Ivy stared at Quinn. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed. A gentle wind made its way beneath the tree’s canopy and ruffled their hair, adding to the coolness to the shade, shielding them from the sun’s heat.

“You are staring,” said Quinn, cracking an eye open to look at her.

“It’s just surprising,” she said, “when was the last time you took the initiative to talk to me on your own accord. . . usually, I’m the one who to start up our conversations.”

“You’re making me sound bad,” he chuckled.

“I’m not lying, though.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then what changed today?”

Quinn shrugged, “I wish I had a special reason. I came here to have some quiet away from the chatter. Saw you and decided to have some quiet time with you.”

“Not that I’m complaining; believe me, I’m not. Shouldn’t you be with Greengrass right now?”

“Right now, the Slytherins are holed up in their dorms, so, yeah,” said Quinn and then turned on his side to face Ivy. “So, how’s Gryffindor taking the news?”

Ivy shrugged. “Ron tried to make fun of the situation, but no one laughed and then got pelted when he got annoying. . . . It got really quiet in the common room, never expected that to happen for Snape.”

“How do you feel about it? He must’ve made your life pretty miserable in his classes.”

“You know I thought that too,” said Ivy, pulling some grass. “Dad and Sirius scared Harry and me about Snape when we were about to start our first year. How he didn’t like Gryffindor and that he hated. . . hated the Potters. And all of that was true— he doesn’t like Gryffindor and hates Potters. . . . But strangely, he never targetted me. He mostly ignored me for the most part. I have no idea why.”

Quinn gazed at Ivy. He could guess why. The resemblance between mother and daughter was much stronger than between daughter and father.

“I feel sad that he died,” Ivy continued, “even though he was miserable to literally everyone else who wasn’t Slytherin. . . and you, I guess. How do you feel about his death?”

“. . . I don’t know actually. I feel mostly numb.”

“What’s with that?”

Quinn sat up and dragged himself to sit against the tree beside Ivy.

“Enough of that; let’s talk about something else,” he said.

?Why are you doing this??

Quinn internally smiled as he heard the voice lacking strength.

‘You know why I’m doing this.’

?If you want to be like this, go find Daphne; why are you targetting her.?

‘Come on, don’t be like this. Isn’t this more thrilling?’

?No, it is not. Here I thought, you’d be a little more bothered with what happened yesterday.?

‘. . . You think I am not!’ Quinn yelled inside while continuing to talk to Ivy with a smile. ‘I have to put up a normal front while you hide inside wallowing in the dark. I’m warning you, don’t take that course with me.’

?Just leave her alone. I’ll stay quiet. I’m not really in the mood to fight with you anyway. Just go jack-off in the room.?

‘Yeah, about that. . . not going to happen. We want her, don’t we?’

?What. . . ??

‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ he quoted. ‘The West family name already granted us with enough social and financial power, and that was already too much. But know, we’re getting stronger and more skilled with magic. . . with time, we would reach a level where our personal power would allow us to roam around pretty much unfettered. And yeah, I don’t really want to get drunk on power, you know.’

?What, wait, I-I. . . don’t understand. . . .?

‘It seems you have some sort of confusion about the Sins. I am not Pride who wants his ego stroked every other second; I don’t want people around me to be yes-men. I am not Envy who would think that anyone who disagrees with me is just jealous. Or even Wrath, who would absolutely blow up if someone is a tad bit annoying.

I am you. . . just a lot more interested in the gentler sex.’

His eyes glimmered as he laughed along with Ivy.

‘So before I go down that road, I need some sort of anchor.’

?. . . And you think this anchor is. . . Ivy Potter??

‘Now, you’re just trying to act dumb. For someone like us, getting people who will honestly say the truth is hard— we got lucky with our friends, but how long do you think that’ll continue? Even among those good people, Daphne, our girlfriend, the person who’s supposed to be closest to us, is the subservient type, and we love that about her; she’s always so supportive, but we need someone who’s going to challenge us to act as the anchor I talked about.

And out of all the people, no one else but Ivy has questioned our actions so consistently. Keeping her close will be beneficial to us in the long run. . . and well, even you can’t deny that she’s quite lovely.’

?You’re going to ruin my relationship with Daphne.?

‘Ah, don’t worry about that; you already rolled the ball on that one.’

Quinn turned his eyes towards the castle with a smile. Daphne walked towards them. Her pace hurried as she saw Quinn and Ivy sitting close together under the tree.

“Quinn, what are you doing here, with. . . her?” Daphne said, eyeing Ivy with a vigilant eye. She raised the creased-up sheet of paper in her hand, “You sent for me to come here.”

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you about something,” said Quinn.

?What the hell are you planning??

