A/N: I barely proofread the next three chapters cuz I would go insane picking apart my own plot/storyline lol so please excuse any typos. But if you spot any inconsistencies within my story characters-wise, please tell me so I can improve! x

     A scream jolts me awake. 

     At first I think it was me. Then it sounds again, knifing its way into my right ear; a sharp blade of unadulterated fear. I turn up the lamp by my bed the same time as the other girls do. 

     Two beds down from me, next to Hannah, Susan is screaming and thrashing in her bed, fighting with her covers like a deer in a hunter's net. 

     Hannah goes to tear the sheets from her, and Susan screams louder. "Susan! SUSAN!" Hannah struggles to get ahold of her flailing limbs. "Someone get the Calming Draught, for fuck's sake!"

     Leanne scrambles about her drawer, knick-knacks clacking noisily as she searches for the bottle. She finds it, sprints back to Susan's bed, uncorks it as Hannah holds Susan's jaw open. A few seconds pass, and her body stills. 

     Hannah is saying something soothing to Susan when a movement by the doorway catches my eye. Four young Hufflepuff girls are peeking in fearfully. I herd them outside briskly, closing the door on my friends behind me. "What's happening?" asks Gracie, a Second Year, in a small, terrified voice.

     "Nothing," I say as I lead them back to their room. "Susan's just got a nightmare, that's all." 

     "Oh," she says thoughtfully, clambering back into bed. "Is it about the war? Alice gets nightmares about it sometimes, don't you Alice?" 

     The fiery-haired witch in the bed next to her shrugs grumpily at the question and looks away. 

     I sit next to Gracie. "Have you had your Boggart lessons yet?" She nods. "Well," I say, "a nightmare is just like a Boggart. They put on a face to scare you, and that's all they have. A mask. There's nothing underneath it, just a silly old spirit with an identity crisis." 

     The girls giggle, and the air loosens a little. "Do you get nightmares, Ainsley?" asks another girl from across the room. 

     "Yeah, but not of the war," I blurt without thinking.

     "What are they about?"

     In the dark forest at night, calling out help, for someone, anyone. Nobody answers. I am alone. The last person left on earth.   

     Drowning in the river, thick fingers of water crushing my windpipe, my lungs lined with cold and salt. A disembodied voice gurgling all around me: "Why, Ains? I'm not the Death Eater, he is! Why would you do this to me?"

     My father's round beaming cheeks, mother's clever, all-knowing eyes, but when they open their mouths, it is Draco's voice that speaks. "Cedric wanted no part in that competition. You were the one who told him to enter — begged him, didn't you? Are you lonely, Ainsley? Did you kill him because you wanted him to be lonely too?"

     "Spiders." 

     "I have a pet tarantula back home," Alice pipes up, now suddenly interested. "Her name is Amelia, and she doesn't bite. I can put her on my shoulder and she likes to snuggle against my neck." 

     I smile. "Well, I'd love to meet her one day. But now it's time to sleep." They sound off a chorus of goodnights and turn off their lights.

     Hannah is waiting up for me in darkness when I get back to my own bunk. The moonlight from the window above us pools on the top of her head, crowning her in a heavenly halo of opal-gold. "Are they alright?" she whispers. 

     "Yeah, they just got woken up by the noise. They'll be fine." 

     "Are you fine?" 

     "I don't know what you mean." 

     Hannah swivels her head around the room before turning back to me and hissing, "Switzerland?" 

     I stare at her, stunned. "You snooped my things?" 

     "That's not the point," she shot back with a scoff and roll of her eyes. "Are you really going?" 

     "I don't want to talk about it." 

     "You can't go. I won't let you." 

     "I said I don't want to talk about it..." I hesitated. "But yes, I am."

     Her jaw fell so open I could see the small black hole of her mouth. "You can't be serious!" 

     "I can." 

     "But what about Draco?" exclaims Hannah, forgetting to whisper. 

     I shush her harshly and glance around the room to make sure no one has woken up. "It doesn't matter. He's not my boyfriend. And you're not my mother, so stop it. Please." Angry and indignant, I pull the covers over my shoulders and turn to face the other side.

