Here We Go Again

Chapter 21: Sinking

POV: Emily

I was doing it again.

"You're doing it again."

I knew that I was, I just couldn't help myself.

"Do you do it on purpose? Some people say you do. I think you just can't help it. Your mind...Well, it's programmed that way, isn't it?"

My mind's not set on right. That's the thing.

"Then again, I can't really comment, can I? I'm the mental one."

People label you crazy because you have eccentric views, because your freedom is more vibrant than others, because the words that come out of your mouth are the things that they consider improbable or too inadequate to say in public. They're wrong, aren't they? That's not being crazy, that's just being whimsical or an individual rather than a piece of a giant plot of narrow-mindedness.

Crazy is having no control on your emotions, no control on your thoughts, no control on your behavior. Crazy is letting memories eat away your present. Crazy is allowing it. Crazy is a voice in your head that shouldn't be there. A voice that is no one else's but your own; one that says the things that you know are the honest truth, and that doesn't let you forget the rotten blood in your veins that's contaminated a great part of you.

Crazy is me.

"I've heard that you're doing much better now—"

It's a lie.

"—but I can see right through you."

That makes one.

"Don't you think it's weird, Taylor? We're hardly the best of friends, yet I can see you withering away as the days progress. I find it tragically beautiful."

It's not beautiful nor tragic, it's fated.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Things just slip out of my mouth sometimes. No wonder I have half of the school completely annoyed with me."

People do hate honesty.

"Not you, though. You always listen, regardless if you feel like I've crossed a line or what I'm saying is completely bonkers. You just listen. You're a tomb, Taylor."

A tomb...

"Look, I know that you probably wanted to be alone, hence why you're hiding underneath this tree when you should be in Astronomy class, but I really would like to talk to you about something. I know it's not my place, and Potter would murder me if he ever knew that I was bringing it up, but you're the only person I know that...I broke up with Alice."

"You broke up with Alice?" For the first time in what seemed like a moment but was definitely more than thirty minutes, I turned to Lysander Scamander and raised an eyebrow at him. "When? Why?"

"Before Sixth Year started, actually," he said casually, but there's was a glint of deep sadness and regret in his blue eyes.

My questioning did not wear off. There's no way Lysander and Longbottom broke up during the holidays. I've seen them together around the castle—haven't I? Have I even talked to Lysander at all this semester?

"Is that why Rose said she's seen you down in the gutter?" That's all I remember of Lysander all year. A passing observation Rose mentioned one night when we studied for our Charms exam. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Maybe that's how long he's been grieving his broken heart.

Lovely. He's so much better at hiding his emotions than me. Or, have I just been too caught up with my own cruel thoughts to notice the outside world?

"I thought it was appropriate at the time," continued the blonde Gryffindor. "There was so much going on at the moment...so much out of my control. I just wanted to be left alone. But Alice knows me like the back of her hand and she just didn't want to let go, she wanted to fix me without knowing the source of the problem, and I...I just couldn't tell her."

That sounds oddly familiar.

"Why would you want to leave her? You two are perfect for each other, Lysander. She could've helped. She could've made everything better."

Someone who loves you can't always fix you, though. I knew that.

"She couldn't fix what I already shattered." Taking a deep breath, Lysander Scamander lost all traces of that eccentric boy that was constantly on about unimaginable creatures, that always sported a smile, that had witty remarks to shoot, that was filled with knowledge that literally made him glow. In his place sat a boy with sadness etched in every line of his face; that was suddenly shooting out flames of misery that made a knot grow in my throat. It was brutal. It hurt.

Is that what I looked like? Is that how I felt to other people?

"All last year I begged Mum to let me go exploring the Amazonas when she told me she discovered the source of the Aquavirius Maggot's existence there. She was happy to oblige me, but when we were still in school and she was still researching the Amazonas for her work, there was a civil battle going on with the centaurs and she had to abandon the research for the potential danger. That was last April.

