Clive Lundquist, Nanette Desford
January 10, 1997
Hogwarts librarysometimes a lost diary is scarier than any curse
Отредактировано Clive Lundquist (10.07.25 02:28)
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Clive Lundquist, Nanette Desford
January 10, 1997
Hogwarts librarysometimes a lost diary is scarier than any curse
Отредактировано Clive Lundquist (10.07.25 02:28)
Clive has been in the library for hours now, and the sense of time within these walls is, as always, beginning to blur.
The quill scrapes against the parchment, the ink spilling out in some spots from too much pressure. The History of Magic essay is moving slowly, almost painfully so, despite the fact that the topic is interesting - the infighting in the Wizengamot. Professor Binns mumbled about it in class with his usual grin, as if it were not about blood, revenge and the fall of entire clans, but about some useless, forgotten code of laws. But in textbooks, between the lines, the essence still breaks through - intrigue, betrayal, struggle. There is something painfully familiar about it.
It's just that he can't concentrate.
Clive has now reread the same paragraph three times. His thoughts are racing. There's a chaos of voices in his head: his mother, his father, the doctor from St. Mungo's who said something about the regressive phase but never suggested anything new. And then there were the memories of how his mother had once laughed - a real, lively laugh, like the sun on a clear day. And how she was silent now.
Lundquist exhales heavily, reaches into his bag for a draft and freezes. At first he just squints, counting the scrolls with his eyes. Then he carefully lifts the bag, looks inside, probes the bottom.
No diary.
He sits up straight, as if something in his spine is being stretched into a steel bar. His chest tightens with an invisible belt, and his breathing becomes shallow. An unpleasant, almost nauseating lump clenches in his stomach.
The fifth-year doesn't panic - not yet. He just slowly sets aside his quill, slides the stack of books aside, and starts checking everything: under the table, between the pages, on the nearest chair. Picks up parchments, looks behind the inkwell, even moves the bench awkwardly with his foot.
Nothing.
All around, almost silence. Someone is whispering at the other end of the room, leafing through pages, whispering - the sounds are muffled, distant, as if underwater.
The Gryffindor stands up. Slowly, neatly, he folds the parchments, shoves the textbooks back into his bag, as if taking his time to fool himself. It's all a mistake. He's just left it in his bedroom, of course. Or in the classroom. Or... or not.
Clive can already feel something starting to crawl under his skin - cold, clammy, piercing. The journal is everything. Not just thoughts. Not just words. It's him. The way no one else sees him. It's his mother. As no one knows her. There's fear. And hate. And despair.
He's heading for the exit. His steps are steady, almost measured. His fingers tighten on the strap of his bag. Inside, everything pulsed like a wound under a bandage.
But first, out of habit, the boy puts the books back where they belong. It's a little comforting. There is something right about putting things back in order. His fingers automatically find the right shelves, the spines of the books fit nimbly between the others, and everything seems a little more stable.
Until his gaze fixes on a familiar figure near the far shelf.
Nanette Desford.
He freezes.
The girl is leaning against the shelf, holding a dark blue notebook. It's open. She is flipping through the pages, and from the look on her face, she's clearly reading the content. Not a quick look. Not by accident. Purposefully.
He recognizes his notebook immediately. Those bent corners. The worn cover.
Clive's stomach clenches. This is it. He should have known. Who else but her would have...
He doesn't move right away. Just stares. At her. At the journal. At the way her fingers slide over his most private, most vulnerable notes. He feels a buzzing in his ears. No, roaring. Blood pounding in his temples. His chest feels like it's cracking at the seams, but his face is calm.
Lundquist takes a step forward. Then another.
He doesn't rush. He doesn't yell. He doesn't snatch the journal from her hands. Doesn't give her anything - no weakness, no power.
- Anything interesting? - the voice sounds flat, almost mocking even.
The boy stops a few steps away from her. He pauses. Slowly, he examines her face, as if he can't believe this is happening. That a diary - his diary - is being read like this. Like a scroll thrown on the floor. Like a newspaper at breakfast.
Of course she knows whose diary it is. His name is in there. His mother's name is in there. Everything about him is in there.
The Gryffindor doesn't even try to pretend that this could be a misunderstanding.
- I hope you at least appreciated the grammar, - he adds with the same cold tone.
Отредактировано Clive Lundquist (11.07.25 02:27)
Nanette doesn't look up right away.
Her fingers tighten around the cover of the notebook, as if it's suddenly too fragile or too heavy. The leather binding feels warm against her palms, worn smooth in places where someone else's hands have held it countless times. She shouldn't have read it. Not a single word in it was meant for her. She knew that from the moment she saw his name inside and recognized the handwriting. That careful, deliberate script that looked nothing like the messy scrawl he used for schoolwork. But she stopped herself too late.
The words are still there, burned into her memory like afterimages. Her throat feels tight. She swallows hard, once, twice, trying to push down the strange ache that's settled in her chest. This isn't about her. This has nothing to do with her. But somehow, reading those words, seeing the careful way he'd written them, like he was afraid even the paper would judge him, it changed something. Made her feel like she was standing in a room she had no right to enter.
