The Keepers' Evil

Twenty-Seven: There was nobody else

Song- Leni: Crystal Castles

Trigger warning for mentions of human trafficking and slavery.

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"There was nobody else."

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"Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr Sallow?" Half of the sky was azure, resting gently in a cloudless state of a peaceful slumber. The other half was rumbling with a deeply rooted terror, as though the cobalt half had given it too many clouds to hold and it had become overwhelmed. The cannonade of rain surged like a protest, and we were high enough up in the castle to notice the clear divide.

"Mr Sallow, it's vital that you listen." I didn't deserve to sit on the same side as the diaphanous clouds, because it meant that the rain tumbled onto Madeleine's head instead. I didn't have to know where she was to know that the divide separated us, because it seemed that no matter what, we would always be on opposing sides of every spectrum.

I hadn't ever noticed how uncomfortably inelegantly my robes hung from my limbs, how heavy even paper sat in the pockets as I shuffled in the gold-laced chairs of the Headmaster's office. His office was a frustrating luxury to be locked in, even if it was momentarily, because she didn't have any superfluities out there. She didn't even have safety.

It was unequivocally easy to notice what was around me, the people I needed, my state of being. But it was implausibly difficult to understand that it wouldn't all be there forever. Taken for granted was the correct term for such a thing, the correct term for Madeleine.

"This is a serious matter of a girl's safety. I must implore you to see the severity of the situation!" my eyes snapped to the Headmaster's, the regality of his posture making it far too easy to deduce that Madeleine was the least of his concerns, but the governing body of the school determined that he had to at least pretend to care. Black struck the wooden desk with his fist, a show of power that he felt he had to display to assert himself. I wondered whether a part of Professor Black felt intimidated by Ominis, maybe rather by the name that he held.

"I can assure you, Professor, both Sebastian and I want Madeleine home as much as you do." Ominis tapped the tips of his fingers together, his blunt nails sounding a small tick, for a moment before resting them across the chair's elaborate arms to reach my wrist. The soft beads of his fingers pressed painfully into the bones in my arm, forcing my attention to return to the conversation at hand.

There was a numbing silence that made Ominis uncomfortable. He slunk his hands back into his lap quietly, hanging his head down away from the eyes that seemed to feast on the lack of sound as though it meant that we knew something. Professor Weasley was stuck in the corner of the room to the side of Black, and her eyes hadn't left me since we had been summoned to the space.

"If you know where she is, if you have any inkling of information, now would be the time to let us know." Weasley and Black had asked the same question numerous times in the half-an-hour that Ominis and I had sat before them, they had each taken turns as if to throw us off, each spoken with a different tone each time and words that were designed to vary the question but produce the same answer. The answer we weren't willing to give.

"As I've told you four times, do you think I'd be sat here if I knew where she was?" Ominis' jaw clenched as though a bind had bunched his teeth into a clink. He had warned me profusely of suspicious attitudes minutes before passing the threshold into the interrogation we were promised it wouldn't be. My nails scratched small indents into the wooden arm of the chair, carving a presence I didn't wish to have in the room of a man I didn't wish to know.