The Voice In The Darkness, a harry potter fanfic

It began when Harry called out to the stars in the darkness. He never felt so small, tumbling through vast emptiness while clinging to the skin of the world and without a single reason why. Harry was curious, yes, but ultimately he was just terribly frightened. And Harry was so young, so very young. Like a lonely, lost child, he did the only thing he could think of to make it stop. Harry felt he had to do this to make the universe make sense after the terrible experience of staying with the Dursleys. Harry called for help.

For years he scanned the sky for a sign. Harry snuck out most nights to wait for the stars in the darkness beyond to help him escape.

"Help, Am I alone?" Harry had closed his eyes and wanted every fiber in his body for someone to answer him. The small ball of blue light left his body and descended to the stars; Harry never understood what he did that night, but the skies were quiet. Always so soft, leaving him to his makings.

Harry had always had a fascination with the stars; when he had graduated from Hogwarts, he left Britain to study astronomy in America. He sent calls into every corner of space for decade after a decade using their magic. He had refused to believe that nothing was out there. They should be. Yet, for some reason, they never answered him.

Everyone remembers when that changed.

The only thing Harry knew was that the signal's origin came somewhere in the Phoenix constellation, near Ankaa 77. Soon, that signal stopped, then the real message began.

Humankind and Wizardkind made contact that day, and we were both asked a question.

"Are. You. There?"

It didn't come through the radio's signals but a voice, a voice inside everybody's heads, asking the question to all of us. Harry heard it. Hermione heard it. The children didn't listen to it; the old only listened to what they wanted it to say. The strangest part was that the deaf heard it. Everyone, everywhere, it found you, and you had to listen to this voice shout that question in your head, in every language on Earth.

Harry remembers it almost too clearly. It asked in that familiar yet indescribable voice that's always there in his mind. It was like one of his thoughts had gone rogue and had decided to speak directly to him. The world seemed to stop functioning as everyone stopped to listen for what came next.

"Where. Are. You?"

The serious question seemed to linger in his mind for hours afterward, and then for days, and then for weeks. That day changed everything.

Among them were the doubters from the very beginning.

"Holy ones" who claimed that God had spoken to all of them. That the time to show mercy for your sin, the only way out now.

Some couldn't and wouldn't take that voice seriously that they had heard nothing, and that small percent claimed that the beings had given them their own set of secret questions. Of course, Harry knew better, and that few remaining truly believed that the world came into contact for the first time by the heavens or a future human like us, one ready to let us free. Ready to lead us out of our nightmares.

Harry knew that they were wrong. It was his doing, that night many years ago he used his magic to contact their doom and it was breaking him.

They had never found any sufficient data that it was alien life; at least, we couldn't even comprehend its nature or discern it from human nature. The stars were too vast, and in their vastness, our voices have touched the ears of something truly incomprehensible. Something hungry and evil.

The Darkness.

Harry realized the mistake when the ground started to groan.

Beneath his very feet, everywhere at once, the ground screamed in pain. The muffled sounds shook through the floor and dirt below him.

The dead screamed.

Everything at once, the dead moaned and writhed in pain too. Men, women, and children were turning in their graves. The animals did so, too—dogs, cats, Anything that had ever walked this EarthEarth. The sharp cries of ancient whales shook the seas, and the shrill screeching of birds echoed in the forests. The caskets shook, and the morgues howled. Hogwarts ghosts stood still in the halls screaming; that day, Harry had received a message from Neville that Hogwarts had closed its doors and sent students home after Hogwarts itself cried. Lastly, the Goblins Vanished all around the world. No one knew why, but the strange thing was that; the goblins left their gold and trinkets behind in the vaults. Harry couldn't fathom that; the goblin's greed is unquenchable. All the vaults were untouched when he had investigated it with the ministry.

The voices of the dead suddenly stopped all at once. It wanted us to breathe in the last of our silence for a minute before it took all our hope away. It was a promise they all knew but didn't want to believe.

"I. Am. Coming."

The Darkness vanished abruptly, and then the air filled with not the dead's screams but the living joined in.

