"Love. No I'm not in love. Cause you're not worth it. You're not worth thinking of."
______________________
"Please, Sir," My voice sounds pathetic. Stupid and pathetic and small and begging. That's who I was reduced to now. A hollow girl begging her headmaster to switch her potions class because she cant bear the thought of facing her...boyfriend?
"I'm deeply sorry, Ms. Evans. There's simply nothing I can-"
"Bullshit!" I shout against my own better judgement. Dumbledore quirks a brow, but I refuse to back down. I wont run away this time. "Bullshit, Sir. There is always something you can do," I state more calmly, reserved.
He clears his throat, shuffles a few papers on his desk.
"I'm not ready yet. I don't know how I'll react when I see--"
He cuts me off, "You can join advanced potions with the sixth year Ravenclaws and Slytherins. Slugclub will be mandatory and should your grades slip you will be immediately placed back in..."
His words ring out as relief floods through my body. One less thing I have to worry about.
Is it possible for me to somehow finish my schooling without ever coming in contact with another living soul?
"Thank you."
☽☽☽
My first class of the day is potions. Maybe he did it on purpose to remind me of the slack i'd been cut, or maybe it was plain coincidence. Either way, I wasn't grateful for this. I wasn't grateful for anything. No one in sixth year knew Iris was my best friend, so, I would have to try extra to keep myself in check, to not fucking explode in front of them. I still prefer this to my other option, though.
Slughorn is the Headmaster for the green cult, so there is no doubt he will favor the Slytherins I'd be sharing a class with. But I still didn't mind potions, I found it quite interesting actually, though I still would prefer not to be here.
We are making draught of living the death, something I have studied already in sixth year. But I guess I'll be doing a lot of potions like this.
The class groans as each students gets paired with another from the opposing house. I'm just glad I wont be forced to hunt for a partner on my own. A girl whines from besides me and I nearly allow my intolerance to get the best of me, but before it can, I hear my name being called out.
"Cordelia Evans and Regulus Black. These seats if you will, you should do well together such bright students as yourselves." Slughorn says in an all too cheery manner. I feel an unfamiliar surge of enthusiasm at his name. I realize that I am pleased to see him. This knowledge surprises me.
I hesitate to move towards my gestured seat, but quickly do so when I hear the girl begin to complain again, no doubt shutting her up. I never realized how much people complain, including myself, before.
Regulus is already sat, looking just as snobbish as the next pureblood. But he also looks miserable. He had been in a few papers recently Is the Young Black heir next to join the ranks? I remember The Prophets article. I remember not caring much.
We make eye contact as I cross the room, and the boys misery is soon replaced with disgust and annoyance. But I'm relived. Regulus still doesn't like me. And I still don't like him. I know this vile git won't step on eggshells around me, he won't ask if I'm okay like everyone else is bound too. I know that Regulus doesn't give a fuck, that he doesn't care, and I feel glad to have that particular constant in my life.
I am expecting insults. Cruel jabs and thoughtless mentions about the last time I saw him.
"Evans." Regulus nods with feigned civility as I slide onto the stool besides him.
"Black." I mumble, mirroring Regulus as I pull the required textbook from my bag.
I honestly can't make out why I have a sense of disappointment, from this anticlimactic encounter.
It's a feeling other than the constant, pain, though, and that can prove to be a dangerous thing.
After the greeting, besides the odd ask from Regulus to grab certain ingredients or the spoken repetition of instructions, we don't speak to each other for the rest of class. Regulus does nothing but what is asked of him by the professor. Of course, the disdain is still there, but his usual snide remarks and taunts are no longer, giving me no reason to retaliate. We just simply work in comfortable silence for an hour.
☽☽☽
I don't want to go back to my empty dorm. Last night had been particularly brutal, and I have no desire to revisit the scene of the suffering. There is never any doubt I will have nightmares.
