✦
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xxiii. Ghost
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THEA THINKS JUDE MIGHT HAVE turned into a ghost. He breezes past her every day for the next few weeks without even sparing her a glance. She tries to talk to him, but the more she tries, the quicker he seems to be able to slip away. So, eventually, she gives up and 'leaves him to it' as Polly suggested, when Thea had asked her for advice. Her heart aches at the sight of his pale, gorgeous face, but really, she's enjoying the break from the raging fire in her chest, and she finds herself thinking of Jude less and less. At the moment, although her flames are constantly flickering, it's soothing in a way. During the day, it reminds her of the Gryffindor common room, and sitting by the cosy hearth with her friends in the evenings.

Whispers are also a new, bitter development, and she can't stand it. It's worse because she knows Harry's no stranger to his name falling off everyone else's lips when he walks past, and she feels deflated knowing that he's experienced this since he was only eleven. But she finds herself taking more comfort than she likes in this new thing in common the pair have, because they've started spending more time together.

Harry and Thea are walking to the castle grounds to meet Ron and Hermione, to enjoy a rare, warm Saturday outside. Eventually, they reach the courtyard, where Draco and his friends are sat. Draco notices her, and looks away quickly. She forces the anxiety to stop bubbling away in her stomach by grabbing Harry's hand, something that seems to surprise both her and Harry. They keep walking, until she hears Goyle and Millicent Bulstrode start snickering behind them.

"Cindercroft and Potter? What are they? The pair who lived?"

"Oh, no wonder she survived! Maybe Potter passes his immortality on to the ones he's snogged!"

Then, Pansy Parkinson joins in.

"Romilda told me Cindercroft is a right fruit loop; jinxed her right out of the compartment for wanting to talk to Potter!"

Her blood starts to boil and her hand shoots to her wand in her pocket.

"Thea, don't!"

She storms over to the sneering brown-haired girl, and pulls her wand out. Her heart is a bundle of flames, and she feels like her blood is some form of gasoline.

"I didn't jinx anyone, but we can change that if you'd like?"

All Thea can hear is swear words coming from Parkinson's mouth. Her eyes narrow, and her lips part like she's about to say something, but before she can, Thea feels a warm hand pulling her away and not letting go. She lets Harry guide her away, her feet following after him but her mind only focusing on his hand in hers, like it's anchoring her to reality. She focuses on that, and somehow, it calms the rage in her body. Somehow, it makes her feel safe and sure of herself, and when the Slytherins keep jeering at her, she doesn't want to snap back.

"Merlin, you are pathetic!" Crabbe laughs.

"You need your little boyfriend to protect you!"

"Come on, stop!"

Thea freezes at Draco's voice, and she notices Harry watching their exchange carefully.

Thea tries to catch Draco's eye, but he ignores her on purpose.

"Just leave Cindercroft alone. Let's go."

He starts to walk away.

"You've seriously not started to care about that cow, have you?" Pansy Parkinson snaps, glaring at Thea as though she wants her to drop dead.

"Not at all." He meets Thea's eyes for a moment, then drops his gaze to the floor. "But she isn't worth getting in trouble for," Draco mumbles, as the group leaves.

Harry looks at her in confusion as they set off walking again.

All she can do is shrug and say, "He's strange."

Harry mutters, "Yeah."

They finally reach the spot under a tree by the lake, and when they sit down, they can see Hermione and Ron are walking down the hill towards them. Thea sighs and sits back, her hands running over her face. In the silence they walked in, her guilt set in, like a living monster roaring under her skin.

"I'm sorry about that."

Harry looks at her with a soft smile. "I can't lie, that was really stupid, T."

"I know."

She breathes in deeply and forces back the stinging in her eyes, determined not to cry.

Harry sighs and breaks the quiet, "What's wrong?"

After a moment, he places a hand on her shoulder softly, and those damn butterflies start flittering around in her stomach again.

She peeps through her fingers to find his green eyes staring at her, full of concern.

"I'm just sick of not being able to go anywhere without someone asking me what happened at the Ministry, what happened to me over the summer, whether I'm trying to be you –"

"Trying to be me? What?" Harry's brows furrow in confusion.

"As in being immortal," she says, a small smile playing on her lips.

"But I'm not immortal." Harry shakes his head, "I don't think I am, at least – anyway, carry on."

Thea takes a moment to admit to herself that he's definitely cuter than he was last week, or maybe she's just noticing it more...

" – whether I'm a ghost or if I'm snogging you!"

