1O3
Norah's eyes remained closed, feeling herself bloody dying. The last of a dying breed. The only one in her family to be cursed with lycanthropy. Bleeding out, fading. She felt like she had been dead to the world, for so long since Wes and Jax were so cruelly murdered. Taken from her.
All that remained was an empty shell, and she might as well have been given the Dementor's Kiss for as much as she allowed herself to truly feel and mourn their deaths.
For the first time in her life, she truly felt her age of thirty, like the harsh life of so long spent in the Forbidden Forest alone, had finally taken its toll on her.
The breeze of the Forest, once so warm and inviting, smelling of pinewood, now crept on Norah's pores like maggots and filled her nose with the putrid stench of rotten flesh.
Oh, wait, that's me, Norah thought darkly, her eyes shut.
The last thing she had seen before Greyback so cruelly thrown her from the ledge of the Astronomy Tower had been her own blood pouring out around her from where he had driven his own claws into her side. The red seemed to seep and weep out of the hole in her ribcage, soaking into the ground around her, and as the warm blood, that sweet, precious lifeforce that emanated out of her and hit the ground, she could swear she felt the blackened edges of death dance around her fading eyes.
Like smoke billowing from fire, though Death did not come for her. No. The angel of Death was not coming for her to take her into his cold embrace tonight. Because…because she had been already dead for so long.
That was, at least until she felt the sticky garish crimson drip against her browbone. It was the first thing that touched her in her semi-conscious state.
Her body twitched and stirred, just a little, and it hurt. Especially her right burnt leg.
It hurt as hell, and a sudden spasmodic, almost knee-jerk reaction as she felt something that felt like the pads of someone's fingertips lightly graze against the blackened, charred skin of her leg, caused her to wake.
Norah gasped suddenly, trying to clutch at her chest, but couldn't. Her lungs felt frozen. It took the young blonde She-Wolf several moments before she figured out that her heart, this damned stubborn muscle within her chest was still, by some miracle of Merlin, beating. But slowly. As if uncertain whether or not she was supposed to be alive or not. Her head throbbed and pounded against her skull, feeling like it was spinning, and she struggled to move.
She felt…cold. So damned freezing. Every breath that struggled to return to her bruised and battered lungs felt sore, labored. She was struggling to breathe, and could not force herself to open her eyes, not wanting to see what awaited her in this life. Norah tried to give a twitch of her foot, though her broken body was crawled with spasms, horrible pain that she had never felt before in her entire miserable life, making her toes in her black leather boots curl and her lips part, though she could not scream.
A strange coil wound tighter, deep within the churning pit of her stomach, cutting her breaths, what little air she could summon to her bruised lungs, short.
Her chest heaved and beads of feverish sweat as she burned up started to form on her brow. Norah was content enough to allow herself to close her eyes and let Death come for her, to whisk her away into that sweet place where it was rumored there was no pain, to see her Wes and Jax again, but then she heard Ollie's voice calling her.
She could hear him speaking to her, faint though it was, sounding like he was underwater. How broken and hopeless his voice sounded. Never before had she heard the man's voice so sad, desperate, laced to the brim with self-hatred and loathing.
But why? Why did Ollie hurt? Why was her friend in so much pain? He should not be,
Brennan had no bloody reason to sound like this. What had happened was not his fault, and it could never be the kid's fault. Ollie spoke her name so softly as if everything he had ever cared for in his wretched, miserable life had been ripped apart from him.
Something was wrong. As the intonations of the former Slytherin's quiet, reserved voice rose and fell with each expelled surge of grief, his desperate, pleading voice came to her eardrums in tides, ebbs, and flows, like that of the sea.
And Norah's mind, hazy from exhaustion, and barely conscious, teetering in that sweet purgatory between life and death, began to attempt to try to sift through the fog that threatened to consume Norah.
Even though her lids were still closed, the young blonde werewolf could see shapes stirring, flying before the stars.
For a throbbing heartbeat, one made a shadow that eclipsed the waning moon, and the dragon that had saved her life disappeared into the night sky in a flurry of flapping wings, massive and angry.
Her eyelids felt heavy, though they flickered, and Norah felt herself wince. After a moment, she realized Ollie's voice was no dream, that Brennan was here. She had to shake away some of the exhaustion, but bloody how the hell to do it?
Norah suppressed a breath and even that hurt like a bitch, every second her chest heaved with hurt, though it felt like her chest barely rose and fell at all. Norah could swear she felt her feverish face beginning to crumble, leaving her nose blushing a light rosy pink with stifled, anguished, barely audible sobs.
Every inch of her broken and battered body protested, but there was nothing that could twist back Time itself and spiral Norah back to the moment where she had decided coming to bloody Hogwarts to defend it, and hope to see the kid, was a Merlin-damned good idea because it wasn't. Look what had happened!
