HUNGER.

Chapter 28

Nott reached to grab her before she could throw herself into the crevice after him, dragging her backwards as she kicked and scratched, not caring whether she'd hurt him. She wanted to hurt him, anything that would release his grip on her, anything that could send her down there with Tom.

"He's gone," he gasped, slapping away Hannah's raking hands and pinning them to her sides. "Stop fighting- he's gone."

She was vaguely aware of shaking her head, words failing her as she allowed herself to be held, stomach lurching with sickening wave of nausea.

This isn't happening.

This cannot be happening.

Fuelled with a sudden rush of desperation, she sent a flying kick into Nott's chest, catching him off guard. Falling backwards, winded, it gave her enough time to wriggle free. He cursed under his breath, lunging at her, but Hannah had already fled towards the deep gash in the rock, begging her eyes to pierce the darkness within it.

She couldn't see far- perhaps only a few feet, before the cavern gave way to impenetrable blackness. But he was down there, somewhere.

"You're just going to give up?" She spat, sensing Nott beside her. His hand found her shoulder, squeezing it tight. She noticed the difference in touch- this wasn't restraint, now. It was an attempt at comfort, and the thought infuriated her.

When he said nothing, Hannah shook him off, not daring to look up at him- not trusting her own composure if she saw the pity in his eyes.

"You said it yourself- nothing can kill him. We just need to get him out." Hannah began looking for any sort of foothold, testing the stability of the crumbling rock with her hands. "Please, help me. He isn't dead."

"I think," Nott said eventually, the tremble in his voice betraying the calm tone. "I think he probably is."

She felt a flash of anger, clinging to the ledge as if it were a lifeline. "So that's it, then? Dead or alive, we just leave him down there to rot?"

White hot tears of indignation pricked in her eyes, but she was past caring about that now, letting them fall freely down her cheeks until they pooled on the stone below. It was only then that she understood Nott's doubt, following his gaze to a heaping pile of rubble across the room.

"The horcruxes- where are they?"

He bit his lip, gesturing helplessly at it. "Under there, somewhere."

Closing her eyes, Hannah steeled herself for what she knew was coming. "And what were they?"

"This isn't going to help-"

"What were they?"

Nott pressed his hand to the bridge of his nose, until the skin there reddened. "Glass, Hannah. Shards of fucking glass. He kept them mixed up with random things, thinking no one would expect them to be horcruxes. I told him it was a stupid idea, that they were too easily broken, but he didn't listen-"

Glass.

Nott continued to talk, but Hannah could barely hear him- a deafening silence ringing in her ears as she stared at the destruction around them. It made no sense, and yet all the sense in the world simultaneously. In her mind's eye, she watched Tom take that same shard of glass from his pocket, the one that had entwined itself within their relationship and become meaningful. It was their chocolate and flowers- a distinct marker of how they'd started, and how things had changed. You idiot, Tom Riddle.

"- he could have chosen anything, made it indestructible," Nott mumbled, "but he chose that. Didn't even tell me until it was too late- there was nothing I could do."

"He didn't want immortality," she said quietly, the realisation spreading cold in her veins like ice. "Because he'd have to live without me if I died."

He watched her with an expression of horror, growing paler by the minute. "He chose something fragile on purpose," he whispered, his voice hollow, turning his eyes back to the broken ground. "It was his loophole."

"And now I have to live without him."

They sat there, as the chamber grew quieter around them, neither daring to look at the other. The cruelty of it all was too much for Hannah to bear- suddenly wishing for the detached numbness Tom had chiselled out of her all that time ago.

"Let's go find Dippet," Nott murmured after what felt like hours. "They'll find a way to get the- erm, him, out."

She had no fight left in her, allowing him to pull her defeated body to its feet. The weight of Tom's choice was crushing, like lead in her chest, forcing all breath from her lungs.

Hannah had thought, all those years ago, that she had simply been built for grief.

She knew now how wrong that was.

Mourning Orion had been easy, in a way. The incessant rage could be channeled, the fire driving her forwards and giving her no time to dwell on her feelings- but this? The emptiness was intolerable, leaving her nothing but a shell that wouldn't even move by itself, her arms hanging limp at her sides as Nott towed her forwards, back towards the passageway.

She could have been dead, for all she knew.

The life had left her body, their surroundings only a muddy blur as various hands steadied her, moving her around until she finally felt a bed beneath her, staring up at the familiar arched ceiling of the hospital wing. There were voices, too, and questions asked, but she let them drift over her- there weren't any other voices she wanted to hear.

None of it mattered now.

She wanted to tell the bustling healers to just stop- to leave her there, like she'd left Tom. To waste away until there was nothing left, until she could see him again.

Would the afterlife have all they'd been robbed of? A quaint cottage, with wildflowers growing on hedges, and family photos hanging proud on the walls?

Hannah wasn't sure. But she figured it might, and that was good enough for her.