Magic? || Years 5-7

Fine: On the Run

Despite Amisty's many vehement arguments, Hermione still locked her in a spare bedroom to sleep while the three of them talked to Griphook and Ollivander about the rest of their Horcrux Hunt.

"I should be there!" Amisty insisted, wrestling with Hermione over the bedroom door. "I'm coming with you, I should listen to what they have to say!"

Tired and a little exasperated, Hermione shook her head. "You need to rest. Properly."

"I'm fine—"

"Go to sleep, Amisty," Hermione said with a tone that brokered no argument. "We'll fill you in when you're not about to pass out."

Grudgingly, when she slept a solid day away nestled in downy comforters and the waves' steady rhythm out the window, Amisty admitted Hermione may have had a point. Not that she'd ever say it out loud.

Shell Cottage was beautiful. Open. The walls were clean and white with the ocean crashing just a walk away. The cliffs a sheer drop with nothing but water for miles and the gentle whisper of grass at her ankles. Breezes full of salt and fresh air and freedom.

Her scar had yet to do anything more than twinge, a scarlet reminder whenever Amisty caught glimpse of a mirror. She tended to avoid them when she could, now, relying more on Hermione's fussing than her own eyes to tell when something was out of place.

The day after she woke up—properly, bright-eyed and relishing in the lack of a cellar—she hardly got a moment alone. Always, no matter what, there'd be someone by her side, whether it be Harry, Ron, or Hermione. Luna, too, but her floatiness was more or less expected.

"I'm not going to break, you know," Amisty muttered one morning, glaring enviously at Ron's plateful of eggs and sausages. Fleur had been very strict that Amisty ate slowly, rather than jumping back into rich meals all at once. Something about her getting ill.

As if that were the biggest of her worries.

"We know that," Harry said, sliding an extra roll onto her plate when Fleur wasn't looking.

"Are you sure?" she said. "Because you keep looking at me like I am."

"We were freaked out, okay?" he said, mouth thinning into a line as he stared at his plate. "You just kept getting worse every time we saw you, and now—"

"It's worse in person?" she said, ice trickling through her veins. Slow. Heavy and pressing up at her throat like a scream she couldn't voice aloud.

"Amisty," he said, sounding exhausted, "that isn't what I was going to say."

"I'm fine."

"You were dying." Harry's knuckles were white around the handle of his fork. "Dying, Amisty. Maybe you didn't see it, but we could, and that was scary."

"Well," she said, the words more choked than she intended, "I'm not dead, and I'm here right now, aren't I? In one piece?"

Harry said nothing.

Biting back a sigh, Amisty got to her feet. "Thanks," she said, aiming a strained smile in Fleur's general direction. "I'll be upstairs."

Luna found her a few hours later, curled up in the corner of her bedroom, eyes and nose tinged red. Fading scratches littering her neck, desperate attempts to yank off a collar that wouldn't budge.

"I just want it off," Amisty croaked into her hands as Luna rubbed soothing circles between her shoulder blades. "He left this damned scar, why does the collar have to stay, too?"