A/N: Well, I hope this is liked. I have taken on a new writing style, focusing on one character and such and yaddie yadda yadda. Whatever, I know you don't want to hear me rambling on about nothing. So, more to the point. I was inspired to do this by H.P. Lovecraft. I think he is a fantastic writer, even if I really don't get it. I am reading The Call of Cthulhu at this moment, and this is what it is inspired about. It isn't a crossover, but there will be elements from the tale, with my own twists to them. Hope you like it.
A vibrant red train raced through the Scottish countryside. The whistle blew with an incredible voice. The steam rose from its front, high into the gray and rainy sky. Near the back of the train, a window opened, allowing a white speck to fly towards London, England.
In that compartment sat a boy, all alone, wallowing in grief. He sat at the corner of the bench seat, curled in a ball, his head leaning against the cool window. His two best friends, his two real friends… well one real friend, were out on patrol. Their position of authority had them scouring the train for any wrong doers. He had been sitting there for a half an hour, thinking.
He was thinking about how unpredictable life really was. About how people were so clueless to the idea that their entire existence could cease to exist within the fraction of a second. He had decided that he would not be one of those people. In fact, he was destined to be the one who would make an existence cease to exist. That was originally what started him to think in that frame of mind, about how to end an existence. If he had to do it to one person why not do it to more? Why not remove all the people that put fear into life just for a laugh and a sick fetish of enjoyment?
Those thoughts, those dark and twisted thoughts, had never entered his mind. He had always been straightforward, a good guy through and through. Now, after witnessing the death of his only father figure, he had a change of heart. He felt the need to bring pain and fear to those who dished it out in the first place. He felt that karma needed a hand. He felt… compelled to feed a hunger; a hunger for death and horror.
He had already made up his mind. He was not going back to his relatives. He was not going back to school. He was not going to be the "Boy-Who-Lived" anymore. No, he was delving into something ancient. Something mad.
As he sat in the dark train car, he could hear them. He could hear their whispered voices. He could feel their tortured breathes. He could see their restrained power.
They were hidden to the naked eye, to the belligerent mind. One had to look past the threshold, the concept that "what you see is what you get". But his mind was no longer belligerent; his eyes had been clothed. No doubt he was afraid; he was terrified. How could he not be? All of that ancient, evil power was surrounding him, calling his name in a subtle way. All he could do in response was hide deeper into the crook of his elbow, shielding his eyes from a true nightmare. He knew he wouldn't wake up, he already had.
He had been working up the courage to ask them exactly what it was that they wanted. He truly wanted to know. He wanted to know why they came to him. Did they go to everyone? Had they done this before? Who were they? Why were they here? Did they actually want to help him? Thousands of questions flew from one side of his head to the other, like a bowling ball against the bumpers used in a child's birthday party.
He knew it was time to ask them. He knew what he had to do. For the past half an hour he had been working up the nerve to ask all of his questions. He was going to do it. That was when the door slid open, casting a bright, nasty light into the room. They left.
"Harry?" A voice called tentatively. If it had been anyone else, he would have killed him or her on the spot. He would have murdered them twelve ways from Sunday. But not her. It was only she that he trusted.
"I'm here." He responded. His voice trembled like the soft roll of distance thunder. It wasn't strong, it was weak an undeveloped.
"Do you mind if I--"
"Hermione, when have I ever denied you anything?" He asked, he felt a slight smirk plaster to his lips.
He could see face from a gap between his arm and knee. She smiled warmly, relieving his nasty and maniacal thoughts for the moment. She walked in and closed the door behind her, casting the car into another phase of darkness. He heard her sit across from him, looking everywhere besides his fetal form.
"You can sit over here if you'd like, I'm not that fragile." He told her. Nothing happened, no one moved. It was after a few silent moments, moments that were vital to his life, when she sat right next to him. He shoulder pressed gently against his. That's when they came back. All of them talking at once. All of them looking at him. All of them trying to persuade him. It was only Hermione that kept him sane.
He tried to ignore them; he tried with all of his Gryffindor bravery to not fear them. It failed miserably. He curled back into another ball, trembling at their icy advances.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked. Harry could hear the thick dipped concern in her voice. He didn't know how to respond. He really couldn't respond. He had no way of explaining what was going on.
"I… It's nothing." He put up a false confidence. He didn't know he had it in him, but stranger things had indeed happened. He stopped his shivering; he pulled from his fetal position. He sat upright, placing his hands in pockets, and turned towards his best friend. The one person he could without a doubt say he loved. He had never loved, or been loved by anyone else. But, with Hermione Granger, all of that changed. All of that changed the day she came into his train cart looking for a toad. The split second she walked into the compartment he felt a strange warming sensation. It was wonderful.
