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'And the angels descend
Like spears of light,
Like bloodied spears,
Like light with sharp teeth.'
-Keaton St. James
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Mid-December.
Six months left.
Restless sleep kept her awake that night. Her sheets askew on the tiled floor, kicked off from hours ago, left her body victim to the winter night, so when she reached over for the bedside lamp, her hands shook, and it took a moment of fumbling before she could locate its switch. Eyes closed, too heavy to keep open, a bright yellow glow reached the inside of her eyelids, and she squinted, face scrunched up, before sliding her numb feet to the tiles. Icy fingers rubbing her face, Addie sluggishly walked to the bathroom within the hospital wing just a few feet from her bed.
Eyes still shut, yawning, she felt the door in front of her, moving her hand over it until she found the doorknob. Opening with a long, whining creek, her brows knitted together as the sound pierced through her skull, and she shut the door once inside before fumbling for the light switch.
The hospital wing bathroom was arguably the ugliest room in the entirety of Hogwarts—yet was the most modern. Small tiles formed the floor and walls, saturating the room in that prominent, sickly medical blue of latex gloves and surgeon scrubs and hairnets. To make matters worse, the lights were bars clung to the ceiling, emitting a constant buzz, and, even with her eyes closed, this was not enough for Adeline to escape the burning white light they cast, leaving her to stumble towards the sink; palms covering her eyes.
Blindly reaching and turning the knob, Addie cupped her hands beneath the tap and feverishly splashed her face with its ice-cold water, rubbing her eyes as though it would make a difference to their fatigue. Only now, adjusted to the light enough to see, her face, and some of her hair, dripping, and beads of water sprinkled onto her lashes, did she look in the mirror.
She could've looked at the mauve beneath her eyes, or the sickly hollowness to her skin—shadowed in all the wrong places from the artificial light above her, but what caught her eye made her breath hitch and a bubbling twist in her stomach—and suddenly she was dizzy, but trying to look away didn't work.
Black veins crawled down her neck. They were like spider webs, or the ominous branches of dead trees burnt by a wildfire—still reaching, bare and pointy, in the midst of a lonesome field.
She'd been in bed for days, and, though of course she'd seen the ones on her arms, she couldn't remember the last time she looked in the mirror. Leaning closer to the mirror, she eyed the lines closer, and noticed that they didn't stop at the end of her neck—but rather they continued beneath her hospital gown. Feverishly pulling it over her head, she felt nauseous; staring at her body in the mirror.
