The Keepers' Evil: The Shattered Star

She did not hate him for what he was not

"Shit." Hugo's fingers burned against the thin sheets of the newspaper, and had Josephine not curled it from his grip, he was sure that holes would have formed around the photograph of the flames that had torn its own holes through Malfoy Manor.

It was not uncommon for their friends to disappear and return within a week or two as though nothing had happened, but this was different, dangerous beyond what their influence could heal. Hugo knew, in the eyes of the professors that cried tears of empathy for their orphaned students and the gasps of even the muggleborns as the newspaper had shared the news, that the Sacred Twenty-Eight was falling, and it was Gabriel and Celeste in the muddle of the middle.

"Why did it take five days to report about it? What if they're-" dead is what she wanted to say. Josephine knew not of what her life would look like without Celeste. She knew all of her fears and all of her wants, she understood all that she couldn't. Celeste was too important to her heart to let her believe that she was just dead.

Hugo held his fingers around her wrist, perhaps to feel her pulse to check that she at least still lived if his friends didn't. Whilst Josephine just had Celeste to think over, Hugo had Gabriel and Gaunt who were his versions of her Celeste. He shook his head slowly, his eyes finding a close to hide from what he didn't know.

"Don't say things like that, we don't know what happened." Hugo felt guilty; he had spent five days in a bubble of happiness now that he had Josie, waiting for Selwyn to return so that he could tell him how sickeningly in love with her he was, how he had been right about just speaking to her. But Gabriel had been trying to survive, his father murdered, his faith entirely shifted.

The Great Hall was almost silent, the candles flickering with the falling atmosphere. Evening meals had remained entirely untouched, a generation touched by the community of a few. Newspapers sat firmly in the hands of every student, and the news warranted not even a whisper.

"Did you have any luck contacting your parents?" Josie was trying to think elsewhere, she did not want to think of Celeste's eyes closed when she shut her own. She was trying to deflect her attention to anything else, and Hugo was somewhat grateful that she had, for he feared he would not have told her if she hadn't.

Hugo rejected the Sallow customs and rules, but that did not mean he could forgo them, especially if it concerned Josephine. Whilst he had tugged her into empty corridors and silent window alcoves to steal her time, he could not let the world know of his desire for her until his father knew of her. Hugo was not a part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but he was a pureblood male who held expectations and responsibilities.

He had attempted to write home, to his mother at first, the previous week after he had told Josephine of his admiration for her, but as he had expected, his mother had refused to acknowledge his need to return home. He had then written to his father, who had told him that he had not the time, so Hugo had resorted to his very last familial option; Solomon.

"My brother spoke to them, told them to expect me this weekend." Josephine was no stranger to the difficulty she would face being in love with a Sallow, but the fear in his eyes spoke too many volumes. He had sat her on the edge of his bed one evening, paced the length of his dorm room, and explained the obstacles of his family's point of view. She was a halfblood, she knew that by being her she had put him in a place of particular pain, but he had kissed away her words gently, encouraging that he would fight for her until they agreed to tolerate his choice of love.