Sometimes We Die

Chapter Four: Aberystwyth

Author: H. Ashleigh

Disclaimer: I am obviously not J.K. Rowling, nor will I ever pretend to be. The views of the author and the views of the characters are often conflicting and are not equal. Please do not judge the author due to her character's failings, misjudgments, ineptitudes, and misperceptions.

"Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way." - Metallica

July 12 – August 3, 1975

Finally it was time to venture to Emily's house. I was taking the Knight Bus to Aberystwyth, late that night. It would take a very long time to make my way by Muggle train, and I could not Floo there on my own: I knew of no Floo Networks in New Mills, and I'm sure Emily knew of none in Aberystwyth. Josie, who lived in Southern Britain, would be Apparating with her father sometime next day.

It was the first time I had ever ridden the Bus, and I was excited. I had heard Josie and Severus allude to it in conversation before, and I had gathered a general idea of how to summon it.

My luggage had been packed for close to a week in unbridled anticipation for the trip. My trunk waited impatiently in the middle of my small personal space, and I stared at it begrudgingly. It had become quite a hindrance the last couple of days: I sported dark bruises on both of my shins and three ripped toenails from having bumped into it so often.

I called down the stairs for my father to help me carry my trunk to the front stoop, and Petunia yelled from her bed for me to shut up.

"I packed you tons of food," my mother said to me, handing me a Muggle cooler. We were standing in front of the open door, my trunk being heaved down the stairs by my father. "Some sandwiches, and fruit salad, and a thermos with some juice. There is also a bag of crisps, fat-free, of course."

"Thanks, mum," I said, smiling to her.

"Have fun with your friends, and tell Mrs. Leach I say hello. Be careful on this Knight Bus, don't talk to anyone too barmy. Are you sure you should be going on this. It sounds awfully risky…" she tapered off.

I just gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and turned to my father to do the same. He had shoved my trunk up against the litter bins by the curb, and was standing in the doorway. I yelled a short good-bye up the stairs to Petunia more to irritate her and have the last word than anything else, and tightened my purse on my shoulder.

"Do you have enough money for the bus?" my mother asked.

"Yes mum," I said, lightly exasperated.

"Ok, well owl us when you get there. You are taking Lotte right?"

"Yeah, I sent her off a couple of hours ago. She should be there before dawn."

I gave them both one last kiss goodbye and went to stand next to my trunk. They waited for me to summon the Knight Bus; I turned to wave and commenced to pay the overtly zealous conductor. I settled on a bed next to a sagging old man who was drooling on the flattened pillow, and across from a freckly Irish woman who was knitting the largest afghan blanket I had ever seen.

I dug through my small purse as soon as my back was leaning against the thin pillow afforded me, although I might as well have been leaning against the naked metal headboard. My hands brushed against my wand, several notebooks, some lip balm, a huge textbook and the bag of food my mother had given me before finally lighting upon the paper-back book I had bought in one of the bookstores in Hogsmeade before end of term. I pulled it out and examined the cover.

Marxism and Leninism in Wizarding Societies

On the front was a picture of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, blended together so as to form one domineering and dark figure scowling at me. The book was the companion text to the book I had been reading when Petunia had interrupted me, written by Gavin Witte and I eagerly flipped through the first couple flyleaves and title pages to the preface, and settled in to read myself to sleep.

"I don't remember studying that stuff when I was at Hogwarts, dear," the woman across from me said. I glanced up and noticed she had faded brown eyes burrowed under heavy eyelids and wiry hair escaping out of small metal clips. Her knitting needles were flashing dully in the dim light afforded by the swaying chandelier.

"I'm just interested in this, is all," I explained.

"Interested in politics?" she asked me.

"And history, very much." I replied with relish, hugging the book eagerly to my chest.

"Hmm," she folded her lips to form a straight line as she stared across the aisle at me. "You look to be about fifteen or sixteen," she said. "What year are you in Hogwarts?"

"I'll be starting my sixth year," I said, setting my book down on my lap.

"I dropped out of Hogwarts after I got my O.W.L.'s," she said, not seeming to care if I was going to judge her. "I hated school."

I glanced at her face more closely, trying to gauge her age. She looked about fifty-five, a little bit more than a decade older than my parents, meaning she was probably born in the late twenties.

"I adore school," I juxtaposed, toying with a bent corner of the book.

"I'm guessing you must be pretty good at it, too," she replied, nodding her head at my small bag. "I'm amazed you could fit that book in there, without some sort of space-making spell."

"It's bottomless," I replied sheepishly.

"Impressive, I can barely manage a simple knitting spell," she said soberly.

