Chapter Text
Darius forgot just how badly sunlight affected old photographs until he was rearranging his room. He didn’t care about the photos of him being promoted to Head Witch or the prints of his book cover. No, he could get those reprinted whenever he wanted. He had the digital files of those. What he was really worried about was his Grom photos. They sat framed and faced towards the window, and it was beginning to show.
Camilla’s deep, raven black hair had begun to lose its contrast, falling down a few shades and starting to blend into the dress he knew was more of a vibrant orchid than muted lilac the night she wore it. Even the abomination on her wrist was beginning to melt into the background of the glossy paper the image was printed onto.
Darius sighed and held the golden frame for a long while. He didn’t want to have to put the picture of them into storage. It still meant something to him. Sure, the photos were taken twenty years ago, but...
He wasn’t quite sure how to put into words exactly how he felt about this photo.
He’d run into the problem of sun damage with his Hexside memories before. Now he had a box full of plastic sleeves and acid-free backing boards where he kept dozens upon dozens of pages of handwritten notes that he’d noticed the colored highlighter fading on when he kept them out in a binder on his desk.
Being as skilled a witch as he was, he didn’t need to keep his high school notes on how to make and command basic abominations, but the handwriting on the smooth, cream-colored filler paper didn’t belong to him. The letters looped and lilted into particular and nostalgic shapes that he wasn’t able to reproduce on his own. They were pieces of art in their own right. He just felt wrong getting rid of them.
So he kept them locked away in the dark where they would stay beautiful for years to come. Sure, the pitch black ink they were originally penned in had mellowed into an ashy graphite grey, but he still had his memories of gingerly setting a finished page aside to dry and the painstaking effort of attempting to gauge how far of a line to highlight because it was easier to lay down the color first than risk smudging a masterfully calligraphed heading.
He sighed just thinking about his afternoon study sessions in the cafeteria. It was, unfortunately, an experience he would never live again. All he had left was the notes he pored over textbook after textbook to synthesize the information for.
With a heavy heart, he placed the photo of him and Camilla next to their notes neatly. He knew he might never see her face in real life again. If he could find a way to extend the lifespan of her image, he figured he should probably take it.