A/N. As promised, chapter 19 is already on its way but until it arrives
you'll have to make do with chapter 18. Enjoy!
Chapter 18
The night outside was pitch black, thick, heavy clouds obscuring the watery moon and flickering stars from sight. Hogwarts slept peacefully under the inky blackness, her silence interrupted only sporadically by the night-time wanderings of Mrs Norris and the ghosts.
Inside the castle's towering walls, along the great stone corridors, torches of all colours set at intervals down the wall had long since guttered out or else shone only dimly. Portraits snoozed in their frames where they lay, various appendages sometimes dangling into next-door's wintry landscape. Down in the dungeons, the bowels of the castle, rats scurried down the dank passageways, hurrying home to their nest while the portrait of Salazar Slytherin frowned haughtily at them. High above in one of the many turret-topped towers, owls rustled their feathers in the Owlery, impatient for the night's hunting to begin.
It was a calm night, of soft shadows and soothing sounds. All students were abed, exhausted after the trials of the day. All, of course, except one.
The light filtering through under the door was faint but it was bright enough to cast shadows and colour alike onto the worn floor beneath it. Every now and then, the light would flicker as the flame that shed it sputtered in a draft.
Harry sat alone in a rickety wooden chair at the back of the Library, hunched over one of the many tables and surrounded by countless musty volumes. The invisibility cloak lay pooled on the table, close at hand should someone decide to enter the Library.
Scanning down the archaic parchment, Harry's eyes paused at a promising- looking paragraph:
_Demon summonings are rare, and those who survive them even more so. There are few records of a full and successful summoning and many of those are ambiguous in their viability. However, they do give researchers a viewpoint on which to base their studies. The extract below describes such a summoning as seen from an eyewitness' point of view.
"Abruptly, all around us, a low hum interrupted the previous heavy silence. I looked on with horror, and no small amount of fear, as my companion raised her arms to the high-vaulted ceiling and began to sway listlessly. The reverberating sound grew yet louder, and I was forced, along with the three other occupants of the room, to cover my ears with my hands.
The witch ceased her swaying, now cupping her palms in the air above her, and started to speak in a language I have yet to hear again. The tension of the room shifted; the air seemed heavier and somehow stifled, the light was smothered. The ever-present hum had, by this point, risen to such a pitch that it pierced my eardrums despite the hands clasped frantically over them.
The air between the hands now darkened and writhed sinuously. Her palms fell apart slowly, and the darkness grew with her, unfurling until it encompassed her entire body and she was held, cocooned at the very centre of a veritable mass of seething black energy.
It was only when she turned towards me and gazed straight through me, eyes wild and black from edge to edge, that I began to suspect that something had gone wrong.
The demon she had summoned had yet to assume a solid shape around her body and its incessant wailings shattered the glass of the high windows, showering the room with fragments of broken glass. The energy around the witch's body thrashed excitedly, lashing out across the room until it came into contact with two of the room's other occupants. The demon seized them and drew them, flailing and screaming hysterically, into its energy mass.
They died instantly, and I believe that the demon fed off the energy their deaths provided it.
The witch began to move towards me, the swaying fingers of the demon surrounding her, grasping forwards blindly. I stumbled backwards, overcome with fear and prayed to whatever deities listening that my death would be a quick one.
I don't know what it was that saved me. I only remember a brilliant flash of blazing light filling the room as a soothing song swept across my mind. When I opened my eyes again, the witch was gone, the demon with her."_
Harry frowned, glaring at the text. He couldn't deny that that sounded like what had happened at the Duelling Club, but there were differences. For starters, there had been no deadly spell to provoke the witch into summoning the demon. Frowning, he thought back to when Ron and Hermione, accompanied by about half of the Gryffindors, had informed him of the details.
//"I don't understand. What did I do?"
"."
"Well?"
"Well.first your eyes changed colour. All over, not just the irises-"
"Edge to edge!"
