Severus stood a few paces before her. His eyes were on the ruined cauldron.
"Tell me," his voice shook, and tears formed in his eyes, "why do you wear flowers in your hair?"
He kept looking to his cauldron.
"I don't understand."
"How does such a sim...
Spring fell upon them in the form of flooding days. That was the measure of time; to distinguish day from night, from one month to the next, as an asset to the change. After hours, if the waters particularly burst through the cracks of stone, you knew it was midday---and a hot one for the season at that.
If it trickled onto your matted hair, chilled you to the marrow---you huddled together, just as before, and prayed months had passed; that this was just a brief, old nightmare in time.
Rationing what little scraps they received was reserved for the days of torture. Challenge yourself to sustain on mere water, and save your delicious crumbs and scraps for the day Bellatrix visited.
A reward, of sorts. Endure the pain, don't let insanity ruin the mind. And everytime you made it, the scraps healed the stomach, as if inside and out, like a miraged-feast.
In an attempt to subdue the ache, Niamh bent her neck upward against the wall. Sitting in a pool of leaking waters, she recalled marveling at the poverty-stricken cellar the Malfoy's owned.
Wouldn't they maintain everything they own to their pristine standards?
But it was obvious.
There would've been fine wines, ales---Merlin's beard, anything to fulfill their stomachs and possibly their insanity.
She never saw the master nor lady of the house.
Those sounds, those brief flickers---they weren't hallucinations. There must be other walls---sturdier than the one Luna had intentionally identified and pushed to discover Ollivander---walls that divided the neverending cellar that defined the Malfoy wealth. Another cellar: likely heated, dry, possibly rug-lined, clean, and filled to the brim with goods of all culinary trades.
Another trample rattled the gates. Niamh remained against the wall, as idle as her inmate companions. They'd be forced upward to their ritualistic fates soon enough.
Slam.
"Ionknee! Ionknee!"
Luna shuffled beside her. Niamh shifted her ears towards the sound, questioning the barrier between miracles and permanent insanity. St. Mungos wouldn't be far now.
Click.
"Be quiet!" Someone hissed. "Shut up . . . we need to work out a way . . ."
"'Mione! 'MIONE!"
"We need a plan, stop yelling---we need to get these ropes off---"
Rapid movement swept past her. Niamh lunged forward with all her will, only to fall back with her broken knee. Her chest rose and fell, her dirtied face awaiting Luna's discovery patiently.
"Harry?" Luna asked, the old dreaminess of her tone returned. Like sunlight extinct to the past. "Ron? Is that you?"
Ron had stopped shouting. The sound; the hallucination of movement neared them, Niamh still thought. Two shadows, of any, could've been Luna's, mirrored each other like a faraway scene in Niamh's eyes.
She spoke directly to her twin shadow. "Harry? Ron?"
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