*
"I don't give a single shit, Slytherin is not pulling out of the game."
"But my arm!" Draco whined, "and the weather, why would you possibly want to play in it?"
Cassius looked down at him, his face wearing a disgusted expression, "I'm not going to forfeit us the match. That's that."
Cassius strode down the sidelines of the field, the saturated grass sodden with muddy puddles, and said, "Now get in the fucking air."
Draco narrowed his eyes bitterly, "No," he hissed and folded his arms, "Get the substitute, I'm not doing it." And with that, he sulked away to Crabbe and Goyle who were looking miserable as they sat in the stands, water soaked his ankles as he moodily stomped his way back to the castle.
Cassius's mood had dwindled, he raced around the pitch, throwing quaffles at them left, right and centre as he criticised them for their 'terrible reflexes'.
Rain was drizzling from the sky, not heavy enough to affect the training session, but heavy enough to irritate them when the light rain tickled their noses. The dark, gloomy clouds gave the image that a storm was soon to burst out; but it never did.
The saturated ground squelched underfoot and Cassius had decided to make them do press-ups on the muddy ground, coating their training gear in a thick layer of mud and grass.
Soon enough, the training came to an end and the sodden quidditch team trundled along the dungeon corridors, their clothes soiled and soaking, hair stuck to the foreheads and mud caking their boots.
Quidditch was the only thing that gave her more joy than Balinor, although she would deny it profusely and say that her toad was the only love of her life, and it was the only thing that was keeping her occupied.
Ever since Snape had invaded her mind and resurfaced those horrible memories she'd tried so hard to forget, she had tried everything to keep her mind occupied.
She didn't want to think about it simply because she knew she would relapse and get sent back to that awful hospital again. She didn't want to go back, but looking down at the thin lines that decorated her forearms and seeing the lines of white painted on her shoulders as she looked herself in the mirror each day, she knew it was not long until the voices would come back.
*
The day before the match, the winds howled outside so loudly it was like a thousand people's screams were lost in the air, and the rain fell harder than ever, making the window frames shudder as raindrops the size of insects plummeted down like bullets. It was so dark inside the corridors and classrooms that extra torches and lanterns were lit, and the dungeons were the coldest of all.
Lilith had defence against the dark arts next but, as nice as Professor Lupin's lessons were, she needed a break. From quidditch and lessons.
So, even as the rain fell from the blackening clouds, she bid the castle farewell and ran outside. It was stupid to be outside just then, and she knew she would probably get a nasty cold afterwards, but as she ran through the rain, hair whipping her face and raindrops pelleting at her like tiny bullets, she laughed. She laughed so freely yet so constricted at the same time, but a laugh it was nonetheless, and her voice cracked with each cry; because it was getting harder to breathe each breath without feeling her heart ripping out of her chest.
When she slowed to a halt, the rain and wind still whipped around her violently and tiny bullets still pierced her skin, and as she laughed over and over; her shouts were lost in the air.
The wind rushed past her ears, the rain blurred her vision, and she felt so free but she didn't know how or why, she wished she could stay there forever. With the wind and rain carrying her shouts away.
But soon the joyful laughs turned cold and the happy shouts soon turned painful, until her heartbreaking cries were finding their way out of her body so fast and without her consent. But no one heard her, for her cries were lost in the wind, just as always. Just as always.
She often looked at the people around her, and thought about running away. She wondered, once, if they would notice if she went. She wondered if they would care. She wondered if their lungs would deflate or their hearts would swell up or if the missing would become so loud that they could hear it in their ears like a song they couldn't get out of their heads.
There was a voice in her head, that once said, 'They won't notice you're missing.' There was a voice in her head, that once said, 'People don't see the sad in other people, because they are so fixated on the sad inside of them.' She wanted to tell so many people that loneliness is a throbbing headache somewhere just outside of her heart. She had wished there was someone to tell, she would have told so many people that she could not deal with the pain. Yet so many of them would have told her, 'Sometimes I get sad, too. You'll be okay in the morning'.
One minute she's swimming and the next she's flailing; drowning. Sinking into an unreachable depth in an infinite mess of hurt and darkness. One minute she's grinning and the next she's wild; broken. Tearing strips of paper thin flesh from a body that could belong to anyone, but not hers. One minute she's alive and the next she's an imposter; gone. Watching herself live from a place she cannot reach.
So she stood there in the howling wind, water dripping from her clothes and a gale blowing her hair into her face, drowning out of water. Her head was spinning and her heart was in her mouth, it was something about crying in the rain that made it hard to tell if you were crying or not, but whether she was or she wasn't, she certainly felt the heart wracking sobs escape her parted lips. She fell to the ground, mud coating her knees and puddles soaking her shoes.
The voices were slowly over powering the raucous gale, the voices were creeping through her head and into her ears once more and she didn't know what to do. She was suffocating.
"What do you want me to do?" She cried, her voice cracking with every breath she took, her shoulders wracking with every cry.
Try again, you're a Slytherin aren't you supposed to be ambitious?
"Stop." She wanted to tell them, but they didn't care even if she shouted it out to the world. She knew they'd never leave her, however many times she'd tried to bury them deep inside the farthest crevices of her mind and tried to forget the sound of their creeds, they'd torment her forever, for as long as she lived.
We'll stop when you do it, come on, we'll go when you do.
She didn't want to die, did she? Not yet.
Yes you do, you want us to go.
That didn't mean ending it, did it?
*
Theo had found her a few minutes later, knelt on the damp floor, shaking and sobbing. He never tried to move her, so he held her still in his arms, pulling her close as they sat there in the pouring rain. She told herself it was only because she was cold and shaking that he held her close, but then she came to a painful realisation that she cared for him and she remembered that he did too.
The voices were wrong, people would notice if she went, perhaps not all of them would care, but they'd darn well notice that Lilith Black, the girl who could shut people up with an icy glare or send them to the hospital wing with a few broken ribs and a broken nose, had disappeared.
The voices were wrong, weren't they?
*