JULY 3RD, 1997

                   𝕿he world was not the same.

                   - CAN YOU FORGET HIS SCREAMS? —

      It had been nearly two months since the murder of Albus Dumbledore, and ultimately the murder of three others that were overlooked by the entirety of the wizarding world.

      Winnie Buldstrode found it hard not to blame them, and more so, herself.

         You see, it is easy to pretend that the people weren't dying when you were protected by the walls of a castle you knew so well. Those walls had protected you since the mere, naive age of eleven years old. You had lost your girlhood there, had your first blushing encounter of a foolish, childhood crush. You spent evenings curled by the fire with your friends, your fingers pricked and smoothed against every crinkled surface of a delicate spine of a book. You were at home.

            You were also blind.

                — DO YOU FEEL GUILTY? —

         Winnie Buldstrode has faced true death. She had seen it caked in grim. Teeth as sharp as razors, sharpened to allude a sense of monstrosity. Winnie remembers how it felt to have those teeth tear into her flesh, to rip her skin from her bones. It was an agonizing type of pain that burned her, the kind that had made her woozy and sweaty with bile.

         She remembers thinking that Fenir Greyback attacking her was what hell feels like.

              Hell is a different feeling altogether.

      It's the feeling of total loneliness, total helpless that you lock down to a complete paralysis of the body. You feel as if you can not do nothing but stare at a reality that surely can not exist. Is this real? You ask yourself. Are you dreaming? You beg. Beg. Beg.

             — HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF? —

         She lives like this.

        She doesn't.

       Because what Winnie Buldstrode had substituted herself to can not be living, not really. She has turned into a weak shell of skin and bones, eyes has blank as burned embers. One would think she is a plastic doll if it were not for the simple way she strolls the halls at night like a ghost. She walks, and walks, and walks until she finally allows herself to fall into a state of peace.

      It can not be peaceful, not truly, for she always awakes in a fit. Gasping for air as if her lungs has constricted in on her, killing her slowly as she sleeps. Tears leak on her face like a faucet, whispers of the dead leave her lips.

        Winnie Buldstrode is haunted.

        She is not upset about losing a Headmaster, he was nutty, and she believed him to be harsh towards the boy who lived. Naming Harry Potter the boy who lived was the first mistake her deceased Headmaster. There is no love lost between her soul and the one that has passed through the veil.

      It is not the ghost of Draco Malfoy who haunts her, because he is neither a ghost nor he is dead. He is a body that lives and breathes as much as her heart will allow, they are tethered together in this reality and the next. Though if they speak words to each other it is short, always tight as if they can nit bear to be under the same roof.

        They can't, but they have little choice in the matter.

        Sirius Black is missed in the way she stares at buttered toast. The toast is too golden, it is not blackened like charcoal, it is not smeared with orange marmalade that he would love so dearly. Her hot chocolate was unbearable, she could no longer drink it without feeling like her lungs would burst in her ribcage. She had tried once, only to throw the cup across the room, allowing it to shatter into a million, chocolate mess against the wall.

       Winnie Buldstrode drinks coffee now. As bitter as her taste buds would allow.

         Yet, it is not Sirius Black that haunts her. Harry Potter is haunted by him enough for the two of them.

         — DID YOU REGRET NOT SAYING IT? —

        Theodore Nott haunts her.

            She sees him in every reflection, every-time her eyes close she sees him. It's like a noose tied around her heart, pulling tighter and tighter. Winnie will never not remember his screams, the kind that sets goosebumps over your skin. The kind that rings in your ears still from weeks to come. He haunts her in every aspect. It goes a little something like this:

          Winnie Buldstrode lives in a constant state of delusion. She remembers the sickeningly sweet smell of dark magic that leaves a sour taste on the roof of her tongue. She remembers the wind beating at her skin, remembers the wooziness that follows her steps, remembers running faster than she has ever run. Skipping steps to reach them, reach him. Winnie did not understand at that time, she did not have all the facts, but she just remembered needing to reach him. Everything blurs the moment she steps into the top of the Astronomy tower. Cordelia Flint is there, her hands unwavering while her eyes hold a complex flag of uncertainty. Winnie didn't pay much attention to it at the time, and she can not bring herself to bridge that path still. She remembers Theo, who looks at her with such emotion evident on her face she is momentarily knocked speechless.

         It all happened relatively fast after that.

         — YOU DESTROY EVERYTHING —

           Winnie does not remember much besides the death of Theo Nott. How his eyes are leaking a river of crimson, how his body withers on the ground. Shaking in a pain that she yearned to feel. It seemed cruel that could feel everyone's pain, but, she wanted to take it away. Take it all away. She could bare it, she could be the vessel for his pain, for his death so he would feel nothing at all.

