Chương 144: Thief's Chronicle I - The Burden (Read After -Rowena vs Illiteracy-)

What could go wrong with wearing a diadem that turns you into a genius, made by your mother, no less? Well, everything. Everything can go wrong. It began a little before I came into possession of the item. My intention was not to wear it, I promise. My intention, although, in retrospect, my actions suggested otherwise, was pure. Others didn't see it. They thought it suited her. Thought it made her sharper. Brighter. More... herself. But I saw it. She was breaking. Slowly, at first. A missed meal here.

A forgotten name there. Her lips moved before the words came out, like her mind was always ten thoughts ahead of her tongue. The diadem shimmered on her head, smug in its glow, like it had all the answers and none of the mercy. Rowena Ravenclaw had always been logical. That wasn't new. For her, feelings were accessories, tolerated at best, dissected at worst. She was the mind behind every plan, every enchantment, every structure in this castle. Emotions didn't get a vote. Truth did.

Maybe that's why no one else noticed the shift. But I did. I wasn't my mother. Maybe it was Father's softness that lived in me, that ache to look beyond the brilliant mind and see the woman behind it. Or maybe I just wasn't clever enough to ignore what I saw. Her eyes had changed. They didn't rest anymore, they flicked, scanned, calculated. Even when she looked at me, she was still reading something else in the air. At night, I'd pass her study and see the light still bleeding under the door. Always writing.

Always muttering. Once, I heard her talking to herself in a language I didn't recognise. Runes maybe. Or something worse. So I tried. Gods, I tried. I brought her tea. I rewrote her reports. I sat beside her hoping she'd see me. Not the helper. Not the scribe. Me. But the more she wore that diadem, the further she drifted. It was meant to make her smarter. More efficient. More brilliant. It made her hollow. I wanted to save her. Of course I did. I loved my mother.

Even if that love didn't have much room to grow under her roof. Still, love's a stubborn thing. But how could I? She was Rowena Ravenclaw. The smartest person I'd ever known. Uncle Godric used to laugh, said Father would grumble for hours, trying to find a comeback sharp enough to keep up with her. He never managed it. So, yes. Convincing her? Not happening. Rowena Ravenclaw didn't listen to suggestions, especially not from people she considered... less sharp. Which, to be fair, was most of the world.

That left me with limited tools. I had to use what I had. Emotions.

I found Morgana in the garden, sat under the hawthorn tree with three girls curled close to her. Two sisters. Quiet. Eyes too old for their age. They'd been through hell. Their mother was a muggle, burned alive after her arm healed overnight. A snapped bone from some "punishment" their lord thought fitting. She thought it was a miracle. The villagers didn't. Morgana found the girls just in time. Both were muggle-born witches, barely ten. The third girl sat apart, knees drawn up, silent. Always silent. Mute.

Couldn't cast a spell yet. Mother said she would, eventually. Said some witches needed more time before they could cast silently. I sat next to them. The ground was damp. I didn't care. One of the girls, the older one, offered me a crushed bit of honey bread. I took it.

"What is it, Helena?" Morgana asked. She shifted slightly to give me space, her cloak brushing the grass. She was older than most of us, graduated but still haunting the castle, chasing mastery. She and Merlin were the bright pair everyone pointed at. Lately, though, her patience with Muggles had been thinning. I understood why, even if it bothered me a little.

"Is it that bloody leech again?" she added, meaning Edric. Morgana didn't smile as easily these days, can't really blame her after what she'd seen lately. I shook my head.

"Can I speak to you in private?" The girls didn't wait for her word. They stood and drifted off together, all three of them sticking close as they crossed the lawn. When they were out of earshot, I let out a breath.

"I'm worried about Mother." Morgana's expression eased, though not much.

"Is she ill again?"

"No." I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve.

"It's the diadem. She barely sleeps. She forgets things, simple things. She talks to herself. And she hasn't taken it off in weeks. She looks straight through me. Even when I'm in the room, I'm not... there." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Morgana's eyes shifted toward the castle, the upper windows glowing faintly.

"Rowena Ravenclaw losing herself is no small thing. Especially now."

"I know," I murmured.

"And no one else sees it. They think she's being herself. But she's slipping. The diadem is feeding something in her, and it isn't good." Morgana leaned back against the tree, arms folded.

"Why are you telling me? Why not her?"

"Because she won't listen to me," I said.

"And you understand her better than most." Morgana's mouth tugged sideways, not quite a smile.

"Do I?"

"You were her student," I said.

"You know how her mind works. You know how it... bends things." She didn't argue.

"I don't want to lose her," I whispered.

"I don't want her to become someone I don't recognise." Morgana looked down at her hands.

"Power taken in the wrong way cuts deep. Your mother has always walked close to that edge."

"That's why I came to you," I said.

"You're strong enough to talk to her. She respects you." Morgana let out a low breath.

"Strong, yes. Respected? Questionable. Your mother respects answers, not people." I swallowed.

"Then give her one." She studied me for a long moment, hair shifting in the breeze like dark silk.

"I can try," she said, getting up. I watched her go, cloak sweeping behind her. I hoped she could talk sense into Mother, hoped she'd manage what I hadn't. She had a better chance than I ever did. I turned to leave as well when a voice slid in from behind.

