SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 028 ] the irony of choking on a lifesaver

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
the irony of choking on a lifesaver

SOMETHING WAS WRONG—Sawyer felt it the moment she'd stepped off the train, an invisible weight that dogged at her heels throughout the welcome feast the previous night, following her from the moment she woke up this morning, shackled to her ankles. She didn't know what it was. Just that it was like fifth year all over again, the feeling of two hands pressing down on her shoulders, holding her down when she knew she should be moving forward. Over the summer, things had gotten better. Maybe she wasn't whole yet, but if all the therapy sessions with Dr Josten had taught her anything it was that the goal wasn't about wholeness. It was about discarding bad habits and replacing them with healthier ones, and then, gradually, replacing bad thoughts with healthier ones. For instance, Sawyer had locked her lighter away after the first session, and hadn't felt the need for it since.

As she stared at the backs of her hands under the table, watched her burn scars stretch thin and bunch up over her knuckles each time she flexed and relaxed her fingers, a pit of hopelessness had opened up. Beneath her skin, there was a familiar buzzing. An ache for pain. To feel something other than the rift opening up in her chest. Around her, the noise dimmed. As the students slowly filed into the Great Hall for breakfast, it felt like the world was going by at twice the speed and she was stuck in tar, her brain barely processing anything. For a moment, the urge hit her full-force. She regretted leaving her lighter at the bottom of her suitcase.

The rattle of pills in a prescription bottle snapped Sawyer out of her reverie.

Marcus set the bottle down on the table in front of her with an expectant look, and Sawyer downed two pills without complaint. Dr Josten had switched her to Valium over the summer. The sharp V grinned at her, a little bit cruelly, a little bit judgementally. Sawyer wanted to turn the bottle away so she wouldn't have to see it anymore, but could only bother with flicking it over on its side. On cue, Marcus pocketed it, shooting Sawyer a concerned look.

"I have a good feeling about this year," Jeremy said, flipping through the Daily Prophet.

On the cover page of the paper, Sawyer caught the headlines of the day: SEARCH FOR ESCAPED MURDERER ONGOING. Below the bold type print, Sirius Black's grainy mugshot grinned wolfishly at them as he laughed like he was taking in chunks of air and spitting it back out, his unruly hair falling over his face, crooked teeth gleaming in the flash of the camera. Sawyer tried to mirror his smile, but it felt weak, diluted. It collapsed in a second and the rift inside her opened wider, like someone had dug a finger through the gap and ripped it some more.

"I don't know..." Quinn frowned, trailing off as she glanced anxiously at the windows where a Dementor drifted by. Since Azkaban had somehow lost a runaway prisoner, Hogwarts had been crawling with Dementors. Out of everyone in the group, Quinn and Sawyer felt the storm cloud of their presence more heavily than the others. Ever since the train ride, they'd both been drained of energy lately. The world had become sluggish and though Sawyer had been taking her medication without fail, she felt the effects waning. As the Dementors drifted down the corridor, right past their carriage, Quinn had broken down, a panic attack violently wracking her body. Later, the group would learn that this was her first one in years. "I think the Dementors being here is just setting me on edge."

Rio let out a sharp laugh. "I've been wanting to go back to bed since I woke up."

Sawyer wanted to tell her friends that she had a bad feeling sitting in her bones, that it was getting bad again and she was terrified all her hard work was going out the window, but it was as though someone had stuck a bottle of glue in her mouth and squeezed it all onto her tongue. So she kept quiet, pushed her eggs and bacon around a little, and the noise around her began to tunnel. Her stomach had shrunken to a tiny seed sitting in her midsection, and her appetite was gone.