Chapter 31: I Didn't Mean To

Credence and the Obscurus

After Percy left, Credence crawled into his bed. He didn't know the time, didn't want to know. There was a sour taste in his mouth and his hair was still grimy with dried rain water, but he didn't bother to get out and wash up. He felt as though he had spent the day running, like the days – or was it weeks? – that he had been on the road on the way to Ilvermorny. The blurry memories bridged him into some form of sleep, which could hardly be called sleep at all.

Suddenly, he sat up, eyes wide open. A dream, or maybe a memory, had stirred him. His memory had reached back into years ago. The Obscurus would overtake him while he slept, when he wasn't there to push the magic down. That was when it had done the most damage. That was when it had been the clearest to him – yet he would always wake up the next morning and try to convince himself that it was all a dream. Even at Ilvermorny, that had happened, during the first summer when he still hadn't had control of it. But it hadn't happened in a year now. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't really had to shove it down at all in recent memory. It used to be all he ever did.

They had been trying to find a cure for so long, and Credence had been starting to accept that bridling the Obscurus was the best they could do.

But Percy had said, "I think you're killing it."

Credence slid out of bed. He spent a few minutes staring, trying to get a good look at the room in the blackness. Based on the darkness and the quiet, it seemed to be around midnight. He must have been asleep for longer than he had thought.

This space was smaller than he hoped. The bed was situated in the middle of the room with a bedside table that he could touch on its right side. That was what held the lamp, which he still didn't light. At the back corner of the room, a desk with a chair and some knickknacks on top took up much of the remaining space. What he was planning couldn't be done here. If he was wrong, and something happened, he wouldn't be able to put all this furniture back without magic.

Credence opened his door softly, shoved on some slippers that were several sizes too big for him, and snuck out into the upper hallway. Many paintings hung on the walls, the ones that Percy talked to so often. Credence tried the downstairs, but they were still there. Most were snoozing, propping their chins up on their hands if they had any to use. But he didn't trust to painted sleep.

Credence wandered around until he found a hallway near the kitchen that was relatively undecorated, and stopped still. The rain had let up while he was asleep. The darkness and silence made him want to run back to his room, but he stood his ground. It was time to try something he had never done.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, Credence felt around for the swirling black hole that was always inside him. There. Come out. This had to be face-to-face. He held out his right hand, palm forward. Why was he having to try? Usually it was so eager to come out. But he hadn't had an incident in so long.

There was a sound like sand being poured into a bowl. Credence squinted in the absolute darkness. Yes, something was coming out of his hand, slow and wispy. It looked like the darkness was moving, becoming a cloud. His breath shuddered as he exhaled. So, this was what it looked like. So this was what other people saw when he fully transformed. He'd only ever seen a picture.

It was becoming clearer now, getting bigger. The shadows warped in front of him. He had the strange feeling like a string was being pulled out from deep in his throat. He had to hold his breath again to keep himself from stopping.

And then it was all out, and he was staring at it; a black, sandy cloud reflected in front of him. He could still barely see it, but every once and a while a weak light, like tiny lightning, would flash from the core of the entity, and he would get a glimpse of it. So, this was his other half.

It was smaller than he remembered. The thing couldn't have been bigger than himself; a boy-sized cloud. He remembered hearing murmurs that it was at least the size of an automobile. He remembered seeing bits of people on the borders of the photo that the newspaper had taken. It had made them look frail. Now, it looked frail. Credence could feel its movements through his still-outstretched palm, as it swirled in place. It didn't pull at him. It didn't try to go on a destructive rampage of Mortimer's Mansion. He remembered when its voice had been so loud, even when it wasn't taking over. Now there were just whispers in the back of his mind. He clung to them, trying to hear what they were saying. The familiar feelings were gray and dull, like a voice that has screamed itself hoarse.

Hungry… he realized, trying to put what he was picking up into words, so hungry…

It was tired. It had nothing to do without people hurting him; confining him in jail or a little closet without a wand. People didn't laugh at him anymore. They respected his magic, the magic that he had stopped suppressing, had stopped feeding to this ravenous monster. The gray sunk into his heart; the fatigue that had crossed from the cloud over into his body. He was killing it.

Credence's eyes stung. He reached his left hand up to rub them, then realized – he could see. They hadn't turned white.

The Obscurus watched as the tears took over.

A/N: Credence references occurrences of the Obscurus overtaking him while he slept. This told in a conversation with Ravina in Summer Trials in a chapter called 'Nightmares are Like Boggarts' if you want to refresh your memory. The whole idea of hunger in reference to the Obscurus is a speculation on my part as to what the Obscurus is and how it works. In my mind, it is a creature born of suppressed magic, but it is different from suppressed magic itself. Once it is alive, it feeds on the magic suppressed by its host, growing bigger and stronger until eventually it overtakes the host entirely. In this case though, there is no magic being fed to the Obscurus, so the opposite happens. Credence's reaction to this will be explored in more depth later, so I will not say more here. Please review!