I almost expressed my doubts, then wondered if maybe she was telling the truth after all. The poor woman hadn't even finished Hogwarts!

"So, do you have much opinion on the Minster right now?" she asked, her brown eyes jumping over the aisle to meet mine.

"I think he is doing a lot to help the Ministry recover from Mistress Leach's reign of terror. She destroyed the Ministries international relations, and didn't do too much good for the economy, either."

"This is very true, although were you even old enough to care about all of this when Mistress Leach was in office?"

"Of course not, and besides, I'm a Muggleborn. I read a lot of books about wizarding politics and society when I first found out I was a witch."

"Smart girl, most kids your age probably don't even know who Mistress Nobby Leach is!"

"I know a fair few who don't give a puffskeins underside – although I'm sure this sort of ignorance to politics will change soon enough," I replied, alluding to the almost omniscient cloud above us that was Lord Voldemort.

"Best not talk about those sort of things dear, it brings ill-will."

And although she hadn't said it directly, the anonymous woman wished for the conversation to come to an end. She tucked further into her knitting, and I into my reading, and I didn't even notice she was gone within the next two stops.

Finally we popped into Aberystwyth, rambling along a dirt road peppered in potholes. Just beyond the road to the right a cliff hung off into Cardigan Bay. The sun was barely rising in the eastern sky, glowing sanguine red, and so the ocean was not yet illuminated in light. Black clouds hovered close to the surface of the water, misty fingers barely grazing the cresting waves, and the sky above them was a deep-sapphire blue, tiny pockmarks of stars clinging to life in the pre-dawn light.

Dwarfed cottages sprang along the road, bordered by low-rising stone fences, a veneer of cool green moss growing over them, or groves of drooping pine trees standing just behind them. I could see rolled newspapers thrown unceremoniously on the pebbled walks and graveled drives, or hanging off stooped postboxes. Dewey teardrops from the night's moist breath clung to the wooden steps of porches or the screens of windows, and cast a lovely silver film over the grassy lawns.

Emily's house came into view around a bend. It sat a little bit off the road, and was one story, with dark blue shutters and a door to match. The back of the house had a covered porch out of which you could view the Bay. Emily's grandmother entertained Madison, Emily's sister, by planting a huge assortment of flowers, and she even had a vegetable and herb garden. Where there should have been green blocks of lawn, the woman had strewn hundreds of wildflower seeds, so it looked like a weedy, colorful sea skimmed by butterflies and bees. The post-box was overgrown with morning glory vines and thistle, and the weathered stone walkway was choking on day lilies.

I clambered off the bus, and before I had even made it halfway down the walk, Emily had burst through the door and ran at me. She reached around and grabbed the other end of my trunk, and we continued up the walk, the leaning stalks of the flowers tickling our calves. Her skin had acquired a rosy glow from mornings by the sea, which her younger sister Madison loved to frequent in the summer.

"Hey! How was the Knight Bus? Are you hungry? We can eat breakfast, or wait until Josie gets here."

"I'll just wait," I replied, my head swimming in tiredness. "I think I might nap for a few hours, if you don't mind. The people on the bus did not let me sleep at all."

"Oh of course," she said, as we pulled the trunk up the porch steps and pushed past the screen door. Open windows lit the interior brightly, and most of all the surfaces were covered in green plants. The front room was the living area, worn wooden floors covered in a huge circular rug. Several comfy sofas and armchairs were butted up against the walls, which were covered in intricate, and rather darkly themed, pencil drawings. To my right were two wooden doors, which lead to Emily's mother's room and Madison's room. Directly to my left was a bathroom, and beyond that was a doorway leading to the kitchen and eating area, and Emily's bedroom.

Emily's mother, Cecile, was made a widow at the age of 30, when Emily was nine and her younger sister, Madison, was three. Emily's father worked in one of the factories, and had died during a factory fire in 1968, leaving Cecile, Emily and Madison alone, the latter who had been diagnosed with autism at the age of two. She had been able to keep the house she and her husband had bought when his life insurance check had come through to them, but they had all had a hard life regardless. I had only visited Emily at her house once before, but I had come to see how difficult caring for Madison could be, no matter how much they loved her.

While Madison was autistic, she displayed unparalleled artistic capabilities. The walls of the house were covered in her detailed pictures of the sea, of various buildings around Aberystwyth and many of the locals, but most of the pictures she drew were imaginative productions of her own mind.

When Josie and I had come to visit for the first time several summers ago, we had gone directly from the Hogwarts Express to her house. Her grandmother had been our chauffer, and Emily had made sure there were pictures to show Josie and I, so that we could see how happy Emily's family had been before the fire.

