When I stepped off that ledge, I expected to feel my stomach ripping up inside of me. I expected that it would flip and flop as I fell like when you fall off your bed in the middle of the night unexpectedly, but I also expected it to stop at some time. I didn't think I would be so queasy for that long.
I was swallowed by darkness and engulfed in its thick smoke, at one point I remember looking up and seeing the amber glow of the ledge above, I was also vaguely aware Sirius was calling my name.
He shouldn't care. I wasn't worth it. Even if he thought I was jumping to my death. He didn't know what I knew, that I would be perfectly fine, it would be completely safe…if only I knew how.
The distance felt like hours. At one point, I opened my eyes and unclenched my jaw and thought, Am I still falling? It seemed too long. Time slows when there was nothing but black to mark your progress. It was eerie, falling and unable to see what you were passing. If some giant being picked up the earth like a marble, and all the tiny ant sized people fell off, this is how it would feel like to tumble through space.
Only towards the end did I have thoughts about what would be at the bottom. It flitted through my mind that maybe there was no end, and I would just shoot out the other side of the earth. But that thought was cut off the shock of chilling icy water, sharp like razors. It was like a thunderbolt had struck me, and momentarily my heart stopped and then I regained my sense and struggled to the surface.
The chill was a bombshell of ice; it was freezing and dark. I gasped for air and could see nothing but darkness around me, even the tiny glow from above was gone, and I felt the cryptic blackness pressing down on me like a thick unsettling fog.
The water pulled at my body, numb and heavy as lead, my legs and arms refused to move properly. I had to force them to keep me afloat, my entire body felt like I was covered in a thin layer of ice. The water was clawing me down; begin me to join it beneath the surface.
In that first moment of trauma, I felt utterly alone and frightened. I was panicked, alarmed and shocked beyond belief. But then Sirius' voice echoed down the tunnel and all the cold and fear was wiped away like a blue dry erase marker. And I remembered that I wasn't alone for once in my life.
I laughed unexpectedly at the irony of feelings that voice brought—that I was glad to hear it, in my hysteria. Laughter is the shock absorber that eases the misery of life. Right now, I was a grand example of that.
There was silence again, and then, "Are you laughing!" He bellowed, clearly upset. "Where the bloody hell are you? What happened? I nearly had a heart attack up here and your having a jolly laugh about it!" He yelled, his voice echoed down the tube, bouncing off the rounded brick walls like a bouncy ball until it reached me.
"It's alright. Im down here."
"Of course you're down there! Where did you think I thought you went? Up?"
"Well there's not much to speak for down here!" I shouted back, my voice carried back to his ears. I splashed a little water, treading, moving my arms franticly to push out the cold—keep my blood flowing.
"Okay, well what is down there?"
"Water!" I answered as loudly as I could, looking blindly up at nothing but darkness.
"Can you see anything?" His voice took a moment to reach me, it reverberated off the stonewalls until it arrived at my ears.
"No, just dark!" I blinked a few times to make sure.
"Im coming down, move out of the way!"
"Maybe you should stay up there. It doesn't look like there are any ways out down here."
"I thought you said you couldn't see?" I stayed silent and looked around, true….I heard his shout as he jumped, and I quickly moved the edges of the circular walls, trying to press my body flat against it, but it was hard with my flailing limbs, working to keep me afloat.
I looked up, blinking trying to see him, but there was nothing. This was what it must be like to be blind. But the darkness was not thin, it was heavy with the knowledge that there was water, and brick and objects around me. I knew that it was there, I could feel it, but my eyes saw nothing. The blackness was both frustrating and terrifying at the same time.
I never knew how much I depended on sight. I felt helpless and vulnerable.
There was a loud splash, and shout. I knew it was useless to look, but I turned my body in the icy water in Sirius' direction instinctively.
"Bloody hell!" He yelled resurfacing and sputtering. "Its fucking freezing!" He thrashed for a moment and I stayed silent, looking blindly in his direction, waiting for him to stop his antics. "Why didn't you tell me it was so sodding cold." He demanded angrily.
"Slipped my mind."
He growled in response. I heard the splash of water.
"Lumos" A bright, brilliant bluish light beamed out of the end of his wand. Sirius was holding it over his head as he tread water with the rest of his limbs. I squinted and blinked into the light, my eyes adjusted slowly, finally focusing on him. He spun around until he saw me along the circular mossy brick wall, then in strong quick strokes he was beside me.
Sirius seemed less angry now that the shock of the water had worn off, his hair hung down in wet tendrils over his eyes, which were dark in the shadows of the light.
With a jolt, I realized he was still bare-chested and his skin looked waxy and pale, but still magnificent in the fake light.
"You okay and everything?" He asked, holding up the wand to get a better look around us, his eyes squinted off into the darkness that enclosed around the light of his wand.
It looked like we had landed in a giant well, by the roundness of the slick walls and the clear but black water. I nodded in answer to his question even though he was looking distractedly around and not at me.
