𝕬 𝕷𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝕳𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝕽𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖘 | 𝑇𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 |

Chapter 10- It's My Life

"Dear Tom,

I've had enough. Please rescue me from this hell—"

Stupid! You can't tell him that...

Frankie was currently sitting at the desk in her room. Not a room on loan from the orphanage, or one that she shared with four other girls at school. A room that was solely her own. One she could decorate with little trinkets and fill with her own personality. It'd been her room for three months and had already developed as if she'd been living there three years. She kept plants and flowers on her window sill. Some magical, some not. Her curtains were embroidered with beetle wing flowers that she'd figured she might as well put to some use now that she wasn't making potions anymore. She didn't know how to sew a lick before isolation. Tom had learned through osmosis, watching Mrs. Cole and the other workers mending clothes before they met. He couldn't stand being yelled at for Billy ripping his already tattered clothes, so he deemed it a useful skill and sought out the knowledge to do the repairs himself. He was always the one to fix the holes for her, since it was yet another thing Frankie's mother never got the chance to teach her. She was now just as impeccably skilled and lonely, so she sewed herself a friend. It was a Niffler whom she named Barnaby. She was currently in negotiations for a real one, but the Minister's flat was baroque and furnished with grandeur, as it should be for an important politician. It was definitely not made to house children and destructive magical creatures with an affinity for shiny objects. Frankie mostly kept to her little room not because she was forced to, but because she felt unwelcomed in every other room of the house.

Tom had been right to assume her first priority would be a bookshelf. Her shelves were already brimming and had books stacked on the top and on the floor nearby. Shockingly, she found little comfort in magical novels and most of the titles on her shelves were comprised of the muggle classics. Her sister had tried to entice her into more magical literature by gifting her a copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard, that apparently their parents used to read to her before bedtime. Frankie found the gesture endearing, but couldn't be bothered with the book itself. The stories were kind of bland for her liking. Sometimes Diana would read them to her though and she'd at least feign interest. They would often spend some time by the fireplace in her room after dinner, either reading from books or recalling school stories. Usually that was the only time they got to regularly spend together. It was also the only hour that the fire in her room was lit. Even though the room got very drafty at times, Frankie made it a point to never light the fireplace. Her fear usually didn't affect her day-to-day when she was back at the castle. She was fine with the common room fireplaces and lighting lanterns. However, it had become somewhat worse as of late. Sometimes she saw Jacob's hand beckoning her closer as he had in the kitchen fire and, more often than sometimes, she saw Tom waving her goodbye. It was a cruel trick of light because neither could be there.

Under better circumstances, she might've found having a space all her own of great comfort. However, she was once again being detained and that changed everything. For the better part of her life already she'd been imprisoned by her parents and the orphanage did very little to ease that sense of inescapable hell. Even living in the countryside with a dark wizard, she'd somehow managed to feel more at home then this place. She'd tried to think why that was, but had yet to come up with a reason. There weren't too many personal artifacts from her life before. That might've been a factor. However, considering she hadn't owned much to start with she couldn't really blame that on her new environment. Her trunk had been sent over eventually, which she only cared about because it held one particularly important thing inside it. Not her useless wand, or her mother's old dress she'd arrived at the orphanage in. A moving photograph of her and Tom. The man who took souvenir photos in Diagon Alley gave them each a print of the photo they'd taken together last year. Frankie usually protected her copy in different books, however, now it lived in a frame on her desk. She was gradually starting to forget his features and when she had nothing better to do, she would stare at it for a good hour and dream she was back at school with him.