Chapter 361 Della's Forked Road
On the day of the competition, after Jingjing had hidden in the maze for long enough, Della also used an illegal portkey to leave Hogwarts.
The first place she went to was the orphanage where she was raised, of course not to reminisce or anything. Instead, she used her telepathy to read the memories of the greedy director who had been working in the orphanage, and found every trace of Maggie before she was five years old.
Maggie never thought that Muggles were a threat, so the green snake shadow that had never appeared in her childhood memory was not difficult to find in the dean's memory.
This was the final proof. She knew exactly what she had become with Maggie by her side, but she also had to carve the beginning of the lie of her life into her soul. Otherwise, she was afraid that she would not be able to hold on and would have to go back to find Maggie.
Della and Cynthia agreed to leave Maggie. Cynthia wanted to use her absence and Maggie's fear of the consequences to gain benefits, and she was sure that her departure would bring desolation to Maggie.
Della actually questioned the desolation. She didn't believe that Maggie, who treated her life as a chess piece, would really care about her. However, Della couldn't confront and break up with Maggie face to face.
In her past life, she had compromised a lot, and finally faced up to the existence of 'Della'. If she cut ties with Maggie, who had completely merged into 'Della', she would be destroying her already shaky self with her own hands.
Della couldn't do that, not because she thought she couldn't do it, but because she simply couldn't do it.
So, she accepted Cynthia's words, made the final entrustment, and left her deepest ties in this world.
Holding the old walnut wand that she and Cynthia had exchanged, Della began her wandering. She had to thank Maggie, the snake who had told her how to block the tracer in second grade, allowing her to use magic to live wherever she wanted.
There is basically nothing to say about Della's wandering life, because she did not experience anything. Even if she saw something new, she never stopped, but just moved forward numbly and aimlessly. Her condition was particularly serious in July and August. During that time, she firmly believed that she would "endure a year and then end her life" as Cynthia said, that is, to end the concept of Della, which had been tainted by lies from the beginning.
On a cloudy day in September, Della, who had been in Continent O for some time, stepped into a small restaurant. The restaurant was an essential part of her wandering. She could also use a folding tent for accommodation in the wild, and food was the only thing that magic could not bring her directly.
Della can still remember that day. It was a rare cloudy day after several sunny days in a row, but it was still very hot. There was always a dazzling light like cracks shining through the dark clouds. She stepped into the restaurant with the wind-eroded sign. Amid the crisp sound of wind chimes, she foresaw the first Muggle in her life who did not lose consciousness in front of her.
In her previous wanderings, because she didn't bring much money with her when she left, she couldn't rashly take money when Maggie was wanted. So Della would choose to use the ability of her eyes to have a free meal in a Muggle restaurant, and then she would use magic to secretly help the store do some repairs, or stay there for a few days to use magic to create some unexpected good luck. She used these methods to pay for the meal.
Not being able to hypnotize Muggles with your eyes means nothing can begin.
Della had many choices, there was always no shortage of restaurants on the street, but she was curious about this rare surprise, so she politely asked the owner, a man with faint scars on his face, if she could do some work to offset the meal.
In contrast to his terrifying expression, Mr. Constant agreed readily. Della worked as a waitress for an afternoon, ate two sumptuous staff meals, and had some change stuffed in her pocket. She also pieced together the reason why Mr. Constant was not controlled by his eyes.
Maggie had told her that the Brontë eye did not work well with people who were at extremes of emotion during the war, which was the case with Mr. Constant, but extremes in a positive direction.
Mr. Constant was the last victim and the only survivor of a serial murder case. Now, whenever we mention the rare and cruel murderer in that leisurely town, we always have to mention Mr. Constant.
He was shot once in the left calf, once in the right thigh, stabbed three times in the abdomen, slashed countless times in the face, and his throat was slit.
The description left no one with any hope of survival, and the murderer had no intention of letting him live, but Constantine survived.
After escaping death, Mr. Constant, who was originally rebellious and almost degenerated into a tramp, cherished his miraculous survival. He began to struggle and was always willing to lend a helping hand.
Having once faced death, he is extremely grateful for life and cherishes every day as if it were his last.
For Mr. Constant, difficulties and pain are also the experience of living. He has broken through all the absurdities of the past. After being reborn from the dead, he can now even reject the soul of the devil.
If only she could turn down another demonic spirit, too.
Why can't she?
From that day on, Della took the first step to save herself.
She traveled across the ocean to the English-speaking country of M, made some money that no one else cared about, muggle-ified her and Maggie's experiences, and went to see a psychologist for the first time.
