Hogwarts Party - aprW olsdeC
It's time for the annual game of, How many ways can you say the chapter name?
As the dust settled and the screams ringing in his ears faded away to nothing Harry glanced out from underneath the desk he shared with Ron who was currently stiff as stone beside him.
The chandelier that he could have sworn he heard crash to the floor was connected to the ceiling again, but... He blinked repeatedly at the sight of not rusted iron keeping it attached but long strings of sinew hanging from the ceiling, curving around the iron. If that's what was even underneath all the blood covering it. Blood that dripped down from the ceiling into a puddle beneath the ornament, gallons of it seeping into the wood. There was no bones, no other... body parts, just blood and muscle tendon.
The stench that followed the sight hit him hard and his stomach twisted painfully. What surprised him most was the way all of this looked fresh. As if someone had just recently tangled the sinew around the chandilier. A question popped into his mind at that trail of thought.
Where was the rest of the body?
There was a gagging sound to his left and Harry turned to see Ron wiping vomit from the corners of his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. The added stench of half digested food made his stomach twist harder. "Ron?" Opening his mouth to talk didn't help matters and a moment later he was doubled over, emptying out his own lunch onto the floor.
"Come on, Harry." There was a hand on his arm, tugging him back out from underneath the desk so the two could stand up as Harry wiped his own mouth with robe, spitting to try and get the acidic tang out of his mouth. "Oh, Merlin."
He raised his head, opening his eyes now that widened further upon seeing the rest of the room. Blood was splattered all over the desks, the remaining gallons that weren't on the floor. The body that he first thought to be missing was spread across the room. Within a plastic skeleton head were the eyes that seemed to be staring back at him, accusing him even though he had just got here. Wherever here was. Though it besides all the gore it looked exactly like the classroom he had stood in moments before. Except for the skull, that was new to.
His eyes settled on the blackboard next where two bone arms with strips of flesh still attached leaned against the board holding blood covered chalk.
It hurts. Oh Merlin it hurts. Please forgive me. Mother. Someone tell my mother I'm sorry. Tell her I didn't mean any of it. Tell her I lov-
Blood covered the rest of the letters, though it didn't take much thought for Harry to figure out what was underneath. He backed up a step, blood running cold when a squilch filled the air. Harry looked down slowly to see blood forming slowly from beneath his shoe, a thin bit of muscle to the right, mostly trapped under his foot with a ventricle trailing down the side.
A shiver ran down his spine as he slowly lifted his foot, setting it back on smooth stone. When the smooshed heart twitched, as if attempting to pump blood to the scattered body Harry turned and ran from the room, straight out the open door into the hallway.
"Harry!" The pounding of feet followed him out as he found himself retching again, leaning against a wall, eyes squeezed shut so he wouldn't see the rest of his stomachs' contents on the floor. "Are you... or, well..."
He gasped for breath, the air was cleaner out here but he could still taste the blood on his tongue. Harry could still see the those eyes staring at him, the corresponding heart beating even when it was crushed. "Let's just... get out of here," he managed to get out before he had to close his mouth.
"What about... everyone else?"
His feet stopped moving below him, Harry barely managed to not look back into the classroom but instead at Ron. Where was everyone else? Besides the mutilated corpse he hadn't seen anyone else inside the classroom. "I didn't... Did you?"
"Umm," Harry glanced down to see Ron fiddling with something in his hands, fingers sliding over metal with a black yellow sheen. "I found this," Ron followed his gaze, parting his fingers to look at letters etched into the surface. "But I don't recognize the name."
When he handed it over to Harry he turned it in his own palm to look down at the name tag.
Norman Bates, 1959
1959? But the body - if the mess of blood, muscle, and bones could even be called a body - in that room looked as if had been killed minutes before they showed up. The blood had flowed for Merlin's sake, it hadn't even had the chance to coagulate.
Was that the current year though? Harry didn't remember reading - much less hearing - that a murder had happened in that year. If something as horrible as that had happened it surely would have gotten out and everyone in the castle would know, they just wouldn't want to talk about. He also doubted any Professor would want to teach in a room where a student was killed in such a horrific way. However he was killed, magic had to be involved as Harry couldn't come up with any other explanation for what he had seen, and frankly, he didn't want to think about it.
"I don't either," he finally said after staring at the name tag for a whole minute. "He was obviously a student at Hogwarts though," Harry pocketed the nametag as he spoke, not able to just leave it after - a shiver ran through his body - stepping in the corpse. It was the least he could do, hopefully it would stop those eyes from staring at him as if everything in the world was his fault. "We need to find the others and get out of here."
"Yeah," Ron took in a shaky breath and Harry glanced to his friend, "Harry... you don't think the person that did that back in there is still close by do you?"
