SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 033 ] are you complete or is something missing?

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
are you complete or is something missing?

IT'S IN THE EVENING THAT SAWYER REALISES this is going to be the first time Quinn is going to fail an Astronomy pop quiz, and by proxy, that means Sawyer is going to fail too. Before the test began, Sawyer and Quinn had already claimed two seats in the back corner of the classroom. The moment Oliver and Wyatt entered with the rest of the Gryffindors, Oliver didn't bother looking at anything else once he'd caught her eye from across the room, and beelined straight for the two empty places in front of Quinn and Sawyer. So Oliver sits in front of her for all of an hour they've been doing their test and sometimes she kicks the back of his chair just to spite him. At one point, he chucks his quill at her head when Professor Sinistra has her back turned. In the next desk over, having completed his test in record time, Wyatt has his head on the desk and Sawyer knows he's fast asleep.

In the back of the classroom, Sawyer and Quinn sit close—close enough so Sawyer can copy off Quinn's paper like she always does.

Close enough to notice that Quinn is shaking more than she should. In fact, she's not even writing anymore, even though she's only halfway through and Sawyer thinks about all the little bones in her body rattling around like little pills in a bottle. Chest heaving, her breath coming up in pants, Quinn's eyes dart towards the window where a dark shape lurks. Sawyer straightens up and stares and Quinn is staring at her quaking hands like they're an afterthought.

With thirty minutes of test time left on the clock, Quinn raises her hand and her face is half-stricken. Professor Sinistra excuses her to the bathroom and she doesn't come back.

"Is she okay?" Oliver asks, after, when they're handing in their quizzes on the way out of the classroom. His voice is low, a murmur amidst the hum of complaints and discussion the other students were swept up in as they file out of the door.

Sawyer shrugs.

"What happened?" Wyatt asks, frowning.

"She won't want to talk about it tonight," Sawyer says, to Oliver, even though she can feel the whole gravity of Wyatt's gaze on her cheek.

It's true.

By the time Sawyer was in bed, lying awake and staring at the window at the overcast night sky, wondering if the clouds had drowned the moon, Quinn still hadn't spoken a word. They're not the type of friends to sit on each others' beds and talk about things like boys and nail polish and the newest shoes on Witch Weekly. They're not even the type of friends who talk about feelings, about what's killing them, about how shitty it's been, how it feels like the marrow of everything good has been sucked out of their bones. Sawyer's always been a girl of action. Words lose her. She can barely read them properly, much less speak them in a way that could assuage someone else of whatever affliction they were plagued by. That's probably why she buries her own afflictions in the scars on the back of her hands. What they are, in actuality, are friends who burn their pasts together.

Maybe she's embarrassed, Sawyer thought, tracing the grooves of the chipped yellow paint in the wall, faded with time that nobody had to repaint or touch up. Why would anyone paint a room this ugly shade of yellow? Supposedly, all the other houses have their dorm rooms painted in their house colours, but this watery yellow reminds Sawyer less of their Hufflepuff ochre ties and more of piss. Maybe Quinn's sad because she's constantly reminded every night they're sleeping in a room that looks like piss. If Sawyer could care more, she might be sad, too.

Now, though, she lay awake in the dark, watching the moonless sky, listening to her roommates' breathing lulling her to sleep.

"Sawyer?" Quinn whispered, amidst the snores and the rhythmic breathing, the cicadas singing to the night, and the rustle of trees in the distance, her voice is a silver thread permeating the static silence. "Are you awake?"