CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
put your curse in reverse

WHEN SHE MET OLIVER on the pitch, the sky was only a glimmer away from daylight, dusted with the silver-blue promise of rain in the afternoon, and Oliver had instantly swept her into a rough, wildfire of a kiss that felt heavier than usual. Sawyer didn't mind it, maybe even liked the little bit of abrasion, but she also got the sense that one kind of trouble was dogging at his ankles. They pulled away with bruised lips and hazy eyes, and Sawyer pinned him with a searching look but Oliver's gaze was a thunderstorm.

"Hi." Oliver said, slightly out of breath, his hands still on her waist. "Sorry. I just—"

"Don't do that," Sawyer said, tugging at the string of his grey Puddlemere United sweatshirt, unable to shake the warmth from her face. "Don't apologise for that. Tell me."

Oliver shook his head. "Let's just run first." He affected a mask of perfect composure that was entirely unconvincing because Sawyer knew every iteration of his face just as well as she knew her own, and plucked Sawyer's water bottle out of her hands and set it down on the bench next to his.

Throughout the run, his head didn't seem to be unburdened any more than when they'd first began. Something was wrong. Whatever it was that was bothering him hit close to home. Few things bothered Oliver. Outside of Quidditch, Sawyer could count on one hand the number of things he cared about. They ran their laps in silence, and the bad weather looming over Oliver's head hadn't dissipated by the time they stopped back where they'd started. Oliver went straight for his water, and Sawyer sat down to stretch out.

Lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, Oliver didn't even notice that Sawyer was openly staring at his toned midriff. Maybe he really was distracted today.

Tossing his empty water bottle to the ground in manifest agitation, Oliver let out a slow exhale. "Yesterday, I got a letter from Harrison St. John. The... the scout from Puddlemere United. Apparently a few scouts attended the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match last month—" which Gryffindor had won by a landslide— "and they want me on their reserve team. It's not that glamorous, and I did get letters from other scouts from other professional teams to start on the lineup, because they like how I play, but Puddlemere United's been my dream for years. I mean, it's also the most obvious choice since they're pretty superior. I haven't told anyone yet, because I haven't accepted the invite. Well, anyone else except my dad."

A month and a half into the semester, a handful of seventh year Quidditch players had started receiving letters from the scouts of professional teams, offering them a place on the draft. Last week, Marcus got a letter from the Falmouth Falcons, but he'd declined the invitation, claiming that they weren't that good, and he only wanted the best. Sawyer hadn't gotten one yet, but she didn't think it'd matter. Quidditch wasn't her end-all-be-all. Even though she wouldn't hate the idea of being drafted, too. That, and she'd only looked at professional teams in passing, caught snippets about aforementioned teams from conversations her friends held and all the games that Oliver raved about, but not in enough detail to formulate a whole opinion on them, which meant she couldn't make her decision without more research. But, then again, she still hadn't received an invitation from any professional teams, so she didn't have to think that far ahead.

Sawyer wanted to congratulate Oliver. It was what everyone else would do, and it was an occasion for celebration, since not a lot of players had the same privilege. But the way he'd mentioned that last part about his father, and the way his jaw tightened like he was about to lose a match, made Sawyer think twice. She held her tongue and let him continue.

"I wrote him, and I said—" Oliver swallowed, crouching down to sit beside Sawyer, his expression twisted up, his voice scraped rough with some unshackled emotion— "I said that I was going to accept the offer to be on PU's reserve team. Even if I won't get playing time until the coach decides to take me off the bench. But my dad wrote back, and I thought... I don't know what I was expecting from him, really." Visibly worked up, his chest rose and fell rapidly, and the lines of his face seemed to sharpen now. Bitterness was evident as he propped his arms over his knee and stretched one leg out. "He's always been so... I don't know. He's just never cared about the things that I cared about." A dark look flickered over his features as Oliver wound a hand into the grass and ripped a chunk out with the sharp jerk of his wrist as his voice turned to iron. "He asked me why I wasn't good enough to be on the lineup. He said, maybe it's time I start looking for a real, more stable career."

