Author: Logical.Bombe
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: "It always seemed like a struggle to breathe these days." Unable to accept, unable to move on, he wandered the silent halls.
A/N: Choked this out when I was supposed to be working on my essay outline. Worth 3 of my grade, that outline is. Ah, well.
Warning: T... because it's so pretty. The T, I mean. Yes, it's a purty letter.
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Breathe
It always seemed like a struggle to breathe these days. Every inhalation was a chore. Every exhalation was an arduous one. Every movement sluggish, every moment feeling oddly like he was forcing his way through it. He felt as though he was underwater. The pressure was enormous, coming from all sides, but his feet always seemed to feel it most. As long as he kept them going, kept on moving, it seemed to lessen. When he stopped, though, it all came rushing back, pushing him, trying to send him down a path that he couldn't see the end of because he somehow knew there wasn't any end to it.
He didn't know what to do. Sometimes he just had to stop moving.
He sighed softly, wheezing as he pushed the air out. It was an old habit now, his sighing, one he'd gotten years ago. How long had it been? So many years ago... his memories of those times were strange, wispy illusions that slipped out of his grip the moment he tried to hold on to them. Sometimes, details came into his head, so vague he was half-sure he imagined them. At other times they were so concrete in his mind he was sure they were true, but the moment he tried to consider them further they fell away, leaving him alone, grasping at nothing.
His eyes sadly traced the lonely halls of where he had once called home. Years of neglect were obvious, all but the most dedicated ghosts having long abandoned the place. The suits of armor were encased in dust, their metallic luster long dulled by age. And yet, he still wandered the halls, the lack of students briefly flickering across his thoughts but fluttering away as quickly as any other thought he had these days.
Running his hand along the stone walls, which seemed so smooth to his touch after so many years, he paused as he passed a hallway where half the wall was missing, showing the grounds of the school outside. Leaning on the rail, he observed the ground outside, another weak smile coming to his face as he spotted the dilapidated remains of the Quidditch pitch. Some resilient banners still hung from the collapsed seats, remnants of the old houses still standing even after their reign had ended.
His eyes began wandering across the grounds, stopping again on a flattened section, which was still scarred a deep black. He narrowed his eyes, briefly trying to remember what had led to that ravaged piece of landscape. Meaningless words played across his mind... he had seen someone... someone he had wanted to kill had been there. A black wash came over his thoughts, and he shook his head sharply to clear his mind of it.
Forcing his eyes onward, sliding past the dark lake, his eyes then came to rest on the tomb, still a pristine white despite all the devastation that had occurred around it. And surrounding it was...
He jumped back abruptly, jerking away from the wall. His hands had suddenly fallen forward, and he feared that the ground was falling away from under him. Waiting a moment, afraid to move for fear of setting off the collapse he impulsively saw as inevitable. After sufficient time had passed without any incident, he calmed down, his breathing slowing. Setting off quickly, not looking out onto the grounds again in the fear that doing so would send him plummeting into the dark. He only began to feel secure again several corridors away, but by then the familiar pressure had returned again, the same struggle to draw oxygen into his lungs was back. His encounter in the hallway was forgotten, fluttering away from his notice.
Seeking to escape it, he continued moving, his feet tracing familiar steps and bringing him towards the entrance hall. On his way, he passed the library, one door hanging open, only one hinge still attached. The other was broken in half, with small chunks of wood littering the hall. Peering in through the doors, he saw marks of a great fire still present in the dark scars and curled yellow pages. Another weak smile appeared on his face, as the thought occurred to him that... someone he knew, or had known... would be appalled at the damage to so many books. A brief flicker of brown, bushy hair flew through his mind, but it fluttered away before he could consider it and thusly he paid it no mind.
He was used to such flickers of memory by this point, and they barely bothered him anymore. Having noticed nothing of interest at the library, he moved on.
