Chapter 76: Denial

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There was something in Nagini that felt wrong and broken. Something twisted and mutilated and tugged on her innards like a bird tugging on her tail. She didn’t know what it was, she didn’t question it, but she knew it was wrong.

She knew it when she woke, and her master was screaming in fury, burning in her head and making her body prickle in pain. She knew that it was something horrible when he screamed for his underlings, filing the estate with bodies that reeked of sweat. She knew there was something terribly wrong when humans flocked and swarmed in numbers she never imagined.

Nagini had a sense of hope still, that perhaps it was not to such extremes yet. Perhaps it was not the single idea which filled her with dread so thick she hesitated to move.

“Nagini,” her master hissed at her, furious and shrieking in his human skin and bloodied eyes. “Go kill that boy’s mongrel bird!”

Nagini tried to ignore that anything was wrong when she struck, pulling the white feathered creature into her coils. She tried to ignore that it was anything to do with the child she sometimes considered hers.

The bird stilled, the one her master’s hatchling fed treats and cared for gently. Nagini tried to ignore the way her stomach turned, when she murdered what Cerestes left behind when he fled.

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Nagini knew in the world of the predators and prey, that the child she was so fond of would never be a predator to her.

She never thought that she would have to look at him, and label him as prey.

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What Cerestes’ beauty had created was demolished by his actions; Nagini understood the former that Cerestes was a predator, and from the latter Nagini accepted that he was now prey.

Hadn’t her master always told Nagini, that she were not a mindless animal no longer?

Was sentience a curse, or a promise of morality itself?

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Her master told her the day he saved her, the day he brought her warmth and brought her meaning, “You become responsible forever for what creature you have tamed.”

She would not forget the day she had her life given to her.

Cerestes was a creature wild and heartless according to her master- he had betrayed them all like something feral.

She had tamed him, and she had tamed Lutain.

“You become responsible forever for what creature you have tamed.”

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Skylar Potter held his breath, closed his eyes, and prayed.

Dumbledore had contacted the Order, gathered their forces. The students had rallied together, evacuating those too young to fight.

The armour clanged and walked, the bridges broke underfoot and crumbled into the ravine below. Skylar tried to ignore the way Adrian stood alone on the broken bridge, looking like Icarus ready to flap his wings and soar.

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