"By July I thought it was perfectly safe to go. Dean protested against it, he didn't want Mum and I to get hurt, especially since there was no way of knowing if the fight between the centaurs had ceased. I kept asking and asking until Mum agreed. Dean wasn't happy, but I didn't care about his warnings because the the thrill of adventure was much more important.

"We were ambushed the fourth day in," he paused for a moment, taking another deep breath and looking up at the sky. "It was a gruesome fight. The centaurs thought we were part of the Brazilian tribes that wanted to boot them off their land. There was no reasoning with the centaurs and...Mum got hurt. There was so much blood...And it wasn't until we were in a hospital that we were told she was pregnant...She was pregnant—before I dragged her to the Amazonas."

Horrified. Absolutely horrified is how I was certain I looked.

"Mum said it wasn't my fault, Lorcan nor I knew about the pregnancy. They were going to surprise us..." He clenched his jaw as he paused for another second. He spoke again with a thick voice, "Every time I looked at Mum or Dean I just felt like a monster. They were going to have their first kid together, Dean's first child, and I..."

He broke into tears and I felt like joining him. I tried to tame my horrified expression, but it only mixed with sympathy and utter grief. I didn't know what to say, didn't know how I could make his tears stop, so all I could do was put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze.

"I know that one day I'll get over my guilt, that one day I can forgive myself for what I did...But how will I ever know if my mother will be okay? How will I know that she's done grieving for the child she lost? How will I know that..." He stopped and he blinked; his blue eyes pierced right into my green ones and I was paralyzed. My heart started pounding in fear. "How did you get rid of your grief after losing your child, Emily?"

My hand slipped from his shoulder and I held my breath.

Traces— memories—of the hex that shot and electrocuted my body and killed the fetus inside of me licked my skins and shook my bones. The memory was vibrant. I remember the hate, I remember his face, and I remember the darkness that came. I remember waking up in the hospital and being told that I'd miscarried.

I remember the joy I felt.

I remember that there was no grieving, there was just sadness to feel absolutely nothing at all for the life that got extinguished before it could even bud.

I'm a monster.

"Your mother is going to be fine," my mouth moved and spewed words, my face pulling on an expression of complete understanding and reassurance. Maybe I was good. Maybe I was excellent at hiding just how messed up I was. "Luna's a strong woman, Lysander. And, yes, she might be saddened over it for a while, but she'll learn to move on. If it's meant to be, she and your stepfather will have a kid together."

"You think so?"

I nodded. "Now, go and find Alice, Lysander. Do anything you can to get her back. There's no reason why you have to punish yourself over what happened. Accidents and misfortunes are part of life, and you can't control those. Forgive yourself and get your girlfriend back."

With the shadow of his always-charming smile, Lysander Scamander embraced me tightly. I didn't want to hug him back, and I was excused when my arms were pinned and he squeezed with all his might. "Thank you, Emily," he said with a sigh of relief as he pulled away. "I've been wanting to talk to you about this for ages but I didn't want to make it uncomfortable. You're stronger than you let on, you know."

I handed him his disregarded schoolbag. "Forget Astronomy class, go find Alice. A giant romantic gesture at this time will surely make her putty in your hands."

"I'll walk you to Gryffindor Tower first," he said as he stood from the hill. "It's dangerous this time at night."

Don't I know it. I was mauled and raped by a werewolf at this time of night last year.

A winning smile appeared on my face. "Oh, you go on. I'm waiting for James, anyway. I'll be fine."

It was so easily bought. It was all it took for Lysander to wish me a goodnight and set off towards the castle again with a skip to his step. The sound of his cheerful whistle mixed in with the knocking that was going on in my head when my mind started playing a memory that was just as fresh and potent as all the other torturing ones I owned.

'Emily!'

'Go away,' she retorted at the voice coming from the other side of her bedroom door. She was busy running around her room, yanking things out of her drawers and closet to stuff them inside a backpack she transfigured from a paper bag from the grocery store.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

'Emily!' The knocking got louder, more threatening. 'Open this door, you brat!'

