The neat, looping handwriting on the parchment feels like a physical slap to the face.
“No matter how hard you try to disappoint your father, you will always remain his son.”
God, it makes him sick. He’s twenty-one years old, yet someone at that miserable Burke gala actually thought they had him entirely figured out, reducing everything he is to a pathetic cry for attention. The sheer, petulant fury of it tastes like acid in his throat. Yanking his wand free, he slashes it through the air before the thought even fully forms.
A silent burst of magic hits the page, and the elegant ink instantly liquefies, scrambling across the fibers into a jagged, unreadable blur.He shoves the note away, the nightstand drawer catching with a sharp click. On pure impulse, a quick, petty twitch of his wrist sends the iron key straight through the narrow crack of the wood until it drops inside with a dull thud. It is a completely useless, theatrical barrier, anyone with a wand could Alohomora the thing open in two seconds flat. He knows that. But if there isn't some kind of wall between himself and those words, he is going to tear this room apart.
Barty presses his knuckles hard against the desk to keep his hands from shaking, his gaze dropping bitterly to the loose parchment scattered across the wood. With a frustrated swipe of his hand, he flips through them—clippings about the missing Minister and the suffocating new Ministry curfew, all pinned down by scribbled listings of small, cramped flats for rent nearby. Trapped like a caged animal while the old man watches his every move, he can barely breathe under his father's roof. He shoves the apartment listings aside, the desperate longing to escape only sharpening the sick, hollow ache in his ribs.
