Forgotten

"Can you hear me?" "Easy, Siri, let her rest." "I know, it's just...well..." "She's probably still out cold."

Sounds like voices. I must be hallucinating again. Either that or I am eavesdropping on someone else's nightmare, here in Azkaban. The thought makes me want to laugh - instead I choke on a cough. Have I forgotten how to laugh as well?

"Easy...you'll be all right..."

Soothing voice. This must be a nightmare...reminding us all of what we can't have. How appropriate. The few good things we do remember make us wish we could just forget them all anyway. Another choking cough.

And I feel - I sense it. I feel something. My throat hurts from the cough. It feels rough against my throat, my mouth. I actually feel something. It is incredible. I do not remember the last time I actually felt anything. I thought I was simply numb. Perhaps not.

That voice again - "Can you hear me?"

It sounds so real...I simply long for it to be real. But it cannot be so.

Then again, why not? What do I have to lose by talking to someone else's hallucinations? I try to move my mouth, try to force a voice out of my throat. It sounds like a cough, only it is a word: "Yes."

"You can?!" The voice is so loud, so alive, so near... "Oh, gods..." It trails off. I want to tell the voice to keep speaking, even though I am sure it is not real, but I cannot make another word exit my lips. I remain silent. Sometimes, during the rare moments of lucidity, I feel that they do not need to keep most of us in Azkaban - most of us are now prisoners of our own sensory-deprived bodies, our own blank prison-cell cadavers.

I feel something else - something rough against my skin. How ironic that when I finally begin to feel something, all the sensations are abrasive and rude. But something is better than nothing, and I have had nothing for so long...

I feel nothing for long moments - perhaps I was not lucid or awake then. But then I recognize another sensation: movement. I am on a train, a slow broomstick, something moving without any speed and with a slow, rocking motion. But I soon realize that it is me. That I am rocking back and forth, shaking somehow. How long has it been since I last moved, that moving now seems so foreign to my stationary body-prison?

"Open your eyes," the voice says, very near, nearer than before. What eyes, I want to ask? Why have eyes when there is nothing to see? Why have mouths when there is nothing to taste, why bodies when there is nothing to feel? Why continue to exist, except for the fact that there is no way to end oneself quickly in Azkaban? But I am still mute.

"Siri, let her rest. She'll need time." "Time enough, you don't understand, she's been in so long, she has to come out of it now. Open your eyes!" The voice is firm, commanding, so sure of my completion of its task. I have no eyes to open, I am sure; I am only a mind, continuing to exist bleakly - there are ways to turn off the body, when it is unused, but one cannot disengage the mind. At least not at will, anyway.

Feelings keep returning to my body, unbidden. I wonder just how deep this hallucination is - it is nothing like the pale memory of dancing at the Potters' wedding, just a wisp of a recollection that that mocks me every so often.

Then the voice says the magic word, says something that sounds like a name. It sounds so familiar, and yet so very foreign. A name? But whose? Why is this kind, surreal voice saying it? Who is lucky enough to own that name? I have none.

He says it again - I know it is a man now. I can hear again. I am still moving - I cough again - it is almost too much for me. Suddenly I can hear and feel, after years of nothingness, and somehow I know that if I were to open my eyes I would finally lose my mind - either because there would be something for me to finally look at, and I would not be able to comprehend it without succumbing to insanity, or that there would be nothing there, and I would simply and finally die of despair.

"Open your eyes, please. Come back to me." And I wonder how I can resist the pleading note in that voice - the desperation that resounds in it. Even if it is just a hallucination, what have I to lose in death? I will go to him...

I open my eyes.

shock shocking color colors bright lights heat skin on my hands someone touching me itchy robes unfamiliar brown couch fire face close to me skin sounds crackling voice talking where am I

Where am I?

tall walls ceiling where am I voice black hair black eyes skin on my skin someone touching me heavy blankets on my legs hearing voices how did I get here how am I still alive

Senses come at me in a rush, and suddenly I hear and experience everything. It is beyond overwhelming, it makes me shut my eyes again, just to block out the one sense I can control. My hands instinctively fly up to cover my face, but someone else's hands control mine and pull them down, back down to my sides.

"No, no, no," the voice says gently, and it is the owner of this voice who is holding my hands down. "Open your eyes again, it's all right to look. You're safe here, you're safe now."

I open my eyes slowly, obeying - because it seems that this hallucination has something substantial about him, something true and somehow real - and I am squinting against the sudden brightness of the room. I cannot be in Azkaban still. Everything there was cold, hard, and gray. Things have distinguishing features here - skin, itchy, bright, warm, gentle. It is so real that it cannot possibly be real.

"That's right, keep them open." How does he know?

I try to speak - my mind is racing, there are a thousand questions, a thousand things I must know, but my voice simply will not obey. All I can manage to croak out is, "...where-?"

"Where are you?" the voice guesses. I cannot see him yet - just the ceiling above me, plain white. It meets the wall at such a straight line. There are shadows flickering across both the wall and the ceiling's beams, shadows that come from fire. How long has it been since I have seen or felt a fire? Or any warmth, for that matter?

"Remus Lupin's Azkaban Rehabilitation Center," a second voice adds, a familiarly sarcastic note in his voice.

"Remmie, shut it," the first voice says playfully.

"Why? If I harbor the Azkaban fugitives, I ought to be able to joke about it with them," the second retorts.

Azkaban fugitives? My brain is clamoring for answers. Azkaban fugitives - it cannot be...

Then the first voice says the sweet word that sounds like a name again, and manage, with some effort, to turn my head to look at him. It takes long moments before my eyes focus on what I gather to be his face, and when my eyes do focus, I know that I am hallucinating.

What cruel invention have the Dementors placed upon us now? I cannot even imagine what it is, because in front of me is the face of my lover, Sirius. I know it is not him. I know he is long gone, as I will be soon.

"Desdemona," he says quietly, lovingly. I faint.