"Why should you care about his opinion, when you've already made up your mind?"

Oliver cut her a flinty look. "Don't you want your father to be proud of you, too?"

"That's not an answer." Sawyer cocked her head. Sprawled out on the grass with her arms braced behind her, she met his harsh gaze with a blank-faced look. "You've never cared about anyone's feelings or opinions except your own. You live and die by these impossible standards that are your own. Not your father's. So what does it matter to you if he thinks it's not a real career? Whose opinion should you value most? Yours or his?"

Oliver sighed, not meeting Sawyer's eyes. But before he could turn his face away, she caught the telltale glimmer in his eyes and anger sparked in her gut. There was no missing it. The tension in his powerful shoulders, the glassy, glazed look in his eyes, the misty anger that clung to his expression. And now, the inability to maintain eye contact, and the small, almost insignificant sniffle that escaped him that slammed into her like a freight train. Come to think of it, she'd never seen Oliver cry before. It took a lot for him to express his emotions. Seeing him now in this state, it was slightly disorienting, but she wasn't going to shame him for it.

"I just want him to be happy for me." Frustration was a barbed wire fence wrapped around his throat as he dragged a hand down his face. Sawyer clocked the audible crack in his voice. "For once, I just want him to tell me he's proud of me. Is that so fucking hard?"

Sawyer seized his jaw and turned his head back round to face her. He resisted at first, but her fingers dug into him with a warning edge, and he knew she wasn't going to let up. When he finally looked at her, it was with reluctance and irritation and the tears welled in his eyes like liquid mercury. She didn't expect it to hurt this much, but seeing him like this sank teeth into her heart.

"You can't ask someone to change their ways for you," Sawyer said, knowing in her head that her words weren't the ones he was looking for. They hardly ever were. The truth was something she'd never been afraid to lay out even though most didn't want to hear it, and it wasn't her job to save someone from their own feelings. Just because he was her boyfriend didn't mean that Oliver would be treated any different. He was important to her. He was everything. Which only meant he needed to hear this. "Your father doesn't know how to appreciate you, and he's not going to until he learns to listen to you. But you don't have to look to him for validation. You've already started here." She laid a hand against his chest, over the place where his heart started beating faster against her palm. "Keep it there."

When she let her hand fall back to her lap, Oliver let out a heart-shattering sniffle and wiped at his face aggressively with the heel of his palm.

"I feel like a total wimp," Oliver said, letting out a humourless laugh, but the breath he drew in was still shaky. He raked a hand through his dark hair. "Fuck, I— I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lose it like this." He blew out a steadying exhale. "You're right. Okay. You're so fucking right. It's just that he's always been able to get to me with only a few words. Somehow, every time, I end up feeling like the world's biggest idiot. Does that make me weak?"

"No," Sawyer said, her tone an unrelenting edifice as she fixed him with a fierce look that stripped all his skin off, her voice calm and steady, like she was laying rocks one by one along a wall. "And don't apologise. Not for that. Never for that. You're a fucking maniac, but you're also a person. Don't hide from me, Oliver. Don't play pretend. Not in front of me."

Relief punctured the pent-up anxiety slowly bleeding out of his features. Oliver swallowed, nodded, and leant his forehead against hers.

"Okay," he said, his voice so small, so broken up. An Adonis of a boy, suddenly reduced to all of his soft points where the scar tissue hadn't yet toughened, Achilles heel in the hollow of her arms.

