The Boy Who Lived and the Phantom Green
Hermione woke up to find a pair of red eyes intensely staring at her. She tried to sit up, but all her blood seems to rush to her head and she felt woozy.
"Where's Luna?" she practically growled.
"Right here," Luna chirped as she popped up at the foot of the green fainting couch Hermione was lying on. While this consoled Hermione, she immediately became distressed when she saw that snake draped around little Luna like a scarf.
"Get that thing away from me!" Hermione screeched as she backed up as far as she could without getting nauseous. The snake hissed at her, but Luna calmed the reptile by petting its head.
"I apologize for Nagini's behaviour," the little boy explained. "She's been trained to be protective of her master, especially against . . ."
"Against what?"
"Against you," the boy murmured. He seemed like an average little Asian boy, not much older than Luna, with shaggy black hair and fiery red eyes under a pair of thick glasses. But his voice was so mature, so tired - like he had been at war for centuries.
"What do you mean, against me? What the fu-" Hermione remembered to censor herself in front of Luna. "fudge are you talking about? And why does this snake's owner feel the need to be protected from me?" The boy eyed something or someone behind her before standing up from the footstool. "Okay, if you're not going to answer my question, I'm going to get going. C'mon Luna." Hermione tried to sit up, but the boy held her down.
"You can't leave," Hermione writhed under the boy's touch, trying to escape, but he continued to speak it that same solemn manner, "We need you. You're the only one who can set us free." Hermione stopped trying to escape and gawked at the boy.
"Set you free? From what?" The boy hesitantly glanced above her head to look at something - though she could have sworn it was a someone - before nodding his head and speaking again.
"Our master both protects us and traps us here."
"Who else is with you?" The boy looked above her head again but said nothing. "Is this all about you not being able to go to the park or something? Sweetie, I'm sure if I talked to your mom or dad-" but he cut her off.
"My parents are dead."
"Okay, well, whatever adult takes care of you."
"I am an adult."
"You're very mature, but you're like, what, maybe nine? Ten? You aren't old enough to be an adult." The boy closed his eyes and Hermione immediately regretted her remark, he looked so sad.
"I've been nine for seventy years," He said it so quietly she could have sworn she it was all in her head. Louder now, he repeated, "I've been nine for seventy years and I will never age a day." Harry's voice rose, quivering all the while. "And I will never be able to leave this shop and live a normal life until HE," he pointed above her, to the second floor of the shop, "reunites all of the pieces of his soul!"
"Harry, do you want him to hear you?" A voice behind her whisper-shouted.
"I don't care he if hears me! He thinks he saved me when that the bomb dropped - that I'm lucky because I'm 'The Boy Who Lived'!" A ball of uncontrollable rage, he turned his face up towards the ceiling, where the mysterious 'master' was. "But the only thing you've done is made me another antique for your collection!" Without speaking, Luna gingerly grabbed Harry's hand and gave it a consoling squeeze. None the less, Harry's brow furrowed as he sank further into the stool, concaving in on himself in pouty, brooding anger.
"Why don't you show Luna all the exhibits in the back?" The voice behind her encouraged. Begrudgingly, Harry rose from his stool and escorted Luna away from the couch and behind her, where the rest of the store waited in the shadows.
"You'll have to forgive him; Harry's been through a lot. We all have." The voice moved into Hermione's peripheral vision and she saw a ghostly woman the color of pale green cat eye's slither towards the stool. She wore a long dress that seemed to be made of iron feathers, and her hair was in a similar wrap. What was really eerie were her eyes - a bright golden color rimmed in black kohl.
"I'm Basil. Basil Isk." Hermione swallowed. The green phantom of a woman extended her hand and Hermione cautiously shook it, forcing herself not to recoil at Basil's cold and scaly touch.
"I'm Hermione Granger."
"It's good to finally meet you after all these years. Your aura has over the shop and every item in it for so long . . ." Basil trailed off.
"What exactly are you - if you don't mind my asking?"
"I'm the shop demon."
"Shop what?"
