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thebestofoneshots · 5 months ago

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Gilded Constellations | (wolfstar x reader)

Series Masterlist | Previous episode

Pairing: Wolfstar x Reader Word Count: 10.2 K Warnings: MAJOR ANGST MOMENT Prompt: Alone, desperate, lonely. How did you end up like this? How will you recover? Is recovering even possible? This IS a Wolfstar x reader fic, but it's incredibly slow burn. They won't start all dating each other until we're very deep into the story, but I promise the long wait will be worth it. Proofread by Lovely @aremuslupinsimp

Chapter 56: Who Wants to Live Forever

There's no place for us

What is this thing that builds our dreams,

yet slips away from us

You sighed, it was a game. Your father had designed a game, and if you wanted to get to the other side you’d have to follow his instructions or solve his riddle. The weird thing was, how much it seemed to be targeted to you. As if he knew one day, you’d have to enter the chamber without him, or without the key. It was fishy, but you still wanted to know what was on the other side.

The riddle was way too elaborate for him to have created it since Christmas, so you ruled out the chance of it being a trap. You would have gone as far as to say that he hadn’t even thought about you visiting theVault he’d given you yet, as if he expected that to be way later on. It was true that you’d gotten an obscene amount of pocket money on Christmas, and he did suggest you could save it in your vault. But still, there was something odd about the entire thing.

You read the riddle again “In shadows deep and whispers soft, a secret lies, though hidden oft,” you muttered. “It must be somewhere in here.” You looked around, raptor-like, analytical, and cold. Solving a riddle was a brilliant way to take your mind off everything it was insistent on thinking, and you weren’t going to reject the opportunity. “Whispers soft,” you repeated. In one of the corners stood a long and tall harp. You could barely see it, it was as if it was sucking the light out of the room. You grabbed the star ring you’d seen earlier with a handkerchief and walked closer to it. Nothing seemed to move, but as you walked closer, you could hear it: the faintest sound of the harp, a soft and haunting melody.

You instantly knew what it was, “The Song of Seikilos”. You swallowed, there was no question about it anymore, this riddle had been designed for you. The Song of Seikilos wasn’t the most common song out there, but you knew about it, and Silas knew that you knew. The summer before the trip with the Blacks, your father had taken you and your mother to Denmark for some political business. You’d begged him to let you visit the muggle museum. He said he too was interested in visiting it and told you to wait.

A week later you were all in the museum. They had a special music-related event, and inside one of the showrooms you got to see the marble columns that held the poem. But there was also a man next to it, playing the same song on the violin while a lady dressed in Greek robes sang the song.

You placed the ring closer to the harp, and surely, there were Greek inscriptions on its side. You breathed and took a closer look. You couldn’t read or speak Greek –let alone ancient Greek– but you were familiar enough with the alphabet, and it wasn’t hard to find the “Σεικίλος”.

You were right, it really was The Song of Seikilos.

You tried to remember what the poem was about, the small caption next to the piece said something about it being a dedication for Seikilos’ wife. But this had happened years ago, how the fuck would your father expect you to remember? You went back to the inscriptions on the harp. You looked through the text again, paying attention to each of the letters. Was there anything you could read?

φαίνου? No idea what that might be. λυποῦ? You weren’t even sure how to pronounce that. χρόνος? hronos… Chronos… The titan of time!

“Of course!” You said excitedly. “The song of Seikilos was an epitaph! A poem for his dеad wife.”

It said something about Chronos demanding it’s due. About time demanding his due. Time… time… time… you pondered. “Through twists and turns of mind and fate. Seek the truth, but never late.”

But what could the truth be? Dеath? That was too simple, too obvious.

Silas would never go for something like that. You leaned closer to the harp, the ring held high illuminating as much as possible, the harp still sucked the light out of it. Either way, right in the corner of the room, under a couple of books you saw something that looked interesting. An old journal. But not just any journal, it was a dream journal.

“In echoes of dreams untold, the key awaits, in tales of old,” you whispered and leaned in to take it in between your hands. It was heavy and old. Blue leather cover and silver engravings. You pulled it out and held it to the light of the vault. You checked the clock again. 10 minutes. it had been ten minutes since you took your bag. If only you could slow time or make yourself faster. There were plenty of spells that allowed you to do that, none of which you could perform with her wand.

You took a deep breath before opening the dream journal. Empty. It made sense, after all it said dreams untold. But if they’re not told then… could they be shown?

You looked at the page and placed your hand on it, closed your eyes and waited. The tick-tack of the grandfather clock and the faintest whispers of the harp the only sounds in the room. You waited a little more… tick, tack, tick, tack… nothing… No dream, no visions, nothing.

You turned to the harp again, perhaps you missed something. Maybe on the echos old, instead of in the dreams untold, you thought. But there was nothing on the books either. You grabbed the journal, closed it and started inspecting the cover… there was something odd in some of the patterns. You slid your hand over the spine. and suddenly, something clicked. You frowned and opened the journal again, right there in the middle of the book there were a few hollow pages and inside one of them a small locket.

You grabbed the locket and left the book on the side, on the back, in cursive so small it was almost unreadable, it said:

While you live, shine have no grief at all life exists only for a short while and Time demands his due.

“It’s the poem’s translation,” you whispered. “But why would I need the poem’s translation?” You looked at the book with the poem again. “Through trials dire and trials fair, only the wise shall find it there.”

Echoes old, and dreams untold, you recited. Echos old, could be old books, you’d already seen a few old books, there were very many in that corner behind the harp. You pulled them out towards the centre of the room. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The Arcanum Codex: Legends of the Ancient Wizards, The Chronicles of Avalon (that one was fae), The Divine Comedy, The Chronicles of Mistwood Manor, The Iliad, Paradise Lost and the Odyssey. So many ancient books: wizard, muggle and fae; but how would you know which one to take?

