Every now and then Odessa got the feeling that she couldn't breathe. It usually happened before a recital or a large exam. For just a few minutes she would feel like she couldn't breathe, but as soon as she started whatever she was doing air would flow back into her lungs and she would be alright. She would dance or answer questions, and that was something she knew she could do. But those few minutes when everything felt constricted, those truly terrified her. Now more than ever, because she knew that eventually she wouldn't be able to breathe. And when that happened, the air wouldn't come back.
For now though, the air was there. It had gone away a few minutes before, when she'd been struggling to put her bag together after her last class of the day. It was nerves; the nerves always got to her more than she'd care to admit. And for some reason, the fact that she was meeting Sirius Black made her more nervous than any exam could.
He tended to make things into jokes, so a part of her was terrified he would make fun of the things that made her happy. Another part of her was terrified he would show up, because then she would have to spend time with him and she would just be irritated. And a third part, a small part, was afraid he wouldn't show up at all.
She'd fought with Leila that morning. She'd been caught swallowing pain potion and had refused to say what it was for. Leila, who'd been worrying since the morning Odessa had woken up unable to move, was furious. They'd shouted at each other, with Odessa claiming Leila had no need to know the truth and Leila shouting that Odessa was just upsetting her and Theresa because she enjoyed being miserable. Odessa had stormed out of the room at that point, and was convinced that the encounter signaled the end of her friendship with Leila Brown. She was also convinced it meant Leila would take on the duties of caring for Theresa, who'd branched out enough to occasionally talk to some of the Ravenclaw boys in her year.
That, of course, meant that she was alone. The only other person she had was Sirius Black and she didn't even really want him. But he knew the truth, and he'd stuck around her for a while now, and Odessa wanted at least one person in her life to care about her. This led to the fear of him not showing up, which led to her inability to breathe, hence her ten minute stay in her Arithmancy classroom once the day had ended. She simply couldn't bring herself to pack up her things and learn that she was, in fact, truly alone.
But with her reminder to herself she knew that the air would come back. And being alone was going to be good for her, or at least that's what Odessa attempted to convince herself of. She was going to die in a year so it would be better to have no one around. That meant no one would be hurt when she vanished. That had been her goal at the start of the school year, so why couldn't it be her goal now? It made perfect sense, at least to her.
Odessa left the Arithmancy classroom with her head held high. She was alone, but that was okay. She wasn't going to let herself get caught up in the idea of having friends, not when she was going to die so soon. She wasn't going to- "I was beginning to think you were never going to come out."
She froze, turning toward the voice and widening her eyes slightly. "You're here? You actually came?"
"I told you I was going to meet you, didn't I? I do tend to keep promises," Sirius said, walking over to her with a lopsided grin and his hands shoved in her pockets. "So, do you have your assignment? We should really get started; I've only got about an hour now."
"Excuse me?"
"Well what did you expect? I do have other things I have to do today. I'm on a bit of a schedule, Perkins, so I'd rather not dawdle anymore. What's up first? We've got to hurry."
Odessa had been reaching toward her book bag, though at his words she froze. "I…"
"Are you just going to stare? We've got to get going."
"I'm...I'm just your charity case," she muttered, looking up at him and folding her arms across her chest. "And you're being rude, because you don't...you don't care, and I'm...I can't do this. I won't be your charity case, Sirius Black. I have no intention of being some person who helps you feel better about yourself. So you just...You just be on your way, okay? Because I'm not doing this. I'm not going to."
She turned on her heel and quickly started walking away. She kept her arms around her stomach because she suddenly felt sick, and her arms were the best form of comfort she could give herself. She'd been right. She was truly alone. But it felt so much worse than it had before, now that she knew it for sure.
"Perkins stop being dramatic," Sirius said, hurrying to catch up with her. "I've got plans tonight that came up unexpectedly. I didn't want to just not show up, but we do have to hurry. Are you seriously upset that I can't give you my whole night?"
"I'm upset because you're a... you're a right-"
"Okay, I get it. I was rude. Can we just get past this? Merlin, Perkins, you're more like a woman today than you ever have been before." Odessa just shook her head and continued to walk away, picking up her pace to try and get the point across that she didn't want to be around him. She didn't know why she'd even hoped for him in the first place; she had never liked him that much. She heard footsteps continuing along beside her though, and soon enough Sirius was speaking again. "Do you want an apology? I don't know why you're so upset about me being rude. You know I am, and you know I'm only doing this so we can get out of each other's hair. It's not that you're a charity case, it's that...It's that I'd rather not have my year occupied by you, and you'd rather not spend your year with me, so why make it last any longer than it has to? All I have to do is show you how to live again and then you'll be fine and you'll get over this foolish sickness that you seem to think you have," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to stop her from going much further. "So, now that we've cleared that up, can we please just get on with this? What's number one, eh? Is it at least something interesting?"
