Frozen Fate

Faded, white cotton curtains with dingy lace trim sway in the breeze. The suns beats down mercilessly through the open window, casting a silver glow over the otherwise unlighted room. The walls are a dirty cream color, made of sheetrock. Two small, cheap paintings of the ocean hang over the bed. These are the things I remember. These are the only images I can conjure when I try to think of pleasantries of my past. That room.

The past is gone though. It is a fading dream that can never be recovered. A distant, fleeting thing I’ll never be able to grasp again. Ron once told me that I should focus on the present more, rather than waste my days away by pondering on the past or the future. That familiar saying rang through my ears, the one he was so fond of. What was it again? “Yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come.” That was it.

Ron is gone too now. Everyone is, or at least everyone I knew. The Pagoma took them away from me. I’m the only one left. It’s so lonely and cold, and I often wish that I had died along with the rest of them. Being the sole survivor among a group of friends is a fate I consider worse than death.

But it’s only a matter of time anyway. The whole world will soon be dead, and I with it. We fought. We tried. We gave it our all, and we’ll be able to rest in peace with that thought. There was nothing more we could do. My only wish is that somehow, someway, we could’ve had a warning. If we had known what was coming, we could have prepared. Maybe we would’ve had a chance. Just maybe, we would’ve won.

But that’s the past. Yesterday is indeed gone. And with the way things are going now, I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow didn’t make it. Everything is so unbelievably cold. I don’t even know if there’s another human being still on Earth. I’ve been too weak to venture out of my cave and check. Not that it would matter though. No one can help me anymore than I can help them.

Hopeless. Everything is hopeless. I remember how Harry laughed when I finally admitted it, one year ago. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along, Hermione,” he said with a laugh, patting me on the back as if I were just now getting a joke he’d told a week ago. I remember frowning and telling him that our situation was anything but funny. But in the end, my sanity crumbled and I began to laugh with him. Why not? Laughing was better than crying. And when he died days later, I laughed over his grave. It was the only thing I could do.

I can’t laugh anymore. I haven’t the strength for it. I can barely lift my hand to scratch my nose, on the rare occasion that I can actually feel it. My feet and ankles are frostbitten, so are my fingers. It used to hurt, but it doesn’t anymore. I’m numb all over. I feel like my insides are numb as well. I can’t feel my heart beating, and I wonder if it’s still beating at all. Maybe I’m trapped in some sort of frozen sleep, a living death. Maybe I’ll wake up hundreds of years later when the Pagoma have left or died out and the sun has returned. Or maybe I’m just on the verge of death. Honestly, I’d prefer that. Restarting the human race sounds like a huge responsibility, and I’m quite sick of being the responsible one.

I’m fairly certain that I’m dying. A welcome death it will be. I once read that those who possess magical abilities release some sort of energy when they die. Most often, the energy is invisible and intangible, therefore useless. In some rare cases however, the energy can be used by the dying person, if the desire is strong enough. So perhaps with my death, I can reach back to my past, to that sunlit room with the sheetrock walls and white curtains. I don’t even remember what that room meant to me; all I know is that I spent happy moments there, and that must mean something.

If I close my eyes, and focus hard enough, I can almost see it again, as clear as crystal. But there’s something else, a young girl with wild brown hair, standing by the window in a sundress. I don’t remember her, but she’s so familiar. A nameless, faceless outline of someone I once knew.

She starts to turn around, her hair ripples in the wind. Just before her face becomes visible, a blinding light fills my eyes. I can see nothing but the snow-white brightness. But I can feel it. Death is upon me. This is the end.