If everyone was crazy, we'd all be normal.

The heat licked at Katarina's skin, scalding hot enough that when she closed her eyes she nearly believed that it was the flames themselves. She was less than a foot away from the open hearth and the sensation straddled the fine line between comforting and unpleasant, slowly turning her back to a rosy red as the heat sunk deeper and deeper, leaving a physical trail of anger where it caressed her.

The brunette had retreated from her dorm room about twenty minutes ago, woken by a loud snore from one of her roommates and then kept awake by the draft that echoed through the room. Most students had come to the general agreement that the winter was over, though Kat had never truly trusted the blossoming trees until the ground exploded green and the last frosts were a distant memory.

Katarina moved another inch away from the fireplace, keeping the balance between pain and pleasure at an artful level. The common room was silent in a way you only found at two in the morning - no study groups, no chattering cliques, no excitement at all - only the occasional popping spark on the fire and the ethereal wind that whispered as ghosts entered and exited the room.

Cerelia was more or less gone from school as she dealt with her new family responsibility, Kendall had his hands full with their father, Gisele had dropped out for the baby, and Elijah had disappeared from her life almost as soon as she had boarded the train back to Hogwarts. All of the people she had always thought she needed had disappeared without a backward glance, leaving the young Rookwood to cope with solitude.

Katarina had always been a friend to silence. She had been first introduced by Augustus, pushed into the back folds of the family and handed over to tutors who had little interest in her words. Later, quiet had become part of Katarina's identity - shutting up was the most natural and safe response to any situation. But recently there had been no one there to hear her even if she had had something to say.

What thought that she would have was worth shouting to the world?

The near-constant introspection and silent observation led Katarina's mind in unexplored directions. Small epiphanies delighted her and gave each day meaning as the Ravenclaw neglected her studies in an effort to instead examine only what was directly visible in the world around her, particularly what was right under her nose.

For example; who would have known that Professor Hayes' cat could get into the kitchens by himself or that Adrienne Reynolds nibbled at her lip when studying for midterms?

Katarina moved another inch forward, vaguely wondering how far she would have to move away before giving up and returning to her dorm. The room was practically empty now with three of the girls gone and Katarina was convinced that the extra space was only contributing to the draft problem. Despite the spring, things only seemed to be getting colder at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The blonde locks were tickling into her nose. The shoulder which her cheek rested on was bony, and impossibly warm. The sweater stretching over the bony shoulder was woollen, and had the lemony tang of the washing powder Mum always bought from the nearest supermarket. Her wrists ached, and her back hurt from standing too long, but it was peaceful.

A warm hand smoothed down the curls on her right cheek, and Rika pressed up into the touch, rubbing her jaw against the palm. A quiet chuckle came from somewhere above her head, and the sensation of soft lips pressing to her scalp sent warmth sliding into Rika’s chest. Then someone whispered, “Take care” and cold air stung her cheek, and her chin slid down suddenly to knock against her collarbone as the support was withdrawn, and the lemon scent was gone.

Rika blinked blearily and opened her eyes, and saw a girl with rounded shoulders and golden hair walking away, away, in the distance; and it was wrong, so wrong, wrong- her ankles knocked against the manacles holding them back, the iron cuffs chafed against her wrists but she couldn’t stop struggling, heart speeding up till it would burst under the strain, breach ricocheting in her chest in vain attempts to get free- get free, free, have to get- and she was shuddering, jerking, straining, words escaping like useless pellets against the useless swollen mass that was her tongue- “No no please don’t please-” , but they were so heavy, a grown-up’s chains weighing down on an eleven year old girl and they hurt and she couldn’t move and she was going, she couldn’t move, couldn’t-


A hitch in the dark of night, a gasp of someone jerking awake.

Her eyelids saw dark, absolute dark and several minutes passed before the pupils begun dilating, adjusting to the lack of light. Her harsh, heaving breaths were the only ones polluting the silence- that too unheard, beyond the periphery of her bedhangings. She never screamed, her nightmares haunted her and her alone. The Silencing Ward was still up every night.

A low, hoarse croak in the dark. “Bren?”

Nothing in response, except the thundering of her heart beneath her chest.

“Bren.”

Quiet.

Her hands were fisting the covers beneath the sheets, clenching compulsively till her knuckles drained of blood. A small voice, stinking of fear filled the silence, and she wondered when she had stopped recognizing it as her own. “B-bren...th-this isn’t funny....just come out already.”

