Day One.
There's no fanfare to it at all, no sensation to warn him, no tug like the feeling of disapparating. He is simply walking down the well-worn planks of the boardwalk one moment and facing steel gray walls the next. Instinct throws a hand out to buffer his momentum before he runs into the cold, rough-hewn rock, but his mind balks, thinks wildly for the first few disorienting seconds that he's been taken back to Britain. To Hogwarts of all places, with its grand stone towers and formidable castle walls.
A breath pushes hard from his lungs as he leans against his outstretched hand, and the uneven landscape of rock presses into the soft flesh of his palm. Emotion clamps tight around his heart and threatens for a moment to close up his throat until resolve can pool in his gut and steady the quake of his elbow.
This is always the way of it, for him. Every opportunity cursed by loss, every blessing tempered by pain. He feels as if his heart has been ripped from him and then replaced within the same blink of an eye.
Hand still braced against stone, he becomes aware of a weight against his right shoulder. The strap of the knapsack he'd been carrying back to Cassie hangs taut over muscle and the thin cotton of his t-shirt. All at once the roar of the ocean pushes past the hammering heartbeat in his ears and snaps him to attention. He turns abruptly, squints against the glare of sunlight off water and lifts a hand to shade his eyes.
Some ten feet in front of him, parallel steel bars march in a row across a hollow in the masonry, fortified by a heavy chain and a lock the size of his head. Beyond, jagged rock slopes down to the familiar glitter of the cerulean sea.
"No," he breathes, and surges forward only to rattle against the solid barrier of the door. In the far distance, the island is a thin, oily line atop the horizon.
Sirius yells, and the sound is whisked away into the churning of the waves.
A breath pushes hard from his lungs as he leans against his outstretched hand, and the uneven landscape of rock presses into the soft flesh of his palm. Emotion clamps tight around his heart and threatens for a moment to close up his throat until resolve can pool in his gut and steady the quake of his elbow.
This is always the way of it, for him. Every opportunity cursed by loss, every blessing tempered by pain. He feels as if his heart has been ripped from him and then replaced within the same blink of an eye.
Hand still braced against stone, he becomes aware of a weight against his right shoulder. The strap of the knapsack he'd been carrying back to Cassie hangs taut over muscle and the thin cotton of his t-shirt. All at once the roar of the ocean pushes past the hammering heartbeat in his ears and snaps him to attention. He turns abruptly, squints against the glare of sunlight off water and lifts a hand to shade his eyes.
Some ten feet in front of him, parallel steel bars march in a row across a hollow in the masonry, fortified by a heavy chain and a lock the size of his head. Beyond, jagged rock slopes down to the familiar glitter of the cerulean sea.
"No," he breathes, and surges forward only to rattle against the solid barrier of the door. In the far distance, the island is a thin, oily line atop the horizon.
Sirius yells, and the sound is whisked away into the churning of the waves.