She was dying! She supposed it was a good thing no one she knew in her life owned a Time-Turner, and besides, awful things tended to happen to wizards and witches who meddled with Time to change their fate. No. Perhaps it was better this way….
Slowly, Norah tried to lift her head, but quickly realized how futile it was when she had to bite down on her bottom lip from crying out as one of Ollie's fingers accidentally grazed against the charred and scorched skin of her injury.
Sharp pains lanced through her leg and her head and colorful spots flashed in front of her eyes. It felt as though her whole body had been ravaged and every twitch, however feeble, caused some muscle or bone to ache.
Regardless, she needed to lift her head and find out what was the hell was wrong with Ollie.
But she found she couldn't. Her arms ached horribly. No matter how much she clenched her eyes shut and forced her body to attempt to twitch just a finger, that was all, just a finger, anything, to let him know she was alive, they would not obey her command.
Someone could cut them right off and she wouldn't feel a damn thing. She was exhausted. Though for the moment, her numb arms, and the rest of her body, for that matter, were the least of her problems.
The kid. Focus on Ollie, what's wrong. Need to…see him. Something's wrong with him. Wrong, wrong, this is wrong, why is he talking to me like this?! Have to…wake up…move, goddamn you, just a finger twitch, something. Need to…let him know…alive, her conscience helpfully reminded her.
Though the pain spiraling its way through her body was like an icy wind choking the very breath from her lungs and making a noose around her neck. Its savage, bitter blasts cut right to her bones and gripped her brain in its freezing claws. Her heart constricted in its wake, as if not sure it should continue to beat.
The pain commanded all of Norah's attention. It did not sit quietly, like that of a simple paper cut or bruise. No. It cowed her brain into meek submission, demanding a simple solution—to look at Ollie—that her body would simply not provide her. Merlin was cruel.
Cruel to deny her even this simple wish. Without a break in the pain that spiraled through her entire system, Norah found she could not formulate a single thought. Norah struggled, realizing as her mind slowly began to respond now that she knew she had to find a way to wake herself up physically, listening to her friend's whispered sobs into the shell of her ear.
Adrenaline flooded her system at that thought, pumping, and beating through her veins like it was trying to escape, or maybe that was just the copious amounts of blood that poured out of her system, it was hard for her to tell.
Norah thought her heart would explode and her eyes, though closed, felt like they were somehow wide with fear and anticipation, though it was not necessarily herself she worried for.
She would, in the end, be just fine.
Norah fought the tears that begged to be free, and her hallowed breathing felt like it stretched her throat until it hurt, and it felt as if on fire.
She felt her skin prickle and bile corrupted her throat, and she thought she would vomit. It was not his fault.
Not his fault. Not Ollie's fault Greyback threw her off the roof.
The fact that he blamed himself was a lie, she could hear the anguish seeping through his tones, and again, her new friend's disheartened cries that were almost screams of anguish ripped through the paper-thin walls of her barely-conscious mind, bringing her back to the current grim reality of her situation that something was wrong with Ollie.
You're gonna be fine, Jameson, her conscience piped up. Wolf or not, you're a Gryffindor, goddamn it. If you can take on three adult centaurs with just the sword of Godric Gryffindor, a burnt leg is nothing. And you've always prevailed. You've had worse injuries than this. Ollie isn't going to leave you. You need to accept his help, like it or not. With his help, and Tonks and Lupin's if they're still alive, you'll be all right, in the end. You will. Trust that you're going to be fine.
She chanted it over in her mind like a spell.
No matter what.
But still, she worried for Ollie, knowing he would blame himself for what had happened when it was not and never would be his fault.
Norah could feel the sweat drench her skin, the throbbing of her own eyes, the ringing screams vibrating in her ears, and the thrumming of her own feeble heart against her chest, miraculously, somehow, still finding a way to beat.
Her fingers curled into a fist, nails digging into the sensitive skin of her palm.
The young witch could not hear her rapid breathing, but she could feel the oxygen flooding in and out of her lungs.
The fear of the unknown, if she would die tonight, almost sent her bloody mind insane.
The fear felt like it tortured her guts, churning her stomach in tense cramps, engulfing her conscience, knocking all other thoughts aside, overwhelming her.
However, most of all, this strange fear she felt was making her calm and that was what scared Norah the very most, more than any other thought now.
The fear sat quietly, eroding the person she was born to be. What started as a horrible contortion of her stomach as it churned, twisting her guts into intense cramps, quickly became a feeling of being smothered by an invisible hand. Her breathing became still and yet somehow erratic, deep.
She fought it. She fought the horrible feeling as her body writhed to be free or shut down completely, and that she could not let it happen to her.
The paralyzing hurt spread through her body like icy metal. She clenched her fists and struggled to open her eyes and penetrate through the black hazy mist that gathered as dots in her closed eyes and line of sight.
