Unspeakables; Rule One

Chapter Nine: Trouble is a Friend but Trouble is a Foe

"Celeste, run! My angel girl, my clear path to heaven, run! Find Grim. Tell him what you saw."

She could feel the sweat drip down her face as she ran for her life. Suddenly, the halls of the French country house became tighter than they used to be. She had to get out, she needed her feet to touch the grass field an acre away before she could even consider herself safe to Apparate. She needed to get to Grim.

Celeste woke up with a start. The dorm room was cold and dark, and it reminded her of waking up on the cold tiles of Grim's kitchen floor the night her parents had died. She tried to breathe deeply, but it was strained and aching in her chest. She remained quiet, attempting to not wake the girls who lay in their canopy beds beside her.

Celeste needed the wind to brush her cheeks and crawl down her throat to breathe again, so she slipped the covers off of her and let the chill of the dungeons permeate from her feet to her cheeks. She grabbed the Slytherin robes at the end of her bed and slipped out into the common room before making her way through and out of the castle.

Somehow, even the air outside of Hogwarts felt different. It was incredibly noticeable at 1 am when everything and everyone was asleep. It didn't feel like that when Celeste and Professor Fig first walked in five hours beforehand, but now it was palpable. There was something dormant in these hills, an underground storm brewing, and it was Celeste's job to figure out if the magic she tasted on her tongue was a good or bad thing.

She couldn't think about the events of the night for one more second. Imelda Reyes, one of her dorm mates, asked a million and one questions.

"I am Imelda Reyes. What's your name?"

"Why were you late?"

"A dragon attack!"

"How did you survive?"

"Do you like flying?"

"What are your thoughts on flying?"

"How did you get so pretty?"

"Did someone die?"

"Wait, are you scared of flying now?"

She thought she would be sick if she processed it all now, so it was tomorrow's problem; that burden would come in the morning, but now there was only her and the great outdoors.

Oh, how she loved the air.

It had been easy to leave the castle, almost too easy, honestly, which seemed incredibly all too lucky and too much of a problem when it came to Ranrock and whatever he might do to retrieve the memory she and Fig stole from Gringotts.

Once she passed the maze of courtyards, she quickly found the garden she spotted when entering the castle. She didn't make it further than a few steps into the quiet area when she was stopped in her tracks. It wasn't a peak of the moon lighting the beautiful night sky or the full bushes that shimmered, causing her to halt.

A young man about her age was sitting on the grass in his trousers and white button-up. The sleeves haphazardly rolled, and the top few buttons were undone. His gaze snapped to hers, as they noted each other's presence. He was pretty, and his light hair was disheveled, clearly from tossing and turning. It reminded her of when Teddy was frustrated and ran his hands through his hair a million times over. The way the moon came over his face cast a sheen over his pale skin and his eyes... like watercolor.

He's blind.

She didn't say anything, and neither did he. He just returned to where he had been facing before she so rudely interrupted. He was grounding himself just like she liked to do, and she wondered what house he belonged to and what year he was in. So she walked and sat herself down on the grass about a yardstick away.