Then, Ronald Weasley had told her to leave. He felt a form of anger that he had never had before. An anger that made him want to remove the child from existence, an anger that made him want the child to feel a pain beyond indescribability. He heard voices in the back of his mind, a section of his head that he had walled long ago. These voices were seeping through a tiny crack in the wall, a crack that he quickly sealed back up.
As quickly as both feelings had arisen, he had pushed them back. He neither needed nor wanted either of them.
"Harry." She said softly, putting a hand on his arm. He almost recoiled at the touch. But those voices, the same ones from five years ago, returned. This time he could not push them back. This time they over took him. This time they controlled him.
"I have come to a conclusion." He said. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Have you now?" She asked in a playful tone.
He gave her a curt, teasing nod. "Indeed I have."
She waited for him to continue, which he did not; he sat there staring at her. He noticed a flicker of multiple emotions pass behind her gorgeous eyes. A flicker of want, a flicker of fear, and perhaps the most surprising, to him at least, a flicker of love; he imagined that it was a clear reflection of his own. Hermione shuffled a little closer to him.
"And what exactly would this conclusion of yours be, Mister Potter?" She turned to face him fully. He noticed her hands fidgeted with the hem of her coat. It made him nervous. He grabbed both of them and held them fast within his own.
"You have to promise me, before I say anything, that you won't run. You can't hit me. You can't scream. After we get back to London you can do what ever you want, but not before." She turned her hands in his, gripping them both softly.
"I'm not going anywhere." He believed her.
"Okay. Other than that, you cannot tell anyone about this. Not Ron, not Dumbledore, no one."
She looked at him, like she had been but with more wonder. She shook her head. "You don't possible think that I'd go behind your back, do you?" He heard an undertone of hurt.
"No. I don't. I'm just letting you know that this is strictly between me and you." A crack of thunder caused Hermione to jump closer, almost literally into his lap. He decided it wasn't good enough, that little voice wanted more. He pulled her directly into his lap. She looked at him, her eyes widening just enough to look surprised.
"Harry," she started. She could only start, not finish, for he had taken her mouth with his. She fell right into the kiss. He put everything into it, trying to repel them. Trying to throw them out of the car, out of his head, out of the world. He needed her. And he knew, by the current situation, that she needed him. He broke the connection between them, leaving her with pursed lips and closed eyes. "Wow."
He gave a small, remorseful chuckle. "I agree." Her eyes flew open and she attempted to run, just as she said she wouldn't do.
He held fast, not letting her move at all. "I thought you said you wouldn't run." She stopped moving and looked anywhere but him, like when she first sat down. "I lied, I said I had come to a conclusion. One conclusion but, really, I have two. The first one is that, Hermione Granger, I do love you." Her head snapped back, her brown eyes piercing his green ones.
"You do?" her voice was just above a whisper, like in a cheesy romance story, but it meant the world to him. For that split second everything, all the voices and all of them went away. The clarity in his head was like none he had ever experienced. It allowed him a truthful answer.
"Yeah. If I can say something that I am honestly and solely selfish for, it is that, I love you." Hermione smiled a smile that would have split the seams of the dimension. "I take it that this is good news?" He implied, raising an eyebrow. She smacked him in the shoulder and grabbed his head between her hands.
"You have no idea." She brought their lips together again. As their mouths moved in sync, the voices came back. They came back telling him to do more, to claim what was his. He fought them off. The only thing that could drive them off was a portion of his brain that was devoted solely to Hermione. That's what made him stop the kiss. It was time to let her in. "Is something wrong?" she asked, her voice wavering with fear of repulsion.
"No, not with you if that's what you're wondering." He told her, bringing a hand to stroke her cheek. "But, I want to ask you, formally of course, if you would be my girlfriend." She beamed at him.
"But of course Mister Potter, you dare not take me to be a scarlet woman, do you?"
"Never. You have just made me the happiest man alive. But," her face took on a confused look, "that also entails that I share my other conclusion with you." He placed her gently next to him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She in turn wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling herself nearer to him; using his body to block the brutal weather raging in a torrent outside the window, and he graciously accepted.
"So, what is this 'other conclusion' you have come to?"
"Bear with me for a moment, it's hard for me to even think about how I am going to explain it." He sat and pondered for a moment. The weather outside was rapidly growing worse. The thunder was getting louder as the dark cabin was lit up more frequently with flashes of blue light. The pattering on the window was becoming more annoying, just like them. "Okay, here it goes.
"It first happened when I was four. It is the first time I can remember being hit."
"What?!" Hermione roared. Harry was slightly taken aback at her outburst, but it gave him that same warm feeling he had when she entered his compartment five years ago. Her loud and blunt angry voice was gone, replaced with a low, menacing undertone. "They hit you?" she asked. The way her voice hissed, Harry would have thought she spoke fluent Parseltongue.
