Trial By Fire Chapter Ten The Gillespie House, a harry potter fanfic

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Rowling's work or the Silent Hill universe.

Chapter Ten The Gillespie House

This voice

Is it calling

It's your choice

She said

Take or let go

Is it calling? [1]

Time stood still, laying in stagnant folds about them. Draco saw Cybil's jaw slacken, her eyes widen, staring at the girl that stood a few mere feet away.

A ghost she was not, he knew that for certain. The child possessed a body of flesh and bones just as he did. And yet, there was something unreal about her.

Dark hair spilled down past her shoulders, rendering her oval face almost too pale. She was wearing a blue starched dress, white stockings and tiny buckled shoes. Her gaze was plaintive.

Draco felt his body spasm as a chill jumped up his spine. He reached for Cybil, wanting to squeeze her arm, to let her know that he had been telling the truth, that this was the child he had chased out of the classroom. Glancing once at the cop's face, he realized she already knew.

Slowly, Cybil was struggling to her feet, an arm outstretched in awkward greeting.

"Hi there," she said and Draco marveled at her composure. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

The girl did not respond. Instead, she blinked, the movement of her eyes reptilian, disturbing.

"I'm a police officer," Cybil continued. She pointed to the patch sewn onto her sleeve. "You don't have to be scared of me. Do you know where your mommy is?"

Something was wrong. Draco felt as though he had to warn Cybil. He hurried to a stand.

"Cybil!"

She waved him away.

The girl watched them in unnerving silence.

"Can you come here?" Cybil tried again. "I just want to talk to you, I just-"

And then the child was gone, the only sign of her presence carrying back to them in a faint echo of running feet.

"God," Cybil moaned, the sound coming from somewhere deep within her. "God, my God!" She took off after the girl.

Draco had no choice but to follow. He raced after her, his bones protesting heartily with every feverish step. Somehow, he mustered the strength to continue.

Cybil glanced back once to make sure he was behind her. "Which way did she go?" she cried.

Draco shook his head, already winded. They turned out of the Midwich parking lot and back onto the street. Down by the corner, a small blue figure darted between two buildings.

Cybil caught sight of her first and pursued her fleeting form. The girl was surprisingly swift for such a young child, and Draco was forced to fight growing unease with each stride. Something was wrong here. The girl, like the town, was not natural.

After being led out onto the Main Street, their course veered straight back off into a side alley, through a playground, down a residential block. The figure in blue stopped for an instant in front of a house halfway down the street, then disappeared.

Draco blinked his eyes. Impossible! She couldn't have Apparated, could she?

He drew even with Cybil and bent over his knees, panting. "We'll never catch her."

"But where did she go?" Cybil whirled around desperately.

"Disappeared."

"Yeah right."

With difficulty, he straightened. "Unless, she wanted to lead us here." He regarded the building on his left.

The house was two stories with clapboard and a predictable picket fence. It looked yellow and brittle, like a piece of parchment left in the sun too long. Cybil stepped through the gate and walked up the cement path, placing a hand on a post supporting the porch. Leaning forward, she peered over the stairs and through the open door inside.

Draco hesitated before following her. A dark, sickly feeling crept over him with all the deadly stealth of a Lethifold. There was graffiti all over the siding, wicked looking words in black paint. He squinted, trying to make them out.

Sinner

Witch

Death Eater

A rush of raw energy streaked through him. So here it was at least, the thing he had been most trying to escape, to hide from.

It had found him.

Cybil climbed onto the porch and peered in through the curtainless windows. "Gillespie," she muttered, reading the name inscribed on the rusted mailbox by the door.

Draco didn't recognize the name and was glad for it. Rolling his sore shoulders, he stumbled up onto the porch. "Do you think she's in there?" he asked.

Cybil didn't respond, keeping her lips pressed together in a tight, decisive line.

He knew what she was thinking. They wouldn't find the girl inside the house. Draco wondered if he had indeed hallucinated the child, but then how could both he and Cybil have seen the same thing?

"Let's go take a look around," she said. "Maybe we'll find you another flashlight." There was a forced nonchalance to her voice.

Draco thought back to the creature who had sliced his flashlight clean in half and shuddered. He didn't understand the forces at work in this town and that frightened him.

Cybil led the way into the house. A hall stretched back to the kitchen. It was empty save for a set of cobwebby stairs and a two legged side table that lay on the wooden floor. To the left was the living room, to the right a dining room. In the latter, a table with four chairs and a dusty wine glass stood in front of a chipped buffet with a cluttered hutch. The living room had only a sagging couch and a threadbare area rug. There was an ancient TV on a metal stand under the window, its antenna twisted and askew.

They searched the two main rooms and found nothing but empty drawers, old magazines and stained knickknacks. Before going up the stairs, Cybil led Draco into the kitchen. A fold-up table with a sticky plastic cloth took up most of the space in the cramped area. The refrigerator was doorless and otherwise empty save for a dead light bulb and several grimy shelves.

