A Beautiful Mind
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter Characters are © JK Rowling, NOT ME!
"It's cold," she murmured to no one in particular, pulling the quilted blanket up to her cheek to let her warm breath collect in the pocket of space between her mouth and the blanket. Cold air in through the nose, hot air out through the mouth. She wondered why it had to be that way. Couldn't anyone breathe out cold air? The mints they gave her made her mouth cold but the breath was still hot.
Something clinked. For a moment she'd imagined it, but it kept clinking.
"What?"
It was still clinking, but the sound was hollow as an echo. She found that she was angry and sat up with the blanket still wrapped around her face, now breathing heavily. She felt that the space was going to get crowded up with hot air soon, and maybe she ought to stop this blanket nonsense, but the rest of her face was so cold! A strand of something pale was hanging very close to her face, and she tried to blow it away, but it only wobbled meekly and stayed put. She swatted at it, and it fell away to dangle over her ear. She looked through the flowery curtains to the other beds.
A young man was snoring and his hand, clutching a large feather- a feather? Why a feather, she wondered. But it was a feather regardless, and it was shining at the tip, tapping the table by his bed. Before she could decide whether to get up and shake him or speak out in protest, it slipped from the man's hand and fluttered to the ground with a tink. Frowning, she got back into her reclining position on the bed- it was more like a cot, she mused- and pulled the blanket up even further until she could feel the edge of it on her nose. Cold air in, warm air out. She needed to sleep. She tried very, very hard not to think at all.
But now that she wasn't thinking, she felt the tug of a memory. Normally she shied away from them, counting to whatever number she could remember to get them to go away. But this one wasn't frightening.
It was a face, round and pale with dark hair and heavy cheeks- fat. It was fat, but pleasant. She wanted another memory to come to her, fished around as best she could for it. But there was no name to go with the face. She liked the face, loved it even. The little round button nose looks like that man beside me, doesn't it?
She looked at the man. She could only remember one thing about him that wasn't unpleasant. He was her husband. His face was drawn, not fat like the boy's, but the nose was the same shape, the eyes the same pale blue. She wondered if the man- her husband- had ever had thick brown hair like the boy instead of his stringy grey hair.
She thought that she'd seen the boy before, here, but she couldn't remember. She looked at the bucket of candy on the little table beside her bed. She wanted a piece, but the woman who came- what did she do? Bathe her, sometimes, change the sheets. The woman wouldn't be too pleased if she was up eating candy all night. But the gumball wrappers were nice and shiny gold, even in the bluish moonlight that sifted carefully through the curtains to land in rectangular patches on her bed- cot.
I keep thinking the wrong words. Her mind started to sort out the real words from the manufactured ones. Not bed, cot. Not man, husband. In cold, out hot. Her thoughts faded to nothingness as she watched the shadow of a bird flutter over the curtains and disappear.
More memories, still none that were frightening. The fat-faced boy was smiling, and she knew with a pang of frustration that the memory was supposed to continue, but it didn't. If I ever see him again, I'll give him a nice shiny gum wrapper. The face morphed, shrunk, changed- a man replaced the boy. She mulled over who it was- her father? She didn't remember her father. It wasn't anyone from this place, no strangely flat smile or oddly formed wrinkles in the forehead. Everyone here seemed so worried all the time, this face was carefree. She smiled as its pleased expression swam into her mind. It was smiling… no. It was grimacing.
No!
She gazed in horror as it distorted, another memory, a hated memory, raged through her thoughts. Red light was everywhere. His face, his nice face, now creased into an expression of pain, eyes closed, then open and rolling back into his forehead, his small mouth stretching into a scream-
No. She was the one screaming. She clapped a hand over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut as she began to count.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
"Shudup!" croaked the man beside her, the face- the face! She gasped in horror as she realized that the man who had been screaming was her husband. She felt all the air leave her lungs as she spiraled downwards, falling in a forever of frozen black water.
She hit the bottom, and it was cold, smooth, white linoleum tiles.
A part of her, a small part, realized that she was on the floor of the room. The blanket pulled in a strange way from the cot to her own body, her hand on her mouth as her torso rocked and her legs were frozen as she crouched on her knees. The other part was such a blur of pain and hate and sorrow she could scarcely breathe, it was like her lungs were being ripped open and every breath she took was escaping back into the air. In cold, out cold, in cold, out cold.
"Mrs. Longbottom?" came a voice, distant and high-pitched and quavering. She rocked and rocked, trying desperately to breathe.
"Mrs. Longbottom!" Hands were on her, pulling her up, but she couldn't breathe, didn't this woman see-?
"Alice, are you alright?" asked the worried and wrinkled face of the birdlike attendant, the auburn hair wrapped in enormous curlers all around her head. At the sight of the woman, her face almost green and framed by massive round curlers, all the memories left. She was seized by hilarity and laughed. The face only became more comical, the eyes going wide as saucers.
"Alice?" the woman asked meekly. She just laughed and laughed, what a face! Still giggling, she lay back on her back on the bed- cot- and pulled at the blanket. Trembling hands helped her place it over herself evenly, and she pulled the top of it back up to her nose. In cold, out hot.
"Goodnight," she murmured, still giggling, the tense smile returning to the woman's face as she said something and crept away. The snoring of the young man dominated the returned quiet, her husband was asleep. She felt the memory of his young face tentatively coming back, but she shooed it away and thought of unwrapping gumballs. Darkness was creeping into the corners of her vision.
"Mm," she hummed. A faint melody came into her mind, recalled by the sound of her own voice. She bickered with herself for a moment, trying to decide if it was something she'd heard or something she'd made up. A sudden lack of caring washed over her, like a relieving chill wave as she lay on the hot sand of the coastline. She hummed it, pleased with its sounds, and slowly fell asleep.