        She never gets the chance, and now Draco Malfoy is tied to her and has nothing left.

       A war is coming; she knows this. It has already started for her, and now all she can do is wait.

       Wait with her heart stuck in her mind. Wait until her feet could hit the castle floors again. Wait until Harry Potter decides the day that Voldermort will die, and she will be there.

AUGUST 14TH, 1997

                 𝖂innie has become accustomed to denial.

        Nearly five months since Theo Nott died, the world has become quiet.

           Too quiet.

          It's unsettling.

                      — ARE YOU PREPARED? —

             Winnie has rare moments of clarity these days, and she is no longer staring emotionless at buttered toast. Her walks have grown to be more of a sensation than an act. She'll perch on the edge of her bed with her new wand trained in her hands until she finally succumbs to her body's needs and curls up like a cat. Still clothed, never underneath the blankets, never truly comfortable, but sleeping all the same.

         They move from house to house as of late. It's a restless action, but she tries to make the best of it. She unpacks her clothes each time in a timely, organized manner. Shirts on the left, sweaters on the middle, and pants on the right. Undergarments on the top shelf, pyjamas on the bottom. Winnie brings books she never touched, but she finds herself unable to let them go.

           She finds she clings tightly to material objects these days; perhaps she yearns for control. An act she has lost, from one house to another, control prickles away to nothing.

          Winnie finds herself in a constant state of loneliness, and it goes a little something like this:

          Remus Lupin is a man she sees little, and he stops by when he can, always running to her first. Taking up the pristine act of fatherhood when war will allow it, the fact remains, however. She has seen him four times since the night that haunts her as a song stuck on a loop. He is always in a fit of despair, full of bruises and cuts she hisses at him for.

             Eventually, she stops and accepts things as they are. Remus Lupin is a frequent werewolf undercover, and she supposes she should be blessed that it is not her out there. So her mouth stays shut, even as he winces and sleeps for days on end in a bed that is not his. Their home is no longer here; it was lost to them with the death of Sirius Black.

                  — WHAT IS HOME? —

           Harry Potter holds a grudge better than anyone she knows. It's simple, really, even in her mind. Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore had died that night, and Harry did not care about Theo Nott or that her life was now tied to Draco Malfoy's. He cared for the loss of the only parent he has ever had, and even though Winnie was not one to hold the wand, there is a blame on her shoulders. She has not spoken to her best friend in nearly five months, he is not there when she awakes with a nightmare, he is not there when she has those seconds of reality when her mind slips too far. Winnie awakes now slowly, with her fingers clenched so tightly, blood trickles from the skin on her palms. Oozing from half crescent moons from her palm.

            Her best friend is angry, and Winnie can not find it in herself to tell him he is wrong for being so. She pretends that it did not hurt when he avoids her at every cost. Winnie pretends that there isn't a hole in her heart, ripped out by the absence of a raven haired boy.

           They had once made a pinky promise to never lie to each other, Winnie had ultimately broke it at the end of the day.

              — ARE YOU ANY BETTER THAN HER? —

           Her mother is not truly her mother anymore. A hard truth that taste bitter when she swallows.

           Imogen Buldstrode had died when Winnie was six years old, there one day and gone the next. Winnie had spent many hours obsessing over the tiniest of memories she had of her mother. She should have noticed. Why didn't she notice?

              Charlotte Nott takes up her space, an odd person that Winnie does not trust. She barely sees her, as Imogen Buldstrode still exists in the mind of the Death Eaters.

           But her mother is dead, dead, dead.

                — EVERYONE YOU LOVE WILL DIE —

           But at least Hogwarts is there, at least she will return to normality.

           Until it isn't.

AUGUST 29TH, 1997

         𝕴t is late in the night when the news breaks.

          She is sitting on the edge of her bed again, though it isn't really her bed is it? Just another house that they will stay in for a few weeks before they leave again. Always moving, always running.

        Remus appears at exactly 3:47 am. She knows this because something felt wrong the entire night. Her stomach was twisting with pain so feral she had puked her guts up just hours before.

        Somehow she knows what is he going to say before it even leaves his lips, and yet it stings all the same.

            "McGonagall is dead. Hogwarts is overthrown."

             The death of that blind denial and false hope dies like this:

        In screams as she clings to the sweater of Remus Lupin as she grieves the loss of her old Head of House. It dies in an uncontrollable realization that war is here to stay, and it will take until nothing is left.

SEPTEMBER 10TH, 1997

          𝕳arry left with Hermione and Ron in the middle of the night on September 1st.

