Invisible String | TVD x WIZARDING WORLD

THE FIRST TASTE ALWAYS STAYS

No.
It can't be.
You died.
I died trying to kill you.

The walls pulse. The room sways. I can hear my heartbeat echo like a death drum inside my skull—slower, quieter, more distant every time.

And there she is.
Leaning against the doorway like she never left, like death was just a detour.

"Katherine?" My voice is a ghost of itself.

"Oh sweetheart," she coos, stepping inside, all hips and venom. "You're gonna start desiccating soon. How many weeks since your last taste, hmm? Three? Four? Don't lie." Her voice tilts upward like a lullaby sharpened into a knife.

I blink. Hard. But she doesn't disappear.

Blood. That's all it is. The lack of it. This isn't real.

"You're not real."

"Sure, let's go with that," she shrugs, circling me like I'm prey and she's the storm. "Hallucination. Dream. A trauma response, maybe. But it's not gonna stop the fact that your veins are about to collapse and your heart's whispering its last love song."

She crouches before me, tilts her head.

"You always did have a flair for the tragic. Heroic sacrifice, martyrdom, kill-or-be-killed—boring." She brushes my cheek. Her touch burns like ice.

"You were supposed to be dead," I whisper.

"So were you."

Silence. Just for a moment. The kind that eats oxygen.

"I'm not here to haunt you," she says. "I'm here because you need me."

"I don't—"

"You do." Her voice is velvet-wrapped steel. "Because when the light fades and the blood dries up and everyone you love forgets your name, guess who's still going to be here, sipping wine and wearing your favorite lipstick?"

My vision flickers. The world tilts sideways.

"I'm not you."

"No," she smirks. "But you will be."

Darkness claws at the corners of my eyes. Her face becomes a blur, then a smear, then nothing.

But her laughter lingers.

Like perfume.
Like poison.

~~~~~

I have been careful.
So damn careful.

The first few months back, I lived like a ghost. Drank my guilt cold from blood bags Regulus helped me sneak in. Bag after bag, I made each one last longer than the last—measuring sips like sins.

By late October, they were gone.

The only time I fed on a real human?

Three months ago.

Theodore Nott.

I didn't mean to. I didn't even want to. He smirked. Said my name. Tilted his head a little too close and—

"I know," Katherine says, her voice curling into the corner of the room like smoke. "It's always the pretty ones who bleed best."

I flinch. My hands still remember the warmth of his pulse. The shock in his eyes. The way he didn't fight back.

"I didn't kill him."

"Yet," she hums, crouching in front of me. Her smile is sugar-coated cyanide. "But let's be honest, darling—didn't it feel good? The way his heartbeat danced under your tongue? The power of it? The control?"