After Mr. Leach had died, Mrs. Leach had been able to stay pulled together long enough to sign several power of attorneys and other documents, documents which gave her mother virtually total access to all of the money left, and total control over Emily and Madison, and this couldn't have been a more crucial action. When Mr. Leach had still been alive, Mrs. Leach had been admitted to the psychiatric ward one time, and had been deemed emotionally unstable. If anything were to happen to upset her life, it was predicted that she would spiral downward into a depression so deep and penetrating that she would no longer be able to function in everyday life.

Just days after the papers were signed Mrs. Leach developed a form of severe psychosis, and had to be committed to the same psych ward for several months. After this, she was always under the strictest supervision, and was at all times accompanied by a nursemaid, whom Emily and Madison had grown accustomed to calling Nona.

Nona had become a member of the family. An older woman whose husband had passed away a few years before she had been assigned to Cecile Leach, she had probably been just as lonely as Cecile had been. She had never had kids, her body's anatomy restricting her from that path of life, and so it did not take her long to adhere to Emily and Madison like a surrogate mother.

Mrs. Leach's mother had a small house built on the property, out of which she lived. There had been two suicide attempts to date, and several more episodes during which Ms. Leach had to be committed. Her mother felt obligated to be near her daughter and grandchildren at all times, so that they could experience the love and nurturing that their own mother could no longer provide for them.

The last time I had come to Emily's, her mother's depressive state had infected me to the verge of severe melancholia. I was certain this was not going to happen again, but just in case I had nicked about ten of my mothers anti-depression pills. They were in an invisible seam I had spelled into the lid of my trunk last term.

At that moment, Cecile walked into the room from the kitchen, a brooding melancholic air emanating from her body. Even clear across the room, I could see who Emily got her rain colored eyes from, although Cecile's were jaded with sadness and miserable regret. The corners drooped down like a basset hounds', and parenthetical lines outlined her mouth.

"Hello," she greeted me, not seeming to want to meet my gaze.

"Hello, Mrs. Leach," I replied, reluctant to smile too broadly, and feeling her ability to weigh heavily on my personality already.

At that moment, a slight nursemaid came up behind Mrs. Leach and grasped her upper arms gently, steering her to sit in one of the chairs farthest from us. She smiled apologetically at Emily as she passed, and nodded in familiar yet distant greeting to me.

"I set the camp beds up already," Emily said, turning her eyes away from her mother. We dragged my trunk further into the kitchen. At the table sat Madison, ten years old now, arranging her breakfast foods in front of her in an assembly line. She glanced up when we entered the room, and smiled widely at me. She had the most amazing memory I had ever come across; even though she was autistic, she could remember any face she met, and the name to match.

"Hello, Lily," she said, her hands still hovering above her banana slices and bits of torn toast.

"Hello," I said, smiling back to her.

"Are we going to the sea today?" she asked eagerly, her large brown eyes lighting up.

"I suppose," I said, turning to Emily.

"Madison, I take you to the ocean everyday," Emily said, exasperated.

"Not yesterday," she pointed out.

"Yes, yesterday I had to help Nona clean, you know that."

"Then we can go today! You aren't going to clean with Lily here, are you?"

Emily sighed heavily, and turned to me, a rueful frown creasing her forehead. I just shrugged.

"I don't really mind going to the ocean, I haven't even see it since last summer," I said.

"Let's see what Josie says," Emily said. "She may want to walk around town instead."

Madison went back to arranging her food.

"How is she doing?" I asked when Emily had closed the door to her room. I stared around at Emily's picture-adorned walls and canopied bed. Moss green paint peeked out at me from underneath the many pictures tacked to the walls. My eyes settled on one in particular, in which a pair of dark and brooding eyes were peeking sullenly out of a small crack in a wall or door.

"I don't know," she replied sadly, sitting down on the edge of her bed. "It almost seems worse than last summer, I can't really tell."

She had set the camp beds up on either side of her bed and I picked one, and shoved my trunk underneath it.

I almost inquired after Emily's mother, but decided not to. While Emily was not shy about explaining to the ignorant what ailed her mother, once you were privy to the knowledge you had to understand that it was rarely, if ever, to be discussed.

"I'll leave you to sleep, then," Emily said, and I smiled through tired, filmy eyes. I was drifting into sleep before she had even closed the door.

I woke with a start several hours later, when someone opened the door quickly.

"Lily, wake up," I heard Josie say loudly. I rubbed my eyes slowly, and noticed she was carrying two plates covered in steaming food, courtesy of Nona, and Emily was closing the door behind her, carrying her own and a thermos, presumably filled with coffee.

