My palms are clammy. My breath is fleeting. I feel bile rising in my throat. Tiny beads of perspiration course their way down my forehead, where a sharp pain throbs as if touched by Voldemort himself. My pulse intensifies with each passing sentence, but still I read on, coaxing myself into torture.
"One page, just one more page…"
And then, as abruptly as it began, the horrors end. As the nausea subsides into shock, I sit by the merrily crackling fire, my mind plagued with images of the terror I had only just endured. Gasping for air to steady myself, my trembling hands collect the 44 chapters of doom and heaved them into the flames. As I watched the plot holes and spelling errors burn, my mind wrestles with a desperate idea that perhaps it had been written as a joke, a gag as precise as those of Fred and George. But I resign myself into the dreadful truth that the author, whose name I could not even utter in thought, had intentionally crafted this…thing—deluded beyond belief that it is a brilliant work of art.
Behind me, Ron and Hermione enter the Common Room, speculating on Slughorn's favoritism during Potions lessons. As the approach me, they fall silent and rush to where I sit, staring blankly at the fire.
"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione asks, placing a hand on my aching head.
I do not respond. Or rather, I can not. My ability to speak is confined within in my throat and I have not the strength to relinquish it. They try in vain to talk to me, to determine what demonic source could have caused such inextricable paralysis. But their voices seem to my muddled mind as if shouted into a void. Ron follows my gaze to the fireplace, where he draws forth out a scrap of poorly written sentences as the rest of the story is engulfed in the dancing flames.
"Blimey, mate, you've been reading this!"
Hermione indignantly snatches the charred parchment from him, chastising me for burning literature.
"But Hermione," Ron says in protest, "that is NOT literature! It's torture! Just look at Harry—the stuff's driven him barmy!"
"Really, Ronald, it can't possibly be that bad."
"Oh, yes it can!" Ron stands and begins to explain while pacing ominously before the fire. "It's terrible. Ginny threw up half a dozen times in chapter 17. Neville fainted three pages in. Even Loony Lovegood hated it, and you know her…"
Hermione gives him a cool look of disbelief.
"Is that so? And just what is the name of this 'torture'?"
Ron stops pacing and turned to her.
"Are you mad? You can't say the name out loud! It's like Voldemort, only worse 'cause it's two words, but you know what I mean."
At this, I am brought back to reality from the labyrinth of terror, and finally tear my eyes from the flames. Ron and Hermione cease their bickering and bolt to my aid. But only two words manage to escape my mouth; a combinations of syllables so vile that my face convulses into a contorted rage with their very sound.
"'My Immortal'"