Phases (editing)

twenty seven

AN:  Chapter songs: Gasoline by Halsey and Sedated by Hozier

17th January 1996

Three Quarter

Gasping. Lungs drained of their one means for function and all I can do is gasp. Reach. Pull at my shirt in a feeble attempt at stretching the muscles in my chest. Feeling as if all the air in the world had vanished before my eyes. Coughing. Spitting. Even gagging for one more sip of oxygen. Then after a moment, there it is. My lungs filled again. Stars and onyx spots filled my gaze at the rush in my blood, but the feeling of air entering my lungs was all I could focus on.

The spots slowly left my sight, and my surroundings became clearer. Then I felt my insides turn. The room I occupied became clearer. Black walnut trim. Viridian wallpaper. My head spun quickly to the right. A stone fireplace with an enchanted flame and warm embers engulfed by a yellow glow. All aspects of my being stiffened and I turned slowly to view the left of the room. As I suspected, a small desk and grand bookshelf suffocated by literature of similar bindings.

I felt my hand shoot to my neck as the air around me thinned.

My room. More specifically my room in the manor. Then the excruciating silence was replaced by a violent scream. One I couldn't place, but couldn't be from someone who resided at the manor.

The weight of my head became unbearable and the only remedy was to drop it limply into my shaky hands. The screams echoed through the manor again.

It was a feminine scream. One full of fear and pain. The first thought was the possibility of it being my mother, but it didn't match her tone.

Another scream ripped through the walls so violently that the enchanted flame twitched. If the scream were more than a mere sound, its power would have punched a hole through the viridian wallpaper.

Then it dawned on me. I ripped the duvet from the four-poster and sprinted. The wing my room was located in couldn't be any longer. The run from the door to the stairs felt like minutes. Even seconds would've been too long. Attempting to get to the location of the screams before another erupted. It wasn't from any family or death eaters. It was her.

She was at the manor. Under unalluring circumstances that made all hairs on my body stand.

All I could see was red during the sprint across the manor. The only thought I could manifest was her being brought close to death by the people I once wanted to be. The people my family were devoted to.

If adrenaline weren't already pulsing through my body, I would've become sick on the floor below my feet.

A scream ripped through the hall in a room approximately twenty feet away. I charged after it and threw my weight into it. The door gave way and the sight caused my knees to buckle. I was stumbling to the floor beside her. Unaware of the other bodies occupying the space, She was the only person in the world to me. Taking her limp body into my arms. A weak beat of the heart, struggling to carry on. I weakly brought a shaky hand to move the onyx strands from her face. She felt fragile. She wasn't ever a fragile girl and it caused my vision to tunnel. Then the fist-shaped muscle in her chest stopped and all remaining essence of her left with it.

An uncontrollable noise erupted from my mouth as my forehead pressed to hers.

What have they done to you?

I'm sorry I wasn't there.

I should've been there.

Why did you leave?