"Snogging me?"

"Yes, Harry, snogging you. I think that rumour came from your good friend Romilda." She pouts, folding her arms and turning her head to the dark-haired girl staring at them from across the grounds, her face sneering and positively green with jealousy. "Just look at her."

"She's quite scary, to be honest." Harry's eyes widen in a look of repulsion and Thea laughs loudly, giving him a light dig to his arm.

She's too busy turning over the words he's so cute in her mind to acknowledge the burning in her chest.

"Anyway, I need to talk to you at some point – but not here." Harry gives her a pointed look, which she understands greatly. It must be something important, something Dumbledore's told him.

"I'll find you later, before bed."

Thea smiles at him.

Then, Ron and Hermione join them, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Hey. Are you guys OK?" Thea asks.

"Yeah!" says Ron, a little too enthusiastically.

Thea snickers. It's so obvious to her that they like each other.

She pulls a tired-looking book from her bag. It's one of her favourites, Wuthering Heights.

Harry frowns at the cover before glancing at her and speaking. "How did you get your hands on Muggle books when your mum is a Death Eater?"

Thea has to bite back a laugh at Harry's bluntness before answering. "Lyra doesn't really hate Muggles. She just...has a bit of a thing for power. And well, books are powerful aren't they?"

Haven't a clue, Harry thinks, but he can't bring himself to say that to the girl who's positively bursting with light, simply because she's holding a book in her hand. So instead, he smiles and nods, before taking out the Half-Blood Prince's book. Then he realises that this book has had him obsessed with it since he first touched it. And he knows exactly what Thea means.

Silence falls on the group, disturbed only by the usual sounds of conversation floating around the groups clustered around the grounds, and light-hearted magic as people practice spells in the last of the year's sunshine. A calm fills her body, despite the flames. She is sat absorbing a book and Harry's presence, his knee only just touching hers. She wears a soft smile, and she can't help but hope this is where she'll be for a long time.

✦

Somehow, Eden finds herself walking quickly down the grassy incline of the hill on which Hogwarts resides, her feet taking her to the edge of the forest where a certain someone likes to spend their free time feeding the Thestrals.

The girl stumbles into a clearing only two minutes into the sparse trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. From a few feet away, the back of Luna's white-blonde head is stark against the brown and green of the ground.

"Hello, Eden."

Luna doesn't turn around. Luna doesn't look at her. But Luna makes Eden's heart jump into her throat.

Breathing in the crisp, still air, Eden makes her way over to sit next to Luna on the log she's perched on, their arms brushing ever so slightly.

"How have you been?" Eden says, her voice a little strangled.

"Oh, I've been fine. Great, actually."

"That's nice –"

"Yes, I did miss you terribly Eden. You don't need to ask."

Eden blinks. She swears the girl lives in her head sometimes; she predicts her words before Eden says them, she knows instinctively what's going in the chaotic mess of her mind. Luna knows, even when Eden doesn't.

"I wasn't going to ask."

"Yes, you were." Luna looks at her and gives her a light smile.

The pair's conversation is replaced by the clicking and breathing of animals, and the running of nearby water for a few moments.

"Can I see it?"

"See what?" Eden asks, her stomach dropping at the question, because she knows Luna as Luna knows her, and she knows the girl's going to ask her about the Dark Mark.

"Your mark – I know you're with them. I'm not stupid, contrary to popular belief."

Eden exhales, though as her breath leaves her lungs, it's replaced with acid, killing her from the inside and disintegrating her to nothing on the forest ground.

"I don't have the Mark. They don't just give it to everyone."

She rolls back her sleeve to show Luna that her skin is clear from the black, swirling ink.

"That's a good thing," Luna says. "You can still choose what path you want to go down, Eden."

Eden looks down. "I wish it was that simple. I only joined Dumbledore's Army last year because I felt brave with you. You're the only one who knows the real me."

Luna reaches for her hand. "It might not be simple, but it's not as difficult as you think it is. You said to me that was the reason you joined, but what made you stay was that you felt good for being around those people and learning good magic for good reasons. Don't forget that!"

"I'm not as strong as Thea. She's basically perfect," Eden snaps. Then, she sighs, "And they want me and Jude to get her back on the right track this year, or there'll be trouble."

Luna sighs. "You can tell Dumbledore –"

"No, I can't."

Eden glances at the exasperation on Luna's face.