Soon after the Darkness disappeared, the world felt alone in their thoughts. Millions went mad with no hope in sight, and rightfully so as chaos took hold of the world. Many died in the violence and the gunfire of that night. That's when the pack had formalized between Magic and Muggle. Hermione was chosen as the benefact leader with Harry right behind her. Many secrets were relieved that night. Magic and muggle came together to form the 'U.M.M.N' to cease the violence throughout the world. It would have been a crucial moment in the world's history; if it wasn't for looming darkness.

Harry only waited. His guilt began to crack through, the dead were screaming because of him. Why didn't he just keep to himself. Why couldn't he just let it go. He waited.

The screaming dead had been their first sign of the doom coming; as the Darkness approached. The closer it got, the more the world felt it.

That first night after the screaming, Harry and a few important wizards from each country found the stars in the dark void bleeding for the first time.

A section of the eastern sky had turned into darkness, blacker than a clear night. It had only become visible because the stars around it, too, screamed a signal only magic could detect.

The only light from those stars had turned a scarlet red, and they seemed to bleed across the sky like blood dripping in water. The only visible light swirled and flowed all around the edge of some unseen mass. They had reported it to U.M.M.N leaders, and that night they found that even magic couldn't stop this.

Harry knew then that he was staring into the face of the Darkness. Scientists from both worlds came together and claimed that nothing was there and that their radars and magical scans always came up empty. That magic telescopes had been developed for this reason only, would only see only darkness. The proof gave Harry goosebumps that it was right in front of our faces every night that rings of darkness only got more comprehensive, and more stars bled in the sky.

Harry watched the doom come slowly. He needed to tell someone, maybe they would have understood why, how could he know that that being was out there. Guilt almost drove him mad.

Each night passed with agony; the black spots would only widen further, more and more stars would warp and bleed. During a new day, hell fell upon the world. These side-effects only worsened. The new day always brought something worse for the world to witness.

Harry was sure most of what happened would go untold and unknown.

Then, animals started disappearing from the muggle and magical lands—all living creatures. Tracks, traces, and bodies vanished. Pets would run away, some violently so. The house-elves Vanished without a trace, their bonds with their family were still there, yet magic couldn't find them.

Animals and creatures cease to exist ever again. Their absence left the forests deathly silent; the oceans became Thalassophobia with their emptiness, the air felt alone to breathe in.

The world was left empty and lonely; people went mad to the darkness coming for them. One day, about two weeks ago, both magic and muggle scientists tried to talk to the Darkness again. They hoped, perhaps, to reason with it. They told it about what was happening in our world and asked it questions. The scientists begged. It didn't want to speak to us. When they asked what the Darkness wanted, it sent its response.

The night they begged for hope, the skies lit up with streaks of hellfire. It was alight for hours, blazoned with yellow and red. Harry didn't realize the effects until the next day when the televisions turned to static, and the telephones refused to work. Worse, apparition and portkeys stopped working. Harry and Hermione had sat watching all the satellites knocked out of the heavens that night, holding their hands in their doomed lives.

Most of the reports became rumors and rumblings; sanity a thing of the past. The air chilled and weighed everyone down, knowing that The Darkness was almost upon us, and everyone dreaded it.

It wouldn't stop raining red for weeks on end and after the muggles satellites fell from space. The rain turned black with unknown filth that turned everything black. People theorized that the satellites had tracked something back with them when they hit the sky, no one what to know the truth.

All we know is that it made the clouds turn black as charcoal that blotted out the sun, like liquid ash. Darkness fell upon the world for days.

That's when the clouds vanished too, no clouds, no rain, no weather. Yet the sky hung low and black. Suppose the sun wanted to be found anywhere in the sky; it never made itself known. Even it had abandoned them.

People would claim later that they'd seen monsters in the dark, creatures with long stringy limbs that made their faces crooked. Most claimed that they were lurking in the corner of their vision. They were unnaturally tall, white monsters that looked like warped humans. Appearances seemed to last for just a second or two before vanishing without a trace. Some believed this was the Darkness in its proper form, but Harry knew better; we looked at nothing complex enough for us to understand.