He shouldn't care. Why did he ask? Did he know how useless it was to care? Had he not learned that the more you care the more you loose? He should be angry with me. Angry with me for being alive, like I was angry at myself. He should be angry with me for getting us into this mess. Its always my fault, even when it seems its another's. Im at fault for everything, people know it, they just choose ignore it. How long will it take for everyone to turn on me, finally realize what a mistake I am—how I make everything miserable and hurt?
--
It only took twenty measly minutes for the hypothermia to set in. There was nothing we could do but stay above the surface and try not to let my frozen body slip under the eerily pleasant sounding dark water—to just disappear.
Sirius seemed more positive about the whole thing. He used the wand's light to find and old rusted chain that dangled dejectedly and lonesome on the slimy round wall. He wrapped it around his forearm, and used it so we didn't have to swim constantly and wear down our energy. Our bodies were halfway in the water, my hair hung in frigid wet curls along my shoulders and then floated on the top of the water in a cloud of billowing hair like a cloud of smoke.
Sirius had his free arm holding me up, as we couldn't both use the chain as leverage. His slick hard chest was pressed against my own, which was only clothed with a now transparent dove white linen.
At first I had struggled, protested and tensed, but there was only so long I could hold out in the freezing water on my own. My energy was already at zero from many sleepless nights of tossing and turning, my mind piercing with pain the dark lord infiltrated upon me. It was not sleep, it was anguish—reliving all those awful twisted memories.
I deserved that pain though. I deserved any pain, and horror, fear, or loss that was knifed at me. There were unspeakable things that I had done, horrible, grotesque things that I did not even remember, but deep down I knew. I knew I was not, nor could be normal, or friendly, because of what I had done. I knew that I could not love, or have friendships and family, because I was evil—no matter how much I denied it—I was scarred, broken and damaged, but demonic none the less. A vile loathsome excuse for a person. Yes, I deserved that pain; but I did not disserve this comfort.
Sirius Black was a fairly smart wizard. Yet he still chose to place himself in the path of doom. If I was any better than I claimed, I would not accept him at this moment, I would thrash away from him and make sure he never got tangled with my web of vile lies again.
But I was not any better. And I could not resist the cool reassuring pleasant warmth that pulsed and tingled through my body with his skin pressed against mine. I had spent the hour after our mishap with the deranged pantry pacing and thinking of the mysterious reason I felt this way when he touched me. Not only that, but more importantly, why in Merlin's name did he have to feel this addicting peaceful sensation too.
I am, for one thing, a completely different case entirely compared to Sirius Black. I can control urges and myself. I have self-possession and composure, but Sirius? A raging hormonal teenage boy, who is as pig-headed and arrogant as they get and almost consumed by his obsession with sex? I have my doubts he can control himself.
I should definitely keep my distance…
My cheek was pressed flat against his collarbone, my nose almost brushing against the base of his throat, as he held us both against the wall. The bottom half of my body was numb, but I was vaguely aware I had wrapped my legs around his waist and chose not to dwell on the fact that I was still wearing a skirt and a see-through top, while he wore no shirt and no boxers.
Redirect train of thought.
The water was eating away at my skin, and I was shivering so violently I could have been convulsing. I had to concentrate to keep my teeth from chattering, it was like trying to not blink—whenever you thought of something else for a moment your eyes would automatically do the deed.
Sirius seemed less fazed by the cold than I, and was trying vainly to lighten the dreadful situation by cracking jokes or making a sarcastic remarks. I didn't have the strength to reply, and after some time of my silence he quietly asked, his lips brushing my ear.
"Are you aright, Kira?" The question was soft and worried; it sent another spike of pain through me that someone would care. He shouldn't care. Did he know that? My stomach curled in on its self like something dead or dying. Why do people bother with such a lost cause as me?
I shook my head 'no', because the cold was too much, and I felt he deserved a truthful answer, no matter how small it was compared to my lies.
Silence ate away at the nonexistent gap between us, humming with his thoughts, the only sound was the soft innocent rippling of the icy water that was almost as good at fooling as I was.
Then abruptly, he yanked me off of him and took my hand, placing around the rusted chain he had been gripping. He lit his wand again, kicking his legs to stay afloat on the inky water.
I stared blankly at him, shocked beyond belief but concealing it well, my eyes were dilated from the insistent darkness, but they adjusted quickly to the harsh bluish light.
"You stay here. I'm gunna get us the bloody hell out of here." He said darkly, taking the wand and plunging under the water. The light glowed in the darkness of the murky water like a gleaming pearl, it casted an eerie light under the glowing surface and Sirius peered at the glistening white light with interest. Then, he took a large breath, filling his lungs with as much precious air as possible, before dipping under the icy water and disappearing.
I watched the small ball of opalescent light emitted from his wand bob under the surface, moving further away, getting smaller as he dove deeper. The shadow of his body often covered the compact mass of illumination casting me temporarily in complete darkness once again.
