| Inked | (George Weasley)

Chapter Eighty-Six

The next few days were hard.

After she had spent the night in Gryffindor Tower, Olive spent the next two days alone in her dormitory, keeping to herself. While deep in the back of her mind she knew that isolating herself probably wasn't a good idea, she didn't know what else she could do that could make her feel even slightly more like herself again.

So she reverted back to old habits. Sure, there was a time or two when she left the comforting silence of her dorm to join George or her friends in the Great Hall, but that was only for their reassurance that she was eating. Even still, she spent most of the time looking down at her full plate in silence, pushing around her carrots and potatoes until they were mixed together in white and orange mush.

The only time she felt the slightest bit better was when she was writing, so that's what she did.

It was the middle of the night, and Olive was curled up in her bed with her notebook and pen. She used her wand for a light, her head under the covers to keep from disturbing her dorm mates, writing paragraph after paragraph.

Yesterday she had finished a story about mermaids. Today she was writing about mid-nineteenth century vampires who happened to blend in very well with society. She liked sticking to magical creatures and the supernatural because it transported her to a different way of thinking, and clearly she didn't want to be left to her own mundane thoughts.

Besides, she found it sort of amusing to be writing about posh vampires visiting their human friends in their estates and trying to get officially invited inside so they could enter the mansion. Politeness came in all shapes and sizes, but vampires seemed to know how to bend it to their will.

"This door is brilliant. I would love to see it from the inside." Montgomery said with a smile, leaning in as far as he could go.

"Oh, it's hand-carved from Venice. It does just nicely with the furniture." Isabelle nodded, standing just off to the side, impatiently waiting for her guest to enter. The most bitter chill had started to leak into the house.

"You know, I might try a walk around to get the whole view-"

"Come in, already, Monty! You're so silly with all these pleasantries. You could write a book of compliments about other people's estates just so they could let you in."

Olive smiled to herself, blinking through her sleep-deprived, bleary vision. Perhaps she would finish this one and start another? She'd much rather focus on something she could control, like her stories, than close her notebook and allow her mind to wander about Cedric.

It wasn't a perfectly healthy solution, but it was how Olive coped.

She spent the first twelve hours after Cedric's death sitting completely still, staring blankly out the window as the people she cared about tried to comfort her and get her attention. Ollie hardly even remembered how Fred and George got her back to Gryffindor Tower. All she really remembered was George wiping the tears from her face, hugging her, holding her in his arms.

If she hadn't been borderline catatonic, it would have been almost cute.

Olive paused, her pen hovering just an inch above her notebook. It was moments like these - where she allowed herself a second or two to think of something outside her writing - that caused her heart to ache.

It's why she had been hesitant to close her eyes and get some sleep. She didn't know what would appear in her dreams, and she didn't want to know.

The pen fell from her hand, and Olive found her wand slipping from her fingertips. Her blanket-tent was submerged in darkness.

It's my fault Cedric is dead...