Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all his companions are wonderful creations of the gifted J., I claim no profit or ownership of anything.
Prologue
The girl ran, breathless, through the dark twistings of the back alleys. She was lost; the stony corridors all looked the same and seemed to turn in impossibly tight circles to one another. She wore nought but a thin white cotton sundress, now torn and stained, and the coldness of night pressed in around her making her shiver despite her fear.
She could not hear the men, but she felt sure that they must be pursuing her somewhere in the pitch darkness of the surrounding alleys. Fear pulsed through her veins and she pressed on through her tiredness further into the labyrinth. She cringed involuntarily as she remembered the expressionless masks that the men wore, the darkness that seemed to surround them and how they treated her like a piece of meat rather than a human being.
She had slipped away when the youngest one wasn't looking. He had been ordered to keep an eye on her while the others went somewhere else, but he had seemed agitated and distracted and she used this to her advantage to slip away into the swallowing darkness of the nearby alleys.
Turning a corner, she tripped over something brittle sending herself flying onto the dirty stone paving. Scrambling hurriedly to her feet, she saw a gnarled face in the dark: a homeless man huddled in the corner, hugging his damaged leg to his chest. Overcome with relief that it wasn't one of her pursuers, she stammered a profuse apology. The man hissed at her, the inhuman noise making her recoil in disgust.
She spun away to continue her flight, but her breath caught in her throat as she found herself less than a few feet from a dark figure. Slowly, the man turned and her whimpered as she caught sight of the ornate silver eye-holes boring into her face. Backing clumsily away, she turned to run somewhere – anywhere, but felt a painful tug on her hair before she could take but a step.
Seizing her hair in a vice-like grip, the man yanked her to his side. "Muggle," he snarled contemptiously. "Make so much as a noise and you'll die. Painfully. Understand?"
She tried to nod, tried not to cry but felt the wetness on her cheeks anyway. He dragged her painfully by the roots of her hair back down the endless corridors of darkness. She did not know if this was the way she had come or whether it was an entirely different route. It was impossible for her to tell. She struggled to keep up, the tears falling helplessly down her cheeks. What did they want with her? Who were they?
Finally he threw her to the ground. She found herself surrounded by the cloaked dark figures as they all stood impassively in a circle. At a parting in the circle there was what looked like a framed wooden mirror. It caught the dull light in the darkness, reflecting little back at her. As she watched the surface seemed to glisten like the darkened surface of a pond, and almost appeared to ripple before her eyes.
Easing slowly to her feet, the girl inched a little further forwards curiously to see where the optical illusion was stemming from. What she saw reflected in the mirror sent a chill through her veins and raised the hairs on her arms. She stuffed her hand in her mouth to stifle the scream that rose in her throat.
–
200 miles away another young girl sat up abruptly in bed, covered in sweat from the dream that remained etched behind her eyelids. She gasped as her lungs struggled to catch her breath back, her hands knotting and releasing constantly in the soft cotton bedspread. She stared unseeingly into the darkness of her room, her inner focus still on the image of the poor girl suffering at the hands of the masked men.
Turning in the bed, she pushed her legs out from under the light summer covers and walked carefully to the window of her room to look out at the mistily moonlit night. She felt her breathing calm a little and the breeze from the window felt good on her sweaty face.
Pushing her hands anxiously through her long brown hair, she wondered how much longer this could go on. Three nights now; three nights she had yanked her own subconscious from the depths of sleep because the dream felt too real – was too terrifying – to continue. She stared out at the shadows cast by the moonlight on the garden stretching out before her and wished that she knew the truth.
The truth as to whether her dreams contained actual event; they felt so real, so tangible. The thought bought goosebumps up on her bare arms.