Her throat closed at the threat of letting out an agonized scream that she knew would not help Ollie's panic, her jawline locked and became tightly closed. Fire in the form of water stung at her eyes as tears pricked and gathered at the corner of her vision, threatening their attack.
Norah crunched her teeth over her lip harder than she ever had, and she felt the metallic taste of iron linger on her tongue as she realized salty, warm blood was filling her mouth. Norah was finding this challenge of attempting to pull herself from this groggy stupor demanding, one she was not entirely sure she possessed the strength left within to carry it out.
Everything felt so damned heavy, heavier than anything she had ever experienced before in her life.
What but she wouldn't give to just…sleep.
To lay like this in Ollie's strong arms and rest, for she was tired, in both body and soul, everything ached and hurt like never before.
Though again, a muffled, choking sob, a cry of sorrow that belonged to her friend wracked through her hazy mind, forcing her to return to her present situation of finding some way to let Ollie know that she was alive.
Norah tentatively opened her eyes, though not without great difficulty, and almost wished that she hadn't, as a swell of nausea washed over her entire body so suddenly that she was half-tempted to close her eyes again and wait for it to pass, but she couldn't, and her sight cleared enough to make out his face.
And Ollie was…crying.
The dark-haired blue-eyed younger man, that she would, until her dying breath, never admit to anyone, especially not him, that she thought he was cute, otherwise his ego would be damned near intolerable, sobbed into her chest unceasingly, hands clutching around her middle, and his pale face was bent over, a lock of his short raven-black hair had fallen from its place behind his ear. It had fallen into his eyes in such a way that it was preventing her rescuer from seeing that his friend had woken up.
Hard, grief-wracked sobs shook his frame so violently that Norah had no idea what the hell to do, let alone say.
She struggled to move even a fraction of an inch but found her body was so heavy and sore that she quickly abandoned all hope of that idea. Norah could do nothing but lay there in silence, listening as he rocked her slowly in his arms as his tears soaked her collarbone. A tiny lapse let him pull away, blinking lashes heavy with his tears, before he just…collapsed again, her friend's howls of misery worsening. For a moment, he almost sounded like a Wolf, the pitiful whimpers that left him.
The pain must have come in waves, minutes of sobbing broken apart by short pauses for recovering breaths, before hurling him back into the outstretched arms of his grief.
A blast of nausea made her skin shiver and left a horrible ringing on her ear as he whispered in her ear.
"I—I'm so sorry! This is…all my fault….my fault…" he sobbed, his cries heart wrenching and unbearable to listen to. "I…I did not mean this. For any of this, Jameson. I…what have I done, what have I done, just look at you…I—I didn't catch you when you fell. I didn't save you."
Her friend's words escaped his lips as a wailing sob, full of self-hatred.
His voice sounded muffled as if Ollie were speaking to her underwater.
Beads of sweat began to form and glitter on her browbone, and gathering enough strength on her throat, she attempted to speak, though when she tried, her tongue felt thick and heavy. When Norah tried through her hurt to say Ollie's name, it felt as though there was a gag on her mouth, and her tongue refused his name's release from her lips.
Not your fault. Not your fault. Not. Your. Fault! Norah tried to scream it at him, anything to let him know she was alive.
But she couldn't even manage a simple squeak or a finger twitch to alert her dear friend of her presence. Her vision blurred as she struggled to focus on the features of Ollie's face.
Heat dragged in spasms across her body, wave after wave, white-hot, searing pain, hotter than any branding iron or dragon flame as it licked up the entire right side of her body and ended at her neck.
Her vision continued to blur, and it felt like the Forbidden Forest's edge around the two of them was revolving. Norah could not even hear her friend's words anymore, just the awful, thick stillness and the ringing in her own eardrums. Norah just wanted it to stop.
Her stomach heaved a pressure that she was so unfamiliar with, and for a moment, she thought she might vomit.
This wave of nausea that wracked her maimed form was entirely different, like nothing she'd ever felt before, but by some miracle, some act of Merlin Himself, she swallowed down the bitter, acidic stomach bile that had crept its way up her esophagus and had settled, lingering upon her tongue. By some miracle, Norah never screamed once. Not a sound escaped her lips as this horrible agony, this wretched, eternal, burning fire wracked her body, though she wished that it would. Anything to make a sound.
Speak, damn you, Jameson! Scream! Shout! Cuss him out! Something! Anything. To let him know I'm alive.
So, consumed by distress and the white-hot pain that seared up her body in waves, that she missed her friend's words.
Though what followed, she was, by some miracle, able to make out.
"I…love you." His words left his lips as a hoarse, weak whisper.
Suddenly, it felt as though a terrible weight had lifted from her shoulders as if an overly large child had just leaped off them after a satisfying piggyback ride. Her brain tingled like a hand that had been sat on for too long.
