Previously on Black Gold:

Jessica: I-It’s not like I don’t like you or anything. I mean…we talk all the time—and I love spending time with you. I just…I don’t know if I like you romantically or platonically. We are still kinda getting to know each other, right?

//

Taeyeon: They told me I was sick. They told me I couldn’t tell anyone while I underwent treatment. I wasn’t bitten, Fany. My parents were fusing werewolf blood into me.

Tiffany: And you couldn’t tell me?! Why couldn’t you just talk to me?

Taeyeon: How do you expect anybody to admit that their own parents are mutilating them?!

//

Taeyeon: Yuri, she’s different, you know?

Jessica: What’re you talking about?

Taeyeon: Jessica, she’s a fox.

//

Taeyeon: Doing nothing isn’t going to get us anywhere. It’s been days. No one’s coming for us.

Jessica: You know you guys are talking about travelling through a forest filled with those halfers, right? We don’t even know if there are tens or hundreds of them out there.

Yuri: Everybody better rest up. It’s a long- journey.

Taeyeon: Let’s get everyone home.

The first time that they were attacked, Taeyeon still remembers being petrified and the way that she could do nothing but reel in shellshock. It had felt so surreal. The sound of exploding charms that rendered her deaf, the way the ground shook as monsters rampaged by, and how her screaming peers horrified her. More than the mayhem, the worst thing Taeyeon remembers is being immobilized by fear when her friends needed her.

But it’s funny how a few days can change people.

“Rawwrg!”

Shifting into her werewolf form is utterly taxing, so clever with expending minimal energy, Taeyeon’s willed her body into a partial transformation, just like her enemies. Her eyes are burning gold, her ears are pointed and blackened at the tips, and along with her canine fangs, she also has thick black claws that decorate her fingertips.

She doesn’t just shove the advancing halfer away, but as she pushes him backwards, she slashes him across his chest with a staggering force. The beast is an overwhelming head taller than her—and possibly triple her weight—but still, Taeyeon manages to send him stumbling on his feet, howling in pain, and Tiffany takes advantage of the opportunity opened up for her.

For a brief second, Tiffany studies the halfer’s piercing orange eyes, but what she’s really focused on are the nasty, jagged fangs that start to lunge for them again. “Stupefy!” she casts, shooting a bolt of blue right down the halfer’s gaping mouth, which sends his hefty body toppling to the ground, paralyzed. “Don’t let them bite you!” Tiffany yells out.

“YEAH?! What do you think we’re doing?!” Jessica screeches back at the useless warning. Raising her wand against a halfer advancing on her, she casts, “stupefy!”

BZZzztt—poof.

“Wha—?” Jessica pales as the blue spark on her wand fizzles from the tip and retracts into its core. “Come on! Stupefy!” she casts again, willing nothing but a sad puff of blue smoke. “Stupe—AHH!”

Jessica’s abrupt scream is absolutely piercing and it’s amazing that she doesn’t pop the half-werewolf’s eardrums with the shrill octave. Luckily for the transfer-student, before the beast reaches her, a slab of wood smashes the halfer across the face and sends him to the ground.

“Get behind me.”

Feeling someone fist her sweater, Jessica doesn’t resist as Yuri pulls her roommate behind her and steps up to face their enemy. Protective of her friend, the fox twirls a broken branch in her hand before lunging forward and striking the halfer across the face again. Far stronger than the average human, Yuri manages to knock some of the creature’s jagged fangs from its bloodied mouth.

Yuri continues to wail the branch against the beast and Jessica flinches when the makeshift bat snaps in half. Even so, the quidditch captain continues to rapidly hammer the halfer with the splintered branch, cutting into the creature with the jagged stump. And even after the creature goes limps, Yuri takes extra precaution and spears him in the chest, ensuring that it won’t stand again.

Yuri hurriedly tries to gulp down as much oxygen as possible as she glances over her shoulder to look at her roommate. “Y-you,” she gasps for a much needed breath before asking, “you okay?”

“Look out!”

