Fighting Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Survive

Word Count: 3,119. 

Warnings: None. 

"Credence!" I screamed, bolting upwards in a fit of screams.

Hands reaching out around me, I grasped at what seemed to be bedsheets. My head moved from left to right, trying to figure out where I was.

"Calm down sweetheart," my mother's voice told me, reaching for my tensed hand.

I jolted, turning to my right to find my mother sat in a chair beside me, her face wrinkled with worry.

"Mother?" I asked, resting back against my pillows and bringing a hand to my forehead. I was dripping in sweat.

She turned away for a moment, taking up what looked to be a wet cloth and resting it on my forehead. I sighed when the coldness of the material touched my burning skin.

"Oh sweetheart, I was so worried," she told me, scooting closer to the bed so that she could look down at me fondly.

"What happened?" I asked her, my memories feeling confused in my own mind.

"There was an attack. At the Ministry," she started, and I could see her eyes begin to brim with tears. "Your father dear, he... he didn't make it."

I turned away from her, feeling my own eyes fill with tears. He was gone. My father was gone. Ripped from this world before I could ever get to know him.

"You killed him," the flame spoke to me. I shut my eyes, searching for the cage to trap her in but falling short when I realised that there was no cage anymore and I couldn't shut her out.

"Survive," a different voice told me, weaker than the other but still strong enough for me to hear. It was Credence.

Survive. That was what I had to do. I had to survive, and we had to win this war. Destroy the Dark so that my father's death was not in vain. Survive.

I turned back to my mother, wiping tears from my cheeks. "And Moony?" I asked.

She shook her head. "They said he ran off after your father –" she cut herself off, almost not able to finish the sentence. "It's been a week and he has yet to come home."

I nodded slowly. "The others?" I asked. "Are they alright?"

"Everyone else was unharmed. Your friend, Miss Lupa, she is still here. Only moment ago, she was sat at your bedside. I convinced her to go take a rest."

I nodded again. "Well then, everyone is alright?"

She smiled curtly. "Yes, they are."

Adjusting myself in the bed, I winced suddenly, pain surging through my abdomen. I brought my hand to my stomach, only now feeling the bandages that had been wrapped there.

"Oh sweetheart, do not exhort yourself too much, you are still healing," my mother told me, jumping from her chair and rushing around to the other side of my bed to adjust the bandages around my waist.

"What happened?" I asked, searching my brain for the memory, but found that it would not come to me. "I remember passing out but other than that." I didn't mention Credence.

"Dumbledore was fighting You-Know-Who," she began to explain. "And in his attempts to stop his advances it seems that you got caught in the crossfire. A generously large piece of glass wedged itself into you. Severus was here during the past few days, helping you heal, but for some reason, it seems as thought your body is taking longer to fix itself."

I had some idea of what that could be. Obscurial's cannot live long. Aberforth's words came to mind. I was barely sixteen and yet my body had already started to give up on me. I was dying.