The poem… the poem was Greek. You took the three books. in your hands. The Iliad, The Divine Comedy and the Odyssey. But which one to take?

The Divine Comedy was about hell, but it was also about dеath, which could have a connection to the Seikilos’ poem. On the other hand, The Odyssey perfectly reflected the “trials dire and trials fair, only the wise shall find it there” line of the riddle.

You were hesitant as you picked the book up, you’d read it before. Your mother had given it to you a few years ago as proof of one of the best muggle-wizard collaborations. With the fact that Homer had been a wizard and because of Circe and Odysseus’ collaboration, proved that while wizards were powerful, and could be evil, they could also be benevolent and help humans. But that was before wizards had decided to seclude themselves from the world, and when they were actually trying to integrate themselves into it.

The book was the version you remembered your mother had given you; green cover, and written in verse. You flipped through some of the pages, and right in the middle of one of them, you found a recipe.

“Shut up,” you whispered as you looked at it. It was sleep draught. “Fine then, that’s it,” you said annoyed. You were stuck. Except, what if you weren’t? You took the locket from the table in which you’d place it, and stared. The key awaits, in tales of old.

What if the locket really is a key? But a key to what?

You spun around in your place, paying a closer look at all the things scattered in the room. The harp and the clock jumped at you at once.

You walked towards the clock: χρόνος. Chronos was such an important character in the poem, it made sense for it to be an equally important character in the riddle. In seconds you were right in front of it. It had been 15 minutes since you started. You placed your hand over the clock, there were many intricacies detailed all over. From a wonderfully sculpted story on the cover to details of the moon, stars, and planets on the face. It had not two, but eleven hands, 2 for hours and minutes, and then one for each planet. They were right around the clock, and moved ever so slightly each day, mirroring the real movements of each of them.

And then, right behind the small cristal, there were the winding ports. You took the locket in your hands and cranked it open. Right inside of it, there was a small winding key. You placed it on a spot, and there was a soft chime you took in a breath. Good, now you had to find the rest of the keys.

You grabbed the book and went over some other lines of the riddle: In silence vast and darkness deep, the answer lies, in dreams asleep. but wake ye now, and heed the call, for time is short, and darkness falls. You glanced at the clock, there was something there now that wasn’t there before. The moon phase section was changing every couple of minutes. It went from crescent to quarter in less than 5. “For time is short and darkness falls,” you whispered as you took a deep breath. “Fuck,” you said when you realised that you didn’t have much time.

It felt like you were spinning around and around and yet you didn’t get the result you’d hoped for. You turned to the rest of the books. You frowned and turned to the riddle again. There was something about the wise: only the wise shall find it there.

“The wise,” you repeated as you pondered. Greek, the Illiad, Wise. “Athena! But where?” You thought of looking in the book, but something told you that might not be the solution, you had already found enough things in books, there was no way the rest were in them too.

You looked around the room again, there were so many things it was like looking for Waldo, or worse yet since when you looked for Waldo you knew exactly what you had to find, a small man with glasses and a red striped shirt. Now thought? You had no idea what you were looking for. Still, you looked around and focused.

That’s when you spotted it, right at the top of one of the huge shelves that held piles and piles of things, there was a statue of an owl. You scoffed when you realised what kind of owl it was, a fucking Athene. You used one of the hundreds of piles of books to lift yourself enough to pull the owl from its place.

That had never been an issue before, a small spell would be more than enough to have it float gently towards you, but you had to improvise now. You almost tripped and fell, but you managed to hold your balance and took a deep breath once you were back on solid ground with the owl in your hand. You started to twist it around, looking at all his sides. But there was nothing, not a single thing.

That’s when an idea popped into your head, you took a deep breath and dropped the entire statue into the ground. It burst into hundreds of smaller pieces, and yet they all looked like they had been designed to crack a certain way. You looked at the floor, they had somehow arranged themselves, one line towards the clock, and the other one towards a small cabinet in the far end of the room. You walked there and started opening all the small drawers.

They had ingredients for potions, and jewellery and– bingo! A vial. Clear liquid, a simple, omnibus label: φάρμακο. You suspected what it might be, the horrifying thought sinking in like a doxy’s fangs. You sighed as you unclogged the cork and brought the potion up to your nose.

You took a deep breath. Nothing. You concentrated a little bit more, you used the same technique you had developed lately, and while you didn’t physically turn into Vixen, you called upon her sense of smell. There it was, cleverly cloaked, clearly done by an expert, it must have been worth a small fortune. But it was clear as day: Valerian Root and Sopophorous Bean.

Draught of Living Dеath.

Rather proper, since φάρμακο is old Greek for both poison and cure, you remembered Slughorn had mentioned that once.

If you thought it through, there was no way you were drinking to a different potion. While a simple sleeping draught would have done the trick, like the one in the small note still in your pocket, there was no way time allowed you to brew such a thing, not with the moon already being full, and with half of your time gone.

Now, you knew how dangerous draught of living dеath could be, and this is when the dire trials came back, you could either drink it, do the brave and reckless thing, or you could try and brew the other potion. With no wand, and barely enough time to find all the ingredients.

You took a deep breath, if you took only a drop, really a drop, nothing more than that, and if the potion wasn’t concentrated enough, then perhaps it would be enough for you to fall asleep and wake up before the moon was dark again.

It was now or never, you took a small hairpin from one of the corners and dipped it in the small bottle. Your breath was short, breathing had become harder as you moved the small, poison-filled pin towards your face. It’s what was expected of you, your father knew how reckless you were, if he had left that there it was for a reason. Not many would be brave –or stupid– enough to drink Draught of Living Dеath, except perhaps someone as stubborn as you or him.