Odessa just kept shaking her head. "I can't do this," she said, slapping his hands away from his shoulders. "I'm not your responsibility, Black, so just...Just stop pretending like I am. You don't like me at all, and you don't want to waste your time with me, so you don't have to. I release you from whatever obligation to me you thought you had. Now just...Leave me be and go... I don't care. Just go."
She took a step back and watched as he opened his mouth to say something to her. Odessa couldn't listen though, so without thinking much she turned and took off running. She had to get away from him, and from thoughts about Leila and Theresa, and from the world in general. She just needed to get away from everything, because then the pounding in her head would stop and she could just be at peace, just for a moment.
After taking turns through corridors and staircases, Odessa ducked into a broom closet. The air was gone again, and the only way it was going to come back this time was if she slowed down for a moment and stopped running. But when she stopped, all she could think about was the fact that she was alone, and that no one in the castle really cared for her at all.
Odessa stayed in the broom closet for hours. She knew that she should leave and go back to her dormitory and stay there, because that was ten times more comfortable than sitting on the cold stone floor of a dark closet. But she couldn't bring herself to go there because Leila could be there, and that meant Odessa might have to interact with her.
She stayed long enough that the room around her slowly darkened and became black. Odessa didn't know how the hours had gone by so quickly, but she knew it was far past time for her to be in bed. She must have missed dinner, which was odd because she didn't really feel that hungry. Still, the room had turned pitch black. Odessa held her hand up in front of her face, though she couldn't see it. That too struck her as odd, but Odessa ignored it to the best of her ability. Everything was fine, aside from the fact that she was in total darkness. She willed herself to just die then, because no one would have to see it and she could just float away peacefully. That, she decided, sounded like the perfect outcome of the day.
But it wasn't the outcome she got. The door to the broom closet opened slowly, and Odessa found herself unable to see the light that should have been there. She felt as though her heart skipped a beat when she realized that it wasn't darkness. She couldn't see. She wondered if her eyes would ever work again, and a large part of her feared they wouldn't. Her disease was supposed to attack cells and make them not function properly. It might have just attacked the cells that made up her eyes first. She hated that she wasn't going to be able to see anymore. That was going to make going to Hogwarts a lot harder. She would probably fall off a staircase and down three floors before she'd even been blind a week.
Odessa knew that going blind wasn't the worst thing that could happen to her. She could become immobile again. That morning had been incredibly terrible. Leila had almost found out the truth. Odessa couldn't handle Leila finding out, especially now that they'd started to fight with each other. Odessa felt stupid, having believed that she could really keep a friend in the first place.
A sound from the entrance to the closet brought her back to reality. It was a place she didn't want to be, considering she couldn't tell who was in the room with her. "Are you going to sit there with your eyes closed all night? You've already been in here for three hours."
Three hours didn't seem to come close to how much time Odessa felt she had spent in the room. "Go away," she said, a bit unsure of who she was talking to. The voice seemed familiar, but she just couldn't place it at the moment.
"Not going to happen. I've been waiting outside this door for ages. I'm not leaving without you. First you run away from me and then I have to sit outside a door for three bloody hours while you have some kind of a crisis, and-Oh come on, Perkins. Open your eyes already, will you?" Sirius asked, sounding like he was getting agitated. Odessa had quickly realized who it was once he'd started ranting at her.
"My eyes are open, Black. And no one asked you to sit outside the door. I certainly didn't want that."
"Perkins, I am currently staring at you and I can tell you for a fact that your eyes are not open. Just stop whatever this is and let's get you food, okay? You missed dinner, and for that matter so did I and I'm hungry."
"Black I'm telling you, my eyes are open. I think I'd know if they were closed, wouldn't I?"
"Well I'm just telling you that I'm staring at you and your eyes are definitely closed."
Odessa frowned, wondering why he was doing this. It didn't make sense and it wasn't even a good prank. She reached up to touch her eyes and prove that he was just lying to her. But she didn't touch her eyes; she felt her eyelashes and eyelids. Sirius, she realized, was right. Her eyes were closed. Odessa tried to open them because she felt silly for not realizing it, though she quickly found that she couldn't.
"Perkins? You look a bit worried. What's wrong?" Sirius asked. Odessa was surprised that he sounded worried as well, because he hadn't seemed to care about her much at all that day.
"I...I can't...Open…" Odessa couldn't get the words out.
"Are you seriously going to sit here and tell me you can't open your eyes?" Sirius asked. Odessa could tell from the sound of his voice that he didn't believe her. He thought, once again, that she was just making everything up. She was an honest person. She knew that, yet he never believed her. Odessa wondered what she'd done to deserve that.
