The Keepers' Evil

Sixty-One: Never. I can never accept it

Song- NFWMB: Hozier

Trigger warning for sexual content.

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"Never. I can never accept it."

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That day.

My sister was dying, but not just the dying that she had been for months. She was the kind of dying that resulted in near death, the kind that opened a wound in the heart that I shared with her, the kind that would leave me with a missing half and blood that would then feel selfish to hold all to myself.

Ominis' demands and crazed attitude could only have come from desperation, could only have matched the blood on his chin that evidently had come from my sister. I couldn't lie and say that it hadn't caused the walls of my chest to cave in because it had and it had hurt so badly that my breath had become sharper, but there was responsibility over Madeleine, over keeping her safe, even from the hands that also somewhat held her.

Ominis wouldn't get to her, I had worked too hard to leave behind the person in me that he had reminded me of, I had worked too hard to become who she needed me to be to put her back in that place of who we were again.

But Anne was my sister, I was her twin.

The thought of my sister dying in my family home was more than enough to pull me from the chair, enough to walk me slowly through the castle to find Madeleine. I wouldn't outright ask her to take the curse, she didn't know how, but I would ask her to try. If Anne was to die, then I supposed that the worst outcome of her magic was never going to be as awful as dying, so it was not out of reason for Ominis and I to just ask her to consider it.

I took advantage of the post-dinner bustle, trying to find where Madeleine slunk in the crowd amidst the red twisted gold tied Gryffindors as I waited only inches from the Great Hall's wide open doors. The cold stone against my spine was chilling, perhaps more so as I waited and waited and still failed to lay my eyes on her.

"She is in her dorm room," A small, yet firm, voice chirped from slightly behind me. "She never came to eat, much like yourself it seems." Natty smiled as she cocked her head towards one of the adjacent corridors that led towards the Gryffindor tower, still smiling as I followed her invitation to walk with her presumably to find my Maddie.

"Is she okay?" Natty nodded instantly to my heightened tone, seeming to focus on the signs of my face that may have matched the tiredness in Madeleine. Natsai was always attentive to the people that she knew, always keen to notice what didn't make them the people that she knew.

"I only saw her briefly, but from what I can see she is. Are you okay?" The question forced me to gulp loudly in a way that told Natty that I wasn't okay, but only a few words followed despite the gnawing, aching, hurt that had now spread from my heart to the burning logical parts of my brain.

"Just fine, thank you, Natty."

Natty didn't press, she didn't ask further despite her stinging eye contact that didn't fade as we walked through the now heavy halls of Hogwarts. Once we had hit the corridor that was clearly marked with the signature frame of Gryffindor's Fat Lady, the air began to feel lighter with just the knowledge that Madeleine was nearby. She was the lighter air in the stormy smell of rain.