Sawyer wound her arms around him and anchored him in place. A long time ago, she believed that everything good was always somewhere else, and maybe somewhere else was right here all along. Just like the night she bared her fears to him in the kitchen, and every time she gave him a piece of herself, the vulnerability came creeping into her, turning her blood to frost. But each time he held her like she was holding him now, it was like the sun setting in her veins, breathing warmth back into her body, along with the assurance that they were here to stay. So many times, they'd said, stay. Neither had broken that promise yet. Without a shadow of a doubt, Sawyer was going to cling to that, because Jeremy once told her that the most useful thing empty hands could do was hold on. For as long as he needed her. And so she held him so tight it felt like they might fuse into one being, one celestial body tangled in the grass, an unspoken promise passed between them. You're safe with me.

* * *

SAWYER SLAPPED HER HAND AGAINST Jeremy's chest when she finally made it to breakfast, just fifteen minutes late, and the distinct sound of paper flapping in the air and Jeremy's muffled oof caught the others' attention. Jeremy scrambled to catch the piece of paper Sawyer had clapped against him as she slid into her spot beside him. Seated on the other side of Jeremy, Quinn peered over, and her eyes widened.

"Don't hold back," Sawyer said, simply, as she piled a stack of buttered pancakes onto her plate, drowning them in syrup and whipped cream. "She deserves to know."

Months ago, just after Jeremy had received the first letter from his mother after she'd walked out on him and his father and left them out to dry without so much as another word, Sawyer had confiscated the aforementioned letter and the one that came after that to prevent Jeremy from making the grave mistake of patching things up too quickly. Weeks later, he'd opened up to her about how he really felt, having been granted the time to process everything properly. Today, she thought it was time he wrote back. It was about time his mother understood that she couldn't pick and choose when it was convenient to be related to him. Some people didn't deserve to be protected from the damage they've done.

Fingers curling around the edges of the slightly creased letter, Jeremy's face was sheet pale, a million convoluted emotions flickering over his torn expression. Caught between one decision and another.

Rio, who looked slightly less like a live corpse this morning, lifted a brow.

"Honestly," Jeremy breathed, and between them the silence bled like smoke from a burning car, the split second that Jeremy had to scramble for some coherent way to construct his thoughts was filled by the centrifugal sounds of the Great Hall, cereal crackling in bowls of milk, forks scraping against plates like nails on a chalkboard, mindless chatter that hummed like the neon electric sign of a secluded convenience store at night, "I don't know what to say. I mean, I have so much to say, I just... Is it worth it? I don't know." He took his reading glasses off and swept his friends with a distressed look, searching for an answer none of them could give. Perhaps they'd all shielded him from this for too long. Ultimately, the decision was his to make. All the words had to be his.

Syrup dripped down the point of her knife, glinting like liquid amber under the lights of the Great Hall. Sawyer stuck the knife in her mouth and licked it clean, ignoring Quinn's pointed look (she couldn't stand when people put knives in their mouths because it made her anxious). "Don't say anything, then. It's up to you now."

A rattle of pills hissed through the lull in the conversation as Jeremy folded up the letter and put it away. Sawyer looked up from her plate at the same time Rio cut Marcus, who was holding up Sawyer's medication, a sharp look. Watching Rio out the corner of her eye, Sawyer downed two pills just as Dumbledore stood from his seat and began to announce the theme for the end-of-term ball for the seventh years. To Quinn's evident disappointment that her choice for the theme—the Great Gatsby, whatever that was—had been vetoed by an outstanding number of votes in favour of the final decision of the theme, Under the Sea. Surprisingly, Rio and Marcus was let down, too. They'd voted for the casino theme, claiming they'd be unbeatable in a gamble and that the organising committee could afford to lose a little cash. Sawyer, on the other hand, couldn't care less. Considering she didn't even know if she wanted to attend this ball (but she would, in any case, because Quinn demanded so and her obstinate insistence had been too endearing to ignore), she'd gone along with whatever Quinn wanted, because Quinn had expressed emphatically that this would be the only chance for her to enact her childhood dream of wearing a pretty dress and feel like a princess.

"I had the perfect dress for the Gatsby theme," Quinn grumbled, stabbing her fork into her food like it was the source of her personal afflictions.

