Promise

-L E S S O N-

***

Adealia's POV

I turned down the hallway to walk into the common room where I had hoped that I had left my finished potions assignment.

If it's not there I am sooooo fucked.

It was a little past twelve in the morning, the hallway was empty, the prefects had come to clear everyone out an hour before so they could finish their rounds.

In the darkness, I saw a shadow on the wall in front of me right before I turned a corner. The person was sitting down, their head in their hands, and I could hear them softly crying.

My heart ached in concern. I figured they were in the hall so they wouldn't wake up their roommates.

I turned the corner expecting to see someone a few years younger than I was who needed comforting-

Ro?

His large frame was shaking uncontrollably. His quiet sobs surged through his body like small earthquakes, seeming to go down to the very core of him. Reverberating pain going through every individual layer of him before being released through his skin.

It felt like someone had wrapped a strand of barbed wire around my heart and pulled it tightly. A combination of stabbing and edgeless pain formed for him in my chest. I tried to swallow my knot in my throat feebly as I sat down on the floor next to him silently.

He looked up, his eyes expanded with panic before registering that it was me.

His sobs subsided, but he began to tremor harder than ever. He clenched his hands into fists trying to regain control of himself but tears still streamed down is cheeks.

"I'm sorry," I whispered softly as I watched him break down in front of me.

Suddenly he collapsed into my lap, his considerable size almost crushing me.

And I watched him weep.

Geniunely weep.

I hadn't seen someone cry like this since I was young. I would find my dad up late, releasing his sorrows into the night, saving up the pain all day, and finally letting it go once we were safely asleep.

Something in me stopped me from crying with him. Even though I wanted to. Even though I felt like I might be sick watching him break into so many pieces in front of me. Every cell in my body was telling me to cry.

But I couldn't.

I knew he needed to see that I was okay.

That I would be okay.

I ran my hand over his hair as I waited.

If there was one lesson that life had given me in my short 18 years, it was understanding grief.

Understanding pain.

Understanding losing something or someone.

I knew he needed to let it out, to ride through the eruption of his emotions forming mountains over the scars I left behind.

So I waited.

Slowly his muscles released their tension and the shaking subsided.

The gasps of air elongated into normal breaths.

The worst of the pain had passed, and his eyes had nothing left to let out.

He gulped, composing himself, and sat up from my lap slowly. He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat before he spoke.