Chapter Seventeen

She was running; she seemed to think and dream of that with distressing and frustrating frequency. She could feel the jolt of each impact through her legs, into her hips and up her spine, her whole body wracked by each stride. She was so very tired, and each footfall hurt. Her arms pumped furiously by her sides as she continued to run, but she knew that she was tiring, knew that soon, she would stumble and fall. Her lungs burned with the effort, her sides felt like hot knives were slicing through to her belly, and sweat stung her eyes, blinding her. Her chest felt ready to explode, and the blood rushed painfully through her throat to roar past her ears. Thud! Her foot on the ground. Thud! Her heart in her chest. Thud! Her foot striking again. Thud! Thud! Thud! Slowing down, she whimpered... she was slowing down. She gritted her teeth and summoned the last vestiges of strength.

Thud!

...Thud!

...Th...thud!

She stumbled and hit the ground, rolling and tumbling as momentum carried her forward. The world became a confused blur of sky and ground, of flailing limbs and tangling clothes. The wind was knocked out of her as her back struck the sturdy and unforgiving trunk of a tree. Gasping and struggling for breath, she tried to see what she was running from. What terrible thing had been on her heels?

Blinking away the sweat, her eyes frantically swept the scene. Trees crowded her, standing like morbid spectators to her plight, their branches creaking overhead. Ferns and brambles filled the gaps between the hazardous tree roots, vicious things that had snagged her legs and scratched at her as she had ploughed through their ranks. Weak sunlight filtered through the bare branches, and a mist was gathering in the distance, seeping slowly towards her as it thickened into a fog. It felt as if the world was closing in on her, intent on smothering her and trapping her here with whatever hunted her.

Her ears strained for some tell-tale rustle in the undergrowth, some crack of a twig being stepped upon, but all she could hear were her deep, rapid gasps for air, the thumping of her heart, and the creaking branches. Wincing as her bruised ribs protested, she moved slowly, crouching and creeping low through the ferns. She eased her way as quietly and as quickly as she dared through the foliage. A treacherous bubble of hysterical laughter rose up into her throat...she had no idea where to run! Where was safe? Where could she go? She no longer even knew what direction she had been running in before the fall. She battled the tears and the desire to scream. Crawling along between the tall stalks, careful not to disturb the ferns too much, she figured that any direction was better than none. She followed the land as it sloped downwards; maybe it led to water, which in turn may lead to a town of sorts. As the day dwindled and the darkness descended, she crawled and slithered her way through the wood.

She kept an ear and wary eye on her surroundings, and crept until the ferns petered out and the forest thinned. Through the younger trees with their slender trunks, she saw what looked like a cave, and with some trepidation, she darted towards it. She stopped on the threshold and gave her surroundings one last careful scrutiny before stepping inside...and without warning, found herself suddenly knee deep in ice-cold water. The cold of it snatched her breath, and she instinctively scrambled to get out of the murky wet. Her numb fingers connected with stone, and she waded closer, her hands and eyes trying to discern a way out of the water in the gloom. Scrabbling and clinging, she heaved herself out and onto an outcrop of rock. Where had the water come from?

Breathing hard and shivering with the cold, she lay down and curled up, wrapping her arms around her shins. Her teeth chattered loudly, and she shuddered violently. Why was it so cold and dark? Surely she hadn't fallen so far into the cave that the meagre daylight couldn't reach her? Exhaustion and the cold connived together, and she felt the frantic energy that fear had provided ebb away. Her eyes closed.

--X--

Lupin sprinted up the stairs with Sirius close on his heels. He used his wand to open the door before him and sped through with heart hammering, eyes wide and dread heavy in his stomach. Minerva sat on the bed with her back to the door, blocking most of their view, but they could see patches of blood on the pale blue duvet and on Ophelia's arms as she lay perfectly still. Minerva was muttering frantically, and her wand fired spell after spell.

"Merlin!" Sirius whispered, intense emotion thickening his voice. Lupin rushed over to the bed and moaned at the sight. Blood ran in streams from her mouth, down her throat and seeped alarmingly quickly through the bed-linen. He saw something pink and fleshy, glistening on the pillow by her head, and he retched violently when he realised what it was.

"She bit through her tongue!" Minerva sobbed. "And I can't heal it!"

Sirius walked, as if in a dream, to stand next to Lupin, and his eyes latched onto the pale face smeared with blood; how peaceful she seemed amidst the horror of it. She was as he remembered her, the features hardly changed with time. In that instant, he reached a conclusion; feeling a weight lift, he serenely left the room.

Lupin was aware that Sirius had left, and the hope that he had nurtured in the kitchen withered, but there was no time to mourn its quick death. He aimed his wand at the woman drowning in her own blood and cast every spell he knew to keep her alive.

--X--

Some insistent prodding at her legs brought her weary mind back, and her eyelids reluctantly opened. It took several moments for her brain to process what she saw: grey, bloated arms reaching out of the water and fingers gripping at her clothes. With silent horror, she tried to pull her legs back, but the sudden movement seemed to incense them, and their grip tightened. Taking a deep breath, she finally managed the scream that had been lodged in her throat. As it echoed around the cavern, the water's surface looked as though it boiled, and more of the terrible limbs erupted from the depths.

