Lifeguard

Struggle and Spoons

Regulus

I held into the metal bar for my life. I automatically held my breath at the effort. I tried kicking the creatures pulling my legs. The strength was unchanging, neither decreasing nor increasing. My own strength, however, was running out. The water around me was freezing. I also realized I was crying. I forced myself to breathe.

A second of weakness and I was only holding on by own arm. I thought about my life and wondered if there was anything I woukd do differently. My only thought was of Sirius .

My second arm quickly gave out. To my surprise, I didn't get dragged into the deep abiss. A awkward glace at my wrist confirmed it. There was a cuff on my arm holding me to the bar. It was painful and I knew it wouldn't last forever, but it was reassuring that I wasn't quite at death's door.

The pain in my wrist was all I could feel. I was sure that my wrist was a few seconds from dislocation. ..ah there it is.

The creatures seemed to get more desperate. I don't knew why they wanted me, I didn't even know what they looked like. They pulled harder. I felt what must've been one of them climb across to my back. I tried hitting it with my non-cuffed arm. It was slimy and cold and yet boney at the same time. It was doing something to the cuff and some it worked. The cuff broke I had no chance of escape.

I didn't know why after 5 weeks of no nightmares, why they returned. It was the same thing. Struggling to swim and then drowning.

Even with the nightmares, I never was scared of swimming. Sometimes I wondered if something happened to some version of me to make me dream like this. Or perhaps, my subconscious brain could no think of any other analogies for struggling then drowning.

I went downstairs and thought about it while sitting on the couch. I hadn't actually any swimming since the nightmares. By concept, I wasn't scared of it. I wondered if it would remind me of my dreams.

I never told anyone about my dreams.

***

Sirius

James' mission day 22: get Regulus to prank with us

Prongs mentioned yesterday how he was glad that he was able to do a prank, but I won't accept that. That doesn't count. No, we are doing a real prank. All three of us. Maybe I can get James to help me play a prank on regulus..

The prank master, Remus, didn't live with us. Unfortunately. Tragically. I should call him. Focus, okay, so the plan is to prank Remus. But Remus always thinks of them when we're stuck.

All summer, james wouldn't let me prank regulus. Something about how if you can't trust which chair you sit in then you can't be comfortable. So, yeah, I had ideas I hadn't used. But pranking your brother and pranking your boyfriend is different.

You don't want to built a catapult under the floorboreds to fling your boyfriend down the stairs (though that one is a little ambitious). You don't want to make it so when your boyfriend goes to drink his soup, a hand comes out of it and smears soup in his face. You don't want to die your boyfriend's beautiful brown hair green.

Which left it to prongs or Reggie. Prongs spent most of his creative energies these days coming up with new plans to get regulus to hang out with him (and they wonder why it was so easy to believe they started dating).

I've never pranked with Regulus. He was always too terrified of what would happen if he got caught. He was the teacher's pet, golden child, gifted kid. To my knowledge, he's never done a prank in his life. Though, if someone told me about a prank Regulus had done, I would probably believe them. Despite his cold yucky mean exterior, he had a cold yucky mean interior, which means he wanted to mess up someone's day.