Just being near him lit Norah up from the inside, giving her a serenity she did not even know she had missed in her life, she could never know without him being close, though something within her fought this feeling.
The darkness began to lift. She could no longer tell for sure if she was dead or not, or where it was that Ollie had brought her, though the first thing that told her she was alive as her eyelids slowly fluttered open was Ollie's face hovering on the edge of her awareness, in that sweet place between long sleep.
Surely, nothing, not even dragon fire from the very same Hungarian Horntail that had just helped in saving her life could kill the kid.
Ollie Brennan had to be the most tenacious of wizards Norah had ever met in her lifetime.
The next signal she was still among the living was the intense, searing pain that shot up like white-hot flares through every part of her broken, beaten body. Slowly, reality sank in on her, weighing her down as if there was a boulder on her chest.
The destruction and devastation of Hogwarts. She had woken up to find herself a shattered She-Wolf. Her body now a broken shell of what it once was. Her mind was plagued with the choice she had made, to leave her friends without so much as a goodbye or an explanation as to why she had to go then.
In her heart, there was nothing left but a gaping hole at what she had done. It seemed every fiber, every cell of her body screamed for Ollie to help her. His name continuously echoed in her head. Ollie! She was quick to recognize that it was her own heart screaming out for her, but it felt…wrong.
This, this unimaginable thing she felt churning in her chest for the man these last nine months had to be wrong…right?
How could she look at another man after Wes's death like this? Let alone one four years younger than she was.
And what would her husband even say to this? This time, the internal voice that taunted her was her own as the question swirled around in her tired, throbbing head. As the silence around her thickened, an abrupt bitterness seeped into her nauseous, rolling stomach as Norah thought of Ollie, and wondered why it was she had not allowed herself to feel for him.
The bitterness in her stomach worsened as the realization quickly set in. Tonks. Tonks was the reason Ollie was such a Merlin-damned bloody mess all the time, and a lump in Norah's throat formed as her breaths stuttered and died. But then…he had uttered those words, and she felt so…so carefree.
The moment her friend had uttered those words, it felt as though the immense white-hot pain that wracked through her body in waves no longer mattered.
And then, before she even had a chance to open her eyes further, let alone try to respond to his sweet, cherished confession with a statement of her own, Norah felt something warm and slightly coarse, and feather-light press itself against her forehead.
Instantly, an incredible heat spiraled through her entire system, and her eyes flung wide open of their own accord despite the heaviness behind her lids, and it felt as though her mind had come back to life at his words, filling her body, invigorating her, giving her a new sense of purpose.
She froze, unstirred, and unresponsive in Ollie's arms. Did he just…?
The pain in her burnt leg, side, and her broken wrist were barely noticeable. Nothing else mattered except for his words and the feeling of his lips pressed against her forehead, gentle and lingering, his fingertips leaving sparks of flames in their wake as he clutched onto her middle, the heat spreading from her lips to the very edges of her toes.
Somehow, by a miracle of Merlin, though it was hoarse and rough and barely audible, her voice (finally) decided to cooperate and come back to her. Against her better judgment, shoving aside thoughts of her dead husband and son, for now, Norah squeezed her eyes and tried to ignore her brain, willing only to speak the words that her heart told her to speak.
Had she really heard him?!
Was her mind, at the edge of the brink of death, playing another cruel trick on her again? But it couldn't be. Ollie, the man…he'd sounded genuine.
No. This was no trick of the Forest's. Not even she would be this cruel. Bloody hell, no.
This…was all real, every second of it. Norah felt her heart swell at his words, those three wonderful words she never thought she would hear again, not since Wes and her sweet precious boy, her Jax, were taken from her.
Before Norah could open her eyes, let alone struggle to answer his confession, she felt something warm, feather-light, and gentle, then press itself for a second time against her burning up forehead, and one of his fingers brush her wispy blonde bangs off her forehead, and it was that gesture that was enough to elicit a physical response.
With next to no effort, Norah's eyes fluttered open, her vision blurred.
And this time, though her voice was hoarse and shaky, her throat and tongue decided this go-round to cooperate, and she heard her voice speak to him.
"I…love you too, Ollie."
Hell of a way to pull through, Jameson! I hope you all liked this chapter and although rather short in comparison to the last couple, I figured there wouldn't be too much dialogue in this chapter while Norah struggled to regain consciousness and give the Wolf some slack.
She DID get almost clawed and strangled to death, her leg badly burned in the fires, and fell some hundred-odd feet off the top of the Astronomy Tower.
I'd say she's more than a little banged up, and she's definitely going to have one hell of a nasty recovery after this, but hopefully, Ollie, Remus, and Tonks can help our favorite She-Wolf recover. Ouch!
