucking away in private this whole time?

A familiar scratchy voice came from behind me. It was Cedric appearing in that annoying he does. He really was so obnoxiously good at everything. With his nasty ass unibrow. "I told you," he said with a smirk, "that's what she's like."

"Horridly terrible at everything?"

"Determined to try." He stared passed me to his candidate, something unrecognizable in his eyes. "I wouldn't have suggested you try to be assigned a Guru to her if I didn't think she was going to be the solution for our problems."

"And pray tell what problems do you, and I have in common?"

His eyes looked down on me from his height, sharp and condescending. "We were together that night when we saw what was waiting for us on the other side of Hogwarts. I'm going to get me and my father out of all of this. And Mary is going to be the one to do that for me."