Phases (editing)

thirty eight

AN- Songs: From the dining table by Harry Styles and Are we still friends by Tyler the Creator

14th June 1996

Waxing Crescent

My eyes fluttered open and the living room slowly comes into view. The morning sun shinned through the white drapes between their movement from the breeze. For a moment, I felt peace in waking up. There's a moment when you first open your eyes after sleeping that the world is beautiful and you forget everything. In those short fleeting seconds, you forget trauma exists and your friend isn't dead. I find sleep most desirable when I get to experience those few seconds; I almost long for them.

"Sorry," Theo says in a quiet yet raspy morning voice, "did I wake you?"

I'd forgotten that we spent the night talking... and crying.

Theo explained that Ginny's relationship with Pansy was found out by her father, Percival Parkinson. In a panicked effort, Pansy and Ginny attempted to run away a couple of weeks ago. The effort wasn't strong enough, and while they ventured to the safehouse system, snatchers found Pansy and captured her. Ginny, being the force she was, tried to take on six snatchers by herself, in an effort to free Pansy from them.

Since she showed no signs of backing down and turning herself over to them, they killed her. In cold blood, they killed the kindest and most open-minded person I've had the pleasure of knowing, and I didn't want even to fathom the hell Pansy was enduring.

I needed the comfort of a friend after the heartbreak and I suppose at some point we'd fallen asleep. Then at some point during the night, his arms snaked their way around me and held me to his chest, for some reason.

"No, no," I answer sitting up, "if I got any more sleep I would probably become comatose."

Theo laughs when I say that, and I forgot the way the room grows brighter when he does. Then as I watch him smile, I return the expression, and we just sit there for a moment looking at each other. It was weirdly comforting, just looking at one another.

Static fills the room causing the both of us to flinch, and Theo snaps his head towards the radio on the mantel. "This is a code Eleven Forty-seven," the voice says through the radio, "I am requesting all heads of the houses to listen to the following report, and plan accordingly."

"Is that Corvus?" I ask.

But Theo appears in a trace that cannot be broken, as he zones into the voice, but it doesn't stop him from nodding. So, the voice is Corvus from a different order safehouse.

"Andromeda," Theo shouts to the second floor of the cottage, "is your radio on? It's an Eleven Forty-seven!"

"Copy!" her voice calls back in the distance between the walls.

"Is an eleven forty-seven bad?" I ask Theo.

His adam's apple bobbed against his dry swallow, "N-no," he says clearing his throat, "it's, erm, bad. Really bad."

I felt my insides hollow, as if all the organs in my body vanished leaving me a vessel for emotion. While sitting there I froze, but Theo, somehow felt my shift in energy, and grabbed my hand. Leaving our tethered hands resting on my thigh. He held onto my hand as if I were to blow away if he let go.

"At just shy of three hundred hours last evening, there was an attack at the rendezvous point for the group moving from the island house four point two eight to Wight one point three two, and the group of individuals entering the house system."