Another pause as he passed the hospital wing. He paused, unsure how he had gotten there, as it was most definitely not on the route to the Entrance Hall. He glanced into the room, which was filled with old beds stripped of sheets, with once-gleaming brass bedsteads now scuffed and blackened. he was once again struck by the feeling that long ago, in another life, perhaps, this room had meant a great deal to him. He stepped inside, glancing around the deserted room, his eyes stopping on a reddish stain on the stony floor. A long tortured scream suddenly echoed inside his head; someone was screaming, somewhere. The voice seemed familiar, and for a moment flame-red hair seared across his thoughts.
Shaking his head to clear it of this sudden madness, he turned to hurry away from the room, anxious to escape. As he left, another scream rang in his memory, but this one was different. It spoke not of pain but of new life entering the world. However, this caused him even greater pain and he hurried away. He only calmed down again after he had gotten several hallways away, and the familiar pressure was pushing on him again.
This pressure, he could handle. This force was something he could withstand, when compared to the terrible feelings which arose in him when he passed places that he somehow knew had meant something to him at some point, long ago in the past. However, with every moment, the feelings he had felt in the Hospital Wing, as with the Library, seeped out of him and left him with the habitual push to breathe.
Shaking his head again, he continued moving, slowly making his way down the steps that led into the Entrance Hall. Having made it to his destination, he suddenly realized that he had no idea why he had chosen to come here, or any idea what he do now or where he would go. An unexpected noise, however, drew his attention out through the gaping holes where the front doors had once stood. Quickly, he hurried to peer outside to see who was trespassing upon the grounds.
His eyes narrowed as he spotted two figures walking down the path, heading towards where the gates had once stood. They were too far to make out from his position, so he chose to follow them. It had been so long since somebody else had been here.
Slipping out the door, hurrying silently on the path after the pair, he was surprised further when they turned off the path, heading towards the lake. He approached as they made their way through the patch of trees that had grown between the school and the lake. He was distracted for a moment as he tried to remember the name of the forest it had grown out of. The Forgiving Forest?
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he nearly walked into the pair before he realized they had stopped. Hiding behind an available tree, he watched the two, not noticing where they stood. He stared, fascinated, but realized a moment later that one of them was talking.
"...not surprising these trees don't grow leaves. I'm surprised anything grows at all here anymore." said one, an older woman. She was small, her long gray hair pulled into a ponytail. Under a long black jacket she wore a faded flower-print dress, and the sight of it brought a smile to his face, though he couldn't fathom as to why. He thought he could somehow smell a faint scent of flowers.
"After what happened here, I agree." said the other, noticeably shivering despite the comfortable temperature. He turned to her, observing her in turn. She was a similar build to the woman next to her, though she was slightly taller and appeared to be in her mid-forties. Unlike the older woman next to her, however, her hair was long, unkempt, and black, and when she turned to face the other he saw her eyes were a glittering emerald green. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again and looked away.
The older woman noticed, turning to face the other. "Yes?" she prompted, and the younger woman turned back, an inquisitive look on her face.
"Mother... what was he like?" she slowly asked, gesturing down at something on the ground. He didn't look at whatever it was she was referring to – the presence of life absorbed all his attention. The older woman, apparently the mother of the younger, sighed and looked up at the sky. The sun was going to be setting soon.
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After the pair had left, he remained in the same spot for a long time, his eyes fixated on the gray stone on the ground before him. He slowly knelt down, trailing his fingers along the familiar – oh, how familiar - name in the stone. He felt the pressure on him, so resistant to his efforts to escape it, falling away from him as his eyes flickered across the embedded text. After he finished, he slowly stood up and stared up at the darkening sky.
He had been wrong before. The pressure had been pushing him down the path, but there was an end to it. He could see it now.
The sun had finally set.
He still couldn't breathe, but he didn't need to anymore.
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Conclusion: This was not an easy story to write. I guess I'm more superstitious then I thought. Or maybe there was just a breeze when I was writing it. Thanks a lot, M. Night Shymalan, now I've caught the crazy.
It ended up shorter then I expected, though. Eh.
Can ya guess whose character's perspective this is, and what happened to 'em? Can ya? Hmm?
Review if you wish to.
Cheers!