Heartache Papers── theodore nott ²

── the before

JULY 3RD, 1997

                   𝕿he world was not the same.

                   - CAN YOU FORGET HIS SCREAMS? —

      It had been nearly two months since the murder of Albus Dumbledore, and ultimately the murder of three others that were overlooked by the entirety of the wizarding world.

      Winnie Buldstrode found it hard not to blame them, and more so, herself.

         You see, it is easy to pretend that the people weren't dying when you were protected by the walls of a castle you knew so well. Those walls had protected you since the mere, naive age of eleven years old. You had lost your girlhood there, had your first blushing encounter of a foolish, childhood crush. You spent evenings curled by the fire with your friends, your fingers pricked and smoothed against every crinkled surface of a delicate spine of a book. You were at home.

            You were also blind.

                — DO YOU FEEL GUILTY? —

         Winnie Buldstrode has faced true death. She had seen it caked in grim. Teeth as sharp as razors, sharpened to allude a sense of monstrosity. Winnie remembers how it felt to have those teeth tear into her flesh, to rip her skin from her bones. It was an agonizing type of pain that burned her, the kind that had made her woozy and sweaty with bile.

         She remembers thinking that Fenir Greyback attacking her was what hell feels like.

              Hell is a different feeling altogether.

      It's the feeling of total loneliness, total helpless that you lock down to a complete paralysis of the body. You feel as if you can not do nothing but stare at a reality that surely can not exist. Is this real? You ask yourself. Are you dreaming? You beg. Beg. Beg.

             — HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF? —

         She lives like this.

        She doesn't.

       Because what Winnie Buldstrode had substituted herself to can not be living, not really. She has turned into a weak shell of skin and bones, eyes has blank as burned embers. One would think she is a plastic doll if it were not for the simple way she strolls the halls at night like a ghost. She walks, and walks, and walks until she finally allows herself to fall into a state of peace.

      It can not be peaceful, not truly, for she always awakes in a fit. Gasping for air as if her lungs has constricted in on her, killing her slowly as she sleeps. Tears leak on her face like a faucet, whispers of the dead leave her lips.

        Winnie Buldstrode is haunted.

        She is not upset about losing a Headmaster, he was nutty, and she believed him to be harsh towards the boy who lived. Naming Harry Potter the boy who lived was the first mistake her deceased Headmaster. There is no love lost between her soul and the one that has passed through the veil.

      It is not the ghost of Draco Malfoy who haunts her, because he is neither a ghost nor he is dead. He is a body that lives and breathes as much as her heart will allow, they are tethered together in this reality and the next. Though if they speak words to each other it is short, always tight as if they can nit bear to be under the same roof.