And the night was drawing closer again, pressing against her skin suffocatingly, the air laden with sweat and cloying at her nostrils, sinking through her lungs and congealing at the bottom as choking clots of fear, the covers trapping her legs which seemed dead blocks of lead, all whispering one taunt in the quietness of the air- mad mad out of her mind insane crazy mad-

And the covers were off, and the cold of the stone floor burned up her bare feet like icy fire, and the dorm door slammed open and she was running down the stairs, stubbing her toe at the bottom in a faint, blunted twinge of pain that barely registered against the whirlwind. And she was across the common room in three strides, fingers fisting against the knocker attached to the entrance and rattling it, the sound echoing through stone and wood hollowly. But it was sealed, like all common room entrances were after curfew, ever since the werewolf attack. And she was trapped with no biting wind to sear across her senses, no open skies of the Tower to give the illusion of freedom. And they were all illusions, because no place under the sun could truly remove the shackles bound to her.

Wide, dilated pupils scanned the room, restless, crazed.....searching for illusionary comfort that would help her hold it back.....just for a little while longer. They alighted on the brightest thing in the room, the crackling fire- spitting out embers into the darkened air. And the bare heels of her feet were frozen where they stood, pressed against the stone.

“C-can I....” Her throat cleared uselessly, tasting of sandpaper. Her hands were still fisted against the wrinkled cloth of her pajamas. “....can I sit next to the fire? I’m cold.”

Cold. Her palms ran over her bare, goose-flesh ridden upper arms, dragging down till her thumbs hooked into the inner crease of her elbows. She was cold, and she’d been waiting for four years, and it never seemed to get any warmer.

This was the type of atmosphere that couldn't be recreated. Katarina had been sitting there so long that the small sounds of crackling fire and whispering ghosts faded into the silence, creating a delicate tapestry of layered nothingness. She found this serene silence most often in the Rookwood forest, sitting on a rock or resting on the cottage roof until all of nature formed a dull hum in the air.

Crash

Katarina's bubble shattered as someone bolted across the common room. Her neck snapped to attention to stare as the girl was stopped at the door and forced to turn back into the room that she was so desperately trying to flee. She watched her blatantly, manners momentarily forgotten as she reeled from the shock of losing her oasis.

The other girl had caught Katarina's eye but seemed to stare right through her as she made her way closer and closer to the fireplace and it's companion. She stopped in front of her and it wasn't until she spoke that Katarina was really sure that the other girl was really capable of it. She nodded, half-mumbling "Yes, sorry." as she slid across the floor to make room for the other girl. She was unaware of her apology as it slipped out but it somehow felt justified, as if she should have made the room from the start.

Katarina was not cold. Her back was tingling, burning, practically boiling at it's proximity to the open flame. The heat barreled into her back and then traveled more gently into the extremities, warming down to her bare toes and simply painted nails. Her move shifted Katarina to more of a diagonal, not quite facing the stranger but not quite facing out into the room, shifting the full force of the fire on to her side rather than her back.

The presence of another person brought back a self-consciousness that the night had, so far, been free of. She had pulled her knees up towards her chest in the move and now forced herself into a more elegant position - back straighter, neck higher, legs curled off to the side. Katarina looked over at the other Ravenclaw before quickly looking away, back towards her hands that played with the loose fibers on the rug below them.

Katarina had recognized the girl as soon as she had came into the light. Dixon - the mad girl. While Katarina had never been a social butterfly, she had made a specific effort to avoid her most vibrant and strange classmates. The company she kept had been almost preselected and she had never had any reason to stray from the inner circle of Ravenclaw Purebloods that she had made her family over the years.

But unless you lived completely under a rock you had heard about Erika. Especially after her brother had arrived suddenly from Durmstrang a new focus had been brought back to his twin, if only for a moment. She looked frazzled now, from her bedhead to her posture Katarina didn't even try to guess what might be happening in the girl's muddled brain.

So many stories. So many rumors. Katarina couldn't have guessed what was true if she tried.

Her tailbone impacted against the stone, and the shudder jolted through her entire spine. She bent her knobbly knees, pulling it up to her chest, dragging her heels against the stone in a move that scraped off the skin from her feet, leaving the inner layers exposed. Tender. Raw.

Her cold, frozen stumps of fingers hooked into the hem of her pyjamas, still shaking like that of an epileptic’s. The sweat-soaked, cheap nylon stuck to her skin as they tugged it up, bunching the material about her knees, exposing her shins to the fire. The numerous, sparse hair littering her legs, a testimony to her absolute lack of self-grooming, shivered and rose to the air, responding to the heat, almost as if seeking out the scorching embers. Her chin buried in the crook between her knees, her lashes blinked at the red and orange that had grown to eclipse her entire vision, and her own exposed skin- glowing almost unearthly, sickly in the light.

