antebellum [t. riddle]

lxii

february 1945

the human mind could be a horrible, wretched place.

it was undeniably sadistic, able to create the worst visions and things only within the limits of an imagination. distorted yet vivid visions and dreams immerse the person into nightmarish situations only just outlandish enough to be distinguishable from reality. 

sicaria imagination had plenty of real world experience to draw from.

all one had to do was think, 'what is the most vile, disgusting thing you can think of?' and the mind wasted no time creating infinite possibilities with limitless situations.

sicaria had imagined the few people in her life dying in hundreds of different ways. in dreams past, she would see visions of herself murdering people from her past, replaced with the faces of those she'd killed before. she had seen herself killing the matsumoto's, madam teresia, and the knights most recently.

and tom specifically. his death tended to be the most violent.

the morning of their trip to the ministry, she had awoken from vivid, gory dreams of his torture and subsequent death by a faceless grindelwald, to find herself lying in his bed and him just across the room, reading over her notes. at her abrupt awakening and sudden movement, he glanced over toward her, narrowing his eyes at her expression of relief.

"are you—"

she cut him off. rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "what time is it?"

no matter how many times he'd asked, she did not divulge what she had dreamt to him. they both needed to be as clear-headed as possible today.

"nearly 5. rest more."

she did not.

tom did not have time to observe her as he usually did; he was too focused on ensuring that everything was going to go according to their plan. he was restless the previous night, unable to sleep more than an hour at a time, and when the smallest sliver of sunlight breached his room, he was out of bed and preparing for the day.

he thought perhaps sicaria needed to rest far more than he did.

just as the rest of the student body was preparing for the day, tom and sicaria were already both wide awake, standing in their defense against the dark arts' professors' classroom. a bright green fire roared behind them with a small bag of floo powder sitting on the floor just beside it.

"your behavior over the course of the next few hours is not only a reflection on yourselves, but also on the school, and most importantly, me." merrythought laughed briefly at her joke, looking between her two students with a wide smile. their professor was beaming, practically exuding excitement for the pair, who were unashamedly holding hands in front of her. "unfortunately, the headmaster cannot be here to send you off, and apparently neither can professor dumbledore, but i'm certain they will both be here to greet you when you return. i'm sure there will be no hiccups, especially since the two of you are such brilliant students, but should anything go wrong, i will be on call for you the entire day. if things become too stressful at any point, you are permitted to return at any time you wish."

sicaria had no idea about dippet, but she was relatively certain that dumbledore's absence was neither accident nor coincidence.

tom and sicaria both stood at attention, listening to merrythought's instruction for today. sicaria laughed on cue, but tom did not. she would have chastised him for acting so unnatural, before remembering that tom rarely showed any indication of his thoughts or feelings when not speaking directly to her.