Oh dear, another Halloween fic, from me. Eh, it's a one-shot, so thankfully there will be no lazyness to worry about. It's quite a bit different from what I normally write. I think this is the best of my Halloween fics, which isn't saying much. Eh, hopefully it'll creep somebody out.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Obviously, if I did, it would go straigh to Hell in a matter of seconds.
It is time...
The words were whispered across Harry's mind. He snapped his head up as soon as he heard them, but a quick glance around the common room revealed nothing. Everyone was asleep. Like he should have been. But he needed to finish the last of his Potions homework or Snape would have his head. He quickly shook his head, blaming the whispered message as a figment of his imagination spawned from sleep deprivation. He turned back to his work.
You can't run this time...This time, Harry couldn't ignore it. He had heard something for sure. "Hello?" he called out into the shadows that filled the corners of the room that the light of the fire couldn't reach. Nothing answered. "This isn't funny,"he tried again, "Come out and stop playing around, I have work to do and you're distracting me."
Nothing. Just the cracking of the fire, and the wind blowing outside broke the silence that choked the room. Harry shifted nervously, but then shrugging it off, he turned one more to his work. He really needed to get this done, and listening to voices in his head wasn't going to help.
I'll come for you...This time Harry actually stood up. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and cold shivers were running up and down his spine. Something was very wrong. He was dimly reminded of the Basilisk in second year, but somehow this felt different.
He slowly reached down and closed his books. Something told him he wasn't going to get anything else done tonight. That same thing told him that it wouldn't matter. He shuddered.
Then suddenly the fire went out.
Harry froze, his eyes wide, trying to take in all the moonlight that flowed through the windows that the full moon could offer. Silence reigned. A silence so complete it was unnatural. Nothing moved, nothing existed. Harry was left shaking, all alone in the darkness.
"Who's there?" he finally whispered. A whisper of wind was his only reply. This was not Voldemort's doing. His scar wasn't even twigging. This was something worse, if that was possible. Suddenly Harry wished it was Voldemort.
Come to me...The Portrait hole swung open at the command. A dark abyss awaited Harry on the other side. A dark abyss surrounded him here. He briefly considered running up to the dorm room and hiding under the covers, but that would bring this evil to Ron and the others, something he refused to do. But if he didn't come...Harry whimpered as he realized his only option. He had no idea what was going on, but he was scared, more scared than he had ever been in his entire life. Something was waiting for him in the darkness, something truly terrible.
Harry took one step towards the portrait hole, and then suddenly he was standing in the opening, teetering on the brink of oblivion.
He took the step out into the darkness.
The halls were just as silent as the common room. The only light came from the full moon, as the torches had all been snuffed out. He walked along the corridors, not sure where he was going, only knowing he didn't really want to go there. But the voice was constantly whispering in his ears, and it was a hard thing to ignore.
Yes, it's almost time. Come to me, you can't escape, my Lovely.
And then, he was standing outside of the doors to the Great Hall. It was in there, he could feel it. He could literally feel the waves of evil pouring out from the room, seeping through the cracks under and around the doorway, even through the stone walls themselves. The sense was so powerful that he couldn't understand why no one else was here. Surely he wasn't the only one who sensed this!
But then he noticed the blood seeping out from under the door, and he understood. And he really wished he hadn't.
There was nothing else he could do. He couldn't run, because then this thing would hunt him down, and even if it wouldn't, he couldn't seem to move his legs. So he did the only thing he felt he could do. It took all of his willpower, but he pushed open the heavy doors and stepped inside.
The blood. Oh God, the blood. It was everywhere. On the floor, on the walls, on the tables, even on the ceiling, staining the moon a red hue. And the bodies. He couldn't bear to look at any of them too long. Corpses littered the room, twisted and mutilated beyond recognition. Bodies hung from the ceiling by shredded tapestries around their necks. Others were impaled on the gargoyles on the walls. Heads sat in neat rows along the tables lighting the way with the light pouring out of their mouths and the holes where their eyes used to be from candles placed inside of them. All of this led to the person sitting in the high chair that used to belong to Dumbledore.
Now, however, Dumbledore would never use it again. His head sat on the table in front of the one responsible for all this.
Harry stared in absolute shock and horror into the eyes of his father.
He couldn't move, he couldn't breath, he couldn't be sick like he so desperately wanted to be. He knew what had happened. He could mentally see how each of his classmates, his friends, and his teachers was called by the ghostly voice to this very spot. He could see them all standing in transfixed horror at the massacre before them. He could see them dying horribly by this man's hands.
And he could see his father doing all of this for him.
