yall prefer one shots or complete stories?
The door clicked shut with a finality that made your chest tighten. You stood in the center of your bedroom, arms wrapped around yourself, the faint echo of laughter from the hall barely reaching your ears. The walls, once welcoming with their deep green paint and enchanted parchment birds that followed your gaze, now seemed to loom closer, suffocatingly so. Outside, Regulus, Severus, Tom, and Harry were already back to their usual business—plans, manipulations, and power displays that ruled the wizarding world with an iron fist. And you... you were trapped.
At first, you had tried to protest, tried to tell them that locking you away like this, even "temporarily," was cruel. But they had all waved your objections off. Harry's calm, commanding tone had left no room for argument, Severus' piercing gaze had frozen you mid-sentence, and Tom's smile had been too sharp to be dismissed as harmless. Regulus, though quieter, had simply shrugged, clearly siding with them without a word.
"I just... I bake cookies for people," you had tried to explain, hoping the memory of your hands dusted with flour, the sweet smell of cinnamon and chocolate chip, would soften them. "I make people happy."
But your words had bounced off their cold determination. They wanted... something else. Something less bright. Less you.
The first few hours, you convinced yourself it was only temporary. You hummed under your breath, spinning your brush in ink, sketching faintly on scraps of parchment. You had made a small charm earlier in the day, one that masked your true spirit: the glint of hope, the spark of optimism, the life that defined you. It made your voice sound normal to any passive listener outside the room, a convincing illusion. They would hear your laughter, your teasing tones, your quiet sing-song as you moved around, and they would think you were fine.
But you weren't.
The food the house elves left behind sat untouched for the most part. Plates of warm bread, fresh fruit, small morsels of roasted meats—but you barely ate. Sometimes, you forced a bite, only to spit it into a napkin moments later. The charm hid the trembling of your hands, the tightness in your chest, the fatigue spreading through your limbs.
At first, you blamed yourself. Perhaps you were overreacting. Perhaps this confinement was a "lesson," as Severus had muttered when he left the room, his cloak brushing the floor in perfect silence. Perhaps they thought this would tame you, make your optimism more palatable, more... controlled.
But as the hours stretched into days, and the days into a week, the walls of your bedroom began to close in with a different weight—the weight of distrust. You began to notice the little things you had ignored before: the way Regulus' smirk lingered too long when he passed by your door, the way Tom's fingers drummed on the tabletop during meetings, calculating, always calculating, and the way Harry's eyes flickered ever so slightly with... something unspoken. Something that made your stomach twist.
You curled into the corner of your bed, tail twitching with the agitation that wouldn't leave you. Fox instincts—sharp, alert, and sensitive—picked up every nuance, every subtle shift in the air. You could feel their presence outside the room, the way the floors creaked under their steps, and the low hum of magic that always accompanied them.
"You're fine," you whispered to the empty room, trying to convince yourself as much as the charm convinced them. "They just... they just don't understand me yet."
But the more you repeated it, the less convincing it became. The isolation was a slow, creeping poison. You had always been brave, fiery, impossible to dampen—but courage began to feel hollow when no one outside your walls seemed to care whether it burned or flickered out.
