Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I profit from writing this fan fiction. The only thing I get from this is entertainment, so no suing, please.

A little foreword though. Voldemort is gone and he's no longer the enemy. And this might not seem like a Dramione fic at first, but it is. You just have to get through the prologue, which is kinda like an introduction to the main concern of the plot of the fic. And it's kinda long, but I promise it will be all worth it. Bear with me through this, okay? Read on.

Hooked

A Dramione Fanfic by: Mystical Pen

Part 1: Cold Metal

Prologue: Open Eyes

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The faint sound of ticks and tocks woke James up. The mechanical music of clockwork was mild in volume but the sounds seemed to reverberate from within the walls of his mind. The ticks clamped down on his ears, making him feel like the clock itself was buried deep underneath the crevices of his brain.

His legs felt like they were made of lead. He sat straight up and stretched his arms behind him, leaning on his fists to propel him to finally stand up, which took a lot of effort due to his uncooperative legs. It was only after he was on his feet did he notice that his hands were tighly closed like they were glued to be that way. He started flexing his fingers, and found it rather hard to move and stretch them. And even after he did, he found that every movement of the joint on his hands and fingers caused a mechanical sound to reverberate in his ears. The sound was very much like the sound a machine made whenever it moved its mechanical joints.

To say that the discovery unnerved James would be an understatement. He was more than nervous. Somehow, the continuous mechanical screeching of metal grating against metal, that deafened his hearing every time he flexed his hands, was enough to even scare him. And at the thought of it, James felt his heart beat faster in his chest. But instead of hearing the loud pounding and drumming of his pulse in his ears, the only sound he heard was the ticking and the tocking of a clock slowly dancing to a crescendo.

A shiver ran down his spine. He could practically feel his panic creeping up on his body, clinging on every inch of his skin, seeping through his pores and infiltrating his bloodstream. He tried to shake away the dread, and in his attempt to calm and occupy his mind with something else-something less unnerving- he looked around him and tried to determine where he was. But this only added to his anxiousness for all around him, he saw only a stretch of empty plane. Behind him was nothing but a curtain of black. Both sides, left and right, was only darkness and up ahead, what awaited him was a black void, leading to nowhere. The only source of light that permitted him to see was the bright beam of white that seemed to come from above, landing right at him, like a spotlight meant to drag all attention to him.

"Hello? Anyone out there?" James called out to the empty void around him, hoping someone-or something-would answer, but the only reply he got was the echo of his own voice. He was alone, it seemed. He was completely alone. And as this realization hit him, the panic struck him. In his desperation, James tried once more. He called out once again in the complete silence of the world around him. But this time, to his horror, no voice came out of his mouth. Instead, the whirring and random clicking of cogs permeated from his vocal box.

James tried to work a scream up his windpipe, struggling very hard to push all his fear and dread out of his throat in the form of a shriek. Nothing came out but the same sound of whirring cogs and struggling mechanical joints. The sounds built up to another chorus of James' mechanical scream, and to his surprise, at the highest pitch he could muster, everything around him shattered in a rain of broken glass. And there, right where the illusion of the empty stretch of nothing formerly gleamed, thousands of mirrors faced James. And this, what they showed now, was an image that James wished was the illusion and not reality.

In front of James now stood thousands of mirrors, all of which only showed one image - him with the center of his shirt ripped open showing his body beneath. But instead of showing his chest, all there was in there was a gaping hole. Where flesh should be, there was only plates and strips of metal. And where his heart should be, there was only a huge clock with its hands moving in time with the ticks and tocks echoing in James' head. It was then that he realized two things - One: the ticking wasn't from just a clock, it was from the center of his chest-his heart. His heart was the clock. And two: He had turned into metal puppet run by a clock. He was now a clockwork wizard.

James started to run forward with such force that he managed to shatter the mirror in front of him. He didn't dare stop even as he was swallowed by darkness after he'd escaped the bright spotlight that was once trained at him. The only light that guided him now was the illumination coming from the clock on the center of his chest. He ran with all his might. He ran for as long as he could without stopping, but it seemed that the world that stretched in front of him was one of infinity.

