FLESH & GOLD

declan fionn prewett ; exquisite, then, that such a boy would come to yearn after sunlit fields and warm hands more than he would ever a throne.

[declanprewett-blog]

leoyaxley:

“Right you will.”

They stand across from one another, regarding; a look of bemusement flitting over Declan’s face, a quaint smile tugging over the edges of Leo’s mouth. A cold chill pervades the night, and yes, it’s late; but the hourhand has never stopped them before, has it? Somewhere beyond the mountains, a war is being fought. Somewhere within the castle, Electra is scheming, her green-clad sycophants preparing for a fight of their own – dirty in variety, naturally. 

They are two boys who would scale the world if only to stand upon the highest precipice and look over all the ruin yet to ameliorate; they have fought and hoped and dreamed for far too long, far too wide, to stop when the sun falls and the moon takes its place. Night has drawn its cold, unforgiving blanket over the horizon; but still they push on. It’s near-midnight, and still Leo can find his best mate here in these dark corners and open skies; drilling, drilling, perfecting. 

“Go on and fetch a prefect, you cheeky rascal. Can’t nab me without nabbing yourself.” A goodnatured quirk of his lips, almost that lucky, searing smile - but not quite. “Last I recall, I’m the captain and you’re the chaser.” He suddenly perks, as if struck by a brilliant idea. “But – d’you suppose if we’re both out by Saturday, there’ll be a raincheck on the match?”

There’s something strange and awning between them - a distance that spirals out of the deep and creeps silently out of the abyss. Standing here, one shoulder pressed casually (yet not casually) against the doorframe of the locker room, his cloaks draped dryly about him; he feels all at once far away and magnified. There’s a peculiar taste of want that tickles his tongue. But instead of letting it blossom, Leo steadfastly raises his eyes to Declan’s as the other boy pulls on a shirt. But still, he cannot help but watch as the rivulets of water make their inevitable way towards the ground — over a cheek, a collarbone, the swell of a chest — 

                     and he swallows, feeling his Adam’s apple bob up and down, once. Twice.

“Bella keeps telling me not to worry, but I know Lestrange’s cooking up something beastly. Everyone’s on edge.” Really, he feels that it’s only him. It’s only him on edge as he stands here watching his mate dress. His brow furrows, if only to distract himself. One hand plays absentmindedly with his wand as he waits for Declan to finish. “How was practice? Worth the cold shower? Should’ve invited me, mate.”

Declan claps a hand over his mouth, a poorly made effort to conceal his delight. He smiles through his teeth, some strand of vibrancy returning to his eyes as he regards Leo. “That’s rude,” he remarks lightly, and after a moment, rises to meet him from where he stands, the strong lines of his cloaked body made soft by the moonlight, the shadows. Leo has always looked the most vulnerable at night, when he is less body and more voice. Declan is inevitably reminded of summer evenings spent out on the Prewett summer villa porches, where they once sat slapping mosquitos from their legs and drawing obscene things in the sand, gasping and aching in their sides. It was so stupid, but in a lovely way; the never-leaving warmth of a body pressing against his arm. 

Declan stops with a half meter between them, and before he is aware of what he is doing, before he even thinks about it (because he never thinks when he is with Leo, there is only instinct and subconscious and automatic), surges forward to poke Leo’s face, an index finger gently sinking into the hollow of his cheek. He retreats, pleased. “Sorry, captain,” he says slowly, quietly, and catches himself laughing. “I repent in earnest.”

Because it is so easy. To be with Leo is to be with himself, made better, stronger, less of a haphazard posterboy who lives each day more and more like a game he needs to beat. He doesn’t know how he managed ever without this golden boy by his side, always quipping something uproarious, always graceful and magnanimous and witty in the way all fallen angels must be - and always watching Declan with those eyes of his, the ones that sit like a comfortable weight on his shoulder. He has never felt so not alone.

Declan scrunches his nose, a motion mildly reminiscent of a petulant child’s, and shakes his head. “And when isn’t she cooking up something beastly? Reckon it’s going to be awful, no doubt about it.” He offers Leo a friendly knock to the shoulder. “Relax, you bloody scoundrel of a man. No rain checks will be in order. We’ve been playing Lestrange and her pit of vipers for years.

