Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FAR FROM HOME
✧
AINSLEY MANOR STILL SEEMED AS UNWELCOMING AS WHEN SHE FIRST MOVED IN. It still had this air of you don't belong when she walked down the halls, and when she saw all the house elves working tirelessly without any praise or thanks for their never-ending deeds. Still didn't feel like home even though she had been living there for six months, though she didn't actually stay there for a majority of those months, and her room still felt more like a hotel room than her bedroom.
It didn't feel like home, didn't feel like her own space with her paintings and her furniture, her character covering the walls. It felt like someone else's space which she was just temporarily living in. The walls were white like the rest of the manor, different from the light yellow walls she cherished in her old home, there since she was a child and moved in with Helen.
Greer, comfortable as ever, seemed to be more relaxed than she was at school hidden by all these lying walls, and Helen lit up the dull and chilling house with her smile, but Morgan felt more on edge than ever. This wasn't her home, no matter how Helen said welcome home when they picked up her and Greer from Kings' Cross.
This wasn't home. It would never be home, and she couldn't understand how Helen was tricked into believing that it was.
Her room wasn't her room, her house wasn't her home. She didn't feel secure enough to sneak out for a midnight snack, always felt like an outsider when she walked around during the day, and she couldn't even have her own friends over.
"You know how Alistair is," Helen informed her with a sad look in her eyes, "I've tried talking to him about this but he just won't budge. I'm sorry, dear."
She wanted to scoff, roll her eyes, and spit something nasty at her aunt because how sorry could she be if she didn't allow them over even without Alistair's permission? But she couldn't, and wouldn't, because that was rude and Helen didn't deserve that, no matter how angry it made Morgan that Greer got to invite her friends over whenever she wanted all she had was the company of Carlisle.
He was nice, she supposed, but he wasn't Dominic or Adeline. He didn't understand her the way they did, didn't like the muggle records she had in her room which she played all day to drown out the stall sound of the manor, and he didn't fit with her correctly. He was nice, she supposed, and he would do for now, but she couldn't see them ever talking when she went back to school.
Maybe during summer, when she was sure again that Adeline and Dominic wouldn't be allowed over, but not before then.
"You don't seem particularly happy here," Carlisle noted, a frown curling on his face which matched the one on hers.
