Stars in Her Eyes {Wolfstar's Daughter}

Chapter 71: Through Rotted Walls

Six eyes misted over as another scream tore from inside the room beside them.

The three of them sat on the rotting floor of the first floor hallway, having found themselves unable to move any further from the door that separated them from their friend.

Just before Nell had gone completely, she had tried to pull her wand out in the desperate attempt to cast a silencing charm on the room. She didn't want her friends hearing this and yet here they were sat, a few inches of wood separating them from her agony.

Hermione was crying silently, making not a sound as the tears fell freely from her eyes, staring straight ahead at the wall that divided Nell from them.

Beside her Ron's eyes were red and the sleeve of his jumper damp from where he kept using it to catch his tears before they fell.

Harry let his head drop back against the wall that separated them from Nell, a feeling of pain spreading across his chest in a way he had never felt before. Not the type of pain that warned him of any danger or injury but the type of dull ache screaming at him that he isn't in pain, but she is.

A type of agony that could only be comprehended by those who have heard the life being gauged out from someone they love, and could now be comprehended by them. A pain that was only worsened by the knowledge that he would never be able to fix this.

The sound of their best friend, a girl of their age, screaming until her lungs ran empty was something none of them could come to describe nor would ever come to forget.

Her pleads for it to end, for it all to end were something they were sure would haunt them for years to come. But if there was to be a worst part, than that role was undeniably filled by the silence.

The silence that took the place of her screams, the silence that took the place of her pain, the silence that took the place of every evidence they had that she was still alive. The silence that took the place of Nell.

A long tremulous dragging sound cut their anticipation short.

Over the years Nell come to learn that with every transformation there came to be a moment, a split second were the pain had ended but before the aggression had begun. A single second where the wolf had her body but she had never been more awake. A single breath where she was certain the air had never smelled so sweet in her chest.

She supposed the wolf had a similar moment too, right when she regained control of her body, but every time she found it was a moment cut far too short. That just as she gathered the fraying ends of her own mind, as she reached the verge of releasing that fresh swell of air in her lungs, it was all torn from her hands, leaving her fumbling desperately in the dark.

The blissful freedom of her fall ended with a hollow thud that those on the surface could never hope to hear.

Her friends listened in complete silence as the dragging sound grew closer and louder, vibrating the planks where they sat. Then all of a sudden it stopped, the shack fell heavy with silence, shifting slightly in the wind.

In a moment of poor judgement brought on by the agonising silence hanging over them, Harry, against all thoughts of reason, decided to draw that connection between his and Nell's mind.

'Nell?'

Only as soon as he tugged on that line, it came snapping back in his mind as if Nell wasn't there to receive it at all. Where he once felt the welcoming presence of her mind, all that remained was a hollow darkness, a cavity where her she should be. The rope that once connected them, now flailing blindly in the dark.

And soon as he had reached out, he wished he hadn't.

For it brought upon a cold numbness rolling over his body, a sheet falling over the image of Nell in his mind. A feeling he never wanted to feel, the feeling that she was gone.