They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. I wonder how blissfully ignorant people must be to think that you have that much time to go back on every triumph, every failure and everything else in between when death faces you so inescapably.
They also say that bravery isn't the absence of fear, but the judgement that something else is more important, excepting that fear and doing it anyway. If you are strong enough, if your mind can wade through and battle amongst the terror that engulfs you when in seconds you know it's all over, you may be able to think of a few things before you die.
I thought of three.
The first was no matter what came out of his mouth, be it demands to get out of the way, or that cold, high laughter that made your spine contort against the inhumanness of it, it was to not stand aside and protect your baby with everything that god gave you and hope that against all knowledge and experience, it would be enough to save him.
The second was what made your arms shake from where they stood outstretched to fulfil the first thought, make your breathing murder and a place somewhere not quite identifiable because you didn't realise it was there before, hurt in such agony. Your husband, your beautiful strong anchor in this world, called out to you to go with his son and run, leaving him to fight a battle he would not win. You hear the curse, the rush of death down the hall, the blinding green fire before you screamingly slam the door shut of the nursery and the crash as he drops dead.
He opens his mouth, his scarlet eyes mad. I close my own and instead of waiting for the next change in my life to occur, I was waiting for the end of it.
The third thought, or rather a realisation of ignorance on my own part was this. Thinking that your friends might have saved you.
'Avada-'
And yet two of them had been the death of you.
'kedavra!'