Unforgivable

~Unforgivable~

Cruciatus. Crucio. Excruciating pain. Even the way the word was spoken was a reflection of silent, all-consuming pain. The pain that causes you to writhe on the floor, mouth gaping in the very image of a scream, but no sound can force itself past the agony. This is the pain that does not stop for sound. It is superior to death. You could be tortured by it forever, with fire snaking up your bare skin leaving crumbling trails of invisible ash in its wake and bands of metal twisting around your ribs like a corkscrew turned by a giant's hand, and you would never die. To die would be to escape; to fall away to that blissful, dark land with its soft embrace like the most exquisite velvet.

So the pain continues on, not pausing even for a moment of unconsciousness. You do not even remember what it was like before the curse. That feels as though it were a lifetime ago--that you awoke from your mother's womb to be greeted by this torment. Every strand of your life-force is pulsing to the beat of the torture. And you can not escape, because you do not hold the wand. Only the one who holds the wand can release you, and they never will.

He had experienced that curse once. Once, in all fifteen years of his being. He had already been in pain--there was warm blood still streaming down his lips from his broken nose.

"He's dot alone! He's still god be!"

She had been standing at the foot of the benches. She had been strangely beautiful, herself. Her lush black hair tumbled down her back in gentle waves. Her eyes were dark and alive, framed by the longest lashes he had ever seen. It was a beauty contorted by evil. She had given him the same agony she had given his parents. He saw it as a gift. The pain was the one thing he now shared with them.

He sometimes wanted to put the curse on himself. He was hungry for the anguish, the sheer, harrowing mutilation. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. When he saw the wand tip pointed inches from his face, his nerve always failed him. He hated himself for this. He was a coward in the face of danger. The fact that he could not endure a few moments of the agony that his parents had endured for hours plagued him.

But he might as well be under the curse. His life had become an embodiment of the Cruciatus, but with a pain less physical than emotional. It controlled every particle of his being. He could not scream, could not speak. He couldn't even die.

It was hilarious. He had always thought his life was in his control. Every breath he took belonged to him. He should be able to cease those breaths if he so wished.

"Mr Longbottom? The answer to question fourteen?"

He could not open his mouth to reply. If he opened his mouth, he might take a breath. He shook his head, mind fuzzy from lack of oxygen.

"Mr Longbottom?"

He could perceive a figure moving toward him, but it was tilting sharply, and splitting into a thousand shards of light and color. His ears were pounding with what sounded like music. The colors bounced to the rhythm, swirling inward, and out.

Put your whole self it, put your whole self out. Put your whole self in, and turn yourself about. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about!

The childhood song burst into his head clearly, as though he had sung it just yesterday.

"Mummy, Mummy, why is everything spinning?"

"If you didn't run in circles you wouldn't be dizzy, Neville, dear."

"Oh, Alice. Let the boy have some fun. He is only a child for so long."

His lips parted, and air rushed into his lungs. Blinking furiously to clear his vision, he shook his head again.

I'm fine.

He hadn't slept for weeks. It seemed almost as though he didn't need to. He was greater than sleep now. Or perhaps his pain would not allow for slumber.

Every day passed as though it were a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe he only thought he hadn't been sleeping. Maybe this whole thing was a dream, one long, never-ending dream in which everything was blurred and dull and faded into itself.

His reflection had surprised him one day. He hadn't been expecting to see it, but he had turned around and the bathroom mirror was there. It was like gazing into the face of a stranger. Gone was the round, content boy he had grown to accept as himself. The man in the mirror was gaunt and diminished. He could see the bones of his cheekbones and his jaw that had been concealed by layers of fat before. They seemed almost unnaturally sharp. He touched his fingertips to his face. His skin was as thin and delicate as paper. He was astonished that it didn't rip at the contact.

Leaning closer, he saw the grey shadows beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were more like reflecting pools than anything else. He couldn't see further than the surface. He wondered if he was going blind; if his sight was disappearing.

Or perhaps he was disappearing himself.

Three blind mice, three blind mice.

His mother used to call him her "Little Mouse." That used to be close to the truth. He used to be round and colorless and spoke seldom. Now he was wraith-like, grey, and didn't speak at all.

"Look, Mummy, a mousie! Help me catch it!"

"You can't catch it, Neville. It's faster than you think. It will get away."

Little Mouse-Neville had run away too. He couldn't catch him. He had been enveloped by the past, and the past didn't want to give him up. It liked Little Mouse-Neville. The future had no place for him.

But he had like Little Mouse-Neville too. But the old Neville was faster than he had thought. It had gotten away.

They didn't recognize him now. He was another face, another voice speaking quiet words as though afraid of talking too loud. Like he was afraid they might break.

But maybe they did remember him, a little. His mother, at least. She saved the wrappers for him, slipping them into his palm at the end of visits.

"Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now...."

He didn't especially like Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. But he kept the wrappers she gave him and pasted them to the inside of his trunk when he got home. The lid was covered now, and now he was expanding to the back panel. If she ever got better, he would show them to her. Maybe she would remember.

He had never had a good memory. His grandmother said that he was born with it, that it was a disappointment that he was not as talented as his mother and father had been. She was wrong. He had been very smart, and he had remembered everything. But that was Before, and this was After. When they forgot, he slowly began to forget too. Maybe one day he would forget the pain as well.

One day he would forget the pain.

Forget the pain.

The pain.

Pain.

One day.