Etched, Engraved, Everlasting (a Hogwarts Mystery Year 6 Retell)

-prologue-

"Clara! There you are! Where were you taken? What happened?"

"I've been sworn to secrecy. But everything's about to change--again."

--

I couldn't remember the last time I felt so hollow.

Though the summer sun shone radiantly through the two months I stayed at home, I felt no warmth coming from it. I couldn't feel anything but numbness spreading through my limbs like ice, a thin layer racing across my nervous system until they reached my brain. Flashes of previous events kept running through my mind and memory, and every time I closed my eyes, the colours grew more vivid, the emotions running higher until I was thrashing around so much in even my most stressful moments.

It took everything in me not to break my promise to my brother. I couldn't tell my parents about our reunion in the last Cursed Vault, when we saw each other again past the fragile surface of the canvas he was trapped in and embraced for the first time in years. I still heard his voice, his laugh, and his final promise to me. I still felt the ray of light shine through the dark that was Rakepick's sudden betrayal. The trigger that was her name took him away from me again, and even now as I worry for his fate, I had to keep my mouth shut.

But he never said I couldn't tell my little sister.

Little Em, that's what I sometimes call her. She's the youngest child of all three of us, with her long black hair and amber eyes like mine shining in concern and care. She was so young when Jacob left. The only way she could ever know anything about him was through stories, some too painful to tell, some bringing back bittersweet moments where we shared forced laughs and smiles.

So I told her. Under the shade of the big oak tree in our yard, I told her about our brother, the brother I felt close to, and the brother she never really knew. I told her about his journey, my journey, and how we finally reunited. Her eyes went wide when she heard of it.

"I do hope we can see him again, Clara," she said in a soft voice.

And I agreed. I truly hoped we could. But this problem seemed to be more complex than we thought of it to be.

Rakepick could still be out there, possibly torturing my brother this very moment. She could possibly find the last Cursed Vault with the forces of 'R' behind her. She took so much away from me, threw the wrench not just in my quiet life at Hogwarts, but also the relationships I had with the people I called my friends. Not many people were as shaken about it, but several seemed to have hardened their shells. More had their personalities completely out of whack, and it was scaring me, shaking me to the point where I could lose my anchor. And if anything happened to me, or my friends, it was all because of her--the woman who had unintentionally changed my life to be what it had been when I was a first year student, and once again before the summer.

She's all I have left. She's the one thing that's still holding me together.

And I vow to not let anything happen to my dear little Em.