Chapter Text
Every bone in your body is tired of fighting. You, who’ve seen death and murder and everything in between, are now faced with the most difficult challenge you’ve ever seen.
Acting like you were okay.
In hindsight, maybe you shouldn’t have returned to school. Logically, you knew they would understand.
But deep down, you knew you just wanted to hurt yourself with Rowan’s memories.
Because how in the world were you supposed to walk where they walked, read the books that they loved, learn the things they would never be able to learn, and simply be okay?
How do you move on from someone who was so entwined in every aspect of your life?
You quickly learn that it’s easy to act happy. To act like you can breathe. To look like you don’t want to curl up and cry.
A part of you is disappointed in your friends not noticing.
(You know it’s impossible to break someone without knowing them well enough.
You begin to wonder if your friends even know you.)
You go to class. You do your homework. You keep up with your friend’s lives. You smile and laugh.
(You learn to lie to yourself.)
What you also learn, is that acting is exhausting.
You don’t know much in life. You don’t know what you want in the future. You don’t know what job you’ll have. You don’t know where you’ll be.
But if there’s one thing you know, it’s that you’re tired as hell.
You quit quidditch, despite the never-ending guilt.
(You expect to drown in a sea of it someday.
You hope it will be your last struggle.)
The team tries to talk to you out of it. By the time they find out where you are, you’re already gone.
There is a twisted part of you, one that laughs and mocks and kills any form of wellbeing.
It thrives off the irony of comforting your friends.
Gently, you rub Penny’s back, as she clings onto you and cries about Rowan. Nearby, Ben is panicking with a box of tissues.
My god. Will she just shut up about them.
(You shut that voice out as quickly as possible.)
You find yourself hating mornings.
There is a bitter act in waking up. One where you can’t seem to grasp why you chose to wake in the first place.
Here, in the empty dorm room, you find yourself hating everything Rowan loved.
Including yourself.
There is comfort in drowning yourself in work. Work, you thankfully discover, is tedious and mind-numbing.
With work, the hours bleed together. You forget who you are and why you feel so sad and empty.
(Work reminds you of dirty glasses and ink-stained hands. It reminds you of late nights and dim lamps.
Even now, you can practically hear the pages turning. You can see the content smile on their face.
Work remind you of Rowan.)
It gets harder to sleep at night.
Especially with the dreams, my god, those horrible dreams.
Some nights, you find yourself waking in a cold sweat. Frozen in fear and shock.
Some nights, you wake up with their name on your lips.
And on the worst nights, you’re the one holding her wand.
On those nights, you don’t sleep. You simply cry and cry and cry.
You begin wishing for eternal sleep.
You find it hard to live when it feels like you’ve killed a part of yourself.
You wonder if it’s warm where they are. If they have an unlimited number of books to read. If they’re surrounded by trees from their family’s farm.
You wonder if Rowan truly is in a better place now.
You wonder if they miss you.