BEAUTIFUL FLOWER | MATTHEO RIDDLE

ETERNAL REST

─── ･ ｡ ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

T R I G G E R W A R
N I N G

Death

─── ･ ｡ ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

E T E R N A L  R E S T

I REMEMBER it being cold; the area beneath my stomach wet and slippery, and the front of my shirt clung to my torso. My head ached with a pressure at my ears, eyes straining as I tried to open them. I was pressed against the floor clearly enough, though the sights my eyes gave were no help at all. Everything was blurry and a little darker, quieter; it faded into the center, where I stared at a large brown blob.

There was a soft tap of rain against wood, endless and timeless. My body felt sore all over, weak and beat. A cold draft blew against my skin and I was reminded of being outside; the crisp air felt like the biting winds of Hogsmeade in the dead of winter, though ours was only just coming to a long end.

Winter was long. I missed it. It was a dark winter, the kind where street posts come on at four in the noon and skys darken before dinnerfall. The kind where snows are ugly and cruel and do not breed picturesque white trees, but wretched and fable looking ones.

Everything was dying, if not already dead, and the only sign of life was the air blown by the mouth and the slight blush on a trembling cheek. We didn't drink hot cider in Hogsmeade, nor did we snowshoe through the trek of snow that topped the hilly backs of the castle, but we sat behind the cobblestone walls of Hogwarts and counted the days before they'd be over, before we couldn't count them again, and after we wished we hadn't been counting at all.

It was hard trying to move, trying to push the heavy weight off of my back. It pressed into me suffocatingly, hard and wounding and unrelenting. The air around me howled, biting the tips of my ears. My lips quivered and hands shook flat against the ground while I tried to press against it. But nothing, no weight lifted and I fell back onto my stomach, face on the ground and my cheek sticky with ink that ran down with water on the floor into the space my body was trapped in. I still didn't understand what was happening, what had happened, or much of anything.

One moment we were here, all of us, together, and then I was watching Mattheo walk out of the door, and then... nothing. That was then and this is my now. Simply nothing. I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Panic surmounted me and rushed like a river through the blood in my veins. I felt like I was suffocating, like someone was laying on top of me and I was slowly dying, rotting. Quiet heaves of breath left my lips, my lungs collapsing, air trapped in my throat. My body felt like it was on fire, the rain clouding my ears and making me hate it. Everything was loud against my ear drums, every small vibration heard and felt.

My legs were stuck, only able to wiggle. When I tried to move them, shifting all of what I could off the ground, a surging pain shot up my legs and through my spine. A yell, one that I had no control over, came from my mouth. Be quiet that small voice, the one I hadn't heard for months, the one I'd first heard after waking up in the infirmary, fluttered in through the room as if carried by the wind. Be quiet, you must be quiet, she said.

There were puddles of water on the ground. A glass must have spilled when the blow hit. When whatever it was that knocked me out had happened. When the blow hit. Had we been... had we been hit? Was it happening now? Were we under attack right now?

"Mattheo," his name was the first thing I could manage to say after I realized... I didn't even think, didn't linger on who may or may not be here. I yelled it again, slightly louder, the pain in my chest growing as I shouted. It was a pleading call, one that tore through my throat and scratched at my lungs.

What if that was the last time I... . No. No. I wouldn't– couldn't even give that thought any entertainment. It didn't matter, it really didn't, because that wouldn't be the last time I saw him or felt him or heard him. I didn't know and that wasn't fair, I hadn't been prepared, I hadn't allowed myself that question. What would you do if this was the last time you saw him? I didn't know, how could I possibly know? How could I possibly sum up every single thing I wanted to do or say to him? How was I supposed to prepare myself for touching him one last time, for kissing him one last time or for simply just being at his side, one last time.

How could I do that when I loved him so much, when he was the only person in the entire world that I wanted to be with forever, no matter what or how long it took. When I would give up everything in my entire life if it meant that we could be happy together, if we could just be happy or just together, happy or not.