The rugged, rust engraved chain cut into my palm as I held it tightly in my grasp. The icy water clung to my clothes and hair, seeping under my moist skin and burrowing its artic winter deep inside my bones and muscles—making it hard for me to make such simple movements. I shivered violently, and fierce flakes of rusted curosion from the dirty chain pressed into my tender palm, drawing blood that dripped thickly down my forearm and gathered in the crease of my elbow. The dark liquid looked grave and foreboding as it tickled over my skin like a creeping spider.
There was barely any pain, just a dull sting. Nothing. I was barely alive. I wondered if this same chain had cut Sirius, if our blood mingled upon my shadow casted skin.
I turned to check on Sirius again, realizing I had been holding my breath this entire time with burning lungs. It had only been minutes, but it felt like a timeless hiatus where everything seemed to pause except my own treacherous self. I let the slow breath, realizing the light had gone out under the black surface of the water, and the room was returned to blinding darkness once more. Panic just as blinding and dark as the circular space I was in shrieked through my blood, racing to my mind and coagulated there in my skull—freezing all other thoughts. I was frozen with fear colder than the inky hypothermic water, and for a moment thought that Sirius was…the pain was more than it should have been. But then he blasted through the surface, sputtering and coughing, his wand held above his head.
The heart-wrenching, searing hot, piercing agony of his momentary imagined death was far worse than I ever imagined. Far more that it should have been.
I had learned how to control and hide how I truly felt behind a face of cold indifference. To the outside world I seem aloof, mysterious, remote, and more than a little unfriendly. Really, I was trying to protect myself, not just from hidden traitors or untrustworthy wicked people, but from making emotional attachments, from the pain that it will ultimately bring.
It seemed only a mask was no longer enough, yet it was still handy now, as Sirius relit his wand and swiveled in the water, using his arms in legs as a moter and rudder to direct him as he searched for me. He found me in the same place he had left me, my hand clutched the rusted sharp chain, and my face was blank. His hair was wet and disheveled; he shook out his dark mop like a dog would after exiting a particularly exciting pond. His eyes, I could see from the blue-white light, were shinning with excitement and his face broke into an unexpected lopsided grin, showing dimples in the sides of his cheeks.
He swam in quick strokes over to meet me, each time his arm submerged under the water his wand and the light disappeared glowing brightly under the surface. His handsome face still lit with a bright smile he met me near the wall. I watched indifferently, my face closed off and impassive.
I was still shaken with my response to the thought that he might be dead. My body was dulled and the echo of that pain still roared through my body like a receding tide—slow, cold and shallow. I had never felt so cold, and not from the artic water that numbed my skin and muscles and body, but as if somewhere inside of me—but not actually there, imaginative, figurative almost, but stil inside of me none the less—had frozen over. Something deeper.
He reached me and clutched the chain just above where my hand held it. HE grinned down at me, his body close but not uncomfortable next to mine. I had never felt so comfortable next to someone, with their touch. I didn't like being near people, but this somehow felt right, just simple and nice. Like the comfort of family, of safety. It was cool and warm at the same time, not demanding or suffocating, just easy.
And that disturbed me. I should not feel comfortable with this contact. I should not have felt pain when I thought—for a moment…
I moved away from him, letting go of the supporting chain, leaving a smear of red liquid on the dirty metal that was lost in the darkness and slipped into the shockingly cold water again. My shoulders dipped under and I fought the chatter of my teeth again and the shiver that threatened to ripple up my spine. Sirius took this as an invitation to resume the position we were in before—that I let go of the chain so he could hold both of up again. What had I been thinking earlier, letting him touch me like that? Letting him get close to me? It seemed so ridiculous, so unlike me. It must have been the water, the water screwed with my head.
He tried to scoop me up again, like he had done last time, but I quickly squirmed out of his grasp. Sirius' eyes clouded with confusion, and watched in silence as I drifted further away from him, from his comfort and safety, to the darkness on the edges of light. Where I disserved to be. Away from everything, in the darkness, not quite there, like a shadow.
"I found a way out." He revealed, without any of the happiness that he had shown earlier. He watched me slowly, his eyes questioning and hurt, his face hollow and vacant. It stung to much to think that I was the one that placed that there.
Suddenly I was angry, I shouldn't feel guilty. I did nothing wrong, nothing to upset him. Nothing had happened tonight which made me feel as I we were any closer, and yet I knew as I thought that I was wrong. Everything had happened.
"Where?"
He watched me closely, still quiet, his eyes scanned my face for a moment then dropped to the black water. He had held his wand under the water, letting the light point the general direction.
"Underwater. It looks like a tunnel."
"And you're sure it leads out of the castle?" He surveyed me for a moment,
"No." I stared back at him, then slowly turned my gaze to the water.
"It could end, be a dead trail. What would we do then? We cant breath under water."
