Invisible String - Sebastian Sallow

Chapter Forty-Eight: In the Shadow of Azkaban

I tried to think of happy things.

I needed to think of happy things. I had read of peoples memories being able to act as an internal Patronus, regardless of the presence of a wand. The idea seemed to have been born around the same time Azkaban prison had been created. Of course wandless magic was the rarest of abilities, and one I had only just started exploring after the development of Abbi's powers.

I didn't know enough.

I hadn't been smart enough to see that I wasn't destined to have a happy ending with the woman that I love. Despite all of the books I'd read, all the knowledge I had consumed, that I had chased after, I never did put much stock into believing that there were problems or riddles that I couldn't solve. I hadn't been smart enough to see it before today.

It didn't stop me from trying anyways.

I tried to think of the good things of Abbi. The way her hair always bounced around her when she was excited about something. The intoxicating scent of her, that honeysuckle perfume of her skin, and the way it intensified when I kissed her. Her smile, the way it made her eyes crinkle, and her nose scrunch.

I tried to picture her laugh.

I tried to think of the feel of her lips on mine.

I could vividly picture the look on her face as I had told her I loved her. My heart flickered with warmth for a moment.

I tried to think about how good it felt to have her in my arms again after-

No, get away from that thought. Don't think about what happened.

It was too late.

Normal settings, I could have controlled the thoughts.

But here, in the dark, the suffocating cold, the despair filling me with every passing second, while countless other prisoners screamed all around me, made it so that running from the dreadful thought was harder to do.

I couldn't stop the rush of images from that night. They hit me with a force I had never experienced, some how more vivid and intense than they even had been as it had happened that night. Though these images haunted my every waking and resting moment, it was different here. I couldn't race to the dormitory room across the house from mine and slam the door open to see her. I couldn't verify she was safe.

That made them all the more terrible.

Her deathly pale body clutched in my arms, curled onto the ground as she fell from the chair she'd been bound to. The way her screams had been echoing through the camp as Marvolo and Thorfinn whipped the Cruciatus Curse at her over and over again, risking driving her into insanity. The way her body lay limp on my bed, bloody, as Anne tried to heal her.

The way she ran from me when she woke up that night.

She didn't know she was running from me.

But she ran.

She was frightened.

She thought I wasn't really me.

Tears spilled down my face as the Dementors rattling breath and scabbed hands closed in on the cell door, their hollow faces covered by the thin veil that kept its mouth concealed. I could feel the way they excitedly sucked on the air, attempting to pull it all from me, take all the happiness they could through the bars as I cried on the floor.

Being in here was proving to be my own personal brand of hell.

~

"Is this really how I am to find the great and powerful Sebastian Sallow? I admit, I'm disappointed."