The December air was saturated with chill as Artemis huddled beneath the stands of the Quidditch pit, a thin blanket wrapped around her narrow shoulders. She shivered, a puffed cloud of air escaping through her dry lips, as she attempted to fall asleep on the frozen grass. The occasional triumphant shout and disappointed groan could be heard from the air far above Artemis, and she tried her best to ignore both.

Normally, the Slytherin girl wouldn't give a damn about Quidditch practice, seeing as she wasn't on the team. But Regulus Black was.

For reasons unknown, ever since that night near a month ago, Artemis felt unbearable pain whenever Regulus was away from her. It made it impossible to do homework, to sleep, to eat, to do near anything. But when she was around him, the fiery pain evaporated.

So Artemis had grown to become talented at following Regulus unseen.

Artemis shivered again, tucking her hands under her legs in the futile hope that it would warm them. Though Regulus was in the air, he was still close enough to Artemis to alleviate her pain. Though she hadn't figured out the distance needed to keep her pain-free, Artemis had determined that anything less than the space between her dorm and his would take the pain away. At night, she was unable to sleep due to the writhing, persistent pain.

She was no longer worried about night terrors; Artemis couldn't even fall asleep to receive any.

"The snitch, Black!" shouted an exasperated voice from above. "You're supposed to be watching the snitch, not the stands!"

Artemis's breathing hitched. Had Regulus somehow seen her? She scanned her surroundings; no, she was hidden underneath several rows of benches. It would be impossible from his height and angle to catch a glimpse of her.

But Artemis shifted farther beneath the stands, ducking her head to avoid hitting it on the wooden beams. The ragged blanket slipped off her shoulders, and Artemis cursed as her frozen fingers fumbled for the worn fabric.

Though the pain was thankfully nonexistent at the moment, Artemis knew that it wouldn't last. It never seemed to. The moment Regulus moved far enough away from her, an indescribable agony would flood through Artemis, and she would be left to grit her teeth and bear through it. And with Christmas rapidly approaching...to say that Artemis was concerned would be an understatement. She could barely bear a few hours without the solace of being near Regulus; how was she supposed to last weeks?

"I can see you, you know," said a voice suddenly.

Artemis jumped in surprise and bumped her head on the wooden beams above her. She peered upwards and found a face grinning down at her. Artemis scowled.

"I can see you, too," she muttered darkly. "Congratulations, we can both see."

"What are you doing here?" Abel asked almost cheerfully. It seemed that Marlene's chipper attitude was rubbing off on him, unfortunately.

"Am I not allowed to sit here?"

"Usually, one would sit in the stands instead of under them," Abel pointed out, his gaze squinted down at Artemis. "You are alone down there, aren't you?"

Artemis's scowl deepened. Of course Abel thought that she had nothing better to do on a Saturday than to shag a boy under the deserted Quidditch stands in the freezing weather.

"Yes, I'm alone. But that's not much of a surprise to you, now is it?"

Abel frowned, but he didn't have a retort. Satisfied, Artemis crossed her arms beneath her blanket. Ever since the night of detention, Artemis had not so much as flirted with any boy, an observation that Marlene had clearly made. Now, she had recruited Abel on her already failed mission to befriend Artemis. But Artemis had bigger things to worry about now. Already, the pain was creeping back into her veins, colder than any ice yet hotter than the flames of hell.

"I have to go," Artemis announced suddenly, more to herself than to Abel.

She crept from beneath the stands, her blanket dragging on the ground. Artemis wrapped around the stands, using her pain as her sole guide to find Regulus.

"Where are you going?" Abel asked, jogging behind her. "Was it something I said?"

"Not everything is about you," Artemis responded absentmindedly, but her heart wasn't in it; her eyes were busy searching the skies for the familiar mop of dark hair. But there was no one there.

"I never said it was," Abel said. "And I don't know who you're stalking, but Quidditch practice is over. It just ended."

Artemis turned, and sure enough, the Slytherin team was walking back towards the castle, brooms held proudly over their shoulders. She cursed and followed them, the pain in her veins slowly ebbing away.

"Now where are you going?" Abel demanded.

"Stop following me," Artemis said over her shoulder, hoping that the boy would leave.

But the sound of Abel's feet crunching the frosty grass followed Artemis.

"If you're stalking my friend, I should warn you that he's not into the kind of things you are."

Artemis turned to face the warm-skinned boy, and she was almost proud to find the look of hesitant fear in his eyes. There was so much that was unfamiliar this year, but Artemis knew how to navigate fear. Just not her own.

"And what kind of things am I into, Abel?" she asked sweetly, a wolf-like smile peering over at him.

Abel shrugged, his dark eyes looking anywhere but into Artemis's. "You know. You like Charms, he prefers Potions. He plays Quidditch, you hide under the bleachers. He's never kissed anyone, you've snogged the whole school. No offense —" he quickly added, "except for towards Reggie."

"He's never snogged anyone?" Artemis asked, not exactly sure why she was asking the question.

"Kissed, and yeah, never. He came pretty close with Charlotte Reed last year, but nothing happened."

"The word I used was snogged," Artemis said as she continued the cold trek to the castle, Abel following at a small distance beside her. "Kissing implies that you feel something for the other person."

Abel frowned, casting an unsubtle glance towards Artemis. "All the guys you've kissed — snogged — and you've never felt anything?"

He looked so familiar to his brother that it was painful. Every time Artemis looked at him, all she could see was Henry.

The first kiss Artemis had ever had was stolen from her by Henry. A lot of her firsts were that night. She wanted a careless word like "snogging" to berate her soul like sandpaper. She wanted to feel the painful guilt of not caring.

But she had felt something when she snogged boys. Artemis felt fear and guilt and a sense of hiding. She was afraid of never stopping, and she was afraid if she stopped. If Artemis never stopped, she felt as if her secret would catch up to her, that Henry's fingerprints would still be visible on her body. Her body was a crime scene; she needed help covering up the crime.

"Fear," Artemis whispered, standing still in the painfully cold air. "And guilt. Like I'm running, and if I stop, then it's going to catch up."

The words felt like a confession, and it was all Artemis could do to avoid Abel's gaze. But he needed to know the pain that his family had caused her; he needed to know how she felt.

"What's 'it'?" Abel finally asked. "Marlene wants to help you, Artemis, why won't you just let us help you?"

The distance between her and Regulus spanned even farther, and Artemis winced, biting back a shout of pain.

"I have to go," she said lamely, taking a stumbling step back to the castle.

As Artemis half-ran, half-fell up to Hogwarts, she could hear the words whispering in her ears.

It was your brother.

But that was another kind of pain, a different kind. One that didn't send her blood on fire, one that didn't freeze the air in her lungs. So Artemis chased solace to alleviate one kind of pain, and left the other solace standing alone in the cold air.

•••

-AND MY BODY IS CAVING IN
A CATHEDRAL OF ARCHING RIBS-

[ everything that helps you sleep / julien baker ]