A/N- I was having an urge to write for Harry Potter so here I am. I started this story maybe six or more years ago and never seriously followed it but hopefully it will turn into something magical.
Disclaimer: i'm not gonna spell it out for you. or shoulD i? hmmmm goOd questioN well acTually… nO still don't WaNt to tell you.
I really wanted to do that once. So yep….. Well have fun reading =]
Oh, when you see where this plot goes you may stop reading, which is understandable. Even though I wrote this a while before it was on television, the story has a characteristic similar to that of a certain disney channel show. Don't be alarmed. I can assure you that this, as I have it planned as of now, will be a deal darker than anything on Disney. That was just my fair warning to you all.
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It was night. And a fine night it was. The stars were out in abundance, confident and bright in the company of familiars. The moon was faded and blood red simultaneously. Aralyn beheld all the greatness she could lay eyes on in the evening sky. Suddenly, the first meteor came, casually late, slicing across the inky black, leading the way for other stragglers. The camera clicked. Slowly the Polaroid slid out and Aralyn captured a few more breathtaking images of the astrological phenomenon before it concluded and she rushed inside to develop her photography.
She confined herself to the "dark room" of her house and set to work.
After she'd taken care of the business side of her photography venture, she went out again. This time without the Polaroid- a digital camera could do some justice to the cool night. Laying on her back facing the stars, the silence overwhelmed her.
She liked silence. It had been a friend to her when no one else was. As a child he had never been able to speak well; her vocal chords had a tendency to spasm or clamp down all together, making her speech slow and deliberate as well as virtually nonexistent. Eventually, no sound could pass her lips at all. The disease was rare and neurological. Supposedly, her brain sent misinterpreted signals to her voice box and resulted in her failed and lacking speech. There were certain rules to her speech; each person with the condition had exhibited similar things. But each person's rules were different. One day they would apply, and then the next, the set of rules could be entirely different. For Aralyn, the rules had been relatively simple her whole life. She could only sing, while alone, in the dark, while playing an instrument or listening to music.
Her life's ambition had once been to find a cure for the condition- there were only experimental treatments as of yet- but somewhere along the line she'd resolved to live her life around the problem, instead of spending her life trying to fix it.
Aralyn stood and strode to the center of her cul-de-sac. Being the last house, isolated, on a dead end street meant that there was a certain measure of privacy around her home. Aralyn didn't anticipate any traffic, so she promptly fell backwards, spread-eagled on the ground. There was a spectacular view of the water tower from her position. She became aware of a chaos of noise approaching her, but chose to ignore it. For a moment, the world was at peace. She snapped her last photo.
Then her world went blacker than night.
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The beeping noise was a constant. No matter how long she kept her eyes lidded, pretending to be dead to the world, the beeping wouldn't stop. It just kept on going and going. She became cognizant to a dull ache spread throughout her entire being. Her eyes shot open wide. All was white. Unlike the stories she'd heard, there was no doubt she was in a hospital and not heaven. She wondered how someone could think such a thing when there were machines along every wall, many of which were attached to her. There was television in the high left corner, and a remote and teddy bears on a table to her right. If this was the extent of heaven, Aralyn decided that she felt cheated.
Tall , dark, and handsome walked into her room, literally, and through her thoughts, metaphorically. She didn't mind. He was, however, possibly twenty years older than her. That was weird. And she was no cougar. She settled for focusing on what he was saying to her, and seeing as he was a doctor it was no doubt important. By then she'd missed a lot of his talking by arguing unhealthily with herself in her head and questioning her mental capacity and well-being.
"So it is because of this that I regret to inform you, you have cancer. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. We've caught it in its early stages so it's entirely treatable. Though nothing is certain. We'll most likely start chemotherapy soon, once we go through the necessary precautions and tests. But I will talk to your father about all of that."
Well. You know what the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki felt like? Of course you don't, but imagine it. That was how Aralyn was stomaching this breaking news. It just was not right.
"No, that is impossible! I can not even talk. Isn't that enough?" she raved to the doctor, whose name she was not yet privy to.
He just gaped at her, as if captivated. But his facial expression was more like one that screamed 'CRAZY!'. It was as if he thought her anger at this cancer was something radical and she belonged in the cuckoo clinic for opposing it. Aralyn gasped. Her hand shot to her mouth. The only thing that was swimming around her usually otherwise unoccupied mind was that this was impossible. Everything that had happened in this span of five minutes was utterly fictitious. There was no way in hell she had just spoke after ten years of utter torture: being confinded to crowds and still more confinded to silence.
"Uhm. Hello. Well, why- this is completely impossible. I couldn't speak at all just ten minutes ago."
"You've been here for two days," the doctor shared. "You suffered severe injuries after a car hit you while you were lying in the road. It's amazing that you survived."
