Phases (editing)

twenty

AN- Chapter songs: Everything I Wanted by Billie Eilish and Go Solo by Tom Rosenthal

23rd October 1995

Full Moon

"Aspen!" Aspen, Aspen, Aspen, Aspen... he repeated my name, but the walls of the dungeons made it hard to differentiate which were echos, and which were from his lungs. He shouted and shouted after me and I flinched every time, but my feet were ever moving and never losing their stride.

"Aspen!" He bellowed. "Would you stop and just listen to me!" His voice cracked around the third word. Like his pleads caught up with him and his reality followed.

I wouldn't stop. I refused.

I welded my lips together and refused to respond.

"It's more than you realise!" He shouted. "More than you and me, more than everything! Just please let me explain!"

My feet stopped working, I was frozen in place. I was a statue in the Louvre, on display, but alone. If he had something worth substance to say he would say it, so I decided to let him.

"WHAT DRACO!" I snapped, every chip, every flaw he created in my cemented body shattered and turned to dust. "What is there to explain! I knooooow- I know you don't open up. I knoooow you rarely talk about yourself, but I didn't believe even the possibility that a single one of those things pertained to me!" At some point during my outward vent, I turned to face him in the corridor, and he stood as I did. Cemented to the stone floor.

"It's not even that, Aspen." He spoke quietly, as every word hurt him.

I was confident that, in all the times we've been alone, this is the furthest we've ever been apart.

"What is it then?" I demanded. Feeling my bones begin to crack. "You're keeping a secret from me, Theo even said so." My hand stabbed the air repeatedly in the direction of the Slytherin common room, as I spoke.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about, you know how he is-"

"The Veritaserum knows." I deadpanned, my blood began to boil. I wanted to become the worst thing he's ever met.

I thought of every moment Draco and I were alone. I thought of the last time we were alone.

Let me protect you, Aspen.

"The only person you should've protected me from," I said, "was yourself!"

He flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, he looked like a little boy hiding from the monsters in his wardrobe. Any other day, my heart would've dropped to hell, but I felt satisfied. I caused him the pain and suffering he has caused me. For years. For our lifetime.

"Aspen," his voice was weak and frail.

"Talk," I demanded. If there is something worth saying, that caused him to even follow me, I wanted to hear it.

His forehead creased with the walls he's using to shield the truth. "Aspen, it's so much more."

"You're talking, but I don't hear a word with substance." My vision was turning to a shade of red.

"I like you, Aspen." His eyes finally opened and met mine. "A lot. I don't think you understand the feelings that course through me every waking moment. My feelings for you are so mutual it hurts. It makes me want to vomit."

"If your feelings are mutual you'd talk to me." I felt the red leave my vision, and my bones beginning to fuse back together.

"I'm not talking to you because my feelings are mutual." You wouldn't think his eyes were beginning to slowly flood with his emotions, due to the unchanging tone of his voice. "The secret, Theo thinks he knows is a false one. It hasn't held meaning in a long while. Can you trust that?"