- Messages
- 2,363
- OOC First Name
- Ana
- Blood Status
- Half Blood
- Relationship Status
- Single
- Wand
- Curly 11.5'' Sturdy Elm Wand with Meteorite Dust Core
- Age
- 19
Plot ID #113688
Ten years.
There was a lot more to the article than those two words, but Celia found herself returning to them over and over again. Ten years. She unfolded the newspaper, allowing the pages to splay across the desk as she tried to ignore the slow hollowing in her chest. It was a ritual she'd repeated a half-dozen times over the past year. Every few weeks, an owl would drop off a thick paper parcel bearing her mother's handwriting. Celia would then discreetly slip it into her bag before heading for the nearest empty classroom. Only once she was safely alone, door locked behind her, did she unwrap the package to reveal the newspaper that would provide the latest on her dad's case.
Ten years — that was how long her dad would be in prison. The sentence really shouldn't have been a surprise. The lawyers had warned that he could get anything from probation to 25 years, and Celia had long since learned to always expect the worst. Yet some small piece of her must have been hoping for something different because she felt as if she'd taken a bludger to the gut. Hadn't the whole point of the plea deal been to avoid a sentence like this? Celia knew life was unfair, but it was impossible not to think of all the financiers out there who had broken more laws, stolen more money, ruined more lives, and gotten more lenient punishments.
Ten years — it was an unfathomable amount of time, even for the girl who always had a ten-year plan. Celia tried to think back to her life ten years ago. She'd been six, living in Boston, her parents still together. New Zealand was a foreign land, and magic was something that happened in fairytales. Most of her memories from that point in her life were hazy, the details worn away by time, and trying to recall them felt like sifting through a stranger's sun-damaged polaroids. But there were a few things Celia was sure of. She'd been happy. She'd loved her dad. And she'd never once thought there might be a day when he wouldn't be in her life.
Ten years — a decade, a decennary, a decennium. A lifetime. In ten years, she would be back in the U.S., a law school graduate ready to make her mark on the world. She would be clerking for a federal judge or doing policy work for a presidential campaign or climbing the ranks of a major law firm. She would be a completely different person. What would her dad be? Cast out. Penniless. A stain on her reputation. In one fell swoop, he'd obliterated most of her inheritance and ruined her name. His crimes had been dissected in national news outlets and preserved by the internet. How much of her ten-year dreaming would be tainted by the shadow of his transgressions?
Ten years — Celia tried to imagine her dad's reaction to hearing those two words, but she couldn't reconcile the man in the courtroom illustration with the one who existed in her memory. The last time she had seen her dad in person had been more than three years ago during an awkward meeting orchestrated by her mother. Since then, Celia had had other opportunities to visit him, especially during the past few school breaks. But she had always opted to stay far away, thinking it might hurt her less and him more. At the time, it had felt good to wreathe her heart in ice and watch the years burn away. But now...
Celia squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails into her palms, refusing to follow that train of thought. For a few moments, she just sat there, slowly catching her breath as she started to spin herself a new narrative. Once she was ready, she opened her eyes and calmly folded the newspaper back up. She placed it face down so that she couldn't see the article. Her dad had been functionally absent from her life for the past six years. What was ten more? This new development didn't matter. Nothing was actually changing, Celia told herself. Nothing.
Now she just had to make herself believe it.