Falling is Only the Beginning.
Don't we know that when we fall, we come crashing down. Hard. Pain filling our hearts and coursing through our veins. Life dripping slowly out of us as we slip closer to the edge of eternity. Tears making stains on our cheeks as our hearts shatter and we gasp for air in this claustrophobic space.
This is a story of a silly little girl's fall.
Fast-forward.
Dumbledore. Sirius Black. Cedrick Digory. Pain is what my heart throbs at these names, unshed tears stinging at the backs of my eyes. Faces breaking all around me. Harry, oh, poor Harry. He screams. He always screams. I stand frozen in shock. My body unmoving. As if I just stopped then time would turn backwards and I would be happy with them again. We would smile and laugh. I never thought that if I went to this school, I would see a dead corpse. Let alone know that person. Share a million memories with that soul. I never thought I'd feel my heart ache.
Dead. He's dead. The astronomy tower. Harry saw. He's dead. Dead. Dead. Gone. Forever.
No goodbyes.
Fast-forward.
I'm in my room.
I'm always in my room.
At night my mother checks on me. I hear her open the door. I feel her sorrowful gaze linger on my bedridden body. Just before she leaves she asks herself why my room in so dark and cold. She closes the door.
Because I'm already dead, I answer.
Rewind.
Ron on my right. Ginny on my left.
Harry in front of me.
Harry beside the gravestone.
Harry beside the gravestone with flowers.
Harry beside His gravestone with flowers.
I can't breathe. I can't move. Everything is cold and I can't breathe I can't move and I can't see. Tears fall. Ginny holds my waist. Ron holds my shoulders. Harry moves untouched through the crowd.
Rewind.
Glass is falling, slowly to the ground shattering and crashing and booming. I'm running. All I hear are the beats of my heart. Harry in front of me. We're racing through waterfalls of glass. We see a door.
I spring into it, I fall. Miles it feels as I fall and I know I will die. The ground surges toward me and inches from it I stop. Then I fall.
The ground smells of dirt and rock and metal and blood.
Harry is the first up. Then Luna. They talk of a veil. I say there is none. I can't see it.
Just as I can't see the horses that draw the carriages.
Just as I've never seen the light fade from a person's eyes.
Suddenly there is darkness. My lungs fill with black smoke and all things evil. When there is light again a man is holding my hair with a wand to my throat. Tears roll down my cheeks. Harry stares at me and in turn everyone else. He's frightened. A single grey globe is held tightly in his hand.
Suddenly there is lightness and Sirius Black stands in front of my best friend, in the form of a true guardian angel. Then there are streaks of light everywhere and the hand around me is gone. I fall into my place beside my friends and fight against that overwhelming darkness that consumes me over and over.
Now there isn't anyone else but Sirius and Harry and Lucius. Sirius falls and the others disappear. Harry is screaming and screaming and I can't not for the first time in my life I find myself unable to move. A rush of cold liquid floods my body and I feel as if I'm the Atlantic ocean, a peaceful monstrosity filled with destruction and pain. Where fallen sea ship lie in the dead of night. Where there is never day and always darkness. A storm is headed this way.
Sirius Black is dead.
Fast-forward.
I feel burned.
My skin is smooth. I have no visible scars.
But in the dark, my mind escapes me. It feels as if my soul drips off the bed onto the floor. Crawls up the bureau, up the tapestry and skims the peeling, aged Victorian wallpaper.
And my soul is burned.
The wallpaper is now ashes, the tapestry reduced to a loin cloth, the bureau a cardboard box. The floor hinged.
The bed is the only part of me that's left unworn.
Outside my soul, down the hallway there are echoes of those I loved. Their voices are ringing; I can hear their urgent, melancholy tone. But the sound of fire and tears crashing and my diving heart prevent me from making out the comfort of their words.
Rewind.
Harry's gone.
I just know he's really gone.
This isn't a game anymore.
I'm frozen with fear. I just know he's gone. I know something has gone wrong.
Minutes later, Fleur is carried out of the maze safely in the arms of her teacher. She's rambling about getting lost. She says Krum is under an enchantment. She says it was dark magic. She says it was the imperious curse. She says he tried to kill her.
She says Harry saved her.
In my mind the endless wait for my best friend to return is eating me live. Some people think suspense is fun, the electricity flowing through their veins exciting. This was not the entertaining suspense. This was the suspense and worry a mother has for her child. A lover for her other half. A sister for her absent brother. A best friend for her best friend. Time crawled slowly with each second hanging in the air along with a million worries and what-ifs.
An hour passes before the worried crowd is shocked into silence by Harry's screams.
I rush toward him, my legs sprinting across the stands with a speed that a quidditch player would envy. I reach him, and I stand, frozen solid by the sight of my friend kneeling over a corpse. His father screams in agony at the sight, the once gentle and kind man furious at the world that's suddenly crashed down around him.
Fast-forward.
The bed bursts into flames.