Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter twenty

           Winnie Buldstrode sees herself when she stares at the moon.

She realizes just how odd of a thought that truly is, how could one see themselves as the moon? And perhaps it is a peculiar thought, she thinks, maybe she really has lost her mind.

It would certainly explain why she was sitting at the top of the Astronomy Tower at twelve thirty in the night rather than her in bed. To be fair, she had tried to sleep, and she even thought she would be able to sleep through the night undisturbed. She had returned from the kitchens with Theo, her bones exhausted from throwing every word and every truth in his face she could muster, she had eaten the chocolate cake in silence. Until she remembered that chocolate cake was Cordelia's favourite dessert and she suddenly felt ill as if she could throw up at any minute.

( In fact she did throw up, but only after she had woken up with her sheets stuck to her skin with sweat and images of everyone she trusted dead at her feet with Voldermort laughing cruelly beside her. )

Fate was a fickle bitch she had decided that night, for the same night she awoke with terror clinging to her bones for what felt like the thousandth night in the row, with the same night she had awoken with a message from mother nature stating she was very much not pregnant.

So with her stomach feeling as if it was being crucified a million times a second, and her eyes stinging painfully from the lack of sleep, she found herself standing with her elbows resting against one of the many railings in the Astronomy Tower. She had no real intention of leaving her dorm room once again that night, but by the time she returned from the loo, her feet carried her away from her dorm and out of the Gryffindor common room altogether.

Which brought her exactly to watching the moon.

It was a full moon that night, leaving the moon to bask in all its glory, a perfect circle surrounded by millions of stars, all twinkling down upon the earth. It made her feel rather small, like all her problems were so stupid in the long line of things, that she was just this one person on this big wide earth. But then, it made her feel rather lonely too.

As a child, she would find herself watching the moon for hours, no real rhyme or reason behind it, just simply because she could. She found it comforting in a way that she couldn't ever explain to someone beyond the words of 'it's always here.'

If someone knew her enough they would understand that and leave it at that, but Winnie Buldstrode often found herself wondering if anyone truly knew her. For a time, she thought nobody knew her better than Cordelia Flint, but then her wayward cousin never gave her the time of day after Christmas, so now Winnie believed nobody knew her better than herself.

It was both a lonely and comforting feeling, leaving both warmth and coldness to trickle through her worn down body.

She knew people tried to get to know her, and for the longest time she told herself it was better if they didn't. She was protecting them that way, she was perfectly fine being alone because she had Cordelia and that was all that mattered. Winnie felt she was being a little too stubborn to think that, because in the end, just like everyone else in her life, Cordelia left without a word.

In truth, Winnie thought she was destined to be alone, just like the moon. Destined to roam her life looking after people from afar, looking in on the inside. It's how she felt when around the Weasley's, they rather terrified her if she were to be honest. They were so quick to accept her, that it almost felt like a test in her mind. She didn't think she cut out for a life where everyone laughed without a care in the world, where things were solved with love. Love did a lot of things but it was never the answer to your problems, love isn't enough sometimes, if it was, maybe she would be living a simpler life than what she was. So perhaps, maybe she was just fated to be alone.