Letting it Burn PV Aly Salinger

Late November 2024 | @Aly Salinger
Note- Opeila's hair is mostly white at this point.

Opeila was fighting tears.
Tears, the wish to scream, the urge to set something on fire... Or someone rather.
The Slytherin was walking through the castle with gritted teeth, muttering under her breath. "Friends. She said she wanted to be friends, little fucking hypocrite..." Maybe it was good that between her common room and the Great Hall, she had enough time to whisper all profanities she could think of and get the worst of the unproductive fury out of her system.

Yet, when she entered the Great Hall, Opeila still looked angry enough one might think she would burst into flame herself. It didn't take her long to spot the curly hair of her classmate at the Ravenclaw table. Under different circumstances she would have pulled Aly aside in private. Maybe she would have done it that way too if more than 20 minutes had passed since Opeila read the article.

Instead she made her way through the hall, stopped next to the Ravenclaw and slammed the slightly crumpled issue of the Headliner on the table in front of Aly- not caring about any food or beverage in the way. The pages of the issue were no longer in the right order, instead of the usual first page, there was an article on the page in front of Aly, one she would find very familiar.

Just ask any one of many already-engaged students at Hogwarts, some of whom were betrothed as young as their early teens: for instance, Slytherin’s own Opeila Winters – or is it Virtanen now? Anyway, Winters was betrothed to Ilvermorny student Miles Thatcher when the pair were, respectively, fifteen and fourteen. Naturally, this cross-the-pond engagement was a result of parental meddling and political pursuits – both on the parts of Winters’ official guardians and Thatcher’s parents, the latter of whom are none other than renowned magizoologists Aldrich and Emmeline Thatcher. It’s sensible to want to align one’s family with another, equally powerful one, but to do so by promising your teenager’s life away may be a bit of an overstep.

xx

Then again, it’s not like these teenagersdon’t still have free will! In fact, many betrothed purebloods may have dalliances outside their engagement – perhaps proving that they may not have wanted to be promised in the first place. Winters and Thatcher, specifically, have both been said to have dated out-of-contract in the past. For those of you at Hogwarts, Miss Winters has been previously involved with two other current sixth years: Gryffindor Alec Mason and, most recently, Hufflepuff heartbreaker Aaron Jones. She was also spotted publicly snogging Slytherin Percival Gray at this summer’s Mistletoe Spin. If you were engaged and wanted to be so, would you philander about with others whilst waiting to turn of age to marry? Methinks not!

Opeila would give her a couple of seconds to save her breakfast and recognize the article before saying anything. A few more seconds to also again fight the tears of rage that threatened to spill over. "What is this.", she would finally say through gritted teeth, not really asking. Opeila knew exactly what this was.

After everything, Aly's crying about a betrayal that had never happened, about the friendship she wanted with Opeila, Aly was now the one who had truly violated her trust. The two of them had opened up to each other in the Virtanen basement a few months ago, talked through their thoughts and feelings, and eventually gotten drunk.
They had entered as enemies, left as potential friends. Despite Aly talking ill about Opeila's boyfriend then. And Opeila had never told him. She had treated the conversation as private between Aly and her, where they had shared deep truths as well as stories from the past.

Opeila had opened up to Aly in an attempt to connect. To form an understanding.
Not to find her family symbolically dragged in the Hogwarts newspaper, when they just started to get along and find a way to treat each other with respect.
Not for her now ended and forgotten betrothal to be dug up again as a reminder to all of Hogwarts.
Not for Cassius, to whom Opeila found herself more and more drawn, to read about her romantic history, worded like she might be one to stray from her relationships, before she had a chance to tell him herself in her own words when she was ready. Especially seeing how things had ended with Aaron.

"How could you?!"
The first tear spilled over and angrily she wiped it away.
Opeila had told Aly about Vladimir. About the nice people she had met who ended up causing her harm, using her for their own goals. Never had she expected then to be used by Aly for a good story.
Maybe the worst of her anger was directed at herself for never learning from the past.
But there was no denying that her tears were for the bridge Aly had just irreversibly burned.