TORMENT (Harry Potter Sequel)

Part II: Chapter Eight

Tom and Mia must've walked for miles. Through the long grass, past all semblances of civilization and down to long, sandy bay far away from the cliffs but still beside the channel. The sky was still grey and seagulls were still screeching from the heavens. It was like nothing had changed- like the world was the same even after what just happened. Which, of course, it was. But not for them.

Tom stopped in his tracks. He stared out across the beach. It was completely desolate- nothing in sight apart from wet, murky sand, scattered pebbles littering the floor and, of course, the ever-lasting ocean. Mia, still holding Tom's hand, looked up at him questioningly.

"Where are we going?"

Tom didn't know the answer himself. Letting go of Mia's hand and letting his own drop down by his sides, he slowly walked forward onto the beaches until he reached the edge, where the tide kept coming to. Calmly he sat down, holding his head low. His mind felt like it was on fire and he just needed... a break. Mia could sense this and so didn't follow him, instead just waiting from the sides, looking over at him concernedly.

He took off his shoes and put them down on the sand, feeling the water wash up against his toes. He pulled his head up and gazed across the horizon. The sun was coming out now through a crack in the grey clouds, shining down on the sea making it dazzle like sapphires. Tom's hands sunk in the wet sand as they dangled motionlessly by his side. He allowed his whole body to finally relax. His work wasn't over yet but... he deserved this.

The waves rushed up at him in an almost hypnotic fashion. It was relaxing, hearing the sounds of the sea, the now calm winds and the gulls cacawing in the distance. He felt, more so than he had even at Luna's house, at peace.

He thought back to what had just transpired. His conversation with Alexander Young.

It confirmed many things he knew already: his special power was called the Anti-Magic Equation. He could activate it at will and if he so choosed could permanently take someone's magic away but, of course, only at the price of his own. He filed that information in his mind under 'last resorts'.

The Malumis family had been enslaved by the Young Family and there were many 'farms' out there, all hidden. To his knowledge the only people he knew to have ever escaped these farms were his parents and, with his help, Mia. Tom still couldn't wrap his head around how this injustice had been allowed to happen. This horrendous sin that was so horrific in nature that he struggled even imagining it. He didn't know what the farms were like but from how they had been briefly described to him by Mia and Alexander Young, he could infer they were nightmarish. Maybe that was what Mia had been having nightmares about. Like Tom had at her age, Mia had started having bad dreams, waking up in cold sweats or in tears. Tom noticed it happened more and more frequently now and he always tried his best to calm her down and go back to sleep when it did happen. He wanted to know more about the farms but... whenever he saw her like that he was reminded about her feelings and found himself unable to ask her. Perhaps it was for the better.

And then of course there was the subject of Mia as a whole. She was 'the Key'. As Tom kept looking at the ocean, his eyes seemed to glaze over as he focused more on his thoughts.

Mia being the Key explained a lot of things. She'd presumably been taken out of the farm so that she could be somewhere under the direct eye of the Young Family, assuring her absolute safety. It explained why when Tom intercepted the messages between the Young Family agents he had assumed it was their most valuable object. And it explained why even Tom could sense there was something important about her. In all sense she was the Key to all this. But Tom couldn't bear to think of her as an object. She was her own person; a child; she didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve to be used and disposed of before being replaced by another child to continue the cycle. The Young Family really did make him sick.