The fox spins around to find a halfer rushing towards her, but a nimble clawed-hand slams into the creature’s shoulder and halts it in its steps. Yuri only manages to blink once before Taeyeon hoists the halfer over her head and flings the beastly woman into a trunk that’s meters away. She hears the sickly crack of bone and wood before the body crashes to the ground, limp.

“You two okay?” Taeyeon asks breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Yuri huffs back, surprised by how more and more composed Taeyeon’s becoming the longer that they’re out here for. “Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, no problem.” Taeyeon slurs before leaving to check on the other girls.

Yuri turns to her roommate and helps the other witch to her feet. “You okay, Sica?”

Jessica wheezes. “Y-yeah, thanks. Did we get them all?”

“I think so.”

On her feet, Jessica can’t help but to stare at the gruesome body just a few meters away. “W-what the hell, Yul?”

“What?”

“Wh-where did that come from?” Jessica asks, still not accustom to seeing such violence.

The fox weakly chuckles through her exhaustion. “Maybe you should drop by a quidditch game sometime. I’m a pretty damn good beater.”

Jessica scoffs at the position name. “Yeah. I see that.”

“Everyone good?” Tiffany hollers.

Out of breath, Yuri just raises her arm for all her peers to see and she gives them a thumbs-up on Jessica’s behalf too.

“Well, everybody’s alive,” Taeyeon mutters to Tiffany. “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany laughs through wheezed breaths. “Now let’s get the out of here.”

***

***

Jessica wants to complain about her aching feet, but as she watches all of her other tired friends hike in front of her, she swallows her grumbles. She wants out of this forest just as badly as everyone else, so she tries not to drag her feet as she continues along with the numbing walk. At least the weather is comfortable in this enchanted forest when it’s not too hot or cold, which is surprising given that winter’s just around the corner. Trying to occupy her attention on anything besides the pain in her quads and calves, she glances to the side.

She tries not to be too obvious as she looks over her shoulder at Tiffany, who’s trailing just a step behind. The girl’s gaze is fixated and Jessica traces Tiffany’s line of sight all the way up to Taeyeon, who’s at the head of the pack. Huh.

Maybe Jessica should mind her own business—after all, it’s certainly not the first time someone has told her to do so—but she can’t help from being drawn into Tiffany’s animated facial features. There’s nothing micro about the girl’s expressions and Jessica studies the way Tiffany blankly stares forward with her deeply furrowed brows over her big emotional eyes. Her frown is also profoundly etched into the corner of too and Jessica can’t stand being able to actually see Tiffany lost in some abyss of troubling thoughts.

Naturally, her curiosity gets the best of her.

“You know, if you keep staring at her like that, it’s gonna start getting creepy,” Jessica whispers.

“What?” Tiffany blurts out, turning her eyes from Taeyeon to Jessica.

“Taeyeon.”

“S-she’s at the front of the line—of course I’m looking at her. My eyes are freakin’ lodged in the front of my skull.”

For a split second, Jessica wonders if she was seeing things with Tiffany ‘gawking’ at the wolf-girl, but given the witch’s overreaction, Jessica’s sure that she hit a nerve. “Seriously, have you guys talked at all about it?”

Fiery just a moment ago, Tiffany unexpectedly softens at the question. “It’s…weird. What’s there to talk about now that everyone knows what really happened?”

“You guys should talk anyways. Get everything out in the open.”

“We have enough to worry about, Jess,” Tiffany sighs, mindful of managing the volume of her typical voice.

“Tiff, just go talk to her.”

“No! It’s awkward!” Tiffany hisses.

“Fine, I’ll make you guys talk,” Jessica suddenly blurts out. She barely registers Tiffany’s wide eyes before she turns her attention to front and calls out, “Hyo! Let Tiffany and Taeyeon take the lead. Come take the back of the line with me!”

Confused, the Gryffindor witch in question stops in her tracks and turns back. “What? Why?”

“Because I’m scared, Kim Hyoyeon! Come keep me company! A-and protect me!” Jessica demands while stamping her foot.

“Oh sure, yelling is such a good idea in this forest,” Tiffany bites sarcastically.

“Aren’t you shrouding us with a silent charm?”