Scratching and peeling the fingers and hands from her, she struggled and thrashed, but those hands pulled her ever closer to the water. Her feet slipped past the surface, and one of the things leapt out of the water and used its body to pin her legs. Screaming and twisting in earnest, sobbing and almost mindless with fear, she tried to grasp at anything that she could use to pull herself away from the water and the monsters within. She was frantic as she slipped down to her waist, feeling more things grabbing her legs. Her hands were slick with water, sweat and blood from her efforts, and she knew with horrific certainty that she was going to die.

More of the creatures were breaching the surface to leap and lie upon her. One emerged with enough force that it fell next to her so that their faces were only inches apart. With the attention to detail that only fear can encourage, she took in the features. It looked fresher than the rest; the skin was less grey and turgid from the water. The hair was dark and plastered to the thing's skull, and the eyes still had a subtle hint of blue in their depths. She noted the length of the face, the cheekbones and the long nose, the slenderness of it. She knew that face! Her eyes widened at the monstrosity of it! She screamed, and even as they pulled her under the icy water, she continued. Regulus! And Regulus embraced her as he had many times, held her as water flooded her lungs and the life began to leave her twitching, shuddering, body.

--X--

He couldn't understand it! The spells were potent enough to have healed injuries much worse than this, and yet, she still bled. They had managed to slow the loss, but it still trickled down her throat and bubbled out from between her pale lips. Lupin glanced across at Minerva, who was wide-eyed and frantic.

"We need Poppy," she hissed out.

"No," Sirius called out calmly from behind them. "You need him."

Their startled gaze flew to Sirius and then to where he had directed with a gentle wave of his hand. In silent wonder, they saw Snape standing in the shadowed corner, his black eyes fixed on the witch now white as death. Lupin stood with mouth agape, his bemused gaze flicking between Sirius and Snape; the withered hope made an amazing resurrection. The dark man strode over to the bed, and he began to sing in a whispered voice an unfamiliar tune in an unfamiliar language. It was oddly beautiful to listen to, soothing and yet, suggesting a power behind it. They stood and listened, watching the enigmatic man wave his wand over the almost dead witch. As the song carried on, certain segments repeating and increasing in tempo, they could feel some power building. The air felt heavy and charged, as if a storm were gathering. Sweat beaded on Snape's brow, and his wand arm trembled slightly with the effort of the magic he controlled.

They looked on in stunned and fretfully hopeful silence. After what seemed an age, Snape picked up the severed tongue, and her mouth fell open at some unspoken command. Holding the slippery flesh between forefinger and thumb, he slipped the tongue past her lips. His song was almost inaudible and tumbled from his trembling mouth while he passed the wand tip over her face.

Sirius' expression was unreadable in the gloom when Lupin tore his gaze away from Snape and Ophelia to look and wonder at his friend. He had an idea what it had cost Sirius to ask Snape for help, and he felt a pang of shame that he had doubted his friend. He felt rather than heard the song stop, and his gaze flew back to the bed; his attention riveted on Snape as the man removed a potion from his breast pocket and poured the contents down the woman's willing throat. Some of the colour returned to her cheeks, and her breathing began to even out.

"Severus," Minerva said with undisguised relief.

Lupin let out his held breath in a jubilant sigh, and he turned to share the moment with Sirius, but the wizard had fled the room; only the faint smell of stale alcohol lingered.

"Nothing we did stopped it," she said in a small and bewildered voice. "I thought that she was going..."

"Nothing you could have done would have stopped the bleeding completely, Professor," Snape said swiftly, as if eager to forestall any outpourings of grief or gratitude. "You did remarkably well to keep her alive."

"What went wrong?" Lupin asked gently, not wishing to suggest that he was placing blame. "So that we know for next time."

Snape glanced across at him, not quite meeting his eye. "She resisted her memories coming back."

"Wouldn't that have been expected?" asked Minerva, her voice laced with confusion. "We have been assuming that she has memories she wished to remove and forget; it's hardly surprising that she would resist."

"We have the ability to repress memories," Snape explained. "Those repressed memories are not affected by the potion because they would have not been affected by the Obliviate Charm. I suspect that the combination of potion and resurfacing memories has triggered a response within her to recover everything, and some aspect of her is fighting the attempt."

"The Obliviate Spell only affects memories that are prevalent," Lupin muttered.

"Precisely," Snape confirmed tonelessly, and the notion crept over Lupin that Snape was on the verge of collapse. The fatigue was showing itself in the way that his shoulders drooped; his lips were parted slightly and his eyelids appeared heavy. "She was fighting the insurgent memories, fighting them with all that she had, fighting to the death."

"Oh, my word!" Aghast at the implication, Minerva looked horrified.

Snape nodded slowly; he seemed to sway ever so slightly, and then he summoned some strength, and he straightened into that irascible tower that had the power to terrify. "I doubt that it will happen again," he said stiffly. "But I will leave some essence of dittany, in case it does," he finished as soothingly as he could. His dark eyes swept the room, and he frowned. "I was under the impression that Moody would be here."

Minerva snorted...a sign of her recovery that her temper could flare so easily. "He was called away by the Ministry; they wished to know where Albus had disappeared to and if Alastor could shed some light." She smiled grimly. "Seems that they are quite eager to track him down."