Body Snatcher
Eine Kleine Katze (now Ellersway)
Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Fullmetal Alchemist.
This story is AU after Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, and episode 51 of Fullmetal Alchemist.
(Chapter 1 re-written from May 2nd 7th 2009)
I
Of Dreams and Of Nightmares
I've been having these strange… dreams, lately. And in them: I am dying. That's how I know that they are dreams; I'm still alive when I wake up.
Tonight the dream starts in the ballroom; I am lying on my back in a wide open hall with a vaulted ceiling that reminds me of Hogwarts. The room has a golden glow about it where the candlelight bounces off the gilded chandelier above me; its beauty leaves me breathless- so, I take one.
Pain. Agony.
I realise now that it is not the beauty of the room that has stolen my breath away, but the aching, gaping hole in my chest- there are organs exposed and blood- so much blood. I cannot see it, but I can feel it. It hurts-
- but that's okay; I won't remember the pain in the morning- not until tomorrow night at least. That's how these dreams work.
My eyes are still open, but the world is slipping away from me; shapes are blurring to become a golden haze. "I'm so sorry!" I choke, "Al!"
I would stop to wonder who Al is, but there is no time- already I feel my lungs tighten- the blood rising in my throat; I open my mouth to speak but the words die on my lips, distorted by a rush of deep crimson liquid.
I am drowning in my own blood.
This has happened before. The same thing happens every night; my world is turning black and a woman's voice is ringing in my ears. She is calling a name- my name; she has screamed the same words to me every night for the past three months and yet they still evade me. It is the worst sort of déjà vu.
My stomach lurches and a fresh wave of red spills out from between my gritted teeth; there is a noise like laughter, too wretched to be human. I hear screaming but I can't- I can't concentrate on it. Is it me? Or is it someone else? The world is slipping away from me and I just- I can't think. Help me, somebody. Al? Somebody. Somebody please, help me.
This is how I die. Drowning. Laughing. Screaming. And the final thing I hear as the floor drops out below me is that still small voice-
"Brother?"
"Brother…?"
"BROTHER!!"
And then, I am gone.
Harry Potter jerked bolt upright in his bed, his breathing was shallow and his eyes were wide and rabid. A few seconds passed and he led back down, lazily he put a palm to his forehead; it was slick with sweat and had yet to start to cool. Through the thin gauze of his curtains he could see the barest threads of morning beginning to touch the sky. It was early, then. He sighed- another good night of sleep ruined.
It was the fourth week of the summer holidays and these dreams had been bothering him for a while now- though it wasn't as if he hadn't experienced disturbing dreams before; ever since he was a child he'd been the victim of vicious nightmares. When he was younger he had dreamt of the death of his parents; his mind conjuring up a car crash more gruesome than any of Dudder's video games. And as he grew older the scene changed, it became more vivid- with words now too; this time he could hear his mother screaming.
Don't take Harry.
It didn't make any sense to him then, but he'd never had any time to think because at that moment- just before impact- Lily would turn around in the passenger seat to face him, and she would just stare. The car had yet to crash but her eyes were already grey and dead and her skin was blackened and rotting; she would take a rasping breath and Harry's eyes would be drawn to her mangled chest as it heaved- ribs and organs protruding, squirming. Harry would always try to reach out to her, but his arms were young and stubby- his words coming out in a futile gurgle. The last thing he would see before his vision exploded was the grinning green headlamps of the oncoming car, getting closer- closer until they swallowed his world whole.
The night he was moved into the cupboard under the stairs, a new kind of nightmare began. In these dreams he was always trapped; locked in the dark and musky crawlspace- where he had been completely forgotten by the rest of the world. The Dursleys had left him- the house was abandoned and he would sit there rocking himself back and forth as a thin harlequin light filtered through the cupboard grate. Eventually the light disappeared, but as Harry peered through the metal grill he realised that it wasn't because the lights had been turned off, it was because someone was standing in front of the cupboard door. Suddenly he would find himself screaming at the person. Please. Please. Help. Don't leave me. Don't leave us. Help me. Help me. We need you. Dad…
That was the first time he dreamt of his father; faceless, unlike his mother whose-
rotting
-image was burned into his retinas. At the end of the dream, every time, the figure would leave and light would flood the cupboard once again. Harry found himself scratching at the doors, then; frantically crying out to the man in a raw and rabid voice: Come back! Let me out. Come back. Come back. Come back.
