Liam pulls back, eyes averting to the window and he shivers at his reflection.
Suddenly, Zayn throws an abrupt punch to his jaw, sending Liam crashing into that reflection and he feels his temple crack, blood spilling hotly onto his cheekbones as his head blooms with pain.
“Fucking, mudblood. Think you’re so high and mighty, yeah?” And Zayn sounds half-crazed, hoarse, and worse than Liam has ever heard him before.
McCarthy eases back Zayn with a hand on his shoulder, glancing between the two of them uneasily, “Come on Malik,” he gives a light tug, “lets get out of here - can’t stand the filth. Don’t want detention over that do we?”
Shockingly Zayn falls into him and allows himself to be dragged out of the compartment, hands clenched white around his wand.
Liam steps forward at the last minute. “I don’t,” he says quietly and his eyes prick with tears. Zayn looks at him with murderous rage and Liam swallows heavily, “I don’t think I’m high and mighty.”
The blood streaks into his eyes so Liam’s not sure whether he really saw Zayn’s face crumble in agony or not.
Instead, he wipes back the hot, red liquid and tucks his tie back, neatly, into his uniform.
………
By the time they pull up to the castle, Liam’s managed to staunch the flow of blood and fix the cut with a simple healing charm. It’s dark out - so very, very dark and the castle doesn’t look quite as lit as it used to and Liam can almost reach out and touch the strange atmosphere that seems to cloud around the somber, returning students and the apprehension that trails the first years.
He was wrong, Liam muses sardonically, the war really had already begun. It just hadn’t gotten to him yet - and it would surely be here by the end of the year.
He gets into a carriage alone and his stomach swoops and clenches in horror because he can see the magnificent, black winged horses of death. It’s rumored that only few could because they symbolized a loss of innocence that was irreplaceable. Still, they’re beautiful in some twisted way and Liam watches in horrified fascination as the thestrals pull him along the path lit with floating lanterns towards the ominous sight that was Hogwarts: School or Witchcraft and Wizardry.
It’s a different sort of chill because Liam can’t hear the school choir singing in the distance like they’re supposed to be on the start of term and the air seems to have changed colors. (Though that might just be from the happiness and soul sucking, cloaked dementors that he can see patrolling the edges of the grounds near the Forbidden Forest.)
By the time he reaches the castle, Liam has to redo his tie twice and straighten his cloak because the breeze was harsher than he remembered. Needless to say, he’s happy to be inside those warm walls that he’s called home since the tender age of eleven when he was a bumbling, chubby fool with too large shoes and heavy books in his arms.
Except, this isn’t the Hogwarts of his childhood. In fact, Liam can barely recognize the Great Hall, what with all the emerald, Slytherin tapestries and the offensive slurs scratched into the tables and walls. (He sees mudblood and muggle-lovermultiple times - some times spelled to glow or sparkle). They’re centered mainly along the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables so Liam feels a bit fitting when he sits down only to find the word MUDBLOOD embedded into the wood directly in front of him.
The hall fills slowly, the student body thickening in size with a slow trickle, and unlike the times he remembers, there are no shouts of greetings or laughter ringing out as friends exchanged holiday anecdotes. No, this time there’s only a heavy sort of silence that seems to sit upon everyone and everything. Even the ghosts are silent, somberly lining up in an organized fashion along the back walls.
#COURAGE
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