Foul tasting, squirming things fill my mouth. I want to spit them out but someone clamps their hands around my jaw, digging their nails in as I put up a token resistance. Their fingers pinch my nose and I am forced to swallow. When they finally let go I gag, my body fighting to expel what I’ve only just gotten down. I feel something brush my lips and recoil, but the hands are insistent, returning to dig in again and force my mouth open.

Ice-cold water hits my tongue and I forget about everything else. I gulp it down as much as the hands allow, but far sooner than I am ready the water vanishes. I moan.

I remember falling. I remember needing to get out, to go home. But the need to explore is gone now, broken under the weight of hunger and thirst. I’ve never felt like this.

None of this makes sense. I haven’t seen a single Potter. No one talks to me, or asks any questions. It’s left me too much time to think. To worry about what was happening. To question why I’d done it to begin with. Troy made it sound so adventurous – a midnight raid, a run on country that should have been ours. I never even got to wear the present he gave me before our trip out to the Potters’. All of it sits on my chest and suffocates me.

I force my eyelids open. As soon as I do I regret the impulse. The darkness holds me still.

The hands are the first sign I’m not alone, other than when I’d made contact with my fist, which I am not going to think about, especially now. Since the fall and the frantic search for some identifying feature, which turned up nothing but a few rocks to stumble over, I eventually came to a stop.

There is no night or day here, just dark. I don’t know where I am, and I’m too scared to call out. It occurs to me that maybe something is wrong with my eyes, and it isn’t pitch black at all. If that is true I don’t know what else to do. At some point I gave up searching. I shed tears that I can’t afford and continued to wait in the dark. Only the soft sounds of this person moving about tells me I’m not deaf. They never speak. Maybe they can’t? I’m desperate to hear another voice, to hear anything other than my own fears.

‘Who …’ My voice emerges, crackling like a dead leaf dropped and stepped all over. ‘Who …’