     "You've changed." 

     "People change, Han." 

    "Not you," she says darkly. "Not like this. You would never have turned your back us. And if you want to continue insisting you don't love Draco, so be it, but just know that the only person you're lying to is yourself." 

     She pauses, waiting for my response. My heart beats in my throat, the crackling of the fire like cellophane. I hear her take something from the table. An object, small and hard, hits my shoulder blade before landing soundlessly on the mattress. I do not move, determinedly ignoring my stinging nose. She gives a final huff of frustration, and the wooden frame of her bed creaks as she settles down noisily. 

     I close my eyes and count slowly to one hundred, mouthing the numbers to myself, feeling the tip of my tongue tickle the roof of my mouth with each syllable. When I am certain Hannah had fallen asleep, I reach out and feel for the item she'd thrown at me. 

     My fingers close around a small wooden loop. It is familiar against the pad of my thumb, every tiny groove of the grain stitched into my brain like my own name. I manoeuvre my pinky through the ring. It fits perfectly, as it always has. And as always, it takes me back to a very specific time last year. 

     Three days before the Death Eaters rampaged our school, Dumbledore's Army had celebrated my birthday quietly in the confines of the Room of Requirement, the only place that had felt truly safe at the time. Within those age-stained walls we were untouchable by death and decay, protected from the palpable tension of war we were all trying to pretend did not exist. 

     Susan and Leanne had baked a fruitcake, my favourite. The girls had scraped together what spare change they had to buy me a dress and some makeup, somehow smuggling the items through the secret passages that led in and out of the castle. 

     It was a smart dress, the type I have seen Muggle white-collar workers don on their daily commute to the city centre. It was  the same hue of midnight in summer, and came with a matching cape. "When you become a journalist, you'll have to dress all proper and professional, won't you?" Hannah said. Brandishing the cape at me, she added, "And this is for when you meet the ministers and other important people."

     "I don't think I would ever be invited to those kinds of functions, Han," I had protested. "I wouldn't be able to go."

     "But you must!" she'd cried, aghast. "What if you bump into some minister's son and he turns out to be your future husband?"

     "I have a boyfriend."

     "I said husband, not boyfriend. They're not the same thing," Hannah sniffed haughtily, and I had laughed, and did not have the heart to tell her what I actually meant. 

     Then it was Ernie's turn to present his gift. It was a little ring he had fashioned all by himself —without magic — out of a little block of wood he'd found. For days he'd worked on it, chiseling away with the tiny blade, no bigger than the size of a fish rib, that he carried with him at all times. The band was ridiculously intricate, etched with minuscule flowers and dainty swirls, and was so small I could only wear it on my pinky.

     "A gift, your Majesty," he said with flamboyant bow and a grand flourish of his hand. I slapped him on the shoulder playfully, laughing, "Get up, you twat!" He straightened himself and smothered me in a hug, the kind that envelops you completely, feels like something warm melting in your belly. It made me feel superhuman, like I could bring the entire castle crumbling to my feet with one command.

     I was able to keep the ring on me during the Battle. The dress, however, I couldn't save. It was destroyed along with the castle, buried under the rubble somewhere and never recovered. Sometimes I would lie awake at night and think of it, mourning the heaviness of the thick cotton in my hands, a strip of my very own sky.

     When I think of that dress now, I realise it isn't its loss that I grieve, but what it had stood for. It meant there had been something beyond the visible horizon, bigger dreams and happier times waiting patiently for me, even though I couldn't necessarily see them yet. 

     Since then the world seems to have shrunk in on itself while I stayed the same. The edges of the sea creep closer and closer towards me, swallowing up what little ground I have left to stand on. No way backwards, no way forwards. 

     On nights when it feels as if I would disappear beneath the waves, that hug I received from my brother would pull me back to shore, and I could start all over again.  

     But what if I have already drowned?

༻❁༺

     The sun feels braver the next day, the clouds less sombre. I sit opposite Monty in a window at the cloisters overlooking the courtyard, our legs stretched out and tangled up in the other's. The outdoor area is particularly busy, bustling with students who all had the same idea of taking advantage of the pleasantly abnormal weather.

