War, Love, and Riddle //Mattheo Riddle x OC

Chapter Twenty Three - Just tonight. Lie to me beautifully, Emma.

The others eventually retreated toward Shell Cottage, grief and exhaustion finally winning their battle against consciousness. Hermione disappeared first, her face pale and hollow beneath the moonlight. Ron followed soon after, unusually quiet, while Harry lingered at Dobby's grave for as long as he could bear before finally allowing Bill to guide him away. Even then, he looked back several times, as though some part of him couldn't accept that the small mound of earth overlooking the sea now held someone who had once been so full of life.

Emma remained exactly where she was.

The wind coming off the ocean had grown colder as the night deepened, carrying the sharp scent of salt and seaweed across the cliffside. It tugged at her dark hair and stung the tear tracks still drying on her cheeks, yet she barely seemed to notice. Her gaze remained fixed on the simple stone standing at the head of Dobby's grave. The words carved into it appeared almost insignificant beneath the vastness of the sky.

Here Lies Dobby. A Free Elf.

Such a small sentence.

Such an enormous life.

Mattheo sat beside her in silence, one arm wrapped securely around her shoulders while the other rested against her waist. He had not released her since Malfoy Manor. Not once. Every time she shifted, his grip tightened unconsciously, as though some part of him feared she might vanish if he loosened his hold for even a second.

Perhaps he did.

The thought settled heavily inside his chest.

Because tonight had proven how fragile she truly was.

For years Mattheo had convinced himself that Emma was invincible. She was powerful enough to challenge fate itself. Powerful enough to survive things that should have killed her. Powerful enough to carry the weight of a prophecy on her shoulders without breaking beneath it.

Yet Bellatrix had still gotten her hands on Emma.

The realization sat inside Mattheo like broken glass.

He could still see the drawing room every time he closed his eyes. The moonlit beach disappeared. The ocean disappeared. Dobby's grave disappeared. In their place stood the polished marble floors of Malfoy Manor stained with Emma's blood. He saw her exactly as she had been when he burst into the room. Broken. Exhausted. Trembling. There had been blood running down her arms and throat, tears streaking her face, and something about the sight continued to hollow him out from the inside. Bellatrix had not merely hurt her. She had taken something beautiful and dragged it through suffering until Mattheo barely recognized the girl lying on that floor.

The worst part was that he had heard it before he saw it.

Her screams.

Merlin.

Her screams.

They followed him everywhere now.

They existed beneath every thought. Beneath every breath. He heard them in the crash of the waves below the cliffside and in the wind moving through the grass around Dobby's grave. He heard them in the silence between conversations and in the moments just before sleep. Bellatrix had cursed Emma six times. Six separate times she had flooded her body with agony so severe that fully grown witches and wizards often collapsed after a single exposure. The Cruciatus Curse wasn't simply pain. It was torture refined into magic. It attacked the nervous system itself, overwhelming the body until pain became the only thing that existed.

Emma had survived it six times.

The impossibility of that fact frightened him more than the torture itself.