I always have nightmares now, every night. Not nightmares really, not in the plural, because it's always the same nightmare. You'd think I'd get bored after so many weeks, grow immune to it. But the dream never fails to horrify me, and only ends when I wake myself up with screaming. Eventually, my mom didn't even come in to see what was wrong anymore, to make sure there was no intruder strangling me or something like that— she'd grown used to it.
My nightmare probably wouldn't even scare someone else. Nothing jumps out and screams 'Boo!' There are no zombies, no ghost, no psychopaths. There is nothing, really. Only nothing. Just the endless maze of Hogwarts halls, so quiet that the silence is an uncomfortable pressure against my eardrums.
Its always dark, like dusk on a cloudy day, with only enough light to see that there is nothing to see. I hurry through the gloom without a clear destination, always searching, searching, searching, getting more frantic as the time stretches on, trying to move faster, though the speed makes me clumsy... then there comes a point in my dream— and I can feel it coming now, but can never seem to wake myself up before it hits— when I can't remember what it is I'm searching for. When I realize that there is nothing to search for, and nothing to find. That there never had been anything more than just this empty, dreary, school, and there will never be anything more for me... nothing but nothing...
That's usually about when the screaming starts.
I'm not paying attention to where I'm walking— just wandering through empty, decrepit, abandoned hallways as I avoid all the ways that will take me to my room—because I don't have anywhere else to go; that's when I bump into him.
Peter.
Oh, I wish I could feel numb again, but I can't remember how I managed to turn it on and off before.
Maybe it was just perpetually on.
The nightmare is nagging at my mind and making me think about things that cause me pain. I don't want to remember the hallways. Even as I shudder away from the images and focus on Peter's face, I feel my eyes fill with tears and the aching begin around the edges of the hole in my chest. I take one hand from my pocket and wrap it around my torso to hold it in one piece.
"Cordelia! I didn't uh...I didn't know you were back!" The words run through my head, lacking the perfect clarity of my nightmare last night. They are just words, soundless, like print on paper. Just words, but they rip the hole wide open, and I fall to my knees, knowing I should not continue to try and walk while this incapacitated.
Peter rushes to my side on the ground. "Merlin!? Are you okay?" I curl over, pressing my face against his shoulder and trying to breathe without lungs.
I wonder how long this can last. Maybe someday, years from now—if the pain will just decrease to the point where I can bare it—I will be able to talk to his friends and reflect on those few short months as the best of my life. And if it is possible that the pain will ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I'm sure that I will feel grateful for as much time as he had given me. More than I asked for, more than I deserved. Maybe someday I'll be able to see it that way.
But what if this hole never gets any better? If the raw edges never heal? If the damage is permanent and irreversible?
Peter wraps his arm around me and I bury my face deeper into his chest. "I'm—Im okay." I manage to gasp.
He pets my hair soothingly, not seeming to give a damn that anyone could walk by and interpret this the wrong way. "I know you are," he whispers. "I know,"
If you know, why are you asking?
I laugh humorously to myself, still gasping for air. The dark humour distracts me, and the distraction eases the pain. My breath comes easier, and I'm able to lean back against him. Though it's cold today, my forehead is damp with sweat.
"Peter," I murmur.
"Yes," He says back.
The air I inhale quivers with my lips as I go to speak, "I'm sorry for your loss, if no ones said it already." I feel him stiffen around me. As motionless, as stable, as strong as a rock. "It must be a terrible thing. When the person you love dies before you have the chance to tell them how you feel. And, I'm just...so...sorry,"
It's quiet for a long moment as I use my lycanthropy to listen to Peters heart thrash around in his chest. Violently. In a tormenting way. In grief. "Thank you." He sighs heavily.
"You know, he sends me to walk these halls at six pm every day because he knows you like to wander around dinner time?"
"Are you going to tell him you saw me?"
"Do you want me to?"
"I want him to know, he broke my heart."
_______
happy christmas!
song: you broke my heart by current joys