till forever falls apart

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My breathing was slow, shallow

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My breathing was slow, shallow. I could hear it in my head, the way that the air barely reached my lips before I shot it away.

And my head rocked round and round with the feeling as though it weighed several tons. My head rocked round and round with the feeling as though all of the lava from my stomach had pooled in my skull and turned solid. It turned a heavy type of solid, one that seemed to pull me down and down forever.

And my eyes dropped open and shut slowly, so slowly that I nearly drifted off every time my lashes met.

And I couldn't move, but I could feel the cold blood draining from where my head hit the bricks. And I wondered each time my eyes shut if it would be the last.

A hollow wave washed over me and I knew that I was truly alone.

But I hoped that he was coming.

I watched through heavy eyes as the moon turned in the sky. I forced myself awake so that I could watch as it fell slowly, too slowly, behind a row of sleeping cottages.

And I tried to envision Remus getting home, walking through the front door, climbing the stairs. I tried to envision him stepping into our room, placing the door shut, dropping his bag at his feet. I tried to envision him collapsing into bed and realizing I was gone.

He would sit up, confused, and check the room, check the bathroom. He would check the whole house, calling my name: 'Syd? Sydney?', but he wouldn't find me. Maybe instead, he'd find the letter. And he would know what Peter had done.

I pictured him Apparating to the Potter's, walking through the broken door, and talking to Hagrid. I pictured Hagrid and Dumbledore explaining what happened, explaining what Peter had done.

I tried not to envision how he looked when he saw their bodies.

From there, Dumbledore would help him. And Remus would hate it. He would hate that he had to trust the one person he despised most, but he also wouldn't care. He wouldn't care about trusting Dumbledore because his hatred wasn't allowed to matter. He would just want to find me.

And they'd come looking, and they'd run past the sleeping cottages and the shops and the Halloween displays, just like Sirius and I had. And they'd find the alley like we did. And they'd find me.

He was coming, I knew he was.

But I wasn't sure how much longer I could wait.

The ghosts in the air had found me again. And they hovered all around me and washed through my skin and settled in my lungs. Cold and tired and sad.

And the ghosts were made of a cold mist that wrapped around the bones in my arms, legs, fingers, spine, and anywhere else they could reach. And they spread that cold to my muscles until my muscles froze over and stopped working.

And I watched through heavy eyes as the world slept.

And once, just once, I let my eyes close for an extra second.

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