Antithesis

Chapter 69: Affix

Idon't I dont what did youdoto me CrOUch.'

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Ginny's gravestone was something small, modest in where it was placed.

They never found her body, so it was a casket filled with things important to her. Childhood dolls, toys, books and a toy wand she always played with when young.

The days were colder, almost all the leaves had fallen from the trees. Her tombstone was barren, the shriveled remains of a few flowers that had been placed there long ago.

"Hey Ginny." Skylar began, voice hoarse and quiet. The wind blew, some of the empty branches from the nearby trees bent ominously.

Hello, Ginny. Lutain echoed, coiled around Skylar's shoulder.

"I'm sorry we couldn't save you," Skylar repeated quietly, reaching out to run his fingers along the rough stone. "Although I don't think I could have. The basilisk is...I'll take her down for you."

Let me? Lutain asked, tongue flickering against Skylar's ear.

Skylar wouldn't pretend to understand what was happening, or how it did. He wouldn't say that it didn't scare him, but he wouldn't say that he didn't deserve it either.

Skylar nodded slightly and closed his eyes, reaching up with one hand to trace along Lutain's scales. Skylar breathed out, and let his mind wander in a way he realized now- was not his own.

"I'm sorry," Skylar spoke out loud, words feeling strange in his mouth, like they were slurred around the edges. "I didn't want to leave you there."

A pause, a sense of fragmentation around thoughts themselves. Memories flickered, a sense of screaming, of desperation and hysteria. Moments of panic, of loss, or sheer hatred directed at self. Looking at the grave of Ginny Weasley, everything else seemed so different.

"I'm sorry I let you starve to death." Skylar whispered wrongly, tingling and tainted, sparking on the edges. "I'm sorry I left you there to die."

The nights they spent screaming over what he had done.

The monster he was to treat her so.

The scrapes on Adalonda's shed skin, the ravenous madness of starvation.

The bright red of her hair, scattered around the scattered bones of her skeleton.

"I'm going to free you, of your curse." Skylar spoke without thought, with a mind foreign to him. "I'm going to end the thestrals."

'What?'

The confusion of the statement snapped Skylar back to clarity. It was a slow process, a moment of thought that took a while to manifest fully. Lutain twitched in response, receding with a similar level of confusion.

"Thestrals?" Skylar spoke out loud, finally in a voice his own, "I- Lutain what does he mean?"

It was without a doubt, Adrian's thoughts. A concept or idea that didn't make sense, which didn't match what they knew. The thoughts they shared together, the haunted memories that Skylar had snippets of in the middle of the night.