The Godmother

35. pain and pleasure

She dreamt of James.

For some reason, she saw the tufts of hair billowing from his head, as they ran in an open wheat field behind the property that they lived on.

Mr Archers never liked them going onto his wheat field, as it ruined the crops. But James had tagged her 'it', and now she was running like Hell to tag him back.

The sky had lumbered into sunset, branding a soft orange into the cloudy atmosphere. Perfectly frozen in the sky. The moment in time where everything seemed fine. Before everything turned on its side.

They were fine. They were fine.

She felt the smaller growths of grass whipping against her ankles and shins, below where the dress that her mother had bought her ended. Dirt running through her toes everytime her feet landed against the ground.

He spun his head around to glance at her. She saw the wide grin on his face as his eyes met hers. He laughed and dashed forwards. She raced forward, beating her legs against the ground in an effort to catch up to him.

She was about to reach him, as everything returned.

Everything horrible.

She felt constricted.

She couldn't feel anything.

When Elizabeth opened her eyes, she recognised the room. The way the flowers on the patterned wallpaper twisted and curled. The green hue emitting from the walls. The window. The chair. There would be a fireplace on the wall behind her. She heard it crackling and the wood inside being burnt, fizzing and wheezing.

She was in the Riddle Mansion. Inside the room where Harry's name had been carved into the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

Regulus had set her to float above the ground then given her a paralysis potion.

Her eyes were the only things that were able to move. The rest of her body was in stasis. Motionless as it hung above the ground like there was a rope around her neck.

She felt fear bubbling. Fear stalking her like a shadow. Growing up inside her the way seaweed gets tangled around your legs when you're trying to swim.

Panic. She was beginning to panic. The worst thing that she could do.

She gasped for air, then again, and eventually was huffing and crying. She felt like she was being strangled. Tears falling from her eyes, though she couldn't feel them rolling down her cheeks.

She needed to breathe.

She knew, in theory, she was having a form of a panic attack.

As the realisation of her condition came to her head, the door barged open.

Regulus rolled through the room, so dominantly, fierce. Any trace of boyhood had left his soul. He was a man. A brute.

She gasped as he entered, finding it even harder to breathe.

The spell that he had cast was wearing fast around her throat. She needed fresh air. She needed to be let down. She couldn't talk, even if she didn't have the spell binding the muscles to work her lips.

She watched as Regulus stood in front of her, his eyebrows furrowed.

Even raised into the air, she wasn't as tall as him.

The threatening physique of his body made her scared of him. Each thread of skin was a threat in her mind. Even the way he stared at her, knowing that he could get whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. It didn't make her shiver. It didn't make her throat run dry. It just made her scared.