𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭, ᵐᵃᵗᵗʰᵉᵒ ʳⁱᵈᵈˡᵉ

chapter 28

tw: emo😼

mattheo thought he had a chance at getting charlotte back. he believed it wholeheartedly, with the same certainty that he believed the sun rose everyday and that he needed air to breathe. he knew he could get her back, thought he was making real progress. all until she said the unthinkable. mattheo thought she still loved him. he thought he could offer her the very acceptable and logical explanation, and they could be happy again. but clearly mattheo was wrong. she wanted him dead. there was no way around the truth, no lie he could tell himself for comfort. charlotte wanted him dead, and that
couldn't happen, so he would give her a close alternative.
he was packed in less than 20 minutes. the familiar swish of apparation made him nauseous, like it always did, but that was about the end of what he was feeling. no sadness, no joy, no fear. nothing. the gates of malfoy manor looked exactly how he had anticipated. cold, spotless, and terrorizing. he stepped through without trouble, which only surprised him a little. he was the dark lords son. he walked up the long entrance to the manor, and when he got inside, he headed toward the dining room.

"hello father," he said. his fathers face was the same as he remembered it. distasteful, scornful, evil. he didn't expect it to be any different, but somehow the sight of it made him shutter.
"mattheo," his father crooned, staring at him with that calculating look mattheo had grown to hate over the years. whatever his father was looking for, he seemed to have found it when he grinned and nodded approvingly.
"have you come to your senses?" he said, in his odd, hissing voice. mattheo forced all thoughts of charlotte out of his mind as he nodded stiffly.
his fathers cold eyes flashed with something like pleasure before he stepped forward and wrapped his cold, boney hand around mattheos left wrist.
"this might hurt just a little," he said, smiling sadistically as mattheo writhed a little in his grasp. and only when the pointy tip of his fathers wand pressed into his forearm did mattheo scream. it echoed through the room, reverberating into his head until all he could think of was the agony he felt, the way charlotte had sent him away, the pointlessness of it all. the burning in his wrist stopped, but he continued to scream. his father looked at him expectantly, and only then did mattheo realize the screaming was only in his head. he had been silent the whole time. a snake and skull writhed in a figure eight motion on his left forearm, marking him as something he had never wanted to be. his soul was ruined now, and he knew for certain that if he couldn't get charlotte back then, he definitely couldn't now. thoughts of her flooded his mind, unrelenting no matter how hard he tried to push them away. her laugh, her smile, the way she looked at him. to whatever end. he loved her to whatever end.

nothing would scare him aware from her the way he had scared her away from him. his love for her was unyielding, and there wasn't a force on earth that could tarnish the love he held for her. mattheo had never met a fight he couldn't win. until her. she had beaten him, good and fair, with no weapons but the sharpness of her words. god, he thought, if only charlotte could see him now. he was part of something bigger now, something large and awful and unchanging, but he had never felt more alone. the cold from the manor was seeping into his bones, chilling him from the inside-out. charlotte had made him the person he was. she had welcomed him into her heart, treated him with a love he had never felt before, and then kicked him out. he wasn't afraid anymore though, he realized abruptly, the chill sitting inside him was something different, something....familiar. he was apathetic. he didn't care about anything that was happening around him. he couldn't be bothered with the weather or whatever the death eaters were talking about. the missions his father spoke of sending him on had no emotional effect on him, and the food he shoveled into his mouth did little to please him. maybe in another lifetime, things could be different, but in this one, he was a death eater and remus would never be brought back to life, no matter how much mattheo wished it. at times, he thought his love for charlotte was the closest he had ever gotten to religion, that if god wanted him to stop loving charlotte, he wouldn't have made mattheo the way he did. nothing short of death would end his love for her, and when death eventually took his hand, he would hold her with his other. he knew this was for the better. he knew it. he knew it, and yet, as the nothingness filled his heart, he thought he felt a tinge of regret. a tinge of longing for a life where things were simple and he could be with charlotte forever. he wondered if she saw him now, would she hate what she'd see? mattheo didn't want her to forget him. didn't want to be so easily erased from her life like his mother was erased from his. he hoped he would linger for her. that he would stick to her like a deep red bruise, like a wine stain on a white shirt. not easily removed. he knew it was selfish, and still he hoped and prayed that she wouldn't forget him. time had brought her to him, and now it had taken her away. the chair against his back was stiff and uncomfortable, but he welcomed the feeling of ire that filled him. better anger than nothing. he didn't know when he would see charlotte again. her name echoed in his thoughts like a heartbeat, never ending and unrelenting . to whatever end, he would love her. from a distance, and in silence, the way it should have been from the start.