You stuck your tongue out and gently brushed the hairpin right on top of it. You placed the bottle on the side and looked around. Nothing, perhaps I should take more, you thought, and then the walls started to change, coating themselves in a black gooey substance before disappearing entirely.

“So I’m dreaming,” you said, there was an echo of your voice, going all the way to the end of the seamingly endless room you were in before coming back to you, in a voice eerie similar to yours but also vastly different.

Deeper, richer, sinister, “So, you are dreaming.”

You swallowed, it was pointless to ask where this was, or anything regarding the nature of the place, you knew you had a limited amount of time and no matter how different time was in dreams, you couldn’t afford to lose any of it, not unless you wanted Chronos to demand his due.

“I’m looking for a key,” you said, your voice echoed again, louder this time, and then, out of nowhere, something, or rather someone appeared right in front of you.

“We know,” the thing said. It was a figure, almost a mirror to you but with no face, all dark and smooth like a mannequin. Only a sunken mouth, awfully reminiscent of a Dementor’s. It didn’t move as it spoke. “Why do you want it?”

“I need to get to the other Vault.”

“The mirror,” a whisper said.

“She wants the mirror,” another whisper returned.

“I just want the key,” you replied. “I need to see what’s on the other side. It may be dangerous.”

“It is dangerous, child,” the voice said.

“It’s a terrible idea to go,” a different one added.

“Perhaps… I still have to do it,” you retorted.

The creature in front of you smiled, a sharp, shark-like grin, “that’s what we wanted to hear,” it said.

“Two paths lay ahead of thee,” one of the voices started.

“One of us always tells the truth.”

“The other one always lies.”

“You may ask one question.”

“To either one of us but not both.”

“Ask away, little sprite.”

“Or stay in the darkness and relent.”

“It is your choice.”

You sighed. You knew this riddle, your dad had given it to you when you were 10, you couldn’t find an answer and you begged him to give it to you. He’d said one day you’d guess it yourself.

“But what if I don’t?” you’d asked, concerned.

“Then you’ll go through the wrong path and something bad would happen.”

“But you could tell me now. Then nothing bad would happen to me.”

“And you wouldn’t learn a thing,” he had answered indifferently.

You held back a resentful groan, as you bit your lip. This stupid game was getting beyond annoying. If this was his way to have you solve his stupid riddle, if he thought you ought to learn something from putting your life at risk, then he might be even worse than you thought. This wasn’t even tough love, this was a reckless gamble of your safety, whatever lesson you were supposed to learn from it was in no way worth it.

And yet, you’d go through with it either way, and he knew you’d go through with it, you were obdurate and determined, and you had to know what was on the other vault. The dream beings had confirmed how dangerous it was, you could not leave it on his hands. Not on the same hands that had cast crucio on your mother. The action that made you react harshly and cause that fire, the action that had caused her demise.

You turned around, you could hear a faint echo of the clock and the sound of the moon phase section changing again, you were running out of time.

“I–” you staggered. How could you trick them? One question, what could you ask?

You turned to one of the paths and pointed at it, “Would the other Omnius voice tell me that this is the way to the key?”

There was silence, and then the voice said, “No.”

If it was lying, then the truth would have said “yes”, and it would have changed it to “no”, which meant it was the right path. If it were telling the truth, then the lying voice would have said “no”, and it still would be the right path.

“Then this is my way,” you said and walked towards the path.

“Are you sure?” one of the voices said.

“You might be wrong,” the other one added.

“Or you might be right.”

“Logic in the dream world can be different than back on earth.”

“What if we switch?”

“What if we both lied?”

“Then the riddle would have always been unsolvable by logic,” you said with a shrug. You were confident in your answer.

“And magic?”

“Potions?”

“Veritaserum?” you asked. “That would be cheating.”

“Isn’t it worth it? To fulfil your task?”

“Would you drink it voluntarily?”

“Of course not!” the voice said, irritated.

“Then it wouldn’t,” you replied. “Unlike Silas, I do not think things can be achieved by any means necessary.”

The voice laughed, a loud, horrifying cackle that resonated and echoed through the entire room. “She really thinks she’s so much better for following her moral compass.”

“Where has that led you, child?”

“Alone.”

“Abandoned.”

“Motherless.”

“Loverless.”

“Straight towards despair.”

You looked at them, their heinous words echoing in your head, each one stronger than the last. All of them ringing truth to your ears. But you weren’t going to put your happiness above the one of those you loved. You were not going to let them suffer at your expense. Not when you tried to help Nina and not when you broke up with Sirius.

“Well then, I’ll walk there gladly, as long as I can still protect the ones I love,” you replied, tears prickled in your eyes as you ventured into the path.

It was dark and it seemed to grow smaller the deeper you were. But you pushed on, after a long walk, you entered a chamber. You looked around, it was empty, except for a deep plunging drop, and a floating slab of concrete in the middle. And right there in the centre of the island, there was a small jewellery box, with the same engravings as the Grandfather clock in the real world. You knew how dangerous of a jump it was, but you had to take it.

You took a few steps back to build momentum and you ran. You crashed chest-first into the side, it knocked your breath out and you barely managed to hold onto one of the raised tiles in the floor. Tears prickled in your eyes as you struggled up. How did it always look so much easier in movies and comics? This was almost impossibly tough to achieve. And you had relatively decent arm strength. There was a wand lying on the side, just within reach.

You hadn’t seen it before but you took it and pointed downwards. “Confringo!” you shouted, the impulse the spell gave you was enough to flip you upside down and have you crash, back first, onto the concrete, your head slamming with an unsettling loud thud. You groaned as you looked up at the nothingness above.

