Monsters are usually faceless |t.r.|

Ch. 4 - They know, they keep their mouth shut

People know.

People know and they keep their mouths shut.

They know what Tom Riddle does with the girls. They know about the broken hearts and the broken promises, they know about the tears running from the corner of their eyes. They know what kind of love he offers, they know how much violence he squeezes into it.

Sometimes violence is a bruise, sometimes it's a tight feeling in your chest every time you breathe for the next eighty years. Sometimes violence is tear stained cheeks and a voice you hear every time you look in the mirror. Sometimes violence is a boy. Sometimes, a boy is violence.

When they see them together, they know. They've witnessed this happen before. They know the end of the story.

Except they don't.

Because in all the stories, the girls are always alive in the end. They're hearts are broken, their souls are bruised. But what remains of their hearts still beats. Their lungs still fill with air even if they wish they didn't.

Juniper won't be offered that luxury.

When Tom Riddle is done with her, she'll have no heart in her chest. No part of her soul will be untouched.

Sometimes violence is a boy who doesn't love you and sometimes violence is a boy who does.

***

They know.

They know and they like watching.

This has turned into a kind of game for them, watching them moving around each other like dancing the steps of a complicated choreography no one else knows but them.

This is the kind of game closed communities like to play, see who can get their heart broken and survive. Gossip about the naive girl, the handsome boy. Watch the flames of their burnt potential, see the smoke dissolving just in time for the next victim.

Sometimes violence is other people. Sometimes violence is other people witnessing a car crush and doing nothing.

It is fitting, in a way. How her community is just another thing that has let her down. She never really felt like she belonged anywhere, but especially in Hogwarts, she never stopped feeling like a foreign. A traveler who makes a stop at a place, gets some rest, but they're not in their final destination yet. Seven years there and she's still not in her final destination.

She never felt like she belonged in her family either. Being born a witch in a family of Muggles, is like being the first rose in a field of daisies. People will approach it out of curiosity, will even try to touch it, but the thorns are too intimidating, too unfamiliar, too dangerous. No one likes the feeling of getting spiked and daisies are beautiful anyway. Let's ignore the rose. Let's love it from a distance.

Her father loves her the way a father does. Silently, so silently she actually questions it. She knows affection can be many things, it can be hidden into anything. Sometimes it's the cut up fruit when she visits home. Sometimes it's the warm sweater and socks and books she receives for Christmas. Sometimes it's a hug at the station before she boards the scarlet train.

But how nice would it be, to hear it. To play with the words in the hand, to have the voice committed to memory. I love you. I'm proud of you. You never scared me. Your magic doesn't make you harder to love. Our hearts beat the same regardless.

But fathers love like it's a shame. Like it's something they should do in secret, a blasphemy they should be ashamed of.

Funnily enough, she inherited all of her shame from her mother.

What a thing to be, a mother. How your entire body prepares itself to take care of a creature for nine months, just for it to be taken by you and never return home again. Does this make your body a grave? An empty house? Is every definition of motherhood, just another synonym for emptiness?

And if your body is in fact a grave, where do you put the grief? What do you do with the overwhelming feeling of having your child and yet, not having it?

Juniper's mother put her grief into her daughter.

She carries it everywhere, the original sin of having left the mother and the body that was her first home, the fucking apple she took a bite of just by being born. It had grown so big now she uses her entire body to host it. It used to be only in her heart. Now she's more her mother's grief than a girl.

The shame is stronger though, more bitter. Unbearable by definition, because the shame can only be lifted by the ribcage and the ribcage is already half broken, from all the times the heart tried to slip out. The shame is the inheritance she got for being born with the same body, the same bones, the same grief.

It's a heavy inheritance but she can bare it. Because it's hers. Because grief can be a weapon, but shame can be a shield. If womanhood is a war, she's going in prepared.

They don't know about any of that. What happens back home, inside her head is only hers. They never know how heavy that shame feels, her smile looks light enough. She keeps moving so they never see how grief has chained her feet on the ground. She offers them what they want, the sight of the potential heartbreak, so they never see the crooked ribcage, the bruised heart underneath.

Tom Riddle will never be able to love her like her mother. Tom Riddle will never be able to hurt her like her mother.

Her mother loves her and says so all the time. Sometimes violence is your mother saying she loves you and gifting you her grief.