But he never did.
At the age of six, his uncle struck him for the first time- not a shove, or one of those poxy little slaps he'd got as punishment in previous years, but a lingering, forceful, back-handed blow across his face- the kind of punch which would leave a man's knuckles bruised- had Harry been a harder target to hit. After this the dreams changed again; now his cupboard had become his haven, a place where he was safe from the beefy, unforgiving hands of his uncle. Open the door, freak. A voice would rumble, making the cupboard around him shake. Open the door.
Suddenly there would be a thump as the man slumped down onto his knees to peer through the plastic grill. Boy. He would ground out in a slow slur. Open the door. Each word was punctuated by a ragged, leery breath and Harry could smell stale liquor permeate the air through the slim slits of the grate. The child would wrinkle his nose. His dreams were always so vivid, not a sense remained unstirred and the only way he could tell that this was a dream at all was by the way it ended; two eyes glowering at him balefully through the vent, round and glowing and green-
Of course; green.
When he was eleven and finally learned the truth behind the phantom green light which had haunted his childhood, his dreams changed almost entirely. His parents had names now; Lily and James- but so did the monster who had snatched them away from him. Voldemort. A name which had him wishing that his family really had died in a car crash. A name which had him wishing (and not for the first time) that he had died too. Now his dreams were full of lights, not just green, but blue and red and white and yellow. An entire rainbow of pain; each colour with its own flavour, its own twist that sharpened the dull, monotonous torture he'd imagined in all his years before.
In the summer of his first year he dreamt about the Philosophers Stone. In his mind he would replay each test he and his friends had had to face in order to reach the stone; except this time there was screaming- not loud at first, but it was there. It gave Harry a renewed sense of urgency. Quick! He would say to Hermione, rubbing his scar with his thumb. I think there's someone in there with him. We need to hurry- he's hurting them. And so they would push on, defeating each challenge with an ease which was disconcerting for a group of eleven year olds and each time the next door opened the screaming would get just a little bit louder.
Can't you hear it? Harry's little mouth would twist itself into a frown, and his friends would shake their heads.
You're going barmy, mate. Ron would say, eyes flickering to Hermione.
Another door would open, the screaming would increase. Another door. Another door. Harry had to fight now to hear his friends over the din.
And then when he was in that final chamber- facing the mirror of erised- there was only silence. Harry watched as his likeness held up the crimson stone in one hand before passing it into the other, right to left, to right to left, back and forth, back and forth before slipping it into his pocket. Slowly his doppelganger lifted a finger to his lips. Quiet.
Harry blanched- not because of the robed man the reflection revealed advancing behind him- but because of the blood that dripped from the raised finger of his likeness. Harry's eyed traced the thick crimson trail as it tapered off down his wrist- his reflection didn't seem aware of it however and gasped- raising his other bloody hand and mouthing-
Look out.
There was a frantic hissing sound and "There- look you fool! He has the stone- it's in his pocket."
True to these words Harry felt a weight pulling at his trouser leg, and suddenly there was something thick, wet and seeping warmly oozing down the length of his thigh. His hand flew to his pocket and he recoiled almost instantly- covered in a warm and viscous red that seemed to grow in the hollow between his fingers. As his hand touched the stone the screaming had started again. But now he realised it wasn't one voice- but hundreds, thousands. There were words too- but they were shouted desperately in a harsh and indecipherable language that made his head ache until it all became just one mass of noise.
Harry let out a frantic, frenzied yelp and scrubbed his blood-stained hands on his robe- but the red wouldn't come off. Instead it started to spread; crawling up his arms and over his shoulder blades. He could feel the voices, they were under his skin now and the air was thick with the pungent, metallic smell of blood. He could feel it at his neck. At his jaw. Then his chin. Finally he felt the hot liquid spill over his lips- choking out a cry as it claimed his lungs.