"Oy, shut up Dean. I'M telling the story. Anyway, this massive.*thing* sprung up around you, blocking the spell but it didn't disappear -"
"What did it look like?"
"Golden, sort of orangey-red. Like fire. It surrounded you completely, then."
"Then what?"
"It moved-"
"You moved too, only you just walked a bit. It sort of.thrashed around a bit."
"It swept me to the ceiling!"
"And then?"
"It vanished-"
"And you collapsed." //
Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes wearily as he remembered the talk he had had with Dumbledore.
Harry had sat across the desk from Dumbledore, his head down and peering intently at the rug beside his feet. Eventually, after several tense minutes, Dumbledore had sighed heavily and started to speak.
The conversation that had followed had been strained and, looking back now, Harry winced at what had been said. The Headmaster had made it clear that it could not happen again and Harry had felt his heart falter, waiting for the inevitable moment when Dumbledore would ask for his wand, break it in two and send him on his way.
Dumbledore had gone on, though, before Harry could make any reply other than a cursory nod to show he understood. "You will understand, I hope, that I cannot in good conscience allow it to happen again." Harry nodded and finally looked up into the Headmaster's eyes. They looked weary but still shone kindly and that infernal twinkle sparkled from the depths and Harry began to feel hope. "Which is why I would ask you not to return to the Duelling Club. Alastor will tutor you personally." He smiled warmly and Harry's heart gave a huge leap.
"You're not expelling me?" he asked with no small amount of surprise. Dumbledore had looked amused.
"Why should I, my dear boy? There is no evidence to confirm that you know what you were doing. Certainly, I'm not even sure if it *was* you that did it."
And after reminding Harry to at least try to stay out of trouble and a gentle enquiry concerning his general health, Dumbledore had sent him on up to bed.
Upon arriving at Gryffindor Tower, he had had different ideas and fifteen minutes later found him firmly ensconced in the Restricted Section. He had been given another opportunity and he wasn't going to waste it.
Harry growled in annoyance and slammed the book shut before shoving all of the mildewed volumes back into their respective places on the shelves. Returning to the table, he picked up the cloak and draped it over his shoulders, careful to avoid knocking over the lantern. Hurriedly, he picked up the lantern and swiftly blew out the candle before ghosting silently out of the Library.
On his way back up to Gryffindor Tower, Harry thought about what he'd learnt that night. It seemed more or less accurate, but Moody had said that that thing, that.whatever-it-had-been, hadn't been evil. So what was the antithesis of a demon? An angel? But he'd seen them on muggle cards at Christmas. They were humanoid in shape, depending on the skill of the artist and always had wings. Dudley's had looked like a pig in a dress. He smiled briefly. *If pigs could fly.*
Could it be something to do with the Order? Some kind of weird defence mechanism? But that was out of bounds too. It wasn't Voldemort who had cast the triggering spell; if that snake had been anywhere as near as he would have had to have been to cast the spell, Harry would have been rolling on the floor in agony. It relieved him to know that Voldemort hadn't been there, but also disturbed him to some degree. The fact that it wasn't Voldemort meant that there was someone in Hogwarts who wanted him at least severely injured, if not dead. In retro respect, it was clear to Harry that Dumbledore had been on the same thought train he was on now.
He grimaced. Why did everyone think he couldn't take care of himself? He was perfectly capable, as he had demonstrated on countless occasions. Why did people think he was going to break at the slightest thing?
//*"Kill the spare"
"Avada Kedavra"
"Stand aside you silly girl"*//
Harry shuddered and shoved those memories to the back of his mind. He didn't need to think about them right now. It hadn't been his fault.it hadn't.
Harry jumped as the large Grandfather clock at the end of the passage signalled the time as one in the morning. Saturday, and he had a quidditch match later today. Against Ravenclaw. He sighed. Perfect! Just what he needed! He didn't know if he was ready to face Cho Chang yet. He supposed today would tell.