     A copy of The Bell Jar sits half-open in my lap. The story details the fictional life of Esther Greenwood, a young wanna-be writer's descent into mental illness, which she describes as being suffocated by a bell jar. In the end, she is discharged from the hospital and is free to return to her old life as if nothing ever happened.

     Over the days I've dwelt on this book I have tried my hardest to pick out similarities between me and Esther, searching for pieces of my life between the pages. Aside from her aspirations of becoming a writer, there is little. I am unable to discern who the villains are — the people at the mental institution trying to help her? Her hapless love interest? Esther herself? 

     After all, novels like this are not an accurate reflection of real life. They are a form of escapism, a means for cowards to hide from the responsibilities they hold in the brutal, unforgiving world. The real world. Their stained glass pages are ornate stained glass façades that provide glimpses into an unachievable reality. The fractals of painted sun blind us; we want to touch them, hold them, refuse to let go, until we look down and see that we have cut our hands on the shards.

     Books are daydreams, made for dreamers. 

     I don't think I'm a dreamer.

     Across from me Monty's two arms are propped up behind his head, the position making his muscular forearms look even larger. He doesn't do this on purpose, I know, but I can't help noticing the stray glances from the girls walking by. Their pace slows as they near us, biting their lip and looking down at the ground as they hurry by, whispering behind their palms before bursting into giggles.

     Monty doesn't see any of this; he's gazing off into the distance at nothing in particular, caught in the throws of some reverie. His hair glimmers russet in the shy sun, neatly combed and coiffed in gentle waves. I observe his face: the clean cut of his jaw, the strength in his nose, his Cupid's bow lips — clean-shaven, as he always is. 

     And yet, there is something off about his Adonis perfection that I can't quite put my finger on. It is like one of those puzzles where you're supposed to find a person or  an object within a busy, cluttered image. I cannot see it, but it's right there in front of me, I know it is, because nothing in this world is perfect. It is a curse human beings have to endure — imperfection and the knowledge of it. 

     Monty's head suddenly snaps to me, catching my gaze before I can look away. 

     "How's the book coming along?" he asks in a conversational tone.

     Keeping mine neutral, I say, "Good." I've learnt that sounding too excited or too bored could either trigger Monty's curiosity or entice me to let slip something I shouldn't.

     "Must be interesting," he drawls. "Getting to hear a different narrative of things."

     "Well, I wouldn't say it's a different narrative, just another perspective of the same situation."

     "How far along are you? Got to the good parts yet?"

     "Which do you mean?" Toneless, but in an obligatorily curious fashion.

     His broad shoulders heave in a shrug. "Dark family secrets, things that've never been made public before, stuff like that."

     I consider this. Bas being in St. Mungo's isn't exactly a secret, his name can easily be found in the registries if one went looking. Narcissa contemplating an abortion isn't that big of a deal — many pure-blood wizards in history have done this: the unfortunate outcomes of rampant inbreeding. 

     Which strikes the thought: had the baby been Draco, or a brother we never knew about? I make a mental note to ask her next time. 

     "Well, not exactly," I say, carefully. "Nothing I would consider major revelations."

     "I see. Well, if you're in a rut there's always Draco."

     My heart skips a beat at the name. "What about him?"

     "You can ask him about the war. How he felt and all that." He chuckles and resumes his position. "I wonder if the Dark Mark hurt."

     I note the nonchalant lilt in his voice and frown. Monty is in a strange mood today, and I best tread lightly.

     "I'm sure I'll get to that soon enough. Right now I've got to sort out the timeline, make sure their bits and mine line up."

     The clouds seem to darken with the furrow of his brows. "Your bit?"

     "Yeah, my account of things. You know, how I got the interview, my observations, blah blah. Everything, pretty much."

     His jumping gaze freezes at the word. "Everything?"

     "Everything."

     "I see," is all Monty says. We fall into an unearthly silence. The buzz of the other students sound like a distant swarm of bees, the world moving outside my bell jar, my snow globe. 

