Run Away ✧ Hogwarts Legacy

chapter seventeen

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

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The air rushed out of Antheia's lungs so quickly it felt like a twist of a knife. The water rolled down from her cheeks until it soaked the collar of her shirt and down her torso. She was glad for it since it hid the trials from her burning eyes. Frustration tasted like venom on her tongue, and when she turned toward Ominis to speak, he was gone. And her anger ate her whole.

When her fist smashed against the edge of the bathtub, she hadn't been paying attention to anything around her. Only that the person she wanted to speak to was not present. If she had been paying closer attention to her surroundings, she would have noticed that the glass vials that were used to create the basin before that cut into her flesh.

There was no pain as her hand bloomed red. Within seconds, she had been dragged to her feet and brought to the sink in a panic. All she could hear was the humming boil of her own anger suffocating her ears.

Sylvie left to go find a potion from her bag for the cut, and Bridget Esper turned to cleaning her wound the same way her father had for her as a child. With the tend care of someone so ordinary that they didn't know how easily it was solved with magic.

The warm water of the sink poured down her open cuts, and the porcelain bowl was dyed red underneath. The damned glimmer of Ancient Magic running circles around the drain, as had always been mixed with her blood. Taunting her to remind her that this was all her fault.The Keepers, the amplifiers, and the casualties that it left in their wake. All of the pain and suffering that it caused everyone else was a result of this curse that was born from her veins.

The cut against her hand didn't hurt. The only ache that Antheia felt was the one behind her eyes.

"When did Ominis leave?" Antheia bit out the words quietly. She couldn't even hide the anger in her question. She didn't care to try.

"Right after you two put your heads in the bath," Bridget said quietly, "I was worried you were going to drown, but he said you would be okay."

"How long ago was that?"

The dull ache began to pulse once the water stopped. Bridget grabbed a cloth and began to twist it to cover the side of her hand tightly. It was clearly not her first time creating a tourniquet. She moved so shift and stead, yet those familiar blue eyes avoided hers nervously. "An hour or so ago."

Antheia wanted to scream.

By the time Sylvie returned with the potion, she was more concerned about the fact that Ominis had an hour start to wherever he decided to avoid them that evening than her own self-inflicted wound. Her skin felt sharp, but it quickly faded. She was sure the wound was gone instantly with the potion's effects, but she kept the bandaid wrapped around her hand for Bridget's sake. A few little misplaced spots of red inking through the cloth before the wound had closed.

The blue glimmer of Ancient Magic was screaming at her. Laughing at her ignorance.

"Where did he go?" Sylvie's makeup drew long black lines down her cheeks from the basin still. They both probably looked like they had just been drowned, but there were more important issues at hand than vanity.

Bridget shrugged, "I'm not sure. He didn't say."

"Well, he can't leave London," Antheia mumbled. Then the knife twisted in her heart instead.

This had been all of her fault. Her selfishness had gotten the best of her, and in the year since her graduation, she had never once considered that Ominis had given up his life for the sake of theirs. He should have told her. He should have told Sebastian. But either would have let him do that, and her selfish heart only grew angrier at itself.