Harry came to a stop and leant on the wall beside a window, peering out to see if the stars were up. It was a dark night; heavy clouds sailed across the sky, obscuring the pinpricks of light from the eye. The lake surrounding the castle gleamed like uncut obsidian, absorbing what little light there was into its murky black depths. A soft rustling overhead indicated the departure of the owls for their night's hunting. Harry watched the dark shadows flitting towards the Forbidden Forest.
All of a sudden, the forest shifted, flaring outwards. Harry stumbled back from the window, eyes large and breathing harsh. He shut his eyes, gripping his wand tightly in suddenly clammy hands. Slowly, he cracked his eyes open. And gasped in disbelief.
The forest hadn't moved at all but stayed exactly where it had always been. That, at least, was clear. Too clear in fact. Light now flooded his vision, throwing the scene into unnatural daylight, but the moon and stars remained behind the billowing clouds. The night took on a startling clarity of colour and detail. He could see into the Forbidden Forest, each branch whipping through the air in a dizzying motion, each individual leaf swaying against its neighbour. He could see the creatures of the forest prowling in the undergrowth; the gleam of sharp teeth, the flash of a pale hide, the trails of a tracked animal.
The vision was gone almost as suddenly as it had arrived and Harry was left blinking in the dark with a bereft feeling and utterly blind, now that the darkness permeated his senses once more.
Harry waited patiently until he could see clearly again, then warily peered out of the window once more. The forest remained in its proper place and Harry could see no more than the vague outlines of the trees at the forefront of the forest.
He shook his head distractedly and sighed. It was late and he was beginning to see things. Not a good sign for someone who had to spend the next day searching for a ball the size of a walnut. He should get some sleep.
Casting one last suspicious look out of the window, he turned and, after a failed attempt at traversing a staircase that decided to move when he was halfway up, hurried back up to Gryffindor Tower and bed.
Hogwarts slept on, unaware of what had just transpired within her walls. Outside, in the cold dark night, shadows moved restlessly in the forest. Neither the moon nor the stars appeared that night; the clouds refused to budge despite the prevailing winds that had developed by early morning. Owls that had left only hours before under a calm night sky, struggled to return in the early dawn through the buffeting winds.
And in Gryffindor Tower, the window of the fifth-year boys' dormitory, slammed open with a resounding crash and the wind rushed in, moaning mournfully. Seamus leapt up off his bed and ran to shut the window firmly.
Harry sighed deeply and watched the dry leaves that the wind had carried inside eddy around in circles before dropping to the floor.
These were *not* the ideal conditions for a quidditch match.
Tbc.
A/N Well there you are. The next chapter involves a very exciting and a VERY important quidditch match, plot-wise of course. Until then, don't forget to review!
Thanks go to:
Nameless
Mop Head and her Daemon
Erik
Kat
Jocelyn
Ashie
Bob
dota
Stardusted
Genevieve Sente
Sarah
bobalong
Buffynick6
Thank you all so much. You really make my day and encourage me to write more quickly. Also, I'd like to say a massive great big thankyou to the six people who have me on their favourite's list! Thank you sooo much!!
Chapter 18
The night outside was pitch black, thick, heavy clouds obscuring the watery moon and flickering stars from sight. Hogwarts slept peacefully under the inky blackness, her silence interrupted only sporadically by the night-time wanderings of Mrs Norris and the ghosts.
Inside the castle's towering walls, along the great stone corridors, torches of all colours set at intervals down the wall had long since guttered out or else shone only dimly. Portraits snoozed in their frames where they lay, various appendages sometimes dangling into next-door's wintry landscape. Down in the dungeons, the bowels of the castle, rats scurried down the dank passageways, hurrying home to their nest while the portrait of Salazar Slytherin frowned haughtily at them. High above in one of the many turret-topped towers, owls rustled their feathers in the Owlery, impatient for the night's hunting to begin.
It was a calm night, of soft shadows and soothing sounds. All students were abed, exhausted after the trials of the day. All, of course, except one.