He didn't know how long he had run without so much as taking a rest. He didn't feel the least bit tired and the beating-or the ticking-of his clockwork heart didn't even falter once. He didn't know why it did, but the sound of the moving hands of the clock seemed to push him forward. And in his mind, he thought he was running after something-running to stop something.

Time stretched in James' world and every passing second, his panic grew fiercer. The instinctual shout of his mind got more and more desperate every wasted second. He was running out of time. He didn't know for what, but he knew it meant something bad. He was just about to be swallowed whole by his dread and panic, when suddenly, instead of landing on the ground, the sole of his foot hit thin air. A helpless flail of his arms was all he could do as he fell into an empty, dark chasm without knowing what would be waiting for him at the bottom-or if there even was a bottom.

His eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. The strands of his hair felt like they were getting ripped off his scalp. Wind hit his face sharply like millions of knives grazing his skin. His pores tingled and it felt like his soul was getting sucked out of him through the little holes, left up there, where he was from, while his body continued falling and falling and falling endlessly to nothing.

As it turned out, there was a bottom to the dark void. Right before he hit the ground, James suddenly stopped falling like gravity had stopped working for him. It only took a split second before James fell in a crouch, his feet finally finding solace in the feel of ground beneath it. And then, bright light nearly blinded him as numerous torches, mounted on the walls, blazed to life all at once.

This should have calmed James down. Finally seeing light should have doused his panic. But as soon as his eyes landed on everything around him, this became an impossibility, for the world he was now in was far worse than the one he just fell out of.

In this new world, everything was upside down, inside out and leftside right.

James suddenly inhaled and exhaled in fast succession as if he was running out of breath. But this was not due to exhaustion. He was very far from tired. What he was feeling now was the overwhelming reign of fear that had taken over his whole mind. It had been threatening to digest him whole all this time, starting from the moment he had woken up in that empty space. And now, it had come to swallow him, regurgitate him and redigest him all over again.

Doubling over, crumpling in on himself and just melting into nothing was a feeling James would have welcomed at that moment. Never in his whole life had he felt as helpless and scared as he was at the moment, not even when he faced Voldemort. Back then, he knew what he had to do. But now, he felt like there was something he was supposed to do, but no way in hell did he have any idea what it was.

Not knowing what else to do, James would have gladly stopped everything he was doing and just sit helplessly against one of the upside down stair banisters. But the unrelenting ticking of the clock on his chest continued to reverberate in his mind. Right then, as he sat with his knees to his chest, his chin on his knees, the ticking was like a task spoken in a language he should have understood. As the mechanical sound invaded his mind over and over again, every passing tick started translating into a language he very well understood.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Move. Now. Little time. Running out.

As the words echoed in his mind, James' eyes automatically fell to the clock on his chest. It was still glowing, the pale light from the ticking clock illuminating his face and giving it a yellowish glow. The clock looked ancient, its style like that of a grandfather clock. From the face of it, a steel rod swung from left to right, like the rod of a pendulum. James couldn't see the circular plate attached to the rod because it was hidden behind the fabric of his shirt and he didn't dare pry it open for the fear of seeing exactly what he thought he would. Instead, his eyes trailed to the numbers on the face of the clock and the hands that indicated the time.

It was twenty minutes before the strike of three in the morning.

At the sight of the time, James' whole body froze. His mind went into a frenzy of desperation being overridden by helplessness. He was indeed running out of time. He still didn't know what would happen at the strike of three, but there was a foreboding feeling inside him that told him he shouldn't let that hour hand reach three without finding or saving what he had to. At the thought of that, the ticking of the clock-symbolizing his heart-increased in volume once more, growing louder and louder by the minute. His whole body seemed to go into overdrive, his veins pulsing with adrenaline, and pushing him to do something right that very moment.

