Cruel Summer - Lily and James Potter

Chapter 5 - Under the influence

After Remus had taken James, Sirius and Peter out and away from her, she had had a wonderful - peaceful - time. As soon as they had left, Lily had sat down for 10 minutes just taking in the tranquillity of not having 4 idiot boys around her. She decided that she would make the most of James' absence and she would have a nice big bubble bath that every girl deserved once in a while.

Running the water nice and hot, she filled up the tub and got in. The water came up to her chin as she sunk deeper into its depths and she closed her eyes and luxuriated in its hotness.

Mmmm, I could lay here forever.

The gorgeous lavender scent was slowly soothing away all her stresses and was gently summoning her eyes to close. She obeyed instantly and let the water take her. Drifting into...a...nice...deep...slumber.

It was cold.

'Where am I?' she thought, looking around the white room.

She couldn't see anything apart from the brightness of the white walls.

'Are they walls?'

She looked down at the floor, but there was nothing.

She didn't see anything, not floor, not a bottomless pit; just a void, of time, of vision.

There was a smell as well.

Like burnt flowers.

A backwards autumn.

A nothingness.

'What is this?' her mind asked.

Death?

She laughed in spite of herself, but the sound wasn't there.

Then, as if it had been there all the time, the walls started to darken.

Being imprisoned by a kind of force.

A kind of language.

One she couldn't recognise, one that her mind didn't want her to recognise.

The symbols moved until she realised that the white room was an oval, and the words were its prisoner.

Like her, captive and alone.

They circled around her, waiting and taunting. Wanting her to know and angering because she didn't.

It was too much.

They surrounded her essence, blocking it in until she could feel it pressing, closer against the air that suspended her.

The cold was worse now, biting into her and all she could do was wait until it engulfed her.

She felt the air shift as the language neared, felt its icy breath as it sighed its promise, felt it pulse against her; waiting, always waiting.

The pulse was becoming more significant now and it progressed into a loud beat.

A thumping even; the only sound allowed to exist.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

'Sssh,' she wanted to scream, 'shut up!'

Bang!

Bang!

Lily jolted awake, violently sloshing water over the side of the bath tub.