bonjour, all. i am rave, resident lunatic and random street person, here with the prologue of a fic that promises to be very very very long, very fun to write (perhaps not so fun to read...) and not as dark as you might think. hope it gives you all a little fleeting entertainment. and i realize this doesn't make very much sense just yet...it'll get better, i swear to god it will. the title has very little to do with the actual story, but i hate titles anyway.
this said, i am done. please, please, please review. i'll even give you an invisible virtual cookie! really!
yours from the farthest corners of the galaxy,
rave.
oh yeah, and everyone belongs to J.K. Rowling, yes yes yes, except the people who don't. and they're MINE, buster. but they keep clamoring for higher pay, so i might just auction them off to the highest bidder eventually.
i really hope this html works.
Prologue: Remembrance
The woman with long, blue-black hair shifted on the hard stone floor.
It was the first time she had moved in days, and it hurt. She flexed her fingers experimentally and winced as a rush of blood flowed to them, bringing back with it every ache and bruise that her involuntary meditation had erased from her mind. Slowly, painfully, she sat up.
A single torch guttered on the wall outside her cell, sending strange shadows in every direction, making her vision dance and wobble insanely. She put one hand on the floor, trying to steady herself, and concentrated on breathing. It was the one thing she hadn't forgotten--breathing. Surviving.
Shivering, she climbed to her feet and stumbled to the wall of the cell, just for the change of view. It seemed like miles; by the time she reached the wall, she was breathing heavily, her limbs shaking uncontrollably. The woman stared at the opposite side of the cell, a thousand years away. There was a niggling bite at the back of her mind that she knew meant that she had forgotten something else. Every day she forgot something new, something integral. This one was important--the bite stung more than usual.
It was so silent that her ears buzzed with imagined noise. "I want to go home," she said out loud, in a voice rusty with disuse. The companionship of the echoes was fleeting, but it was all she had. "I haven't done anything. When will you let me go home?"
Go home, whispered the echoes. Home.
Where was home?
The woman slid down the wall, crumpling into a ball, exhausted with the effort of trying to remember. The cell swam hazily in front of her, as though she watched it through tears. Tears she remembered, but there weren't any left in her; she drank them off her cheeks long ago, on one of the days when the guards forgot to bring water. This haze was drier, darker.
Not remembering home was the worst...worse even than when she had forgotten her name. Names could be replaced. Home...home was the only thing that made life more than here, more than darkness and hunger and the constant ache of thirst. But now she had forgotten home.
A wave of dizziness swept over her, prelude to the sick, leaden feeling in her stomach that came with the guards, every time. Of course, their arrival meant food, drink, but no nourishment could be worth the pain their visits brought back. She cringed into the corner of the cell, listening with dread to the swish of the cloaks, and then, slowly, trying to cover her ears against the screaming...
oh god james lily james lily peter
blood. too much blood. no one has that much blood in their veins, no one--street stained crimson, bright and gaudy, like a carnival. screaming and sobbing--oh god oh god oh god--and then laughter--
--sirius--
And then they passed. The woman let out a long, low moan, but didn't move, just lay, trembling, on the flagstones, hands over her ears, eyes tight-closed.
Eventually, thirst won out over memory. She crawled, on her stomach, over to the tray. Water--sweet, pure water. she bent her head over the goblet, like a cat, and took one long sip--then pushed it away. Any more, and she wouldn't have enough left to survive the time before she got another glass.
Something caught her eye--something, stuffed under the stale loaf of bread. The woman dragged herself over to it, pulled it out of its hiding place.
It was a piece of parchment, with only two words written on it. Her haunted gray eyes strained against the permanent half-light of the cage, trying to read what it said, a strange emotion filling her chest, forcing her to try to make out the letters. Was it hope? She thought that prison had killed hope in her years ago, but yet...
Finally, she managed to decipher the tiny parchment, and her mind reeled against it, knowing it was important, not knowing why...she read it again, her unsteady fingers tracing the lines of it:
Anika Donelan.