Midmorning

xv. one day

Graduation never seemed to cross anybody's mind until the day before. By then it was all seventh-years talked about, laughing through remember when or crying over the forthcoming loss of a friend, though they could always travel to meet each other again. Wren could've been in the same position—she just had to do so much more than travel to meet me.

She would be fine, though. I kept thinking that. She kept changing her aspirations, but I was convinced she could have them all at once and be fine. More than fine. Happy. I was irrevocably jealous.

It was odd to see the first-years scatter the halls knowing they had so much time left, enough to memorise the path to every room, the place where that person said they liked their skirt, where that boy kissed them one time before lesson, where they nearly died, where they nearly lived.

Etcetera.

I hadn't touched breakfast today. Or the day before. I couldn't actually recall any time I did eat it after Wren said she hurt herself really badly because there was too much to think about and too little to taste. They say you can ground yourself by savouring every single flavour in your mouth, the spice or the sugar or the salt dissolving, but there was nothing about it to savour—it was only dragging me away from the soil rather than rooting me there, reminding me that everything was the same, over and over—like his mouth, get out—until it stopped and started again.

Wren was talking to me. Supposedly, so was Avery—he was apologising, under Tom's instruction no doubt, imperio for all I cared—and I could hear it, see it, but it felt unreal, like I had been ejected from my own body and forced to be my own mirror, spectating the way I'd stirred untouched coffee out of heat and nodded at everything said to me.

'You know I mean it, don't you?'

Nod.

'Well . . . I suppose I'll see you.'

Nod.

He was gone.

If he was there at all.

I drummed my fingers along the side of the goblet now, staring but staring too hard and I'd left my body again. I'd ripped myself from it so many times now that my soul chipped remnants off with it, organ and bone and blood, hollowing me out until I was just flaking, ballooning skin.

'What do you think they'll do when they leave?' Wren had said when he left, only skidding over the graduation chatter. I shrugged.

'Follow Tom around like lost puppies?'

She laughed and I wished I could.

'That's likely,' said Wren, eyeing the rings and the glittered eyes. 'They're so rich they probably don't know what to do with themselves. I mean, what do you do when you have everything, anyway?'

Every time I looked I knew that circle was cruel, resembling their own invisible ring, gold on gold on gold with the diamond anchored to one edge. You could decide who the diamond was—Malfoy was insufferably rich, and would be until his bloodline ran cold; Lestrange knew enough about everyone to draw the school into silence; Hornby leant on Avery and was too late to lean on herself—

The list goes on.

The thing that diminished their power was that Tom had them all across his board, his little chess pieces, his golden band. It was even scarier to think he could leave like a father and be forgiven just the same.