Run Away ✧ Hogwarts Legacy

chapter forty-eight

Savior by Rise Against

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Trigger Warning: This chapter includes sensitive conduct - please see the comment for a full description of conduct.

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There were so many nights where the bright red eyes had been the last thing that Antheia Wynters had seen before waking up from her nightmares. The ones that seemed to drip of fresh blood that made her smell iron at the sight of them. The deathly stare of Marceline Elm made her feel as if the witch was looking into her very soul and slowly plotting how to pull the threads apart until nothing of her was left.

Everything about the glare of those red eyes had always haunted her as if she wasn't allowed to breathe with them on her. In her own silent protest, she took a deep breath.

As far as fighting between the two of them, they were dead even. Antheia may have had the upper hand the prior time, but Marceline was more adaptive to fighting than anyone else that she ever faced. Everything was different this time though and they had known it. This had to be the last time that she was forced into a battle of arms against the dark witch. One of them wouldn't be making it to see the end of the day and both knew all too well.

"We have some unfinished business, love." The witch mocked her.

The words nearly broke her heart in half to hear. Sebastian Sallow's warning rang all too well in her head. The witch was cruel with her words, intrusive into their memories, and used all of that knowledge to make Antheia forget about the witch hiding under the true owner's skin.

It was more difficult to fight against her when it was Desmond Esper's voice that she heard, his pet name that called for her affection, and his face looking down at her. Yet she couldn't pull her eyes away from the reflection of the looking glass.

Antheia hadn't fully come to the realization that Marceline hadn't only escaped the vivarium by using his body, she had gone through his head as much as she had to Sebastian. She didn't know what memories had been shared with him or from him, either way, she was afraid of what that meant for her.

It made her heart sink to think about what was happening to Desmond.

"Why don't we take a walk?" Marceline suggested. Her hand slowly moved away from Antheia's mouth, but she knew that she wasn't free.

Antheia held on to her white birch wand tightly in fear of needing it, but even now that she had the freedom to speak, she couldn't bring herself to cast a single spell. She couldn't be reckless with so much on the line.

The witch had her wand pointed against her lower back as a reminder that this walk was not by choice. No, not her wand, Antheia realized, it was Desmond's wand. She couldn't remember a single time Desmond had ever had his wand pointed at her before, they never dueled against one another, it was an odd feeling.

"Where are we going?" Antheia asked quietly. All she had to do was buy time until Sebastian arrived with the relic, and then she would have the upper hand on the witch. But if he was too late- she refused to accept it would come to that.

Marceline's voice seemed to echo in a devilish layer over Desmond's when she spoke. It made her skin crawl. "Let's go visit that Repository of yours."

Antheia looked down toward the floor because it hurt to say even if she wasn't looking directly at them when she spoke, "I don't know what you are talking about."