"Yeah." He supplied with a shrug. The simple subtlety of acceptance made them angry. No, it made them more than angry. It made the end of Death Eaters seem like a broken nail compared to what they wanted to do to the Dursleys. Harry started to retract again; he was becoming more scared of them. Their anger, their lust, their power was a blindly lit torch; a blindly lit torch that was blindly thrown onto an oil well.
Hermione must have noticed his retraction. It was hard to miss with her being so close. He vaguely noticed her look at him, he vaguely noticed her touch him, he vaguely noticed her talk to him. He could only tell she was doing those things; he couldn't make anything of her voice, he couldn't see the concern or love in her voice, he couldn't feel the soothing touch on his arm. No, no. He was fully aware of the touch on his arm. All of his focus, however, was on them.
For the first time he could see them. He saw men, men that were tall and gaunt. Lifeless faces plastered on hollow shells of existence, like a marionette puppet after its strings were cut. They moved in flawless synchronization, in a deadly march of false power, in a feeble attempt to rule in a mendacious utopia. There were hundreds of them, each an exact replica of the last, yet each was more… perfect than its former. From their black boots to their grey cotton uniforms to their blonde hair and blue eyes. Right down to every feature they were societies definition of perfect. Each of them was bound to the same cause; a red patch on their upper right arm, two black "S's" intersecting in the center, one lying horizontal and one standing vertical.
That group of people was taken over by another. The other he could not put into perspective. He could not even put the first into a perspective. He could not even think of the definition of perspective. His head was nothing His body was nothing. He was floating in a void of nothingness, an abyss of terror and insanity with a splash of awe. The only thing that kept him was the weak anchor of Hermione's hand, causing a small, almost insignificant, portion of his brain to remain functioning.
He noticed her trying to bring him back in, hauling him with all her emotional might. It was only enough to keep doorway open, it wasn't enough to drag him back.
A man, a single solitary man appeared. His wild, untamed beard gave him the look of a crazed animal. The glassy, yellow eyes were more ghastly than his tall, boney figure. His crooked nose was like the beak of a monstrous hawk, waiting to devour him the moment he lost his alertness. His skin was wrinkled and yellow, like one with at the end of a losing battle with liver failure. The similarity to Dumbledore was evident; he looked very much the deceiving Headmaster.
The man spoke in short, horrific tongues. The words spilled from his mouth like a more than full bathtub. Harry understood not one word. He pulled bits and pieces out of it, such as: "Myldenth" and "Tythilca" and "Uprowsnic". None of it made sense though. The old mans eyes rolled back into his head; the yellow pierce was gone, replaced by an infinite white, spackled with red vessels. His voice grew strained as his skin grew taught. His wrinkles stretched further and further, almost disappearing completely into his stretching skin. All at once he began shouting in a thunderous voice, one that was replicated many times with other voices. It was as if a thousand voices were shouting all at once, all in different languages, none that he could make any sense of. The man threw his arms out and snapped his legs together, he looked like Jesus plastered onto an invisible cross. His voice lost its thunderous tone, lowering to one that was well under a whispered whisper. He uttered one word: "R'lhey". His jaw was torn from his skull by a torrent of non-existing wind, leaving a pulp of muscle and shattered bone.
Harry screamed. He screamed and began crawling backwards, the first successful movement that had been allowed by them. He tried to scale the wall behind him, what he did not know was a wall. He screamed in terror, he screamed in anger, he screamed in excitement and speculative awe! How horrendously delightful it had been. That was what had scared him most; that he had enjoyed it. Something was happening to him, something that he could not control.
Everything stopped. Time, life, existence. Everything that was anything and nothing ceased to exist. He was no longer with them. He had been pulled back. He understood where he was and whom he was with and what he was doing. He was with Hermione. He was seated in the corner of a train car, with a plane of glass separating them from a lurid tempest.
He looked down at Hermione, her hands plastered onto his shoulders. She was staring right at him, trying to gain some insight on what had happened. How? How had she torn him from the recesses of madness? How had she saved him?
"Harry?" She asked; his stupor broken, he quickly grabbed her face and crashed their lips together.
As their lips were locked, he whispered, "Thank you," over and over. Tears poured out of his eyes as he moved from her lips to her forehead, moving south to her neck, moving west to her ear, then moving east to end on her nose. "Thank you!" He said again, pushing his forehead against hers. She looked at him, a complete bewilderment in her features.
"I will always be here to help you. Don't doubt that, please if anything, don't doubt that!" She grabbed his hands again. With their foreheads still touching he drew a deep breath and exhaled after a few moments.
"That's what I'm afraid of." She looked back at him as he met her gaze. "The conclusion I have come to, the one besides loving you," he paused as she beamed at him, "is more of a revelation. I have noticed how miniscule man's perspective of life is. Either you live it carefully or you live it to it's fullest. You are either good or evil. If you're good you can't have evil thoughts, thoughts of revenge or thoughts that are outside of your affiliation. If you're evil you aren't allowed to help people because you feel it's the 'right thing to do'! I am sick and tired of how close minded people are, 'Mione!" He growled, throwing himself back into his seat. His hands twisted into the skin on his forehead.
