"You can't judge a book by its cover, Rhea"
"Yeah well, I can judge a person by their thoughts"
For Rhea Devereux, being in other people's mind was as easy as taking candy from a baby. Being born with the gift of Legilimency, it was something she wa...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
That weekend Rhea didn't leave her friends' dorm, and they didn't leave her alone either.
Somehow, thanks to Lily's ability with levitation spells, Josh was able to stay in the room with his four friends as well.
Rhea didn't talk much, maybe because her throat hurt too much or because she knew that if she did, she would cry again.
Many images passed through her head, all of her and Antonin.
From Slughorn's dinner to walks down the long crowded hallways. She believed they were friends, and for a long time he was the only friend she had.
Maybe she didn't notice, or she didn't want to notice the mark he had on his arm. Or the looks thrown by him at any boy who looked at Rhea, or the way he treated her when she greeted someone of the opposite sex.
She must have realized it before, she told herself.
If she hadn't been so dependent on him, in the way that his mere presence - most of the time annoying - made her forget. He made her forget about her father and all the problems that he brought. It was horrible to admit it, and every time she thought about it, Rhea couldn't help but loathe herself.
She thought it was her fault how it all ended . Her friends constantly repeated that it was not, and she just nodded.
But she still thought it was.
She should have known. But she didn't, and that made her feel even worse.
✧☽✧
Rhea decided, as she always did, to bury all her feelings of sadness, fear and anger deep inside her.
It wasn't healthy, Merlin, she was well aware. But it had worked for many years now. Hiding her emotions was so easy that sometimes she forgot about them.
But this time it wasn't like that at all.
It was only Tuesday and Rhea was sitting in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom crying. She saw Dolohov in the hallways and couldn't contain her fear and her tears.
Taking a breath, she stood up and went to the sink, washing her face with ice cold water. Carefully, she pulled out the scarf she was wearing and saw the big bruise. Fighting back her tears, she took out a pot of ointment that Josie had gotten and applied it there. It didn't erase the bruise, apparently nothing did. The same thing happened with her wrists. And Rhea didn't want to go to the hospital wing and have Madam Pomfrey see her.
The bruises didn't hurt, at least not that much, but they were still there, like a horrible memory that hunted Rhea.
✧☽✧
Rhea opened her eyes. She was lying on the grass, which felt damp from the night drizzles. She didn't move for a while, staring at the gray sky in front of her.
There were no clouds, and there was no sun either. The air was icy, but she wasn't cold.
Rhea kept looking up at the sky until she felt something move, like an animal running beside her. She stood up hastily, the long white dress she had was too big for her, as if it weren't hers.
Carefully, she began to follow the noise across the field, the gras beginning to grow and grow until it was level with her eyes. But she kept walking, her bare feet felt the wet grass.
She eventually came across a big house. A mansion with black stone walls. It stood there, arrogantly, although the moss on its walls gave the impression of being abandoned.
It was the Avery Manor. Rhea stopped dead in her tracks when she realized that.
It wasn't the amazing, imposing mansion her father gloated about or where she and Theo spent their childhood in, or the place where her mother died.
No, despite being the same big old house, it wasn't the same. It was as if its ragged walls and broken windows represented something else.
It was as if the overgrown grass and moss on its great walls represented something else.
The place was something uncared-for, falling apart and that, eventually, would end up as simple bricks on the ground.
But it wasn't the fault of the house, but of many things around it.
Eventually it would fall apart because of the humidity, or perhaps because of the long and strong winds and, above all, because it was desolate.
The house was alone, it had been for years.
"It will fall if it is not taken care of" said the cold voice of Rhea's father, who walked with his usual pompous gait, his brown eyes looking at his daughter, "but no one will repair it, right? Nobody will repair it because nobody cares"
"Nobody cares because of what happened there, because of all the things that happened there" she said, her voice trembling as she took steps back.
"Nobody cares and that's it" said her father, approaching Rhea, "it's an old, broken house, why should they care?"
Rhea said nothing, but for the first time she felt the chill of the air circulating like ghosts around her.
"It's just an abandoned house, Rhea, abandoned just like you"
Rhea shook her head quickly. She tripped on a rock, fell and opened her eyes.
She looked both ways, panting. Marlene's snoring filled the Gryffindor dorm and Lily slept peacefully in her bed across from Rhea.
It was only a dream, Rhea told herself, running her hands over her face, just a dream.
But the abandoned house didn't leave Rhea's mind or her thoughts.
a/n: THAAANK U SO MUCH FOR 5K!!! That's really amazing, and it means a lot too :)