‘I’m helping you, of course,’ he said, ‘didn’t you want to Daphne the dirty little truth? I’m going to do you a favor and do the job instead of you.’

?Stop! I will do it on my own! Don’t mess with my life, you shitty fake!?

Quinn closed his eyes and took a deep breath to settle the sudden bout of headache.

‘That’s why I didn’t want to come so down the line,’ Quinn said to the one trapped inside the soulscape. ‘If you’re to blame someone, then blame Greed; he’s the one who wanted this done. . . . I really don’t want to do this, you know, I really don’t, but I need to or he will. . . .’

Quinn stood up and dusted himself. He took a few steps forward till he was standing equidistance from both girls. He glanced at both of them once before turning to Daphne.

“You remember that I wanted to tell you something and asked you to wait for sometime before I could tell you,” said Quinn. “It’s a secret that I have been hiding for a long time. . . ”

?Stop!?

The moment Ivy heard those words, her eyes widened. She hastily got just as Quinn dropped a bomb.

?Shut up!?

“I kissed Ivy last year,” said Quinn even with the splitting headache.

?. . . I’m going to gut you and believe me, I’m going to enjoy it.?

‘Bloodthirsty much? Did killing Snape awaken something inside you?’

“. . . What?” Daphne uttered with a stunted expression.

“Last year, we were alone. One thing led to another, and we ended up kissing,” said Quinn. He noticed that the voice had gone silent once again. He bowed his head and continued, “I am sorry for hiding it from you and not telling you for so long.”

A score of emotions went through Daphne’s emotions, surfing everywhere from sadness to betrayal, finally settling on anger with emotion draining from her face.

“Who started it?” she asked, her voice cold. It reminded Quinn of before Daphne had warmed up to him, just much worse.

“Doesn’t matter,” she turned her cold gaze to Quinn, “I will come to you later.” Daphne turned to Ivy, “You knew that he was taken, everyone knew that we were together, so don’t try to deny that. . . and you still did this.”

Her wand came out. Ivy, too, took her wand out in response.

Quinn seeing that, stepped in front of Daphne and placed a hand on her wand arm to gently direct it down. “Daphne, please calm down; there’s no need to point—”

Daphne pushed him away and glared at him. Her eyes were glistening as she pointed her wand at him. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t curse you here and now.”

Quinn once again stepped close to her and again lowered her raised wand arm. This time, she didn’t resist and even let him take her wand away. She raised her other hand and punched him in the shoulder repeatedly.

“Why. . . why would you do that?” she said between her punches. “I trusted you.”

“I am sorry, I made a mistake,” said Quinn with a genuine apology in his tone. “Please forgive me; I am really sorry.”

Quinn brought her closer as she kept on hitting him and hugged her. As he tightly hugged her, a strange smile appeared on his face. But then, the smile froze, and Quinn’s expression turned from confidence to panic and horror.

His eyes dimmed for a split second before they went normal. Tranquility appeared on his face as he stroked Daphne’s back and whispered his apologies into her ear with magic weaved into his voice, manipulated his body temperature, trying anything and everything that would best calm Daphne.

. . . .

Inside the soulscape, Quinn sat slumped beside the Soul. Yesterday, he had taken a life for the first time. Life of a person who didn’t deserve to die. Today, one of the bedrocks of his life had been shaken. He hadn’t been there to do it himself or even able to stop it.

‘You didn’t want to stop it,’ a corner of this thought whispered the treacherous words to him. ‘You were glad that you didn’t need to do it on your own.’

Quinn grabbed his head and hugged it to his knees.

He was so out of it that he didn’t notice that suddenly the blackness that plagued his Soul was gone, and it was back to its golden state with only a few muddled black spots. The spotty walls that had improved after Envy had been removed opened up, and only varying shades of yellow remained.

“You know, I don’t think the situation is as bad as you think.”

Quinn tried not to respond. He kept his eyes closed and his head down. But he couldn’t restrain his anger at the ridiculous words spoken.

“You fuc—.”

He raised his head up and all but growled at the personification of his sin in front of him, only for his words to die in his throat when he saw the figure in front of him.

“Hello, it’s finally nice to meet you. My name is Quinn West, but you might better know me as. . . . Greed.”

.

-*-*-*-*-*-

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Quinn West – MC – At a new low.

Daphne Greengrass – Girlfriend(?) – Betrayed and hurt.

Ivy Potter – Anchor(?) – Caught in between.

FictionOnlyReader – Author – So. . . I don’t know how it turns when a partner confesses to cheating. I have been in two relations in my life, and both of those ended without cheating involved, and none of my close friends have gone through the same. I have seen the situation on TV, but I don’t know how Daphne, who is in her first relationship, would’ve reacted, so I went what seemed right to me.