Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Being seventeen was the worst thing Willow felt could've happened to her. She felt the world's weight on her fragile shoulders and wondered if this would be it.
She felt overwhelmed every moment of every day and wondered how people achieved life past this age, she hated being seventeen.
Every day she became more aware of her emotions and how they affected the people around her, and she wasn't happy with how it felt.
She found herself becoming tired of being exhausted mentally and physically, she hated how she couldn't control herself, she hated it all. After all, she's only freshly seventeen.
Lonely nights were full of dreams of wishing she were different and longing for a mind that didn't self-sabotage every aspect of her life. She wanted the ravishing and comfortable relationships she was promised, but it felt as if it would never happen.
Dressing up for the Yule Ball and doing her makeup to mask the pain she felt was deemed pointless in her head. Miles would be alright, or at least she figured ruining one more person's night was the new normal for her now.
Even lying in her own self-pity caused her to ache for she knew she could do better than this, but she allowed the feeling to remain. She couldn't mess up anything else if she stayed in her bed all day.
This remained true until the night of the Yule Ball, as she thought of taking the train and heading home. Even though she didn't want to go home, she'd take those cold lonely walls over the ones surrounding her now.
Thinking of if her father was home and answering his dreadful questions would hurt less than to be here. Willow always dreaded going home, for Hogwarts was so full of life for her, but that life was drained.
She could ride the train forever and never get off, she could go live with her estranged cousins, or she could hide in the kitchen with the house elves until they threw her out into the streets.
Anything felt more promising than staying at Hogwarts and pretending as if being this age wasn't the hardest thing she'd ever done.
Her peace was broken when a hand hit her dark door, snapping her out of the trance. She didn't even notice everyone had left.
She didn't pay attention as her dorm mates got ready for the ball, the event didn't even register in her head as they giggled in different corners of the room.
The door revealed a sweaty Miles Bletchley, aggressively adjusting his tie as she opened the passage.
"What are you doing? You're not ready?" He roughly asked, partly from the frustration his tie was giving him.