“Practice was fine. I had to imagine your stressed out shrieking sounding out from across the field while I worked for the full effect,” Declan continues, without missing a beat. The humor that sits between he and his best mate is like refracting magnetism, like sunlight - fast, brilliant, and natural instinct. He bats his lashes with artificial tragedy. “And well, I did invite you. I owl’ed. Your loss.”

[declanprewett-blog]

DATE : 5 September 1944 LOCATION : Gryffindor quidditch locker rooms TIME : 23:54 (11:54 pm) STATUS : Open to any

The shower water hits his back freezing cold.

Nevertheless, Declan endures it. It’s his own fault - he had lost track of time practicing on the pitch and missed curfew, when the water is promptly shut off. Declan considers a warming spell, but recalls with some disappointment that his wand is currently zipped up in his quidditch bag, which he has hung by the locker room door.

It doesn’t matter. The cold isn’t too bad - enjoyable, even, as it seems to wake him up. He’s exhausted - three hours flying alone on the pitch would do that to any man - but this is a kinder sort of exhaustion. He can feel it ache in his calves and callous on his palms. This sort of tired is so much better. Declan shuts off the water after a few minutes and emerges with a towel wrapped around his waist. He is wiping off the beads of water trickling from his hair and down his shoulders, chest, when he hears footsteps.

He stops.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Declan’s mouth quirks into a small frown. It is difficult to ascertain whether he regards the figure with an innocent and mild bemusement, or genuine blooming caution. Then, perhaps realizing his state of dress (or lack thereof), Declan makes to awkwardly wrestle on a loose sweater. It clings uncomfortably to his wet skin, but he ignores it.

Declan vaguely realizes he is shivering slightly, the chill of the water not having entirely left his body. “I’ll call a Prefect,” he says. A friendly tease, a sarcastic threat, empty words to fill the spanning silence -

It could be anything, really.

[maxironsdirectory]

‘Wonderland’ Magazine, 2011

[maxironsdirectory]

Favourite Images of Max Irons (26/50)

[declanprewett-blog]

reginaserpentes:

He kneels besides her like a knight of broken crusades, all humble decorum and red swashes of torn fabric – but she receives him coldly despite it, she receives him with a flinch and a sharp inhale of breath. 

They’ve come so close to this a thousand times. They’ve passed each other in the illuminated halls and felt their lungs constrict, they’ve met eyes and exchanged biting words and wished ill upon each other on the quidditch field, the dueling mats, the steps of Hogsmeade. But it all came down to this: the infinitesimal approach towards the forbidden, the enormous restraint of holding back, the unconquerable weight lain across their bare shoulders. It was like a noose tied about their neck, a black-clad executioner waiting for them to step from the precipice and succumb to the deep unknown.  

Touch me. 

If he senses it, the vastness of the moment, he doesn’t allow it to dissuade him. When the snake coils, injured; the lion nonetheless takes her up in his mouth. She is so thrown by the circumstance and shocked by the moment that she doesn’t strike, merely falls limp, letting him fuss, letting him press the pads of his fingers against her palm, against the tendons and veins of her hands, her wrist. They’ve spent so much time and effort in the quest to avoid contact; but with a crash and a bellow of trumpets, it happens anyways. Again, and again. And inevitably, again. There’s dirt on his cheek. For a fleeting, short-lived moment, her dark eyes linger upon the smear of it, and she almost has the mind to lift her free hand and wipe it away.

But then he bends her ring finger and she feels a sharp jot of pain travel down the length of her arm. Instinctively, Evadne snatches her wrist back from him, pressing it protectively against her chest instead, and just as instinctively, her gaze focuses into something poignant and damning, a dirty narrowing of her eyes, a silent accusation. The snake convulses in the lion’s jaw; and he drops her, but not without leaving a scrape.  