"Well," Sirius started, something angry in his eyes burned. "What do you see? Do you see us getting out of here? That's the only way, you know. Why don't you just look into the future and save us all." He mocked angrily, defensively. He seemed wounded, upset. Did I see anything? Fury pulsed through my body, heating my blood with sickening fire.
"Excuse me?" I warned, daring him say it again—to mock me like that, especially about something as selfless and painful as my visions. I dealt with those, repeated them under my own expense to help those harmed within the odd scenes. I helped them, saved people under all the pain and anguish I suffered from the visions themselves and…and Him. How could Sirius say that? Was he really so cruel?
"I said," He started, wavering when he saw the shock of mortification and sadness. I hardened my face, leaving nothing to be seen by him, leaving me no vulnerability. "Why don't you just bloody look into the future? Since your so special." He hissed, gaining his confidence again, the same blaze burned in his silky eyes, igniting my skin with sharp hot stings like still burning ash, sparks.
"I don't choose what I see Black. And you don't know anything, youre just an ignorant selfish little prat. You don't—you can't—understand what its like, what its like being there, seeing and feeling people die, see what no one was ever meant to witness." Despite my best efforts, my voice shook with emotion. It wavered as my throat tightened and my eyes squeezed shut—blocking the impulse to cry. Crying made me feel so weak, so pathetic and I couldn't be either of those. I had to be strong, indifferent and fierce to protect myself as well as others.
I saw the flicker of guilt and remorse in his liquid eyes, he hung his head slightly and I noticed self-loathing among the other emotions.
"Just—just, leave me alone, Black." I muttered quietly, loosing the fire that burned inside of me, suddenly feeling hurt by his spiteful jab.
"I'm…I'm sorry. That was cruel. I know—well I don't, really—but I understand what…you're going through. I'm sorry, I am."
"I don't want your sympathy, or understanding. Just shut up, leave me be. And lets get…try to get—out of here." He nodded slowly. "Lets see this tunnel." Sirius looked up, his damp hair hanging down his forehead, and he smiled a weak, desperate smile, brought his lit wand back under the water.
"Down this way."
------
The water was colder the farther down we went, and darker. My muscles ached from the chill that wound itself around my body, numbing all my movements. I wanted to turn around, to go back to the inviting surface where there was air and it wasn't so cold, but I couldn't tell which way was up or down. The surface of the water was as black as the bottom; both were so dark they seemed to just…not be there. Gone. The absence of matter; nothing. It was confusing and frightening at the same time. The only thing that guided me was the blue shadow of Sirius, holding his wand out and providing a milky pearl of light. He was checking on me more than where he was going.
It seemed strange that he would feel the compulsive need to watch me. Every few seconds he would glance back at me, as if at any moment I might disappear into thin air. And I might, if I used up any more energy shivering.
I clawed my way through the oppressive frigid fresh water; it seemed thicker than water should be, otherworldly in this green blue terrain. Bars of opalescent light beamed away from Sirius's wand, casting a sort of eerie glow around the subsurface environment, making this strange water landscape seem like a scene from an oil painting. It seemed so crisp, so clear and yet so mystifying it couldn't be real.
The blackness continued. The tunnel roamed farther, stretching out to an unknown distance. For the first time, I panicked at the thought that this one breath I held preciously in my lungs might not last until the end. That it might give out, and I would be left with nothing but this artic water to breath…I banished the thought.
My head felt frozen. My mind throbbed under the winter cold water that tried to penetrate my skull, raking its cold pale fingers across my body looking for some weakness. It felt as if someone had unscrewed by skull, popped off the lid of my head and poured a slush of shaved ice on my brain. It was so cold it burned.
And still the blackness persisted. Now, not only my brain was panicking but my body was also reacting to my increased heart rate. Faster heart—more blood—more oxygen, oxygen I didn't have. My lungs burned, and my arms swept out in front of me franticly, searching for any escape.
Sirius noticed my need, suddenly I felt his hand grip my arm, and steer us in some unknown direction. It seemed we were going up, but I was as unsure about that fact as I was about where we were.
How could a school have this death trap inside of it? Shouldn't there at least be some sort of caveat like… WARNING! DEMON CUPBOARD—DO NOT ENTER…? Wouldn't that be safer for the student body?
But Hogwarts wasn't safe, in more ways than one, and I knew that.
My lungs were screaming with demand, pulling all my thoughts to the one thing that had my body wanted to forget. My head and ears pulsed, beating with the frantic slowing rhythm of my heart.
Just as suddenly as my panic had come, Sirius pulled me up, and we surfaced, banging our heads against something cold and hard. I gasped in shock as my head felt like it was splitting in two, and realized in a sort of dazed pain that air rocketed to my lungs filling my blood and supplying my heart. I heard Sirius breathing deeply too.
"What—?" I didn't have the strength to continue and finished lamely, lack of oxygen made my body feel heavy and weak.