The light filtering through under the door was faint but it was bright enough to cast shadows and colour alike onto the worn floor beneath it. Every now and then, the light would flicker as the flame that shed it sputtered in a draft.
Harry sat alone in a rickety wooden chair at the back of the Library, hunched over one of the many tables and surrounded by countless musty volumes. The invisibility cloak lay pooled on the table, close at hand should someone decide to enter the Library.
Scanning down the archaic parchment, Harry's eyes paused at a promising- looking paragraph:
_Demon summonings are rare, and those who survive them even more so. There are few records of a full and successful summoning and many of those are ambiguous in their viability. However, they do give researchers a viewpoint on which to base their studies. The extract below describes such a summoning as seen from an eyewitness' point of view.
"Abruptly, all around us, a low hum interrupted the previous heavy silence. I looked on with horror, and no small amount of fear, as my companion raised her arms to the high-vaulted ceiling and began to sway listlessly. The reverberating sound grew yet louder, and I was forced, along with the three other occupants of the room, to cover my ears with my hands.
The witch ceased her swaying, now cupping her palms in the air above her, and started to speak in a language I have yet to hear again. The tension of the room shifted; the air seemed heavier and somehow stifled, the light was smothered. The ever-present hum had, by this point, risen to such a pitch that it pierced my eardrums despite the hands clasped frantically over them.
The air between the hands now darkened and writhed sinuously. Her palms fell apart slowly, and the darkness grew with her, unfurling until it encompassed her entire body and she was held, cocooned at the very centre of a veritable mass of seething black energy.
It was only when she turned towards me and gazed straight through me, eyes wild and black from edge to edge, that I began to suspect that something had gone wrong.
The demon she had summoned had yet to assume a solid shape around her body and its incessant wailings shattered the glass of the high windows, showering the room with fragments of broken glass. The energy around the witch's body thrashed excitedly, lashing out across the room until it came into contact with two of the room's other occupants. The demon seized them and drew them, flailing and screaming hysterically, into its energy mass.
They died instantly, and I believe that the demon fed off the energy their deaths provided it.
The witch began to move towards me, the swaying fingers of the demon surrounding her, grasping forwards blindly. I stumbled backwards, overcome with fear and prayed to whatever deities listening that my death would be a quick one.
I don't know what it was that saved me. I only remember a brilliant flash of blazing light filling the room as a soothing song swept across my mind. When I opened my eyes again, the witch was gone, the demon with her."_
Harry frowned, glaring at the text. He couldn't deny that that sounded like what had happened at the Duelling Club, but there were differences. For starters, there had been no deadly spell to provoke the witch into summoning the demon. Frowning, he thought back to when Ron and Hermione, accompanied by about half of the Gryffindors, had informed him of the details.
//"I don't understand. What did I do?"
"."
"Well?"
"Well.first your eyes changed colour. All over, not just the irises-"
"Edge to edge!"
"Oy, shut up Dean. I'M telling the story. Anyway, this massive.*thing* sprung up around you, blocking the spell but it didn't disappear -"
"What did it look like?"
"Golden, sort of orangey-red. Like fire. It surrounded you completely, then."
"Then what?"
"It moved-"
"You moved too, only you just walked a bit. It sort of.thrashed around a bit."
"It swept me to the ceiling!"
"And then?"
"It vanished-"
"And you collapsed." //
Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes wearily as he remembered the talk he had had with Dumbledore.
Harry had sat across the desk from Dumbledore, his head down and peering intently at the rug beside his feet. Eventually, after several tense minutes, Dumbledore had sighed heavily and started to speak.
The conversation that had followed had been strained and, looking back now, Harry winced at what had been said. The Headmaster had made it clear that it could not happen again and Harry had felt his heart falter, waiting for the inevitable moment when Dumbledore would ask for his wand, break it in two and send him on his way.
