Who: Susan and Blaise Where: Tucked away behind a statue somewhere What: Interrupted hysteria When: 6 January, 8.30ish pm
Rating: G
The breaking of the quill seemed inconsequential, as did the splattered ink across her fingertips, as Susan reread, reread, reread her own trembling script, trying not to think it, to think what she had nearly written. What if they're dead. She couldn't hear Nyx or his low, unfriendly hisses at the foreigner that inhabited his cage; she couldn't hear the loud, happy noises from the common room. She simply let the journal fall closed to her bed, stood upright, and stared. Elsewhere. She needed to be anywhere but here. Anywhere alone.
Her heart. All she could hear was her heart as she left the dorm, left the common room, deaf to the calls of her friends, of her classmates. And then she walked, slowly, calmly, through halls, up stairs, past professors, chest bursting, begging for air - screaming soon – until she had found a desolate niche.
It wasn't until she had safely tucked herself into the spacious recess behind a statue of Bredwick the Bold that she dared to gasp, a loud, wretched noise that could not bring forth tears. She wouldn't. She wouldn't cry. It wasn't allowed.
Not caring to sit in the common room or the library, pretending to revise -- and wanting to simply be moving, to know the feel of air brushing past his face, turning alternately warm and cold as he passed by windows, Blaise found himself wandering the corridors. Snow falling outdoors prevented a trek there, possibly to the paddocks. Hope that his brother would write him soon kept his heart afloat, and kept his mind occupied. Occupied, that is, until he passed a statue and heard a noise, definitely from some other person. Frowning, he investigated. His mouth started to sneer at the sight of their illustrious Head Girl -- possibly in wait for some paramour? The sneer faded, though, at the sight of her face: pale, drawn, and close to panic. "Bones?"
Her head, shaking, tried to ward him off where words could not. She couldn't be seen, couldn't be heard; and now, she couldn't speak, for with air, with sound came the risk of spilling that agony she'd bottled up till bursting. Strength - how desperately she searched for it, curled in her corner, braced against statue, against wall - but it never seemed to come. He wouldn't move; some pitiable attempt at answer was little more than a choked sound, and wan features tightened, clamped shut, locked against any possible release.
Not certain that he even wanted to be here, but equally certain that he couldn't just leave Susan to whatever grief held her in its clasp, he stood, wavering. And then, decision made. Hufflepuff she was, but he wasn't heartless. Carefully, he wedged himself behind the statue as well, lowering himself into the opposite corner. And waited.
Susan stared at him, eyes wide, dangerously glossy, wishing he wouldn't sit there, wouldn't wait, as if his very presence demanded something from her.
"I c... an't." Strangled and visceral, she choked against her own reticence.
And then, in some vicious moment of realization, she couldn't bear it. Recoiling in misery, one of her hands lashed out, fingers sprawling, clutching into his robes with a vice-like hopelessness, as if to hold him at bay, even as her other curled up, buried into her ribs, under her sternum, trying with a manic desperation to keep everything inside.
Heartbeats, and then a hollow, horrible noise. "Oh God." The heat that seared across her eyes was blinding - or perhaps that was the tears - and she shook, she fell upon her knees, she coughed, retching some agonized noise of misery against repressed ribs. Whatever was meant to come after was impossible, for she was sobbing, every violent gasp a low, utterly ruined noise.
A faint question of how he found himself in these situations crossed his mind, but in any case he did as he would were Susan any female friend of his. Extracting her hand from his robes, he simply held her, desperately hoping that no one would come around. He still didn't speak, just kept his arms around her shoulders, patting every few moments.
With no sort of comfort (not that he could have known to give any), Susan simply cried, choking on breaths that were getting harder and harder to acquire. Lack of breath, lack of any rational thought, and she began to work herself into a kind of hysteria she couldn't cope with, sobs replaced by harsh gasps and muffled syllables that spilled wetly into his sweater. "He's killed them! I know it!" What would have been a high pitched keen was made dull by breathlessness, but the terror that shook across each syllable was unmistakable. "Oh God! I'm going to die." Her entire body, then, shuddering, heaving, arched like something feral at the thought. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't.
She knows this fear, too. More, even. The realisation hit him squarely, stealing his own breath for a moment before relinquishing it and he breathed again, jerkily. He tightened his hold on her, unsure of what words she needed to hear, but wanting to speak regardless. When her hysteria took hold completely though, he jerked her away. "Susan." She didn't hear him, couldn't have heard him, as her name was no more than a whisper. Louder, then, and with a shake. "Susan!"
Eyes, painfully wide, stared back at him. Blank, glazed as her lips continued to move - but the breath was gone. She simply shook in his grasp, wretched, afraid, miserable, deaf; but the shake, the sharpness snapped some awareness into place that would have been impossible on her own. "I c-c-c-an't." Stuttering now, or chilled, she didn't know; her body seemed like a foreign creature, rebelling against her, refusing to be silent, cringing where she demanded strength. But the shrieking - the horrible noises had stopped - and she simply -stared-. Stupidity, embarrassment, fear of saying too much - it was all superceded by horror. "They haven't. I can't." Tears again, this time silent as they washed over peaked features.
Silence -- mostly -- filled his ears and he was grateful for it. And silently still, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into her hand; she'd want it later. He shifted until he was kneeling before her, the stone cold beneath his knees. "You will." He knew her fear, understood what she would not say, but wouldn't let her drown in it, not when he himself would not allow himself that luxury. "Or it will have been in vain."
Whether it was his words, or the slice of possibility rallying whatever bit of bravery Susan Bones possessed, she finally accomplished what had too long been arrested - an unlabored breath. It was low, deep, and parted clouded, obsessive worries if only for a moment. It was long enough to reveal some tiny morsel of hope, spurred more by his stability than by his insistence, and she grasped at it, held it, forced herself to focus her energies upon it entirely. "What time is it." An odd calm. She needed something, she could feel it.
He pushed the sleeve of his jumper up, the gold of his watch glinting in torchlight. "It is thirty-five minutes past eight in the evening. You have missed an appointment?"
Her head shook abruptly. "No." Each breath deliberate, soothing, for she could feel panic welling up in her again. "I need." God, I can't do this. "If you could please find me an auror." She was struggling again. "It's very. Important." Tears again, and she hated them, but better to tear than to cry, to scream again - she would have to relent for now. "Please."
His stomach dropped at the thought of an Auror, unreasonable thoughts breezing through his head. What if they can read it on me? That I've been touched by this, that my father's a bastard that -- He nodded. "Here? Send them here, that is?" He knew there were a few empty classrooms down the corridor. And, finally. "You'll be all right?"
She nodded, the bubbling hysteria held back only by that one, desperate sliver of hope. "Yes." Pulling away, then, Susan leaned heavily into the wall, murmuring stupidly to herself. "Everything I have." A vicious head shake. "I'll be fine." Resoluteness in voice, if not in spirit, and she held herself together by fingers and knees, curling, again silent, calm. She had to.