periphery

graphic by clearplastic@the-dark-arts

Dead.

Marlene McKinnon, my best friend, was dead.  She had more than likely been murdered by supporters of You-Know-Who.  And we hadn’t been speaking to each other for over a month.

The dirt drive to our house was long and winding, and as soon as I passed the first bend beside the pasture I fell into the snow.  The sheep watched me with their black watery eyes, uninterested, and in my wildness I envied them.  I couldn’t breathe.  My lungs had collapsed and wouldn’t open again; the sobs were too heavy, and only when I thought I would faint did the first rattling breath come sweeping into the vacuum of my lungs.  With my cheek pressed into the snow I cried and thought of Marlene, and the last time I saw her: the way her white-blonde hair whipped through space as she Apparated, with a thunderous CRACK!, away from Sirius’s Cruciatus Curse.