𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐚¹- hp.

𝐱𝐯. veils disguise the evil within.

Harry isn't one to cry, let alone process his emotions, swamped by memories of Uncle Vernon shouting and punishing him for being 'a weak little freak' that bounce in his head, but he can't figure out why his heart weighs heavy now that she's not by his side. Her name lingers in his thoughts like an eminent prayer, a highlighted bible verse, and he thinks it might be her warmth he misses; but deep within his soul, he knows Lavinia's coded into his life like a cheat code. He catches himself turning to his left to see her reaction when something funny has been said, hears her remarks whispered in his ears, and lays each night in bed with her play stuffed under his pillow, rereading the annotations he has memorized for a wisp of her.

Hermione squeezing him draws him from his thoughts, dropping his arms and pulling back, "If I ever act like that again, you have permission to smack me." He seriously tells her.

"Don't be ridiculous." Hermione wetly laughs, wiping at her eyes. "I'll just refuse to share my Potion answers with you."

Harry barks a laugh, widely grinning. He wouldn't put it past Hermione to withhold her Potion answers, or any answers really, and silently vows to be a better friend. It's what she deserves, and it's what Lavinia would want from him. He doesn't bother to fight the lingering thought, wondering what she was doing.

Matthijs popped the cap off his beer with his lighter, something she realized he commonly did, whether he did it because he thought it was cool or that it was the quickest way, she didn't know, but it was obviously his preferred method as he leaned back in his armchair. "You think Christiaan regretted it?"

"Regretted what?" Lavinia lazily asked, turning the page in her second copy of Romeo and Juliet without bothering to look up, legs dangling over the armrest of the sofa, swinging side to side.

"Leaving dad and I." Matthijs said after a few moments, staring at her.

Lavinia snickered, the corner of her lip threatening to curl upwards, "No."

Matthijs clenched his jaw, taking a swig from his beer. "I reckon he might have."

"And I know that he didn't." She answered.

Their relationship was odd, very odd, in her eyes. Majority of her days were spent cowering from him in fear, retaliating with harsh words that caused the light in his eyes to dull, shouts echoing throughout the house in a back and forth game of tug-of-war. Other days were spent simply avoiding the other as to limit their interactions, but when the void crevasse of loneliness threatened to swallow them whole, they silently sat in the same room, each left to their own device. In her mind, it was better to sit with her poor excuse of a brother than to sit alone in her room with nothing to distract her, and she often assumed he felt the same.

She found he was more tolerable when he was sober ( which was a rare occurrence in all honestly ) than when he had been drinking; Matthijs was a mean drunk, spewing the blame of his pathetic life on her that rarely ever correlated. The only thing she had learned from his stay was that he was a drunk, an addict, and that blood didn't mean shit. It didn't matter that she was family, to Matthijs and Alida she was the cause of their problems, the devil reincarnated to punish them for their wrongdoings; the phrase 'blood is thicker than water' that she often heard around her school was utter bullshit, repeated by peers with loving families who could do no wrong in their eyes. In Lavinia's eyes, you couldn't trust a single soul, and the betrayal of blood buried you faster than the betrayal of water.

"What do you even know?" Matthijs scorns, "You barely knew him."

Lavinia hums, peering over the top of the play at him, "Well, a year does quite a bit for siblings, don't you think?"