And then you heard it again, like a faraway whisper: Tick, tack, tick, tack… The ever-so-constant reminder that you had no time to rest. You exhaled wearily and groaned your way into a sitting position. You took the small jewellery box in your hands and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge You were about to smash it into a wall out of exasperation, a riddle within a riddle within a fucking riddle, it was getting out of hand.

But there was a small glistening thing in the side of the box with some kind of engraving: ᾄδειν Σεικίλος.

Of course, you thought and recalled the poem you had memorised just in case, “While you live, shine,” there was a click inside the box. “Have no grief at all,” another click and then a twist, “life exists only for a short while,” a louder sound came from the box, like a small bell, “and Time demands his due.”

The box opened in a second, surely, there was a key, mirroring the one that had been inside the locket there. You grabbed it, expecting to wake up, but nothing happened. You looked around, there were other trinkets scattered all around, but none of them had anything that could help you wake up on the outside.

There were unlabeled potion bottles, there were other wands like the one you’d used earlier, there were some bones in the corner and there were even a few books– the same ones that had been next to the harp. But there had to be a way to wake up, there had to be a way to get out.

And there was an infallible one, one that you had heard of before and that your father had made sure to drill into your head in the past.

“Darling, our little girl is having nightmares.”

“She is?” he asked as he leaned down to look at you, you must have been four or five.

“There’s dragons, and trolls and big scary dogs that want to eat me.”

“And where are you in the dream?”

“Running through the forest, and then I reach a cliff, I can’t run anymore, they,” you sniffed. Those small child eyes, normally filled with wonder, were filled with tears, “they eat me. It hurts.”

“A cliff you said?”

“Yes!”

“Then jump.”

“Ju-jump?” you staggered. “But it’s dangerous and there are pointy rocks at the bottom, I would diе.”

“Is the best way to wake up from a dream.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Wouldn’t being stabbed by rocks be less painful than being eaten alive?”

“Silas!” your mother chided.

Your father threw her a look and then one at you, a small smile playing on his lips, “Then… You learn how to fly!” he said as he took you in his hands and twirled with you in the sky. Your laughs filled the room, your mom was clapping and he looked at you with the purest of smiles when suddenly, out of nowhere, he let go of you and you plunged into the floor. Of course, you fell into a mattress he had apparated there, but the fall hadn’t been any less jarring.

On the floor, you looked at him with a terrorized expression.

“Silas!” Avis said angrily.

“It’s so she learns it’s not that terrible to fall,” Silas responded as he pointed at you, a dismissive sort of look. “Children like it.”

“She’s horrified!”

“She is not! Look at her!”

Both of them turned to you expectantly. You were small, but you knew if you said the wrong thing, the two of them would fight, and you could never tolerate their fights. With your heart hammering in your chest, you smiled faintly and then started to laugh. The tears that left your eyes, were considered laughter-induced rather than the terrified ones they actually were. “Again,” you managed to say, to sell the idea further.

That’s when you decided you had to become an expert at flying, you couldn’t allow Silas to throw you again.

And yet, here you were, back in a dream and you would not only allow Silas to push you down a cliff, but you were about to plunge into the dark abyss, willingly. “He always gets what he wants, doesn’t he?”

You leaned over the edge, looking down, there was no breeze, nothing that could indicate how far of a fall it might be, if there was an end to it at all. You had learned how to fly so you wouldn’t fear the fall. You hadn’t been afraid when you fell from your broom and you wouldn’t start being fearful now.

You extended one of your legs, your feet dangled over nothingness, you took a deep breath and then you plunged. If you screamed, the hollowness of the place made the sound disappear. The rush of the fall was there, the same plunging sensation you felt sometimes on a broom, it was beautiful and harrowing at the same time.

And then, you woke up. Your breath was short, there was a thin coat of cold sweat over your limbs and the place seemed way brighter than you remembered. The key, was in your hands, it was lighter here than in the dream, but it was there nonetheless.

You opened your palm, it was almost the same as the other one, except for a slightly darker colour. You stared at it as you tried to catch your breath, you wanted to laugh and you wanted to cry, but you glanced at the clock instead. Third quarter, you sprung up from where you lay and ran towards the clock, placing the key straight on its spot. The moon phase went from Third Quarter to Waning Gibbous. It wasn’t much, around 4 more minutes than before, but four minutes were enough to make the difference.

You took the book with the riddle and went through the last lines, the ones that you hadn’t used before Paths diverge, yet all converge to where the truth and secrets surge. Choose wisely, seeker, lest you fail, and in the end, your efforts pale.

“Choose wisely, seeker,” you thought. Could he mean?

You turned around, looking for something, and right there in the middle of one of the bigger shelves, there was a golden snitch. When you stepped closer to her she released her small wings and started to fly around the room.

You had no broom, but you had experience, if she thought you weren’t looking at her she would lean closer to taunt you, that was what they always did. You walked towards the pile of books you had left in the centre of the vault and grabbed one of them, flipping through the pages while keeping an attentive eye on the clock. The moon was back in Third quarter. You were running out of time. You were just looking at the pictures in the book, the Peverell bothers talking to Dеath, Dеath giving them the hallows, you’d heard the story many times before. You waited: one look at the pictures and a short glance at the clock, the tick-tack almost maddening as the small snitch kept buzzing around the room.

And then it happened, the small golden ball flew close to you, right in front of your face. You were as quick as humanly possible and took it with one of your hands. You could feel it melt at your touch, suddenly you no longer had a snitch but a small shiny key. Its colour lighter than the other two.

You turned to the clock: Waning Crescent. The tick, tick of the handles seemed to get thicker as you approached it, louder, so loud it was almost deafening, but you never stopped walking and lodged the key straight into the one remaining hole.

Three paths, three keys, they all converged into one single clock, into a master of time. The bottom door of the clock opened itself, and on the other side you could see nothing but darkness.

