SEVEN WAS A CURIOUS GIRL, in almost every sense of the word. For no one knew Seven, not really. —She scarcely even knew herself.

All the knew about herself was what the few letters she'd found had told her, —seven to be precise. Her entire life seemed to revolve around that number. Sometimes she felt it was all she ever was and all she would ever be, just another number, just as meaningless and fleeting as the last.

Not even she knew her real name, so instead she became the embodiment of everything she was to destroy, and in turn, with the slaughter of the seven Sins she hoped to cull this identity and shed it in favour of another.

Only when the seventh Sin fell lifeless to her feet would her memories return, along with her true identity, or atleast that's what the letters foretold.

Seven had read and reread the letters so many times by now that the parchment had started to fray and tears intermittently stained the ink. Every night she slept with them beneath her pillow, safely tucked away in her little black purse, although tonight was different. —Tonight her letters were no where to be found when she finally awoke, head throbbing with the weight of a morning as she stretched the sleep from her aching limbs.

  Light from the setting sun danced across her bed as she sat up, tainting the white sheets tangerine. It was considered early in the Lust District, Seven guessed it to be scarcely passed nine o'clock, as much of the night's music had not yet began to drift through her open window, carried by the breeze.

  Though the absence of her letters was not the only thing amiss as she rubbed her groggy eyes and saw him. At the end of her bed sat a boy, casually draped across an arm chair, flicking through her letters.

  Seven sat up at once, reaching for her knife only to find it also missing. "—Who are you?" She demanded, clutching the sheets to her chest, realising she was still wearing the same dress as last night, though she struggled to recall the exact events through the emerald haze that clouded her mind. Lust was dead, that much she knew. "—What do you want?"

  "So many questions, and so little time." The boy mused, not tearing his eyes from the parchments.

  "Answer me!" Her fingers found her wand beneath the sheets, and she pointed it at him, —her hands not quite as steady as she hoped them to be.

  "Why?" He finally looked up, his eyes meeting hers for the first time and Seven could've swore she recognised him. His grey eyes were unsettling to say the least. Everything behind them screamed of hollow darkness, the kind that came right after the moon reached its crest and the evil came out of the night. The kind that suffocated any semblance of light. Pale hair, almost white despite the vermillion light fell over his face. "—Are you scared Seven?"

  He looked like a freshly woken storm, brimming with thunder and cursed by lightning. Everything within Seven screamed danger, —to run. But she couldn't, she was entirely transfixed. Frozen in time by the boy with the piercing eyes. The colour of thick smoke.

He knew her name. What else did he know? Seven didn't dare think. Instead she shoved the bitter feeling down in favour of a snarl. "Should I be?"

A strange smile tugged at the corners of his lips, "You should be absolutely terrified. —But not of me, at least not yet..."

  A frown marred her face as he looked back down at the letters, pulling fine lines between her brows. "You don't know me."
  It angered Seven that she had her wand pointed straight at his chest and he didn't even care, still he practically ignored her just as he had before. "—I know what you want, and trust me, we have that much in common."

What did she want? —Above all else? Seven knew the answer without a seconds though, but how could he? "I don't know what you're talking about."

He shook his head with a sigh as he turned over one of her precious letters. "Don't play dumb with me. We want the same thing, only alone neither of us can succeed."

"If you know me so damn well then tell me," Seven could feel her anger reaching it's summit, mounting with every stroke of deft fingers on the pages. "—What exactly is it that I want?"

"The sins, dead."

That stopped Seven short, right as she was debating which curse to strike him with first without damaging her letters and she stammered, "—That doesn't explain why you're in my room."

  "You should be thanking me." He said casually, "I did save your life after all."

  Seven decided she did not know a curse to stun the boy without risking the safety of her letters and lowered her wand slightly, though not entirely. "What?"

  He shrugged, pawing through them, "You were about to get yourself killed. Navy's men aren't exactly known for their leniency."

  "I think you'll find I can handle myself." Seven bristled, debating sacrificing her letters just to spite him.

  "Sure as hell didn't look that way."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" She snapped, suddenly all too aware of how exposed she was, "You think just because we want the same thing that what?— That we're allies?—That I'll help you?"

  He looked up at her once more, though this time something was different. An unsettling promise lingered just behind those hauntingly grey eyes. "I am not your enemy Seven, —God forbid you make me one."

"Is that a threat?" She snarled and he cocked his head, as if she were a riddle he couldn't quite decipher, "Do you want it to be?"

Seven didn't answer, only glared at him. They stayed that way for a while, without words, eyeing each other with shielded intent. One loathing, one curious, both guarded. Until finally he broke first, peeling himself from the armchair and chucking the letters to the foot of the bed before her. "They missed the apostrophe on 'it's.'"

  His words hit Seven like a dagger to the chest and her voice was suddenly quiet, soft. "I didn't write them."

  He didn't look at her, "I know."

  She watched the strange boy as he began riffling through her draws, pulling out clothes. "Get dressed," He said, throwing them at her, "—We're going to go kill a sin."

  • • •

  (EIGHTEEN MONTHS PRIOR)

  SHE HAD HEARD of the devastation, even witnessed it first hand. Seven hadn't fought during the battle of Hogwarts, for she had nothing worth fighting for. Instead like a coward she ran. At first she fled to what was now the Sloth District, but in the days following the war the chaos was worst there. But it wasn't the anarchy she had to fear, instead the fallout. Public executions, whippings, bodies lining the streets, gutters filled with the blood refused to drain, —even the rain failed to erase the last moments of the lives ended in agony.

  Some night seven still had nightmares about the day the Crawlers came, bringing with them an end to the hope of salvation.

  Harry Potter was dead.
   —Struck down and torn apart by strike after strike after strike. They cursed him until his skin split and eyes drew bloody, until his bones broke and he became something hardly human. Then they tied him by his throat to a chariot and dragged his body through every street in every district like some kind of sick trophy.

  Seven had watched the chariot pass from her window, and after she didn't eat for three days and didn't sleep for six. She had been violently sick, throwing up the last of her hope until her lips were bloody and ravaged by bile.

  And though his body was long dead, she could've sworn that for a brief moment his eyes met hers, hollow and empty as the day he fell. Hardly any skin remained on the mangled corpse, once the figure head of thousands, —now unrecognisable, ripped apart by stones and gravel, ivory bones peaking through the torn flesh and his limbs jutting out at inhuman angles.

  Seven remembered how she'd watched numbly as a girl with violently red hair had ran out into the street, and tried to free the body from the chariot despite her mother's cries for her to stop. The scream that followed as the Crawlers descended on the foolish girl, blinded by her love, would stay with Seven until her final breath. —Though even in death she doubted it would leave her.

  A wretched sound that held more torment than words ever could as the girl fell to her knees in the gutter and her mother was dragged away.

  Seven never stayed anywhere too long after that. Always on the move, always planning ahead. She didn't dare allow herself a moment to settle, —to feel, —to think. She kept herself busy to distract from the fact that she was entirely terrified, —every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day.

***
QOTD-What do you think the boy's true intentions are?
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