"What's stopping you from wearing it to this one?" Marcus asked, thoroughly confused.

Quinn pinned him with a look so condescending Sawyer could see Marcus start to fidget a little self-consciously. "It's not the right vibe."

"Whatever," Marcus said, rolling his eyes in disgruntlement. Rio offered him an unsympathetic shrug. Marcus turned to Sawyer. "Anyway, now that you're finally here, I can tell you all that I got another offer from a scout. Puddlemere United wants me to play Chaser. I'm starting off on their reserve team, but they said they have hopes for me to be bumped up to the main lineup soon."

And Quinn, bless her little heart, let out an excited squeal. "That's so amazing!"

It seemed easy enough for him to tuck away the internal conflict that Sawyer had presented him with upon her arrival, as Jeremy's expression lit up like sunshine. "Congrats, mate."

"Did you accept?" Sawyer asked, itching to break the news to him that he'd be playing alongside Oliver if he did, but also itching to leave, because that familiar wayward burning in her veins, collecting in her gut like the dark twists of roots tangling with her intestines, kept demanding her attention. It was an ugly feeling. One that'd become so familiar it fed out of her hand like a villain's oily-beaked crow. Jealousy grew skin and cartilage and it resided in the shell of her ear, stretched over pounds of organs, and twined with the tendons of her heels. It ate up everything good, beginning with everything her mother saw in Wyatt that she never saw in Sawyer, and now, when she didn't think it was possible to be any more dysfunctional. She didn't even care about Quidditch. She'd never made it a goal in life to be drafted to a professional team. Why couldn't she be happy for Marcus, just like everyone else?

Marcus shrugged. "I have until the end of the term to decide, so I'm going to weigh my options first. I mean Puddlemere United's a pretty decent team, but the Holyhead Harpies are fair competition, and there are a few other teams I'm still considering. So I'm not in any rush. I've declined the Chudley Canons, though. That one's a strong no for me. Have you seen their stats over the last five years? Nobody in their right mind would play for them at this rate."

In one of her earlier sessions while she was testing the waters with Dr Josten as her new psychiatrist, she'd been asked about her relationship with Wyatt and why she couldn't stop associating the feeling of hatred with his presence. Admitting the problem was the first step towards repair, but simply knowing the wound was there did nothing to reveal it. She'd told Dr Josten, my mother made me, and didn't bother elaborating her point because it didn't matter all that much. My mother made me eventually branched into, I'll never be the favourite. Which also didn't matter, because Sawyer had found a niche corner she didn't have to cut her edges down for in order to fit in. Where she could be a monster, she didn't have to hide. I'll never be the favourite cracked down into it bothers me, but I guess I'll always lack the qualities of the daughter my mother was looking for.

Monsters had hearts. Even if they were portrayed as stone-cold and savage and capable of horrible things, biologically, they must have hearts. Live, beating organs slathered in ectoplasmic blood, and surely they must feel that pinch of being unloved, too. If not in the emotional centre of the brain, then in the chest where the hunter's spear had skewered them in the space between their ribs, guided by the hand of fear or hatred. Both pains were a kind of killing, Dr Josten said. So, after a few hours on the cracked vinyl sofa and the pharmaceutical lights of the psychiatric office shining down on Sawyer's revelations laid out on the lacquered coffee table between them like a cross-examination, I'll always lack the qualities of the daughter my mother was looking for was finally broken down into its fundamentals: I want to be loved, but I'll never find it here, and so I'll blame my brother, not because he's the favourite, but because he has everything I do not and therefore he is loved, whereas I am repudiated, my mother's cold-shoulder speared through my chest.

* * *

FEBRUARY TURNED OVER INTO MARCH and the skin between Sawyer's rage and her patience was wearing so thin even the Valium could no longer bridle it. She considered writing to Dr Josten, but couldn't concentrate long enough to get the words down on paper in a way that wouldn't reveal the world of magic to the muggle doctor.