And just like a switch being clicked on, James bolted to his feet and wasted no more time. He didn't exactly know where his destination was or what the purpose of this was for, but he pushed himself to move. He told himself he had to. And the continuous sounds of the moving gears inside his chest was like fuel that fed the fire of determination and urgency blazing inside him.

James moved with fast and determined pace. Looking around, he took in the state of his surroundings. There were windows on the floor, some were tightly shut and the others were widely open and leading to a chasm of darkness. There were doors on the ceiling and on the walls. And the torches that lit his path were in fact mounted on the walls in an upside down position. The paint that coloured the whole place was of different shades and the materials and the wood that made everything up was of different kinds as well, some were even rotting and some looked prestigely handsome. The place was a labyrinth flipped and turned in on itself.

He was lost. He didn't know where to go. He didn't know which doors he should open, or if the doors were even supposed to be opened and not the windows. But he pushed himself to start doing something. As much as he wanted to just stop for a moment and think about why he was there, the urgency in the atmosphere prevented him to do it.

James ran to one of the doors stuck to the wall, he yanked at the knob, but he found that it was locked and that it would not budge. He pulled at the knob again and again, trying with all his might to open the door, but it remained shut. Deciding it was not worth it, James tried a different door.

The next door James tried was made of rotting wood. Ticks and other parasites crawled the maze of indentions on the wood, but James paid it no heed. Thinking this door would be easier to open because it was already rotting, James enclosed the rusting door knob in his hand pulled the door open. Nothing happened. Just like the first one, this was locked and there was no way it would give out even under James' weight.

The burden of time heavy on his head, James tried another door. But this returned the same result. His irritation, panic and desperation growing ever fiercer, James tried to open door after door, some burnt to black and some looking newly made and polished. He pulled at the knobs as hard as he could in the hopes of ripping the doors of its hinges, but they didn't. Try as hard as he did, he got the same result every time. They all wouldn't open.

James yanked at his hair, his breathing growing ever more ragged. He tried to scream once more, but his voice still wouldn't come out. He was losing it. He was going to fail. He just knew he would. And as if on cue, the loud chime of the clock on his chest echoed through his eardrums and shook his skull. When he looked down at his chest, the hour hand was on the number three and the minute hand was pointing straight to twelve.

He was late. He was too late. It was all over.

The same thought kept repeating in James' mind as he unconsciously backed away from the door he was facing. His hands were woven tightly into his hair, yanking at the strands, as if the effort would make everthing feel better. But it didn't. It only made everything feel worse than it already did because the truth was, James couldn't do anything but pull at the strands of his own hair as the strands of time fell helplessly through his fingers.

He was feeling a jumble of emotions. He was confused. He didn't know what he had just lost, but even though that was the case, he still felt horrible and helpless. Guilt invaded his clockwork heart at the same time that uselessness seemed to penetrate the metal plates of his body. A throng of emotions spilled all over him like he was standing trapped right under a waterfall. He couldn't shield himself from the harsh rush of the vertical current, nor could he escape from it.

In the midst of all this, as the clock continued to chime, signalling the failure that was James Potter, he was unaware-unconscious-that his backing away from the door in front of him was leading him straight to the waiting mouth of a window on the floor behind him, the pane thrown wide open and leading into another dark chasm. He was unaware of it all until his feet slid in one fell swoop through the hole and his body followed. He was once again falling into an unknown void.

Complete and utter silence swallowed him as he fell into darkness once again, the glow of his clock heart dimming little by little as he fell lower and lower. But unlike the first time, James wasn't scared of falling into nothing anymore. He felt only helplessness and uselessness. He even wished he wouldn't stop falling. Or better yet, he would just fall and break all his metallic bones and die when he reached the bottom.

Fate, it seemed, didn't plan to be kind to James no matter what had already happened. No matter what state James was already in, Fate didn't seem to care. James' wish didn't come true. He didn't keep falling forever, nor did he die once he'd reached the bottom. Just like the first time, James fell gracefully in a crouch. After feeling the ground beneath his feet, James fell in slouch on the ground and refused to move again. He felt like there was no use to it. He wasn't able to find what he needed to. There was no point in doing anything else.