She rolled her eyes. 'Go on without me,' she called back as she punched the sweater inside her backpack so she could shove in a small wooden box into it. 'I'm not feeling well. I think I'm coming down with a cold and London weather will not do me any good. Just leave.'

KNOCK! KNOCK!

'Nick, just go without—'

BANG.

With a gasp, she turned around and stared outraged at the man that had practically kicked off her bedroom door from its hinges. 'Are you insane?!' Her green eyes were wide, matching his perfectly. 'I'm not fixing that!'

His eyes glanced towards the door, looking at the barricade that had previously separated them for a single second. Nick Taylor turned back to his sister and the deepest frustration glittered his orbs. 'Don't you worry about it, Emily,' his tone was frightfully condescending, 'I'll just pull my wand out of my pocket and fix it myself. How stupid of me: I thought I was the wizard and you were the Squib.'

Her own frustration towards her sibling disappeared. Guilt came back with a pat to her shoulder, her old friend. She knew that she had no control on her brother's lack of magic, yet she felt like she stole it and kept it all to herself selfishly.

'Going somewhere?' He noticed the stuffed backpack on her bed.

'I...um...I was just—' A popping sound echoed around the room and she felt panic for a moment. Nick looked around, brows furrowed, but the noise quickly faded and was forgotten. Emily exhaled. 'I'm going to New York.'

Her brother snorted. 'Funny,' he said with disregard, 'but I've got a corporate party to attend. And seeing as the host is my boss and he thrives on family unity, and I am trying to move up in the law firm to sustain both of us, I suggest you put on a dress and act like a muggle girl for a few hours because you're coming with me.'

She shook her head. Defiance—for the first time in her lifetime since Nick's been her legal guardian, she was putting her foot down.

'I asked you to come,' muttered Emily with a hint of emotion poking out. 'I asked you to go to New York with me, Nick.'

'You're not going,' he snapped, swallowing a knot in his throat. Whether it was red emotions, angry ones, or mournful ones, Emily had no idea. 'There's no point going back into the past, Emily; you're only going to end up opening old wounds. You're going to hurt yourself. There's a reason why I don't want to go, why I don't want you to go...New York is not our home anymore. There's nothing for us there.'

The young witch was momentarily sidetracked. There were only hazy memories of Nick giving her comfort, of Nick being a human being with emotions other than anger, back when they were children, that she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She couldn't believe that the barriers and masks had fallen; that he looked like he was about to let his memories and hurt flood in.

He looked concerned. He looked like her brother.

'I know that going home will be hard, but I...we just need to. It's been been seven years, Nick. We need to go back. We need to go back and remember our roots. We need to remember the happy family we were.'

'We were not a happy family!' If she thought she'd won the first battle, she was completely wrong. He pulled out his gun and shot. 'We were about appearances! That's why they shipped me off to Tokyo like I was a fucking plague because I didn't have magic in my veins! They didn't love us, Emily!'

Tears welled in her eyes. 'That's not true!'

'Get dressed,' he hissed at her. 'You've got ten minutes to meet me in the car, Emily, or you can forget about seeing your boyfriend for the rest of your vacation!'

Emily opened her mouth to protest but her brother had already given her his back and stomped his way out of her room.

'Are you sure this is worth it?' A dim voice asked her as she waved her wand at the door and it put itself together; shutting itself after it was done.

A hand was put on her shoulder. She looked at it, the piece of body appearing from thin air. She guessed where the eyes were and she nodded. 'They're my parents, it's definitely worth it.'

Harry Potter appeared with a tug of his Invisibility Cloak. 'James won't be happy that he won't get to see you for the remainder of your winter holiday.'

'If you were given the chance to visit your parents' grave sooner than the first time you did, Mister Potter, would you have taken it?'

The Chosen One's bespectacled, emerald eyes glazed over with deep thought. It took him a moment to release a sigh and nod. 'We better hurry.'

Emily was quick to slip on her backpack and take Mister Potter's outstretched hand. It took one deep inhale and a quick self-assurance that she was doing the right thing when she felt the horrible sensations of apparition pulling her away from her bedroom.

