Epilogue
Afterthought
During the last week of August, on an especially hot day, Corina was sitting on the front porch of her aunt’s house, fanning herself and sipping on sweet tea that her aunt’s elves was constantly supplying her with. The industrious little creatures had long since packed her school trunk for her and had sent her aunt’s owl of with the letter she had written explaining Corina’s current…circumstance to the headmaster, so there very little for her to do until it finally came to leave for Bell.
Corina’s aunt lived in utter isolation, even by wizarding standards. There was a village about twenty miles away, but it was made up almost entirely of French wizards; the house-elves even informed her that Corina and her aunt were probably the only English-speakers for most of the Southern French Territories. So that left out taking up time socializing with the local.
As such, Corina became very family with her aunt’s home, as well as her surrounding land. The house itself was so old, it had been around when Louisiana was still considered a French colony. If she were eight or nine years young, she might have had fun exploring all the old halls and rooms. But with all the events of the past few weeks, Corina felt she had aged considerably past the age of sixteen even.
This day in particular where Corina found herself at was the sort where it was too hot to do anything but pick a spot and stay there with only one’s own thoughts to keep one company, along with the wicker rocking chair, straw-woven fan, and the shade provided by the overhead roof.
Much of day, she had spent with her thought wandering back to Annie Two-Moons, even though she hadn’t seen the girl in several weeks. By now, she was out in the Western Territories, probably the only Indian child for miles, as every other was off at one boarding school or another. At this very moment, Annie was probably sitting on some piece of lonely packed earth with only her thoughts to keep her company, much like Corina found herself on her aunt’s porch. To wonder if Annie was off somewhere thinking about Corina while Corina was thinking about Annie, around and around and around…it was almost Zen, although Corina barely understood the foreign concept.
By no means was Corina over the death of her father, but time had allowed the pain and shock to dull and allow more rational thinking to enter her mind. She no longer believed Annie had intentionally cast the spell on her father, but, again, also hadn’t stopped believing that Annie had had nothing to do with it either. Boredom and little contact with people other than her aunt and the elves left nothing to do but create speculation upon speculation.
Corina took a long, contemplative sip of her sweet teacher and resumed the slow pace of the fan. Long strands of moss dangling from the cypress tree swung lazily back and forth.
The possibility that it could have been an accident was starting to become more and more of a possibility in Corina’s mind, though in not quite as innocent of a way as the actual wording of it made it seem. The term ‘accident magic’ had something of a slanted meaning when it came to incidents involving young children who had not yet gotten their wands. Every incident of accidental magic Corina had heard in stories was veiled in the intentions of the child behind them.
All sorts of emotions could cause incidents of uncontrolled magic: grief, fear, happiness, embarrassment, and especially anger. Anger had a sort of way of causing magic to fester; not become any more powerful than any other incident of magic, but just make the acts themselves much more…gruesome, beyond what any person could believe a mere child was capable of doing. There was no actual scientific evidence behind this belief; it was more of a wives tale, akin to the notion that food or potions made with nasty intentions would make a person horribly ill, no matter what it was. Even Corina’s aunt believed this to be true, about brewing and about anger.
She could just imagine Annie laying awake in her bed at night, in that dormitory with the dozens of other Indian girls, just wishing that all her anger could be taken out on someone in the most gruesome way possible. And that every moan of hunger or scream of pain from a beating would only fuel that anger like a beating heart.
Of course, this reasoning only lead to more wondering. Why had it been Connor Payton who had been chosen to suffer when Annie had only known him for a few days, as opposed to the numerous teacher who had been tormenting Annie and the other Indian children for years? Surely teachers who had actually staved the students and beat them with hickory sticks would have made much more attractive targets, the ones who would have been the focus of the most collected rage.
The best explanation for ‘why’ was simply that her father was just the first white man who An.nie had enough access to take out her frustrations. Not to mention the fact that he was the one who made her aware of her abilities in magic. Corina had no real idea if actually knowing about the existence of magic made any difference in a small child’s ability to use it, but she could come up with no other explanation.
Yes, Corina knew her father was a good man. She knew he had the purest intentions in everything he did for Annie, that he really did just want her to be with her parents again before she could receive an education that could give her a chance to be more than just some family’s maid. But Annie didn’t know this. Corina could only imagine all the people in Annie’s life who must have told her ‘they were just trying to help’, and what that ‘help’ had come to mean in Annie’s mind.
In a way, Corina’s father was just another white man dictating what was going to happen with Annie’s life, wizard or not. Whether the source of Mr. Payton’s fate was his close and constant proximity to Annie, or whether the girl had just snapped remained a mystery, and Corina knew the only way she would every receive any kind of answer would be to ask Annie herself, and that was something she was most certainly not willing to do.
Of course, this only lead for Corina to wonder what would happen to all the white teachers that would be at the Bell Academy who would ‘only have her well-being in mind’.
But Corina shook her head, trying to let her mind drift off into a haze that the humid heat naturally provided, tired of the constant stream of thoughts swirling in her head. Corina would finish her own education at the Bell Academy long before Annie’s had even begun. She took solace in the fact that she would never see Annie Two-Moons again, and whatever it was she chose to grow up into was no longer any concern of hers.
Dawes & Carlise by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: With her departure to Bell only days away, Corina contemplates Annie Two-Moons and the events of the past weak with quiet reasoning.