Sirius coughed, relighting his wand and holding it above the water. I couldn't comprehend what had happened. Where were we? I swore there had been nothing but a underwater subway tunnel, nothing but rock and water in all directions and suddenly there was air?
In the light I could see the slick dark rock where we had cracked our skulls. It was only inches above my head and I had to slink deeper in the icy water in order to provide more space between the solid surface. This entire tunnel looked as if it had been carved right out of a stone mountain.
"There's been an air pocket since the beginning, you know, trapped air. I thought you knew. I've been coming up here about every ten seconds. How did you not notice that—" He stopped, his brow furrowed he turned to me, green and black shadows spread across the hollows of his features. "–how did you not BREATH this entire time?"
"There was an air pocket this entire time?" Sirius choked on some cold water and squirted it out though his mouth.
"—yes" I was silent. I felt embarrassed for the first time since I remember. "I reckon this is where it stops though," He said uneasily, still watching me intensely his shadowed eyes shinning in the reflected light of his wand off the water, like glinting mirrors casting back thick plates of opalescent light. "It's been sloping off for a while…" Sirius trailed off, unsure of how to continue, or if I even understood. Our breathing echoed mutely off the rugged stone above us, between icy water and the blackness of rock. Sirius held his wand underwater now; the light was too harsh in this small of area. I could see the end of this rare and certainly lucky air pocket; the rock sloped and disappeared beneath the dark shimmering water. It held a lurid finality about it, that end was so absolute so clean and unconditional.
I was almost tempted to suggest turning back, to just paddle our ways back to the Well in the comfort of breathing. But I didn't, because I was both a coward and a fool. A coward because I didn't have the courage to go back to that place—to stay with this unsettling boy—and a fool because I was certainly pressing death with this next excursion. But did it really matter? Death seemed so trivial, so feebly unannounced and tiring. I was sick of thinking about death when I knew I would never take my own life, not because I hadn't thought about it, or because I was tempted, but because I wouldn't, and I knew that because I had witnessed it. In my dreams too. The ones that were not full of such intense pain and agony they forced me to vomit…
The air was stale and acrid, as if we were breathing in vapors of something molding and dying. I had been so busy with the beauty of air's sudden reappearance, that I had withdrawn my other senses in the bliss. Now, this awful thick smell was lingering on my tongue and filling my head with a hive of bees, my skull thundered with dizziness, and spun like a spindle.
A hand reached out in the cold and held my shoulders, Sirius's other limbs worked more furiously to keep afloat now that his hands were preoccupied.
"Are you alright?" The concern was deeper than the water hellhole we so ungracefully landed in, and it disturbed me. The warm, hypnotizing tingles rippled through my muscles, loosening my stiffness and alertness. This feeling was so wonderful. This feeling only his touch pulsed through me was like a slow cool smooth symphony, floating and swirling inside the hollows of my body.
I let my eyes close for a moment, relishing in this bliss for a moment, letting my mind take me someplace wonderful and beautiful—something I didn't deserve but wanted none the less.
Oh, the greed of the human heart…but I could wish, however fertile and worthless it was. Wish was too soft of a word to ever get anything it wanted. Wispy and pale. Useless.
He's touching you, that filthy blood traitor is touching you... Make him pay…kill him…drown him like I know you want to…
For a moment, because I was so unsuspecting and vulnerable, I felt that volatile, violent anger rise in me at Sirius. I felt the intense wicked hunger to push his arrogant face under the water's unforgiving surface, to fill his lungs with ice and watch the life drag out of him slowly while he struggled. I imagined it, felt that evil malevolent need, but just as quickly as that thought suffocated my mind I knew I was not my thought, or my hatred—my need. It was His. And he was back.
For the last month Voldemort had been absent in my sad life beside the physical attacks and nightly dreams (which I tried to avoid for my life). He didn't try to force me to do his heinous crimes or speak to me. Mainly, I considered that he was otherwise occupied—busy with other horrible deeds. But now as that instinct to do his will rose in me, I found it unsettlingly harder than I expected.
I pushed Sirius's hand off my shoulder; it no longer held any comfort. My jaw clenched and my concentration was easier broken when half was used keeping my led filled body above the water. I pushed His violent thoughts out of my head, as he struggled and thrashed—causing immense pain—cursing me in his silky, calm threatening sneer. Snake-like. I shivered violently, and the small scar-like mark on the delicate skin under my wrist burned like acid. I lifted my arm to look at it, the small pale straight and curved lines just beneath the first layer of skin, when I looked I felt it would be appropriate to find the mark glowing red with the Dark Lords anger. But they were silent in his fury; they were still ominous and threatening nonetheless.
Sirius was watching me, the need to hurt him no longer burned, and I felt shamed that I had so easily forgotten whose thoughts were mine, and which were obviously not.
"Are you okay?" He asked quietly, an edge of distressed curiosity laced his voice. He still held out a tanned arm, holding the light above the surface again. "Why do you have TMR on your arm?" He asked surprised, finally catching a glance at where my stare was directed.