Prewett draws away, but as he does, she catches his quiet remark. It’s like he’s speaking to a child, and the rush of indignant pride immediately comes to prove his point, as if her very nature cannot bear to be chastised. Don’t be so proud, he says to her. But in her eighteen years, all she has heard, all she has known, is this: Be prouder. 

“Don’t be so noble,” is her immediate retort, with a stubborn raise of her chin (but why was it that she always felt the need to be taller, more powerful, more foreboding, when it came to speaking with Declan Prewett?). Her lips, painted red for a night of frivolity, shine equally well in the midst of terror. To smile in the face of danger is to take from it its prowess. Of course she doesn’t mean it, but if she loses her propensity for masks and deception, then what else was there to clothe her when she was weak? 

“We would have killed each other eventually. It’s inevitable. You should have just let fate have its go.” She takes on a matter-of-fact, melancholy sort of tone. But there’s amusement there too. There was always a hint of amusement in the centre of every terrible, despicable thought. “I’m not one of your ugly little sheep, darling; I don’t need you to leap to my rescue. Besides. You’ve lost your crook in the rubble. We’re both lost, now.” 

Don’t be so proud? She wants to laugh. She would be proud, she would be arrogant and heartless and brutal, like a wolf killing in the dark, like a ship navigating black waters. And she would make death proud to take her, when it finally came with its scythes and shadows and unending cold. 

“Let’s not pretend to be better than we are, lion boy.” She looks up at him, her lashes fanning out and her eyes reflecting the light of her wand. Golden, gold, decaying. They are sixteen and pressed against each other on silk sheets, they are seventeen and frozen in shame, they are eighteen and there’s something glimmering faintly at the end of the tunnel. 

“But really.” All hail the teenage girl, with her pursed lips and grand schemes. She’s still there, beneath the regalia and crowning, beneath the glory and carnage. “Haven’t we progressed beyond all this surface shit? Let’s go deeper, baby. Hit me while I’m down.” 

Lion boy. Of everything she hurls his way, this abrades against his cheek, a bruise and a welt. It isn’t shocking, per se, the coldness with which she addresses his birthright, his domicile, and the swiftness with which she ties him to it. Gryffindor, Prewett. Prewett, Gryffindor. Of course. Isn’t it what has always been done? In the end, Declan is nothing but a mascot, to her as he is to everyone - head of the pride, head of the Resistance, fire-eyed thing of the stars, the radiant emblem of justice that will save them all. The handsome daydream. Declan will carry this burden without resentment, but it is hard, sometimes, to feel as if he is nothing but vapid grandeur and a fantasy of the masses. 

"You're incorrigible," Declan snaps, words like teeth, agitated and uncomfortable. She speaks like Avery from an afternoon eons ago, spitting and hissing at the mere idea of help, of Declan having a shred of humanity that he is willing to extend to a snake. It is infuriating and it is unbelievable, how foreign kindness is to these dark, prideful creatures. “Not you, too - the whole lot of you are like stubborn primary children, fucking Merlin.” He draws back further from her, just barely bristling. He doesn’t deny it - that they would kill each other - though Declan does not believe it, not truly. There is little affection in his heart for Carrow, but there is no true ill will. Devastation does not come naturally to boys beneath the sun.

And here she is, speaking so candidly of her demise, so intertwined with her legacies and crowns, so taken with her inglory, that the death of it seldom moves her. How sad, Declan finds himself thinking. How cold, to feel death so intimately, to wear it like tassels upon the shoulders, to know it as men know war.

"Get over yourself, Carrow," Declan retorts abruptly. "Normal people don't want to - to hit you while you're down. We don’t all live in Riddle’s medieval kingdom. Some of us - ” And he pauses here, never able to stay frozen for too long, never able to dance a whole dance without adjusting the mask. He looks upon Carrow, now, and forcibly pinches his mouth into a scowl. “Some of us left. We're not all out to get you, despite what you've been trained to believe."

Declan reaches for Evadne’s wand, where the Lumos is beginning to fade. "Well, you still have yours, don't you?" Declan gestures, and isn't it ridiculous, that the thought of her Apparating without him doesn’t occur to him until now? That he is the only one in true danger? That even when it is with red-lipped, red-rosed Evadne, whose eyes cut like diamonds, whose mind is marble, silk, thorn, indigo -

That even then, his first thought had been, we. He and the vipress, together.

