"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 FORTY-FIVE
I COULD SMELL DENSE LAVENDER, when I retrieved a few of my senses, my eyes remained enclosed behind my lids. My body felt sore, faintly aching like a radiation being emitted to and fro inside my bones. I didn't suppose I had the strength in me, and a terror seized me when I tried to move a limb, only to find the effort being allotted more than I could bear at present.
My back was flush against a soft surface—a bed. My mind rushed to recap everything that had occurred to me in the darkness behind my eyelids. I didn't want to open my eyes clueless as to what to expect. That felt worse than anything I could name at present.
The Cruciatus curse. I had been put down with it by that witch. An official, perhaps, of the British ministry of magic. She had shown no remorse, so deep was she in her willful slavery to Voldemort. The wizarding authorities were to keep wizards safe, and Umbridge hadn't hesitated to put me out, brutality in her manner that reflected a certain personal tinge to it.
I tensed suddenly as a familiar feeling stirred inside me. My constellations—like electric eels under a clear water surface—sizzled inside. Their impulses were slow, the information they carried for me heavy in their hold as they struggled to spark the forefront of my knowledge, trying hard, being deflected and then trying hard again. Eels trying to swim against a strong water current. My forehead ached then, and an impulse finally sparked in my center.
A muggle mother, a squib brother.
This was the witch—Umbridge's—plunge into her profound hate towards rest and the willfulness to Voldemort. Like him, she also harbored hate for muggleborns and muggle kind. Or perhaps, there was more to it than just that. My constellations had only ever picked up a single defining factor that was at the front, no more and no less.
But I understood her slightly. I knew what family stains were, and how hard it was to live through them, dirtying yourself in the process just by association and proximity. Then you grew out of them, didn't you? You fought hard to find your own way and what you choose to do with that stain. Perhaps this Umbridge had long ceased to fight for her own.
I felt a shuffle in my periphery. A muted soft sound. Feet against carpet. I opened my eyes then, my vision being incarcerated by lush deep greens that were all around me, accentuated by the deep polished mahogany of the roof and furniture.
My eyes went to the threat first, and I saw a woman in the distance with platinum hair—very reminiscent of Draco Malfoy's—tied neatly up in a do. She was clad in a cinched black dress that flowed down her petite form elegantly. Her back was to me and her pale wrists searched for something in a glass cabinet on the elaborate cupboard amongst a cacophony of small glass vials.
The woman had been looking after me, I could deduce. Perhaps assigned by Severus, Umbridge or even Voldemort himself to bring me forth. I wasn't beneficial if I just died, taking my heuristics and the loyalty of The Elder Wand forever from the world.