         Harry left without saying goodbye, and Winnie once more pretended that it does not haunt her each night. His voice of torture and death has not joined her nightmares of Theo.

                 – CAN YOU BLAME HIM? –

         No, she can not.

       Living is false. War is greater and kills you in more ways than one. It is the morning after a full moon, her bones are aching, and her cheeks blossom with fresh bruises. The loss of wolfsbane was tiny in the measure of things, but she will hold it every month when she loses her mind for twelve hours.

       Everything changes with each blink of her eye, and the only constant is Draco Malfoy. He is there when she yearns to be alone, fighting her with sharp words and poison on his tongue. He is there in the silent moments when they both ache the missing pieces of what their lifes once were and what they can never be again.

          Not even a constant could make her fight.

SEPTEMBER 20TH, 1997

           𝕮harlotte Nott is the embodiment of death itself.

        Winnie hadn't wanted to know, and she didn't mean to poke the silent woman that she burst.

                 – YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING –

          But the world was dark, and her heart was stone. The blonde was content living in a world of guilt that she possessed upon her shoulders. Charlotte Nott seemed to grow tired of the female bite and her little will to fight. She was far from the girl who forced herself out of the attack on Hogwarts, far from the girl who brimmed with anger.

        Winnie Buldstrode was a part of the dead walking, and Charlotte Nott could no longer handle it.

             This led to Winnie discovering every tiny part of Charlotte Nott's tragic life that keeps stealing and taking from her.

              "I was sold for a profit of my older brother's interest. He gave me to Tom Riddle to toy with, to steal my very essence of innocence at the age of sixteen when he was almost twice my senior. Tom Riddle stole everything I had and locked me into a loveless marriage to a boy who could never love me the way he should. He stole me from someone I loved, someone who was gentle and loved me not for the sight but for who I am. But even in a marriage, I was not free because Tom Riddle showed up and took and took until I had nothing left until I could still not unfeel the way he would touch and toy with me. I had to give up everything to get away from him. I gave away my gift. I gave away my love, and my best friend and husband died to help me. Blood is stained on my hands I see it every time I close my eyes. I had to take on the part of a dutiful housewife who had no choice but to stand aside as he hurt you, as he dishonoured me, as he killed and had his whores sleep on my bed. But at least I was free from Tom, and then... and then he came back, and I– Do not lecture me on not knowing what loss and pain are, girl. I have felt more than you ever had, and I'm still here. I'm still fighting."

OCTOBER 31ST, 1997

             𝕮harlotte Nott's truth haunts her, another collection of miseries she sees when she closes her eyes. It pours down her like an array of demons. Moments of peace are harder to catch, swallow down and force it to stay put as of late.

            –  PEACE IS A CHILD'S TOY –

      But she is living now.

        Or at least her strange way of living. The anger that courses through her veins suffocate, and she holds onto it like a lifeline. It keeps her going. She yearns for revenge, that anger to be relinquished with the blood of those who wronged her.

        Winnie Bultstrode is living in her way.

          It is—however, a sobering thought to see the Order comprised mostly of young adults and teenagers.

                 – LAMBS FRESH FOR THE KILL –

       The Order meeting comprised this: Winnie Buldstrode sat to the right of Remus Lupin. Her finger twisted the cool silver of her ring as they rested upon the worn dining room table of the safehouse in Washington. It was a new house, held only for meetings and the occasional groups that trickled in and out. It was the safest for meetings, as the Death Eaters had yet to travel across the sea. For now, they terrorized the border. Remus Lupin had stopped going undercover a month after McGonagall died when it became clear the Order was spiralling and needed leadership.

        The total amount of adults comprising the Order was Remus Lupin and Kingsley Shackbolt – who still worked undercover at the Ministry despite it falling apart – Andromeda Tonks, Ted Tonks and their daughter Nymphadora Tonks. Mad-Eye stood to the side, watching them closely with his continuously moving eye. Bill and Molly Weasley sat together with their sons, Bill and Charlie. Redhead and freckles were dotting their cheeks. To the side of Bill sat Fleur, the pair had gotten a relatively quick elopement in August, and now their hands were laced together.

          The total of members that should, by all rights, be anywhere else but in that room consisted of Winnie, with Ginny Weasley to her right, despite Molly Weasley's complaints that she should be anywhere but there. The Patil twins sat together with Lavender Brown beside them. Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Luna Lovegood, Justin Finch, Margaret Warner, Neville Longbottom, and the list went on and on.

          Minus Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were still missing in action somewhere in Europe.

