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chapter three, to repel darkness
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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀MAGDALENA WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO not return to the hellish world that was the night of the World Cup, yet for some horrible reason her mind refused to leave it untouched.
⠀⠀⠀⠀She'd had the scene replay in her head several times over since, but only for a few moments. They'd never come to the actual attack, but rather just an imagined view of the other people who'd been there. Running, the sound of feet meeting the sodden ground as crowds surged past her as though she weren't there at all...
⠀⠀⠀⠀Thud, thud.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Magdalena heard everything; felt it too — the coldness, the waves of panic and the tears she couldn't control... but as soon as the memory began, it stopped, and she was awake at four in the morning again with a heaving chest and sweat on her skin.
⠀⠀⠀⠀This night, however, wasn't the same. Magdalena had known as she'd slipped underneath the duvet and drawn the curtains around the four-poster that something wasn't quite right. It was similar to when a person anticipates crying, they feel themselves sink until they're level with sadness, and then release. The dormitory had been silent, only the sounds of the four other girls' slow, unconscious breathing as they slept in peace. And so she'd stared into the darkness, the red of the curtains obnoxiously loud against the otherwise silence as she'd waited for herself to sink into sleep for the next few hours.
⠀⠀⠀⠀And for those few hours, it was all fine. The unconscious state was far better than the conscious — she was away from reality and in a dream world that she controlled, where she wasn't lonely, wasn't verging tears, wasn't avoiding her family... Magdalena much preferred it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀So it was all fine, until it wasn't.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The Dementor was looming overhead, and Magdalena felt something inside of her move. She felt sick, a pushing feeling at the back of her throat that made her want to scream but wouldn't let her. She could hardly breathe, her eyes wouldn't blink and she was fighting to move at all. But her suffering was silent. No one saw, and no one could hear her. And Magdalena looked up at the thick, dark mass of horror with an emptiness she'd never known. She had nothing. She was nothing. And the creature knew. It knew that she knew, and that everyone else knew that Magdalena Parkinson was nothing.
