EDIT: I would like to let you know that this story has been rewritten as The Boy and his Dog. Please consider reading that one!
The Visitor
The first time was when he had been imprisoned for a long time already. He had no way of knowing how long exactly, the days seem to last forever and there were no seasons on the perpetually cold and rainy island. Still, it must have been more than one year, that he was sure of. He had woken from a restless sleep by the strangest sound. Not that the sound itself was so unusual, but where it sounded was. Because, in this place of decay and despair, a child had spoken. It was faint, probably from the far side of the hallway, but it was also everything this place was not, and he drank in every word.
"Mister, mister," the child almost sang. "I dreamt a cat today. It was raining and she was cold, but I picked her up and put her under my cloak." It stayed silent for a second, no other sound forthcoming, but then the child continued again.
"I like cats, mister, do you? They're so warm and furry. My cat was really pretty, mister. Her fur was all wet and black and brown stripes. I could count her ribs through it."
He smiled slightly and shifted on his cot, trying to find a place where that annoying stone wouldn't poke in his back. He felt his eyelids growing heavy and enjoyed the, he realised now, absence of the cold caused by Dementors. It was still freezing, of course, but that was a natural kind of cold. So unlike that cold that seemed to suck all the life and happiness out of your body. The words of the child blended into a pleasant buzz, accompanying him to his first peaceful rest in this wretched place.
The second time the child came he was already awake, so he heard the iron door swinging open and close again. He heard the child himself only when he started talking again, almost imperceptibly closer this time. He thought he must be talking to the other prisoners, because the boy seemed to be alone. He stumbled to his door, long since weakened by hunger and cold, and curled his fingers around the bars. For a second he was fascinating by his hands, so thin and bony and white and unlike before, but then he shook his head angrily and tried to peer onto the hallway. If he pressed his head against the freezing iron he could just about see three cells down, but the child was out of his line of sight and the cold gave him a headache. So he just lay down again and listened to the voice.
"Pretty lady, pretty lady, where did your pretty hairees go? You shouldn't pull them out, lady, what a pity! If you were a spider, you could build a house from them. Give your hairs to me, pretty lady, I'll make you a web. I found a spider today, and its house, but the spider I killed and the house I tore down. The spider burned so prettily! I wonder, pretty lady, will you burn as pretty as my little spider fire?" The boy laughed delightedly, the sound echoing off the stone walls and intermingling with the mad shrieks. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rising, but he had long ago learned the Dementors disappeared when the boy came around, so he just tried to enjoy the respite and to ignore what the boy said. He was coming often lately, at least once a week. Or so he thought. The boy had almost neared the section of the hall where his cell was placed. It had been what, a year since he first came? Two years? It was a long hallway. And so very cold and dark. Even during the day, or what passed for it, he could barely see the occupant of the opposite cell. He wasn't even sure if it was a male or a female. The only time there was any light, it was in the form of a torch in an auror's hand. He made sure to keep away then. Nothing good ever came from aurors.
He had long stopped wondering what a child was doing here. It was not as if it mattered, after all.
He was often pacing for hours in his cell. It took him ten steps to go round. Three for the long wall, two for the short. But that was when he had been healthy. It was a lot more steps lately.
The boy wore a thick black cloak, protecting him from the everlasting cold, but underneath it he could clearly see bare feet. Those feet walked soundlessly over the grimy stone floor, until the boy had reached the cell diagonally from his own and sat down. The prisoner in the cell twitched faintly, but otherwise didn't respond. The boy leaned slightly forward and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, his voice so clear and innocent that it still startled him, "did you hear the dark tonight? She sang to me, she did, old man. She told me all those beautiful stories. There was a flood in the mist today, d'you know? There was a flood and a blaze and a sickness too. She sang to me they died, she did, all dead they are. Rotting and lifeless like the stones under here. D'you feel them, old man? The stones are speaking, d'you feel? They shriek about their deaths."
There was a delighted maliciousness in the boy's words. The prisoner opened his mouth. He barely registered that his own mouth also opened and his lungs expanded and filled themselves with oxygen.
"Shriek!"
He shrieked and the world blackened.
He awoke some time later with a pounding headache. His throat was parched and sore, and when he tried to cough, he managed to produce only a faint wheeze. His vision was blurred, but some blinking took care of that. His shadowed cell swam back into clarity, complete with frost creeping over the stones. It took his scrambled brains some time to realize what that meant. He managed to transform before the Dementors passed by his cell, but they still made his sight go blurry again. It was then that his sensitive nose caught the strong smell of blood. Fresh blood, and very close too. The pounding of booted feet suddenly invaded to hallway, tripling his headache. He crept whimpering to the corner of his cell where the shadows would hide him from the incoming aurors. They weren't interested in him, however, but in the cell diagonally from his. The cell where the boy had paused last time.
"Screamed himself to death, it seems. Bloody fucker," one of the aurors said sullenly. "Levitate him, Jefferson. I don't want to stay down here any longer than I have to."
"How did he manage that?" The second auror's voice was young and filled with tremulous astonishment. There was a slight jingle and a rusty creak as the door swung open.
"Don't ask me, I don't know. But I've seen weirder things in this place. Just levitate him, kid. We're not getting paid for playing detective."
Mere seconds later the noise of their footsteps disappeared around the corner and the hallway was once again deadly silent. Even the prisoner down the hallway who was more often than not screaming gibberish at his walls had quietened. He stayed hidden in his corner with his head on the floor, for once thanking the numbing cold which dulled his headache. It didn't soothe the pain in his throat, though. He looked mournfully to the half full bucket of water near the door, but couldn't find the energy to get up. It was frozen anyway, the Dementors having been near it not five minutes ago. Stupid Dementors. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.
He stared horror struck at his eyes, his face, his untamed mess of hair and realized that, oh god, he knew this boy. This was the one who had walked his dreams for all those miserable years in this dreary hell. This was the one who kept him sane and tormented him with guilt.
His body sagged back against the stones.
"I remember you." The child widened his grin until it was impossibly wide. "Doggy, doggy, won't you play with me?"
**This was supposed to be longer. But it felt finished, and continued to do so for months. So I decided Shadowplay looked decidedly lonely and posted this. So...