"Shop demon. I'm a demon spirit, and the shop is my hearth and life source." Hermione couldn't help but cringe at the thought. "The shop has been in his family," she gestured up to the second floor, where the mysterious master supposedly was, "for thousands of years. And most of those years have been under his reign."
"He sounds like a monster."
"Of sorts, I suppose. His quest for immortality has done that; he wasn't always this way. Not at the beginning."
"Are they vampires?" Hermione propped herself up so that she was sitting upright on the couch.
"No. Just pieces of soul frozen in a part of their journey."
Hermione nodded despite not really understanding and glanced at the strange objects around her. They had everything from shrunken heads to dusty tomes to strange metal cabinets.
"He's a collector, as you can see," Basil explained.
"I take it the antiquing business is quite, uh . . . profitable?"
"These aren't just antiques, they're horcruxes." Hermione must have given a baffled expression because Basil rushed to explain. "Horcruxes are objects where people hide fragments of their soul, allowing them to be immortal." What was more disturbing than what she just said was how calm, even content, Basil was about it. "I promise it doesn't sound as weird as you think. People who do not want to die pay us in favours or money, and we take their souls so they can gain immortality. We keep the souls in various items around the shop, only to be returned if the person requests or if their soulmate has been discovered."
"So, Harry has one of those things too?"
"That's where it gets a bit more complicated. Harry is actually a horcrux for the man upstairs."
Hermione tried to speak but the words weren't there. This was all so confusing, and she began to feel dizzy at the very thought of it.
"My master has seven horcruxes, and with each time he split his soul it became more and more unstable. Harry was never supposed to be a horcrux, but something went wrong and his soul attached itself to Harry. It happened during the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945."
"Holy shit," Hermione remarked, wide-eyed.
Basil nodded. "Nagini, that's the snake, is a horcrux too."
"When Harry was saying he was trapped earlier, what did he mean?"
"All horcruxes must remain in the shop. It's our way of protecting them and making sure the pieces aren't destroyed."
"How do you protect the pieces from other customers?"
"Based upon the strength of the owner, they can defend themselves to some degree. It's actually fascinating, but I won't bore you with the details."
"Why did you let Luna and I in then? We aren't looking for immortality."
"Normally there are barriers up, but . . . the minute I saw you near the shop, I knew it was you were going to be the one to set Harry and Nagini free and save him," she tilted her head up towards the ceiling, "from himself."
"Who is he?" She pointed up.
"He's had many names, but he currently goes by Lord Voldemort. And he is very good at what he does. So good, in fact, that he's lost himself in the process." Above them, the floorboards creaked and whined under someone's weight. This Lord Voldemort was walking right above their heads, and it scared the shit out of Hermione.
"And why am I important in this situation?" Hermione questioned in a hushed voice as she peered up at the squeaking wooden floor sprinkling dust above her head.
"I don't know how to explain this to you without sounding crazy," Basil began, but Hermione jumped in.
"I don't think you can top what you just told me."
"I think it will."
"Well, lay it on me. It's not like it will kill me."
"Don't say that. Please don't say that," Basil begged, desperation in her eyes.
"Huh?"
"Don't joke about death - especially your own. Not after all you've been through." Hermione gawked at Basil, unsure of how to respond. "You don't remember anything yet, do you?" Basil asked gingerly.
"Remember what?" Basil let out a long sigh.
"I thought being in the shop would be enough to bring them back. Clearly it . . ." she trailed off. "How could I have been so naive!" she muttered to herself. Suddenly, the floor boards began to creak once more above their heads, but this time they slowly spread from one side of the room to the other. Hermione turned around, seeing that at the other side of the dimly lit room was a staircase where a shadow emerging at the top of the stairs.
"In the name of Salazar, neither of you are really ready for this," Basil bemoaned. From under the stairs, a door was flung open and Harry and Luna rushed out towards them.
"Nagini ratted us out - that little venomous-!" but Luna grabbed his arm and he was calmed.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, big-eyed and scared.
"Yes," a man's smooth baritone echoed from the stairs as heavy footfalls slowly descended the stairs, "what are we going to do?" Hermione dared not look for fear of seeing this monstrous man, but she could tell that Nagini was somehow with him because she could hear sassy hisses.