The question caught me off guard. The blemish on my wrist had always just seemed like a scar, a miscellaneous mark that burned at odd moments; I had never thought of it as a symbol. For the life of me, I could not think of anything with the initials TMR, if it indeed did represent initials.
The thought scared me; it shocked and tumbled my insides to know that someone, somewhere had marked me as their own. Someone had claimed me as an object of their possession, and had no qualms carving their name into my flesh; no guilt in hurting me, as if I were not even alive or feeling.
Sirius was watching me closely now as I stared at the milky letters with a disturbed horror etched across my shadowed face. I could see the curved characters on the delicate inside skin of my wrist and tried not to notice how obvious it was that they were letters.
I shoved my hand under the water and looked back to meet the dark boys eyes.
"Its nothing, really. Er…the—the professors' lounge is towards the center of Hogwarts. I expect that this…tunnel is leading towards the lake. How far do you think we've gone so far?" Distract him. Distract myself.
A cold chill washed through me as I thought of my hand beneath the waters surface—a hand that no longer seemed belong to me—and the glacial coolness did not seem to only come from the winter water.
Sirius eyed me cautiously. This dark haired boy seemed much too attuned into my facial expressions; too sensitive to my moods and feelings. It was unsettling how he just…knew. I didn't like it. It was frightening in a delicious and obnoxious way. But he also seemed to know I would not answer if he asked the question than was burning the tip of his tongue.
His face slumped into a tired, weary expression as he considered my question in a resigned way, as if he something was troubling him, and sitting in his head like a giant hippogriff blocking his thoughts.
The musty air in the small stone pocket was making my head spin as I waited for Sirius to answer; the smell upset my nose and eyes. From the light of the wand I could see tiny streams of water trickle out of pencil thin cracks in the black moist rock above, and hear the crisp icy water slapping against the stone where it slopped into the dark underwater world and disappeared.
"I think we've got a ways to go." Sirius sighed. "Rest up here, and take some big breathes. I don't think we'll taste air for a while…" His voice seemed abandoned, and sad, as if some gloomy prophecy was about to take place. And it probably was.
The thick oppressive black water pressed around me like an unsettling fog of darkness. Only the small ring of light provided by Sirius was being seen by us. Everything else was a mystery. My heart hammered against its ivory cage, rattling my ribs in an uncomfortable vibration. A pulse thudded against my temple as a hammer would a nail. The need to breathe was not demanding, but it was there. Lurking in the shadows of my mind. I tried to push the panic out of my mind, and instead focused of calculating the distance we had gone.
Surely we must have spent hours under the ice, but a small rational part of me reminded of mere minutes. Above, where our light saw the stone, I could feel the steady slope downward and it made my heart rise with fear.
For the first time I let my thoughts swirl with the unspeakable. What if? What if, as we swam like trapped guppies, we hit a wall—a dead end in the truest sense? We would die, drown. Our lungs would ache and collapse. In a desperate hope we would gulp in water as substitute, but instead be met with more pain. In our last moments of life, we would look at each other from beneath the surface of this alien world and hate the person staring back because somehow it was their fault, not our own. Because fear becomes hatred…
We were heading deeper and deeper down into the earth. This dreary tube lead on forever, to the point where Sirius would, with a flick of his wand, throw a dazzling ball of light ahead in a vain attempt to see the end. My arms and legs ached from movement; my muscles trembled from lack of sleep, nourishment and too much exertion. But I pressed on, more for the idea of trying than actual want myself. I wanted to want to live, but could only force myself to look like I wanted to live. Only skin deep. Just like the rest of me. Lies upon lies, even to myself I lied.
The cold seemed to lick across my skin and numb my body in uncomfortable tingles. My fingers became harder to move now. They refused to do as I asked.
I was so caught up in the miserable ramblings of my own mind I didn't notice Sirius struggling.
He was falling farther and farther behind to the point the light was so miniscule for me, I stopped to motion for him to relight it. Sirius was moving franticly, he grabbed his throat with his free hand to relay he needed air. I paused, not knowing what to do, what to act on, before I yanked him forward, wrenching his wand out of his grasp and for a moment my mind blinked red with my obvious stupidness.
Of course there were many ways to move faster with a wand.
I wasn't allowed to dwell on this for the urgency of his need. If you have never actually contemplated or been moments away from drowning, you will never understand the sudden pressure of the water as it pushes down on you, almost as if knowing you have no choice but to fill your lungs with the murderous substance in mere minutes. Sirius was glancing around furtively, searching for escape, for the sweet bliss we so often take advantage of.
I plunged the wand forward, my movement dragged exaggeratingly in the thick water, and the word came out as little desperate dancing bubbles. In moments we were speeding through the water, almost as if a motorboat was pulling us. We dragged, holding on to the slim stick that was our only escape. Sirius's body was jerking, I could feel his chest heaving as he denied his lungs air again.