All is one. It would whisper. All is one.
That summer, Harry set his alarm clock every hour so he wouldn't go to sleep.
By the time the next summer eventually rolled around, his nightmares were worse than ever. The basilisk had scared him shitless; though he wouldn't admit it out loud. Harry liked snakes, heck- he'd go as far as to say that he loved them- listening to the adders chatter away at each other in the long summer grass. It was pleasant- and there was very little in Harry's life that he could truly call pleasant. But when he saw the basilisk… he felt his insides curl and his blood go cold. For a normal person, this might have been a rational reaction; but Harry was not a normal person- and he couldn't explain it. The serpent was the subject of his nightmares for almost a year before they changed again.
At the end of his third year, he had expected that he would get nightmares about werewolves. It seemed natural after all, I mean- one had tried to eat him only a few weeks previous, and he knew that both of his best friends got the occasional night-terror about it… but, he didn't. That's not to say his nightmares had stopped though. They hadn't. Harry did get nightmares about that night, but they weren't about werewolves. No.
His nightmares were about Sirius.
Every night when he closed his eyes his mind would replay his godfather's transformation from man into dog. Man into dog. Man into dog. Man into dog. But never, never, dog into man. In his head Harry drew it out, the process slowed, distorted and amplified. His subconscious had recorded every crunch and snap of bone, every tear and flaccid groan of flesh as man morphed into canine. At the end of the dream the dog would cock its head to one side, heart pouring from it's dark eyes as it bared its teeth and said-
"Wanna play?"
When Ron and Hermione discussed becoming animagi, Harry said no.
In the trio's fourth year Harry saw a dead man. A body in a forest. Soulless. Empty. This bothered him. You see, for all the talk of dark wizards and curses and murder, death had never before seemed so real to Harry. And it wasn't as if he even knew the man- atleast, he didn't know him well… But his eyes were open when Harry found him. Soulless. Empty. And this bothered him. Of course, then, only a few days later- Cedric died. His eyes were empty too, with the same soulless glassy sheen- unblinking, accusing, and etched on Harry's mind for eternity.
After that, the nightmares were almost unbearable. Mostly because Harry knew it was his fault. Partially because he had now had the chance to sample the delights of the cruciatus. His mind would let him forget neither of these; and for three hundred and fifty six days, Harry dreamt in shades of green. His usual nightmares were now peppered with visions of Tom's torturous escapades; in some ways this was a relief.
Variety is, after all, the spice of life. He would sneer into his pillow.
Perhaps this was the reason he hadn't tried so hard at occlumency, perhaps he had been reluctant to part with his newfound relief from the hold of his usual nightmares. Harry shook with the force of these treacherous thoughts. He didn't need another reason to blame himself for the death of his godfather, there were enough already…
…And the guilt…the guilt was unquenchable; it dragged him downwards, pulling away at him until he felt great chunks of his soul stretch and snap under its dead, heaving weight. He dreamt of that night even when he was awake… Every time he closed his eyes he saw it: Sirius, falling in a graceful arc through an ornate stone archway; looking like a skater or a dancer or a diver- moving with a grace that was just so unnatural, so un-Padfoot that it was hard to believe it was really him at all. His eyes were-
Empty. Soulless.
-comically wide and his mouth was set in an eternal, cursive 'O'. There was a sudden rushed hushing noise like a sigh and his torso disappeared completely through veil; the gauzy wisps of evasive, smoke-like fabric curling around his legs like some kind of sea urchin, reluctant to release its hold.
Seconds- less than seconds, really- that's how long it took for Sirius to leave Harry's life forever.
Sirius. His throat trembled. He had only had one real nightmare about Sirius and that was on the day of the man's death. In it, Harry replayed the scene leading up to his godfathers fall- except, this time he was closer- this time Remus couldn't hold him and Harry would run, reaching up to the man with outstretched arms. He would be so close. So close. But as soon as his first foot fell on the stone steps of the dais Sirius would shriek; suddenly he would start to disappear, his body beginning to decompose- the smoky tendrils of the veil devouring him alive. Harry would force himself forward and Sirius would reach out to him-
But Harry was too late, as always, and snatched only at air as the last of the man crumbled into nothing. That was how his dream ended, and he awoke retching with a déjà vu that he couldn't identify and wasn't sure he wanted to.