Cybil moved over to the sink and tried the faucet. They were both surprised by the sudden rumble of pipes that shook the dilapidated house. After a moment, brackish water poured from the faucet.

"I'll be damned," Cybil laughed. "After all these years." She let it run for several minutes until the water came out clear. They took turns washing their faces and hands.

Draco hissed when the cold water first hit him, but enjoyed its invigorating touch nonetheless. He scrubbed the blood from his brow with a grimace as Cybil opened up cabinets.

When he was finished, he straightened and wiped his hands on his dirty jeans. Above the sink was a rack of pots. He glanced at them briefly, shocked to see a familiar shape hanging between a colander and sauce pan.

At first, he mistrusted his eyes and put it down to delusional thinking. It couldn't be!

But then again, I did find the wand.

Carefully, he lifted the pewter cauldron from the rack and inspected it. Bloody hell, it was in near mint condition. He could still see the engraving on the bottom. Spotts and Spencers. They were the foremost cauldron manufacturers in North America. He even remembered Snape having a few of their products in his dungeons.

First the wand and now this. Silent Hill had had at least once magical family, though why a wizard would be displaced amongst Muggles he couldn't…

Draco's train of thought was jarred by the sudden, crashing reality of his own predicament. He was here, wasn't he? Why shouldn't others have come before him?

Before he had time to think the matter over, Cybil let out a low whistle of shock.

"Jeez, look at this," she said, holding open a cabinet door on the other side of the sink.

Draco crouched beside her and squinted past thick cobwebs. There were dozens of small, corked bottles in the compartment and he knew immediately what they were.

Cybil didn't. She reached for one and withdrew it, her thumb and index finger pressed against the short neck of the vial. Inside were several dried green leaves. "I've never seen anything like this before," she muttered. "I would say it's a narcotic of some sort…but, hell, it almost looks like mint."

"Close," Draco said and took the bottle from her. "It's fluxweed, a plant native to this part of the country." And it's used in the Polyjuice Potion, he thought.

They went through a few other bottles, containing frog parts, hellebore and leeches. Draco identified each substance correctly, much to Cybil's shock.

"Holistic stuff," he concluded at length and closed the cabinet door, feeling as though he had said too much.

Cybil stared at him. Draco was expecting her to ask just how he knew so much about the ingredients, but she didn't. Instead, she twisted her head about and glanced into the empty hall. "What kind of place is this?"

Draco said nothing.

Cybil turned back around and studied the closed cabinet door. "I've never seen stuff like that before," she said slowly, "not even in a drug lab."

Desperately wanting to change the subject, Draco stood. "Do you want to check upstairs?"

Cybil sighed and pushed herself to her feet, groaning slightly. "Might as well."

The staircase was not wide, and Draco was forced to take the lead while Cybil followed. Once upstairs, they found the second storey quite the same as the first. There was a scattering of old furniture, a bathroom at the end of the hall, and two small bedrooms on the other side of the stairs.

They went to the bathroom first, and he sat down on the rim of the claw-footed tub while Cybil searched the medicine cabinet. "We're out of luck," she said, knocking several plastic bottles into the sink basin below. "I was hoping for a first aid kit." She tossed him one of the containers.

Draco read the label aloud. "Aspirin."

"Yeah. Check the expiration date on the bottom though."

"September of '75."

Cybil grunted. "Talk about a time warp."

"I guess." Draco set the aspirin on the back of the toilet.

The first bedroom they entered was the larger of the two. There was a moth-eaten blanket on the bed. Draco could just about discern a pattern of flowers on it beneath the layer of dust. The dresser was empty save for a pair of cracked reading glasses that sat on the top. In opening the closest door, they found a pair of snow boots and one hanger.

Cybil sighed. "This place has been cleaned out. The owners probably left town the night of the fire, took what they could with them."

Draco stared at the reading glasses and suddenly thought of Potter. "It's an odd sight," he admitted, more to himself than his companion. "Life interrupted."

The second bedroom down the hall was more intact than the first. As soon as they entered, Draco realized it must have been a child's room.

A girl's.

His gut squirmed as he took in the pink, patterned wallpaper, the lacey pillows and bedspread. On the nightstand, he found a picture frame. After cleaning the glass with his sleeve, he held it up for Cybil to see.

They both said nothing for a long minute.

"That's her," she said at last. "The girl. It's her, isn't it, Draco?"

Draco flipped the frame around and undid the rusty latches in the back. The flimsy picture slipped out, and he let the frame drop down onto the bed.

A girl with dark hair. An oval face. Empty eyes. The same blue dress. On the back, he found a scribbled name and date.

"Alessa in front of Midwich Elementary," he read. "1974."

"The year of the fire," Cybil replied solemnly and took the picture from him. "But that was over twenty years ago."