The adrenaline rush quickened my own necessity. Suddenly I could feel that panic waking inside me, my heart thumping so hard I was sure the students in the castle above would be pressing their ears to the floor, wondering what that sound was. That sound was my life. That sound was me dying, Sirius dying. Did they know that?
The water no longer seemed significant. It didn't matter if I inhaled it, as long as I got to inhale. The urge to open my mouth and gulp was louder than my heart. It was a constant begging voice that reasoned there might be some chance that the water wouldn't kill me.
And then there was the end. The literal end, not figurative. The tunnel rounded off, and opened to another underwater world. The dim opalescent bars of moonlight beamed down into the even the deepest depths of the lake. The water was no longer pitch black; the pearly underworld was so magnificent—so magnificent that we had escaped—that Sirius gasped in surprise.
And it was over.
He had inhaled.
He had let go.
Immediately his body jerked, his mouth opened and closed as he tore away form me. Sirius's eyes widened in shock, in pain, in surprise and agony. Water rushed to kill his lungs, to deny him life. Again his body jerked and scrambled, but his arms were falling limp as his chest convulsed, trying to take back what it had done—to somehow chough that water back up. His hands clawed desperately at his throat, he turned to me in torment pleading with his eyes.
Eyelids drooped, his body fell limp...then sprouted energy and he jerked his eyes open. Then limp and heavy again in a sort of horrible, ghostly drift through the moon streamed water of the black lake.
The water was eerily quiet, and I watched in o sort of terrorized panic. I wanted to do so many things at once, my body just didn't move. My own body and pain was forgotten. The surface glittered nearly one hundred feet up in a menacing innocence. The wand was forgotten, the wood disappeared like drift wood in the depths of darkness bellow.
I shook him franticly, my eyes popping as I suppressed the agonizing scream that threatened to claw its way out of my throat. I wanted him to stop joking. To spring his eyes open and plant another sloppy kiss on my surprised lips and laugh as he had last time he feigned being hurt. I wanted to hit him—to tell him to get up. Get up. GET UP.
Only when he started sinking did the full impact hit me. I felt as if I had been run over by a rolling giant bolder, stamped of hippogriffs, sliced in half, hit in the solar plexus and hurt, oh so painful—the feelings that crashed down.
But it couldn't be. Not Sirius. No. He wasn't dead. Couldn't be. All I needed to do was get him to the surface—yes—then he would wake up. He would breath in and be fine. Completely okay. Yes, Yes…
…please…
I reached and yanked his limp arm, and heaved his body with me. The weight was massive, and as I scrabbled, panicked through the water a heaving sense of dread filled my ears, lungs, heart, head in a rush of unwanted cold.
Sirius's body was heavy like cement, and the water seemed to be hardening around me, as if this entire murky world would solidify at any moment. His dark hair billowed in the water like a smoke signal. He no longer moved. His face was relaxed—lifeless. The panic rose in me like a tidal wave. If I had not been underwater where my mouth would do best shut, I would collapse into sobs.
Having someone die in your arms is worse than a thousand deaths.
I dragged both our bodies upward, the silence screamed at me to keep moving. My lungs heaved as I thought of all that wondrous air above the surface. Sirius was like dragging lead, his body wanted to stay in the water, wanted to sink.
A timeless amount of space flowed across my body as the silence ate at my ears and the water teased my body. My pulse was thundering, I could actually feel my blood slowing like paste. Fresh tingles erupted in my head, as if moths were chewing on my brain. I could see black patches in my vision, and my head lolled for a moment…
But the weight reminded me of his life. More precious than mine would ever be.
And we broke the surface.
Rain thundered down in sheets of glass, the sky flashed with cracks of light and booms echoed over the valley. There seemed to be more water above the surface than under. I gasped for air and pulled Sirius up, begging him to breathe, but his body lay silent and still. A torture beyond belief. My body felt weak, my vision blurred red as I wished to slink back under the surface to just sleep…
But as Sirius's body threatened to sink with me, I couldn't allow that wish. Tears stung my eyes from the pain, the exhaustion the emotional panic and shock and wreckage I had endured in such a short time. Water filled my world with sadness.
Many times, as I dragged both our dead bodies through the choppy terrible water that had seemed to peaceful from bellow, I had to hold Sirius above myself as I coughed and choked on water beneath him. I had never swallowed so much water. I had never felt so lost and panicked. I swam until I nearly drowned several times, almost coughed up my own organs, lost my legs from numbness and exhaustion and until, finally, I hit land blindly in the dark. And never had I felt such relief.
There was no sand on this bank, only mud. I could only manage to pull us out of the water mere feet. Only half of each of us extended from the sweeping tide.
I wanted to collapse. To sleep, and be done. To never wake up. But Sirius lay there, face up on the ground, his back sinking into the mud, and he had still not breathed.
