Gone are the carefree school days, as a new era begins in the lives of the Marauders. Voldemort's powers are ever increasing and the days are getting dark for all the wizarding world. James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, along with their friends...
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The ice cold water took Regulus's breath away. He could feel the current pulling him first further out to sea, then pushing him in toward the land, a rocking motion that sucked him down, even as he kicked.
Kick you son of a bitch, he scolded himself. KICK!
The surface seemed ten thousand million miles away, as far away as the sky usually looked from the ground, as though you could kick and kick and reach forever and never really reach the top of it.
Precious seconds, Regulus.
He couldn't answer, the water pressed around him, and if he opened his mouth he feared all the air inside him would rush out and he'd fill up with water and be ended.
Perhaps it would be easier this way.
Just sink into the sea and never be heard from again. The Dark Lord and his Death Eaters couldn't do anything to him if he was dead.
You are not dying. But you will fulfill a prophecy given long ago. Before you were yet born, this moment was foretold.
Regulus, relax my boy. Relax. The key to getting to the surface is to relax. Let the current carry you.
He released the fight from his muscles. He floated there in the water, still, and unmoving, suspended by only the water, hair swirling about his face as the tides moved in... and out...
And he became weightless... it was as though the ocean itself was pushing him up... up... up...
Regulus's head came through the surface just as his lungs felt fit to burst. He gasped air in great, desperate gulps as he bobbed and jolted with the tide.
The sea was no longer teal. As he looked about, it had become a horrible dark grey that seemed to stretch away forever in every direction, all the way to the horizons.
To all the horizons except for one.
In the distance there loomed a hellish, formidible tower of white stone, brash against a pitch black sky. He stared at it in horror, slicing up into the night, standing in a crude island of jagged rocks. Rain so heavy he could see it even from the distance sliced through the air, pelting the island, and the thickest black clouds he had ever seen circled and surrounded the top of the tower so that the tower itself couldn't be seen through them. Lightening flashed and even over the tide Regulus could hear the thunder clap.
What a horrible place, Regulus thought. If he had thought a moment before that he would rather be anywhere but in the sea, he now realized he would rather take his chances in the frigid water than set foot on that terrible shore.
