CHAPTER TWO

Kit had become dangerously dependent on Dreamless Sleep Potion, clinging to it as though it were the last thread keeping her from falling apart. Each night, she drank it with trembling hands, desperate for a reprieve from the torment that awaited her in her dreams. Without it, she couldn't sleep—couldn't even close her eyes—without reliving the moment she lost Cato, her twin, her other half. Over and over again, the scene played out in gruesome detail, leaving her shaking, screaming, and waking the rest of the Hufflepuff dormitory.

The potion was her escape, her salvation. Professors and healers warned her about the dangers of overreliance, about the toll it would take on her mind and body, but Kit ignored them. She couldn't afford to care. Sleep was the only time she found peace—or at least silence—and she wasn't ready to give that up.

Her anxiety about running out of the potion or its ingredients became another weight on her shoulders. Though the materials were relatively easy to find at Hogwarts, the thought of a single night without them filled her with dread. She hoarded ingredients obsessively, hiding them away in case of some imagined shortage. Her peers began to notice. They whispered about her in hushed tones, worried about her pallid complexion and the dark circles under her eyes that even the potion couldn't erase. Professors, too, became concerned, watching as Kit withdrew further into herself, her once-vibrant personality fading into a shadow of what it had been.

Before Cato's death, Kit had been a bright light in the castle halls. She was the kind of person who smiled at everyone, who offered help without hesitation, who found joy in the simplest things. She was bubbly, passionate, and full of life. But now, that version of Kit felt like a distant memory, like someone she had known long ago but no longer recognized. In her place was a girl haunted by loss, by guilt, and by the paralyzing fear that she would bring the same fate upon anyone who dared get close to her.

She had become terrified of touch, of closeness. Even a casual brush of someone's hand sent her into a spiral of panic, her mind screaming that she would somehow curse them, doom them to the same fate as her brother. Her friends tried to reach her, to tell her the accident wasn't her fault, but Kit couldn't hear them. The guilt was too loud, drowning out their words with cruel whispers that told her she didn't deserve forgiveness, that she was to blame.

It wasn't just her fear of others that consumed her. There were nights when Kit stared at the vial of potion in her hand and thought about not drinking it, about letting the dreams take her. She thought about how much easier it would be to give in, to let herself sink into the suffocating void that had claimed her brother. The idea of reuniting with Cato, of being whole again, was tempting. But every time she approached that edge, she heard his voice in her head.

"This isn't what he would want," she told herself. "Cato would never forgive me." Those words became her mantra, the thin thread that kept her tethered to the world of the living. She repeated them over and over, clinging to them like a lifeline. It was the only thing keeping her from falling completely into despair.

But even that lifeline began to fray when she started hearing his voice—not in her mind, but in the air around her.

"Kit Kat."

The nickname sent a chill down her spine. She froze, her heart racing as she felt an icy breath on the back of her neck. She quickened her pace, trying to escape it, but the voice called out again. She knew that voice better than her own, yet it filled her with terror.

It wasn't the first time she'd heard it. The first time had broken her completely, shattering her heart as she spun around, desperate to see her brother standing there, only to find nothing. No one. Now, every time it happened, it left her feeling even more unmoored, as though she were losing her grip on reality.

She wanted to believe it was her conscience playing tricks on her, a manifestation of her guilt and grief, but deep down, another possibility haunted her: that it was truly his ghost. And if it was, what did that mean for her? Accepting that it was his spirit lingering nearby only made the reality of his death more suffocating, more unbearable.

Kit buried the voice, the memories, and the fear as deep as she could, locking them away in a corner of her mind that she rarely dared to visit. She had to. It was the only way to keep moving, to survive in a world that had lost all its colour and meaning. A small, fragile part of her still clung to the hope that this was all some twisted nightmare—that at any moment, she would wake up and find Cato alive, grinning at her from across their shared workbench.

But hope was dangerous, and Kit knew it. To hope meant to believe, even for a second, that things could return to how they were. And if she allowed herself to hope, only to have it crushed again, she wasn't sure she would survive it. Accepting the voice as real, accepting that it might truly be Cato's ghost, would be the final nail in the coffin of her denial. It would mean admitting that her twin—her other half—was gone forever and that the life they had built together was nothing more than a memory.

The weight of that truth was too heavy for her to carry. If she let it settle on her shoulders, she was certain it would crush her. So, she ignored the voice, pretending not to hear it when it echoed her name in the quiet halls or whispered to her in the dead of night. She told herself it was nothing more than her mind playing cruel tricks, a symptom of her grief and exhaustion. It wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

But no matter how much she tried to suppress it, the voice lingered. It seeped into her thoughts at unexpected moments, catching her off guard and sending her heart racing. It was always so familiar, so heartbreakingly Cato, that she couldn't help but flinch every time she heard it. The nickname, Kit Kat, spoken in his playful tone, was both a comfort and a torment. It reminded her of the way things used to be, of the bond they had shared, and of everything she had lost.

And yet, even as she pushed it away, Kit found herself wondering—what if it was real? What if it truly was Cato, trying to reach her from beyond? The thought was both terrifying and tempting. If it was him, why was he still here? Did he blame her for what had happened? Was he trying to comfort her, or was he stuck, unable to move on because of her inability to let go?

Kit couldn't bring herself to face those questions. She couldn't confront the possibility that she might be the reason her brother's spirit couldn't find peace. Instead, she buried herself in her work, in her potions, in anything that could distract her from the overwhelming guilt and sorrow.

But no matter how much she tried to numb herself, the truth was always there, lurking in the shadows of her mind. Cato was gone. Her world had ended. And she was left to navigate the ruins alone, a hollow shell of the person she once was, haunted by a voice she couldn't decide whether to embrace or escape.