Speaking? Severe injuries? Car hitting me? These were all new notions to her. As far as she knew, nothing of the sort had happened to her yet, and it hadn't now. Did he not just tell her she had cancer? She assumed, albeit prematurely, that she'd fainted sometime after she took the pictures (honestly, that whole night and the following days were all blurry). Ah! The dull ache! For the first time since she'd opened her eyes, Aralyn looked down towards the rest of her actual body. She was met with a cast and bandages galore. At least a handful of what this doctor was asserting to her made sense now. She still was in sheer disbelief at the miracle that was her speech, so much so that she could've broken down in joyous tears at that exact moment. She withheld them. As if the doctor didn't find her insane as it was.
Thankfully, Tall, dark, handsome, and horridly judgmental walked out to search for her father; she was left alone. Sure of her privacy, Aralyn sang a few bars from Anastasia's "Journey to the Past". She was more than satisfied. Her voice had made amazing progress, if she did say so herself. Yet, the nagging knowledge that her voice could disappear at any given moment was there; the rules changed so often. She was determined to make as much use of it as she could before it was gone again, possibly lost for good.
Aralyn sat up abruptly in her hospital bed. She tugged at the suffocating white linen sheets and broke out from the blankets confining her to her mattress. Consumed by emotion and rash ideas, she tore the offending IV protruding from her lower arm. She stifled a yelp. The window of her ground floor room called out to her, begging her to escape. Her clothes and possessions were in plain sight. Grabbing them, Aralyn hastily unlocked and pushed open the window. This was happening. She could get away from all the lies this doctor was feeding her- and she was eating up- and go places. Places far away where she could be somebody who could talk, compliment and criticize, and sing and even insult. This place, of course, was undetermined but-
"Now, just where do you think you are going?" exclaimed a man from the doorway to her room. There was a hint of amusement in his voice. It set Aralyn on edge. This doctor without a name was especially irritating. Hopefully, someone else would permanently take over her case at this hospital. If she had to spend another minute in his presence, well, she just might die.
"I was actually going for a walk. I thought, why not be adventurous and exit through the window. I quite enjoy self defenestration." Aralyn turned about to face the doctor only to be met with an empty room.
"Behind you," said the intruder. She jumped. Okay, now this doctor was bordering on pedophile. Turning about again, she realized this man was anyone but a doctor. Unless doctors suddenly became bespectacled ancients who wear rather homosexual bathrobes. Or was that a Snuggie? (A/N: I admit! I had to reference this once! Just once I swear!) Either way, that made him no less questionably characteristic of a pedophile.
"Well, just who might you be that needs to know just where I think I'm going?" The semi-pedophile stared at her, confused. They shared a minute of silence. "Okay, well this was an enlightening conversation but I really must take off."
"I'm Harold Tellor. I'm a nurse at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries."
She had no idea what he had just said, but something told her it was insulting. Or vulgar. "Well, as much as I would like to understand what the bloody hell you just said, I really am quite confu- Wait! You're a nurse?! I knew there was something queer about you" Aralyn mused. She didn't think her realized she meant in more ways than one.
"Yes, I am a nurse." She waited for him to assure her he was completely heterosexual, but nothing.
"And…?" she prompted.
"Oh, right. Silly me, I didn't even tell what I was here for…" Re-examining his earlier words, Aralyn became quite sure of what he had, in fact, said and became quite sure that he had, in fact, gone mad. Anything literally magical was also utterly impossible. And she didn't exactly peg this Harold fellow as an intelligently, intentionally humorous man. He had obviously been serious. But he obviously could not be. Car crashes, severe injuries, and speaking, while improbable, were all in the scope of possibility but magic was most certainly not. "I'll be taking you to St. Mungo's to treat your muggle condition." She ignored the words she didn't understand.
Figuring playing along was the best way to get answers, Aralyn asked. "Why isn't my father coming as well ?"
"Your father is no longer with us, I'm afraid. What an unfortunate few days your family has had. To think he was killed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. It's saddening, really." This guy was off his rocker. Still, Aralyn couldn't help but turn pale. It's impossible, this guy is a lunatic. Your father is far from dead, she repeated to herself.
"And why should I want to come with you?"
"Well, why for heaven's sake not? You do want to be treated, don't you? And live? St. Mungo's treatments are far more advanced than anything in this dreary place, though, admittedly, not undoubtedly successful. You'd stand a much better chance at St. Mungo's, and, being a witch, you're susceptible to our techniques."
"You know what, I think I'll stay right here. I'm not going anywhere with you." All his talk of magic and witches and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was more than a little annoying and creepy.
"Just grab my arm," he said off-handedly.
"No way in hell am I touching you." Her suspicions about his perversion had yet to be disproved.
"I really don't have time for this," he said. He seemed to be getting annoyed now, but he was met with Aralyn's defiant glare. Sighing, he grabbed her arm.
I knew it! He is a pedophile! Aralyn thought.
The world she'd known began to spin around her, and she could do nothing about it.
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Phew, what a long chapter! Sorry for any grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes! I'm sure there are at least a few. Also, I have a peculiar tendency to imagine new words. As of now, I am un-betad, but hopefully that will change in the near future.
Anyways, I hoped you liked the chapter. It's sort of an introduction to her character and background.
As always, feel free to review!
Song listened to during writing process: "Dark Blue" by Jack's Mannequin
Dr. Dani Suess