Sophie O'Malley
November 14, 2020 1:49 PM
Adult education by Sophie O'Malley
Sometimes there were things that couldn’t be fixed, even with magic. Even now, at thirty-five years old, Sophie often found it a hard fact to accept, but it was a fact nonetheless. Some things were simply beyond repair, some damages unable to be undone.Magic could not seem to fix itself, for one thing. That was Sophie’s latest dilemma. A slight knick to the end of a wand could potentially be repaired, but her wand was just too far gone to save. What once was eleven inches of hazel wood enveloping a core of unicorn hair - a wand that had been matched to her mother nearly forty-five years ago - had simply given up. The wand just could not go on anymore and had begun to break down, with powdery pieces splintering away from the whole.
Her mother’s wand. Sophie was absolutely devastated. It was incredible how even now, thirty years after her mother’s death, things like this could knock her so far off her game. Everytime she thought she had processed her lingering grief, something happened like this and reinitiated her mourning. She only had so many pieces left of her mother, and this was her biggest link. Gone.
Before the wand was completely turned to sand, Sophie essentially euthanized it. She cut the wand to five roughly equal pieces. The first, she placed among her most treasured belongings. The second, she gave to her father, who, while raising a son with his second wife, would of course never stop loving his first. The third piece, she gave to Aunt Cecily, her mother’s identical twin and the closest thing Sophie had to a mother for the majority of her life. The fourth, she gave to Serapes, who had quietly loved her since their youth. And the fifth, she took to her mother’s grave and buried among the topsoil.
Which left Sophie wandless. Ryan’s cousin Adam was a wandmaker and had sold them wands for the boys last year, so she went to him to find her new one. When she held the wand of blackthorn, she felt an immediate power coursing through her arm and indeed her whole body that she had never felt before. The dragon’s heartstring within it was practically beating, synchronized to her own pulse. She had never felt so strong - it was a perfect match.
This discovery, in tandem with a letter she received from her son Wally detailing a wand-exploring lesson at school, inspired a curiosity in Sophie, so she did a little research of her own, both in books she could find and from discussion with Adam. And then she experimented, casting every spell she could think of, with which she found increasing success.
This experimentation culminated with a friendly duel against her father. Once again, Sophie felt a deeper connection, as if her wand was an extension of her own fingers, with lightning dancing from the tip. She felt adrenaline rushing through her the likes of which she had never known in casting, like an aerial dive to catch a falling Quaffle and defend her team’s goals. She felt young again, like a teenager on the Pitch. She had on occasion dueled her father before, just as a practice technique when she was struggling in school or as a release of frustration, but - excluding some gifted victories in her youth - this was the first time she had ever won.
It was exhilarating, and yet also infuriating. All this time, she had been held back by a mismatched wand? That was really it? And her mother’s wand, too! With acknowledged irrationalness, Sophie felt angry with her mother once again. Her memories of her mother always evoked complicated emotions, and this riled all the conflicting ones up again. She had always been angry for being abandoned, lonely for her company, jaded by her absence, and more. It was part of why Ryan’s biological mother drove her up the wall so much; how dare she waste her gift of time with her child to torment him. Sophie’s mother had only gotten to spend five years with her before she was taken away, technically by her own hand but truly by her own inner struggles. The influence of both women left Sophie a tremendous pressure in her own parenting now: she had to be a good mother, because Ryan knew what it was like to have a terrible one, and she knew what it was like not to have one at all.
All in all, the reintroduction of these conflicting emotions was a lot to take in, but somehow, Sophie felt a glimmer of hope and strength she had never felt before. She signed up for some evening courses to better her magic, and she sent a letter to Selina, her former boss at Sonora, seeking guidance on what sort of Transfigurations magic she ought to pursue. Another letter went to Gray, the Charms professor, to offer her profuse gratitude for his lesson and detail the outcome in her own life. Sophie could learn, she knew now. There was a power within her which she could harness, could hone. This was only the beginning.
OOC: Mentions of Adam Brockert approved by his author.
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Sophie O'Malley
Adult education
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