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BELLA COULDN'T SEE ANYTHING, and she briefly wondered if her fall had made her go blind until she remembered the feeling she'd had when she looked into the chest and realised that there was just no source of light inside this never-ending trunk. She felt fuzzy, and all she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her eardrums. All she could feel was the pain surging through her head and her left shoulder and her right wrist, all injuries courtesy of Mad-Eye Moody.
Fake Mad-Eye Moody, rather.
She tried to force herself to calm down and take deep breaths like she had earlier. The deeper the breaths she took, though, the more tired she felt, and suddenly all she wanted to do was sleep. She was never able to sleep, and she knew that if she closed her eyes right then she'd be able to drift away like she always wanted to. She craved it desperately.
The longer she lay there and tried to fade into unconsciousness, though, the more time she had to realise that she had misjudged some things — the noise seemed to be from more than just her pounding heart, a garbled voice filling the empty spaces behind her heartbeat, and the pain seemed to be more than just residual as her shoulder was shaking vigorously, enough that her whole body was moving.
"Can you hear me, girl?" a gruff voice finally managed to penetrate the shooting pain in Bella's head, and she realised her shoulders were being shaken by hands. "Come on, now, you have to stay awake, cracked your head pretty hard on the way down."
Bella groaned and snapped her eyes open irritably. She still couldn't see anything, but that was expected.
"Alright, I'm up!" she snarled loudly, immediately regretting her decision when the noise penetrated her skull and made her want to pass out. "Merlin, stop shaking me!"
"You could have a concussion!" he growled back, sounding just as irritated as she felt. "Would you rather I let you die in your sleep?"
Bella rolled her eyes. "Well, I don't exactly have much going for me now, do I?"
It was silent for a moment and Bella wished she could see in the darkness. Without that ability, though, all her other senses felt like they were on overdrive, and she realised for the first time how bad it smelled, like a mixture of B.O. and... bodily waste.
"Who are you?" the familiar voice finally asked, a suspicious edge to the man's tone. "What are you doing here, what happened?"
"Bella Potter, not a Death Eater or anything, relax," Bella sighed, bringing her hands to her head and massaging her temples in the hopes of making the pain go away, still careful about applying any pressure to her wrist or rotating her shoulder too much. "And you're Mad-Eye Moody, right?"
