Duplicitous | T.N.

XLIS • Parrallel || lellarraP • XLIS

She lay sleeping, her mind and soul entirely disconnected from the physical figure as it rested.  Her senses remained unused. She could not see, smell or hear. Her mind blank and empty.

It was as though her would had been ripped from within her, her brain turned off like a lamp before bed. There was no function. Despite the rising of her chest as she took her shallow breaths, they'd assumed she was dead.

As she and her being slept soundly, those around her panicked. Many grasped her hand and begged to a higher being to free her from her sleep, but to no appeal. The girl simply did not wake. Her pulse, dull and faint, throbbed against the roof of her veins and surface of her soft flesh. Fighting to work whilst her brain took its rest.

Her friends spent most of their days by her side. Caressing her limp hand, offering the limb bittersweet pecks and strong holds. As the sun came and went so did they. Retreating to back to their dorms as the moon approached the very same place the sun had sat the day prior.

Through her window, any visitors she had, and there were many, were given the perfect view of the setting sun. Once it fell beneath the sky line and beyond the horizon, visitors were sent away.

Theodore deemed them cowards, succumbing to bed whilst their beloved lay unmoving. Occasionally he'd make an appearance, but only after the moon had scared away the falling sun, deemed the blue sky too bright and replaced it with its navy blanket decorated with specs of flashing lights.

He hated seeing her. Not only was every visit slowly evolving into a tiring obstacle course, 'avoid the countless presents, bouquets, chocolates and letters or don't and ruin an injured persons gifts', but it was painful too. To see her like that. So he never ventured to see her more than three times.

On the occasion that he did visit her, nausea gripped at his stomach and spun it around a thousand times, churning his gut in the familiar way that had him wishing to vomit his each of his organs up. He could only look at her and dread, look at her and remember the fright.

Days before when they had arrived, students sat in the dining hall chewing at their breakfast. Questions to do with her absence occurred once or twice but no anxiety had clawed at him, not as how it did afterward. He ate happily, fulfilling the desire his stomach ached for.

The teachers chatted and the students gossiped. It was hardly any different from every other morning, excluding the disappearance of the one group and their 'headmaster' Umbridge. He figured they were be in bed, exhausted after whatever shenanigan shooed the lady away.

Then the doors burst open with a bang. The faint racket in the room escalated, curious eyes each training on Harry Potter. The boy was covered in filth, head to toe. His uniform proved to be rag-like, mud splotched over the frames of his glasses and across his white shirt... or shirt that used to be white.

Theodore wouldn't have expected anyone to care beyond the slight disgust found whilst looking at his state, if it wasn't for the dried crimson liquid that formed a dark back from bellow his ear and across his neck. All paired with stained tear tracks that marked the curve of his cheeks.

He and Hermione, who rushed behind him in a familiar state, headed directly for the teachers table. They came for McGonagall, who beckoned Hagrid and Madame Pomfrey to follow, and each of them ran through the hall without much of a fuss.

Pansy emerged from the door they exited, her jaw hanging dumbly from the joints that connected it to her head. She walked over to them hastily, her arms flinging from her sides as she walked at an unnatural speed. "You'll never guess what I just saw!" She whispered to himself and Blaise.