☆彡･:*:･ ────── 𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀 | In which a dyslexic, skittish Hufflepuff named Gian Adams finds order in Remus Lupin, a boy who unwittingly invited chaos.
[𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐲 @Hellmiina]
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The milky spumes that frothed at the pebbled shore reminded Gian of the way foam congealed at the plastic tip of a soap dispenser. He found his mind hooked on the nexus of strange thoughts as he stared at it, his legs dangling from a bench with his arms perched on his trousers. He'd been sitting there for some time, having witnessed the sun dissolve into the clouds which flooded with black ink, and twinkled with stars that shed ribbons of light across the surface of the lake. The soothing sound of the occasional ripple in the water put him at ease as he leaned back with a smile on his face, his heart hammering like a worn out drum.
He was so caught up in the atmosphere of Hogwarts at night that he almost didn't hear the leaves crunching nearby accompanied by a figure emerging from the shadows.
"Gian," said a female voice, and his head rose. The sight of Illaria standing there in her robes, the Ravenclaw emblem pinned to her chest with her curly brown hair tucked up in a ponytail, put him into a still trance. She came closer, fiddling with the metal belt on her bag strap. "I thought we were going to meet in the courtyard. I couldn't find you."
He dug his hand against the fissured grooves of the log and scooted over to give her room. "I left dinner early, decided to come down here. Guess time got away from me." He saw her sit down from his peripheral vision and deposit her satchel onto the rocky shore.
There was a loud silence, in which the wind struck whistle notes through the air and the water wrinkled under its strong impulsion. Gian scratched at his hair, threading his fingers through a few of the strands then let his hand fall back to the cleaved wood.
"Is Sanaa treating you okay?" her voice splintered through the dark trench of quiet, both of them expelling soft exhales of air at the same time.
"Yeah," Gian answered, unfalteringly. "Why wouldn't she be?"
"I don't know." Illaria gave a noncommittal shrug, glimpsing over at him through a dark fringe of lashes, her identical green eyes piercing, nearly cleaving him in half. She ran her thumb along one of the tiny wooden canals on the log. "She's a bit intense, if you haven't noticed. And no offense, but you're just...you're not..." She hesitated to choose her words.
"Not intense," he supplied, his voice stilted as he gazed out at the landscape.
"You say that like it's a bad thing. It's not, you know," Illaria told him, though there were long spaces between her words, like she was picking them cautiously. "Sometimes I wish I felt things like you do." Her foot punched at the shore and some of the pebbles sprayed outwards.
He scoffed at that, but just shook his head, words failing him when he tried to produce a retort. No one could ever want to feel things like he did. He wished he didn't feel things like he did. The heartbreaking intensity of his ever fluctuating emotions was described by his grandmother Hazel as Calore Infinito, which meant infinite warmth in Italian. The epithet didn't make sense to Gian, who at times felt like he was being speared by an icy dagger, the cold isolation of despair sometimes freezing him to the very bone marrow. There was an infinite cold patch that his father had left behind, that refused to warm no matter how much heat was applied. And the way he felt things...it was tenfold what was normal, his nerves peeled apart much easier than others. He felt pain and joy more intensely than he thought possible, and while his father had encouraged him to endure and feel no matter what anyone said, often times the pain subdued the joy, which just came in fleeting surges between the tides of anguish.