Josie shoved the plate into my hands as I was sitting up in the bed. I plucked the fork up and started shoveling food into my mouth.

"I guess you weren't hungry," she said, smirking slightly. Her and Emily sat side-by-side on Emily's bed, facing me.

I didn't say anything in reply, just continued filling my mouth with fried egg and bangers.

Underneath Josie's right arm was the folded Prophet. After I had finished my eggs and sausage, I gestured to Emily to pass the thermos, and took several sips.

Josie had placed her tray of food on her lap and was unfolding the paper, examining the front cover.

"Why are you even bothering with that?" I asked her. "I didn't even think you cared about what was going on in the news."

"Don't be such a bint, Lily," she said from behind the paper. She was unfolding it and looking through the first couple of sections. "I'm looking for something in particular."

I took several more sips of coffee and handed the thermos back to Emily, who was halfway done her plate. I set my tray aside and lay back down on my side, facing them. My eyelids sifted downward, and I felt myself strung up in the limbo between wakefulness and slumber. The cobwebs of dreams Emily and Josie had burst through were beginning to rebuild themselves in the crevices of my brain; I could hear their chatter, but none of it made sense.

"Oh bugger, what I'm looking for isn't in here. I was hoping there would be an announcement article. Aunt Marlena is going to be teaching at Hogwarts! She is taking the Defense position!" Josie said excitedly.

I was too sleepy to respond.

"Lily, let's go down to the beach! Get up!"

"No. I just want to sleep." And I buried my head under my pillow.

"Honestly Lily, you're acting like Josie right now," I heard Emily say. Their laughter eased me into comfortable dreams.

"Has Snape tried keeping in touch with you?" Emily asked later that night. Dinner had been served several hours ago, and Josie, Emily and I had clambered down the wooden steps built into the cliffs face and were walking along the receding surf. It was a beautifully clear night. I could see straight above me the cloudy streak of stars that was our Milky Way, tracing its way through the sky. It looked like the trails of white smoke that fireworks left in their wake.

"Everyday," I replied. "Audra beings me a letter everyday."

Neither of them said anything. I don't really know what they would say, or if they were reluctant to make any comments. The thing between Severus and I had always been just that; no one else had ever understood, not even my mother. Perhaps Josie and Emily were just being good friends, and quelling their barrage of opinions out of respect, I really could not say.

"Are you still doing a special project with him and Slughorn this year?" she asked.

She was, of course, referring to the project that NEWT students started in their sixth years and continued on until their graduation. The professor for each subject selected the best two students in the field they were studying and asked them if they would like to assist him in break-through research he was doing in his field. It was basically an unpaid internship, and if any worthwhile discoveries were made during the students' help, their names went on the thesis project submitted to the Ministry.

"I don't know," I said. "I would like to, maybe I can just do it myself." I doubted I would be able to pull off such research alone, though.

"I'm sure someone else could do it with you."

"Maybe." But I knew that could not be. No one else in the school could compare to Severus' genius in potions, and it wouldn't be right.

"Maybe you should just get on with it," Josie said. She had been busying herself at the cliffs base, but had come back to join us. "I mean honestly, the boy has written you enough, done his penance."

Emily wrinkled her nose. "Why should she forgive him?" she demanded. "He is always going to be this way!"

"That's precisely the reason why she should forgive him! So he's prejudiced, everyone has a little bit of it in them. My father hates the Irish and quite frankly, I don't think they're that great of a bunch either."

"You are being irrational. This is a completely different thing! Muggleborns are being persecuted against right now, Josie! That's me and Lily! You cannot justify that just because everyone is a little bit prejudiced!"

"You think just because I don't keep up with the news like you and Lily do means I don't know what's going on? Just because I'm a pureblood, I couldn't have any idea about what the Muggleborns are dealing with?"

"Josie, that's not what I meant!"

"My father works in the Auror department, comes back with some stories he won't even tell me and Arabella, and you think I don't know?"

I could feel one of their rows coming on now. I guess it had really already started, when Josie had wandered over to give her two knuts to our conversation.

"Now you really sound unbelievable!" Emily said. Even though it was dark out, I imagined her hands balled into tight fists. "I absolutely hate when you accuse me of things like that."

"You're the one telling me I'm ignorant!"

"Well," she answered, and that was really all she had to say.

"You always have to do this, Emily. We are talking about something so small, and you morph it into such a bigger issue."

I felt sort of stunned that Josie was calling my relationship with Severus a small thing, but they both turned into felines when they argued with one another, and I really didn't fancy being the piece of dead meat they tore at in the middle, so I didn't say anything at all.

