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She's smashing things again when he gets home.
The lights are off throughout the house, and their little Fox Terrier puppy, Rusty, greets him at the door with his tail between his legs.
The lights are off because she's smashing the mirrors. He can hear her shrieking and crying as shards of glad hit her skin and she's wailing because her nightmares are back and Dean knows that he needs to stop her before she does even more damage to herself.
She's in the bathroom, curled in the corner opposite the door when he finally gets through the wreckage in the corridor and bedroom.
"Oh, baby." He murmurs, turning on the light and seeing the mirror shards scattered around the room and broken porcelain in the bath.
There is blood on her cheek, from a flying part of mirror Dean guesses, and her eyes are filled with that haunted look he knows is from her demons and from her.
"I'm sorry." She whispers, and he picks her up and sits down on the toilet seat, placing her on his lap.
"It's okay, Padma. It's okay."
She swallows a little and chokes on the tears she's trying not to cry and her whole body shakes as she tries to control the emotions rising in her.
"She's always looking at me, asking me why I didn't help her. And I can't do anything and I just need to get rid of her." She's crying again, stuttering and gasping for breath and Dean rubs her back and makes her bend down to open her airways and soon she has started breathing normally again.
"It wasn't your fault Padma. You couldn't have saved her, no one could. You were helping others and she had told you to do that!"
The logical side of her, the Ravenclaw part, knows he's right, that she couldn't have helped and nothing could have been done to save her sister. The emotional part, the part which would have had her placed in Gryffindor alongside Parvati, tells her that she is the cause of her sister's death, and that she had always had a chance to save her.
Dean wishes that part didn't exist.
She is still against him, and Dean thinks she has fallen asleep when she speaks again.
"I want all the mirrors gone, Dean. I can't look at her any longer."
He nods against her head and picks her up, skirting past the shattered debris and placing her down on the bed.
With a quick incantation, the room is restored to how it was, the only exception the shards of glass on the floor. He scoops them up and places them in the rubbish bin downstairs, getting rid of the other remaining mirrors in the house.
"Padma, you're going to have to deal with this at some point." He tells her as he lies down next to her.
"I know." She whispers, and she closes her eyes and turns to the side, forcing the images of her sisters body lying on the stone stairs out of her mind, getting rid of the sound of a Slytherin boy's sobbing and yelling at a God that Padma doesn't believe exists.
"I love you." Dean whispers into her hair when he thinks she's asleep.
She doesn't reply, but looks into the bathroom at the few remaining pieces of shattered glass and hopes he doesn't give up on her, because she already has.
Review please :) I'm a fifth of a way through this challenge now, which is fantastic, so I'd love to know what you think etc. Awesome.