It was over.
The long, hard-fought war was over. Sage was finally climbing out of the trench, battered and bruised by the sharp bullets fired off over the seven years it had lasted. She hadn’t quite believed the news when she heard it for the first time, but there it was. Real, irrefutable, and the thing she’d always known to be true.
Her father wasn’t really her father anymore.
He never really had been.
Her world of London nightmares and the old muggle movies she secretly loved were gone, crushed under the weight of a signature on wrinkled paper. Sage still remembered the creak of the door, the sound of the faucet running when she washed her cracked knuckles. It was all hidden in fragments in her mind.
The stark reality that she wouldn’t ever enter that house again as his daughter felt impossible, but it was true; she’d been locked outside and exiled.
Finally, she felt at peace with the news. She had to be, considering she’d known it was coming for the last seven years. This was always meant to happen.
The breaking of bonds was the only thing she’d been counting on.
But she was okay with it.
June at Hogwarts had always been the most peaceful chaos. Now labeling it as the month in which Christopher and Cassie officially broke off their marriage felt odd, but welcome. After all, they’d been telling her it was on its way for almost a year. It was naivety to assume they’d become one big, happy family after years of torture.
Sage had been… numb. Trying to avoid the pains of loss, ignoring the silence that seemed to follow her everywhere she went. It was stupid, but it was her. Her usual daily runs had been put off, falling into the strain of only practicing Quidditch when it was required or when she was beating herself up for a tough game. She hadn’t acknowledged that it was, indeed, the weight of the upcoming announcement, but it was.
This was the invisible ghost that had spent its whole afterlife haunting her.
She’d gotten the owl yesterday. Somehow, she knew what the contents would be before she flicked open the seal. Maybe she should have been more cautious, waited a second or two before opening it. Maybe that would have saved her the blank stare, the ghastly pain in her ribs. It sure didn’t save her from the painful dryness in her eyes.
She couldn’t have forced a tear out if she tried.
Cassie’s owl wasn’t the only one; Christopher made sure to include his own sorry excuses, too. She scanned the words he falsified, resisting the urge to laugh at his apology for not being able to make it work out. One line stuck out to her, forcing Sage to drop the paper into her lap and think for a second: “In another life, I might have been perfect with your mum alongside me and been able to raise you the way you deserved, but I’m sorry that didn’t happen.”
Sage wanted it to happen. She wanted that perfect life so badly, so badly that she’d sacrificed everything to try and fit in while she was in London. She wanted to feel like she could’ve lived there, tried to play along with their little show. She choked while trying to accept the normalcy of it all, was that where she went wrong?
How did it end? It ended the way it always should have. It ended with tears. It ended with lives destroyed. It ended with Sage earning back her life.
Worst of all, it all came crumbling down after the steady foundation was compromised twelve years ago, twisting and mocking everyone below, acting like it was on the verge of falling only to stay up for another decade. And then it did fall.
Cassie’s letter was like a breath of fresh air; it told the truth. She welcomed Sage back home with a tight embrace, promising she’d be there for every single curve their road took. “I feel so guilty for letting this happen to you, my love,” Cassie had written, “but I promise this is the end of all of it. You’ve had to grow in such an odd way, but no more.”
No more.
Now, the day after, it was all catching up to her. June 7th. The finish line. There were too many metaphors for what she could call it; it was all the same in the end. No matter how much she tried to look at it from a different angle, it was the same: her mum was dead. Her step-mum was there. Her dad was out.
Sage was herself again.
It had been a long minute since Sage had returned to the edge of Hogwarts’ lake, a place that had always acted as a source of comfort for her. She’d returned to the water, the envelopes of the announcement held tightly in her hand as she settled down. She was alone, and that was fine.
She traced the green blades of grass under her palm, staring at the bright blues of the sky with renewed confidence. A new Quidditch-caused callous on her palm stuck out, another physical reminder of the battle. Somewhere back in the castle was her sister, reading copies of the same letters and probably thinking similar thoughts.
Sage took a deep breath, internally preparing herself to acknowledge the month she would spend with Christopher in the summer as per the child arrangement order. At least she would have Kora with her.
