Chapter Nineteen

A/N: Thank you to Jenny Jones-Potter for reviewing the last chapter.

Selena had never felt a pain like it. The loneliness tugged at her heart, as if threatening to rip it in two, as she herself had been ripped in two. 'I can't keep pretending like this.' she told herself sharply, after a fortnight of such pain. 'I need him. I'll always need him.'

Finally, when she could resist the temptation no longer, Selena made her way up to the Gryffindor Tower, in the hope of mending the bridges between her and her twin. She did not know whether he would be receptive to her efforts, but she could only hope that he felt the same agony she did to be parted; that would make things so much easier.

She waited for almost ten minutes outside the portrait guarding the entrance, hoping to sneak into the common room as soon as somebody left. Of course, it was late evening now and most students would be preparing to go to bed, if they had not gone already. Still, in her blind hope, she waited in the dark, not wanting to aggravate the portraits, who would surely run off to fetch a teacher and get her into even more trouble.

Finally, she could wait no longer and stalked off in the direction of her own common room. The curtains pulled down over all the windows made it almost impossible to move quickly or with any sense of direction, but eventually, she was back in her dormitory.

The first thing she noticed was the light streaming in through the window. Someone had forgotten to close the curtains before they went to sleep. Selena tutted slightly under her breath; it was a school rule, as of this new year, that all curtains must be closed at night, even the ones in the hallways and classrooms. They had said that it was to prevent the castle from getting too cold, but this was a ridiculous reason- although Selena had not missed the fact that McGonagall's eyes were to the floor when she made the announcement, as though she was trying to hide something. 'What could there be to hide by closing curtains?' Selena wondered absent-mindedly, as she strolled over to pull the fabric shut.

However, once she reached the window, something made Selena stop. The light was brighter here, because she had full view of the moon, bright and round, hanging above the school like the star of Bethlehem. It was so beautiful, so hypnotising, so...

Without warning, a bolt of agony pierced the girl's skin and she bit her lip bloody trying to keep from crying out. Before she had time to wonder, the pain came again, and again, and again, until it reached a point where she could barely stand. Panicking, Selena bolted from the room, half-running, half-falling down the stairs until she reached the comforting warmth of the common room. Only then did the pain seem to abate.

It took a few minutes for her mind to clear, but once it did, the haze of pain gave way to a thousand questions, buzzing around in her head like bees in a shaken hive. The one that buzzed the loudest: 'What in Merlin's name happened to me?'

She had never felt such pain before in her life. It had felt as if her whole body was on fire, flames piercing each tiny cell of her skin like red-hot knives. Each passing second had made her want to scream, to cry out in agony at the night sky, so loud that the whole of the castle would hear. She wanted someone to explain to her what had happened, but something inside her told her not to speak of it. It was an instinct, as much a part of her as the need to breath, which told her that should she would come to harm should she impart this secret.

Selena did not return to her bedroom. She did not want to relive the awful agony she had suffered there. Instead, she curled up on one of the couches that littered the room, huddling under her cloak to keep warm, despite the fire still roaring in the grate. She tried to close her eyes and relax, but all she could see behind her eyelids was the silvery outline of the moon. It was making her head ache to even think of it.

It was early in the morning when the girl was awoken by a gentle hand shaking her shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered open to meet the sight of a boy with flaming red hair and a bemused smirk.

"Have you been sleeping here all night?" Fred asked, the humour clear in his tone.

Selena opened her mouth, then closed it again. The feeling had resurfaced, the dread, the danger, ticking away at the back of her mind like a bomb awaiting detonation.

"I went to try and patch things up with Teddy." she explained, nodding her head. "I thought that if I sat outside the Gryffindor Common Room for long enough, he'd have to come out and talk to me. But he didn't, so I came back here. I settled down in here because I didn't want to wake up the rest of the girls."

Of course, she had omitted the pivotal detail of the story, but Fred did not blink an eye at the tale. It was the truth, after all, and thus it was convincing. She had no need to tell him the whole truth; he would never understand, particularly as in all this time, she had come no closer to figuring it out herself.

"Lena, are you okay?" the boy questioned, noticing that his friend had become lost in her thoughts.

Once again, she considered confessing her fears. Fred was her dearest friend and it did not feel right to keep something so important from him. She should tell him everything, in the hope that he could help her feel alright again.

But she did not. Instead, she simply shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm fine."

A/N: Please review!