The echoes of her family's arguing that she'd heard that night still swirled in her head. Mama, small and quick, hitting Papa and him begging her to stop, to forgive him. Don't do this. He'd shouted as Ro took off that night into the rain. She could still feel the sharp bite of the cold nipping at her skin, which only propelled her forward. At some point, she had to turn around, didn't she? Had to open her eyes to face the future that had just shifted beneath their very feet.

She'd run until she'd reached the nearby lake. It was dark but illuminated as the moon hung over the water, a glowing pearl that cast a magnificent almost impossible blue light onto the water. Was it blue, or had she just been imagining things? Ro struggled to focus her eyes. Her feet hurt from running, and she struggled to bend her knees. Had she been hit by an erumpent?

As she blinked rapidly to clear her mind, Ro realized she wasn't staring at the blue lake, but at Malfoy hovering above her with an increasingly apprehensive look in his eyes. In an instant, she remembered everything they'd just been through: her almost being crushed by the wardrobe, getting him out of his room, discovering the dead body, almost drowning in ceiling-high waters, getting crushed yet again by a pantry cabinet and all the way to her fainting at the sight of —

Ro shut her eyes tight and raised a hand to her temple, pressing against it to quell the second wave of nausea that threatened to overturn what little she had in her stomach. She groaned, placing her forearm on the ground and attempting to sit up. "I'm sorry." she said, her hand moving to cover her face as she felt her cheeks flooding with embarrassment. The action had the added benefit of preventing her from seeing the pool of blood that had likely grown, and thus preventing them from repeating this whole ordeal again. "I'm sorry, I'm okay."

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