To her disbelief, Odessa felt herself start to cry. He didn't believe her, and he didn't really like her. Within in a few seconds the crying had turned into sobbing and hyperventilating. Odessa couldn't breathe, which made her clutch her chest and throat tightly. If she had to guess, this was a complete breakdown; in all actuality she didn't care much about what it was called. Sirius already didn't like her, so why did it matter if she broke down in front of him?
"Hey, woah-Please stop crying. I don't do tears," Sirius said awkwardly. "Seriously, please stop with the tears."
Odessa couldn't speak. She just kept crying and trying to calm herself down. The more she hyperventilated, the more her chest hurt and the less she wanted to be alive. She wondered if she could just drop dead now. At least then Sirius would believe her.
She couldn't decide why she cared so much about that. Odessa usually didn't care too much about what others thought about her. Usually she could just put the thoughts out of her mind, but Sirius Black was oddly important. She wanted him to believe her, but he just didn't.
Odessa felt someone sit next to her and gingerly put an arm around her shoulders. That just made her cry more. He was just pretending to care now, which felt worse than his original actions of the day. Still, she was desperate for someone to take care of her, so she laid with her head on his shoulder for a while.
"What is it?" Sirius asked eventually. "What do you have?"
"Y-You won't believe me no matter what I say," Odessa mumbled, trying to pull away from it. Her sobs had been reduced to just tears again, but she still couldn't stop them completely.
"No one gets this upset when a lie doesn't pan out," Sirius said quietly. "So... I figure you must be telling the truth. So what is it?"
"It's...It's called…" She couldn't bring herself to say the name of the disease. She never said it out loud. She'd done it once, when the healer had given her the diagnosis, but not since. "It's...The...The cells in my body, they're dying. Fast. Madam Pomfrey can give me potions to speed up the production of new ones, though after six months those potions become useless. The cells will die faster. Production will stop all together, near the end. Things start to fail, organs and such. And...And the magic inside of me will...On the last day it'll attack everything that's still functioning. It's a slow death. It's painful. Those that contract it lose color in their skin and eventually their eyes. They bruise, easily, and the bruises stay for weeks because they're not as important to the healing months left and I'll have to spend half of my time in the hospital wing. I..In the last two months the healers suspect I won't be able to walk anymore. In the last month I'll have to have spells cast on me to help me breathe. I...I can barely dance anymore. Everything hurts, all the time, because I'm dying and it's slow and it hurts and I...I can't stop it."
"It...It's not…" He didn't have to finish. Odessa knew by the sound of his voice that he knew what her disease was. She just started nodding, because talking felt like too much. "I'm sorry."
"For?"
"Not believing you,"
"Yeah, will, who would believe me?"
"No one. It's...It's not even common anymore. I thought it had just...disappeared,"
"Apparently not," Odessa said quietly. "I'm living proof that it hasn't died out,"
"So...So why can't you open your eyes?"
"The hell if I know," Odessa mumbled. "I...I"m assuming it's attacking whatever nerves I have in my eyelids or the part of my brain that tells certain things what to do. I don't know. Madam Pomfrey can probably fix it but I...I don't want to go to the hospital wing. I'm going there far more than I'd like and I don't think...I don't think she even likes to look at me anymore. It's hard to treat a patient when you know they're going to die."
"Can't they find a cure?"
"There isn't one. They don't know what causes it so they just can't make it go away with a snap of their fingers. If they could I'd take them up on it."
"So...How much...How long until…"
"Nine months in total, or at least that's what they estimated. Six months until my life is completely taken up by the stupid thing. And...I'd say another two at maximum until I'd rather just bite the bullet and die my own way."
She felt him cringe slightly, and Odessa shuddered a bit too. It didn't sound like a great outcome, not even to her. "Do you trust me?" Sirius asked eventually.
"Not really, no," Odessa said. "Why do you ask?"
"Because we're getting out of this room. I'm...We're going to go to the kitchens and I'm going to make you try the best dishes of your life. I'll have the house elves prepare them, they'll be happy to. They love me down there. It's on your list though, isn't it? Trying the best food in the world? Well, to be fair I didn't get a great look at your list. But if it's not on there then it should be. Anyway, I just so happen to have a fantastic knowledge of food. After that we'll go to the hospital wing and get your eyes fixed."
"Why wouldn't we get them fixed first?"
"Because if I'm honest my friends are going to be watching for us all over the castle, and if I take you straight to the hospital wing they're going to think I did something and then murder me. Remus is quite a big fan of yours, did you know that? Yeah, apparently he can't stand the way you smell because he's sensitive to sickness or something-don't ask-but he thinks you're smart and kind. He's not a fan of the idea of me corrupting you." Sirius said.
Odessa was surprised when she laughed slightly. She hadn't expected to be amused at the situation, though she actually was. To her surprise she found herself nodding and letting Sirius grab her hand and lead her to the kitchen. It wasn't how she'd expected things to go. But a small part of her felt like she was going to be cared for again. Even though it was expected, she would accept anyone caring about her.