He held his tongue for a moment, because, well, he had thought about it. But he hadn't heard anything to suggest anyone was nearby. The thing was, the school was too quiet. If someone else had been even breathing he was sure he could have heard it clear as day. "I think we need to keep moving and-"
"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT THE BLOODY HELL UP!"
"Hermione!" Ron shouted and Harry was instantly following his friend, heading towards the sound of the shouts. Their shoes pounded on the stone as they rounded a corner, ran down a hall, down a flight of stairs, past the walkway next to the courtyard, into another long hallway to come to a panting stop as the angry screams were bouncing of the walls. "Wh-where is," Ron struggled for breath after their break neck pace, "Hermione?"
A strange sound came from the wall then and Harry looked towards it to see a girl step from the wall with an odd blue haze around her. "Ron." He tapped at his friend's shoulder who looked up quickly with a smile for it to slip into a frown a milisecond later. Harry stared at the ghost for a second thinking he recognized her before asking, "Have you seen our friend? Her name's Hermione."
The ghost immediately let out a wail, "Your friend! Your friend? Why would I care about her or her name! No one here ever cares to ask about my name! They might as well all forget! Just like they'll forget YOU!"
Harry practically jumped from the screams, barely keeping his eyes on the ghost as she flew around the hall. "Umm, what's your name?"
The ghost stopped dead center in the hall, lowering slowly to the floor, looking at him with a critical eye. "Myrtle," she sniffed, "Before they die though they all call me, Moaning Myrtle. They think I can't hear them but I can!" The ghost flew into another rage and Harry ducked down as she sailed over him and Ron. "I hear what they say behind my back! How they laugh at me! 'Moaning Myrtle, that twat, how she's still breathing is beyond me!' 'I bet she-whack! They never saw it coming those fools! But I did! And what do I have to show for it? Nothing! Not even a body..." Myrtle broke out into sobs, lowering back to the floor as she cried. "Ryou..."
"Excuse me, Myrtle?" She looked up slowly with another sniff when Harry addressed her, "Did you see Hermione? We heard her screaming a little while ago and it was coming from here-"
"No."
He frowned. Damnit. Had they just missed her? But Ron had shouted her name, surely she would have heard it and stayed where she was.
"Okay, well-"
"You're new aren't you?" Harry glanced to Myrtle, unsure what she was referring to. "You just arrived here by an earthquake, didn't you?"
"How do you know that?" Ron questioned.
The ghost girl smiled, "I did it to, the charm. Everyone here has, and everyone has died here. Or if they're not already dead they will be soon. You two are part of the new presences I felt."
"New?" Harry asked. There were other people here in this awful place?
"Yes, there's still a few from the last batch around. Though none are here. Not exactly anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"They're in another closed space."
"Closed space?"
Myrtle laughed, "You really did just get here. Pay attention then new blood. Here is just a closed space within these castle walls. There are more where other people reside, other... things reside. The way to tell the difference is the walls, Hogwarts started out with no paintings until the Founders and staff started to pass away and they had portraits made, but you know this already. It's by these pictures that you can tell you're in a different closed space. If you can manage to move across to another closed space. It's difficult for those with bodies. I am not restricted like you are. Each closed space holds at least one person inside, if that sole person dies that closed space disappears until a new batch comes in. Right now there are seventeen living people I sense. So, if they were all in their own closed space there could be a total of sixteen closed spaces, though that would make them terribly easy to kill. You've seen a body have you not?"
He shivered at just the reminder of the scene that greeted him and Ron here. "Yes. So were in one of these 'closed spaces?'"
"Correct."
"But it's unlikely everyone else is alone in their own closed space? Would you know where our friends are so we can find them?"
Myrtle smiled here and it sent a shiver down his spine, "All of them are your friends? I highly doubt that. The friend you asked about though, Hermione, was it?" At his nod she continued, "I only sense the two of you in this closed space. Which would mean she is in anoth-"
"But we just heard her!"
"That is common," Myrtle hissed, throwing an annoyed glance at Ron, "You may have heard her but it does not mean she is here. It does not mean anything unless you are to find your friend. Even then you may find her before she ever screamed in the first place. This place plays tricks on you. It lets you hear your friends but not see them."
"What do you mean, 'before she ever screamed in the first place?'"
Myrtle turned to look back at Harry, "Exactly what I said. It plays tricks. You may be hearing a past voice, present, or even future. Time is the same in all closed spaces but fluctuates inbetween them. You may hear or see something that happened in another closed space after it happens in the future or past. To put it simply, you're in a demented fun house. I wonder how long you'll last before they get you?"
"Who's they?" Harry asked as he processed all this information.
Myrtle just grinned at him before exploding into laughter that might as well have frozen his body in place, and then she wasn't even there. The girl, the ghost, just evaporated right before his eyes, laughter dying down but it still rung loudly in his ears.
