Ashes || Sep and Ramsey || June 26, 1980
Date: June 26th, 1980 Time: 7:15AM Place: Crabbe townhouse, London
The sun poked its nose around the curtains of the spare bedroom in the Crabbe townhouse, letting the morning light into the dark room and heralding a new day. Once upon a time this had been Theia’s room, though there remained little evidence of this. Theia had never been a particularly materialistic person and when she’d moved away, she’d taken most of her belongings with her. Until the night before, the room had generally remained empty, except on the occasion when Ramsey needed somewhere to stay for the night.
As had been the case the night before. Slumped across the armchair by the window, Sep blinked awake slowly. Had it not been for the sunshine slanting directly into his eyes from the sky beyond the glass, he might have remained asleep for much longer. It had been a long and exhausting night. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he looked over at the figure on the bed.
Ramsey looked wan, as if all the stress and pain of the night before had drained the colour from him. His arm was wrapped in thick white bandages and Sep didn’t want to think about what it must look like beneath the deceptively pristine cotton. When he closed his eyes he could still see the angry red blisters, the way the skin had split, revealing the tissue underneath. The phantom memory of the smell of burnt flesh resurged in his mind and he fought back a wave of nausea.
The hours between the catastrophic Death Eater meeting and when he’d finally been able to fall asleep was an unhappy blur in Sep’s mind. He hazily remembered Apparating to his house, the barking of his dog Grim as he rushed through the door with Ramsey’s semi-conscious form slumped over his shoulders, barely pausing to dismantle the wards. He remembered giving Aurie a half-baked and panicked excuse that he doubted she’d believed, before she’d rushed for her wand to help him conjure bandages. He was fairly certain she hadn’t even questioned why he’d insisted they didn’t use magic to heal the horrible burn. He’d have to make it up to her for that. He was pretty sure he didn’t deserve her or her loyalty.
Ramsey was stirring in bed and Sep got to his feet, crossing to the bedside. “Ram?” he asked, almost afraid to know what shape his friend might be in this morning. “You okay?” He hated that there was so little he could do to help him. That he’d had to sit there helplessly the night before while Ramsey had been tortured was bad enough, but then he couldn’t even heal his injury in the aftermath, which was infuriating. And yet, he didn’t dare take the risk of defying the Dark Lord’s orders.
