The After
Prologue
Sounds were the first sensation to filter in. Otherwise, numbness kept every other sense clouded and indiscernible. Whispers and rustles loudly penetrated the fuzzy numbness. They crashed in upon each other, becoming a crescendo of noise. Then the numbness became predominate.
When the whispers crested again, new piercing pain followed at its heels. Throbbing with the rise and fall of the notes of nattering whispers, it pulsed and surged, crashing, crushing, beating, beating…
Whispers grew. Grew too tremendous, that trembling, the nuance of the numbness fell away, fell to allow pressing pressure of the things held back to consume and emancipate at once.
Jagged jars and trembles shook my awareness, presently painful and powerfully precocious threatening to traitorously upend any further progress. But the whispered sounds that were shaping persistently pulled conscious closer.
Words whispered worshipfully, woefully, wrath non-withstanding. Snippets, snatches of snarls, sobs, and sighs slipped through elusive as snitches.
Then, clarity, a clarity that broaches on clairvoyance crashed in upon me. The crisp feeling of actually being alive brought forth the fact that nerve endings were afire with lightning pain and each laboring breath was a seeking searching way to end it. One deep breath and a keening wail when the pain burst further, my eyes snapped open. The blurry outlines of a shadowed, curtained bed confronted me and I despaired, for nothing looked as I thought it should.
I scrambled backward looking and searching, but the dimness of my eyes in their own creation became my downfall and I toppled off, only to be caught by strong firm arms that more pure terror into me, causing all thought to fade away.
When they brought the Potter brat in, I was not expecting the same spectacle that greeted me. Surely a hubbub that would stroke his ego satisfactorily. The condition, however, of our Chosen One, was unexpected in its intensity.
I entered his sick room and stared down at the face mottled with bruises, dark eyelashes resting against pale and purple cheeks. I began my examination and administration of topical potions with a reserved and inhuman grace, as has been my wont to do.
The following examination and application seriously threatened to append any and all previously presuppositions made. This surely could not possibly be the same boy I had previously known.
Clinical ministrations finished, I turned to pack away vials and stoppers. Each move more lethargic that the last, as my mind, so ordered and rational was in total disarray as the foundation for the last 15 years was shaken about as crassly as one of those muggle snow globes. Physical motion stopped as the speeding thoughts took over. They were abruptly stopped as a sound of distress was torn ragged and rough from the boy's throat.
The kinetic energy that suddenly sprung into my limbs was more potent than any pepper-up potion. I surged toward the bed to meet pain-glazed, terrified green eyes as he pushed his body with adrenalin based fear to the edge of the bed. Catching him with arms trembling, I watched as he succumbed to his terror and my arms cradled more gently to me. A warm, trembling feeling in my chest made me snarl. At what, I still don't want to acknowledge.