Ever Again

By Ginny :)

A/N; This is very much a PWP ["Plot? What plot?"] fic. It's short and strange, but I rather like it. I don't own anything in this, except my own words and thoughts. This is why it would not be a good idea to spy on Tom Riddle, on one particular day in history...

Anyone out there who regularly reads my stuff will know that I do tend to write humour. This most certainly doesn't fall into that category.

I got this idea from "Tha Chaos Within" by Itheca, but this is by no means copied in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's almost completely different, once I re-wrote it.

Ginny :)

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The room was empty.

The air seemed to hang there, stale, unmoving, like an ancient cloak left in a wardrobe, which no-one wants.

Even the mice had long ago departed, followed by the cockroaches, and even the death- watch beetle, who would usually have stayed, biding their time until the walls fell in, the roof crumbled, and the floor became just another piece of dry earth, where someone might have stood, once.

The walls, cold stone, did not even have damp moss on them. the whole room was bone dry. And dark... so dark... a dark which went beyond darkness, so that everywhere was just blackness; the air was inky.

No noise. Can't you picture it? The silence was-- not waiting for something exactly-- but dormant. So there, you could practically taste it.

It was impossible to make out the details of the room; no two people could have interpreted it as the same thing, but what they couldn't miss, was the heavy, suffocating, ever-present silence.

A noise! A scraping at the other side of door, as loud as a gunshot in this silence, almost breaking the timeless spell of emptiness upon the room; now it contained something; now it contained noise.

Not just noise now-- movement!-- light! The door's lead hinges creaked like a man in pain as the door was heaved open, and a figured was silhouetted for a moment against the light, just long enough to see his pointed face.

Grey eyes, hard as rocks, cold as the murky depths of the sea, staring out of a sharp face, practically pinched into shape by some higher power. Dark hair, shimmering silver in the candle light that illuminated it from behind like a black halo. A king returning to his own private, subject- less dormain.

His footsteps fell like punctuation marks in the silence, echoing deep into the cavernous corners of the room.

"Lumos!" A streak of light shot out of the wand, that was now visible in the young man's white hand. No more then three candles, dusty, blood red tapers, suddenly shot out their golden glow.

Smoke rose into the air, perfumed, twisting into weird shapes, which lingered and then left.

The room, it was now obvious, was not quite as empty as it last seemed; a jutting shape carved along one wall. Sleek, long, almost undulating, carved into the shape of a snake.

The young man paused, as if thinking for a long moment, before proceeding to send out some more beams of light from his wand. These beams, though, do not fade away, and seem to join the three guttering candles together, in a perfect triangle, with the young man in the middle, now surrounded by the brilliant light.

Another pause.

Then he spoke again, his voice high, firm, insistent, in some language long ago lost to man.

"Esir, y m'repleh ooh sah neab dehsinnab y lgnorw morf siht d'lrow..."

The previously steady flames of the wax candles begin to gutter, even though the wicks were still long. The air seemed to tighten a little.

"Ib hcaese uy owt esir, rolur folla sgniht etarga d'n llams ekila..."

Pulsating air. The trembling candle-light made the shadows in the room dance like black and midnight hags, with the boy's shadow seeming to be the devil Himself, in the very centre of it all.

"Ekans, tnepres, kisilisab, nekawa--"

A scream. Maybe it came from your own throat?

A movement.

Giant eyes, reaching into your soul... nothingness. Blackness. All gone.

That's all there is for you to see. Ever again.

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