Alas, the expression here is too accurate and may be too cruel to a little girl who has finally ignited the spark of survival, but the world is not a fairy tale after all. Long-standing psychological problems cannot be transformed into spring by taking a single step. It can only be said that the effect is minimal.
Della has a critical personality. Maggie spent more than ten years of companionship to make this criticism ineffective in front of her. Della, who has read a lot of psychology books and tells a embellished story, has driven several psychologists who first came into contact with her to collapse.
After being recommended to the nineteenth psychiatrist, Della was advised to take medication for the sixty-seventh time. She finally accepted her fate and, knowing that she would not have the opportunity to gain enlightenment by accident, she took the medication back to her temporary apartment.
The first few times she took the medicine, she didn't feel much. It was probably just the false happiness that appeared when the fake Moody cast the Imperius Curse on her in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, which was easily broken. Della once thought that the medicine was useless because her mental condition did not improve at all. Her insomnia symptoms worsened and her appetite became worse.
Then in one ordinary dose, things changed dramatically.
An hour after taking the medicine, Della was sitting in a recliner reading a German philosophy book when she found that the words in front of her had turned into French. She naturally wondered why there were so many French words in a German book. Before she could come up with an answer, English appeared in the book.
She was still thinking, but the questions she was thinking about became very strange, as if originally she was walking the fastest straight line between a question and an answer, but that day all the questions started from the same point, and the line was winding and twisting, and whatever answer she encountered would pop up in her mind.
She felt thirsty and thought she should go and dry her shoes. Oh, no, the book problem was not solved yet. Why was it like this? Della tried to get back to the question, but the next thing she thought was a completely unrelated "Ah - should I learn some Italian?"
Why should I learn Italian? It seems that the flowers need watering. The sun is so bright these days. Will anyone use her to ask Maggie for a million Galleons?
What a nuisance! I really don't want to live anymore - what's that noise? Is it a raccoon scratching the door? What is Maggie doing? Oh, she really should go fix up the attic, there's too much clutter -
Della's pupils gradually dilated, and she didn't realize that there was no attic in her apartment at all, just like the book she was holding was only in German from beginning to end.
When her thinking became straight again, Della was faced with the potted plants in the refrigerator, the tomatoes in the sink that had been bitten twice and then stuck into the succulents, and a pair of sandals that she had carefully wrapped with pages torn from the philosophy book.
Her mind was out of control, which proved that the drug was effective. Her thinking priorities were completely confused, and her negative emotions and various entanglements related to Maggie were shattered and mixed into all her daily thoughts that were suddenly taken seriously. In this case, all the physical reactions related to the excited emotions brought about by the drug alone were also real.
The feeling of happiness appeared, but unfortunately it was the kind of happiness that only brought emptiness and bitterness.
Della didn't crave that kind of forced happiness, but she did need some intervention to suppress her paranoid thinking that was close to a dead end. According to the doctors, she had to live until she was willing to live.
After that experience, Della understood what the doctor said, but she really hated the confusion brought by the medicine. It felt like it was not her who was alive. There were a few times when Della almost believed that the effort required to survive far exceeded her current desire to live. Fortunately, she finally criticized this judgment and thought of a new way.
The solution came to her almost immediately. Fortunately, she was a wizard, and her unfortunate possession of the eyes that represented all illegal manipulation was the way out.
In addition to breaking up all thoughts and preventing negative emotions from surfacing, you can also suppress all emotions, including negative ones.
Perhaps the method Della ultimately chose was a detour compared to the doctor's advice of "socializing more and getting out of your own mind," but she was already at a stage where she could refute all the "you should" voices. She knew that she couldn't force it anymore, and being able to find a way to move on that suited her was already a huge improvement.
So she found a small town with a beautiful environment sandwiched between the mountains, built her cabin in the woods where few people went, and gave the last money she had to the vegetable merchant, the department store owner and the best restaurant in town. Della made a small teleportation mechanism in the warehouses of the vegetable merchant and the department store owner, so she could get the necessities of life in her tree house without leaving home.
She lived a very regular life. She went to town once every three days, exchanged a new batch of books in the library without anyone noticing, went to a restaurant to enjoy a meal, and then found a few people other than the people who were necessary for life to use their eyes. In this way, her life could continue indifferently.
Della is trying to continue, but she must admit that this is a fork in the road.
"How could I possibly persuade you to go back to a life you don't want?"
Belinda cried out, with only heartache on her beautiful face. Della looked at the face that had touched her deeply. The lake in her heart that had been frozen for so long was still calm, but the water that was still flowing underneath began to surge.
It seemed like something was about to burst out, but it didn't seem to be hers. Della, who had suppressed everything for a long time, fell into a long-lost disorder. "Sorry, I'll leave for a while."
She said this and hurriedly left the living room.