The Sound of Your Tears

I can hear you crying. I can't see you, my glasses are still missing. But I can hear you. I can hear the sobbing and the desperate way you're trying to breathe. I can hear the incoherent cries falling from your lips, a jumble of pleads and apologies, and for a second I feel like laughing, because I've never heard you beg or apologize. It only lasts a second, though, because this isn't funny. I wish I could hear your laugh, but the person laughing isn't you. I can hear the high, cold laugh. A laugh shouldn't sound so cold, but it does, and it makes fear spread like ice through my veins. I search desperately for my Gryffindor courage, any last drop of bravery, but there is none, like I've used it all up, and I'm left with nothing. I know it's too late for your Slytherin cunning to help me, to help us. Maybe if we had been caught just a few minutes earlier, if he hadn't shown up at almost the same time as me and my friends had been dragged in, maybe you could have helped. I know you wanted to. But it's too late, we were too slow, and all I can do is listen to you cry. I wish you wouldn't. Each sob hurts even more than the pain in my scar, pulsing through my forehead. This pain is a stab in the gut, each word you stumble over a sickening twist of the blade.

I can hear footsteps to my left. I can hear that god-forsaken laugh again. I can hear a shouted incantation, and I can see a flash of green light. I can hear you scream.

I can't hear anything.