Tiffany scoffs before she masks her annoyance with a fake smile, which makes her eyes disappear into crescents. “Who’s going to be able to shroud your shrill voice?”

“Yah.”

“Alright, you take the lead with Taengoo,” Hyoyeon says to Tiffany, suddenly butting in between the two girls. “I got the big baby here in the back.”

Jessica whines and plays up her helplessness for the Gryffindor witch, but she also eagerly shoos Tiffany away, excited to set her ‘clever’ plan into motion.

Embarrassed, Tiffany wades past the other five girls before she reaches Taeyeon at the head. “Sorry about that,” she mutters as the group resumes their pace.

“What was that all about?” Taeyeon asks.

“Jessica’s very demanding,” Tiffany sighs. “She only wants the best bodyguard and I can’t be it.” The other girl chuckles, but it only takes a beat of silence before Tiffany drops her smiles and jokes. “Um, Jessica said we should…talk.”

“Ha…figures,” Taeyeon whispers with a thin smile. “She really is nosey.”

Tiffany chuckles lightly. “Yeah, she really is, isn’t she? But, um…about what happened—”

“I’m sorry, Fany,” Taeyeon rushes out. “I’ll tell you it a million times and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it better, but I am sorry. I had no idea what I did.”

“I get it now. It was more than either of us expected,” Tiffany says, still plagued by the memory of the other girl assaulting her. Though the more she thinks of how Taeyeon became a werewolf, Tiffany has her own doubts too. “Do you ever wonder if you were actually sick though?”

Usually attentive with tracking the air for potentially dangerous scents and sounds, Taeyeon feels her focus suddenly retract and coil right into the space between her and old friend. She feels dumbfounded over the question that stirs a nervous flutter in her gut.

“…Huh?”

Tiffany shrugs. “What if your parents weren’t ‘experimenting’ on you like some crazy science project? You ever think about what else could’ve happened? Like…what if the Headmistress—hell—what if the entire Council of Magic is wrong about your parents? What if you really were sick and they were trying to treat you via illegal means?”

“I…” Taeyeon trails off, not sure what to think about suddenly. “I-I don’t…I don’t know?”

“You said they were Hyoyeon’s GP too, right? They never touched a hair on her head. And I know your parents, Tae. They took care of me. They loved me…so how could they not love their own daughter?”

“…You really think it’s possible that they were treating me and not experimenting on me?”

“I hope so,” Tiffany whispers. “I just…I can’t imagine them hurting you.”

“I…I can’t believe I never thought about it that way,” Taeyeon whispers, feeling her world spin.

“See? You should’ve just told me what happened in the first place.”

Taeyeon sighs. “We’ve already been through this. I couldn’t tell anybody what happened during that summer.”

“I deserved more than you pushing me away,” Tiffany says, frowning deeply. “How was I supposed to even get a word in with you when you always told me to beat it or had your little minions chase me away? You should’ve told me.”

Taeyeon feels like it’s a little harder to breath, as if a bubble of guilt is pushing down on her lungs. “I’m sorry...I didn’t want you to know. It was too much.”

“I know,” Tiffany replies before starting to quietly sniff.

Surprised by the sound, Taeyeon looks over at the other girl as they continue their leisurely-paced walked. “Why are you crying?” she asks, watching Tiffany dab at her eyes with her knuckle.

“You were a kid. You shouldn’t have been alone through that.”

Taeyeon smiles at her friend’s sensitive nature that she so often buries and hides behind all sorts of acts. “It didn’t feel right to drag people into my business…and it’s not like I told the other girls; they accidentally found out about me.”

“When you just shut me out, I felt so betrayed,” Tiffany mutters. “I went crazy or something. Everything felt like it was falling apart and I hated how it felt like I was losing control.”

“Always gotta be so headstrong, don’t you?” Taeyeon says, scoffing at girl’s explanation for her dramatic personality.

“I guess…I’m just a reactionary kind of person.”

“You can’t always be in control, Fany.”

“Pfft, well the illusion of it was nice in school, but now that we’re here...” she murmurs, trailing off as she cranes her neck up to look at the canopy of maples barely