Never Too Young To Die

Blinding Realization

~HAZELINE~

Deep breaths, Hazel. Deep breaths, I told myself over and over again. I was only a few minutes away from my highly-likely, tragic, young death. Honestly, I had to refrain myself from vomiting. Or fainting.. again.

Anyway, I did actually have a faint idea of what I was going to do, luckily. I really did feel bad about not taking Hermione's advice. Any of it. It's just that it wasn't something, or anything that I was familiar with. 

When I was younger, my mum was obviously in hiding, so we didn't go out much at all. But there was a time when a wizard somehow managed to locate our house. Within split seconds he recognized my mum and he was going to take her away. He began to shoot hexes at her, but she wasn't scared at all.

I remember her just laughing. An evil, careless cackle and it was then that I began to question whether or not I could trust anyone. I was terrified, terrified how fast my mother's personality had changed in about two flat seconds. 

In the end she didn't kill or even hurt him. She blinded him, only temporarily of course and used a memory charm. I remember trembling in my room for hours until I finally came out to see my mum cooking and whistling as if nothing had happened at all. 

So I decided that since I had witnessed how these spells worked, I would use them. I was the last contestant to go into that frightful arena and everyone else had passed with ease. Well, Fleur Delacour had just gotten her skirt lit on fire, but other than that everyone was fine. 

Fleur had ten minutes before her time was up and at the moment she was sneaking around a dragon that she had put to sleep. I was so intently watching that I didn't notice someone enter the tent.

"Pst, Hazel!" Someone whispered. 

I furrowed my eyebrows, turning my head and scanning the tent. Someone was standing behind the curtains. 

"It's me, Harry!"

I shot across the room towards the curtains to find a pale, rimmed-eyed, bed-head Harry. He quickly hugged me and in that moment I wished that the world would just go away. I wished that Harry and I could just run away and never come back.

"I believe in you, Hazel," he whispered in my ear softly. "You can do this."

I nodded, a few tears escaping my eyes. I wanted to say something, anything. But I was still frozen with fear, as Harry was about to say something more, Barty Crouch came bustling into the room in an urgent hurry. 

"Miss Lestrange!" He yelled. "Your turn."

He placed an encouraging hand on my shoulder and then continued, "Miss Lestrange when the canon sounds you-"

Before he could finish, the catapult was fired and I was shoved into the bright and blinding lights of the stadium. Rows and rows of people were here to watch and even through a crowd that big, I could tell where Hermione, Ron and Harry were sitting. It's because of their hair. 

I analyzed the arena with extreme scrutiny, before blinding realization hit me. THE DRAGON WAS COMING AT ME. Why was I just standing here?! I had to get that egg as quickly as possible, I didn't have all the time in the world! I shoved my panicked, idiotic last minute-thoughts aside and sprinted to duck behind a rock.

I could hear my heartbeat in my throat as I turned to look over the rock. I had to duck just as quickly as I got up due to an extremely hot and dangerous shot of fire rocketing over my head. I breathed a sigh of relief, pulled my wand out and tried to get myself together. 

The dragon was so close to me I could literally feel it's hot breath down my neck. I sprinted as fast as I could to hide behind another rock. I just had to stick to my plan and everything would be fine. I was alarmed to see the I was actually facing the audience now.