It was after this that the new dreams began. These dreams were strange and didn't seem to be based off his life at all. Initially he had assumed that they were visions from Tom, but there was no magic and no death eaters- there was torture, of course, but there was no cruciatus- likewise there was death, but for once it remained unaccompanied by a sickly green light. For a while, he thought the dreams might have been symbolic and cursed himself silently for having burnt his divination textbooks with Ron at the end of their exams. But after almost three months of trying to figure out a deeper meaning Harry decided that these dreams were far too fucking real to be some sort of subconscious cry for help.
Weeks later and the dreams still hadn't stopped; every night they would be different. Different faces. Different places. But they would always, always end in the ballroom- with the horrible crunch and sick surprise of being gutted by a beautiful fiend. Harry shuddered. There were certain dreams which were repeated more than others; squeezing his eyes shut he tried not to remember the alleyway, the prison, the laboratory… the basement.
These dreams were always from the same perspective. Harry knew this because of his hands; both were always gloved and he would periodically hold them out and clench his fists. His left hand would tingle as the blood rushed out of his fingertips, but his in his right one he felt nothing. In fact the only thing he felt to tell him he even had a right arm at all was a long and aching weight that pulled at his shoulders; skin white and taut over the metal port etched into his chest.
He thought that maybe Voldemort was giving him these dreams as some sort of sick joke; but Harry discarded this idea as soon as he first dreamt about the metal arm- it was too modern- too muggle to be something that Tom had thought up. The boy winced. The night he had dreamt of the surgery on his shoulder… that hard been hard. It had felt as if someone was trying to weld wires to his skin, and he could still feel his nerves burning when he woke up; shaking, Harry would hold his breath and grab at his full fleshy limb- knuckles turning white. Don't worry. He would think. It's still there. It's still there.
In reality these dreams were just as bad- if not worse than those the 'Dark Lord' had become so prone to sending. They were violent and left Harry feeling like a drained and empty husk. The nightmares truly took it out of him, it seemed. He invested so much emotion in his night time adventures that he found it almost impossible to feel through out the day; after waking up from a night of 'sleep' he would find himself even more exhausted than when his head first hit the pillow. Harry felt that this was largely to do with the bizarre emotional attachment he seemed to have to certain faces in these dreams-
A young boy with round eyes, a blonde with oil-slicked skin, a suit of armour and a beautiful dark-haired man in uniform-
-it was almost as if he knew these people… Harry shook his head, and then there was that gate…
Even so, he didn't really see much point in writing to his friends- let alone the order about these dreams. If it didn't concern Voldemort, it wasn't really any of their business. Not that they would care much anyway, nightmares were a hard thing to empathise with if you hadn't had them all your life like Harry. Ron and Hermione- well, they'd try to understand, but they wouldn't- and Harry really didn't need any of their strained, confused sympathy. He didn't need another reason for them to pity him.
He sighed; there was one person he knew he could've talked to about this. A person who- having spent twelve years in Azkaban- understood the true weight of nightmares; how the twisted creations of your own mind could haunt you more than anything dreamt up by a psychopathic 'dark lord'. Unfortunately for Harry though: Sirius was dead.
Harry drowned a muffled whine in his covers and pulled his pillow over his head.
His godfather had been a brief beacon of light and hope to him over the past two years; like a shooting star he had burned away the darkness with his bright and loving brilliance, but just like a comet his presence was brief, and he quickly- too quickly disappeared completely; and Harry was left alone once again.
And now, here Harry was; his friends having damned him to a summer with only his own treacherous thoughts for company, and the Order as his own private gaolers. Life at number four had quickly become his own personal hell.
The boy seethed. His prison wasn't even gilded.
Sluggishly, he allowed himself a quick glance at the small plastic clock on his windowsill; he could only just make out the thin black hands in the dark. He blinked; the time was only twenty-past-four. Harry sighed, eyes lingering on the swirling cloud of dust that gathered at his window, each speck picked out by the orange glow of the street lamps outside. Silently he pulled himself out of bed.