              ( Draco Malfoy was also wisely not there; nobody trusted him enough; instead, he sat somewhere upstairs surrounded by books Winnie had made him read to keep him quiet. )

          Winnie Buldstrode was growing restless. She was stirring in her own anger and had nothing to show for it. She needed out; she needed something.

          A group of muggles and muggle-borns had gone missing at an alarming rate. Nobody needed to speak to know who was responsible – Death Eaters.

           The war had been slow, increasingly so, and soon, it would get worse.

                      – YOU WILL ALL DIE –

              Winnie's voice was hoarse fifteen minutes after the meeting had ended. It was all due to her screaming at Remus Lupin, who kept denying her access to go on missions. He protected her from death, and she was ready to accept it.

             Remus Lupin wanted his daughter to survive this war for every purpose; he had lost everything and would not surrender the one thing he had left.

          Winnie Buldstrode was hungry, starving for revenge. Dying for action, she could feel her bones grow weak each day. Her body was starving for the tiniest piece of satisfaction, which she would not receive between the four plain walls of a safehouse, suffocating her endlessly.

             Maybe he understood that feeling, for by the end, he had relented. Only under the agreement that she endured training like the rest of the people in her year and teenagers fighting.

DECEMBER 24TH, 1977

               𝕯raco Malfoy is an enigma she can not understand.

             It had been nearly two months since Remus allowed her to be an active member of the Order. For two months, she endured the strictest of teachings from Mad-Eye Moody, whom she had grown to respect and loathe simultaneously.

          The volunteer training with Pompfrey put her mind at ease, and she found the world shimmering to a silent hum. There was still the white noise trickling in the back of her brain, but for a moment, she could pretend it didn't exist as she dealt with cuts and served limbs.

          But Draco Malfoy was a constant limb she could not heal, nor could she untie the mess he created in her life.

           Winnie had wished to spend Christmas Eve alone, lost in her own twisted web of guilt that she kept tightly locked behind the rage of her anger. Sometimes, it needed untangling, and sometimes, she just needed a reminder of everything that has lost.

         A reminder that he was gone, and she would never tell how she loved him back.

         Draco Malfoy had other plans, more like he wanted to fight.

        He had made it known that he wanted to join the Order. He wanted to go on raids, to do anything besides stay in the house.

              – ISN'T HE THE SAME AS YOU?--

            Winnie Buldstrode didn't trust him. He moped around and turned his lips into a scowl anytime a muggle-born was mentioned – they had gotten into fights over that, too, until. Eventually, he stopped. She never asked whether or not it was due to his change of heart.

        But her argument died in its tracks when tears blossomed in his eyes; she was rendered speechless, and he regrettably mumbled how he just wanted his mother.

         Unlike him, it was a truth so pure that she lost herself for any words to reply.

          She had almost forgotten that he was a child just like her at the end of the day. Winnie had lived the past few months ignoring him despite the fact they had lived in every safe house together the entire time. She didn't know when he ate – or how he ate, for that matter, as he still had no wand. Winnie didn't know what he did all day, didn't know when he slept or when he showered.

            Draco Malfoy mirrored her pain and anger, and she had never even bothered to care.

DECEMBER 30TH, 1977

            𝖂innie Buldstrode vouched for Draco Malfoy in the next meeting, and though the faces of students she had known since age eleven looked at her with a level of trust, Remus Lupin didn't, and that was enough for her.

JANUARY 29TH, 1998.

           𝖂ar was easy when you were hiding behind walls when you only saw the blood that splattered across other people's bodies as you healed.

        It was different when you were living in the middle of it.

        Winnie's first mission had her tied to Draco Malfoy. The Order had seen it fit to pair them together, a strange turn of events she hadn't minded.

      She was assigned as a mission healer, a bag strapped to her back full of potions she could use if needed.

     Winnie wasn't supposed to need it. It was supposed to be easy, supposed to be quick. They were just designed to raid the Greengrass property, that was all. Fast and simple, the Death Eaters held a meeting at their base in Hogwarts. It was simple.

      Until it wasn't.

       The prisoners they were directed to grab were the default they never expected. As soon as they stepped out of the dungeons with the prisoners, alarms started to blare on every surface of the manor.

         What happened next Winnie could carry with her forever.

           The fifteen-year-old she held in her arms took her last breath as a Death Eater directed a spell toward her chest. It was only Draco Malfoy who pulled her away from the child in her arms, so much like the night Theo died.

          She would carry this death with her forever, another death that would haunt her.

FEBRUARY 14TH, 1998

           𝕳arry Potter greeted her on her eighteenth birthday, and she had expected them to have another row as she stood in her pyjamas, tears streaking her face from the ghost that haunted her.

          He hugged her instead.

