Dear reader,
I grew up with Harry Potter, I saw the first batch of HP fanfiction published here, and I have lived in the extended worlds of Harry Potter that the imagination of my fanfiction authors have so kindly created. Now more than a decade later, an adult in body but still a child at heart, I would like to repay that kindness by extending the fantasy a little bit more. This is my first attempt at writing a story. It may be clumsy, I may not have consistent time to update chapters, and it might get abandoned. Nevertheless, in the brief connection where our imaginations merge, I earnestly wish you forget about reality and travel to another world.
With love, DayDreamTraveler
Why was death not coming?
The inhuman sounds of her gasps and gurgles were more than he could bear. Each breath speared the agony of drowning into his mind until he could think of nothing else. The room filled with the terrible sound of dying, punctuated every so often with the shake of window shutters closed against the storm outside, as if the very house shook with her death rattle.
The lone candle flickered as a cold draft pushed through the room, making mice and giants out of their shadows. He saw the shadow of his brother travel across the wall to bend down over a shuddering mass, and the death rattle became whispered words. He did not turn around to hear what was said. He did not ponder the expression on his brother's face. He did not want to see her corpse like figure, and he would shut his eyes if it didn't magnify the sounds, oh god the sound, of her dying breaths.
Why was death not coming?
Her whispering brought a temporary absence to the death rattle, and he cautiously released his tense hold on his knees. He had kept this position for six hours, perched on her sewing stool, facing the wall, watching the shadows. He could only watch the shadows. Like the shadows on Plato's Cave, these were but pale illusions compared to reality, the reality he could not bring himself to turn around and see.
He wondered if this was it, if death would finally claim her. Instead of the painful dropping of his heart that he was used to at that thought, all he could feel was numbness.
But no. She coughed, choked, and continued to settle into that awful gasping rhythm. He curled in tighter on himself.
Vaguely, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the door fly open with a crash.
"I have potions!"
That was his older brother, hurling himself from the threshold to the lone table seemingly in one step. He dumped the contents of the box he carried upon its worn surface, and delicate glass vials of all colors rolled across the table, flashing jewel-like rainbows across the wall.
"She has already said her farewells," he heard Cadmus whisper quietly.
"NO! Don't you see brother? This is the potion master's personal kit!" Frantic flashes of color on the wall sung with the high pitch of glass upon glass. "There has got to be something in here that can heal her! They are all labeled, but I'm rubbish with Latin. So help me!"
The shadow of Cadmus stood still above their mother's cot. "Antioch…" No words could be found. The death rattle claimed the room once again.
"By Merlin! When will you get it into that tiny skull of yours?! There. Is. No. Heaven!" Antioch's shadow grew with each punctuation, until it was a monster that stretched across the ceiling. "That is just rubbish mudblood propaganda that no wizard would lower himself to. Just because you want to believe that she is going to a better place doesn't mean she is! Don't you understand? We'll lose her forever! So read the labels! For our mother…please!"
Please. Antioch never said please, he always commanded. As the oldest brother, he was head of the house in the absence of their father, and he seemed to always be bullying his brothers into one menial chore or another. Arrogant Antioch. When things went wrong he always bullishly insisted on his way, even though in this case, they all knew there was no way their mother could be saved. Foolish Antioch. But out of the three, he had been closest to Mother, cared for her as their father should have, trusted her and had her trust in turn. Loyal Antioch. Devoted Antioch. This was the first time Cadmus ever heard the word 'please' fall from Antioch's stubborn lips. And so perhaps it was this uncharacteristic sign of desperation that drove Cadmus to pick up the nearest vial, filled with a bright orange liquid.
"Pepper Up." He read robotically, set it down and picked up another. "Bloodroot. Merlap Essence. Felix Felicis. Dreamless Sleep. Deflating Draught… Antioch, our mother is dying. You know none of these will prevent her death."
"Keep. Reading."
And so color after color flashed on the wall as Cadmus picked through the hundreds of vials inside the potion master's bottomless case. Slowly the death rattle grew softer, the candlelight grew weaker, and the hut was lit by the gray gloom of encroaching dawn. Finally, Cadmus reached the last vial. The shadows were so weak upon the walls that the vial's shadow did not cast any color at all.
"This—this is only a temporary solution you know," Cadmus croaked, voice hoarse from reading labels. "There is no potion that can cure her illness. But perhaps…this potion can suspend her current state, precariously on the edge of death forever."
"The Draught of Living Death…" Antioch's fading shadow slowly and reverently reached out for the vial.
"Caution, brother. This is no different than letting her die. There is no way to bring her out of Living Death."
"The Princess was revived!" Antioch snapped, snatching the vial from his brother's hand in one decisive movement.
"The Princess," Cadmus spat, passionate vitriol suddenly burning away his mild manners. "To revive that bitch cost the sacrifice of hundreds of first-born males to the evilest dark magic ritual since the Egyptian Plague of Firstborns. Are you suggesting the first steps of mass-murder on the eve of our mother's passing? I cannot let that happen!" He stepped in front of Antioch.
"And I cannot let her die!" Antioch roared, fist tight around the vial, his shadow trembling with the effort of suppressing his violent urge to crush his brother in his anger. "What Mother has sacrificed for us, for you! Has that God of yours made you forget that?"
Antioch lunged around his brother with the vial, but Cadmus pushed back, leaning close. "Don't you dare! I forget nothing. And unlike you, I have not forgotten our mother's teaching. I have not forgotten the most important thing of all. We are Peverell. Stamus Contra Tenebras."
On the wall, the faint outline of the potion vial hovered an inch away from the rasping shadow, only to be swatted away. A silent scramble broke out amongst the two brothers, their shadows dancing on the wall to the rasping rhythm of their dying mother. Why was Death not coming?
No, Death was nearing; he could hear it in the weakening sound of his mother's labored breaths. But Death came at a slow, leisure stroll, as if trying to drag the agony out longer for its own amusement. If this went on, if someone did not do something, she could be dying for hours more, maybe even another day. By then the sound of her gasps and gurgles would not only have filled the hut, but it would fill him, inside and out, numbing him, choking him, until he himself could not breathe. It was unbearable. He would be driven insane, unless...
"We will revive her, without dark magic."
Antioch, hand still stretched out with the vial, and Cadmus, his own hand barring Antioch's, paused at the sound of their younger brother's voice. He sat, still facing the wall, perched on the stool as if he and the stool were carved from the same tree. But he continued to speak in his thin and reedy voice.
"Our father is the most powerful warlock of these isles. Antioch, you inherited that power. Mother was—is—the smartest Healer. You inherited that intelligence, Cadmus. And I have inherited the Gift from magic itself.
Let her drink the Draught, brothers. We will revive her, because I have Seen it."
Ignotus finally turned away from the wall. Face pale, set with large eyes that glowed eerily green in light of dawn, he looked younger than his ten years and painfully frail. But his voice was fierce in a way that only desperation at the edge of insanity could bring. "You are right, Cadmus. We must remember our family motto. Stamus Contra Tenebras: we stand against darkness.
Even if that darkness is Death itself."
Thoughts? Please review. If any history majors are out there, especially those who know anything about 13th century Britain, HELP! I would love to know anything about this era. I have a lot of research to do if I want to bring this story out of the Peverell hut and into a functioning, historical society that is integrated with Muggle history.