flower crowns | drarry

thirty two

thirty two
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it was dark.

harry didn't know where he was, or what he was doing there, but it was so, so dark.

and he was running.

where was he running again?

he couldn't remember, just that it was important. he needed to get there, needed to do something.

so he kept running.

he ran and ran and ran.

(through the heavy darkness that seemed to bend around him, trying to swallow him whole.)

soon his limbs grew heavy with exhaustion and slimy tendrils of hopelessness began to crawl up his throat at the thought that this darkness could be endless and he would never get out- but he couldn't stop.

he needed to keep going, he needed to- to-

what?

just as he started to slow down, the static in his ears dulled.

first he heard the erratic thudding of his heart, wild and panicked as it resounded through his tense body. then the frightful cadence of his quick, stuttering breaths joined the symphony of terror.

and then the screams.

the horrible screams.

choked up and screeching like pure pain of the highest frequency. a series of wordless pleas pulled from bloodied, unwilling lips. the sound of those endless screams consumed the darkness and made everything simultaneously sharpened and insubstantial. smears of crimson and onyx faded at the corners of harry's hazy vision, and distantly, he felt tears dripping hot down his face, scalding the tender skin of his cheeks. he knew those screams, he knew those screams, he knew those screams, oh god.

his strides sped up. he surged forward with a new desperation, tearing his way through the darkness with shaky hands. he ignored the paralyzing cold seeping into his aching bones, urging him to stop, to give up, to fall to the ground and let the darkness consume him.

he ignored it, and he ran.

he ran until his breathing sounded like ragged sobbing and the ache in his feet was nothing compared to the ache in his chest.

the screams were louder now, shrill and excruciating and painful.

as he ran, he snapped his head in every direction for the source of the noise, frantic eyes scanning the unrelenting darkness for warm brown eyes, curly brown hair, something, anything but the blackness.

and he found what he was looking for. in the midst of a strange, onyx fog, in the middle of a large, ballroom hall, he found them.

sprawled on the glossy hardwood of the shiny floor was hermione. she lay, writhing beneath bellatrix lestrange, the coils of her russet hair spread out over a growing pool of harsh crimson, her eyes layered with agonized tears, crazed with the haze of pain. she was still screaming, screaming, and ron was curled up stiffly on the floor a few feet away, holding a blood stained hand towards her collapsed form, unable to move from his place on the floor.