just a young heart and a fragile mind

bring me the sun

they've made their bed so now they have to lie in it.

She's terrified. Her hands shake, and her head is a jumble of mismatched thoughts and unfinished sentences. He's looking at her in such a way that she wants to hide yet also expose herself fully to him – air her dirty knickers in public, so to speak.

She looks away; her heart is a constant thrum in her ears. Rose thinks she can feel the burn of his eyes on her, but still doesn't look up. She shouldn't be feeling like this.

But last night changed everything irreversibly.

Night crept up on Hogwarts almost suddenly. One second, Rose was looking across the vast expanse of the lake and the next she was trying to discern silhouettes and shadows from pure darkness. Her thoughts were catching up on her.

"It's almost past curfew, you know," she heard some say, before settling next to her, sitting so close they were sharing body heat.

Rose looked at her angular side-view of her older cousin. He was clenched his jaw in irritation. The urge to hold his hand in hers shot through her arm and she had to move her hand into her lap to stop herself from doing it.

"I know, James," she replied, her voice soft and hesitant. She wished he'd turn around to look at her – it was unnerving to talk to him when he was so angry. "What's wrong?"

"Mary Bell," he ground out.

Rose's heart sped up double time. Mary Bell knew and Mary Bell wasn't a nice girl. Mary Bell was revengeful and Slytherin through and through (even though she was wrongly put into Gryffindor) "What has she said now?" Rose asked, kind-of hoping he wouldn't answer.

He did. "She's threatening to tell the whole school about – about us," he said, finally turning to look at her. He looked as scared as she felt, so she moved even closer to him, settling her head on his shoulder.

Maybe it was wrong to be this close to your cousin, to have the intense physical reaction she got whenever he smiled his secret smile at her. But she didn't really care until it all got real and the shit hit the fan.

"Oh."

A loaded silence settled over them. Rose turned her head slightly. He looked so distraught at the prospect of their secret being unveiled, stripped and exposed for the world to see.

"Mum wrote to me yesterday. She said she's proud of me for my grades so far this year. What if she knew, Rosie?" His voice turned soft and vulnerable. "She wouldn't be proud then, would she? She'd be repulsed by the thought of the two of us. What we do."

"I know, James. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I hate myself for what I'm doing; of what we're doing to ourselves. We're practically breaking our own hearts by feeling like this." And she did, sometimes she'd look in the mirror and see all the impure thoughts she had had about James. The way she admired his strong jaw or straight nose, or the way she loved the feel his the strands of his hair between her fingers and the way it felt when he kissed her and the thrill she got from the smiles sent her way across crowded rooms. She felt loathing soar through her but then she'd see him and it would be gone but it didn't feel wrong when it was happening.

"So, Rose, where were you last night?" Lily asks and it's a simple question asked with the innocence of a thirteen-year-old.

"Um, in my dorm most of the night," the older girl replies, "why?"

Lily's face hardens a little. "I went up to see you, but Mary Bell said that you were out," she says, her voice tough and laced with accusations.

Rose looks up, glancing fleetingly at James. They know. Rose can tell by the slope of his shoulders – the defeated curve to his spine as he avoids everyone's eyes.

She suddenly feels sick to her stomach. Her voice shakes considerably when she speak next, keeping up the foolish sharade. "What-what are you on about, Lily?"

Lily looks betrayed now, utterly heart-broken as she sits next to Rose – Rose with all her secrets and lies and self-hatred and thorns. "Rose, I know about you and James. Mary told me."

The room is blurry and Rose feels her stomach try to escape through her mouth and for some odd reason the table seems to want to smack her in the face because it's rising to meet her – oh, she realises.

The wood is cool against her cheek and that's all she registers before the world dims slightly before going completely black.

Her back was pressed against the grassy bank and his lips were on hers. He was whispering dangerous secrets into her ear between kisses.

Her hands roamed his back, his chest, feeling the taut muscles, placing her dainty hand on his chest to feel his sped-up heart-beat. She felt around his shoulders blades, trailing her fingertips down his spine while he worked on the buttons of her blouse.

They should stop, but it's not like they've never done this before.

His head dipped a final time, kissing her so soft and sweetly she smiled against his lips.

He was the one to pull away, getting up on his heels and back away as if she were poison to his blood.

She probably was.

Hatred at herself clawed at her conscious. She pushed it away as she pushed herself up.

Skeletal trees waved behind them, the sharp breeze settling into her skin as she walked toward him certainly.

"What are we doing, Rose?"

She paused in her footsteps. She remembered his hands on hers and his voice as gentle as he spoke of promises that were only going to be broken. She remembered his smile and his voice and her heart exploded in her chest. But then – was it worth it? All these deadly secrets and terrible sins they were carrying on their shoulders. It was 'wrong', yes, but it was more than that. It was like trusting someone your entire life and then your feelings toward them change in such a short amount of time.

Rose said, "I don't know," before she turned around and ran to her dorm, not looking back; never looking back.

She wakes up in her own bed. She's led on the covers and Lily is next to her, Dominique behind Lily and Molly next to the window.

Dominique, being the oldest in the room, talks first. "Rose," she says, her voice laden with disappointment.

Rose feels regret at everything and she hates herself for what she's done to James because she loves him but it isn't the right kind of love. It's destructive and broken and it was kindled by two souls who both hated themselves coming together and melting into one.

Rose tells them everything, staring stonily ahead at the bedpost.

They make offhanded comments and add in their own snorts of disgust and Rose doesn't begrudge them it.

She looks to her left – at Lily – and sees the judgement and revulsion in her bright eyes. She looks little like James, but she's got the same eyes. Rose looks away.

"How long has it been going on?"

"Six months."

"That long?"

"Yes."

There's a heavy pause.

"How could you do it, Rose? How could you love him when you knew you shared blood?"

Taking a deep breath in, she says, "I didn't think about it. I thought about the things about him that weren't related to me. I thought about – I thought about the way I felt when he around. And I thought about the way he understood in ways no one else understood me.

"And then Mary Bell found out and I started to hate myself because I realised how disgusting it was . . . but I couldn't stop. I loved him and it was so unhealthy the way I loved – love, love him but I didn't care because he felt the same way."

She's crying and her chest is a raw, open wound, inflicted by the darkest, cruellest wizard.

Swiping at her cheeks with the heel of her palm, she finishes, "It's not going to stop, just because everyone knows. Well, it is, but I can't stop feeling this way. It's silly and fruitless but what I feel is real."

She dares a glance at her cousins. She regrets it because they're condemning her in ways she wishes they wouldn't. They don't understand, but then again they wouldn't. They don't want to say, but they kind of hate her now. She's not their cousin anymore, she's just a girl who fucked up badly; a girl who's sat in the skin of their cousin, who talks like their cousin, but whose eyes are sunken and hair dank and greasy. She's not their, cousin, this girl; she's just a girl who's taken their cousin's place.

I don't know tbh, but I'm really into cousincest atm so expect more probably