He wants it to stop. He needs it to stop - to make the light go away, to fade away and leave him back in the safety of darkness, a darkness he’s made a home out of, now. But looking at her only seems to pull the light ever-center to his vision, and he can’t seem to tear his eyes away, unable to shake the feeling that he should know something. You should remember this. He forces himself to hear her words, to make sense of them. Focus. Pay attention. Whoever she is - who is she?, his mind screams - she’s dangerous, and he knows it. He doesn’t catch the pause when she says his name, as he’s finally able to tear his vision away from her eyes. Dominic looks instead to the waters behind her, at the sunlight shimmering on the ripples of the waves, praying for them to center him again, to grant him peace.
It should center him again. It always has before, but now it doesn’t. It doesn’t, because it brings the light back again, stronger this time. He’s afforded a single glimpse - this woman before him, but younger, her hair lighter but her eyes no less sharp, the turn of her lip no less clever, and he knows what she feels like, what she tastes like, where when why how - and then it’s gone. He balls his fists in frustration, swallowing back the swear on his tongue. Dominic settles on turning his eyes to the dirt beneath their feet instead, focusing on the feeling of the wand at his throat, at the heavy weight of the threat behind it. His patience runs thin, fraying at the edges. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he all but snarls, rising to his full height. He’s used to towering over others, is now used to using it to his advantage to intimidate another into submission, but before this woman, even as he straightens his spine, he knows she’ll not fall for such simple tactics.
He eyes his canvas notebook in her hand, wants to snatch it back - and knows he’ll earn a hex or two for his efforts, if she hasn’t already cast one. After all, how else could he reason the sunspots that dance across his vision now, if not some cruel curse that emanates from her very presence? All he wants is to get out of here, to get away from her and whatever spell it is that she’s cast on him. Dominic turns and begins to walk away from her, a dangerous gamble, considering the wand at his throat. He’s not under arrest; his freedom of movement hasn’t been taken from him yet, even if all has. It’s only at the mention of the family name that he pauses. Collier. He tries to remember why it’s important. Collier. Commonplace enough, a name that fits an ordinary family in an ordinary house. Mother father, brother sister. Younger brother. Younger boy. A well-lit sitting room, a crackling fireplace. All the better to illuminate the blood, the savagery, the tragedy left behind. The younger boy is bleeding and he’s kneeling and he’s pulling his wand out and -
“What about the Collier boy? Heard he’s been recovering in St. Mungo’s after what happened to his family, God rest their souls,” he snaps, even as a touch of curiosity and dread crawls into his voice. He moves with the speed and grace of a predator, turning back to the woman and stalking towards her with deadly precision. He narrows his eyes, even as he searches her own for a hint of what’s happened to the young boy. He needs to know, even if just looking at her makes the sunspots in his eyes grow tenfold. Did I do enough? he wants to ask. Instead, what he says is, “Are you suggesting I had something to do with it? The Prophet runs dozens of articles a day with all sorts of bastards, and you’re so certain it’s me? You’ve lost your damn mind if you’re taking the word of a boy who’s been dead to the world the last three months.”
They’ve had many arguments, Emma and Dominic, so many towards the end of their friendship that it perhaps couldn’t be called a friendship at all. In retrospect, it had been a grim foreshadowing of what was to come. However, in all that time, in so many occurrences where she had called him a coward, an idiot, a pushover with the wrong priorities, she had never felt so lost talking to him. He’d been her best friend once upon a time, and even if he made decisions she’d never understand, she’d always known who he was. Right now, any step he made or word he said would come as a surprise to her. She doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on. Hates it, in fact. Hates this.
It’s only when his eyes change focus, if only for a moment, to focus on the ground beneath them. This is something she can reconcile with- for lack of a better word- her Dominic. The unwillingness to raise to a fight, the part of him that, no matter what she said to him, about him, would never retaliate with the same viciousness, if at all. Then, in a moment, the part she recognises is gone. He’s so much taller than her, somehow even taller now than they were when they last saw each other. “Yes, you do.” She feels steel in her spine as she raises her chin to meet his direct gaze. No part of her wants to back down from this. When she was a teenager, Emma had made an art out of uncertainty; she had pulled boys closer to her and pushed them away again like a child with a yoyo, always knowing exactly where she wanted them to stand. As seems to be a reoccurring theme in this interaction, she doesn’t know if she wants Dominic closer or at the other side of the park.
He goes to turn away from her and she’s only just able to stop herself from grabbing his shoulder once more. She’s under no illusion that she’s as calm as she should be, but Emma’s intimately aware with the type of people Dominic associates with now, and knows that even if he had killed every member of the Collier family by hand, the threats she threw against him would be enough for those types of lawyers to get him off scot-free. So she waits, pocketing the notebook out of personal curiosity rather than professional. He’ll notice, definitely, but she doubts he can risk trying to get it back. Part of her feels bad for using that against him, but a stronger part of her needs to see how his art is manifesting ten years later. A memory surfaces, something that would have been soft yesterday; chasing each other around an empty Ravenclaw common room, a ribbon-bound sketchbook held tightly in her grasp. The label addresses it to her, and she’s trying to stay out of his reach whilst trying to untie the bow. “I want to see,” her higher-pitched, almost giggling voice calls out. He’s using his height as an advantage, his much longer legs catching up to her in moments. “It’s not Christmas yet!” He insists, but he’s laughing too. The sound of his laugh echoes in her head, interrupted by the man himself. She’s broken from her reverie by his harsh tone and she lets herself ache for a second before refitting her armour.
“Thankfully, yes. He woke up this morning. The rest of his family were dead at the scene, including his sixteen year old sister, Jess.” She says the words to get a reaction out of him, all the while fearful that she won’t. He’s turned back to her now, she knew he would. “I’m not suggesting anything, Dom, I am asking you what you had to do with it. My partner was reading The Prophet, your face bloody front and centre on the front page, and the kid damn near had a panic attack. He’d remembered nothing up to that point, just kept asking for his Mum.” Emma hadn’t meant to reveal that much information, but remembering Toby’s face filled her with a rage once more. His grip on her hand had been like a vice the moment he’d seen the front cover of The Prophet, repeating the same phrase over and over until her partner had had to fetch a nurse. “Why did you scare him so much? Just you, no-one else. Explain that to me and I’ll leave you alone.”