At least… At least she knew the book was closed.
She turned back to the summer air. Before, she used to scream out here. Everyone probably thought she was crazy, screaming into nothingness. Now, this was peace. This was closure.
This was her picking up the stray pieces of a shattered heart and brushing off the scars, replacing the hurt with a cure.
Normally, hearts were used as a form of beauty. A sign of love, an affirmation of loyalty dusted over with shades of joy and fidelity. All this to create a stained glass portrait of how life should look. They weren’t supposed to crush under life’s iron fist, but hers did.
This beautiful mosaic that was her life had been ruined.
This image of life’s cruelty had shaped her.
Now, sitting by one of her favorite places in all of Hogwarts, the glorious sunrise rose before her. Even if it all worked to crush parts of her heart, now standing by herself proved who she was. Deep within her soul, she knew it was time to go.
Time led to permanent aches, a deep painful scarring within her. Remnants of the past stretched out its hand, tying ivy-laced rope around her and tugging her back to watch moments of her past life. Finally, she was cutting off the head.
Sage lifted Christopher’s letter, staring at the way he curved his letters the same way she did. His false proclamations of fatherly love were just that: false. Perhaps at times she had been an imposition, but in the end it never came back to her. The way he labeled his signature as her father felt like a strike to her heart.
She had given everything for a chance at making that true.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
She cut the invisible strings tying her to London, to Christopher. As far as Sage was concerned, the divorce made her her own person for the first time in years. The heavy weight on her spine sighed with relief once she shook it off.
It was no use to revive life on something long dead. Holding onto it wouldn’t save her.
Sage breathed heavily, blinking once more at the parchment, numb to the attempted emotion in it. Gently, she allowed it to fall onto the waterline.
Fading…
Melting into the water, its weight fully absorbed meant the words were gone. She didn’t have to face it anymore. She had done it on her own.
Sage watched it for longer than necessary. The happiness in the aftermath was finally beginning to trickle in. She might have loved everything for the extent of her lifetime, but nothing lasted forever; the time had come for her goodbye.
She was beginning to move back inside the castle when footsteps sounded behind her. “Jesus, you scared me!”
Kora sat down next to her, letters in tow. “It’s over,” she whispered. “Just like that, it’s over.”
Sage tilted her head slightly, studying her sister’s shock. She may have seen the warning signs, watching carefully as the boat rocked, but her sister’s Slytherin intuition didn’t.
“What’re we supposed to do when we go home? Tell Mum we can’t wait to see Dad?”
Sage wrapped her arms around her little sister, trying tightly to squeeze out the shock. “We don’t have to do anything right now. We can sit here for as long as you like and talk, don’t talk, whatever you want.”
Kora looked at the ground by Sage where her letter from Cassie sat. “What’re you doing with them?” she asked, pointing to the parchment.
“Keeping… Mum’s. I drowned Christopher’s.”
Kora laughed emptily. “Can I do the same?”
“Does it count as littering when you’re melting the words of someone who ever cared?” Sage shrugged.
Kora paused, but grabbed her own letter. “I don’t think it counts.” She dropped the paper onto the surface, matching Sage’s actions by watching it melt. “At least now it’s gone.”
Something inside Sage had left, floating around the world and watching its outcome silently. While presently she remained alongside her sister, a fragment of her kept vigil across the path.
She refused to take any more steps back.
After the letter had plummeted down to the bottom, shredded by the water’s effects, Sage slowly took her sister’s hand. “Come on,” she whispered.
“Where are we going?” Kora asked, scrambling to her feet.
Sage paused. “Wherever we like.”
Deep under the lake’s surface were the only remnants of Christopher’s dangerous attempts at forgetting his ways. Fear could no longer take away the chance Sage had to leave it all behind. She had let go. With her hand held to a flame, she let it all go.
She allowed herself to look back one final time. A sharp rattling broke from her chest, groaning pieces of a heart piecing itself back together. They latched, connecting like those two-piece childhood friendship lockets she used to want.
Within her, the last memories turned dark. It was over.