Don’t call me baby, he wants to whisper.

[druella-rosier-blog]

It's just six words

Two foolish hearts, two outstretched hands.

send it’s just six words for a six word story between your muse and mine.

[watchoutforintellect]

I spill towards the stars in the empty years.

Anne Sexton, from “Where I Live in This Honorable House of The Laurel Tree” in The Complete Poems (via watchoutforintellect)

[declanprewett-blog]

reginaserpentes:

She has never known terror. Not like this. 

Evadne Carrow has seen many atrocious, heart-wrenching things in her lifetime; but not once in her seventeen years has she witnessed such massive destruction, such measured chaos, such great, crushing shock. She had been knocked from her seat when the first black shell fell, but it was the second that was like the ringing bell of the apocalypse, shrill and deafening, utterly dominating in the way it swallowed things and peoples and castles. The sky was falling, rubble and ash and dust so thick that it could choke; and for the first time in her lifetime, she had felt fear so sharp that it could cut her from the inside out. This was not the terror she knew. This was something otherworldly, the crying and the screams, the fallen stones and the broken paths; Hogwarts crumpling beneath the blow of muggle inventions – who would have foreseen the day that wizards and witches would fall merciless to the enormous monstrosity of their inferior counterparts?

Who would have foreseen the day that she faced such terror and was frozen in the face of it? 

She can’t quite make sense of the night – it’s all a senseless blur, too dark and too light, too slow and too quick for her sluggish mind to process. And through it all — the little boy grabbing hold of her hand, her wrenching it away from him, stumbling from the crowds, pushing her way towards the double doors, emerging in the halls – is this question: how could they have done this to us? They had power beyond belief, they could turn blood to arsenic and swallow fame whole: yet here they were, here she was, lost and meandering, bleating like a lost sheep to the winds, utterly aghast with the reality of the situation. Terror. It paralyzes queens, cripples empires. There’s a cut slicing thinly from her shoulder to clavicle, there’s dust on her face, in her throat; she’s coughing and somehow, somewhere, she had fallen from the snakes and found herself maneuvering through a labyrinth of halls that were not there before (the castle reacting, no doubt; setting traps for invaders and closing doors to those who called this place home). There’s a frantic sheen to it all, like a kaleidoscope shattering all the colours and remaking them again. 

Nothing makes sense. 

A suit of armour barrels past her, helmet crushed by falling rubble; she’s shivering against a wall, cloak lost;  and then there’s a new hallway and a new scene of desolation, and for the first time in what seems like hours upon hours, she is not alone. 

Evadne squints against the thickness of the air, and from the darkness emerges a figure that may as well have been molded from light. She’s near delirious, her mouth is dry; there’s something painful pressing sharply into her neck, her hands, scraped by sharp edges. She sees them like she sees the sun: dimly, without focus – and perhaps they see her more clearly, because one moment, they are ten metres away, and the next, there is the vociferous slating of stone against stone; and she feels something warm and solid slam into her body, pushing her out of harm’s way as the archway collapses in a series of cracks. 

They fall gracelessly. She cries out as her wrist does something terrible as it hits the ground. Her saviour (attacker?) swears loudly, angrily. They untangle with even less finesse, and only then does she jolt from her hounded reverie and realize whose hands had shoved her to the ground, whose body had pressed unceremoniously against hers as they fell against cracked marble. 

He stands above her, and she still can hardly see him in the settling black; but she still recognizes him, the way he stands like a lion reared to fight, the way he inquires after her like a king after a fallen swan. No one else could personify such nobility even in the midst of this devastation. 

Declan Prewett. 

“Fuck,” she hisses without decorum (both at him, and herself, and the world as they know it), painfully pulling herself up against the nearest wall, where she gasps for breath. A moment passes; Evadne cradles her wrist close to her chest, wincing, while trying to decipher the dark. Her wand is still in her pocket; she fumbles for it with her free hand, and fingers closing about it, whispers, “Lumos.” 

