'She found the colours to paint him where the world had left him grey'
-Atticus
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Her sobs were stifled at first, attempting to conceal her grief from the eyes of the students swarming the halls before curfew dawned, pushing to get through their various crowds. Adeline's hand-me-down flats hit the cold, stone floor one after the other at a rapid pace, her head throbbing as she grew numb to the callings of her name and iciness of the air penetrating her warmth.
Students looked at her and they did nothing, nothing, apart from just stand there, staring at the runaway girl with blood smeared across her lips and fingertips. She'd never run this fast before, maybe she could just run forever, from everything. She could leave right now; make it all go away. Just as long as she doesn't slow down.
Just don't slow down.
But her legs grew sore, of course, and her breath turned shallow, as if there wasn't enough to sustain her brutally pumping blood, as though her lungs were riddled with holes and the air just fled straight through. Light-headed and heavy-hearted, she stopped running, and the tears that pooled in her eyes finally let out, spilling down her cheeks as cries that racked her aching chest rose as strangled sobs that were previously locked in her throat as she clenched onto the blood-soaked napkin. Her head fell helplessly, shoulders drooping from the weight of everything, it seemed, hair dangling at the sides of her face. Her hands trembled as she tried to wipe away the crimson-stained around her mouth, wetted from her crying—a simple task, yet she struggled, resisting the urge to dry-retch from the metallic, warm blood that empowered her taste and stained her teeth.
She'd seen him at the dinner, her father; just for a moment, a sheer split of a second, but God was that enough to make Adeline choke on her drink and cough up the blood she'd been swallowing back the past eight minutes. To remain at that table with her father mere seats away, in the place of Cormac McLaggen, and feel the stares of her peers as blood dripped from her mouth to her dress, the colours matching, was all too much. She couldn't hear the chasing footsteps of Harry and Hermione anymore.
She was alone.
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It was impossible to tell how long she'd been there for: after what seemed like forever, Adeline looked up as the sound of rain beyond the castle walls began pelting against its windows; a storm was brewing. Taking a shivering breath, she wiped her cheeks and rubbed her stinging eyes before walking onward, mildly stumbling as she stepped. She'd never seen this hall before.
There was no clear destination in her static mind as she wandered aimlessly, slowly, with only a small attempt to find her way. Adeline spied the night through each window in an attempt to steady herself, though just as she gained a balanced pace and semi-capable mindset, a splintered portion of glass and a spiking sense of curiosity averted her steps to move toward it. The crack resembled an elderly vein, or maybe the root of a tree; it distorted the grounds in which the window exposed, where death eaters were drawn to the shield surrounding Hogwarts like moths to a lightbulb. A sudden spark ignited the shadows.
As movement behind Addie instinctively caught her attention, her eyes changed focus from the grounds to her mirrored image disfigured in the fractured glass.
And there he was; behind her shoulder, his wand digging into the skin of her neck where goosebumps had emerged. Icy breeze slipping in through the broken window caressed her unblinking eyes, drying them, inducing tears to swell uncontrollably.
"You're not here," She quivered, and even though it was a hallucination—it had to be—her voice was small and her mouth was dry, heartbeat exceeding its regular cadence; if she had one, that is. But, then again, hallucinations can't touch you—and the weapon held against her was unmistakably felt.