As the weeks flew by, Quidditch training begun to ramp up, which meant longer practice times, an audible tension between the teams, and Oliver's seasonal ulcer as he worked the Gryffindor team to the ground with his impossible training regiment. Maybe it was his father's quick dismissal of his accomplishments, or maybe it was the mounting pressure to redeem himself this season by winning the Quidditch cup at the cost of his own soul. Each morning they met down at the Quidditch pitch, he was so charged, he almost forgot to keep pace with her during their laps, and each time she kissed him to stop him from rattling on like a bullet train about the insane drills he was forcibly shoving down his teams' throats, she felt his impatience in the rough of his mouth against hers and the teeth nipping at her lower lip and the urgent press of his body against hers. (She wasn't going to admit it, but maybe she liked it when he got so fired up like this.)

At one point, the Hufflepuffs were scheduled for training in the late afternoon immediately after the Gryffindors, and as Sawyer was coming out of the locker room with her broom and bat and Violet at her side, she'd overheard Oliver riding his team like they were preschoolers handling Quidditch equipment for the first time. From his condescending remarks each time a Chaser fired a shot that should've made it, to the scornful dismissal and rude commentary on the teams' shortcomings, Sawyer had heard it all, and by the time the Gryffindor team was kicked off the pitch for the Hufflepuff's turn at using it, the Gryffindors were worn down on frayed nerves, and in the aftermath of their frustrations, Sawyer noticed a few dents in the metal of some of the locker doors shaped suspiciously like fists and the tip of a shoe.

Under Cedric's captaincy, the Hufflepuffs had moved on from submitting to the desperation to executing some fairly complex plays and were finally keeping up. It'd gotten so rigorous to the point where, night after night, Sawyer could sit on her bed and fall asleep inside a minute, completely dead to the world. As much as she didn't care for the regiment of training, or the rush of the games, she was starting to realise how much she missed the feeling after a game before the adrenaline receded and push her back into her emotionless shell, and counting the bruises she collected from rough checks and the soreness threaded into her muscles.

The Slytherins, on the other hand, were having a much less emotionally charged time. Outside of training, however, Marcus and Rio, were just as at the end of their tethers as the Gryffindors. Each meal that Rio was present for turned into a whole tirade about consistency and lack of commitment. It started with a snide remark from Marcus about his attendance and shoddy performance that, manifestly, had too many holes in it to repair, to which Rio reacted just as explosively as a napalm bomb. Then it turned into Jeremy inquiring about his welfare, and Rio's accusations of Jeremy's interrogation being too critical, of the two Slytherins tag-teaming him.

Sawyer's lack of support and her indifference in general seemed to also be a trigger for a blow-up, and despite her abstaining from participating in these arguments, Rio managed to turn her silence into something malicious, to which she could barely stop herself from pulling out all the stops and questioning him about APEX, and what he thought he was doing, forcing her to break a promise like that. Still, there was a wound somewhere making Rio act like a cornered animal, all teeth gnashing and snarling menace and unable to relax enough to let the help come forward, and Sawyer would keep pressing on it until she wore away at his resolve. Until he came clean. Just because he was more absent recently didn't mean he was off the hook.

By the time the first match of the semester rolled around, the chemical environment that seemed to shroud them all didn't show any signs of lifting. The Ravenclaws were behind the Slytherins by only a handful of points, and the snitch was nowhere in sight yet, but the crowd around Sawyer was exploding with a cutting distaste with the roughhousing the Slytherins were only just getting away with. Marcus wasn't like Oliver or Cedric. He operated in the loopholes, encouraged his team to play dirty where the rules were slack, and cut corners where he could afford to. Anything to secure a win. If it meant more injuries on the pitch, then so be it. As long as the casualties weren't of his own, then nothing else mattered. Aggression had the crowd riled up, and the Slytherin players seemed to feed off that outrage when Rio barrelled past the Ravenclaw Chaser and checked her hard and fast enough to knock her into an uncontrolled spin and pop the Quaffle loose. Already twenty minutes into the match and the Ravenclaws were struggling to keep up.

