This is from my own imagination, everthing else - the characters etc - belong to J.K.Rowling. It focuses on the scene in PoA during their third year exams, and Hermione faces the Boggart and comes out screaming.
I hope you like it.
It is so utterly dark. The door is shut and locked, the musty windows barred. The room is entombing, burying me before my time.
A candle burned a few hours – or was it days? – ago, leaving flickering shadows to climb about the room, to cling to my body as my mind shuddered and screamed.
But now the light is gone.
A dead candle stump on a tray of tarnished silver.
"Only the best for you my dear," a mocking voice cries. Inside of my head or out, I'm not sure. I don't think it matters any more. I'm locked in, trapped and scared.
The walls are getting closer, the ceilings getting lower - and I'm praying for light.
A scratching sound behind me causes blind panic, all reason gone. Scrabbling with ice white fingers, I claw at the door, tearing flesh down to bone as the wood stays firm. My eyes, normally bright with life, have died leaving crevices on my shadowed face. My hair is lank against my skull; beads of sweat cling to my skin – each one a testament to my overwhelming fear.
I can see nothing, smell nothing, feel nothing and my world has gone deadly silent. I'm not even certain if the room surrounds me any more. All that matters is the darkness.
The isolating blankness.
Finally I scream. My breath rips through my throat, burning the delicate flesh in my mouth. I only stop when I realise I'm not making a sound.
Raising a quivering hand to my chest, I place it above my heart in an attempt to prove reality – to prove to myself that I exist in this fearsome place. I wait for the warm blooded thump, for the subtle flexing of skin over a beating heart.
Ba-bump, Ba-bump, Ba-bump
But the feeling never comes and I slowly let my hand drop to my side. Burning tears slide over stinging eyes and provide a welcome release from the lack of existence. But the tears soon turn to racking sobs and silent screams of mercy as I claw at my own face.
There's knowledge deep down that this isn't real: that it can't be real. However, that knowledge is a light which is swallowed by the darkness which chafes at my skin like hemp cloth on a wet body.
Ghost like fingers slide over my glistening cheeks, as an answer to my pleas of mercy, wiping away my hot tears and I allow my body to relax against that gentle, angelic touch. But those fingers which traced so sweetly over my skin, and which steadied my quivering lip, fasten themselves around my slender throat.
Unrelenting.
Unforgiving.
And I asked God what I did wrong.
It was so easy, scarily easy, to lie and say I fear some childish thing – that I failed to receive top marks, that my worst fear is that of failing.
It frightens me that I could lie to my friends about something so strong, without a flicker of insincerity, but how could I possibly try and explain and describe that…that overwhelming pain and intensity? No, it's something personal to me, and not something I wish to share, even if I could.
Let them think I am a shallow know-it-all, for they need a rock and a safe person to hold onto – Harry has never been a child, and Ron is growing scarily fast. Let me be the one who holds onto school, and fears nothing worse than failure.
But then, maybe that is my worst fear: failing at life, despite all my chances and my efforts. For everything we do to be in vain.
That is no childish fear.
Read and Review please. Many thanks.