The Keepers' Evil

Forty-Seven: Perhaps one day

Song- The night we met: Lord Huron

"Perhaps one day."

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Anne's eyes teared with the sadness that should've been a glue strong enough to repair the cracked split that Madeleine created in the photograph of our parents, of her parents, of Ominis' parents. The photograph held little value and we had enough to remember them by, but anything that captured the smiles of our mother and father drew that too familiar jagged line down her heart.

But Madeleine's eyes remained cold, crystallised with a pain that no longer begged for tears. The relationship between the Gaunts and the Selwyns had been a complex one, but it had existed, I had seen it in her memories. Even if Madeleine and Ominis hadn't known it, tucked it somewhere within the minds of the children who had struggled to survive, their parents' hands had touched once. But the notion that our parents, our innocent parents, had too been a part of this handshake was one of a confusing apprehension.

"That belonged to our mother, you don't know-" The emptiness of the corridor suddenly seemed like a divide, the pieces of ripped paper enunciating that the complete house in which we stood upon would never be whole without the union that it was founded in. I owned the house, it was mine to make a home, but I wouldn't get that chance, not whilst the Gaunts would forever be after Madeleine.

"Don't tell me I don't know what it all means, because I do. The Deathly Hallows was what my father used to solidify the slave trade, it's the key to breaking it all down." Madeleine's defensiveness broke the dam that stopped Anne's tears, but they weren't tears of sadness like I had assumed.

My sister was frustrated, incredibly so.

"Then why are we not trying to work out how to get it? Clearly they wanted us to finish the job!" Our parents had been simple people, people who lived happily on the love of each other and their children, but they had always been too curious for their own good. To believe that they had somehow become entangled in the Selwyn family destruction pained a part of me, but it also was not the hardest to believe.

Anne's voice wavered with an anxious distrust, one that she placed within Madeleine with a blinded frustration and a mind as intelligent as mine. If Madeleine wanted me to leave the Deathly Hallows alone, I would. For her, I would. But I couldn't deny the shadow of curiosity that peaked into intrigue at the thought of what all of our bloodlines had been connected by.

"The Hallows aren't something you get. They're something you take and you pay a price, a big one. My father paid with his sanity, his light, his love for me and my mother, and it ended in her death. Ominis' father did the same! They're put in this world as a temptation because they're worth more than a trillion gold coins." Madeleine spoke with a speed that was simply a rushed anxiety, a desperation to save her family.

As her words joined to accompany her hands that clasped together to plead my sister, the sound of the tiny clap of her palms shattered my mind, scattering every thought into a jumbled mess that, once more, looked like me choosing Madeleine over my sister. For a very long time I had forced Madeleine to care for Anne, to find a cure within the muddle of magic that she possessed, willing her to love her like I did so that she didn't have to die.

For a very long time, I chose Anne over Madeleine. But it didn't feel better to choose either of them. I hadn't realised that it made me selfish to want to choose both.