In one respect at least, Lizzie was a very poor witch. Because when Tucker got up and headed for the door, her hand went for her knife, not her wand.

Perhaps it was because she didn’t actually mean to do anything. He knife was just her place of safety; her emotional shelter. It was her friend in pain. It was her tool of torment. It was her final defiance against the horrible world she lived in.

If she’d drawn her wand, she would have hexed Tucker before the door closed behind him. Instead, she screamed and flipped the knife open and threw it at the door. A hoof-knife is not meant for throwing. The blade curves the wrong way, and to stand any chance of sticking it, you have to hold it by the edge; not the best idea with something that could shave the down off a peach. But Lizzie had practiced in the barn, during long hours of loneliness and despair, and the knife slammed into the door, hooked blade buried into the wood, just after Tucker had closed it.

‘Well, sod you too!” She screamed, her face purple. She was standing on the far side of the table, the plates still sitting there in front of her, looking at her knife sticking in the wood. There was silence, broken only by the whispered words of the House Elves over by the massive fireplace.

“Sod you. Sod you, Tucker Watkins. Sod you, sod you, sod you.”

What had she done? What had she said? Nothing! She replayed the last minutes of their conversation and she could see nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could have taken offence at. She had practically bent over backwards to agree with him! All she had asked, as a fig-leaf for her pride was that he try to smarten up a bit! It wasn’t like she had said anything nasty.

Not like he had. Not like…

“Och, I’m done with you, Tucker Watkins. Ye can go ahead and busk under a bridge for al’ of me. I’ve got better things tae do that weep over you.”

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