     I remind myself that he doesn't know about my deal with Rita. He still think I'm going to self-publish. He cannot do or say anything to stop me. Nothing with a valid excuse, anyway. 

     I should have known Montague never needed such a thing.

     "Well, my dad will be the first to read it, anyway," he adds coolly. 

     My dad. The Head of Magic Public Information Services. 

     "I know," I say, flipping my book open to the page I left off at, bookmarked by the swan quill, trying not to show that I had forgotten about Theron Montague. My eyes float over the rectangles of words that mean nothing, made no impact on my life, solved none of my problems. 

     I run a thumb down the long ivory shaft of the swan feather, fanning the white downy edges against the tip of my pointer. "Monty," I say. "Can I ask you something?"

     "Sure, babe."

     I lift my head to meet his eyes. "Is it true you told Draco he could have a fair shot with me?" 

     He studies me for a long time, his lip twitching almost unnoticeably. I cannot tell if it is from surprise, provocation, or because he wants to smile. "Yes," he says finally. "I did."

     A stray ray of sun hits us, bathing us in a dull yellow glare. I squint at him through the light. "Why? Do you not love me anymore?"

     At this his expression falls and he sits up, leans in earnestly. "Of course not!" 

     "Then why?"

     "Well, I just— It was all for a laugh. I didn't think he would take it seriously! I mean, he knows I hate his guts."

     "So you did it just to torture him, then?" 

     "Like I said, it's just for laughs. I know you would never do it anyway." 

     "What makes you think so?"

     He laughs, asks ironically, "Is this a test?"

     "No," I reply honestly. "I'm genuinely curious."

     He sighs, as if he's about to repeat himself for the hundredth time. "It's because you're smart, Ains. You aim high. You want the world, and you know you deserve a man who can give it to you. Draco can't do that, not with his family's status in the gutter." 

     I frown, choose my words carefully, flattening my tone. "Do you genuinely think status matters to me?" 

     "Oh, I know it does," he nods. "I mean, you come from so little, babe. You have big ambitions for yourself. Expectations, if you will. You want to climb the ranks, rub elbows with important people. Not because you enjoy it, but because you know it's going to get you where you want to go. You may tell yourself otherwise, but deep down, you understand the value of choosing your friends wisely. They have to be people of this time and this age."

     He pulls back, shrugs. "Draco's rich, sure. But the Malfoy dynasty has fallen. They've already been erased from the ranks of high society. And that's what you'll be if you become too involved with them. A nobody." 

     He leans in even closer, like he's divulging a secret. "And if I know anything about you, Ains, it's that you can't stand the idea of being ignored, less than, forgotten. Obscurity scares the shit out of you, more than anything else in the world. And that's what I love about you. When you want something, you're not just gonna' stand there and let it pass you by. You reach out and snatch it as quick as you can. So do I. We make a great team, which is why I've been warning you for ages about the Malfoys. They're interesting subjects to write on, but they're not people you want to associate yourself with." 

     Fantastic monologue, Monty, how long did it take you to come up with it? 

     That is what I should have said. 

     I should have said: "You're wrong. You haven't the first fucking clue what you're talking about. You don't know me at all."

     I should have said a lot of things.

     But I am speechless. He had spoken with such confidence, such calm conviction, like a tradesmen whose lies have been worn smooth with practice and repetition, that for a moment I feel the pull towards its promises to feed me, clean me, fulfil me.    

     "You're right," I say, going back to my book. I feel his eyes boring into me over the top of the pages, waiting for more. When I say nothing else, his lips curl into a smile. 

༻❁༺

     Susan's scream lingers in my mind the entirety of the week, ripping through the grey matter behind my forehead like an arrow head, ringing in my ears as I sit through classes and pen down essays in the library. It bothers me because it hadn't been a scream of fear. It had been a scream of death.

     None of us know what happened to Susan during the war. She had been standing with us, alongside the professors at the Courtyard, watching the trolls beat their way through the stone soldiers and feeling the rumbling ground beneath our feet as Voldemort's army charged at us. But during the retreat back into the