You had solved it, and yet the next step was as daunting as some of the trials you’d already accomplished. You took a deep breath and walked inside. Darkness, darkness, darkness, and then… light. Not blinding but enough to make you squint. A vault, twin to the one you had been on, and yet vastly different. All the things had been piled to the side, and in the centre back there was a large something covered by a thin fabric, it draped down the sides of it, allowing you to see a shape, it looked like some kind of door.

You walked outside of a clock, exactly the same as the one in the other room, and towards the large thing at the end. You didn’t hesitate to pull the thin white sheet from it, there was a small cloud of dust that wafted through the air due to the harsh movement and then, once the dust settled, the sheet fell on the floor with a gentle thud. Not a door, but… a mirror.

Except it wasn’t quite that either, you could see your reflection, but there was something odd about it, it was you, but, there was something about it that looked different.

You looked at the mirror, there seemed to be an inscription at the top “riapsed dnaht urt d niflla hsuo yt ini htiwt nemrot ren niruoy tubega sivruo y ton tcel feri ”

It was English text, which surprised you since you assumed it would also be Greek, everything seemed Greek that day. You read it aloud, it didn’t sound like Greek either –you thought it could have been the pronunciation rather than the spelling. You pulled back a little, trying to get the big picture. The mirror was tall, far taller than you, even Remus would have fit inside of it perfectly, and it would have surpassed him. It had a silver frame and it had pointy ends, it reminded you a lot of Hogwarts Architecture.

You wondered if you’d ever seen a mirror like that, and you didn’t quite remember such a thing. Yet, it was oddly familiar as if you had seen it before, perhaps in a dream. You reread the words again, and that’s when you realised what it said. It wasn’t Greek, it wasn’t even a different language, rather, and quite proper of a mirror, it was in English, but spelt backwards.

"I reflect not your visage but your inner torment, within it you shall find truth and despair,” you read aloud. There was a slow chime as if it had come from the clock behind you and not the mirror itself. The reflection in the mirror wobbled as if the screen had turned into a silvery pool instead of glass.

You walked closer again, you knew reading the inscription had activated whatever was inside of it, but the idea of seeing your inner torment was not something you were eager to do, it wasn’t something that you wanted to face. You’d been running from it incessantly since Christmas, and you did not want to stop now.

But you had to.

Whatever was inside the mirror was reason enough for your father to make that dreadful riddle, and if it had been that hard to accomplish, then there was definitely something worthy inside of it. You looked at the mercury-like screen ahead of you and took another step towards it. You placed your hand on it and saw how the entire thing wobbled alongside your small push. It seemed to almost stick to your finger before releasing it and going back to its place.

You remembered what one of the voices in the dream had said, the echo so present in your head, it was as if they were speaking to you again, “Straight towards despair.”

Right in front of you stood a mirror of despair, and you would walk right inside of it. Head high, and breath calm, even as your heart hammered inside your chest. You took a deep breath and took another step, and then another. The metal liquid surrounded you completely, and suddenly you were somewhere else.

You were falling, and then you crashed onto a mattress. Avis and Silas were there.

“Mum,” you said, tears prickling your eyes. “Mom, you’re here!”

“Look what you’ve done!” She said angrily at Silas, “She’s crying.”

“No! No, I’m–” She looked younger, far younger than you remembered, far younger than she’d been when your chimaera swallowed her.

“She can barely speak.”

“She must learn! She must become stronger! If she wants to survive she–”

“Silas!”

You knew what this was, you didn’t want to see it. You stood up in an instant, “It’s fine, I’ll go to my room,” you said before exiting the living room as far as you could. You locked yourself in one of the closets, and things were calm only for a second. The doors opened, your room was different, and you, or another version of you was there, writing something furiously on some parchment, bunching it up and throwing it on the side.

Regulus’ letter was on your bed, you walked towards it and picked it up, you now knew what it said, how much heartache would have been spared if only you had given Reggie a chance. “Read it,” you told her.

She turned to you, tears in her eyes and a scornful smile, “you have no business here,” she replied, snatched the letter from your hands and threw it towards the fire.

She watched it burn with a tear sliding down her cheek and then went back to writing the letter she was working on, you looked over her shoulder “Sirius, This is the last letter I write. I’m sorry for…” you knew exactly what she was writing, what you had written.

You sighed, and walked toward the door, next thing you knew, you were in the shack. Remus had a cloak, and he was panicking, looking at the bIood in his hands, breath sharp and desperately looking at James and Peter.

“Where is she?” He asked, you could hear the desperate crack in his voice.

“She’s okay, she’s with Sirius,” James said with ease. Peter was looking at the broken metal door with a confused face, and trying to place it back into place with a spell.

“Don’t lie to me,” he pressed, there were tears prickling in his eyes, he looked livid and terribly upset. “This is her bIood,” Remus said, his voice breaking near the end. “It smells like her!”

James licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Yes, you accidentally scratched, nothing else. You know,” he said. “You remember.”

“No, I–” Remus breathed, he was entirely forlorn. He frowned, “I lost track of them! She was there and then she wasn’t and then–” Remus shook his head and sat back on the bed “–There was a fox.”

James nodded, “She’s the fox.”

“Moony was trying to bite her!”

“That didn’t happen,” James reassured. “There were no bites.”

“So, she’s okay?”

“She needs to get patched up,” James said, “but she’ll be fine, she’s tough.”

You wanted to walk towards Remus and give him a hug, to tell him that you were all right, that you would be all right. That it wouldn’t even be the hardest thing you’d go through in the past few months, but the scene dissolved into another one. Remus, James and Peter turned into dust, so did the room, and it slowly rearranged into a larger room.

