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Rowan Sylvie stood amidst the chaos, watching as the ancestral manor that mocked her went up in flames like the grand finale to a tragic opera. The acrid scent of burning flesh heated her lungs, crackling flames waltzing through the halls of her prison. Who would have guessed that a little spark, the tiniest most harmful flicker of heat, here and there, would escalate into a full-blown inferno so very swiftly? Certainly not she. Rowan. Sweet, sweet Rowan, with her singed hair and bruised limbs.
Niggling suspicion lingered in the air, like the smoke that now choked the life out of everything it touched. It was poetic, she thought, how her parents who seldom touched were now engulfed in a fiery embrace of crimson and gold.
She looked down at her bruised arms, held them out, examined them. Bruises came from a variety of sources. A tumble down the stairs, a stray jex gone awry...a little altercation with her dear mother and father long before the whole place went up in flames. Who's to say? She was previously Slytherin's best beater. That comes with bruises, no? It's not like anyone questioned them before. Her parents, the bruises. Tragedy, as it seemed, was their family crest, proudly displayed for all to see.
The tiny embers nestled on the carpet, simmering, smoldering. She could feel them nipping at her ankles. The flames licked eagerly at the dry timbers of the manor, hungrily devouring everything in their path. They crept along the floorboards, like hot serpents, slithering through the corridors with malicious intent. She watched on the burning staircase as it unfolded, this inferno of her own making, with a mixture of awe and horror. And as the house began to crumble around her, consumed by the very fire she had unleashed, she felt and range sense of liberation wash over her.
The walls groaned in protest, weakened like Rowan's limbs by the relentless assault of the flames. Windows shattered, sending showers of sparks and tinted glass into the night sky, as the fire danced triumphantly amidst the chaos it had wrought.
Her heart hung heavy in her chest, restricting her lungs.
Her vision blurred, and her ears started ringing. Blood-curdling screams belonging to a woman she didn't recognize engulfed her in her fit of malady. The ricochet of scrambling feet on the cracked marble tiles of the glossy mansion echoed through her ears like bullets on glass.
She lay helpless on the cold floor as the world around her shriveled into chaos and complete anarchy. She rolled onto her stomach, screwing her face up in agony. Her muscles tensed as she tried desperately to pull herself off of the ground. She clawed at the marble, scraping her fingertips against the grainy shards withered away by the fire. The rustle of feet scurrying around behind her amplified. Through the blur of her peripheral vision, she made out the vast shape of some unidentified being striding her way. It eerily resembled something similar, like a person, but she couldn't say for sure. The hazy blur was instantaneous in the rate at which it was approaching her. Its pace was steady, unlike her rapid heartbeat. She continued her pitiful advances towards her flee to safety, anguish filling her lungs.
She crawled, and crawled, and crawled. She managed to crawl to just in front of the large oak doors to the entrance of the manor before her arms gave way. She could hear the loud thump of her heartbeat iterating through her chest. She was hyperventilating, gasping for air. It felt like someone was clawing at her, trying to tear through her and harvest her organs. She felt the sudden urge to cry out and scream for help, but the lack of oxygen she was getting into her lungs prohibited her pleas. The ringing got louder and louder and louder. She couldn't hear her thoughts or the wind or the thing that seemed to be hunting her down. The sudden spike of adrenaline had her heart racing. In her spur of panic, something heavy swatted her in the back of the head, hitting her parietal bone. She fell unconscious, her head filled with ringing and ringing and ringing.
