Aftermath ✧ Sebastian Sallow

chapter sixty-two

Drown by Bring Me The Horizon

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Amelia's Perceptive

It was my last night at Hogwarts as a student. Time had never been on my side when I began my studies at the school, but time was often more cruel to me than others. It always moved too fast and disappeared before it should have. In the morning, I would leave the grounds just as I had entered the school, alone.

But that night, I had been full of rage.

Time was cruel, but the keepers were crueler. My body still ached and twisted since taking in the magic of the Repository. 

Besides the physical pain, it felt like a scar had been left on my heart that would never heal. The most powerful magic in the world and it even that couldn't save Anne Sallow.

The whole point of having magic was to protect the people that I loved. If even that couldn't save her, then what was the point is having magic at all? 

The Map Chambers and the framed portraits were empty as they had been for years. They seemed to die alongside Professor Fig as if they couldn't be bothered to answer for his death. Yelling at empty frames hadn't made me feel any better than I had hoped for.

All I ever wanted was knowledge, to not have this magic be such a mystery. They had done the same to Isidora when she had been alive. When she made her own discoveries she was treated as evil. They kept the secret a burden on those who bore the magic and gave no explanation for their actions. If the bloody keepers only shared the knowledge, no one would have to live in fear. 

Now that the Ministry knew the secret it was going to be me who had to correct the failures of another generation.

In the morning I'd have to go to the Ministry and report as an Auror. Clean up after the witches and wizards that they had failed.

That night the hallways were still crowded long after curfew as everyone was busy saying their goodbyes. But I didn't care for any more goodbyes. All the people that I cared about the most were already gone.

At least that was how I felt when I entered the Undercroft.

I had already collected my belongings beforehand, but I went back when I realized that there had been no one else in the school to collect the rest. All of them had left me without much of a warning, so many of their belongings still sat abandoned inside the secret room. 

Anne's sketchbooks and quills were left behind still on her chair. There was no one that would be able to take them besides myself.

The sketchbook had still been untouched when I found it, quill shoved quickly into the page that she had last been working on. One of the last times that all of us had been together had been in that room, Anne had been drawing as we all talked although she claimed she wasn't finished working on the piece yet. No matter how much I begged her she always refused to let me view the drawings until it was up to her standards. It felt like she might have scolded me for viewing the page early. But she was gone.

Rough playful lines were carefully placed across the page. It had been a drawing of the four of us all together, but she was right, it wasn't finished. She had never finished drawing herself. The only sign that it had been her was the rough shape without a face.

It instantly brought tears to my eyes. Basically, everything made me cry at this point, but the drawing had hurt like a dagger to the gut.

"Always crying, this one!" A female voice called from inside the Undercroft.