Credit for the image here.
For teadalek, who is the best friend I could ever have.
“Think,” Professor Lupin said quietly, walking back and forth across the floor of his office. “It doesn’t matter if you were five or fifteen.” He stopped and gave Quinn a reassuring look. “Find your happiest memory, the one that stirs your very soul and makes you smile. Ready? Remember the incantation: expecto patronum.”
“Expecto patronum,” Quinn repeated dutifully, but there was no energy to it, no strength, no… belief.
She tried to do as she was told: tried to search within the deepest recesses of herself, to find her happiest memory. It doesn’t matter if you were five or fifteen. She was five when she was bitten, but even before then there hadn’t been much… happiness. All she could remember was darkness, a dark house, dark paintings hung on the wall, the dark gaze of an old woman staring at her… Quinn shivered and tried to find something else.
Eleven. The Hogwarts letter. Diagon Alley. A new Quidditch broom, new books, the hat maybe placing her in Ravenclaw. Galleons pressed into her hands, “Don’t disappoint us, Quinn. Don’t sully the Fabray name.” The train, taking her away from her parents.
The train… Quinn smiled faintly.
It had been two hours. Two hours of giggling and trading sweets from the cart, sherbet lemons and chocolate frogs. “Oh, I didn’t have this one!” “I don’t have any.” “Here, I don’t need it.” “We should be friends.” “Then we will be.” “Best friends?” “Best friends.” There were feet propped up on opposite seats, brown wavy hair falling into deep brown eyes, a breathless smile punctuated by dimples.
There were words Quinn didn’t understand, like Broadway and West End and Barbra Streisand. But excitement was always infectious, and she begged to hear a song, just one song. And though the doors to the compartment were closed and it was just the two of them, it was as if the entire train – the entire world – stilled. It didn’t matter that when the moon came Quinn’s bones would break and stretch and she’d be unrecognizable to anyone, that she’d wake up naked and cold and alone hidden away from everyone. That she’d always wake up hidden away from everyone, truly. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know the song, that it was unlike anything she’d ever heard. Because the melody was beautiful and she had her first friend. Her first real friend.
After would come the words, the betrayal that would end it all.
But for a brief, shining moment, when Rachel Berry sang… Quinn had never been happier.
Her blood ran cold when she saw it. She didn’t dare take her eyes off it, even though everything within her was screaming for her to look away. She felt it all begin to slide like water, to turn to ice. Her father’s disapproval, her mother’s fear, the fact that no one would ever love her as she was. Quinn focused on the memory, on the feel of the rhythm of the train in her mind, on the sweets and the talk, Rachel’s voice, Rachel.
She tightened her hand, watching as the string of light grew greater, wider, watched as the bird stretched its wings and took flight across the room, swerving around her shoulders.
Quinn laughed, and for a beautiful, blissful moment, she thought she could hear it sing.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
gracieabrams
pixelskylines
gamechangershow
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