"Helena, I was looking for you." I stopped. Of course he was. Turning slowly, I let every ounce of distaste show on my face. There stood the bloody leech. Edric of Hallowmere, draped in silver-threaded robes like a moth waiting for candlelight. Tall, pale, and always just there, as if he thought proximity might eventually count as affection.

"Edric," I said, flat as stone. He gave me that ever-wilted smile, eyes too eager under his dark brows.

"I hoped we might walk together."

"I'm walking the other direction," I said, already turning.

"Please. Just for a moment." He stepped closer, hands clasped as if he thought that made him look thoughtful instead of rehearsed.

"I only wish to know how to help."

"Help?" I let out a sharp breath.

"You want to help? Stop lurking behind doors. Stop showing up wherever I breathe. And stop talking to my father about weddings." His face flickered.

"You exaggerate."

"No, I don't. You're like a ghost with too much perfume. Haunting and nauseating." He didn't answer. Maybe he didn't know how. Or maybe he thought silence made him mysterious. Then, his face shifted. The fake softness dropped, leaving something sharper underneath.

"Helena, don't confuse my affection with submission. And don't forget how your father and mother came to beg mine for the land this school stands on." I almost lost it. Breathed in through my nose. Counted to three. Breathed out. It wasn't true. Or at least not the way he made it sound. Edric's father, the so-called Baron of Hallowmere, had stormed up after the school was built, shouting about boundaries and ancestral rights, waving old deeds like he expected one of the Founders to blink.

Uncle Godric was ready to flatten him right there in the courtyard. Probably would've too, if Father hadn't stepped in. Said it was unwise to start a feud so close to our gates. They let the man posture, showed him the wards, offered him a seat on some made-up board to keep things civil. A "founding quota," Father called it. Political fluff. Either Edric's father had boasted that the Founders came crawling to him, or Edric had made up his own little tale and convinced himself it was gospel.

Hard to tell with men like him. Their egos tended to breed stories faster than rabbits. I wasn't in the mood to sort out which version he'd heard, or invented. I turned to leave.

"Helena, can you give me a minute."

"No." I didn't even stop.

"Not today." His footsteps, that soft, pathetic patter he thought sounded courtly, stopped dead. Why Merlin befriended him, I had no idea. From what I knew, Merlin had been making the rounds of certain Muggle families, ones with armies, land, enough steel to march at a moment's notice. For what? No clue. He never said. He and Morgana played everything close to the chest these days. Edric, meanwhile, was absolutely the last person on earth Merlin should've befriended. Or stood near. Or acknowledged. I kept walking.

There were bigger problems than Edric of Hallowmere.

Morgana failed. She looked shaken when she told me Mother wouldn't hear a word of it. Said it like she'd hit a wall. And the look in her eyes... like something had gone sour. But I learned something new. Mother's working on something. Something big. Something she says will secure prosperity for years. What it is, Morgana had no clue. She didn't stay to guess either. She left quick, muttering that things were getting worse. Said she had people to find.

Trouble was spreading and she couldn't spare more time dancing around Rowena's pride. I didn't press. Unlike me, Morgana actually did things. She saved children. Women. Anyone caught between wand and pitchfork. She saw magic differently now. Sharper. Less forgiving. The softness she used to carry, her smile, her warmth, was going. Or gone. Still, I was grateful she tried. Father had left a while ago.

Aunt Helga was somewhere deep in greenhouses, half-buried in soil, more focused on which breed of hen laid friendlier eggs than what her niece was spiralling into. And that new pet project of hers, the little ones she said would 'keep the hearths alive' long after we were gone. Aunty always saw further into the future than she let on. Sometimes I wonder if she knew what she was shaping.

Uncle Godric might as well have vanished into mist, he was always at the front, swinging swords and chasing skirmishes that kept getting closer. So who was left? No one. No one but me. And with no one else left to ask, ideas I wasn't proud of started turning over in my head. Things I'd never have said out loud. Like maybe I could steal it. The Diadem. She'd be furious, of course. Possibly worse. But maybe, maybe, if it was gone, and she had to go without it, she'd see. She'd feel it. Notice the difference.

See what it had done to her. A week. Maybe two. But how? Even Father couldn't sneak close to her. Let alone me. She barely let me pour tea without flinching like I might jostle the ink. Her wards were subtle, but I'd tripped two of them by accident last month. One of them had turned my fingertips blue for a week. The other one nearly sent a spike through my boot.

Chance showed up like a stain. The last face I wanted to see. Edric. Of course. But this time... this time I looked at him differently. Could I use him? The idea lodged sharp behind my teeth. He wanted to be helpful. Wanted to be needed. Maybe he'd jump at the chance if it meant being closer. Closer to me, to my family, to anything with a shadow of power. I could ask him to fetch something. Distract her. Ask for counsel. Some excuse to get her attention off the study for an hour.

He wouldn't even question it, not if I dangled it the right way. He stopped a few feet away, wearing that same lopsided, hopeful smile.

"Helena—""Wait," I said.

"You wanted to help." He blinked.

"Yes?" I stepped closer. It made my stomach twist to even consider it, but desperation is a quiet corrupter.

"Then listen carefully."