James would have stayed like that for eternity. He would have stayed unmoving like that until this world he was in crumpled and perished. But it wasn't long after he'd descended from his fall when another door appeared in front of him, lit by a single torch mounted right by it.

The door was simple, not as richly decorated as the ones he'd found up above, but it was tidy. It wasn't coated with dust, it wasn't crawling with parasites. As simple as it was, it was in perfect condition. So James didn't know why he thought he could open this door. If he couldn't open a burnt and destroyed door, how could he open one that looked new? But his mind didn't seem to care. Before he knew what he was doing, James was already standing right in front of the handsome door, his hand tightly enclosed around the golden knob.

James didn't have time to be nervous about the door. He didn't have the time to wonder if it was locked or not. With just a slight twist of his fist, the door swung open, its hinges protesting loudly in the form of ear-shattering creaks. He walked into the room that was still awash with darkness. It was after his fifth step that light flared brightly.

Again, James should have felt relief. He should have been happy that he'd finally found the door he was looking for. He should have felt okay again after he'd found out his purpose. But again, just like the first time, what lay in front of his eyes wasn't something James could be happy and relieved about.

Beyond the door were four adults and two toddlers. Their eyes were all wide open and lifeless, their faces smudged with deep scarlet. They were all dead. They were all bathing in a pool of their own blood.

Suddenly, the silence around James ended. From all around him, a barrage of horrible and horrific noises started attacking his ears. The clock on his chest chimed its loudest once again-a reminder of how late he had been. Yells and shrieks of horror penetrated James' ears among a sea of questions asked by familiar voices. They were the voices of the bodies splayed lifeless in front of him, voices owned by his friends. The shrieks and questions came but their mouths were unmoving, all just wide open in a dying plea.

How could you? How could you let us die?

We trusted you. We helped you as much as we could. We risked everything for you. All we asked was protection. Why did you fail us, James?

Why did you fail us, friend?

Horrified and scared, James fell to the floor in a helpless heap. He inched backwards, trying to get away from the room, but the door slammed close behind him. His back hit the tall door, but he didn't stop inching away from the gore in front of him. He slid to his right in an attempt to get the corner of a room, somewhere far away from the nightmare staring him in the face. He hadn't gone too far from the spot he fell on when his hand came upon something thick and sticky. When lifted his hand and looked at it, he saw his fingers coloured with deep red blood. Where the blood coated his fingers, his flesh crusted, fell away and revealed rusting metal fingers.

James panicked once again. The rust crept up his hands, to his arm and to his chest, shattering his flesh and revealing his rotting metallic body underneath. Helplessly, his eyes fell on the floor beside him, the place his hand felt the blood. His rusting body was immediately forgotten when, to his horror, his eyes fell on an unattached hand lying beside a puddle of blood by his side.

It was a left hand and a bit of forearm. It was small, obviously not belonging to any of the adults. And as if to answer him, a shriek pierced through the atmosphere of the room, sounding the loudest and floating above the other demanding voices of the other dead people. It was the pained cry of a baby.

As scared as he was, James' eyes still roamed around and settled on the body of one of the babies. It was a girl with short, curly hair of a light brown shade. Her eyes were of chocolate brown, but they weren't gleaming with warmth at all. They were cold, as cold as death itself. When James looked to her left arm, there was a hand attached to it. The cut-off hand wasn't hers.

Another body of a baby was lying not too far from the girl's. The baby's body was lying on its stomach, face down, but on his head was a mop of platinum blond hair. He was evidently a boy. The boy's body was twisted in an unnatural angle. And there, poking out in a painful way and soaked in blood, was the stump of a left forearm, unattached to a hand. The cut-off hand belonged to the boy.

