ARSONIST'S LULLABY ━━ r. black¹

𝖝𝖎. to touch the sun

彡 chapter eleven
( to touch the sun )

A SNOWSTORM DESCENDED over Hogwarts on a Valentine's Day, the sky gray against the brilliant power-white piling onto the stone courtyard and tower turrets. "Morgana?" Salem hissed, attempting to pull open the curtains to the blonde's bed but finding them stuck in place. "Mora, classes start in thirty minutes and you didn't come down for breakfast."

"Can you please tell our professors that I'm not feeling well?" Morgana lied, unable to rouse herself from her bed. Her voice shook, cheeks damp with tears that she wasn't about to let Salem see. There was something about being vulnerable that irked Morgana. "I'm just going to sleep a little longer and I'll go see Madam Pomfrey after."

"Okay," Salem called out. "Feel better," she added, her footsteps receding away from the dormitory, the door banging shut as she went, the sound ripping through the air like a bullet. Morgana turned onto her side and sighed, comfortable underneath her soft nest of blankets and sheets. The beds at Hogwarts were incredibly comfortable, charmed to fit themselves in accordance with their owner's liking. For Morgana it meant a bed so soft it was like a marshmallow that swallowed her fragile body every night.

She gently rolled a golden locket between her fingers, the clasp sliding open to reveal a photograph of her mother. "I miss you, mum," she whispered, gently stroking the photograph with her index finger. "It's been fourteen years," she mumbled, her lip trembling. "Grandmother sent me the list of everything I need for my debut this summer and all I can think about is how you should've been the one helping me with all of this."

Gentle souls such as Pandora's seemed destined to meet torturous ends, the hollows of their bodies sanctuaries for pain and suffering. The doctors had ripped Morgana from what they believed to be a corpse only for the woman to live for four more days, slowly bleeding out and meeting an unfortunate end.

If Morgana shut her eyes and allowed herself to be swallowed by endless waves of forbidden memories she would longe for what could have been forever. Plucking herself from bed as light as a feather, she tugged a knit sweater over her head to avoid the chill seeping past the glass panes of the window. Snow used to be her favorite thing as a child because her nanny used to allow her to build snowmen during the day, building roaring fires for her at night that kept the snow monsters away with flickering embers.

Now it just coated everything in a bright white under the gloomy clouds that had rolled in over the past week days, ominous and threatening in the sky. She moved as slowly as the storm that morning, which had stalled over the region for three days. Every movement was deliberate and required maximum effort, from running a comb through her hair to actually cleaning herself in the shower instead of just standing under the stream of hot water.

When the fog on the bathroom mirror was wiped clean she stared at how hollow her cheeks and eyes looked. Morgana never looked unkempt or dirty at school, the byproduct of a strict upbringing filled with etiquette classes and lessons on posture. She grew up learning French, and classical languages, the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, ballet, violin, piano. Ballet had stuck with her for a while, dancing until her toes were bloody and bruised and her grandmother made her quit because it had all been for perfect posture. But now? Now she looked like she hadn't taken care of herself for a month because that was the truth.

The words, "Your mother would be disappointed," cracked over Morgana like a whip every time she irritated her grandmother, and they stung, digging deep wounds inside of her and clawing a desperate home just underneath her skin. She always held every critique close to her, closer to her than her friends, letting the snarky remarks eat her alive.