The Wounds we Feast


Summery:Post OoTP. Having Voldemort posses his mind could not have had Harry up and dandy after a few minutes. There are consequences to that night, ones that Dumbledore predicted, tried to control but could not stop from coming to pass.

Genre: Drama/Horror

Author's Note: An exercise at horror, both psychological and blood-sheeringly tangible.

Prologue

Along the floor, as the door opens, the darkness sublimates.

As she steps into the room, she is conscious that only a small, sharp curve of light reaches into the shadow. If she were a bit more dramatic, she would imagine that the light dies, being flayed off in little whips, until a small tremor, only a pathetic little shiver remains. But she isn't, nor does she have the time to be absorbed in anything more than that is real and tangible. So, she steps into the room and observes his harsh breathing in the dead stale air, and as an afterthought, leaves the door slightly ajar. She isn't afraid of a bit of dark, nor of the monsters that might inhabit it. "Harry," she says, and suddenly she is hesitant again. "Harry?"

He is an outline in the shadows, and she watches his silhouette as it jerks at her voice, a bulge appearing at one end, the engorged reflection of an arm perhaps. She watches as it begins to twist and contort, filling the room with the cracks of complacent joints. She is afraid, and imagines she knows why. Flattening herself against the walls, she gently eases the door shut and as the light dies, the cracks, slow and languorous now, separated by short pauses, fill the void. It all seems very private to her, something she had no right to intrude upon the way she has. She should have knocked, or said something, anything…

And suddenly his breath, heavy with the days, is against her face and her eyes jerk open and she flinches, startled, catching fleeting sight of red-rimmed eyes before a hand violently slaps the wall beside her head. His voice rasps against her ear. "What the hell are you doing… Hermione?" It is so dark now, that although she can feel his heat, he seems nothing more than a mere shadow. She reaches out her arms, and her hands lightly touch the cold sharp bones of his face, trailing a soft path down to the neck. He feels sick; his skin his far colder than what is permissible. She wonders how he looks like now. It has been a few weeks since she's seen him.

She remembers the last time this happened, the last time she rescued him from those demons of his. It's all very similar, and yet so very different. The bound, walled space of the closet provides a kind of intimacy that has never been there between them.

And the darkness hides.

The moment passes. Time moves, once again, at its destructive pace. He swings back, the noise being the sight of the hour; one hand slaps against a walls, another clangs against the hollow of the door. He growls, "What's wrong with you?" and his voice is so very harsh, so very demanding. So very different. She is unable to reconcile the two: the one issuing in the grey seas of memory, and the one she hears now. A hand grips her shoulder, pressing between the blades. Then another and she screeches in pain and as she's flattened against the wall, his body pressed against hers. The thunder of his breath whispers against her ears, "Speak dammit."

And she can't. She doesn't know why she's here, what is she doing in his den. Something's frightened her, and she's never been a coward. Something in the air tickles her nerves, sets her senses alit with this primal urge to… to what? She can almost see him now, his eyes glinting black, his pale skin covered with a diamond film of darkness, the bare contours of his parted lips, his angry scowl. And she can't speak, she is so very afraid… Her hands desperately grope, trying to capture him and move him away.

She tries to shout, and she hates her voice. "I'm trying to help you, Harry. Sirius wouldn't –" He lifts her off the ground, and she bites back the scream.

"Last time I will say this Her…mione. You can't."

And suddenly, light streams in. Like an abstract painting, the world is composed of strict lines, bright here, dark there, cutting everything endlessly, into independent little pieces. A strong tug on the arms, the confused wheeling of the legs, the painful crash of wall against head and then she's outside, with tears on her face, and her eyes blinking at the invasion.

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