You heard the door close behind you and then turned to the only person remaining in the room. Evan. He stared at the door dumbfounded, a mix of hatred and relief evident on his face. You weren’t sure why you were there, and you were about to follow yourself when you heard a sob. You turned around to look at Evan hesitantly, a small confused frown knitting your eyebrows together. He was crouching down on the floor, face hidden in his hands and a stream of tears leaving his eyes.

You stared at him confused. A part of you wanted to place an arm on his shoulder and tell him things would be all right –not that you could actually interact with him– the other part, the one still sad and angry about what happened in November was almost thrilled he was crying. But the first one won over the second and you approached him cautiously.

He was muttering incoherent things as he spoke, something about Arkalis, about you saving him, about hate and compassion and Merlin knows what else. You swallowed, when you implied to his father that he was straight, when you manipulated Arkalis into thinking you had kissed his son to get him off Evan’s back you were just doing what you considered was right, you never expected for that to mean so much to Evan. Let alone break him down into tears.

It made sense now, that he and Barty had helped, what you’d done there was a lot more than you initially thought, your simple, almost dutiful act of kindness had meant a lot more to them than it had meant to you. You had earned the help they’d given you, simply by being kind.

You stood up, it was not your place to be here, in fact, you assumed Barty would be here soon anyway, for some reason you seemed to be surrounded by tragic love stories. You looked at the clock in the corner, and then you heard a scream.

You were paralysed by it, your breathing caught in your throat, a small sob leaving your lips. You knew what that was, you knew who that scream belonged to.

“No,” you whispered, shaking your head. “No, no, no,” you repeated, breath sharp and chest heaving. “Not this again, I don’t want to go through this again.”

Suddenly Evan wasn’t on the floor anymore, he –or a distorted shadow of him– was right in front of you. Tall and imposing and as terrifying as he seemed that night in the forest. “Go,” he said, although it wasn’t quite his voice.

“I don’t want to,” you replied, voice small, filled with anguish.

The world around dissolved and you were back in the hall. Nina was being held by two wizards while her mom was being tortured on the floor.

“I don’t want to see this!” you insisted. The door from the terrace where you were with Reggie was still closed. You were both still there, this was before you arrived. Nina was crying, and screaming and her mom’s jarring shrieks were even louder. You closed your eyes, but the sounds became even more vivid, louder and overwhelming, you felt like your ears would bleed if you didn’t open your eyes again.

Bellatrix shouted, there was a blinding green light and then Nina’s mother fell on the floor with a hollow thud, eyes shiny and completely defocused.

Nina let out a shrilling cry, something so loud and harrowing that you knew instantly what it was. The one you had heard from the terrace. Bella started saying several things, and you saw yourself leaving Reggie on the chair and speeding to the area, determined to do something, determined to save her. If only you knew that determination would lead you nowhere.

The second you spoke, and Nina turned to you, the entire scene dissolved. Now it was your father looking at your mother after she’d been stepped on by the Chimaera, you gulped, his screams had been swallowed by the commotion that day, but today you were closer to them. In your father’s gaze, there was anger and desperation and he looked both irked and terrified as he held your mother’s charred body.

“I’m so sorry,” you mumbled, tears welling up in your eyes as you saw your father filled with despair. “I’m so sorry, I just wanted to do what was right, all I wanted was to–”

The scene dissolved again, now it was Nina taking your face in her hands and telling you that you had to keep moving. You looked completely appalled, desperate, borderline hysterical; but Nina looked at you with a loving gaze, a calm, lake-like balminess emanated from her celadon eyes as she spoke, loud and clear. It hadn’t felt like that in the moment, but Nina had spoken to you for several sentences before you caught what she was saying before she told you to look at her, to really look at her and then told you how it wasn’t your fault.

The scene dissolved as you and Nina walked towards the window. The scorching heat of the Chimera dwindled and was replaced with an eerie coldness. Your heartbeat paced rapidly, you knew what was coming, and you didn’t want to face it again. You shut your eyes as the scene around you started to darken, “Please,” you begged. “I don’t want to live through this again, please.”

But if there was an architect to this ordeal, he either didn’t hear your pleas or chose to ignore them. You felt something cold graze your cheek, and when you touched it you realised it was snow. You sighed, you were surrounded by hedges, the moon high above you, bright but nonetheless harrowing. You knew that moon, you knew what she’d witnessed, what you were about to witness again.

Suddenly you and Nina passed by, running fast as Lucius appeared, throwing a spell and taunting you over the dеath of Cygnus Black. You fought, fierce and determined and strong. Lucius wasn’t all that great of a duelist, but you were weak, marred and using a stolen wand. Had he been any better you would have lost to him after the first couple of spells. Then he made the hole in the ground you threw a spell on him and started to repair it. Nina saw Lucius get out, she saw him pointing his wand at you, and then she saw something else. Something behind Lucius. Whatever she saw, you hadn’t seen it then and you still weren’t able to see it now.

She nodded and pushed you, the spell hit her and she fell on the floor. You –the other you– instantly crawled towards her with a raw scream, the bright shining light was there again and then from behind Lucius appeared Evan and Barty.

You were crying and pleading and telling her it would be all right even if the two of you knew that wasn’t true. You turned your gaze to the side, trying to avoid looking at it again, but then you turned back, tears streaming down your face as you stared. You wanted to see Nina alive again, you wanted to hear her voice, even if it was her last breath that you’d hear.

Seconds later you were crying and trying to use the wand to revive her, but nothing worked. You knew nothing would and yet you harboured an inch of hope that maybe in this dream, Nina wouldn’t diе, that she would wake up and run the hell away from that hedge with you.

Barty approached you and tried to pry you off Nina’s body for a few minutes before he actually managed to do it. Nina became butterflies and you saw one of them lean closer to you, to the real you, not the dream you crying on the floor; but the spectator of it all.

“Nina,” you whispered, the butterfly batted her wings and flew along the rest of them.

