May 16, 2001

You're dreaming of water.

It's rushing, tumbling, spinning, away, away from you. Taking with it years of dirt, decades of blood, centuries of regret. It's vanishing down the drain. It's going to the ocean. The air feels like salt and you wonder whether death by water is peaceful, if the sea embraces you and pulls you gently beneath the waves. Or if death by ocean is rough, is tumultuous, is as fierce as the way the waves constantly leap toward the sky. You wonder what it is that hurts more. The sand in your throat, the salt in your skin or the water in your lungs. You wonder if it matters, if it's all the end.

You're dreaming of water.

It's running, gurgling, spinning, away, away from you. Taking your tears, your apologies, your desperation with it, disappearing down the drain. It's going to the ocean. It's going far away, forever away, and you can't follow.

There is a dirty sink with cracked tiles. There is a mirror. There is the transparent reflection of a girl looking upon your misery with a combination of compassion and glee. There is a mirror. A brief reflection of green. Green like the forest is green, green like the Killing Curse is green, green like Slytherin, like everything you uphold and abhor.

There is a boy, your jewel-eyed boy. Here, you almost know his name. You fear him. You crave him. He is speaking and you can't hear a word above the rushing sound of blood in your ears.

You fear him.

There are words, screamed, hurled from your throat. There is a crash, the sound of smashing porcelain, the rushing of a burst pipe, the screams of the ghost girl. There are words, torn from your throat. There is light. There is pain. There is pain. There is pain.

You're dreaming of water.

Pink-tinged, red-tinged, it's all gushing away from you, out of you, taking with it years of hate, decades of despair, centuries of regret. It's vanishing down the drain. We're going to the ocean.

You're dreaming of water…

You wake to the sound of someone crying, but it isn't you.
You don't think it's you.

Here, in this room, in this home that isn't yours, the darkness is so absolute, you can't see your hands as you raise them to your face to touch your eyes. Your fingertips are trembling, but they come away dry. When you close your eyes, the darkness doesn't change. You keep your eyes focussed behind your closed lids, waiting for the lights to appear. You count the colours, willing yourself to sleep.

But someone is crying.

It isn't you.

The noise grates at your ears, pulls at your conscience. Louder than God, here in this room, here in this darkness. Pain, trying so hard to be silent, begging for a response.

You reach out a hand, searching. Hesitating when you encounter the body, the warmth. It is shaking. You think of water. Broken glass. Tears. There was a boy in a bathroom and another boy who saw the weakness but neither boy was you. Not you, not you.

There is no you, anymore.

Here, though, in the darkness, suffocating and absolute, there may once have been a boy. There may have once been a you.

You close the distance, grip the warmth, a bony shoulder covered in damp cotton. Your fingers no longer tremble. When you pull, the body comes easily, melting into your arms as if it belongs there. You run fingers down the spine, count the protruding bones. Tap out forgotten rhythms on the ribs. Catalogue the hip-bones with your palm. This is the place you know. The map of this body is written on your marrow. Its tears would break your heart, if you still had one that beat.

When the body stops shaking and the gasping tears slow, you allow yourself to look, with eyes not made for seeing...

him.

In the slowly softening darkness, he is all angles and shadows, whispers of bones and hollow spaces where dreams should be. In the dark, his eyes glow.

Your jewel-eyed boy, with eyes green like the half-recalled forest, like the Killing Curse, like everything you thought you knew.

Here, in this darkness, you think you almost remember his name.