Still, she doesn't offer an apology.
- Your punctuation's a bit shaky in places, - she says flatly. No smirk. No edge. The words come out smaller than she intended, like they're afraid of themselves. She doesn't meet his eyes.
The silence that follows is taut. In it, the soft scratch of her fingernail against the corner of the cover sounds louder than it should. She's picked at that same spot three times now, a nervous habit she thought she'd outgrown. The small sound echoes in the empty corridor, and she forces herself to stop.
Her pulse is too fast. Why is her pulse too fast? She's faced down teachers, prefects, her own parents when they're in one of their moods. She's never been afraid of uncomfortable conversations. But this feels different. Heavier. Like she's holding something that could break if she's not careful enough.
- I found it near the stairs, - she adds quietly, finally lifting her gaze. - It could've ended up in anyone's hands.
That's the truth. And it's that truth, awful, weighty, that pushes her to act: Nanette extends the diary toward him. Fast. Like it's burning her fingers. Her arm trembles slightly with the motion, and she hopes he doesn't notice. The space between them feels enormous and too small at the same time.
Her tone stays cold, but it's no longer biting. It's guarded. Protective, almost, though she's not sure what she's protecting him, or herself, or the fragile thing that's settled between them.
- You don't owe me an explanation, - she says, and there's a tiny flicker of discomfort at the word owe. It tastes wrong in her mouth. Too formal. Too distant. Like she's trying to put walls up when what she really wants is to tear them down.
There's something else she almost says, it flickers across her expression like a shadow, but she swallows it. Or can't find the right words. The sentences pile up in her throat, clumsy and inadequate. "I'm sorry. I know what it's like. You're not as alone as you think you are." But they all sound wrong, too much like pity or not enough like truth.
So she just looks at him — steady, unreadable. As if she's hoping he'll say it first: why he wrote it, why he kept it hidden, why he didn't tell anyone. Her eyes search his face for something — anger, maybe, or embarrassment, or relief. Something that would tell her how to respond, how to be.
But she doesn't ask.
She only says, more quietly this time, almost like it hurts to admit: - I didn't know. About your mum.
The words hang in the air between them, fragile as glass. She can almost see them there, shimmering with everything she hasn't said.
Then she takes a small step back. Not retreating — giving him space. Handing the control back to him. Her heel catches slightly on the uneven stone floor, and she has to steady herself against the wall. The coolness of it seeps through her shirt, grounding her.
But her gaze lingers. She's still waiting.
Waiting for him to take the diary, to say something, to bridge the gap that's opened between them. Waiting for him to be angry, or grateful, or anything at all. Her fingers curl and uncurl at her sides, a restless energy she can't quite contain.
The corridor stretches empty around them, full of shadows and silence. Somewhere in the distance, she can hear the faint echo of other students' voices, other lives moving forward while theirs has paused here, suspended in this moment of strange, uncomfortable honesty.
She wants to say more. She wants to say nothing. She wants to run, and she wants to stay, and she wants to understand why her chest feels so tight when she looks at him now.
But mostly, she just waits.
- You're wounding me,- Clive said sarcastically, his tone almost mocking, though he was clenching even tighter inside.
He says it like a joke, but it's not really funny. Not this time. Not with this one.
This kind of communication between them is the norm. Bad, toxic, stultifying, but... familiar. Almost comfortable. Like a sore tooth that you press your tongue on anyway, knowing it's going to get worse.
And now this habit helps him to keep his back straight, not to lower his gaze, not to snap. It helps him, at least outwardly, to keep his dignity. Because, unfortunately, there is no time-turner at hand, which means that there is no going back. You can't erase the pages. You can't tear them out. You can't burn them. Everything has already happened. It's all been read.
All that's left is to accept it.
And choose his words wisely, so Nanette wouldn't even suspect how much it hurt him.
And it did, in fact, hurt him a lot. It was as if someone had torn off all his skin at once, leaving only his exposed nerves.
The Gryffindor looks at her, and a feeling of awkward, poisonous closeness grows inside. Because now she knows more about him than anyone. Maybe even more than he knows himself. He often wrote there out of emotion - out of anger, out of desperation, when things were particularly hard. Sometimes too harshly. Sometimes too honest. Sometimes in such a way that he was afraid to read it again.
But it was easier to write than to speak. Safer.
The diary was a way to get his head straight.
To get himself back.
To reassemble the scattered fragments of Clive Lundquist's personality, an ordinary sixteen-year-old Gryffindor, not the son of a woman dying in St. Mungo's bed.
Now, however, it's as if that Clive has cracked. Nanette is holding the shards in her hands. And clearly doesn't know what to do with them.
The fifth-year notices how she avoids her gaze. How she doesn't speak with her usual harshness. How her voice has lost all the sarcastic liveliness with which she usually hurts him. And that... doesn't make it any easier. Not one bit. It's just unsettling.