It had to have been a half hour since that horrible unspeakable moment underwater. Another coughing fit surged over my ribs, my muscled tightened as I puked on the bank, the bile rose in my throat again, burning, and spilled through my mouth. I choked and sobbed; my vision was obstructed with horrible silver blotches. I turned and tore at Sirius's corpse blindly—searching desperately through my occasional convulsions for a pulse. My arms were shaking so badly I could hardly maneuver them properly. Another sob wracked my chest, and fresh tears cracked down my cheeks.
His pulse was quiet, his body cold. I gasped for air and hiccupped pathetically. Not necessarily for Sirius's death, but for the death of a life in general. I was the one that deserved to die, not anyone else. I should be dead. Not Sirius, who still had a life ahead of him.
There was no wonderful swish of colors, no vivid, beautiful feelings that washed through me when I touched his hard, cold body. There was no relief, and no delicious tingles—it was blank, nothing. And that is what set his death in stone.
His hair was matted and layered with dirt and sand, his closed eyelids were bruised purple and shiny, his lips swollen blue and face a pasty sickly white. His forearms and hands looked like cold, carved marble—lifeless and inanimate. His clothes were wet, and they clung rumpled and creased, covered with specks of dirt and pond scum to his body. Sirius's dark black hair no longer had the movement of smoke, it was slicked back and flattened against his forehead, neck and ground. The rain pounded down in long roars, and little rivers flowed in streams down his collarbone and neck, running like tears down the plates of his cheekbones and pale face. His feathered eyelashes clumped and wet, clung to tiny droplets that balanced upon the fanned tips until the rush of the tiny stream over the curve of his nose dragged them down too.
Everything was numb. Blank and cold. There was a thick blanket of gloomy fog that harshened the darkness of night. I sat on my knees in the downpour staring immobilized at Sirius's dead body. And then after an incomparable amount of time and space, collapsed on his lifeless corpse. It held none of the comfort or safety it did before, none of the warmth and soundness. My hands held tightly to fabric of his clothing, hoping that maybe if I clung on long enough he wouldn't actually leave. Staring blankly through the rain, my eyes open and devoid, I wished so desperately that I was the one dead that I could almost feel death whispering in answer. I could almost feel it clawing at my tattered clothes, whispering harshly the deadly water was only feet away…
I hated myself so thoroughly at that moment that death would be to easy, less painless than this misery. Sirius should be alive. Tears followed thicker down my the curve of my features and joined the rain in its decent towards the ground.
Sirius should be living.
He should be alive, not me. Sirius should be alive…he's dead, he's dead…My life is useless, why am I alive?...Sirius should be alive, he's dead.
I choked back another wrenching sob. I'd give anything for him to be alive. Anything at this moment to see his face crinkle into another wicked smirk or goofy grin. I pushed off and looked down on him again. My eyes stung again, and my throat burned.
Something squirmed in my stomach, a slow dragging feeling, and I broke into another sob as Sirius remained motionless. Dead. It felt like my insides were unraveling, something rose in my chest, pulling upward through my throat. I kneeled over ready to vomit again.
Tears ran down my face and were lost in the rain, in the pain, in his death. I would give anything to let him live. For him to be alive again.
Bile never flowed through my mouth, I waited, feeling the uncomfortable rise, that unraveling, draining feeling continued.
Sirius remained motionless. His death screamed in my ears and eyes, roared through my insides and swept away like the water that killed him leaving me feeling hallow and empty.
Something was wrong, this unraveling, squirming feeling felt like I myself was unraveling. As if someone was stealing my life away as if sucking it through a straw. A warmth rose in my throat, so unlike vomit, I opened my mouth bending in the sand, waiting. The rain pounded harder, drenching me completely, the blackness of night consumed me.
Sirius would never be alive again. Never. He would never tease hopeless fourth years…or harass the caretaker…play jokes and pranks…get detentions with James or laugh with his friends…He would never get to become an Auror like he so wanted to…or deserve another patronizing look from McGonagall…never duel in the hallways…or play quidditch for Gryffindor again…
A golden thread flowered from my lips; it swirled in the air like a yellow drop of food coloring in water. A single stand of gold swished in the air, as if deciding where to go next. My body continued to unravel. I felt weaker, like this golden thread was pulling the life out of me.
Life Sirius no longer had. I tried to remember what he looked like alive and well. What, only and hour ago, he looked like with a living body, a smile despite the circumstances…but the image of his dirty, cold, pale dead body obstructed any memory.
The thread illuminated the night, the fog, and the suppression. It had a life of its own—a life it was stealing from me. This strand plunged, diving, slicing through the fog. It dragged more life out of my, unraveled, stole. I didn't care. I felt like sleeping. Falling… The gold vein twirled upward and then like shimmering fire, dove down again and plunged straight into Sirius's chest. For a moment an inward light illuminated his entire body, then everything fell dark again like the moment the sun disappears behind a cloud. I felt my shoulder slump and collide with the cold wet ground and then unconsciousness pressed on all side and I was gone.
