Parallel Universes • s.black

XXXVI

-Stella Hart-

It will be tonight.

I'm not quite sure how I know, but I do. When I woke I was taken by it, the knowing. I woke breathless and shivering, sweat coating my skin and I knew that tonight it would all end.

At first I thought I'd dreamt it, but if I did I didn't remember it- and I always remember. The only fragment of memory that I was left with were whispers and echoes reverberating around my brain. A constant reminder.

It will be tonight.

I couldn't sleep in my room last night, there were aurors all over the school looking for me and while I was arrogant I wasn't stupid. I was suprised though that they hadn't shut the school down after the deaths of the aurors but I wasn't complaining. Getting carted off to the Ministry was not part of my plan and everything had to go to plan. It was imperetive.

So I woke deep in the forbidden forest, leaves in my hair, dew on my cheeks, in my eyelashes. The sun was well past risen, it was probably closer to lunch than it was to breakfast now. I rose to my feet wiping the smudges of sleep from my body I had to put a few things in order before tonight. I reached into my robe pocket that always held spare scraps of parchment and a quill for quick notes and reminders, but today would serve a far more important purpose.

I scribbled out a handful of words.

Tonight, the game will come to it's end. The epic conclusion, the grand finale.

Tonight, you watch your world come crumbling down. Look closely, you can already see the cracks.

Tonight it ends in the forest of echoes. Echoes of blood and howls and sighs where she lay dying and you thought she could be saved.

Midnight. Alone. Or more will die.

It was a riddle, which seemed fitting for the grand finale of the game. I held the parchment in my open palm and let my eyelids close and my head tilt back. I began to picture the five of them, Lily, James, Remus, Peter and Sirius. They'd be just sitting down at the Gryffindor table slipping into their usual spots diving into the lavish amounts of food, all of them profoundly aware of the space where I used to sit. Where I haven't sat in a long time and after tonight I would never sit in again.

The parchment caught alight, the edges of it burning in a fire that stung my palm but I barely noticed. The fire worked from the outside and moved in consuming the parchment until it disappeared completely. Now a different picture appeared in my mind, one that although was imagined may as well have been real. In fact I was completely sure that it was happening right now.

The singed parchment would appear on the table in front of them, startling them. They would pick it up gingerly, wincing at the burn of the leftover embers clinging to the edges. Lily would probably read it, her voice shaking. It did that a lot. Then there would be a handful of minutes, maybe more, as they tried to decipher my words. I wonder if they would realise that when I spoke of their world coming down I meant the force field keeping Voldemort out?