219. Drowning
Bree's maternal grandparents lived in a private community in California. They had a pool. Two pools, actually, one was small kiddy pool, maybe two and a half feet at its deepest. The other was Olympic size with a deep end hanging off of it so that it was L shaped. At its shallowest, it was three and a half feet deep. At its deepest it plunged to twelve feet.
When Bree was little, the big pool terrified her. She couldn't swim yet and every time she was taken to the big pool she would either cling to the edge of the pool and move along it sideways, or, when the edge was out of reach, cling to whoever had taken her into the pool so tightly that you would need a crowbar to pry her off. Finally, her Mother took her to a friend who had a much smaller pool and Bree learned how to swim.
From then on it was next to impossible to get her out of the pool. She loved swimming. She would push off of the wall and gliding through the water. She would do dives, jumps, and cannonballs into the water. She would swim to the very deepest part of the pool, touch the bottom, and then rush back up to the surface to fill her burning lungs. That first breath as she broke the surface was exhilarating.
You never really understand what having the wind knocked out of you means until it actually happens to you. Lying in a ditch on the side of the road, Bree understood. She had ended up in the ditch after the horse she was riding got spooked and bolted. In a few seconds Bree realized a few important things. 1: She wasn't going to regain control of the horse as she had dropped the reigns, 2: She was not going to be able to keep her grip on the saddle horn, 3: She was going to fall off the horse, 4: Grass was softer than gravel.
After these thoughts had run through her mind Bree took her feet out of the stirrups, let go of the saddle horn, stuck out her right arm and leaned. She hit the ground and rolled onto her back. She couldn't breathe.
"In." she thought. "Breathe in." But her lungs wouldn't cooperate. They burned with the need for air but she just couldn't take a breath. Finally, after what felt like hours, air finally flooded into Bree's lungs.
There was a lull in the fighting. It was the final battle against Voldemort's forces. Bodies were being gathered in the Great Hall. Bree walked in and saw Mrs. Weasley crying over a body with the rest of her family around her. Bree was too far away to see who it was.
She fiddled with the ring on her left hand as she moved closer. It was one of the twins, and she knew which one it was. Bree couldn't breathe.