ARSONIST'S LULLABY ━━ r. black¹

𝖎𝖝. the edge of seventeen

彡 chapter nine
( the edge of seventeen )

SHE WAS SUPPOSED to be having the time of her life, yet the youthful freedom of adolescence immortalized in the novels that lined her walls was a far cry from the reality she faced every morning when she opened her eyes to face the dreary Scottish sky that mirrored her own reality.

The faint light of a flickering candle spilled over Morgana like a maelstrom of shimmering molten gold, cheeks rosy and flushed in the glow, her solace the night. The moon spilled silver over the mirror, reflecting moonshine and delicate reflections of her delirious state throughout the small mirrors that were strategically placed so she could see herself from every place she stood. She was drunk, and knew it, the firewhiskey still burning her throat like a forest fire. Morgana Fawley compartmentalized herself into three parts; her academic, social, and vain sides of fit together like a perfect puzzle, and buried the disastrous parts in her room.

She was stitching tattered ruins and false faces together every morning when her legs turned to cement, unwilling and unable to remove her from the cocoon of her blankets. The flesh should have melted off her fragile frame from her inability to muster the courage to face her family at mealtimes, but the house-elf Missy was always kind enough to leave food in her room three times a day. The teapot refilled itself once Morgana consumed the bitter black liquid, rings from her china cups littering the floor and her desk.

Morgana emerged from her room like a crepuscular creature, living in the hours of darkness, the moon her sun and the sun her moon. The neurons in her brain were firing abnormally, she was awake when she was supposed to be asleep and vice versa, a madwoman, a neurotic, a girl who had most definitely been tainted by bloodlines that traversed paths like intersecting streets. She was destined for tragedy, standing alone as the world whirled by around her like a furious windstorm, wallowing in her misery.

Regulus had ended it just like that.

We can't do this, Ana. Can't play these games like children pretending to be in love, fooling our friends and ourselves. You never loved me, and I never loved you. It's over.
Sincerely, Regulus Black

She should have listened to Sirius's warnings instead of paying them no heed. He'd ended it with a simple 'sincerely' and shredded Morgana's heart just like that, every memory of him tainted by his sudden betrayal. Even the light of the moon reminded Morgana Fawley of Regulus Black, but that didn't stop her from basking in its rays as they poured over her, dousing and bathing every inch of her skin in a gleaming silver. The Regulus Black she had known was a daydream encased between the pages of a leather-bound romance novel, a figment of literary genius created by the cruel author who had dictated her life with the strokes of their pen.

The filaments of gold he used to point out in her eyes died with his letter, and so did any love she had left to give. "You look tired," her grandmother pointed out when she was caught and pulled into dinner one day like a fish on a reel, her father sitting there and tightly clenching his fork while his wife and children stared at his daughter, two separate spheres connected by a singular man. Sophie was perhaps a decade older than Morgana, every inch of her delicate and soft like a fragile china doll, rosy cheeks, button nose, round eyes.

"Have you been sleeping, Morgana?" Sophie asked, delicately spooning custard into her mouth with one eye masterfully trained on four year old Hugo and eight year old Josephine, incase their youthful mischief managed to ruin the one time Morgana showed up to dinner.

"As much as I can," she replied. "I'm preparing to take my NEWTS next year, and I need to top the class this year to prepare."

Her heartbreak remained sealed behind her pursed lips and weary eyes as they seemed to all buy that answer. "Are you excited for your second term?" Jasper asked, voice soft and edging on cautionary. He knew how she ticked; she was his own blood and bone, flesh carved from a still-warm corpse as an omen of death was sighted. She was tragedy and melodrama, her mother's child yet still her father's, nearing seventeen and not accustomed to the bitter sadness that swallowed them all whole.