A/N When I sat down to write this, the opening words that greeted me on my blank word document were: Narcissa Malfoy was the real hero. Don't ask me how I managed to turn that into a look at Alice Longbottom's last moment of sanity, but I did. It's quite worrying how off topic my writing can wander…
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I don't own Harry Potter. It hurts so much to say...
Screams rip through the air, shattering her mind into a thousand pieces.
A raging forest fire sears up her body, eating away at her flesh as she writhes and yells until her voice becomes hoarse. In this moment the world turns a thick, pressing black that crushes her underneath its weight and pulls the air from her lungs. She can't breathe, she can't think and for a moment she is certain that this is Hell; this is Judgement Day come early.
But through the blackness a voice calls out to her, a rough, scared voice but it permeates her mind and catches her attention better than any amount of pain. The darkness recedes, pulling away from her and she takes hurried, chocking breaths in its wake in case it returns again. It doesn't.
Air rushes into her lungs and burns her throat with its coldness. She feels herself swallow mouthful after mouthful of glass shards, their edges tearing holes down her neck as she breathes. Just as she is certain that it cannot get worse the fire picks up, scorching a path through her frozen limbs and wrapping around her in a flaming embrace. A high pitched, raw sound echoes in her mind and replays again and again. Every part of her is a blazing inferno and as the fire rises all around her, threating to engulf her, the voice calls out faintly from some unconceivable part of the world that is not smothered in pain.
She pauses for a moment, trying with all her might to ignore the burning and focus on the enchanting whispered words. But they cannot stop the pain and as it floods her system once again she loses concentration, succumbing to the angry, hot flames that cover her.
This is how they find her hours later, splayed out across the stone floor with closed eyes and ragged breaths. Hours later to them; a whole lifetime to her. Her world is now filled only with echoes of screams and the distant caress of flames that can no longer hurt her. But somehow, amid all the chaos that has enwrapped her mind she still retains one phrase long after everything else has charred in the fire.
Alice! Alice! Stay strong. Neville is safe.
For the rest of her existence the only words Alice Longbottom will ever utter are merely a repetition of her husband's hoarse yells that broke through the Black and found her amid the fire.
It's an echo of something from another life.
Just like her.