Unlocking his door he exited his room, moving slowly across the landing towards the bathroom. Stumbling into the bathroom he flicked on the light on, and pulled the door closed behind him.
The false light stung his sleep-obscured eyes and his vision was slightly unfocused, he peered into the glass of the bathroom mirror. As his sight cleared he took a large intake of breath.
Harry didn't need his glasses anymore to study his reflection in the mirror; he hadn't needed them since just before his sixteenth birthday. In fact he had experienced several changes since the 31st of July. Subtle, really- but noticeable to those who knew him. Most of the changes were hard to pinpoint; perhaps his eyes were a little rounder, his curve of his face a little softer-as if his body was suddenly trying to compensate for his half-starved gaunt-faced childhood. Every day Harry found himself struggling that much longer to find some trace of James in his jaw line- of Lily in his cheekbones. They were still there though; it was just that he had gotten so used to finding his father in the mirror every morning that it scared him now that he looked more like Harry than James. The few Order members that he had spoken to had passed it off as his magical (and physical) coming-of-age. Harry was sceptical- as well as slightly surprised that Moody hadn't tried to pin him as some sort of impostor.
The biggest change was in Harry's height; or maybe it would be more fitting to say that the least change was in Harry's height. He had always been short as a child, but had always chalked it up to the neglect he had experienced when he was young. This was okay when he was a kid- but by the time he'd reached his fourth and fifth year, his 'height-problem', had become- well, exactly that: a problem.
Okay. To put it more simply… he was short. Very short.
…Embarrassingly short.
It had never really mattered to him before, but as the years crawled by and his friends and classmates all shot up around him, he was left waiting- stuck in a perpetual childhood. Adolescence- well, puberty- had abandoned him at the height of five foot three and honestly, people were going to notice.
Staring furiously at his reflection he swore that the summer must have shaved a good two inches off his height. Not that that was possible but-
"Malfoy is going to have a field day come September…" he moaned, collapsing his face in his palms.
Carelessly he reached a groping hand into the sink, pushing the small metal plug into the hole at the bottom. He fumbled hastily for the tap, if he was going to get a wash he would have to do it when the Dursleys weren't awake.
And why shouldn't he get up now? Twenty-five past four was as good a time as any. Time had lost its meaning to Harry now anyway. Four weeks of monotonous purgatory did that to a guy.
Slowly he cupped his hands together, soaking his half-awake face in the cool, wet water. It was in these few seconds of complete submersion that Harry could forget.
Forget mum. Forget dad. Forget… Cedric and Sirius and the screaming blood that pooled between his aching fingers and the scarlet-stained wall and the little girl called "Nina". Forget the beautiful woman led dying on the floor and the mass of pulsating flesh and organs that writhed in the corner and felt more like his mother than his mother ever had and Harry knew it was wrongohheknewitwaswrongbuthecouldn'thelpithejustcouldn'tescapethefeelingthat-
All is one.
Harry pulled his face out of the water. There he was again. Thinking.
Gripping the rim of the porcelain sink, he let out a long, shuddering hiss of pain, his clenched fists glowing ivory.
Sometimes. Just sometimes. He really thought he was going insane.
"Harry, hearing voices that no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the Wizarding World." The words of his best friend echoed in his head.
"Shut up, Ron."
"You do know that talking to yourself is generally considered to be one of the first major signs of insanity, right?" Hermione added.
"Think I've heard that before too." He said in a breathy sigh- pulling the plug free with one lazy finger. Was he really so buggered up in the head that he was talking to himself now too?
The crueller part of his mind pointed out that he wouldn't have to put up with the voices if he'd have been arsed to learn occlumency and Harry's breath hitched. There was not a day he didn't curse himself for his blind stupidity and pig-headed, arrogant laziness. His thoughtlessness had cost him dearly. He hated- fucking hated hindsight. A million what ifs flooded unbidden into his mind and he felt himself spiral even further downwards; he tried to remind himself that he had no right to feel sorry for himself, because at the end of the day it was his bloody fault. He had nothing to complain about; he wasn't dead. He wasn't gone. He wasn't-
Empty. Soulless. Rotting-
The more forgiving part of his mind told him that it wasn't his fault, that it was Bellatrix, Voldemort… even Snape who was to blame… but that voice was malnourished, small and weak.