" 'Mione? Where did that come from?"
Harry looked at her from under a hand that had slipped to his eye. "You're serious, after everything I just laid on you, that is what you have to say?"
"Well, for starters, I rather like the nickname. Now, if you're not going to be such a rude prat about the situation, maybe you'll get a response from me." She told him, raising an eyebrow as if challenging him to respond.
He sighed and let the hand slide back over his eye. A flash of lightning promptly followed another crack of thunder, they were right in the storm. "Hermione I am sorry. You have no idea, hell I have no idea, what is going on!" He punched the side of the cabin, his fist cracking against the cruel, cold metal. Hermione didn't flinch. Instead, she leaned over him and took his hand in hers. She waved her wand over it and the bones mended with a snap. He looked at her, that smiling angelic face, and returned her smile to the best of his ability.
"About your… conclusion. I understand a hundred percent where you are coming from. I haven't stayed awake at night, pondering these ideas, but the moment you started mentioning them, and with the emotion you poured into your explanation, it made a lot of sense. I never would have thought that Harry Potter, my best-friend, the love of my life, would be able to blow my mind." She smirked at him while he chuckled. She locked her arms above his head and pulled his head down to meet hers. She gave him a chaste kiss on the lips. "Now, what happened before Harry? You lost it. I was really scared for you. The look on your face… It was horrifying. I tried to talk to you but you tried to hide or protect yourself or… I don't know!
"Then you started screaming! I cried so hard when you screamed Harry! I have never seen anything more terrifying. I don't even know how to--" Hermione couldn't continue, she broke down and cried into his chest. He reached up and massaged the back of her scalp; through the beautiful bushy hair he loved.
It took her sometime to calm. It may have been minutes or an hour. He didn't know. It wasn't really important. He was with her, not with them. That was all that mattered. When she finally stopped he looked at her. Her brown eyes were puffy and red; her face was stained with tear marks. She smiled sheepishly regardless. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. I can't explain what happened Hermione. I still don't know. I want to but--" A tapping on the window drew him from the sentence. "Hedwig." He leaned over and opened the pane of glass, allowing a bird to fly in. A wall of water and fierce air blew in as well, but was quickly silenced as the window was shut. The bird on the opposite seat, after Harry squinted through the dark to see, was not Hedwig.
He didn't know what it was. He couldn't distinguish its head from its body. With rubbery, black skin and scaled wings. Taloned claws emerged from the bottom of its legs. He didn't know if he wanted to throw up or just pass out. It screeched, sending a splitting pain through his head, sending a rush of a thousand images before his mind. Images of them.
"Harry," Hermione whispered excitedly, "do you know what that is?"
"Not a clue in the world." Harry told her, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. Something about the creature seemed… familiar. They knew of it.
"It's a Bublazed!" He looked blankly at her. She rolled her eyes, causing him to slightly smile. "They are rumored extinct, but they have been known to be used by the Goblins!" Harry quickly rushed over to the Bublazed, leaving Hermione sitting there. He imagined that she had a questioning look on her face. The ugly creature bent over, revealing a pouch on its back. Harry was repulsed by the thought that he had to touch it, but pulled a scroll out anyway. The creature snarled in response and waited for someone to open the window. Hermione did so, letting the nasty water pour back in.
As the creature flew off, Harry let out a sigh of relief and sat back on the bench. Hermione sat on his lap and swung her legs onto the bench beside them. She took up the new, typical position of wrapping her arms around his head and leaning into his chest. He put his chin atop her head.
"What is that Harry?" She asked. He gave her the letter. She studied it for a few moments before looking back at him. "I'm going with you."
"What about your parents?"
"They'll understand."
"And if they don't?"
"Then fuck 'em." Harry was slightly taken aback. "It's you, Harry. It will always be you from now on. From the moment you told you first conclusion I decided that it was you. You are my life now." Harry smiled. He let that voice in the back of his head convince him that this was good. He let it mold his new head. He let it start creating his new personality.
No more Harry Potter, The Boy-Who-Lived. It was Harry Potter. That's it. He was done with the light. He was in too far to be affiliated with either light or dark. He was changed. One word kept floating around his subconscious: R'lyeh.
He had no clue what it meant. He knew they knew. He knew they wanted him to know. Maybe he should start listening to them. He didn't dwell on it. Right now he was more concentrated on the girl in his lap who was viciously attacking his face. He returned the assault, until the door slid open. Until a voice broke through.
"What the hell is going on here?"
That was the moment that the old Harry Potter was dead. He began to listen to them. He accepted them. He was one of them.