When he finally comes for you, you're waiting. You've been waiting for seven days for this moment; you think each day will be your last, and yet, each day he fails to appear. You think, idly, in those long cold nights, when every footsteps makes your pulse quicken and your heart race, that this is the greatest torture, and that he knows your fear, and that every day he resists you grew more and more afraid, and less and less hopeful, because if Theodore (or Chang, or Seamus, or Lee, or Kenneth, or…) was going to rescue you, he would have down it hours, days, ago.
If you were going to live, you decide on the third night, then you would have been saved. It was on that day (or night, you can never tell from the way the torch flickers, but the food that magically appears on your floor gives you a sense of time. The irony, you realize, is overwhelmingly bitter), you now realize, that you lost your faith in God and in Merlin and in love and in friendship and in honour, but most of all, it was on that day that you lost your faith in Gryffindor.
Afterwards, after you fought your way out, after you killed three men with your bare hands, and five more with a wand that was not your own ("Only powerful wizards driven by powerful emotions can cast an Unforgivable spell. Doubly so if the wand is not your own." Moody had said), you discover that Gryffindor died long ago, died with Godric, died with Harry, died with Dumbledore. But that is later.
Once you give up, it is as if you are driven to life, to survive. You take a moment to reflect in the bitter irony of finding courage after you have given up in your house. You a take a moment to smile, a bitter, twisted smile, not unlike the ones Theodore used to give you when he spoke of his father. But it is only a moment, and after the moment is gone, you are back to work, searching and scrambling as far as the chains will let you, searching vainly for something (anything) to help you.
On the fifth day you almost give up hope in yourself. You wonder if that will kill you; completely giving up on yourself, and your humanity and your life. You wonder if that's what he was waiting for, all this time. You think that you should steal his chance of taking your life – that would bother him, wouldn't it? It would make him so angry. You smile, and take a moment to just stop living for a moment. It is at that moment that you notice a bar underneath your bed has come lose.
When he finally comes for you, you are waiting. You are waiting, lying on your bed (more like a rusted mattress you think), one hand gripping the protruding springs, and the other hand gripping the metal poll. You are waiting for him to open the door, for his footsteps to fall, for his laughter to begin. You are waiting for your one chance to live, to survive, to escape.
You are not entirely human when you attack him. Your humanity has taken a back seat to monstrosity, your reason being over ruled by instinct. You are crying, and screaming, and hitting him with a metal poll, over and over again, trying to wipe that ridiculous smirk off his face – doesn't he know when he's going to die? You think wildly, swing and hitting, and crying and laughing and crying and hitting and wanting him to just day already.
You attract noise from the guards – in your animal-like ferocity you forgot to be quiet. You are dimly aware that you are soaking in blood, and that you have cracked his wand, and that the chains, which had once enslaved you, have now dissolved into magic and nothingness, but these things are not what you concentrate on. All you know is that these two men will kill you if you let them, and that if you let them, you'll never see Theodore again.
This thought must have sustained you, because before your adrenaline fades, and your heart starts to clear, and you see more just red, you hear footsteps. Your heart is pounding so hard, you're sure you must be dying. But that can't be right (reason, no matter how hard you try to ignore it, will always be there, whispering in your ear, and for a moment you are grateful, until you remember that reason is why you're here), because you are living. You are trying to live, and if these five men running towards you are going to stop you, then to hell with them – they probably deserve to die.
Your reason tells you that the wand you are holding belongs to a dead man, and that you killed this man, and that binds you to his spirit for the rest of your life, but your instincts tell you to point towards them and shut the words, the Unforgivable words, and you do it, because you can't stop now, not when you've made it so far.
They are laying still, their faces an array of confusion, horror, surprise and arrogance, respectively. But you can't stop now, not when you have to run, run, run. Run far away. Because you're alive, and he's dead, and now all you can do is run.
Faintly, in the distance, you think it's odd that nobody has chased you. You think it's odd that nobody was in the house. You think it's odd that it's winter, and you have no shoes, but none of this stops you. Not when you've gone so far, so long, so strong. The cold rips away at your instincts like fire in water, and soon logic sets in. You realize how foolish you were to go outside, and that you've escaped the worst horrors imaginable only to die in a snowdrift in Russia, and seriously, what were you doing in Russia?
Your think you see Theodore's face, somewhere high, high above you, and you smile, and you think.
Dying, you think, is not nearly as exciting as the waiting. Dying, you now know, is more like falling. Or maybe you are falling, falling into a bank of snow, but you think hysterically that the snow is a symbol of your death, and that your death is a symbol of snow.
You wonder how that is possible, but by then you have already fallen.
I had no idea I had so much sick and twisted angst in me. V. disturbing, v. depressing. My ability to write under the most trying circumstances continues to amaze...