"You are just getting confused," Emily said, with a bit of sarcasm edging itself around her words. She reached in her pocket and pulled out her pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and soon the tip of her cigarette flared into bright orange color. The flame from the lighter had illuminated the curves of her face, cast deep shadows under her mouth and nose and in her eyes, and the strands of hair that reached far out away from her head gleamed fiery yellow.

Josie just snorted in contention and turned away from Emily. I could see the outline of her body. Her hands were on her hips and she was shaking her head derisively.

"Everyone says things they don't mean, Lily," Josie said, turning to face me instead. "How can you let something someone said to you out of humiliation and anger really stick to you?"

"Josie, I can't believe you are being so naïve," Emily said, after a couple drags from her cigarette.

They continued bickering, and I turned away then, and walked closer to the surf, thinking about what Josie had been saying, and wondering if maybe she was right. She was so quick to forgive and forget though, whereas Emily was the shrewdest of us all, always calculating. And I had no idea who I was.

I hadn't actually sat down and thought about Severus since the night before leaving Hogwarts. I had always made sure I was constantly busy, that my mind was occupied with other things so it did not wander into such treacherous territory.

But perhaps that was the worst thing I could do, because my subconscious had always been revolving. The subconscious twists things, alters colors of situations, changes people's voices. And I couldn't believe I was actually pondering what Josie had said. The younger, stronger, smarter me would never ally herself with someone who had associated such foul words with her person, but I was not that girl anymore. I had already begun my downward spiral into terrors, and nothing could stop the sheer force of gravity from pulling me down into Hell, and I would only realize the severity of my situation when I landed and looked around at my surroundings.

The next day, we took Madison to the beach, where she ran around looking for shells and hermit crabs. I just sat on a towel with my feet digging into the sand, watching her. Her laughter carried on the breeze from the ocean, and was almost infectious. It took Emily and Josie away with it, and they helped her build a castle feet from the crashing surf, only to watch it be eroded away when the tide came in. They giggled when Madison's skillfully crafted turrets crumbled into beads of congealed sand and rolled down into the water, only to burst apart in a kaleidoscope of dirt and crushed shell.

But I could not let it take me away; I only thought of Severus, and I wondered how often he had seen the ocean, if at all. I hoped the river in New Mills was not the only experience other than the lake at Hogwarts that he had with large bodies of water, and I was struck with an immediate, drowning sadness. I couldn't imagine his mother taking him anywhere outside of New Mills, for she had never struck me as caring and loving, at least not in the conventional sense. Besides, Severus, who spent most of his days holed up in his cellar of a room, would probably melt if his body were subjected to as much sunlight as the beach afforded. I wondered if he had even seen pictures of the ocean, but this was a ridiculous thought. Who hadn't at least seen a picture of the ocean?

Madison ran over to me then, her reddish-brown pigtails shining in the white sunlight. She brought me an almost-whole scallop shell. One of its feet had been broken off in the surf, and the edge was jagged and sharp. The outside of it was adorned in alternating mother-of-pearl and pewter gray stripes, and when I turned it over, a cloud of black boiled in the center to fuse with slate-blue around the edges.

"Thanks," I said, smiling up at her.

She didn't say anything, just grabbed the huge jar of sharks teeth she had collected over the years and ran away from me, far away down the shore to comb the sand for teeth.

"Funny little thing, don't you think?"

Josie had sat down next to me, the freckles covering her face standing out starkly in the midday light. Her skin was blanketed in freckles, so much so that her real skin tone was hardly ever realized. Emily was padding along in the wet sand, looking at her footprints molding and disappearing at equal rates.

"Yeah," I replied.

"It's odd. Emily never talks about her coming to Hogwarts," Josie said.

"I have never heard Emily say anything about Madison displaying magical abilities," I said. "I just always assumed her autism blocked any magic she might have."

"I don't know," Josie contemplated, the tip of her tongue squeezed between her two rows of teeth. "Sometimes I can feel magic radiating off of her."

This may have been true, but I had never paid too much attention to Madison and her aura. I had only met her once before now. Maybe Emily just didn't think about Madison going to Hogwarts at all, because she didn't want to be let down.

Thinking about Emily and Madison washed bitterness over my body. If Madison never displayed any sort of magic, it wouldn't matter. She would still love Emily, because Emily was all she had, and Emily was all she knew. She was such a simple little thing, and these sorts of things made all the difference. Her simplicity seeped out through her pores, untainted by anything. Her love for Emily was perhaps the only pure love I had ever witnessed in my world. And at least I can say I had become familiar with such love before everything went to Hell.

Author's Note:

**Just for the record, I have nothing against the Irish.

**Comments very welcome.

**Thank you to MRSSPICY for her prowess.