Song- The end of love: Florence + The Machine
"It's ironic, when I left home I vowed to the leave the dark arts behind."
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Discussions of the Deathly Hallows and its potential had captured Anne in ways that her made her curse fall flat. She was a Sallow, and I had learnt far too quickly that the Sallows forever needed goals to accomplish to captivate their minds as a distraction of their hurt. I had smiled a few more times in the past few days as she had paced with the photograph, her mind running around the words as many times as they had been circled on the paper. Sometimes I could still find Anne.
My feet tracked along the long wooden slates of the corridor, the windows sulking with the early nighttime that often felt loneliest. It seemed to highlight the distance between Madeleine and I, perhaps even Madeleine and Sebastian. I wished to connect the stars so that maybe I could form a trail back to her, back home, but for now only my feet made a pathway that led to nowhere except an empty room.
My wand blinked between the shadows and forced a safety in the darkness when the truth of our lives was the unsafe. The corridors of the Sallows' home hadn't always been this cold, I could feel the life that once breathed hope into the same floorboards I once walked upon, but they were empty whilst Sebastian was away.
It was a strange feeling, the unsafe and how our minds determined what was worth being afraid of, and as my feet approached to pass the door to Anne's bedroom, I felt my heart hitch and my brain that told me to be afraid. But even through the insecurity, I still desired to knock, to enter into what terrified me.
"Ominis? Is everything okay?" Anne's voice was soft as I peeled the door open, my wand indicating the calmness of the room around her. Anne had a way of crafting the air into feathers and the howl of the wind into lullabies, and as she rested gently, propped up against the headboard of her bed and the blankets forming a comfortable fort around her body, I felt an instant calm to the sudden nervousness to my system.
"Yes, just fine. I wanted to check that you were okay?" Anne smiled in response to the care as though it added an extra layer of protection to her stillness of peace before shuffling slightly towards the edge of the bed and tapping a small indication of confirmation for me to enter her pocket of harmony.
"Oh, I'm okay, just looking at this photograph. It's funny, isn't it? Just how in love even Madeleine's parents appear." The concept of love was one I had tried not to dwell upon. It was a word of haunting responsibility, one that I could never be certain I had felt. If my heart had loved Anne, and I was sure it had, why had it betrayed her? If my heart had loved Madeleine, why had even that feel so jaded?
"Madeleine's parents did once love each other, I want to believe that, for her sake." Anne appeared somewhat confused by the idea, frowning with a curiosity beneath her expression that followed me from the door to beside her.
Tucking myself beside her in the space that had spent more time comforting her pain than aiding her sleep felt intrusive, but as her cheek nestled into the warmth of my shoulder and her ragged breath seemed to settle, the feeling fell to be replaced with a smooth state of repose.
"How do you even know what you're feeling is love? How do you know it's love if you've never felt it before? Surely you can't just know?" Anne was asking questions that were complex, profound. She was asking questions that not a single one soul had the answer to. For Sebastian, love had been Madeleine and there wasn't another heart that could've pried hers away from his.
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The Keepers' Evil
Fanfiction"That's where Sebastian's guilt met my guilt and, oh, what a dangerous form of amortentia it was." Ranrok was killed, Rookwood was dead, and the repository was opened. Madeleine had done her part, she had done everything asked of her. But whilst Mad...
