A/N: Probably shouldn't be writing this but as my USB is currently lost and i cant continue with my other stuff at the moment i thought i'd let another story come through. This will be a slash story (DMHP) not sure how long. Also, this is only the introduction, chapters will get longer!!! Thanks for reading and please review so i know if it's worth continuing.
Summary: They say that beneath the centre of the World and beyond the horizon that sparkles with newborn glory in eternal continuity, there is a place of dreams. This place is called Eden. With Ron's sickness getting worse and Malfoy's greed mounting, who will be the first to win the race for the ultimate wish?
Rating: M - gore, mutilation, language, sex (slash)
Disclaimer: Do not own any of the Harry Potter characters, i am simply using them for my own means.
Introduction
They say that beneath the centre of the World and beyond the horizon that sparkles with newborn glory in eternal continuity, there is a place of dreams. A place where anyone can become anything whether the wish be to sprout a pearlescent peacock's tail and mighty oceanic wings or to obtain a heart as pure as the most precious of rare jewels or to return a loved one to bodily health. A place that myth once called Paradise and legend morphed into the ultimate image of perfection, unattainable and forever beyond corporeal reach. It is a haven created before sin and without the corruption she brought to the world. It existed before life and came to be from boundless magic before it was captured and tainted and restrained by wooden sticks and greedy human hands. This place was called Eden.
Few are lucky enough to visit this spectacular, fabled place and those who have are deemed insane and their accounts invalid, but if one were to listen to their woven tales, they would hear of sun speckled meadows where laughter flouts upon the drifting clouds in the pure blue of the heavens that shifts so one is not entirely sure whether it is of water or sky. And even with the fresh greenery of the rolling hills and the gurgle of the brooks enclosed below the dancing waterfalls brimming with rainbows of iridescent blushes, there is, just beyond the tip of a slope or around a boulder of glittering ruby, a wonderland of ivory snow, newly lain and untouched, pure as the innocent eyes of the deer that leaps within the treetops, balanced on invisible wings.
If one were to venture through here, past the drifts and through the cave that shimmers and reflects everything in its majestic frozen mirrors and razor icicles, then one would come across the fallen season. Where leaves litter the ground, mournful and forgotten, awaiting the time when someone will remember and appreciate their lives. It is here that the wishing tree can be found. Its branches stand naked, forlorn, and its skin is not soft as baby's flesh as it once was but rather has the roughness of the jagged mountain range. It has lived through many ages, feeding from the unadulterated wishes of those who approach it.
As the centuries have passed though, those wishes have become corrupt to the point that this tree has all but given up hope, shutting herself away in this deadened place to rot rather than extract the festering evil that spans the world. She, and the garden around her, is slowly dying, another tree exposed with every passing day, for the purity of untainted love is fast vanishing, becoming as much of a myth as the garden itself. One day this place will not exist and on that day all hope and kindness and caring will be gone from the world. But until that day, she will wait with her branches spread, hibernating until someone is lucky enough to find her and ask for a wish, and only one will she grant to all who come before her.
However, she, and all the Garden of Eden, is only a myth, a legend if you will, and there are few, mostly those driven to desperation or a gut-wrenching hunger for power in some form or another, that still search for her, willing to do anything, anything, in order to obtain that single wish that is not bound by the laws of the Earth, or the Sea, or the fiery pits of Hell, or even Heaven and its angels who cry from above as the world below descends into chaos.
Even with the sickly smile on his face, Harry could tell, looking down on him now, that his best friend was in a bad way. What was worse, he could tell that Hermione knew that too and was accepting it with the kind of stoic analysis with which she accepted everything. Although he was sure that on the inside she was burning, screaming, writhing. Their marriage would be a short one if Ron's condition continued to disintegrate with its current speed but, most aggravatingly, no one seemed to be able to find what was wrong with him or, more importantly, a way to fix it.
A week ago, Ron had still been hobbling about the small apartment he shared with Hermione, now though, he lay still under the covers, unable to lift even his hand. His speech was not longer a low gravel flowing with confidence but rather a croaking slur that hissed from between his teeth. His once fire-red hair that could always be counted on to flare embarrassingly brightly at the most public and inappropriate of times, was slashed across his forehead, like small daggers, dull and limp, matted with putrefying sweat. The entire room stank of sickness and the warning of oncoming death, making Harry feel the need to gag every time he entered the room while his mind fogged and felt a heavy haziness that came with ill-health.
"We're going to find it, Harry," Hermione whispered to him, her words harsh, as she stroked a strand of lumped hair back from Ron's closed eyes and tried to ignore the sound of his wheezing breath, which was as close as he could manage to peaceful, although by her constant flinching, Harry didn't think she was managing it very well.
"We don't even know if it exists, Mione."
"It does," she stated with a determined hope that was most unlike her. "It has to."
Draco Malfoy would not label himself as greedy, as such, or selfish, more that greed was all that he had knowledge of and he had never known a reason to be selfless. His upbringing had consisted of a strict father intent on raising him with an iron fist and morals of even firmer substance and a mother who was barely present. He had learned early in his few years that self-preservation was all that mattered in this world, anything emotive was pointless and there was no such thing as love for another, only for material possessions which could never betray you.
It was for this reason, as well as the fear that his father's anger struck within him, that Draco Malfoy found himself upon this journey. Leaving behind the smoking ruins of his family, he set out to restore their name. However, he was fully aware that it was impossible to do this alone, his father's dalliance with the vanquished dark lord had made sure of that, which was why he found himself going from one end of the country to another, fulfilling task after task and riddling out riddle after pointless riddle and feeling like he was chasing a imaginary tail all the while. But, true to his family name, Draco refused to give up. If his ancestors said this place existed, then it was final, and it most positively, definitely existed…at least he hoped it did.
"So now what?" Blaise Zabini murmured, staring down into the smoking volcano below them, the Italian twang of his accent half hidden by the smoke residing in his throat. He looked absolutely bored, Draco thought, glimpsing down at the bubbling lava himself and correcting the slight flaw in the way his mouth sat which portrayed how uncomfortable he was standing here atop the lip of the great chasm with nothing more than a de-heat-me charm between himself and a rather messy, burning and painful death.
"We head north," he monotoned back to his companion, "just as the Sprite indicated."
"Back to where we started?" Blaise asked, turning disinterested eyes that were so dark Draco imagined they were looking right through him towards his general direction.
"We must have missed something," Draco replied, shifting back towards where they had left their portkey and ignoring the feeling that those eyes were slicing right into his back.
"To London, then."
Reviews would be appreciated. Is it worth continuing?
Yours
Bella
