Chapter 21 I Hoped I Was Dreaming
A/N: Thanks and praise to excessivelyperky for this beautiful thought from The Dragon's Pearl: "Words were magic that belonged to everyone."
Maura woke from a fitful doze. Damn. I hoped I was dreaming. It was all too real: her hands and feet were shackled; she lay on a cold stone floor in a dark cold place. She could barely sit up; the chains that bound her to the wall behind her were too short to permit much movement. "Hey!" She tested her voice. Her throat was dry and she was terribly thirsty. Not only that, her bladder insisted that she empty it. "Hey!" she shouted. "Is anyone out there? I have to go to the bathroom – NOW!" Silence. Fear prickled inside her, fear and betrayal. That freaking Jack – surely a Druid would not abduct and imprison her. Would he? "Anybody! Somebody help me!" she screamed. "I'm going to wet this floor!" Silence.
Carefully, she tested the limits to which her bonds would allow her to move. Not much; maybe three feet from side to side. She couldn't get out of her own way; couldn't get her hands down to pull up her skirt and get her knickers down. Her ankles were shackled together; she couldn't even get her legs apart. I will not cry. I will survive. I will pee in my knickers and hope that whoever comes in here slips in it and I can kick their teeth in.
With that, the door creaked open. Yellow light streamed in, blinding her. A voice: "Uncomfortable, are we? These – guest quarters don't have our usual luxurious WC facilities. Pity." She felt an odd prickling sensation and then she didn't have to go any more. Magic.
"Please, let me go! Tell me what's happening!" A figure blocked off some of the light from the door. Flames bloomed on thick candles stuck into wall sconces, and she could see the man in front of her. He was tall, robed from neck to foot in black. And he was incredible. An awesome mane of thick, long platinum blond hair framed his handsome, aristocratic long face. He held a silver serpent-headed cane in a black-gloved hand. Oh, my God. Lucius Malfoy.
He smiled at her, a lopsided smile, and her heart stumbled on its next beat. Oh, no. "Jack? You're not…you –"
The man moved closer. "Jack? Hardly. You must admit, my dear, that he made an admirable disguise." He loomed over her. "I don't think you would have come with me voluntarily."
Maura struggled against her bonds. "What do you want with me? You don't even know me!"
The man laughed, a melodious sound but with unpleasant undertones. "I know everything that happens at Hogwarts. You, my dear, will be the guest of honour at my- festivities tonight."
"I don't care about your festivities! I just want to go home!"
The man turned to go. "What you want is unimportant." The door slammed shut behind him.
"Wait!" Maura shrieked. The dark and the cold and the silence closed in again on her, and she hung her head and wept. Oh, God. I should have been more careful. It was so obvious that Voldemort would be involved in the epidemic, and that he and his chief enforcer would be watching me – and Sherlock. Holmes. Holmes! He's been so involved in helping Snape find a cure that he hasn't been paying any attention to the cause! I've got to get out of here. I have to write this mess into some kind of order.
It felt good to be thinking about others. It helped to keep the panic at bay; well, somewhat. Maura sat in the cold dark silence, her mind whirring. I'm a writer. Anything I can imagine, I write. Does it matter where it gets written? Could I write it with a pebble on the wall behind me? She felt around the stone floor; not a pebble, nothing. How could she see to write on the wall, anyway?
I'm a writer. I write first and foremost in my head. Can I write myself out of this prison, as a start? Her heart was jumping and her hands were ice-cold. So was the rest of her, and her legs were starting to cramp. Not great conditions for entering a meditative flow. Screw this, Maura thought angrily. I develop plots in my head while I'm on the train, while I'm walking, while I'm waiting for a bus or lingering over a coffee. I write characters and background while I'm in the shower or brushing Pumpkin. I even write dialogue while I'm constructing an elaborate wiring infrastructure diagram for a client. I can do this. She stilled her breathing.All those years of yoga training had better pay off.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small,
And the ones that Mother gives you
Don't do anything at all,
Ask Alice, when she was just small…
Jefferson Airplane, White RabbitThere's space between the molecules. Everything is a galaxy, protons and electrons, planets traveling in oval orbits around the nucleus, the Star. Everything has light-years between itself and everything else. Or nanoseconds.
The Black Hole yawns. It swallows matter and anti-matter. It squeezes the space out of the galaxies, like water out of a sponge. The protons, neutrons and electrons, the planets and moons and asteroids stay the same, but their orbits change. They grow closer together. Gravitational force keeps everything from flying apart.
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold…
Yeats, EndymionOut of the Big Bang, the galaxies are born, expanding, expanding, expanding. Some old, old star systems have come to the end of their rubber-band tethers; they begin to contract. They wind back slowly towards the center. The space between the morsels of matter is sucked into the Black Hole. The star systems get smaller. The atomic structures shrink. The molecules draw closer together.
The manacles slid off her wrists and ankles. She stood up, stretched her numb limbs. She faced the wall and put her hands on its rough, cold surface.
Creation continues endlessly. New stars form out of whirling hot gases; new planets cool, circling the center stars. The Black Hole sucks the new galaxies towards itself, yet the Creation Bomb holds on to them. The weak force that keeps the orbits in place is teased first in one direction, then in another. Distance between the protons and electrons increases, space stretches as thin as tissue paper.
Maura's hands melted through the wall. She closed her eyes and pressed herself into the stone and out again on the other side. She stood on wet, cold grass, barefoot, shivering. She turned: in back of her stood a huge mansion, almost a castle. The quarter moon gleamed, a smile in the sky. She watched it, watched leaves flit over its shining face. Not leaves. Brooms