If even she feels uncomfortable now, then things are really bad.
- Of course, - Lundquist agrees, raising his eyebrows, - But it was you who found the diary. Funny coincidence, isn't it?
The boy takes a step sideways, as if casually changing his view but not his distance.
With Desford, he can't afford weakness. Ever since first year, Clive has developed a tactic: armor, sarcasm, and a proactive attack. He'd learned to answer her with the same tone, the same words. Not because he wanted to - because he had to. Because otherwise she would have already broken him when he was just eleven years old.
She can do that. She can hit him with the right words and make him angry. And make him so mad that you can't tell where the truth is and where it's just a desire to inject him deeper.
He's under no illusions.
- I wasn't going to explain anything,- Clive said without changing his tone. Calmly, evenly, almost sluggishly.
So far she hasn't said anything bad, which is alarming.
Clive knows her. The girl's just collecting her thoughts. Processing the information she's received. Digesting it, so that she can say something sharp, unpleasant, with her trademark half-slanted squint and icy smile. It's just a breather before the storm.
And yet he can feel something... shifting in her. It's as if she doesn't realize how she got herself into this situation. Like she's not holding onto his vulnerability - but her own.
It doesn't matter. He should not believe it.
- I didn't want to tell everyone,- the boy says briefly. Dry. Almost rude. - That's why I keep a diary.
The fifth-year says it like it's about something mundane, boring. No pain. No drama. Just a fact.
But he's lying, of course. Not in words, in tone. He just didn't want to share.
And now she knows.
The Gryffindor sees her handing the journal to him. Clive lowers his gaze and notices a slight trembling - maybe his fingers, maybe his breath. He doesn't move immediately. A moment, and he's ready to recoil. Not to take. Not to touch.
But no.
He picks up the notebook. His fingers hardly tremble anymore, but his chest tightens again. Lundquist feels the leather of the binding - warm, familiar. It's as if he's holding his own voice in his hands, scared and raw. But his face is still indifferent, even lazy, as if nothing much is happening.
- I guess I shouldn't count on you to keep this a secret? - the boy asks.
Clive hesitates to the very last moment before he asks the question. He realizes how it will sound - like he's panicking, like he cares. But no. He can't just walk away. He needs to know. Needs to know what to prepare for.
A fifth-year isn't used to leaving things like this to chance. Will everyone find out tomorrow? Or the day after that? Would he walk out of his bedroom and immediately catch someone's eyes - sympathetic or, worse, pitying? Will he hear behind him “poor Lundquist” or “did you know what happened to his mom?”
Uncertainty pulls harder than the cold beneath his ribs.
And no matter how much Nanette pretends - as if she's all restraint and tact now - Clive knows what she's capable of. He remembers how skillfully she can present information. How one word of hers can hit the sorest spot. He's heard her pick apart other people's secrets precisely, dispassionately, as if she were cutting cloth with sharp scissors. Not loud. Not angry. Just right on target.
If she wanted to, his pain could be turned into a sharpness. A weapon. An excuse for subtle, condescending mockery.
And he can't ignore that.
Nanette doesn’t look up right away. Her fingers are clasped behind her back now, tense and stiff, like she’s physically holding herself in place to keep from flinching at the weight of Clive’s voice and how controlled it sounds, how sharp. Too sharp to be indifferent. Too steady to be truly fine.
She deserves it. Of course she does.
She shouldn’t have opened the journal. She knows that. There’s no excuse good enough, not even the fact that she hadn’t meant to pry. That she thought it was just a notebook someone left behind, maybe with notes she could use, maybe nothing important at all. But the moment she saw his name, the moment she read those first few lines…
She should’ve closed it. Walked away. Done the right thing. But she didn’t. And now it’s too late.
- I didn’t read all of it, - she says finally, her voice quiet, not small, not apologetic, just careful. Controlled in the same way his is. As if she, too, is afraid to say too much. - Just enough to know I shouldn’t have.
She exhales and forces herself to look at him. His face is unreadable. The same Clive-Lundquist expression she’s known for five years, infuriatingly casual, a little lazy, maybe smug if she didn’t already know better. But now she does. The smugness is a mask. The indifference is armor. She recognizes it because she wears the same one.
- It’s not going anywhere, - she adds. - No one’s going to hear about it from me. - Her voice doesn’t waver. She’s good at this part, at sounding certain even when she isn’t. But inside, it’s a mess: guilt and shame and a strange kind of tenderness she doesn’t know how to carry, especially not toward him.
Because this is Clive. Infuriating, sarcastic, impossible Clive. And yet… the words she read are still sitting with her. The pain, the anger and loneliness in them. They reminded her of things she doesn’t say out loud either.
She crosses her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes flickering away again. - You can believe that or not, - she mutters, the edge creeping back into her tone almost like a reflex. - I’m not here to beg you to trust me.
But even then, there’s no venom in it and no bite. Just tension, regret and something else she can’t name. Something that feels a little too much like understanding.
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