The scene dissolved and you saw Sirius, he was in what you quickly recognised as James’ bathroom. He was on the floor and panicking. He was saying something about it not being a dream and about you being in danger.

“It was real, and she’s alone, in the snow, pretty much passed out, we have to do something. Maybe I can apparate there or–”

“You’ll splinch.”

“Damn it, James!” Sirius snapped. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

He looked absolutely desperate, terrified, you wanted to hug him and tell him things would be all right but then James spoke. “Remus!” he said. The scene dissolved again. Now it was Remus running through the shack, looking at the fence and then at the window you had used to save the butterfly. He ran through the snow, desperate, out of breath until he found you.

You had been too numb to see his reactions, but when he touched you, with that tenderness that he managed to always pull off, you saw how scared he was, as terrified as Sirius as he pressed his hand onto your face and realised how cold you were. He had stuttered several times until he managed to get proper words out, he carried you. And then, just as he apparated away, the scene dissolved.

This time it took longer for the next scene to appear, all of the mist around you changing colour and slowly solidifying into something else. It was you and Sirius, in the Potter’s kitchen. You sucked in a breath. The entire scene passed over, how you asked Sirius if he liked Remus, how you told him you would leave, and how he begged you not to do it.

Sirius’ tears were gut-wrenching, you wanted to run and hug him and hit the person who had made him cry like that. The problem was, it had been you, you had been the one to make his eyes well up in tears, the one to make his voice crumble, and the one to cause him all of that distress.

You held back the tears, “I get it!” you said loud and clear, your voice heavy with emotion you tried to conceal.

“I get it!” you repeated as you turned around. “I cause despair, I’m the source of it on everyone around me, people cry because of me, people diе because of me! Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Nothing, absolute silence. The scene in front of you, of Sirius plopping down on the floor with tears in his eyes, of Sirius crying and in distress, was there, and then it wasn’t. It dissolved, leaving you in an eerie nothingness. It was so vast you weren’t sure where it started and where it ended, there was silence, and it was cold. Not as cold as the snow but cold enough to send a chill down your spine.

It felt like you were not only alone but forsaken.

“You get it,” an echoing voice rang in your head.

“She thinks she does,” another said.

“She’s wrong and she’s right and she’s confused, and so, so alone,” a third voice said, mocking pity on every word.

You looked around, but there was no one, the voices seemed to slam directly onto your head.

“But you don’t have to be,” the first voice said.

You did not like where this was going. You had read plenty of ghost stories, any offer too good to be true was probably laden with some secret evil. This place, the entire trial felt exactly like a horror story. And yet you felt so lonely, that you listened.

“There’s rock,” the second voice said.

“It will help you bring me back, my love,” you froze, it was your mother’s voice. You turned around, tears welled up in your eyes as you saw her. It was not your mum, but the charred remnants of her that the Chimera had left, but it had her voice, and it had her eyes, your eyes.

Your breath hitched in your throat, your heart hammered in your chest as you looked at her. Trying to think of a way to help her. You were walking towards her when there was another voice from behind you.

“You can bring us back.”

You sobbed and turned around, you had recognized her voice, you had missed that voice, a tear rolled down your cheek as you looked at her. She was as you remembered, cheeks pink with the cold and blonde waves stained with crimson. She was looking at you like you were the last hope she had, the one thing that would stop her from despair.

“Nina,” you said, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, you sniffed as you tried to breathe.

She smiled, the smile you knew so well to be hers. “With this,” she said softly and extended her hand towards you. “Spin the stone three times, and we’ll be back.”

She extended her hand, she was holding a ring in between her fingers. You looked at the ring, you were hesitant, but you took it. Her hands felt like Nina’s, but cold. You looked at the ring, a dubious frown accompanied your sniffing.

“Spin it three times and bring them back,” one of the voices said.

“Bring us back,” both Nina and your mother said at the same time.

“You will bring me back, won’t you?” Nina asked, her voice soft, hopeful.

A stone that can bring someone back from the dеad if you spin it three times. “It’s a Dеathly Hallow,” you said in a soft, surprised exhale.

“It is, dear,” your mother said. Her charred hand was upon your shoulder. You turned your head to look at her, out of the corner of your eye you could see how burned her entire body was, “you can use it to bring us back,” she added, with a smile that looked so much like her and so much unlike her with all the charred skin that you shivered.

“Mum?” you said, your head cocked to the side, your voice nothing but a whisper.

“Go ahead, pretty girl.”

“Save us,” Nina said.

You tried to hold back the tears, but it was useless, you took a breath that got stuck in your throat. You had read the Tales of Beedle the Bard, you had read other muggle fables, doing it was a bad idea, and bringing someone back from the dеad was about the worst thing you could do to both them, and to yourself. But with your mum being charred and with Nina’s hair turning crimson rather than blonde, both because of you, you wanted nothing more than to fix your mistake.

You desperately yearned to have them back, to hug them again, for their scent to fill your nostrils like it had so many times before, the light wood-like smell of your mother and the blue lily and lavender perfume Nina used to wear. The images in front of you, although faithful to the last time you’d seen them both were nothing other than a brittle and shallow reflection of them.

The imitation was almost perfect, the slight ups and downs from the way they spoke, the colour of their eyes, the way their faces moved, the way the light hit Nina’s freckles. They were so similar it was easy to be fooled by them, but beyond that and if you looked closer, they were nothing more than a mirror of who they really had been, a frail reflection of the women you’d once loved. A projection, beaming at you from the distance, light shining from a dеad star.

You had read that once in a book, and you hadn’t quite grasped the magnificence of it until you too, felt it.

“Darling?” your mother said, cocking her head. “Spin the rock! What are you waiting for?”

“Three times, and then we’re back,” Nina chimed.

