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s i x t h y e a r
ADELINE is not in her bed.
This is the only thing she knows for sure as she opens her eyes.
Bitter cold prickles her skin as white light covers her vision. She can't see anything around her as her entire body shakes. It's as if she has walked into winter, her entire being turning into biting winds and piercing storms.
As Adeline blinks away the expansive ivory she notes the grey sky above her. Slowly, she turns her head and hears a delicate crushing in her ears.
Her nose itches when something lands on it and when Adeline turns back to the sky, she notices the small snowflakes falling all around her.
Snow.
Adeline sits up slowly, taking in her surroundings. She's in the middle of a snowy field, spatterings of trees to her left and right. In the distance, so far away it's faint, looks to be a wooden house.
Adeline looks down at herself. She isn't dressed in her green sleepwear, which she was sure she had put on before bed. Instead, she is adorned in a white summer dress, blending in nicely to the snow beneath her near bare body.
Under the layers of acceptance, understanding and interested confusion, fear beats quietly in Adeline's chest.
She had taken her vial, hadn't she? She was sure of it.
But perhaps.
Perhaps maybe not. Because, well, Draco had looked so much worse at dinner, hadn't he?
His eyes were a dull grey, not the wicked silver she likes to think she knows so well. His hair flat and his skin tight against his cheekbones, delicate wrists barely supporting his hands as they hold his chin.
And, oh, didn't he look so terribly sad?
He hadn't touched his food, hadn't listened to a word anyone said, hadn't even been there at all really.
Hadn't looked at Adeline again, not once since that day in class.
It'd have to be weeks ago now yet she was still reeling over it.
Draco had gone back to pretending she didn't exist, and the rest of the school began to grow bored of her presence. They still avoided her in the hallways, whispered her name even when she wasn't around, and kept a cautious eye whenever she was, but it hadn't been so prevelant as it was when they all first arrived.
Everyone seems to be slightly more accustomed to their hatred toward her. Everyone except Pansy Parkinson, of course. She was still as relentlessly awful as ever.
Had that been it? Had that been what distracted her before she fell asleep?
Adeline had been so preoccupied, concern itching at her mind like a virus, her blood pulsing too fast as Pansy's words richotted through her head.
