•*•*•*•*•

THERE WAS AN ITCH WITHIN HIM.

Life was clawing at his chest with razor sharp talons, pressuring his breath to exit through his mouth and take his first gasp in more than a decade. Blood pumped through his lungs at speeds that shouldn't be possible, but were. Control returned and it felt like he'd been sleeping for 100 years, just now awoken with a sudden purpose to breathe.

To open his mouth and scream to his hearts content, to lay blinking at a ceiling until he was sure. Until he was one hundred percent sure that he was alive.

Which he wasn't. Not yet.

Every feeling that threw itself at him and every impulsive thought that shot through his brain faster than the speed of sound was stuff he resisted. It was a hard task but he managed it, he did not fling his eyes open and get used to light he hadn't seen in a while, he did not start scratching at his own chest to get this feeling out.

And most of all, he did not open his mouth. Because some part of him knew, some part of him could feel...that he was under water.

Floating lonely in a deep abyss, he could feel his hairs waving slowly, the water on the surface of his skin. His clothes hanging heavy on him, almost dragging him down to the very depths of the water he was submerged in. Sinking down and further down.

Water in his lungs, his nose and his mouth. Small bubbles escaped from it but he refused to make any movement.

Until he was forced to.

A slim, bony hand enclosed his bicep. Nails tore his jacket, his shirt and his skin. So sharp that he could already feel the blood seeping into the water around him, the first instinct was to tug himself away from this grip, but it was just too tight. At first he tried to play it off as a nightmare, a bad dream, but then the nails dug deeper and he was forced to open his eyes.

At once he was attacked by liquid in his vision, a dark and cloudy sight with the faint outline of some sort of person in front of him. Though this person was skinny, almost only bone and it swam in the water like a dementor without its cape, that thought was when he truly realised what danger he was in and what was grasping him.

Inferi. Hundreds of them, grasping at his skin and tugging him further down into the water. Wrapping their skinny arms around his body, strangling him, restricting his breath and bruising his skin. He tried not to freak out, attempted not to flail and instead reached for the stick he knew was wedged in his pants, taunting him by poking his thigh whilst these creatures attacked him.

Fire. Extinguished by the water around him and put out by his own stupidity. He was running out of time, his lungs were screaming for relief and he kicked his legs to swim to the surface. The Inferi didn't want that to happen and kept a hold of him, scratching his skin and letting red seep out into the murky blue surrounding him, dirty water infecting the newly formed cut.

A muffled yell of agony. A hand curling around his wand and then he was safe, a break from the weighing down of his drenched clothes as he ascended out of the water and landed harshly on a pile of rocks. Another small groan at the pain that shot through him and his back, the sound was deep and gravelly but he didn't have time to react to his own voice.

The Inferi were crawling slowly out of the water, scrambling towards him but despite his injuries, he was faster.

"Incendio!"

Hastily, his surroundings burnt orange and the Inferi fell back to their depths, screeching in horror. It was an ear-shredding sound but he couldn't bring himself to care as he ward them off with the flames from his wand, waving it round and round so he was protected was the greedy hands of the Inferni that wanted to kill him.

Eventually, all the screeching died down and he lowered his wand, flames ceasing from the powerful blaze that it had been. Sweat was dripping down his face and he could feel his arms getting slippery and claustrophobic in his jacket, but all he wanted to do was sit down, lie back on the rocks and catch his breath that he hadn't breathed in a very long time.

"Thank you, Professor Missotal." He breathed heavily, once again startled by his own voice, how it felt to talk. It wasn't rough like he expected, it felt freeing to be talking, freeing to feel his lips moving and his tongue forming words. "Wow. Wow, wow, wow. This is my voice, this is my voice, one two three, one two three. Sebastian. Sebastian Hargreeves. Wow, wow, one two. Which witch gave which wand to which witch who wanted which wand?"

Sebastian quickly glanced around the location he was in, making sure that no one had seen his embarrassing test of using his voice. The place was desolate, for that he was thankful.

It was also dark and lonely and Sebastian became acutely aware of the fact that he needed a quick escape plan, he needed to go home. Because he had no idea where the hell he was or how the hell he got there.

He needed to get back to his parents, to his dear sister, he needed them to know that he was okay after the fight in the alleyway. He was fine. Sebastian was okay. He would go home and scoop Elladora into his arms, hug her tightly and twirl her until she got dizzy and fell back so he could catch her again and put her into her bed. Safe and secure.

"Oh God." He mumbled, getting to his feet and massing his throat. Feeling the soft skin under his fingertips, Sebastian revelled in the feeling. It all felt new, amazingly new and fresh. He could touch, he could feel and he could taste the air and the life around him although he seemed to be trapped in some sort of cave.

