Heartache Papers── theodore nott ²

chapter one

MAY 1ST, 1999 / WILTSHIRE. SOMETIME AROUND 2 AM

𝕿he night is quiet – the entire world is noiseless. It is as if the whole population of mankind stands still as the moon shines like a crescent in the clear sky. Stars twinkle above, a memorizing ball of beckoning light that seems welcoming to the residents of the dimly light muggle street.

Rows of picket-fenced houses stand approximately one foot and five inches from each other. The night air is sticky with the promise of summer; windows are left open as a gentle breeze hums across sleeping homeowners.

A cat slinkers across the paved road, travelling from one house to another. Orange fur shaking with its steps, coated with grim.

The animal makes the hidden girl in house thirteen feel a little less alone. Her nose twitches as she watches the cat stop with its paws still on the dewy grass from the rainstorm. Green eyes blink with tiny lines of black towards the hidden house; a breath tightens in the girl's chest as she makes eye contact with the stray.

A total of fifteen seconds pass before the cat continues its journey, tail high in the air as it walks away from the house and, by default, the girl sitting on the wooden porch.

Winnie Bulstrode blinks away the slight sting in her hazel eyes. Restlessness weighs down on her shoulders, eating away the fragile bits of her nails as she irritably picks and prods at the skin. She shifts forward, the bare of her legs scratching against the splintered wood. Winnie merely winches as she presses her knuckles into the middle of her spine. Pushing backwards until a crack settles in the night air.

Cracking her back is a relentless habit she picked up somewhere between being woozy at the sight of blood and not even blinking when it gets smeared across her person.

Out of all the things she could've gotten used to, seeing and feeling blood between her fingers and skin was not something she would've wished for.

Wishing was an act she hadn't done in a while; there are no wishes in a war.

A breeze curls through the air, running through the curls of her hair that rest just below her breast. Goosebumps prickle against her exposed flesh as she wraps her arms tighter around her jumper. Plaid pyjama shorts barely cover the skin of her legs, exposing arrays of scars. Sliver and uneven against her pale skin, if she touched it now, her finger would draw lines of a lost map.

Never-ending, never rewarding.

Remus Lupin would drag her by the point of the ear if he were to see her now. Sitting on the porch of a Safehouse was dangerous; not bothering to disguise herself was reckless. The soft bulb of her nose was the very same. The roundness of her features had slimmed since her seventeenth birthday. Her hair was no longer straight or as long. It was shorter, often left unbrushed and unmaintained. ( War was no place for beauty ). Three jagged scars run along the side of her features, exposed as her hair falls behind her shoulders. Sparkling in under the gaze of the blinding stars.

There is no denying who she is. Any Death Eater with half a brain could tell. There have been rumours about how Voldermort wanted her payback for her deficiency many years ago. It was somewhat laughable to her; obsession was intoxicating, and he wanted her dead of his own free will. Remus Lupin didn't find it so ridiculous, and he had become hyperaware of every whisper, every speculation. Winnie was to be careful, to be safe.

Safe hurts to swallow. If Winnie had been secure since the beginning, would everything be different? Would he be gone?

       – NO. DO NOT BE FOOLISH –