Run Away ✧ Hogwarts Legacy

chapter twenty

Back to December by Taylor Swift

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It was warm after the rain. Well, it had always been a humid summer day, but Desmond was finally able to appreciate again the heat against his sun-kissed cheeks without the icy magic nibbling at his skin. It had been over a year, and in that short time, he had learned to forget that feeling. Completely oblivious to the embrace of sunlight. It was marvelous. The way it soaked through your flesh and made your skin bring a bloody blush to the surface. Never remembered how enchanting the smell of a hot day could be.

He sat on the rooftop for some time after Antheia had left, to give her time to get back to the church and assess the mayhem their fire had caused. But also for himself. It had been a long time since he had felt so himself again, and he needed to collect the pieces of himself left.

Desmond didn't think that he would cry that day. Certainly hoped that no one would have to see him crying. Even if they had been born of joy, he was embarrassed that the last time Antheia would see him was crying. And he had been crying the time before that, too. The day he made a promise to himself, it wouldn't be the last time. There had to be at least one more time they saw each other where he wasn't crying. It could be years before then, maybe as long as decades, hoping that they all grow old and gray. Long lives and heavy hearts.

When they parted, they both assumed it was the end. Maybe not a permanent end, but a conclusion of this part of their lives. Desmond wasn't sure when he would feel safe enough to come back to London again. Or if Antheia would even be in the city if they did return.

But he was getting ahead of himself again, jumping to conclusions on plans and ideas that he had not even begun to act on. Already thinking about them returning to the city one day, when he was still timidly avoiding leaving alone.

So Desmond sat at the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling half-hazardously off the ledge, as he watched wedding guests filter in and out of the building. They looked like ants from that far away. It wasn't entirely clear who anyone was, either. He had expected to be able to tell Antheia apart from everyone else; her magic had glowed like a beacon before, but now he was as blind to it as he had been at the start.

Anxiously, he reached into his pocket for a smoke, only to discover that he ran out. Then he realized how uncomfortably warm the old, thick jacket was in the heat of July and shrugged it off. Then the sweater, which had been dampened from the rain and dirty with dry mud from being pushed off the back porch step. The cold caused him to wear so many layers that he was thankful that at least he would be comfortable in the last layer of his undershirt with the summer sun beating down on his back.

The wool socks, he wished he had a better solution for, but he'd just have to sweat through those a bit longer.

It was clear that the magic always caused him to feel so cold, but now with this change, he couldn't believe just how frozen he had spent the past year. Even the idea of inhaling warm smoke suddenly seemed too likely to burn him alive. It was probably for the better than there were none.

A person left the church just about every minute. After counting five minutes without anyone else leaving, he decided that it was probably safe enough.

His hands were shaking, but at least he had managed to stop the tears from persistently edging a river into the side of his face, at least for the time being.

Desmond took a sharp breath and pushed himself off the edge of the rooftop. It was a short fall from the six-story building, but his wings had taken shape before his feet ever had the opportunity to touch the ground below. The warm air beating against oily feathers was another sign that this was the freedom that he had been searching for. There was nothing dragging his soul back to the earth, and he was completely weightless.