Stood on some rocks in a cave, Sebastian put his hands on his hips and surveyed his chances of getting out. Slim to none. There was some sort of sink on this rock and Sebastian walked over to it, admiring the crystalline design to which he ran his fingers over. It was full of water and inside was a necklace.

A very ugly necklace.

Sebastian reached into the water and clasped his hands around the necklace, trying to yank it out from the bottom of the basin but it had a great resistance. Shrugging, the boy left it alone and walked away from the sink to the other side of the pile of rocks. Simply water.

Nothing else.

"Apparition it is." He clasped his hands together, closing his eyes and concentrating really really hard because he had only just learnt the skill. The lessons had been hell.

Three of his friends had lost his eyebrows and one ended up with a cut on his head from the apparition lessons in their sixth year. The worst year of his life. How he got stuck in this cave was unknown, but he was thankful for the reprieve he got from his studies. Apparition had come quite easy to him, forced apparition from his parents since he started at Hogwarts helped with that. He was a very skilled wizard and anyone would be a fool not to realise it.

Professor Slughorn hadn't made him prefect in his fifth year, he was hoping to make Head Boy when he went into his seventh but he reckoned that his friend already had that position secured. He was a Gryffindor after all and anyone could see that Albus Dumbledore favoured his own house over all the rest, it was just a simple fact. Sebastian just didn't understand why his skill always went unrewarded.

Except for his sister, who always had that impressed and glazy wide-eyed look when he performed spells in front of her after he had turned 17 in the early days of September in his sixth year. He'll never forget the first time he lit a candle by her bedside and he could practically see her brain exploding from behind her eyes, of course she had seen her parents use magic and their house elf use magic.

But Sebastian was different, he did simple things like light a candle or cause her ceiling to reflect a starry sky for the nights where she couldn't sleep. Sebastian was the only one in the house that she cared for and his ability to do magic was astounding to her. He couldn't wait until he took her to Diagon Alley to get her first wand, watch her do her first spells, watch her make friends as she came into her first year of Hogwarts...it was a future that excited him.

In order to see it, however, he had to escape from this cave.

He closed his eyes slowly, concentrated on a singular image in his mind and then felt himself being sucked into the familiar feeling of apparition. His body squeezing, his stomach lurching as he was taken through time and space to get to the place he had most desired. It was only about two seconds of travelling before his feet had landed on a hard surface and he found himself in a small village.

Of course he wanted to see his sister, but he would be lying if he said he wasn't parched and craved a butterbeer immediately. He had taken himself to the Three Broomsticks Inn, his favourite place to go with his friends when they had their weekly Hogsmeade trips. It was a miracle that his mother had signed his permission slip and he was over the moon when she had, running to meet his friends at the start of third year with the paper wafting in his hand.

It smelled just the same, of burning fire and a honey scent sitting in his nostrils like it had never left. A wizard sat at a table by himself looked up at the young boy and furrowed his eyebrows as Sebastian took in a large whiff of the place that was so homely and familiar, all he did was nod towards the wizard with a smile and set off towards the bar.

A woman was dusting it with a cloth, her hair in blonde ringlets and her apron stained. She looked much older than the usual bartender he saw every time he came in, he had never ordered the drinks but his friend who did had been obsessed over the young and beautiful owner of the Inn ever since he had set eyes on her.

"Rosmerta not working today?" He asked the older woman who was scrubbing down the stains probably left by older magic folk who sit there drinking all day, a polite smile was painted on his face but she looked at him like he had use the Confundus Charm on her.

"Are you having me on, love?" She stopped scrubbing and looked up at him, putting a hand on her hip and then raising her eyebrows slightly at the sight of his face. "You look familiar."

"I come here every week." He shrugged his shoulders but her confusion only grew as she squinted her eyes at him, whoever this woman was, she was very confusing. "Please can I have a butterbeer?"

The woman merely grunted and got a glass from underneath the bar, leaving Sebastian to look around the bar. It had changed decoration slightly from when he had last been in just the weekend before, but he couldn't put a finger on what had changed around here. An abandoned Daily Prophet sat on one of the empty tables with a headline of 'THE BOY WHO LIED'.

Sebastian took a step towards it, intrigued but the woman slammed the glass down on the bar before him which prevented him from picking the paper up. He thanked her hastily, fished money from out of his pocket and then drained the glass of the sweet liquid inside, wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve and then leaving the glass on the bar.

"Thanks. Give Rosmerta my best, tell her that I'm Rodney Parish's friend." He tapped the bar as she gaped at him and shook her head, opening her mouth to say something but he had already apparated again, leaving her in the dust to shake her head at the spot he had once been.

"Rodney Parish." She muttered, under her breath with a small smirk and then continued to scrub down her bar. "That child needs some serious help. Is Rosemerta working today? Like I'm not right in front of his eyes."

•*•*•*•*•

A/N: welcome! i am so excited