"Trust me, you shouldn't want anyone like me on your back."
"Maybe I don't want anyone like you on my back," His eyes darkened as he stepped closer, confining me tighter into barely any space as my back pressed against the wall.
"Maybe I want you. U...
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LIKE OPHELIA, MADNESS SEEMED TO reach its cold dead fingers to grip my flesh, but it never quite touched. Perhaps it knew I was not ready for it yet, and it was biding its time.
Ilvermorny was shroud in a cloak of darkness when I brought myself and Bridgette back. My magic felt foreign to use now—as though using it to kill a dark wizard, one of the greatest the world had ever seen, had expanded it somehow. The expansion had much to do with the limits of heuristics. I was so aware of them before, now I felt as though no such limits existed. That feeling alone was terrifying, for could I confirm it from?
The solitary full moon that had shone on me in the top most cell of Nurmengard's main tower, shone above me now too—undeterred by everything it had witnessed. If I stared at it hard enough, I could just barely see it shift its stance slightly, as though shaking his head and calling me a murderer.
But why would the moon itself side with Gellert Grindelwald? If it truly did, it would know that the dark wizard demanded his death by my hands. Perhaps it mocked me for giving him the one last request that the man did not deserve on account of his crimes.
Bridgette and I stood in the hospital wing of Ilvermorny, the cluster of candles at the side table had been illuminated by Bridgette as she tucked her rowan wood wand back into her back pocket. The flickering candle lights casted shadows at our feet as we stood facing the bed the formerly missing Beauxbatons student, Maximillian Toussaint, lay on.
He looked alright, though the skin wrapping his form was a sickly gray than the olive color it used to adorn. No visible injuries marred his physique, and his Beauxbatons uniform—the attire he had been wearing at the time of his disappearance was dirtied and splotched with mud. His eyes were closed as he slept soundly, his straight chest rising and falling with equal intervals. The freckles across his face had turned a darker shade of gray as well, abandoning the burnt orange they used to be.
"il a l'air bien, je m'attendais à pire d'une manière ou d'une autre," Bridgette spoke softly, releasing a breath. "What do you think happened to him?"
A scuttle sounded in the silent courtyard the hospital wing opened up to, and I briefly turned to look, hearing nothing more. The moon was still bold outside, reluctant to shy away behind clouds anymore.
"I don't know," I replied.
The hospital wing was empty, with no other forms aside from ours. It was hours past curfew. Empty pristine beds lined the hall, and Maximillian Toussaint had been placed on the middle one—as if the positioning had purposefully meant to make him a specimen of interest. At the foot of his bed lay dried bouquets of flowers and get well cards scribbled hastily from Ilvermorny students to Hogwarts students alike.