In the stands where the volume of the crowd could shatter glass windows, Sawyer sat with Quinn, Slytherin scarves wrapped around their shoulders. Even though Quinn had no interest in Quidditch or knowledge of the sport, she jumped to her feet each time Jeremy scored on the Ravenclaw Keeper, or whenever Marcus or Rio executed one of their risky tactics that easily could've endangered their target's lives if they weren't so focused.

But that focus wasn't going to last.

Sawyer could tell the moment Rio lost the Quaffle after one of the bludgers crushed him against the stands, and he'd spent the next few minutes of the match blinded by fury, only just avoiding getting carded for violating the 'no violence on pitch' rule by Madam Hooch when Marcus or Jeremy reigned him in. Once the adrenaline seemed to clear up, Rio had to stop for a moment to throw up on the sidelines. Immediately after, the match resumed, and the ferocity was inviolable, but Rio's declining performance was starting to get a little more noticeable. He seemed out of breath every time he got checked by the Ravenclaw players, who figured they could fight fire with fire and pull dirty tricks on the Slytherins in retaliation. The Ravenclaw beaters were starting to target him as well, and each turn he made was beginning to get sloppier and sloppier. At this point, they were running down the clock, and the Slytherins were pulling ahead, the Ravenclaws only just pulling their act together to close the point gap.

Their only shot at redemption seemed to present itself when Rio suddenly dropped out of the match after slamming full-force into one of the Ravenclaw beaters in a livid rage, which sent him off the pitch, disqualified for the rest of the match. He'd left the pitch in a storm, but Sawyer could tell he was barely holding himself together. Since a disqualification didn't warrant a substitute player, the Slytherins were down to a disadvantaged number, and it was clear that the Ravenclaws were starting to realise that they were about to shatter the Slytherins' formerly watertight offense line, which was now weakened by Rio's absence.

But Sawyer didn't stay long enough to spectate the rest of the match. Instead, she'd left Quinn behind to catch up with Rio in the boys' locker room. It wouldn't be the first time she's had to seek out someone in a place where she wasn't permitted to be, so she entered it without hesitation and without reserve. Because the match still had a bit of a ways to go, the locker room was empty save for the two of them, and Sawyer only heard the sink running as Rio stood hunched over it, keeping a white-knuckled grip of the edge of the sink, his chest heaving violently as he fought down the urge to vomit again.

The bottle of APEX in the pocket of her robes felt like a smoking gun.

In the reflection she caught Rio's pallid features and his shattered countenance, his lips pulled into that permanent snarl, his eyes hollow and void and uncomprehending of the state he was in or the threat standing right behind him.

Sawyer clamped a hand over his shoulder and yanked him round to face her. For someone who stood one entire head taller than Sawyer, Rio was surprisingly easy to shove into the wall of one of the shower stalls, that gave a loud shudder and a groan under the impact of Rio's weight. He made little effort to fight her off when she caught his face in a vice grip that would leave bruises, forcing him to look her in the eyes. Irritation crossed Rio's expression, but he didn't resist when Sawyer's grip tightened to the point where his jaw felt like it might snap between her fingers.

"Go away," Rio rasped, through gritted teeth. He clawed at her arm, but she didn't let go, even when his blunt nails left angry scratches down her skin.

"Once a runaway, always a runaway," Sawyer said, her tone an eery cheer that sent an involuntary shudder down Rio's spine. "Once a liar, always a liar. I warned you. I don't break my promises, and yet you seem so hellbent on making me violate my own rule."

Rio's eyes flashed. "Maybe because some people just don't appreciate being manhandled."

Rage ripped through Sawyer's veins, but she stuffed it down before it could explode outwards. Not yet, she told the monster inside her. In time.

