Till Death do us Part

Immortal Ruby

Sighing, I turned over the page. They had been stuck at this table for hours, studying through the text books and honestly, I was bored. 

"Look at you playing with your cards. Pathetic! We've got final exams coming up soon," Hermoine scolded Ron who looked at her angrily.

"I'm ready! Ask me any question."

"All right, what are the three most crucial ingredients on a Forgetfulness potion?"

"...I forgot."

"And what, may I ask, what do you plan to do if this comes up in the final exam?"

"Copy off you?"

"No, you won't! Besides, according to Professor McGongall, we're to be given special quills bewitched with an anti-cheating spell."

"That's insulting! It's as if they don't trust us!" Ron groaned before turning back to his cards. "Dumbledore again!"

Snickering, I watched the two talk. Roger rolled his eyes as Wayne chuckled. Kevin smiled before turning back to his book and reading through the text. I turned upon hearing the hopping coming from Neville who had his legs stuck together. The other students were laughing at him- that was rude.

"Leg-Locker Curse," Ron asked though he already knew the answer.

Neville kept hopping forward, stumbling and struggling to stay up. 

"You have got to start standing up to people, Neville," Ron shouted exasperated

"How? I can barely stand at all!"

Seamus pulled out his wand as he jumped up. "I'll do the counter-curse!"

"No, that's all I need... you to set my bloody kneecaps on fire!"

Seamus slammed his wand down on the table making me jump. "I don't appreciate the insinuation, Longbottom. Besides, if anyone cares to notice, my eyebrows have completely grown back!" Seamus got up, stalking off in a huff but showing a large chunk of hair missing from the back of his head. 

Absent mindlessly, I picked up one of Ron's discarded cards, reading the back. Wait... weren't they looking for this guy? Pocking Ron's cheek, I drew his attention. 'Wasn't Hermione asking you to look for a guy called Nicolas Flamel?'

"Yeah, why?"

"Ain't that him?"

Ron looked over the card, gasping at how I had managed to find something he had undoubtedly been searching for, for weeks. I let out a happy giggle as he showed it to Hermoine who quickly belittled herself before jumping up. Ron grabbed my wrist and dragged me off to the library. Hermoine led us to a table and pushed into the seat before running off around the iles.

Hermoine came back with a large book in her arms, slamming it on the table. "I had you looking in the wrong section! How could I be so stupid? I checked  this out weeks ago for a bit of light reading."

"This is light?" Ron looked horrified by the book as I only laughed.

'You should have seen the stuff Ama gave me to read. That was a lot of information,' I wrote jokingly. 

"Here it is!" Hermoine pointed to a line in the book, making Ron and I lean over. "'Nicholas Flamel is the only known maker of the Philosopher's stone!'"

"The what?"

That name felt familiar... Was it in one of my books?

"Honestly, don't you two read? 'The Philosopher's stone is a legendary substance with astonishing powers. It will turn any metal into pure gold and produce the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal," Hermoine explained, making my heart drop.

"Immortal," Ron asked but I stopped listening stuck in the past.

I was curled up into the far corner of my cupboard, my thin, stick-like arms curled around my even thinner legs. Tears dripped down my cheeks and onto the floor.

"Are you alright, Sly?" Ama slid up my arm, being careful to miss the agonising injuries. 

"Why am I different, Ama? Why must I live like this? Why can't I just die?!"

Ama looked shocked- or as shocked as a snake could be. She wrapped herself around my neck and nuzzled into my cheek. "You are not as different as you might think."

"If other people break their skull, they die. I just get back up and have to keep going, slowly falling apart at the seams. How can you say there are others out there like me? I'm alone."

Ama smiled softly, looking into my eyes. "There is someone out there like you. We snakes call him the immortal ruby. He uses a special gem called the philosopher's stone to be immortal. But like you, he has to live with the ever worsening body. As he gets older his body detirates and soon it will become painful for him to move at all."

"The Immortal Ruby... I would like to meet him."

"Maybe one day. When we get out of here."

A long silence followed what I said, I was chewing onto my lip, the question forcing its way into my brain. "Ama... Do you think I'll end up like him? Slowly getting worse and worse until it is painful to live but unable to die."

"Honestly, I do not know. I hope you do not end up like that."

I hummed before wiping away the tears on my cheeks, laughing while doing so. "Then it is settled. I will stop feeling bad for myself. If no one else is going to help us, then I will help myself. I'll fix my own cuts and broken bones. And when I'm old I'll just laugh at the pain." I took in heavy breath, stilling the laughs and insane giggles that came up out of my throat. "That's what I've got to do, isn't Ama?"

She never did give me an answer. On that day, I broke. I started to love the pain, started to fix my own bones and sow up my skin. The Ruby Immortal named after the colour of his stone, and the only other person in this world like me. 

"That would be so cool," Ron exclaimed, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Could you imagine all I could do if I was immortal?"

'You don't want to be immortal.' I didn't even realise I had written the words out, too busy looking at my damaged fingers, resisting to rub against my eyeless eye socket. 

"Why wouldn't I want that?!"

"Ron," Hermoine quickly reprimanded, noticing my 'strange' behaviour.

Shaking my head, I stood up and turned away, flicking my wrist a last time before I left. 'Immortality is not a blessing. It's a curse.'

And with that I was gone, leaving behind two confused Gryffindors.