Disclaimer: I don't own anybody/anything. It's depressing really.
NB: Not for the squeamish. If you don't like blood and gore and murder etc DON'T READ! You have been warned.
Chapter 1:Letters in blood"GET OUT!" The mousy first year yelped and scuttled away. Albus felt ashamed but right now he had bigger things to worry about.
The putrid stench of rotting flesh seeped under the door into the potions room. It smelled sickeningly sweet, like burnt chocolate. Asked about it later, the headmaster would be unable to describe it, yet it would stick in his mind for the rest of his life, infiltrating his nostrils in his waking hours and terrorising his sleep.
He placed his hand on the doorknob yet couldn't muster the strength he needed to turn it. He took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose and mouth, hoping the feeble defence would rescue him from the worst of the callous odour.
He closed his eyes briefly and breathed in his last gasp of clean air before pushing open the door and stepping gingerly into Severus' room.
The smell intensified terribly, causing the old man's eyes to water and hold desperately onto the air fighting it's way out of his labouring lungs. The room was pitch black. Even the moonlight seemed to shy away from the loathsome scene played out before it. Albus fumbled blindly for the light switch, which may have been the most regrettable thing he'd done in his long life.
The light dimly lit the room and rocked back and forth from the thin wire attaching it to the ceiling. Albus gasped, and the air he breathed in caused him to retch emptily into his clean, white hankie. Tears streaked down his haggard face.
Sybil Trelawney's mutilated corpse lay naked on sheets stained red with weeks old blood. She was turned to her side, her legs entwined in the once-white sheets and her arms wrapped weakly round her head, forever preserving the last horror-stricken moments of her life. The stab wounds covered her completely. Her arms were barely recognisable as part of a human and the bones protruded morbidly, like the shattered remains of a dead tree. One of her eyes was gone-God knows where- and the empty socket was filled to the brim with crimson blood, a gory replica of a goblet of red wine.
Albus ran to the bathroom and heaved into the sink, wiping his mouth with a fragile, shivering hand. He walked back into the bedroom and, averting his eyes, noticed a pile of papers lying on Snape's desk. He cautiously walked over and picked the top one from the pile, careful to hold the handkerchief up to his face. It was splashed with blood, and he was filled with revulsion. How had it travelled so far? As he read panic started to well within him. He picked up the next, then the next. They were all addressed to the same person, all carrying the same message, all able to make a persons mind scream in terror and fear. A sane persons mind anyway.
Albus didn't even feel the warm, sticky blade pierce his skin, flesh, bone, nor the calm, even breathe on his neck until he collapsed on the floor, his mouth covered by a blood stained handkerchief. The last thing he saw was the last line of one of these letters, the words remaining ever imprinted on his mind.
We'll be together soon, my love.
Please review. If you didn't like it (which I wouldn't expect you to) I did warn you at the beginning not to read so you've only yourself to blame.