NEVILLE


Hermione's words echo as he trudges down the bank, his toes trailing through stones and river blood. Her fingerprints stain his arm—a reminder of her permission to accept who he is now, who he has to be.

He feels the silt running through his veins, pieces of dirt and filth making circuits around his body and leaving traces of their darkness. He'd been covered in it—unable to clean it off—so he kneels in the water, bare from the waist up.

Fingers wrap tightly around the rope. He feels the thick handle, moves down to run a callused palm over knotted, frayed strands. When he looks out over the stream, listens to the water parting around him, all he can hear is the dirt grinding about inside him and it needs to come out.

His wrist jerks upward, a fine spray of water hitting the surface and falling across his face. As the rope whips over, bites into his back, he grunts, hisses, and bows forward. He clutches tighter at the handle, drags it forward into the water and swings again. There is a rhythm to it now.

Each time it digs deeper, he hisses in triumph, cries out a little softer in anticipation. It doesn't take so long anymore.

He looks to the water as it comes up and over his hips and smiles at the tinge of red. He continues flailing the rope, closes his eyes, and his mouth opens.

The last whip of the knotted tails throws water and other things over his skin, leaving him mottled with wounds.

His lips move in prayer to gods he doesn't believe in, saying words he doesn't understand. All he knows is the need to purge—to be released from the darkness—but when he closes his eyes, all he can hear is the grinding of silt in his veins.

So he starts again.