Draco's mind worked furiously against logic. It didn't make any sense. The child they had spotted was no more than nine. He glanced at the nightstand once more and saw the edge of a notebook protruding from underneath a copy of Mary Poppins. Sliding the children's book off the top, he snatched up the notebook, eyes widening as he flipped through the pages.

Dear Diary…

"Hey," he began, his voice dying as the stairs outside the room creaked.

Cybil whirled around, dropping the photograph. A gasp froze against Draco's teeth.

There was a ghost in the room with them, a woman in mottled rags, a puppet on unseen strings with the eyes of a Seeress. She smelled of soot and sky and emptiness. And her head, crowned with sticky strings of matted grey hair, was twisted in a questioning angle.

Draco felt his knees go weak as he was confronted by a living shadow, something he could not account for in his muddled mind. Overwhelmed by sudden sorrow, he leaned against the bed. The atmosphere had turned from stale to tremulous and the change left him weak.

Cybil dropped her hand from the butt of her gun.

The woman moved further into the room, her feet shuffling under her tattered robes, one shaking hand outstretched to touch the discarded photo on the bed. "Can you tear the scales from my eyes?" she said, her voice thin and old. "I am blinded in the dark."

Unwanted questions crawled up Draco's throat. "Who are you?' he asked, unable to hold them back for fear of choking.

"They disturb my house," the woman replied, "and they shall inherit the wind."

Cybil shifted away from her, a look of uncharacteristic pity on her face. "Gillespie," she said, repeating the name on the front of house.

The woman glanced up at the cop with diluted eyes. "I am Dahlia."

"Dahlia." Draco fancied the name was charmed, a thing once spoken and then regretted.

Dahlia's eyes met his. "Cassandra cried for Troy. Can you see as she did?"

"No." Draco felt Cybil's gaze on him, but continued on anyway. "I can't."

"We are all lost in the dark," Dahlia said knowingly. She let one long nail trail over the face in photograph and then drew back quickly, as if it burned.

Cybil let out a shuddering breath. "This is your house?"

"It is a shell. A corpse with no heart."

"But you've lived here? Since the fire?"

Dahlia stepped away from the bed, her head now bent, draped in a filthy veil of hair. "Since the fire?" she echoed. "I am damned."

Draco stared at her, recognizing madness where he saw it, but no evil intent. This woman was not wicked like his aunt Bellatrix, but her mind was gone. The light had left her. Nervously, he jammed his hand in his pocket and touched the tip of his scavenged wand.

Dahlia suddenly went rigid. "Yes!" she cried, raising her voice until it was throaty and strange. "I remember it now! What was lost….found…"

Draco recoiled as her arm lashed out and grabbed his wrist.

Cybil moved forward. "Hey!"

Dahlia ignored her, tracing a long line up Draco's arm. "I can feel it in your blood even now. Salvation or damnation? It is for the Dark One to decide."

Again, her eyes met his and Draco understood. She knows I'm a wizard.

Dahlia let him go, her face now pinched with urgency and fear. "Heed me," she said, speaking to both him and Cybil. "The flock is in hiding, but they will find you. Run from them. They are deceivers, and they are deceived. They are damned, and you will burn in their fires. Burn, burn." A sob choked off her last word and she looked at the picture on the bed once more. "They took my child from me."

Draco glanced over Dahlia's trembling head at Cybil. Her eyes were narrowed, nostrils slightly flared. He recognized her expression. It was the same one she'd worn when she pulled him over on the highway. Skepticism warred with caution.

"Your child?" Cybil said at last, stirring the uneasy silence. Carefully, she reached out and pointed to the photograph. "Is she your daughter, Dahlia?"

Dahlia lovingly bent over the picture. "Alessa."

Alessa. Draco felt the name hit him square in the chest like a stunning spell.

Alessa, with her long dark hair and dangerous eyes.

"We've seen her," he said.

Dahlia stared at them. "Can you tear the scales from your eyes?" she asked.

Cybil shook her head in impatience. "We need help. Do you know what's going on here? Can we get out of this place?"

Dahlia lowered herself onto the bed, pressing her pale cheek against the photograph. "Only the Dark One opens and closes the door to Silent Hill."

"But-"

"Beware of the flock. They left their mark at the hotel. And they will take you with them."

Dahlia suddenly straightened, her eyes resting once more on Draco. "They will seek to purify what runs in your veins."

And then, like a shade, she slipped from the room.

Draco thought he heard her feet on the stairs and he watched as Cybil ran after her.

The picture had been left on the bed.

Alessa, he thought. Where are you?

Author's Note: Those of you who are familiar with Silent Hill might recognize Dahlia Gillespie here. Otherwise, just consider her another OC. ^_^

[1]This is an excerpt taken from Ane Brun's "This Voice" off her album A Temporary Dive (2004).