the seven virtues [tom riddle]

chapter eighteen

thank you to arrtdecos for the wonderful dark academia playlist that always inspire me. you should all follow her youtube channel!!
and to my sister for the edits, as always.
i was too tired to spell-check so do not mind my mistakes but let me know if there are any.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was silence that made her hurt the most—when the clogs of her mind distorted, their outcry loud enough to irritate the edges of her psyche, like the buttery texture yielding to the will of a knife. Her thoughts were boisterous, like miniature demons screeching in her ears until her cochlea rattled from the low pitches, and she tasted dust on her tongue, a feeling so utterly detached and devastating.

The library is where it happened most often, when Varya would sit alone at a table, and glance around at the students who went on with their days as normal. As if there were not hundreds of beasts miles down the road, trying to attack the castle. As if Grindelwald was not approaching each day, scheming from his fortress in the mountains. As if they were not at war.

Envy was a vile thing. It was akin to mold that inundated the soul, dark green fungi that spread caustically, multiplying with each contact, each smile passed between shelves, each person that laughed a little too much and a little too loud. Varya knew then that bitterness was viridescent, and she could not help but side-eye the mundanity of it all. It reminded her of everything she had been deprived of.

Two sides opposed each other fiercely, her need to be alone and her fear of being alone, for even around those she considered friends, Varya felt entirely suffocated. It was the castle—being back to where it all began, walking down the hallways to Slughorn's class and having him delighted at her return. It was all too much for her to handle.

The cauldron sizzled in front of her, and she felt the way her eyelids began to drop, having been kept up all night by Ophelia and Elladora's bickering on who ought to take Ivy's old bed. When there were only two of them, it had been easy to ignore the unused part of the room, but with Varya's return to the dorm, they had to settle their boundaries. It had been the Eastern witch, in the end, that had taken her parted friend's bed.