"Eden, you can't blame Thea for all of this. You can do exactly what she did. You can choose right instead of wrong. And besides, I think you know that Thea isn't perfect."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She's only trying to be perfect, and ironically, that's where her problems come from. She can't please everyone, no matter what."

Eden falls quiet.

Luna squeezes her hand. "For what it's worth, I know that you don't want any of this. And while I can't be too close with you when everything turns completely bad, I'll find you after."

Eden doesn't reply. She just lets the warmth inside her spread up her, comforting her and turning her lips up into a smile.

She does still matter to Luna. She finds herself thinking that she always will, in some way or another.

✦

Even though the air has turned undeniably cold, and barely anyone steps outside without a coat, Thea finds that her new, favourite place to clear her head is the castle grounds. For most of the next Sunday morning, she's alone, until someone she didn't really expect joins her.

"How are you doing, T?"

Thea whips around at the sound of a concerned voice pulling her from her unbelievably loud thoughts. She pulls her gaze from the Black Lake and Eden's face appears in view, as pretty and as tired as ever. They're into October now, and this is the first time that Thea has seen Eden properly since school started.

Thea feels an urge to strike her, like she did to Jude, but the other side seems to take over, the side that makes her feel so sorry for Eden that her bones ache, because now she's running towards the girl and engulfing her in a tight embrace.

"Absolutely awful. You?"

Eden sighs as they pull away and take a seat on Thea's blanket that Lyra had knitted for her when she was seven. The scarlet wool is wrought with memories that Thea can feel seep into her skin every time she wraps herself in it, but despite what had happened, she takes an immense comfort in what her mother was like. Or pretended to be like, she feels is a better way of putting it.

"The same."

It's quiet between them; the only sound now intertwined with the air is the crackling of war and soft, chirping birds. Then, Eden speaks.

"It's weird, don't you think? That we've been related this whole time?"

"Weird is an understatement, I think." Thea's gaze lands on a butterfly resting on the ground just in front of them and sighs. "I never ... I never expected any of this. So it's all just been thrown at me with no kind of pre-warning."

Eden turns to look at Thea, her usually warm brown eyes now cold with melancholy. "I'm sorry for all of this. I really didn't know that your mother was one of them...they hid it so well."

"It's not your fault," the blonde says, picking at a loose red thread on her robe sleeve.

"I just...I wish I could make everything different. I could've told you that we were related when I found out, I could've told you who Jude's mother is..."

"Eden, it's alright. Yeah, it hurt, and I have been so angry with you...but what choice did you have?"

Eden looks away.

"Maybe, you wouldn't have been tortured, if we'd just been honest."

Thea is pulled back to that small room with nothing but a fire and a wooden window pane. Her mouth is warping around those words, those knives that seem to have left a bleeding slice that refuses to heal.

✦

She remembers so clearly the look on Jude's face when it was his turn to 'look after her, see how she's getting on', and she couldn't stop saying "I am with the Death Eaters, I am with them and I'm not changing, not ever!" And then she snapped out of her daze, and she was caressing the bare skin of her left forearm she swore had a black skull and serpent moving on it, just a second ago.

He stroked her face, and she thought he was crying. He might have been angry or wasting away, she's not too sure about the details. She never is these days. Then he says, my God what have they done to you, Cherie; she remembers that because that's the French word she'd taught him when they'd first started talking. She remembers melting into those warm, slim arms of his and falling into an empty sleep.

✦

"I am with the Death Eaters."

"I'm sorry, what?"

Tears sting her eyes as she thinks get out of your head, out of his arms, it's not where you belong, but she can still feel his ghost when she snaps back to Hogwarts. With Eden. With a reminder of her mother's betrayal.

"That's what they made me say, in the hopes it'd come true. Draco didn't tell you?"

"No, I wouldn't let him, or Jude, tell me anything after they made me watch Bellatrix torture you."

Silence. It's crisp and buzzing, pulling her skull and choking her so she can't reply. All she can do is a run a hand over her left forearm that's bandaged tightly over 'Death Eater', carved clear and in harsh red cuts.

"I'm sorry you had to –"

"Don't you dare say sorry!"

The conversation lulls away. A tear slips quickly and unnoticeably down Thea's face.

After a moment, Eden breathes out, her throat choked and voice strangled, almost beyond recognition.

"My God, I can't wait until all of this is over."

Thea laughs bitterly. "Me too, but I have a feeling it's barely even begun yet."

That night, Thea's dreams are filled with memories of Malfoy Manor, her friends, and everything she wishes could be different.