Chapter 4
She realised when she limped through the door from the corridor into her quarters that she hadn’t bothered to change clothes since it began, she hadn’t really had time. But she had taken the briefest moment before she gathered her students to the Great Hall to change out of her nightclothes. (She was not going to fight and possibly die in her tartan dressing gown, it was simply not going to happen.)
Now she stumbled through the door to her bedroom, suddenly frantic and short of breath, and quickly removed the black outer robe, the black button boots, the black floor-length skirt, the black high-collared blouse, and everything else. She wrapped a dressing gown around her and threw the rest into the fireplace and set it alight.
As it went up in smoke she resolved never to wear only black again outside of a funeral, she would no longer allow the pain in her to show outside, and that extended to the clothes she wore. No more dressing like every day was a day in mourning, though she would be mourning for the rest of her life at this rate. She watched as the flames swallow the clothes and felt the tears start again.
She considered throwing her wand in after it all, let go of that too, releasing it after all that it had done, all that she had done with it. She didn’t need it anyway, she was adept at wandless magic. So she threw it in the fireplace and watched as it too was enveloped in flames. She would have to replace it before she could teach again… if she taught again. She was too tired to think of that now.
She was too tired and too desperately sad to envision any kind of future. She wanted nothing more than to give it all up, set all the contents of her rooms ablaze, and die choking on the smoke like she was choking on grief. She didn’t want to keep going, she didn’t want to go on. And yet she would go on, later.
For now, she turned and collapsed into her bed, hoping she might escape the nightmare she was living, even if she was only escaping into another one.