𝐔𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥

Not even once

When Blanche opened her eyes, a bottomless layer of darkness blinded her. Not a thing could be discerned; sometimes, brief dashes of light seemed to crackle in front of her nose - but other than that, the night submerging her felt endless.

Am I dead?

Interminable hours had passed right by her, as well as the occasional presence of various, unidentifiable silhouettes. Everything felt opaque, even her own self and state of being. The nothingness didn't bore her, weirdly, but it didn't scare her either; if anything, the numbing silence left her tangled in a blanket of indifference. That floating, void space felt like a slip through the cracks of the floor under one's feet, or maybe as the ring one gets in one ear: an empty detail occupying an insignificant amount of matter, compared to life's length.

Slowly, she began to regain the slightest bit of consciousness; and as she did, she became more and more aware of her state. Her mouth was agape, but she couldn't do much about it: when she tried to shut it, her body simply wouldn't comply.

Blanche contemplated for a while the possibility of not reemerging from that dreamlike condition, wondering if, perhaps, she'd be able to stop her heart. The bastard was relentless. Night and day, it continued to pump that stupidly corrupt blood of hers: that's what tingled at the top of her fingers, those useless, microscopic veins that kept her alive with an obtuse force she couldn't bear. It was unusual for her to be forced to sit - well, lay - in silence, without anything to keep her mind off itself. Blanche entertained the thought, for a while, of how everyone else's life would have been different, without her meddling; and that's when she realized that her whole existence didn't really matter, at Hogwarts. But not only that; it didn't matter just as much as it didn't matter in Manchester, or London, or any of the other places she'd fled over the years. She wasn't relevant, not even to the Death Eaters: it was just a petty pride fight they were after, from the looks of it. Man, she'd never been relevant. Not even once. Not even once. Not even once. Not even...

These three words, repeated a million times in the echoing dark limbo, finally woke her up.

The morning light hurt her eyes, coming from seemingly everywhere at once. She was so stunned that it took her at least a minute to recognize the Infirmary. It was a place she had always loathed with every fiber of her being: the white beds, separated only by a few dividers, made her feel sick.

That alone alarmed her, but when she realized she'd been changed into a white gown and that her wand was nowhere to be found, she panicked: being alone and unarmed was out of the question, given the circumstances. Merely sitting straight on the bed made her head spin, but she tried to get out of bed anyway. Her feet had barely touched the ground when Madam Pomfrey, appearing from behind the nearest divider, tackled her. Blanche tried to put up a weak resistance, but she couldn't fight her: Pomfrey was used to it, and years of practice had given her a firm grip that drove Blanche to surrender. The woman was inoxidizable. In the years she hadn't seen her, Pomfrey hadn't changed, almost like Minerva: she had the same immaculate bonnet and apron, and the same concerned eyes. "Professor, stay still!"

"I'm fine," Blanche mumbled with an exasperated sigh, "Please, let me go."

"Goodness, absolutely not," Pomfrey replied, "Nonsense! You can barely sit, let alone stand, on your own!"

"Where is my wand?"

"It's in Minerva's care. Don't worry," replied Pomfrey calmly, "It's in great hands."

"In Min-"

Blanche couldn't complete the sentence, choked by anger. Without her weapon, she felt too vulnerable to be quiet; Pomfrey's authoritative aura was enough to make her contain her agitation, but not to calm her down. "I need my wand, Mrs. Pomfrey."