Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter fifty seven

                 The beginning of the end is near.

Winnie Buldstrode can feel the air tighten, shimmer with antispacated breathes. It's almost as if the earth she steps on can feel the awakening of something disastrous.

The blonde remembers how quickly it is to ease into fear in those peculiar moments. It is so easy to hug fear, as it curls it's suffocating arms and tugs her down. Squeezes her until her bones are fragile and her heart quickens with blood pounding in her ears. It is far easier to confide in fear, like an old foe you pass along the street. It feels comforting despite the bitter lump in her throat and the tears that sting her hazel eyes.

Fear follows her like a shadow, awaiting it's time to strike.

Winnie can feel it now, as the world spins around her. The early spring sun is sinking beneath the sprouting trees. It is warm on her neck, but chilled to the long sleeves of her black shirt. She had left her hair pulled back against the base of her skull, a blue ribbon that is both hurtful and comforting to touch, ties it together. The scars on her face is bare, disagreeable to most and a painful reminder to her. She had avoided mirrors like the dragon pox that day, yet, she didn't need to take a glimpse upon her face to know she is pale like snow, sickly as her eyes stare wordlessly at a frequently worried Hermione and Ron.

Winnie stands alone, detached from. The duo who are whispering their own words towards each other. They are not intentionally leaving her out, in fact, if she lifted her foot from the yellowed grass she is stepping upon, she will be engulfed into their light, into their warmth.

Their reasoning for being so distraught leaves her alone, leaves her trapped with fear and a sickening urge to yurl into the ground below her.

The fact is simple.

Draco Malfoy lays in the hospital wing with scars so deep against the pale of his chest. He could've died, he should be dead. While Winnie is not responsible for Harry's actions, nor is she responsible for the impulsive way her friend acts, she can not help but feel she could've prevented this.

It had been five days since she spoke to Cordelia. Five days where she had let herself seep so far into fears chokehold she had spent many days hidden beneath the fourposter of her bed. School books surrounding her, ink dried on her skin and a heavy weight sinking her further down.

Winnie Buldstrode could say she is quite well at coping, at pretending. She could push her face into a smile that her cheeks would burn from the intensity of it. She could pretend that the following stares that followed her when people glance upon her cheeks didn't effect her. She could even pretend that feeling incredibly at a lost didn't make her eyed hollow like empty flower vases.

Winnie could handle the lost of Theo Nott. She could handle watching him from a distance, seeing him love someone else, she could handle it because deep down she knew he would be the only person she could ever love. Deep down she knew that the chance of surviving this war grew lower and lower each day, she was not blind to the slow disapparences of muggle's and muggle born families. It had been only two days prior, when Maragret Warner – a muggleborn girl in her year – had her entire family murdered. Her screams had still pierced the very walls of Winnie's mind, it was deafening, a gut wrenching punch that made goosebumps trickle along Winnie's skin.

So Winnie accepted the likely hood of everyone surviving this to be low, so low that she had started to memorize people's faces. The way their nose would twitch when they laughed, the odd quirks to their face, features that set them apart from everyone else. It was rather morbid, but she had allowed herself to sink so deep into despair that it grew into acceptance.