And in the dull glow, they are illuminated in all their rumpled glory. He’s as surprised as she is, she’s certain of it: though whether they are displeased or merely inconvenienced, is a query yet to answer. The light flickers with her spirits; volatile, uncertain. She feels all at once caged, an animal shut in with its greatest enemy; a tigress facing a lion – and trapped; a bull and a torn red flag. 

“Hello again, baby.” She tries to muster a smile, but finds that it’s fled from her. Are you alright? he asks. But she cannot answer, not without damning every centimetre of their current situation. And for what? Instead, there is a empty, cold sort of irony, which she seizes upon like a lifeline in a sea of uncertainty. This afternoon seems so far away; lifetimes, eons. And from the deep waters, she latches on only to one moment —

“This time it wasn’t me who crashed into you, was it?”

He knows from the first words: a hissed curse, a weak spell - and he feels he has known for years already when she finally addresses him, baby wrapped like a ribbon around the great and terrible gift of her presence. God, he knows. And how could he not? He would recognize Carrow across ballrooms, across summers, stripped to nothing but rags or raised to queenship - the overwhelming being of her is forever steadfast. He turns fully to regard her, lips parted and eyes wide, as bewildered as he is unmoved. Shouldn’t he have expected this? They are refracting magnets, molten Prewett and thieving Carrow, spinning worlds whose axes tilt just so they may meet every orbit - pulled to one another over and over, in streets and alleyways, in dreams and memories.

Carrow holds her illuminated wand strangely, and it is this observation that jarrs him from his reservations, her gilded remarks sliding off of him with ease as he silently makes his way back to her, uncertainty pushed beneath a naked, pressing concern Declan will never admit to come morning. “And this time it wasn’t me made into a doormat,” he remarks unsmilingly, stiffly, only to kneel beside her and take her wrist into his hands all the same, finding he cannot muster sufficient contempt for her irredeeming sharpness. He studies her injury with great concentration, and is distantly relieved to find it does not appear severe. “Bruised, maybe twisted,” he mutters, nearly to himself, and meticulously uncurls each of her fingers to test for a reaction, a specific tendon.

For a moment, he forgets whose hand he holds in his own - she is another injured quidditch teammate at halftime, she is Leo after an ill-advised and terribly satisfying fistfight, she is Bellavie in the hospital wing, laughing, enduring, endlessly generous -

- and abruptly, the moment ends.

Declan blinks, and recedes immediately as their surrounding chaos returns to him in jagged fragments. It is not so much of a recoiling as it is a cautious sliding, a weary sinking. He lays her wrist back at her side, gentle and hasty, and after a moment of hesitation, flicks his gaze up to meet hers. “Don’t be so proud,” is all he able to say, and he delivers it as plainly as he can - it is dusted with irritation, but empty of condescension, of cruelty. He feels complicated inside - some haphazard concoction of rue, of anxiety, of indignation, of bitterness. And yet, of all things, he is certain of one truth: He would not stand to see Evadne harmed.

This is dangerous, however, and as he holds her eyes with his own, unwilling to break first (to leave first, to let go first), he knows this, above Bordeaux or bedsheets, will be a secret to carry with him to the grave. His greatest, his darkest, his heaviest.

It must be - for this, just this, is what determines victory in warfare.

[declanprewett-blog]

🍹!!

ask meme 2/? | a headcanon/fanfic for @camillabbott​

Declan figures a Saturday morning trip to the greenhouse is in order. If he doesn’t get out of his dorm, after all, he’ll go mad - Bellavie and Charles have gone to Hogsmeade with Kharmalia for brunch at the new Chinese restaurant (and if Declan wasn’t invited by the demon Head Girl, he isn’t sulking), Leo is out sick, and there are only so many hours of Resistance lesson planning and Knights-scrutinizing he can engage in before his vision starts to swim with Riddle’s face - which, no.

