.
.
One name, Tom thinks, one name call me just – one – name and when the bombs come I won't save you.
They are huddling and chittering like the rats, vitriol lost to fear. The lesson engraves itself precisely on his mind – fear erases everything. Fear erases.
But mostly Tom is scared.
Because he can hear the sirens but he can't hear the bombs. Because he can smell their sweat and the mold of the basement, but he cannot smell the death that may be reaching down to hug him. If it comes he will have only seconds to decide what his life is worth. If I do magic but I had no choice will they know I had no choice?
His fingernails dig into his palms and he realizes he wants Dumbledore. He'd lit his wardrobe on fire but the fire had no heat. I don't think he'd let me burn if he could just see my face –
– but no one can see his face here, because it is dark.
lumos lumos lumos, he promises himself. He can summon the light if he needs it, but for now, for now, he will go without, like supper, because he is strong – stronger than the others, the children, whispering and weeping around him. He is the one who will survive and he will survive because he matters more than them more than them more than them.
There is a touch, something brushing against him like the crash of a blinded moth. It petrifies him. It etches him into the moment, pulls him back down into his limbs and his breathing, in the dark, chittering like a rat just like them. The touch withdraws. I'm going insane I've fallen asleep I'm dreaming someone's come to save me nobody's come. It was one of the tricks that it amused the dark to play on him. Who would reach out to me here?
He huddles in the dark and knows that if he dies no one will care. But he always knew that, and the dark is just pressing the knowing in closer. What do you do when you want to live and nobody cares that you are in a dark cellar and the sky is a flash away from falling on you –
you fight you fight you FIGHT you –
"Tom."
That's Ms. Cole and her smell is a cheap perfume she thinks smells like roses, cotton from her sweater, bleach that's worn into her fingernails. "The raid is over It's time to GO."
Already someone has snickered and Tom looks at the shape of his knees in the dark which do not move and his hands that move up and down like they might register on a seismograph and there is his breath too which spikes and hitches and sPIKES aND hITCHES
"tOM!"
I have died, Tom thinks, I have died and now I am dead. Strangely, the thought is enough to unlock his body. He unfolds himself from the floor. Ms. Cole is already moving away, because he has moved now and she thinks he is living.
But she is wrong, Tom sings in his head, where it is still dark even when his eyes are flooded with daylight.
On the way back to the orphanage he sees a flower peeking out from a pile of rubble. It is daisy and missing only one petal – almost perfect. He makes a particular point of crushing it under his shoe.