James felt like he was going to throw up everything inside him, including his organs, gears and cogs though they might be. He looked at his body and saw the rust almost crawling up and down his whole body, his skin flaking and pooling around him in a heap of dust. James' eyes were still glued to his rusting body when the voice of a boy rang in his ears.

"Unca Jay. Unca Jay." The voice was familiar, a voice he'd always heard. It belonged to the boy. It sounded so cheery and excited, like the boy always had been. The boy, more than the girl, had always loved playing with him.

"Unca Jay. Unca Jay." It called again in a melodious toddler's voice. The way James' name sounded from the boy's lips was so carefree and excited, very much like how it always sounded in a normal day, that James wasn't able to help himself. He looked up. When he did, he wished he hadn't.

The melodious voice turned into a deafeaning and horrifying shriek. James' eyes stared widely at the boy as its head slowly turned around from its unmoving body, twisting at the neck, and faced him. His lips were open widely as blood gurgled out of his mouth. When James' eyes fell on the boy's gray orbs, they turned to stare straight at him.

"Unca Jay let Lindon dead."

xxxxxxxxxx

James bolted up from his bed, his breathing fast and laboured. His face was sticky with sweat that trickled down to his neck. The collar of his shirt was drenched.

"James, James, love, are you okay?" The worried voice of his wife, Lily, sounded from beside him just before her warm hand found his cheeks, turning his head to face her. Her eyes were awash with worry and fear. "James, talk to me."

"I saw them, Lily. I saw them. They were asking me why I let them die. They were dead, Lily. Their eyes were lifeless and empty." His voice came out in a hushed breath. His eyes were wide open, fear clouding his brown orbs. He was trembling horribly and his temperature was worryingly cold. "And the boy, Lindon, his arm was sliced off. He had no arm, Lily! He blamed me for what happened to him!"

"Listen to me, James. Listen to me," Lily insisted just as she swiped his wet bangs away from his eyes. Her husband's glasses were very much forgotten by both of them in the middle of this midnight crisis. "Listen carefully. It's just a nightmare, okay? It's okay. You're here with me. I'm not gonna let anything get to you, okay? You'll be fine, love. You'll be fine, you hear me?"

James' vision was blurred, and had it not for the blazing red of Lily's hair, he would have thought his nightmare had come true and one of his dead friends-one of the women-was there to haunt him. But indeed, it was Lily there with him, not anybody else.

Had it been a different nightmare, James would have calmed down at Lily's words. He would have believed her. But the fact was, it was always the same nightmare. It was one that was familiar to him, but familiar though it was, it was still the most horrifying.

After two years, he still couldn't move on from their deaths. It was the same night every year that the same nightmare haunted him. It always happened at the anniversary of their deaths. And the fact that he always woke up at the dead strike of three in the morning had only added to his horror. It was like they were haunting him, making sure he never forgot about them, making sure he always remembered. And so remember, he always did, not only the nightmare, but also the night of blood that the nightmare had sprung up from. Remember the horror of that scarlet-tinged night, he always did.

Once upon a time, at the toll of the clock at three in three in the morning, four friends of his died beacause of his carelessness. Once upon a time, he had been too late to save two toddlers. Once upon a time, he had found the unattached arm of baby Lindon in a pool of blood. Once upon a time...his nightmares had been reality.

A/N: So there we go. The prologue. I wrote that last bit very late night, near the strike of three. The amount of creeps I had then...enough to give me nightmares if I hadn't had my cuddly teddy bear with me. I know that prologue is very confusing. I really know it is, but I promise you, you will get your answers in due time. Right now, just worry about this bit. :D The next chapter is coming soon so hang in there.

Next in Hooked:

Chapter 1: Gray To Brown

"Are you the best psychiatrist here?"

"Pardon me, sir?"

"Cure my mother."

"What? I don't-"

"I said, cure my mother."

Then suddenly, Hermione was pinned on the wall, the man's body caging her in, preventing her from getting away. His face was inches away from hers, his nose nearly touching the tip of hers, their breaths mingling in a hurricane of warmth. "Cure my mother, please."