He isn’t surprised to stumble across Camilla there - she reads often in the greenhouse, or waters the plants, or conducts Herbology experiments in advance so as to avoid dueling other frantic students for bookings later in the week (students like Declan). It’s very clever of her - Charles commends her relentlessly. Today, she is in the general flowers section, shear in one hand, basket in another. In the basket lay a dozen brightly colored blossoms - he recognizes a rose, a carnation, and little else - each distinctly different from one another.

“Morning,” Declan offers, and she graces him with a mild, elegant nod of the head. It’s strange, how regality hangs from her frame, even adorned in yellow and black - she is an Abbott, he forgets occasionally; a snake before she was a badger. Declan seats himself on an empty patch of grass and watches her work for a few minutes. There is a peace to her method, a soothing effect that arises from her dependable repetition. After a while, Camilla sets the basket down to join him, and they sit in amicable silence. She studies him, and he studies the grass. He doesn’t know what to expect - perhaps she will inquire after the whereabouts of his Aviators, or how Resistance developments are coming. Sometimes he is asked about the quidditch games, whether he’s dating Bellavie. These have been all the world wants from him as of late, it seems.

“You must be very tired,” Camilla says finally.

 It is the closest thing to an outstretched hand, a set of dark, knowing eyes amidst all the light, and he is so grateful. Declan feels his eyes flutter. “Not too bad,” he mutters, but they are vapor words, and without thinking too hard about it, he settles his shoulder against hers - surprisingly strong, for someone so gentle. All the strong ones are, comes the bittersweet thought. Girls like Camilla, like Bellavie and Vesta - there is an incredible resilience to the way they stand, an enduring light to their weary-worn existences that will forever be unknown to the snakes Declan once dwelled amongst. What is gold, what is blood and power, before their startling humanity? How could tomorrow thrive off of anything but their courage?

When he wakes, he is alone. At his side, where Camilla once sat, sits two things: a note, and a potted Star of Bethlehem. The note reads:

This one is a favorite. They call it a florist’s nightmare, funnily enough. Water daily.

[declanprewett-blog]

marsavery:

DATE: September 1st, 1944 TIME: 23:32 LOCALE: Slytherin Dungeons OPEN TO: Declan Prewett

          At first there was only huddled silence. Mars had never been afraid of the unknown – it was the known that scared him, the fist hurtling toward his face that he didn’t know how to dodge. It scared the little ones, though, and while he was awkward at being comforting he did his best. He could remember nights where Mercury would cry out and Mars would just lay in bed, pretending not to listen, pretending he didn’t care. How often he’d pretended those things, back then. How often he still did.

          Then, the ceiling began to shake. Druella Rosier’s fragile form seemed to tremble beneath the dirt, and then the ceiling was collapsing quite violently, water bursting from above as their entire bunker began to wash away. His priority was the others first, of course – younger than him, less adept at getting themselves out of trouble. His wand in hand, Mars used the other to haul them to safety, often to his own knights. Snakes were ruthless, but in a crisis they banded together, one united front hell-bent on protecting each other and themselves.

          The room began to clear and Mars decided it was enough, trying to find what the hell was going on, when he heard something slimy and slick dropping into the water. He ran, and the scrambling of his feet made him unlucky. Mars tumbled, his chin hitting stone as blood smeared across it. He wasn’t in too much pain, though it did hurt, but when he tried to lever himself out, his foot was entirely stuck.

          You buffoon, Avery. Get up. Yet he could not, no matter how many times Tom’s scathing voice sounded like a conscience in his mind. The awful sounds grew closer until the squid blew by him entirely, seeming not to take notice of his head barely above the water. Once he was sure it was reasonably far away, he shouted – and hoped whoever was coming would do so quickly. The water had begun to rise.

“Stay where you are!”

Declan shouts it in a petrified third year’s face, forced to be callous by circumstance, by roaring water and monstrosity. With hands clamped tightly down on the child’s shoulders, as if to prevent him from being flushed away, he looks wildly about the surrounding chaos to locate a familiar face, a free arm - and is met with grim results. Nearly his entire Resistance is here, but there are simply too many students to pull to safety, too many dungeon walls to keep from collapsing; too many and too much. Declan is soaked to the bone, cloak discarded somewhere beneath the water, his woolen sweater wrapped around a shaking girl he’d sent Bellavie’s way just moments ago. The water that slams into the dungeons feels endless. 