“Are you not going to bring us back?” Your mother asked, it sounded angry.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Nina said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I thought we were friends.”

“No,” you said to yourself as you shook your head. “No, no, please don’t do this to me.”

“Darling,” your mum said, her voice was that of a reprimand, cold and stern, she sounded more like Silas than herself. “Spin it now, bring us back!” she urged.

You were taking steps back, away from the two of them but they stepped towards you as you did. Your mother was angry, even beneath the charred skin you could tell she was seething. Nina was sad, crumbling, cheeks red and stained with the track of her tears.

“Please,” you begged.

Nina fell to the floor, knees crashing onto nothingness with a loud thud, “I don’t understand… We were friends. I loved you. I was in love with you, why did you not love me back? If I were Sirius or Remus you would spin that stone in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you? Am I not enough?”

“Nina,” you said.

“I diеd for you!” she screamed. “I’m dеad because of you!”

You stopped cold when she said that. She was right, and she was dеad because of you. You took the stone ring in your hands, held it closer to your face and touched the stone, tentatively, only with the tip of your finger. And then, out of nowhere, a small blue butterfly landed on your finger. You looked at her, it was the same butterfly you had helped enter the shack.

“Have you also diеd because of me?” you asked bitterly. “Do you also want me to bring you back?”

You put your finger back in the stone, but the butterfly got in between, not letting you touch it. You frowned as realisation hit you. That was not Nina, Nina would never say those awful things to you, no matter how many times you had said them to yourself.

The butterfly on the other hand? The one trying to stop you? That was a lot more like the Nina that tried to snap you from your destructive thoughts back at Evan’s manor. Like the Nina that had hexed Bellatrix without hesitation to defend you, like the Nina that had pushed you out of harm’s way, like the real Nina.

Nina whispered your name, and you looked up at her. “Bring me back,” she said. “I want to live again.”

“No,” you said.

“What?” your mother asked, the steady but furious tone you had come to know so well.

“I said no,” you repeated louder this time. “I can’t help you.”

Nina’s face fell to the ground, a tear streaming down her face while your mother stalked towards you angrily. Nina looked up at you, anguish and despair so evident that it was almost heartbreaking. “Is it because I’m not good enough?”

“It’s because you’re not her,” you said simply. “She wouldn’t want me to do it.”

“But I do!” She said distressed. “I do! I want you to bring me back! I want to live again! I want to feel the sun on my face and hear the hollow sound of the wind and taste chocolate on my tongue and see you.”

“I can’t.”

“But you kiIIed me!” she said desperate, her face morphing into an expression that you weren’t sure Nina was capable of making. “You murdеred me, I diеd because of you! Why won’t you bring me back?”

“BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT NINA!” you shrieked, your voice breaking near the end. The figure pulled back. “You don’t know how much I wanted you to be her. How much I wanted to see her again, how much I craved to hear her voice again. But your voice, although similar, is not hers. And your eyes? They might be the exact same colour, but they don’t twinkle in the way hers did. You,” you looked at the charred figure.

“You both are nothing but an illusion of who they both were, of what they were…And you could never be anything but. Because…” you hesitated, you didn’t want to say it. “Because you’re both dеad.”

The figures dissolved in an instant.

You crumbled onto the floor and sobbed. The nothingness embraced you like an old friend and you allowed your tears to stream down your cheeks in a cascade of pent-up emotions. All the denial you had forced through them, all the times you had blinked them away.

You cried and cried and mumbled incoherently how sorry you were over a hundred times. Nina was dеad. Your mother was dеad. They were both gone, and they would never come back. You pulled the ring from your fist, you’d held it so tightly that the shape of the stone had etched itself onto your hand. You held it between your fingers and stared.

Not even this rock would bring them back, even if it was a real Dеathly Hallow, even if it had the power to bring people back from the dеad, you were sure the price you’d pay for it would be far more devastating than the crumbling ghost of the person you knew that it would bring back.

“Truth,” a voice said, echoing in your ears the same way it had done inside the dream.

“She saw past despair and looked at the truth,” the other continued.

“You may go now, child.” A third one said. The reflective-like screen appeared in front of you. You could see the colours of the vault on the outside. You blinked and then turned your eyes back to the ring. You extended it right in front of your chest, holding it in the palm of your hand, before turning your hand upside down and letting it fall to the floor.

“You won’t bring it with you, child?” the second voice asked.

“No,” you said simply. “Something like this shouldn’t exist.”

“Destroy it then.”

“I can’t,” you said, you had felt the power within it. It was dark and dеadly. “You know I can’t.”

“Then someone else might take it. Use it.”

You let out a breathy scoff and then sniffed, your nose was still filled with snot from the tears. “Not if it’s unfindable,” you said and stepped out of the mirror. When you turned back to look at it, Nina and your mother were tapping at the crystal desperately. As if they too wanted to get out as if you were the only one who could help them.

You reached inside your pocket and took Nina’s wand in your hands. You looked at it with a sort of sorrowful look, eyes glassy with tears and then pointed it at the mirror. You took a deep breath, “Reducto!”

A flash of light came from Nina’s wand and crashed onto the face of the mirror, turning it into shreds. The wand had worked better than any wand you had ever used in your life, as if she had been made for you.

Unbeknownst to you, your spell hadn’t trapped the ring in the mirror forever, but rather, transported it back to its original place, Gaunt House. And it would remain there for years, until someone else, someone much weaker to the whispers of the dеad, tried to use it.

There's no chance for us

It's all decided for us

This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us

Who wants to live forever

Who dares to love forever

Oh oo woh, when love must diе

Series Masterlist | Next Chapter

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A/N: I questioned myself for making them suffer so much while revising this chapter. Some of Sirius' words are just heart wrenching to me, I swear <3