Fractured AIAOY 6

Chapter 21

Rebecca jumped so fiercely she nearly made it out of her skin as a roar echoed through the cavern.  A hand grabbed at Harry's wrist, but he freed himself and scrambled up the rocks towards her.  "Lumos maxima!"  Rebecca sent a light of her own out to brighten their surroundings.

What had been eerily still water was now churning with the movement of hundreds of body clambering towards them.

The first to lay a hand on the island itself did so tentatively.  Its body was something that once might have been a man, but long ago.  All of the bodies nearing them had whatever they had been wearing from the day they had died; their faces were slack-jawed and grey-eyed, but clearly once human.

"Inferi, Rebecca!"  Harry gasped, casting a hex at one that climbed towards Dumbledore.

"Harry!"  Rebecca shouted, pointing at one of the bodies moving closer.  "That's him!"  Harry couldn't look at first, not with a group of inferi in front of him.  As soon as he got rid of one, another popped up in its place.  Rebecca focused and sent a line of them away with a jinx that left her winded.  "That's Regulus!"

Harry turned at that.  His heart dropped when he found who Rebecca had seen.  He was a miniature version of what Harry had imagined Sirius as when he was younger: starkly defined cheekbones, sharp nose, hair as dark as the blackness in the edges of the cave.  It was Regulus Black and he had died in the very cavern they were in now--this was where Wilhomena had failed to save him.  "Focus, Rebecca!"

The inferi were farther up the island now, only a few few feet from Harry and Rebecca.  Rebecca stopped attacking with her wand and threw an elbow into the woman's body that had grabbed her arm.  As soon as she was freed enough, Rebecca punched at the man in front of her.

Harry was grabbed by the inferi before Rebecca and yanked closer to the water's edge, but she too was overwhelmed moments later.  Harry realised with a sickening sense of already-lived horror that they were going to be dragged to the bottom of the water and that his sister--his sister who had already drowned once in their lives--was going to do so again.  Just like before, Harry couldn't do anything to stop it.

The water was cold as ice around Rebecca's legs and it fueled her fight a little longer.  In the end, the inferi tightened their hold and forced her into the depths.  Bruises left behind on a body that no one would ever see, Rebecca thought as he head was pulled under for the last time.

No matter how she clawed at those dragging her deeper, no matter how she fought for leverage against her attackers, Rebecca soon had to stop.  The little air that she had had in her lungs was running out and, upon looking around, she found that the water was much deeper than it had appeared.

Rebecca's vision began to get narrower as her oxygen ran out and a strange sense of warmth seemed to spark inside of her.  "If this is dying," She thought.  "It's not that bad."

"You are not dying today, child."  Wilhomena's voice pulled Rebecca out of the haze it was sinking in to.  "I lost one of you to the evil of this pit already, I will not lose another."

On the other side of the island, in the depths, Harry's fading attention turned up to the bright light that broke out above the water.

Rebecca, now freed from the inferis' grasps, struggled in the water.

"I have surpassed my limit."  Wilhomena's voice was fading steadily.  "You were right, I will not fail you.  I do not think I will be able to return.  You will not need me, you have the power to do all that is ahead of you on your own."  

Rebecca's hands began to burn with the same heat that marked the power she felt when she and Hermione had been in the Forbidden Forest and, further, when she was reaching into the beyond to bring someone back.