“The squid,” Declan hears the boy saying. “It was just here - I was - will it c-come back - ”

“Stay where you are,” Declan orders one more. Clumsily, he casts a drying spell upon the child’s soaked robes - it is mediocre at best, the elementary spell made significantly weaker when channeled through a wand other than his own. He’s borrowed one from an injured Gryffindor, his own trapped somewhere beneath the rubble of a ruined corridor, and has a strong suspicion it is unicorn hair - those never sit well with his magic. As Declan motions to catch the attention of an unoccupied Resistance Ravenclaw from across the dungeons - finally - he manages to offer the boy a nearly-gentle squeeze. “Somebody is going to come get you, you’re safe,” he says, all the while scanning the dungeons for more moving bodies in the water, more shuttering slivers of survival. “Are all your mates alright?”

Declan is concerned, certainly, but it is a concern that stretches across the expanse of an entire House, an entire school - and as thus, it is worn thin and perhaps too businesslike to convince a child of sincerity. His weariness is a bitter reminder of how totally awful he is at heroism without the support of others to lift him up - Bellavie’s unyielding kindness, Leo’s infectious optimism and Charles’ cool-cut intellect; without their armor, what is left of but Declan abstract ideas, dreamers’ smoke pipes? The boy shouts a response back, but abruptly, Declan has stopped listening. All of his focus is redirected to a spot of of dark amidst darker, and it sharpens into the vivid form of a head struggling above water, a face twisted in an anguished shout -

Mars Avery.

The Ravenclaw finally spots Declan. The boy tugs free from Declan’s iron grip to reunite with a rescued friend. The water screams -

And Declan dives.

He finds the solid mass of Avery’s body an eternity later, and doesn’t hesitate to wrap an arm around the slimmest part of his waist, pulling the boy with him to a dry dungeon ledge he has spotted out from the corner of his eye with a relentless, vicious sort of fury. Fucking Avery. With effort, Declan shouts into his ear, “Don’t let go.” Their earlier conversation still burns in the pit of his stomach - it had felt like the epitome of being cut off, of watching someone make the worst mistake of their lives after he’d explicitly screamed no, you fool, you madman, you thing of light. It is an entirely new class of savagery, Declan thinks, to be forced to watch a man slit his own throat. It will never not hurt him - Avery making a home out of the teeth he resides so miserably between now.

Finally, they hit dry land. With a roar, Declan drags Avery up to the ledge, some ten feet from the ever-rising water, and rolls off of him to spit out the mouthful of water that has collected at the back of his throat. For a moment, Declan is unable to do anything but lie beside Avery, panting like a dog, aching and dazed. His displaced emotions finally begin to settle after a minute or two, panic falling to the back of his mind like a sedated, distant buzz. With a groan, Declan struggles to a sitting position and pushes his soaked curls out of his hair, blinks the debris from his eyes - and regards Avery with knitted brows, a heaving scowl.

“You know, war god,” he pants, and if there is a smile to accompany his words, it is buried miles deep beneath the shock, visible only to the ghosts. “This is an awful time and place to go for a swim.”

And then, because sarcasm is ill-suited to boys like Declan -

“Are you alright?”

[declanprewett-blog]

🍹

ask meme 1/? | a headcanon/fanfic for @vntonin

Rubbing alcohol, magicked or not, fucking burns.

Declan does his best to kill the hiss of pain that rises in his chest, and fails. It falls to the infirmary floor like acid, and with ire, he watches it sizzle and froth at his feet while Madam Pomfrey fusses over the cuts and claws and fractures, the marr of black blooming across his cheek. She’s scolding him on the decency of civility and you ought to know better and of all people, on and on, but all he can hear is the laughing. A soft, rasping howl from the other side of the curtain, the kind one might expect from a madman. Pomfrey casts a look at the hidden figure, but says nothing. Declan understands - to offer reason to an animal is to offer gold to a corpse.