Harry began to shake as James stood from the chair. His bloodstained robes swirled around him as he walked slowly forwards. Soon he was right in front of his son. Harry couldn't look up, couldn't look into the face that looked so much like his own, knowing what this man had done. He couldn't even feel anything past the shock. He just continued to stare at Dumbledore's severed head, even though his father's body stood in the way.
"My son. My Lovely." James whispered, and he grabbed Harry under the chin and tilted his face upwards to look into his eyes. Harry tried not to notice he blood now smeared onto his flesh. He stared into the eyes of his father, and James stared back. For the longest time, neither moved.
Finally, though he didn't think he could, Harry tried to speak, "S-so," He licked his lips nervously, and tried again, "So, this was all done for me?" he asked, not wanting to hear the answer. It still hadn't completely sunk in, but he did feel slight fear, and he knew he wanted to get as far away from this demon in his father's form as soon as possible. James smirked.
"But of course, my Lovely, my son. Only the best for you," He answered. His hand never moved from Harry's chin. Harry flicked his eyes over to one of the heads on the tables. It sort of resembled Cho, but it was so mutilated that he really couldn't be too sure.
"Why?" Harry asked, even though he really didn't want to know. James's smirk morphed into a sickening and sinister grin. His hand shot down and gripped Harry tightly around the throat, while the other grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged on it.
"Because," He squeezed tighter, and Harry's hands flew to his throat in an attempt to pry off the iron-like grip, "because you are MINE, so you deserve a nice presentation. Don't you my Lovely?" Blackness was starting to creep around the edges of Harry's vision, so he almost didn't hear the explanation. However, James didn't seem ready to let go anytime soon, so Harry was left choking and struggling to not pass out. He didn't want to think about what would happen if he did.
"Why do you struggle, my son?" James suddenly asked, "Soon you will be with me and your mother for the rest of eternity. Isn't that what you want? I removed everything that would keep you here, so now you can come and be with us. So why do you resist?"
Harry gritted his teeth, trying so hard to ignore the words of poisonous honey pouring from this monster's mouth. But it sounded so easy. All he had to do was give up, and then he would finally be with his parents like he always dreamed of. It was true, it wasn't like there was anything for him now...
Harry glanced over to the right and with the last of his concentration focused on the head closest to him.
It was Snape's.
Out of nowhere, a rage and a power Harry had never felt before rushed through him. He was so furious he was shaking. Cedric, Snape, Sirius, his real parents, Dumbledore... they were all people that had sacrificed themselves to save him, to help him. He couldn't let their sacrifices be in vain. With a roar of primal fury, Harry ripped James' hands away from his neck and punched him square across the face. The monster stumbled back a few steps and landed on the ground with a thump.
Harry saw red. This thing had killed everyone he loved, everyone he cared about, everyone who returned those feelings, and countless other innocents. Without even pausing to think about what he was doing, Harry grabbed a knife that was sticking out of a small girl's body, perhaps a first year, and charged at the man at his feet. In the next moment dark black blood was spilling over his hands in icy torrents.
James gaped up at him with the knife still sticking out of his chest. But he wasn't dead yet. The look of shock quickly changed to one of fury, and Harry faltered. But a quick glance at the room around him, at the death surrounding him, and he strengthened his resolve.
Quickly grabbing another knife, this time sticking out of what looked like Professor Sprout's neck, Harry lunged forward and in one swift motion beheaded the demon. The lifeless body tipped over, and then abruptly disappeared into black coloured wisps of smoke.
Silence once more greeted Harry's ears, but this time, it wasn't tinged with the absolute evil of before. All of the sudden the events of the night caught up with him, and he was trapped between wanting to scream, vomit, cry, and run away all at the same time. As it was, he simply settled for sinking to the ground to kneel in a puddle of both human, and demon blood. And he still had no idea what was going on.
That was how the Aurors found him hours later.
As it turned out, Voldemort had been partially responsible. He had been trying to gain control of a demon of Hell to attack Hogwarts, but he had lost control, and the demon killed him. The demon then proceeded to Hogwarts, as Voldemort had asked, and killed off each and every person one by one. Harry had been saved for last, and as a result, the real James had had enough time to gather his strength to try to control the demon and save his son. He managed to weaken the demon enough that Harry had been able to kill it. Unfortunately, because James had been bound to the demon at the time of its death, his soul was lost forever into oblivion along with it.
Harry was never the same. He had lost everything in that one night. No one knew what to say to him to make it better. As it was, many people were busy grieving over their own losses, of their children and friends.
And so, when Harry's body was found on the floor of the Dursley's bathroom, with both wrists bleeding into oblivion, no one was really surprised.
The event came to be known as the Hogwarts Halloween Massacre.
Happy Halloween everybody. :)