His head spun. It was a familiar, vicious cycle of thought that he was on- but Harry had always managed to pull himself out of… Eventually. Alone.
It had been quite an unpleasant shock to realise that no one was going to help him through this. He had expected at least to receive an awkward letter off Ron or Hermione telling him not to blame himself and to get his homework done or even inviting him to stay at the Burrow-
But no. Nothing.
Harry shifted slightly. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He had received regular communication from Remus in the first few days of the summer, though Harry had found it kind of difficult to talk about his feelings to the man. Despite this, he'd found great reassurance in the letters from the old were-wolf, and Harry was relieved to find that he hadn't been forgotten entirely. He had looked forward to the company over the holidays- but then, only seven days into their correspondence, the letters abruptly stopped.
Harry somehow suspected that Remus hadn't done it out of choice.
The only letters he had received after that were the ones sent by the Order. They were delivered promptly every three days, each message as blunt as the last.
Harry-
Have you had any visions? Is your scar hurting? How are the Dursleys treating you? Please write back immediately.
DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE.
After the first few letters, they no longer bothered to sign the paper. But that was okay, Harry didn't really care any more.
He knew that there was probably a perfectly sound and sensible reason that people were avoiding him, but he couldn't help but feel kind of jilted by the insensitive way in which they 'executed their correspondence'. So, indulging his immature and angry teenage hormones he swiped a pen off the desk and simply wrote back:
I'm fine.
-Harry
Needless to say he got a few angry replies to that. But life went on; each day rising and dying, though every day was pretty much just as dull and slow as the last for Harry. He had completed all his homework within his first week back- and by the fourth had successfully re-read most his books for the year (which was a new low, even for him).
Harry stumbled across the landing and back into bed. Glancing at the little plastic clock he wondered if he could manage a couple of hours of honest sleep before he rose to face the day again. Even after four weeks, it was still going to be a hell of a longwait till September; he shook his head and sighed- burying it further into his pillow.
Tired. Why was he always so tired?
...Usually, Harry a slow sleeper- too prone to keeping his mind busy and awake by thinking to damn much. Usually, sleep snuck up on him this way- fatigue steadily building during his drawn out inner monologue- filling the cracks of his mind until it gushed over the brim; wiping away his conciousness in a wave of white. But this time, in the odd milky, half-light of morning, Harry Potter was gone within seconds.
I've been having these strange... dreams, lately. And in them: I am dying…
Okey, everythings going up on this account now- there were several exceedingly good reasons for this (not least a couple of severe misjudgements on my part as to my approach to writing this story), and originally I wasn't going to put Body Snatcher back up at all. But did alot of thinking and decided I'd miss it terribly if I didn't continue it. If you want the full story as to why this was taken down then throw me a PM, if not then you can expect the next couple of updates to be a bit slower cause I'm in the middle of my exams.
For now, (as some of you have noticed) the yahoo group has also gone down- this is because I truly did originally intend to completely abandon this story. If this story gets followers again (as it has lost all of its reviewers and people on alert because of the account switch) then I may recreate it. For now, my focus is just writing the story- and hoping it can find readers again.
Can has moar angzt nao plz.
I mean, srsly, guys, srsly.
Anyone spot the nod to the FMA movie?
Also, yay for very long chapter avec frites, as you can tell I tried to make the chapter a bit more relevant to the title this time round- though things may have gotten a little out of hand- note the endless FMA references for your enjoyment. I'm trying to lay the groundwork here for Harry/Ed(Hadward? Eddy?)'s transformation, I want it to be really clear that Harry and Ed have always been the same person; this is why I wrote a very Edward-tinged version of Harry's childhood nightmares. Am I making any sense here?
And gee; Mr. Eddy Hadward does sure love his angsting.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, as always- please, please review- it really does make my day :)
Lotsa love,
EKK
(next update may be a wee bit delayed coz' of birthday ce-le-bray-shunz)