I knew the moment I first kissed him, that he would condemn me, that I would drag myself through broken glass for him. I just was not sure if he would stay long enough to pull the jagged pieces out.
I never imagined that instead, he would push the...
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I descended the stairs leading up to the boys' dormitory in haste, my breathing erratic and uneven from what I assumed was both anxiety and anger. My hands curled into fists to halt their ceaseless trembling from the events that had just occurred.
When I came to stand in the common room, that is when I allowed myself to slump against the nearest wall and allow myself to relieve the tension from my body. I shut my eyes tight. What had I been thinking?
"You lied to me." A hoarse, feminine voice broke the deafening silence in the Slytherin common room. My eyes snapped open at the new intruding presence and for the second time that day, my heart dropped to my stomach. Walburga stood just a few feet away from me, her entire being dishevelled. The usually errant curls of her hair were tangled and twisted as if she had been running her hands through them continuously, pulling at them until her scalp protested in pain. But it was not only her appearance—no. I could see from her body language, and her expression just how unwell she was. She was not standing with a perfectly straight spine and her head tilted up in pride and she most definitely was not wearing her smug, complacent mask on her face. She looked as if she had been kicked in the heart, doubled over in pain, and her face displayed the rawest pain I had ever seen on her.
"What?" Was the only coherent response I could come up with. I averted my gaze at the pure spite that was reflected in her eyes. And it was at me.
"You lied to me." She repeated, this time louder. "You said there was nothing going on between you and him."
I looked back at her in puzzlement. I thought she had figured out that it was me who had slipped the note in her bag and devised the whole plan with Riddle. But it seemed that was not the case.
"I do not know—"
"Don't lie! You are coming down from his room are you not?" She fired at me before I could finish my sentence. Her onyx eyes moved over my face in scrutiny as she continued. "Your hair is messy. Your lips are swollen. You were with him."
"It is not what it looks like, I swear it to you. We were fighting, like we always do." I attempted to reassure her, but even I could hear the waver of uncertainty in my voice as if I was trying to convince myself rather than her.
"Then why as soon as he saw me in that inn he could only utter your name before he took off with no explanation? I thought he wanted to see me, Arwen. But it appears it was not me he expected to meet there."
"What are you talking about? What inn, Wal?"
She held up the palm of her hand as if to silence me. "Do not! Do not call me that. Don't you dare play dumb with me either"