Sawyer laughed, but the sound wasn't pleasant. Its echo drove iron nails through the stone walls, threatening to cripple the metal lockers. Rio flinched. "You asked me to do whatever it takes, didn't you? I am. I'm holding up my end of the bargain, but you're throwing it back in my face. Don't tell me I'm in the wrong here. Don't tell me you've forgotten."

"I haven't," Rio snarled.

"But you have," Sawyer mused, her voice made of blades. "You already have. But that's not even the most pathetic part, hey, hey, don't do that. Look at me." She grinned when Rio dragged his broken stare back to meet her piercing one, defiance scrawled across his expression. She pulled out the bottle of APEX from her pocket. "Your sickness is your own undoing. What do you have to say to that, junkie?"

And it was as if something inside Rio had snapped. She saw it flash across his riven-granite features. Saw the fury tear through his veins as his world stopped and his gaze latched onto the bottle of drugs in Sawyer's hand. Saw him connect the dots. Saw the myriad of emotions flitting across his expression until he planted both hands against her shoulders and shoved so hard he knocked her back a step.

"It was you," Rio seethed, lunging for her, but missing as Sawyer sidestepped. A reinvigorated anger thundered over Rio's face as he bared his teeth. "You fucking psycho. Why is it so hard for you to stay out of other people's shit? Maybe you have a saviour complex, but I don't need you fucking breathing down my neck every second of everyday—"

As he went for her again, swinging blindly, Sawyer caught his fist in her hand and twisted his momentum against him, slamming him against the lockers as he tripped over someone's bag on the floor. The force of the crash nearly caved the door in. Like an animal thrashing in a trap, Rio tried to wrangle himself free, but couldn't escape Sawyer's grip, twisting his arm behind his back. His other arm tried to lash out, but to no avail. With a sharp tug on his compromised arm that might've dislocated it if Rio had been any weaker, Sawyer threw her knee into the back of Rio's knee until he folded, too drained to put up the fight he might've if he were clean. The withdrawal was doing a number on his strength. Already, she felt the sharp points of his bones digging into her flesh. When he sunk to his knees, she dug her foot into his calve in warning. Now that he wasn't struggling so hard anymore, the clanging of his body against the lockers had subsided and she could only hear his desperate breaths hissing out through his clenched teeth, the rage tearing at his lungs. It still couldn't match the one ravaging her blood.

Time passed slowly, greyly, soberly, in the silence. The weight of their words sinking in.

"I warned you," Sawyer said, again, her fingers staking into the bones of his wrist. "You told me that you wanted him back." Neither of them needed to clarify which him she was referring to. Rio's head thumped loudly against the locker. "You know what you got yourself into the moment you showed up at my door that Christmas. You knew I would make good on my promise. I wasn't planning on letting you go, Rio Alvarez. But I've come to realise that you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. So if you want to ruin your life, if you want to keep playing the blame game, I hope it's worth it."

With those last words, Sawyer released Rio, and tossed the bottle of APEX at his feet. The bottle clattered to the ground and the lip popped off, scattering the white pills all over the floor. Disgust curling her lip, Sawyer turned before she could catch Rio scrambling to gather up the drugs, and strode out of the locker room. Outside, the match raged on, the thunderous approval of the crowd echoed through the corridor as the Slytherins took the win, oblivious to their teammate falling to pieces by himself.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
4

ok look before we all start being disappointed in rio or sawyer..... they're not perfect. sawyer is a 17 year old girl and she isn't professionally trained to deal with situations like these. if she is harsh, it is because she cares a lot about rio and the promises she makes. rio is forcing her hand. but he also cannot be fully blamed because he was pushed into addiction by his father and addiction is a very tricky thing to deal with anyway. he is also only 17. they're just kids man. life dealt them an unfair hand.

but also!!! oliver crying 🥺 i hardly see male protagonists breaking down like this and it's kind of about time oliver Cracked a little