LUNACY ll Mattheo Riddle x Reader

80. ʜᴏʟᴅ ᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ

The first explosion drifts into my dream. The scent of smoke, the almost painful heat blazing in the air... It all seems so real.

My eyes fly open. The world is burning around me.

"Mattheo!" I croak, the smoke already having made its way into my lungs. Lungs that seem to collapse in on themselves when I find the spot beside me empty. He's been bedridden for ten days, he can't have disappeared all on his own, not when he can barely hold up a spoon-

"Y/n."

Such a soft whisper, yet I hear it as though he has spoken it directly to my ear. I snap my neck around and find him on his knees, with his wand held above him with both hands. From it flows a pulsing, silvery light, leading up all the way to the ceiling where it forms the shape of a... A bird, of some sort.

A Patronus, I realize, a split second before noticing what it's shielding us from. If I thought my lungs hurt from the smoke before, it's nothing compared to what I would have been reduced to had Mattheo's magic not been keeping out the rest of the toxic fumes.

From the shattered window, I can hear that a battle is being waged outside. And yet, I can't bring myself to tear my eyes off the vicious little thing that soars above us, protecting us to the best of its abilities. It's rather curious, I find. As the final heir to the House of Gaunt, it would have surely been expected of Mattheo to have a snake Patronus, if a wizard so drenched deep in dark magic as he could even produce one, that is.

Yet at the same time, I understand it perfectly well. Mattheo's purest form would not want to associate itself with the Dark Lord in any way, which is why it is a beady-eyed crow that now pecks at the ominous clouds gathered overhead.

But despite what his purest self may believe, at the end of the day, he cannot be something so completely removed from his legacy. And thus, a glowing silver serpent soon erupts from the tip of my wand and joins the crow in providing us a way out. A serpent, not for his father nor the degenerate madmen that called themselves the Gaunts, but for Slytherin himself, greatest of the Hogwarts four, whose burning need to preserve and protect the rare few he loved by whatever means necessary, has been showing itself in Mattheo since the very first time we professed-

But we never did.

Of course it should be at the end of the world that I realize it for the first time. We never did get around to telling each other of our love, not in a way that didn't involve the taint of Horcruxes completely poisoning the moment.

But before I can tell him at last that I do, that he was the first person in my life to ever teach me what the word meant, that I am mad for him in a way that can only be described as wonderfully unhealthy...

The bird's wings give out. It evaporates to silver mist before its lump body hits the ground. Mattheo is not so lucky.

His head hits the floor from where he was kneeling before, with a heavy thump that has my heart plummeting to the ground. My Patronus coils around us protectively, hissing at the magical smoke that tries to grow closer.

With difficulty, I manage to loop Mattheo's arm around my shoulders and lift him to his feet. This would be made so much easier with a simple Lightweight Charm, but I can't risk casting it in case it causes my Patronus to disappear.

With the silver light guiding us, the two of us stumble out of the room to a hall full of debris. While the foundation of the manor itself wouldn't dare crumble apart, anything and everything that can, does. There are cracks in the doors, carpets have been shredded up, and tapestries are burning. The subjects of the portraits that line the walls have fled for their lives, while one of the chandeliers looming overhead gives an ominous creak.