My teeth bared at the same time that my nails retracted like a cat's would and dug themselves deep into the roots of the grass I was sitting on. A hiss of pain escaped my lips and it wasn't due to any external wounds. It was all the internal ones reopening—it was all the memories quaking awake, making me feel every miserable emotion I've collected in the sixteen years of my life.

I screamed.

"I can't do this," I cried into the night. "I'm done. I'm done!"

Almost a year of psychiatry sessions with a Healer from St. Mungo's and I haven't made any progress. Months of sitting in a chair, hearing him tell me all these ways that I could keep the voices in my head from talking, how I could shut away the grief, how I could forgive myself, how I could move on—all fucking useless.

I am useless; I'm broken. There's no fixing me.

I was too damaged to be fixed by a Healer with breathing techniques and words of encouragement. His advice couldn't fix someone who'd been neglected by her parents, raised by a nanny, had a dysfunctional family, whose mother was never home to embrace her daughter when she was scared or lonely, a father whose entire function was to keep his legacy pure and his investments rising higher and higher, and a brother who loathed his sister because of DNA mistakes she had nothing to do with.

The Healer's advice would be better suited for someone who hadn't murdered her parents, someone who wasn't given a chance to grieve them, someone who was torn from her homeland and then shipped off to a boarding school where she didn't know a single soul.

The Healer's advice would do wonders for someone who hadn't been attacked physically, emotionally, and mentally by a werewolf. Someone who hadn't been sixteen and gotten raped and pregnant by that werewolf. Someone who hadn't miscarried two months following the traumatizing event.

I was a lost cause and no one wanted to see it. They all just thought I needed more time, more space, more help, more comforting, more love, and more advice. I didn't need all of that. I didn't want any of it.

I needed an escape. I needed an end.

Fumbling a shaking hand into my open schoolbag, I let my fingers find the metallic object that'd been stored and hidden in there for several weeks. My fingers gripped it, a cry got stuck in my throat, and then I pulled my hand out: a blade glowed in the moonlight.

I brought the tip of the blade to my left wrist. I was about to plunge it in, but James' face appeared through the cycle of memories playing in my head. I saw his brown eyes, so beautiful and big and rimmed with thick lashes. I saw the nose he'd inherited from his father, his mother's smile along with the slightest whisper of freckles across his nose that he got from her. His untamable black hair, the scar on his left temple from a bludger he took to the face when he was eight. I saw every little aspect of his face and it hurt.

Some would say that sixteen is too young to know about true love, but that was the only positive thing I was absolutely sure about: James Sirius Potter was the love of my life. He was everything.

I didn't deserve him.

He needed someone just as in love with life as he is. He needed someone healthy, someone who's mind didn't feed her poison. Someone who didn't come with unmovable bruises and scars. He needed a girl just as adventurous and loud as him; not someone who he felt he needed to protect every single second of the day for the fear that she'd break herself.

The blade sliced deeply through my wrist in one fluid motion.

I should've felt immense pain, shouldn't I? I should've felt my skin rip open and my veins slice up—but I didn't. The physical pain wasn't an option. Physical pain was tamed because the excruciating burning of everything inside of me overpowered it. It just made the cutting of my next wrist and its vein almost graceful.

I watched the blood ooze out from both my wrists for a long moment. My mind went blank for what seemed like hours, but the cold splashing of water around my ankles climbing higher alerted me and I refocused. I was inside of the Black Lake, marching in deeper to the hollows of it.

My eyes fluttered shut. The blood was still squirting out of my popped veins and I could feel myself growing weaker. A laugh passed my lips. I could feel the life coming out of me, too. It was...

There was no ground to set my feet on anymore. The icy, dark water of the lake reached my neck and I opened my eyes again. Everything was so dark, almost unrecognizable as my eyelids grew heavy and my heart wasn't beating the way it should to sustain every organ and cell inside my body alive.

I was dying.

I was ready to die.

How strange: I felt peaceful as I sunk into the lake and water covered me all.

I'm sorry, was all I could think of; finally, said the voice inside my head.

Then there was nothing.