She was locked in. The room was silent. The walls were closed. The loneliness buried to the hilt, harrowed into her very bone. Yet she could not fling her arms around a neck, press into a body heat not her own, squeeze a palm for comfort. Her fear wouldn’t allow it. And even if it did, her body would be thrown into frenzy, locked down, throat regurgitating the contents of her gut right here, yellow and steaming with a putrid stench across the reddened, warmed stone floor. If she had the breath to, she would have laughed.

Her throat swallowed, again and again, in the face of the fire, bobbing against her kneecaps. Her palate was too dry for even vomit to make its way through. And if by some relieving miracle succeeded, it would be water and black bile. Her stomach had been empty for over twenty hours. Crackers.....she’d had two of them yesterday morning.

Locked. Silent. Closed. When did it get so bad? When had it gotten so bad? It had been five years, hadn’t it? She’d done well till now, hadn’t she? The first year had been bad, but she remembered so little of it anyway......lots of tucking her head under the pillow and sleep-waking. And then Bren had come, and it had gotten better, and all her friends had left, and Reid mocked her and called her weak, and her parents regarded her with worry and fear that increased day after day- when she withdrew from running about with her neighbours and spoke to thin air and refused to sleep under a roof or touch living skin- mounted to dizzying proportions, till they stopped being her friends too- and she was fine, because she had gotten better. She laughed, and joked, and ate food, and slept and maybe it wasn’t all in such a ‘normal’ fashion as they pleased, but she did. And then she’d come to Hogwarts and she hated it, but between worthless rivalries and daily arcane lessons.....it almost seemed alright.

But magic crawled through the halls of this castle, its walls bled with it, its stones remained submerged in it, the same magic that had taken her Barbara away before they could even know what a wand looked like, and that very poisonous, ramiferous thing was flowing beneath her bare feet right now, and that very choking, wondrous vice flowed through her veins, ensheathed her heart because she was f*cking born with it, and Bren was gone again and her throat was closing up, vision darkening and faces of fire spewed out from those red sparks dancing in her vision, jeering and leering and coaxing her to fall forwards- just an inch. And her nose was twitching, because she was leaning and it was turning, recoiling from the heat, the blasted, burning, warming, blinding, numbing heat.....

And damn it she was a coward, yes, a sniveling coward, because she was too scared to fall forward that last inch, that fear kept her alive and breathing- all these years, the churning, uneasy sensation preventing her that first year to fall into a lifetime of sleeping with her eyes open, that forced her now to fixate on something, anything to convince her that a world outside her head existed. It caught at her ears then, a light exhale of breath against the air: and she seized on to it with grasping hands, imitating that light push of oxygen: rising through her lungs, travelling through the nasal passages, then forced out. It drew in again, and Rika sucked in her stomach, sucking the air pressure in along with her white, pressed lips and the minutes passed by, slowly, achingly- her painstakingly matching, aligning her breaths to fall with the inspiration and expiration of the only other person in the room. Hot, hot, stinging moisture squeezed past her eyelids and never had her heart felt more grateful, her mind more feverishly relieved.

Thank you. Thank you.

How easy it was to get lost in the maze of the mind; but now she had a skylight which allowed a stray ray to kiss her face, a ventilator to push her face against and breathe. She had an existence, she was more than the empty space that she so often felt drifted meaninglessly through these walls, she had to be, because the fear would allow nothing less. She had mass, the stone warming her backside was real, she drew in oxygen from the air and exhaled out carbon dioxide, she had a presence, what she did mattered. She had a voice.

“Have you ever wondered what your funeral would be like?” Her voice meandered on, a thin, fraying thread of sound.....but she had to fill the room, she had to. “If people would wear black, or someone might not care enough, so put on a yellow t-shirt underneath. If someone would write eulogies to your name so that they could sound more important. If people would cry. If your stone would be big and white, or small and grey and snuck in the corner of a tree. If it would make the slightest bit of a difference.”

Yes, it was filling the room. It was. Or atleast, this tiny little corner where flames licked at stone and skin, as if they were all alike. “I have. I even have my epitaph written.”

That was a lie. She had thought, but she had never written it down- and suddenly it seemed imperative that she share it to the room, to the ears of the girl who’d probably stopped listening a long time ago. The flame might start preferring skin any second....or maybe the latter would seek the former out itself.

Her throat swallowed again.

“ ‘Go ‘way now, its no point. I believe in reincarnation, so I’ve left all my money to myself.’ “