Appearances slowly increased in duration and number. Harry thought everyone saw them once at the least, but he never saw one and didn't want to. They never came close to touch nor speak to anyone, and indeed, no one had been harmed by one. Most who saw them found their features to be sorrowful or saddened with pain. Some even claimed the creatures had driven them away from their nightmares in the night. Others even claimed that they were healing them.

Hermione had come up with a different theory; they were house elves evolved into some beastly monster that had come to save us. She theorized that they had time traveled with the goblins to the future, but Harry had to let her down slowly because it was fruitless to hope.

Prayer was no help either; when Hermione's parents tried to take them to a church.

The churches and places of worship died with the Darkness that had divided for so long they never brought anyone hope in the coming darkness of life.

The Darkness wanted them to pray and beg and know that our views cast a shadow so small in the void. Weak, but a few nights ago, the Darkness decided to end all the begging and praying. No one felt like they wanted to know how; by this point, nothing surprised anyone anymore, but all books of worship caught on fire—every Bible, every Quran, everything that would give the world hope.

Harry knew on the last day that it had only responded to them because of his message from when he was young. He never told anyone; no one would have believed him anyway. The response to his message was received six months ago, in one part. Only a few picked up what sounded like garbled interference. It consisted of unintelligible screeching and the sounds of doom that continued without pause. The message's meaning; Harry, in his darkest day, prevented anyone who had found it never to comprehend it.

"You. Are. Not. Alone. Harry. Potter." the buzzing he deciphered into the Darkness echoed in his head over and over again.

"You really dropped the ball, Harry. Four point six billion people- and you failed every single one of them." his mind thought as he almost ripped out his hair.

The final message came a week later in the dead of night. From just beyond Mars, it came upon us slowly. The Darkness echoed one last time, and it spoke the simple truth.

"I. Am. Here."

Under Harry's thrumming eyelids, he sees a dizzying array of colours. He won't get off this carousel quite so easily. Colors, scenes, and half-formed phrases still litter Harry's mind. Part of him is still trying to solve the darkness, isn't it. Harry's thoughts lost between the slowing of the brain waves. Harry cried, it finally happened. He cracked and he was alone, like always. Hermione was away with helping the world; Neville was taking care of the wizarding world and the Weasleys; he didn't dare think about them. Harry could take the easy way out but he only waited for the end to come.

In the darkness beyond the horizon, the likes of which Harry doubts no one has ever seen before. It brought with it the screams of endless souls, and it moved with ferocity. The stars are dying now, and Harry knows they'll never shine down on them again. Harry wakes with a jolt to the light passing so quickly.

Harry and Hermione sat at the top of Hogwarts, writing a message for the future, if there is any, holding a locket with the resurrection stone inside it. "This is not a warning. No, it's far too late for that. Instead, consider this the last realization, the last humanity we will ever know. Harry used to wonder whether or not he was ever alone and lost, but never whether or not he was safe and hidden. The universe is infinite, and his understanding was significantly more finite. Harry should never have beckoned the darkness. Instead, he should have clung to the light and closed his eyes every time he turned to the void. As the final minutes approached, Harry held one final truth to be certain".

Harry knew why the skies were always so quiet.

Harry decided it then and there, he pointed his wand at the incoming darkness, not afraid of death. A last-ditch attempt to save the world. Harry looked at Hermione and smiled a small smile "Expecto Patronum "And out of the end of his wand burst a massive stag, bigger than anything he had cast before. Its silhouette covered the whole castle and he screwed up his eyes, as the light hit the darkness. It took every ounce of strength and metal to hold it against the force of it, the pressure made him step back.

"No, not this way."

Harry looked over to Hermione and she was crying, he dropped his wand and ran over to her succumbing to the darkness. He took Hermione's hand and pulled her into a tight embrace. Harry could feel her trembling.

"I'm scared, Harry."

"It's okay, we're together now" and he tightened his arms around her and whispered in her ear. "It was me who contacted the Darkness. It's my fault." he said slumping to his knees.

Hermione pulled apart and looked at him with her wet brown eyes full of questions. She let go and turned her back on him. He was alone, always alone. Harry had dropped his wand from his non-existent hand as the darkness took him from the world.