Mahogany ; D.M

56 - still life

October

With each day that drifted on past, she felt like an apple within a still life painting. Crafted like one of Cézanne's, when all from afar seemed so perfectly normal and precisely placed, but actually when taking a closer look, the abnormalities become so very apparent to the eye.

Here she was, conventional appearance wise, despite her gaunt cheeks and bruised under eyes that screamed of the lack of sleep she had been suffering from for months.

And internally, she was decaying. Like rotting fruit. An apple, festering from the inside.

But because they couldn't see it, they would never know. Never be able to configure how much goddamn pain she was in.

Athena kept to herself most of the time. Sometimes she worried everyone would assume her to be deliberately antisocial and although this was sort of the case, she just couldn't bring herself to be around people. Surrounding herself with human interaction was exhaustive.

Especially when everyone tried to act like nothing was wrong. As if the entire world wasn't falling apart, meanwhile they were lounging about in the Gryffindor common room, pretending like it was just another year at Hogwarts.

Just another year.

And if she weren't at Hogwarts, she wasn't sure if she knew where else she'd want to be. After all, this had always been the place she'd longed to come back to after every summer.

No...she did. She knew exactly where she'd rather be.

Anywhere that he was.

And that was the sad truth of it. Her heart longed for him, her soul ached to be near to his. But at the end of the day, she was always left with the same bottomless despair. Another day of being without him.

She was so fucking drained. So empty. So sick and tired of feeling like she had nothing, when she once had everything.

It was a tumult of conflict that stirred within her like a hurricane. She just wanted it all to end. Just wanted to be near him again. Merely knowing he was in the same proximity as her would be enough. To know that he had been real—that he was still real.

What a waste of time she felt sitting in a tedious lesson was when thinking about her friends. They were somewhere out there, probably fending for their lives, trying to survive or whatnot—she had no idea. Meanwhile, she was here, sat within a warm classroom shielded by the rain pour outside, taking notes on Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.

Her mind tended to wander in lessons. Her attention span had never been the same since the summer. She could tell her grades were slacking, but couldn't find the means within herself to care.

What did it matter? Optimism had been lost on her a long time ago. She was probably just going to die anyway. She'd already been face to face with death once.

"Miss Greene, is there something more interesting on the other side of that window that prohibits you from returning your focus back to your textbook?" McGonagall's strict tone sounded through the loudness of her thoughts.

She sluggishly looked towards the front of the class, refocusing her eyes upon the words that dotted over the page of the textbook.