(And this infuriates him, too - that people like Dolohov can stalk the hallways as the pervading sicknesses they are, and be allowed it. It infuriates him, how detached he - and all of them - are from heart, from humanity. Declan had spat it in his face twenty minutes ago, do you even know how to be a person, do you even care -)

After she leaves, Declan is granted less than two minutes of peace before Antonin Dolohov pisses all over it. The sound of scraping curtain rings is an entrance fanfare for the crooked king, who, from where he lies (draped over the bed, something deathly and majestic; sickening and saintly) now regards Declan with ghoulish pleasure. The afternoon sunlight slanting through the window lines his form in cherubic curves, but do not hide the bruises he adorns, which are nearly identical to Declan’s. It’s satisfying. “Yaxley is a sore subject, then,” is the first thing out of his mouth; simpered, sung - he is glowing with amusement. “You would forsake those pretty morals of yours so easily for his dignity.”

"Don’t test me,” Declan snarls. It continues to elude him - Dolohov is cruel to Bellavie and Charles, but he is relentless with Leo. “You’ll leave him alone, or you’ll live to regret it.”

“My,” Dolohov laughs, and throws his head back, lashes fluttering, and isn’t that the picture of devastation? He is a spot of dark in the sun, some god of the wilderness thrust unceremoniously amongst good men, a bleeding wound in water. Isn’t that chaos he licks from his lips? Isn’t that mercy crushed beneath his broken jaw? Declan watches him, stinging hands already itching for a wand. 

“How romantic,” he says, the pale of his throat bobbing; a sliver of moon, a wolf’s underbelly. “The little lion kisses with his fists.”

[declanprewett-blog]

ask meme 2/? | a moodboard for @reginaserpentes

haunt me, then.

[vestalee]

blue!

                                            send me a color and I’ll write a drabble                                       VESTA & DECLAN ♦ BLUE

                       The lake reflected the sky like a pale blue mirror, or maybe it was the other way around, but either way Vesta felt like a figure in a watercolor. Tired yes. A little spell singed from friendly fire exchange in dueling; but gloriously, gratifyingly happy. This was her first year with the Resistance and sometime she takes a step back, just to look out at this motley crew of determined dreamers. 

She comes across Declan Prewett doing the same, figure a little hazy against the mazarine sky until she joins him at the dock. He looks less exultant, more melancholy; this boy who who often wears himself ragged shadow boxing his personal ghosts while they all spin sedately on. He hides it well, most days; the doubts and worries that spider webbed through him like fissures in diamond, that made him more than what he was; refraction for light to pass through and dance on past.

Vesta touched a hand to the back of his shoulder and smiled. He reflect it back, sea to sky, tinged with that same shade of melancholy. Her smile widens and a little bit of askance flicks into his eyes, mouth working to form a question that dissolves in to the graceless warble of surprise as she abruptly shoved him off the dock. The splash as he broke that azure surface into ripples and shudders echoed down far down the shoreline. Vesta crouched at the dock edge, chin cradled in her hands to watch as he surfaces again.

                  “ Thank you. For making a place for us. ”    She isn’t sure if he can hear her over the laughter rolling in from the rest of their cabal, but she’s pleased to see some of the blue slough off his face and run into the lake water.

[declanprewett-blog]

YOUR BEST FRIEND’S HOTTER - a mini-playlist @ravencalla

Silver - The Neighbourhood Bad Language - Topi Black Mambo - Glass Animals Mean - Taylor Swift

[leaguerpg]

🔸

name: not potterringtone: i know what you did last summer  

ringtone: angel with a shotgun – the cab

[ficra-blog1]

🔸 (well by golly!!! you never told me about the ringtone!!)

name: Declan Prewett 🔥⚡️ringtone: “Waiting For A War” by The Morning Benders

[batstobed-blog]

send me  🍸 for a moodboard of our muses send me  🍷 for an aesthetic of our muses send me  🍹 for a short fanfic/headcanon of our muses send me  ☕️ for a mini playlist of our muses