Chapter 52

A sudden jarring impact to the top of his head had him seeing stars.

He stopped swimming, his lungs beginning to burn in his chest. He raised his arms over his head and tentatively reached out with his hands. His fingers came into contact with a thick, knobbly layer of ice. He moved his hands through the water, sliding over the ice in every direction, trying to locate the hole in which he'd fallen through.

And then it hit him: the breaking noise earlier had been the men making a hole in the ice - and they must have sealed it again once they'd tossed him through.

He kept searching, hands frantically scrabbling at the dense layer of ice, panic beginning to set in as he came up with nothing but more and more ice; so thick that he didn't have a hope of breaking through it.

He tried to gather his magic in a desperate attempt at casting endlessly but almost cried out at the ensuing pain that rippled through his body with the effort. The Cruciatus Curse had done the job they'd intended.

He instantly reared back with his right arm and punched the ice as hard as he possibly could, uncaring of whether he broke every bone in his hand to do so. The shock of the hit reverberated painfully up his arm, and did some damage to the bones in his hand, but did absolutely nothing to the ice.

He knew he was out of time, he couldn't hold his breath any longer and his limbs were now so cold that he could barely feel them let alone move them.

He couldn't believe after everything he'd been through, that this was how it was all going to end; murdered at the hands of a couple of nobodies for reasons he didn't even bloody know.

They wouldn't even find his body for months - if at all. It was only October and the snow wouldn't be properly melted until February or March…

He felt a sudden flare of hope within his chest.

It was only October; the lake wasn't safe to skate on until usually December or January, which meant that the center of the lake wouldn't be frozen solid yet…

Hu Yetao forced his stiff body to start moving. He felt uncoordinated and slow but he pushed onwards with fresh determination, this would work, he was sure of it.

A surge of bubbles escaped his mouth as his lungs forcibly pushed out the single breath he'd been holding. He clamped his lips shut again, lungs burning and nearly empty, and pressed on. He was beginning to feel light-headed and dizzy but held onto his consciousness with the same resolve and fortitude that had kept him alive so many times before.

'Don't stop moving, just keep going, keep going, keep going,' he chanted over and over again in his head like a frantic mantra.

He dragged one hand along the underside of the ice as he struggled along, the texture of the ice changing noticeably as he moved; from smooth and slick to grainy and rough. Soon enough his nails were able to dig in and chip away little bits of ice.

Spots were beginning to dance before his eyes and he could no longer feel any part of his body as he did a kind of a jerky, clumsy swimming motion to keep himself moving forward. The last of his breath left his body in another surge of bubbles, his mouth automatically opening and inhaling icy-cold water which flooded down his throat and entered his lungs.

It was now or never.

He stopped and used the last of his strength to once again punch at the ice, using his uninjured left hand this time. Even though it was a weak hit, it still managed to split the thin layer of ice and he quickly surged up to shove his head through the small opening. The rest of the fragile surface fell away, some of the ice cutting his skin and ears, but allowing him to take in a huge gulp of desperately needed air.

He coughed up the water he'd inhaled and his throat burned as he tried to catch his breath in between bouts of choking. The blackness instantly cleared from the corners of his vision and his mind felt a little more lucid as he continued to gasp in great uneven breaths.

He couldn't relax for long though, he knew he needed to get out of the water - and fast.

He began to propel himself onwards towards the other side of the lake, feeling heavy and weak as he continued to slowly break through the thin layer of ice as he went, like a ship breaking through glacial Antarctic waters. He kept swimming until he finally hit the dense ice that surrounded the outskirts of the Great Lake.

It took him a few attempts to lift his exhausted arms out of the water to place his hands on the surface of the ice. He winced as he put pressure on his injured right hand, but it was just a drop in the bucket compared to the pain of everything else at that moment.

He took a deep breath and pushed himself up, the buoyancy of the water helping immensely to lift his weary, water-logged body out of the lake so that he could slide his knee up onto the ice. He fought to tip his weight sideways, away from the edge, until his body finally overbalanced and he was able to fall onto his back on the ice, gasping from the effort.

He closed his eyes as he lay there breathless and panting, his body beginning to twitch and shiver out of his control. His trousers and button-up shirt were soaked through and sticking to his skin, providing no source of warmth whatsoever. He was so cold but so tired too.

He knew it was a dangerous thing to want to give in to the urge to sleep in his situation. He forced his eyes open and lifted his head to glance back over to the opposite shore, trying to detect any hint of movement to ascertain whether his two attackers were still there. He couldn't see anything, not a lantern or even a faint wand Lumos, but in the dark and without his glasses it was difficult to know for sure.

He lay there for what felt like two minutes, but may have been closer to twenty, by the time he gathered the strength of will to push himself over onto his hands and knees and begin the painfully slow process of crawling over the rest of the ice-covered lake towards the snowy shore; half afraid that the ice would give way at any moment and he'd end up back underwater.

He knew he wouldn't make it out a second time.

His arms were shaking so badly now that his elbows kept giving out every few steps, nearly sending him chin-first into the hard ice. He stopped every once in a while to rest, careful not to lie down because he knew it would be too hard to get up again.

What felt like hours later, Hu Yetao arrived at the edge of the bank of snow that sloped up from the lake towards Hogwarts, the lights growing clearer and brighter the closer he got.

He pushed onwards, safe in the knowledge that his two attackers had left the scene of the crime, expecting him to have perished beneath the ice because no one had attempted to stop him yet. His heart clenched at the reminder that the men had his wand, but he would have to worry about that later.

His progress slowed to a snail's pace as he crawled up the hill through the thick layer of heavy snow, sliding backward every few steps before taking a breath and then pushing onwards.

He paused chest heaving, staring up towards the school with desperate eyes. It looked so far away. His shivering had lessened to almost nothing now, which he thought was probably a bad sign. His whole body felt numb, and his mind was turning to mush again, indistinct thoughts flowing fuzzy and far away

He set his jaw and continued. At least the cold numbed the leftover paint from the Cruciatus Curse, as well as what has surely broken bones in his right hand. He tried to stand but instantly stumbled back to his knees; limbs too frozen and weak to hold him up, and head-spinning with light-headedness.

He kept his gaze on the looming castle, placing each hand down on the snow, sinking through to his elbow, then placing the next hand down, sinking, drag one knee forward, drag the other knee forward. Lift, place, sink, lift, place, sink, drag, drag. Repeat.

On and on it went until he couldn't even think anymore, his stiff and frozen body moving forward on autopilot.