Song- Supercut: Lorde
"Some consider them a bad omen."
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"What's going on with you at the moment?" It was those words that a troubled mind did not want to hear, not whilst the guilt of feeling too deeply when the earth was finally moving slowly had settled deep within my gut. It was a type of plague, I thought, to feel too consumed within myself now that Madeleine had finally smiled more than she cried. I had waited for this time for far too long, but it seemed that the peaceful waves had washed ashore the bodies of the past that hadn't truly gone, but simply been too caught up in the ocean that crashed in the storm.
"Nothing, love." I smiled, but I did not. I spoke the word nothing, but nothing sounded like everything in my head. I clenched her fingers in mine beneath the table, but it was not enough. Since when was she not enough? It was a cruel twist of the knife in my heart, the one that had been cut into the places in my chest when I had let that spell leave my wand, and the pressure ached until it hurt too much to believe that it was all okay.
Madeleine watched me with kind eyes, ones that did not frown nor squint at what she did not believe, but simply smiled with her fading attempts at believing me. We had shared this conversation in a jumble of different letters and words across the previous weeks of lighter days and sunnier evenings, and she had always simply believed me with a small smile to accept what she did not wholly understand, but I knew that she had still seen how the lingering cold shivered the mask of my own false smile away to leave the silent, invisible, gasp for air that I took every time that she looked away.
It was in classes like Binns' that I had been warranted the time to think dangerously, when the class was sleepily quiet and work was not required. With the knowledge that school was to end in a matter of short months, not much had been left to learn, and my mind did not appreciate the peace I had thought it would.
When the nightmares had returned for the first time in weeks despite the hands of friends that held our smiles to our cheeks and the games of Quidditch that occupied the lonely evenings, despite Madeleine, I knew that something felt wrong but I ignored it like it was in my nature to do so, because my mind was twisted, and Madeleine would not become victim to it once more.
When the nightmares hadn't left but Madeleine's sleep had finally become peaceful enough to fight hers away, I realised that she was not enough to silence the image of Solomon in my mind, not anymore. The night that I had woken her with stains of cold sweat lapped over my shirt and fingers pressed against her wrist, with my subconscious trying to escape the sound of Solomon's bones against the Catacomb floor and my heart left with Anne, I remembered that the peace that we had found recently was a front, a trick, a pretty mask, that hid the truth that told me that I would never deserve to hide my cracked mind behind Madeleine's beauty. It was not fair, and she did not deserve to hush my pain when she had only just found a life good enough to want to live it.
"I feel like I haven't seen you much recently." There was a genuine sadness, a guilt, an open vulnerability, in her voice. It was only true, distance had separated us and time had not been kind either, but I had somewhat found strength within this. If Madeleine was not close, I could not ruin her. Madeleine now sat in a scary place, a place worse than when she had hit the bottom. She was happy, perhaps the happiest she could be, and I had thought I was too, until I realised that she had so much that could now be taken from her, and I was not a good enough person to help her keep it.
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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...