       They spoke no words, just held each other as they broke into shattered pieces of their hearts. No words needed to be spoken, and time healed wounds, especially in the middle of the war when friends died like stocks around them.

        So they held each other like the world was crashing around, which it was, catching up to them quicker than they thought.

MARCH 23RD, 1998

            𝕸adam Prompfey's capture and assumed death threw Winnie off guard completely.

       They were moving safehouses when it happened. Someone had uttered the name Voldermort, and hell descended upon them instantly. Sulphur filled the air, a bitter taste that burned her insides as Winnie yelled for backup.

      They were unprepared, and they paid the price.

        Madam Prompfrey was ripped from her hands, and there was nothing she could do but let it happen.

        It left only Maggie and her left as healers, and the fallout was drastic.

APRIL 2ND, 1998.

        𝕮ordelia Flint was a ruthless killer.

             The truth had been just as bitter to swallow as she drank her coffee that morning when Ron Weasley spoke about their run-in with her while they were hunting horcruxs. While Harry was oddly quiet on the topic, Ron was not.

            It was just as hard to swallow the moment she saw Cordelia Flint photographed in the Daily Prophet that evening, her face void of emotion as she stood next to Bellatrix Lestrange with her eyes staring blankly at the camera.

                    – WHO WAS SHE? —

MAY 17TH, 1998

           𝕿he first time Winnie Buldstrode had sex, it was with a muggle man in a random, dingy bar in Washington.

         She was drunk, vision blurred by the bitter liquid that tainted her liver, and the boy looked irly like the boy she loved. The boy she lost.

      For awhile, she could've pretended it was him, until the moment was over. Until his sweaty body leaned against her. Until she smelled the sickening smell of a cheap cologne she knew Theo would never wear.

        Everything crashed down on her after that.

       Theo had been dead for a year, and it was not him that she let have her. It was not him that pressed a sloppy kiss to her forehead as her heart twisted in terrible pain. There was an ache between her thighs hat burned furiously, and stinging in her eyes that leaked tears.

       She did not hear him speak in her ear, only that his voice was too high was too rushed to be Theo.

        Because Theo was dead, and he will never speak to her again. She will never hear his voice again.

        Winnie became rather sober quickly after that, now only blinded by her tears and breaking heart as she stumbled to an alleyway. Leaning her arm against the brick wall before she apparated away to the safehouse that she Should've never left.

       Draco Malfoy caught her when she got home when she stumbled in the hallway with a sob leaving her throat. The blonde fell forward, planning to let her knees scrape against the floor, but it never did. His arms wrapped around her, holding her up as she clung to him.

        The tears that leaked against her bare shoulder from his eyes were never spoken about. They grieved the loss of their past, the loss of Theo Nott together.

       Just like they always should have.

AUGUST 22ND, 1998

         𝕭urned skin burned her nostrils, hand shook uncontrollably as she stood in the pristine white of the bathroom. Her eyes were unseeing as she shook the pale of her skin covered in blood as silent tears tracked down her face.

        Collin Creevy had burned from the inside out and she could do nothing as his brain oozed out of his like water. She could do nothing as he screamed and trashed, as his eyes leaked crimson tracks down the wailing features of his face. She could do nothing but force Justin to hold his hands down as she poured Dreamless sleep potion down his throat.

         All that did was to cause him to choke on the potion, and she felt nothing but powerless as his body halted its twitching. His eyes rimmed red faded away to a dull nothing, he was dead and there was nothing she could've done.

          The Death Eaters were getting crafty and there was no cure.

DECEMBER 2ND, 1998

        𝕽umors were a cruel way of torturing ones soul.

         When the rumour broke that there was a boy – man with chesnut hair and eyes as green spring leaves causing havoc and murder sprees as a Death Eater broke loose, Winnie felt like her world shifted again.

       She let that rumour as quickly as she pushed aside everyone she saw die.

        Theodore Nott was not alive, and holding onto a childish hope that he is was for children, and she never felt further away from a child than now.

FEBURARY 14TH, 1999

           𝕻ansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini joined the Order on the evening of her nineteenth birthday.

          Winnie found herself wondering when she became the watcher of all Slytherins when Remus dropped them in Draco and her's safehouse. She felt oddly alone when the trio of Slytherins reunited like old friends, she had made the move to slip away when Draco called out to her, reeling her back ino their hole of warmth and Winnie found herself unable to say no.

          Maybe she was tired of being alone, or maybe, just maybe, she was tired of living in her solitude of pain by herself.

— the events that happen in this portion are quickly brushed over. it's just to showcase pivotal events. the rests of the chapters will be longer and more detail oriented i swear <3