In the beginning, they had done everything together. They had stolen brandy from her father's liquor cabinet, smoked dirty Muggle cigarettes to hear his mother scream, and tortured the little ones in bad humor. They'd lay awake at night, mimicking each others movements, touching in time, slow and calculated. They'd drift away from themselves and become something else entirely, but they could never float too far away.

It was always like that in the beginning. She was darkness and he was her mirror. They'd been drawn to each other like currents to the undertow, whisking themselves away before they knew what was happening to them. She was willing, and she’d never seen him fight back either.

But everything had gone wrong when he'd gone off to Hogwarts. That was when he’d left her. He’d done something to make the hat call, “Gryffindor!” They said it was a break from family tradition, but she knew it for what it was.

It was betrayal against her. A slap in the face that would never cease its sting.

He had gone away from her, leaving her to the undertow. He wasn’t swimming with her anymore.

Though furious, she couldn’t help but decide that he had been nothing but a tether holding her back. But that was no more.

So she let go of the anchor and got pulled out, sucked in, dragged down until everyone else knew she had drowned.