#amcarrow

            It wasn’t strange for her to duel. Marlene got into more fights than a drunk Irish man, and these days any fucker who supported blood purity was a target for the blonde, and Amycuw had pushed her too God damn far. She had been within and inch of grabbing his wand and snapping the damn twig so she could go after him with her bare hands when Slughorn and stepped in. It had felt so 𝓰𝓸𝓸𝓭 to have something, someone, anyone to fight against. For a moment she had been grateful to Lucius for giving her the release of a duel.

             𝓐𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓬𝓪𝓶𝓮 𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓭𝓸𝔀𝓷. When the dust settled all that was left was two teenagers left alone in the library to finish rshelving books together after curfew, without any damn magic. Some teachers assembly had placed them here unchaperoned, doors locked for three hours, and Marlene already felt sick of his presence, and his damn cologne.

             She sat sprawled across one of the tables, smoking a fag rolled two quickly from a page torn from one of the books they were meant to be sorting, and the tobacco she carried in her front pocket. All she wanted to was to lay here and finish the cigarette, and to drown out the smell of books and of fuckin’ pureblooded perfume.

"Twenty galleons? Are you insane? That's robbery!" Daisy complained loudly, glaring at the shopkeeper. She'd ventured off the beaten path of Diagon Alley, bored with it's shops and the overly watchful eye of the patrons there. Though she was getting better about dressing in a way that made her appear older so folks would stop questioning her right to do magic, there were still people beginning to recognize her and it was inconvenient. Knockturn Alley had a reputation that worked to her advantage, one of discretion. 

She had found herself in a small, dusty shop filled with antiques and rare magical artifacts. In her hand she held a silver locket etched with daisies. Many people with names like hers grew tired of their namesake, wanting to distance themselves from the image, but not her. She still adored them in all their varieties and had a soft spot for anything that displayed them. This locket had other interesting attributes as well, including the fact that the inside had been magically expanded to hold quite a few more than the standard two photographs. The original owner must have had a large family, like Daisy. Regardless of those traits, though, it was hardly worth the asking price. 

"That's real platinum gold, that is! Twenty galleons is a steal!" 

"Okay, first, platinum and gold are two different metals and this," she retorted, shaking the necklace at him, "is neither. It's silver, plain and simple. I'll give you five galleons, and that's still over-paying."

The man looked shocked and then downright furious. "You callin' me a liar, you little bitch?" 

Her spine stiffened at the word and her eyes blazed. This was the time she should have set the locket down and simply walked away, but she'd always had a quick temper - her eldest brother called it her redhead rage. "Either that or grossly uninformed. It's a wonder a man as stupid as you is still in business." 

His face darkened further and he began to advance on her, intent on bodily removing her from his store. It had been a while since he'd gotten to throw someone out and it always made his day. "Ought to show a bit more respect, missy... 'afore you cross the wrong person," he told her, his voice low and threatening. 

Daisy backed up a half step, still annoyed by his behavior but regretting her own outburst as well. When would she learn to shut her damn mouth? Her eyes darted around the store, looking for assistance or an avenue of escape and finding none. The shop owner was between her and the door and no one else seemed to be paying attention. Not for the first time, she wished she was old enough to simply apparate away. 

Long after Lucius had removed his mother from the Slytherin boys dorms and taken her to somewhere she'd be better off, Alecto was still sat on her brothers bed in the boy's dormitory. Her parents would be leaving the castle soon but she had no desire to leave her newest hiding place and see them off. She'd spent time with her father and avoided her mother and talk of what she was going to do once she finished Hogwarts without a solid betrothal. And now she just wanted some time to herself. Socialising wasn't her favourite thing at the best of times. Alecto acted like she liked people but they really were just dispensable and there for her amusement. She could be happy only ever talking to her brother and not having to lie about how she felt constantly.

Especially now she didn't have to lie to her brother as well. She wasn't sure she completely understood what had shifted between them but she knew his lips on hers felt more right than anything she'd ever experienced and so she was trusting it. She'd always loved him, always wondered if they were too close to just be regular siblings, always thought about the way his hand felt in hers a little too much. He was everything to her. Alecto had always been his. She'd always closed her eyes when others touched her and imagined that they were his softer hands running over her skin. And he had kissed her. He had crossed that boundary and her one secret had been given to him. She loved him. Perhaps more than anyone had ever loved.

And maybe that was why she still lay on his bed, leafing through the pages of his textbooks and lying back to get any closeness she possibly could to him. The window was open and she could feel the cold air slipping him but she simply used it as an excuse to wrap the covers around her. Alecto's head moved down to the pillow and lay in the same spot his did every night and she knew this had been anyone else's bed she'd think herself a stalker. But this was his bed. It was his space for her to inhabit and she knew he would never mind her being there. He was her comfort and if all she could take in that moment was being where he was then she'd cling to that.

T H E - C A R R O W S:  a playlist for the sister and brother who should never have been apart, for stolen kisses and lies, for jealousy and danger that became never ending and for a perfectly imperfect love.

001. sacrilege - yeah yeah yeahs. 002. crashed - daughtry. 003. jezebel -iron and wine. 004. never let me go - florence and the machine. 005. good to you - marianas trench ft. kate voegele 006. stay - rhinanna ft. mikky ekko 007. dark doo wop - Ms Mr 008. you're all i have - snow patrol 009. poison and wine - the civil wars (acoustic) 010. toxic - yael naim 011. touch - daughter 012. always - blink 182. 013. c'est la mort - the civil wars 014. if i didn't know better - sam palladio and clare bowen 015. tainted love - hannah peel 016. creep - radiohead 017. litost - x ambassadors 018. silhouettes - of monsters and men 019. the devil may cry - the weeknd. 020. possibility - lykke li

Remus walked through the library in silence, his mind still half-focused on his previous courses and the work that he would have to take care of that evening. All of the classes that he had been so intent on taking this year seemed to have added up quickly, now that papers were due and books needed reading. The quiet room was almost empty, save for the few students that he passed who looked intent on their studies, each sitting beside a large table stacked high with books. Exam season was far away, and due to it being in the middle of the week, he didn’t need to worry about a great number of students cramming in time to finish last minute work, either. If this meeting didn’t run over too long, Remus thought to himself, he would probably try and make use of the quiet space, himself.

Turning at the end of a long, tall shelf stacked almost impossibly high with dusty tomes, he spotted the corner that they had wrote about meeting up in throughout their letters. His eyes lifted as he saw someone already standing in the section, and he moved forward in a motion to speak to the girl. She was a seventh year Ravenclaw, if his memory served him correctly, and appeared to be somewhat friendly. As he moved forward, he found himself arguing that this wouldn’t be too bad- not nearly as terrible as it could have been, at least. He had been correct in his assumption as to his penpal’s house, and she appeared to be pleasant enough. However, just as he walked closer, she lifted her eyes to his for the faintest of seconds before turning away just as fast, taking with her an old biography. There was no semblance of recognition or consciousness in her appearance, something which caused him to immediately falter. Remus’ eyes quickly dropped and he stood in the section for a moment, entirely confused as to whether or not that was supposed to be the person he was meeting up with. She didn’t seem to acknowledge him in the least, so perhaps not.