Dumbledore had gone on, though, before Harry could make any reply other than a cursory nod to show he understood. "You will understand, I hope, that I cannot in good conscience allow it to happen again." Harry nodded and finally looked up into the Headmaster's eyes. They looked weary but still shone kindly and that infernal twinkle sparkled from the depths and Harry began to feel hope. "Which is why I would ask you not to return to the Duelling Club. Alastor will tutor you personally." He smiled warmly and Harry's heart gave a huge leap.
"You're not expelling me?" he asked with no small amount of surprise. Dumbledore had looked amused.
"Why should I, my dear boy? There is no evidence to confirm that you know what you were doing. Certainly, I'm not even sure if it *was* you that did it."
And after reminding Harry to at least try to stay out of trouble and a gentle enquiry concerning his general health, Dumbledore had sent him on up to bed.
Upon arriving at Gryffindor Tower, he had had different ideas and fifteen minutes later found him firmly ensconced in the Restricted Section. He had been given another opportunity and he wasn't going to waste it.
Harry growled in annoyance and slammed the book shut before shoving all of the mildewed volumes back into their respective places on the shelves. Returning to the table, he picked up the cloak and draped it over his shoulders, careful to avoid knocking over the lantern. Hurriedly, he picked up the lantern and swiftly blew out the candle before ghosting silently out of the Library.
On his way back up to Gryffindor Tower, Harry thought about what he'd learnt that night. It seemed more or less accurate, but Moody had said that that thing, that.whatever-it-had-been, hadn't been evil. So what was the antithesis of a demon? An angel? But he'd seen them on muggle cards at Christmas. They were humanoid in shape, depending on the skill of the artist and always had wings. Dudley's had looked like a pig in a dress. He smiled briefly. *If pigs could fly.*
Could it be something to do with the Order? Some kind of weird defence mechanism? But that was out of bounds too. It wasn't Voldemort who had cast the triggering spell; if that snake had been anywhere as near as he would have had to have been to cast the spell, Harry would have been rolling on the floor in agony. It relieved him to know that Voldemort hadn't been there, but also disturbed him to some degree. The fact that it wasn't Voldemort meant that there was someone in Hogwarts who wanted him at least severely injured, if not dead. In retro respect, it was clear to Harry that Dumbledore had been on the same thought train he was on now.
He grimaced. Why did everyone think he couldn't take care of himself? He was perfectly capable, as he had demonstrated on countless occasions. Why did people think he was going to break at the slightest thing?
//*"Kill the spare"
"Avada Kedavra"
"Stand aside you silly girl"*//
Harry shuddered and shoved those memories to the back of his mind. He didn't need to think about them right now. It hadn't been his fault.it hadn't.
Harry jumped as the large Grandfather clock at the end of the passage signalled the time as one in the morning. Saturday, and he had a quidditch match later today. Against Ravenclaw. He sighed. Perfect! Just what he needed! He didn't know if he was ready to face Cho Chang yet. He supposed today would tell.
Harry came to a stop and leant on the wall beside a window, peering out to see if the stars were up. It was a dark night; heavy clouds sailed across the sky, obscuring the pinpricks of light from the eye. The lake surrounding the castle gleamed like uncut obsidian, absorbing what little light there was into its murky black depths. A soft rustling overhead indicated the departure of the owls for their night's hunting. Harry watched the dark shadows flitting towards the Forbidden Forest.
All of a sudden, the forest shifted, flaring outwards. Harry stumbled back from the window, eyes large and breathing harsh. He shut his eyes, gripping his wand tightly in suddenly clammy hands. Slowly, he cracked his eyes open. And gasped in disbelief.
The forest hadn't moved at all but stayed exactly where it had always been. That, at least, was clear. Too clear in fact. Light now flooded his vision, throwing the scene into unnatural daylight, but the moon and stars remained behind the billowing clouds. The night took on a startling clarity of colour and detail. He could see into the Forbidden Forest, each branch whipping through the air in a dizzying motion, each individual leaf swaying against its neighbour. He could see the creatures of the forest prowling in the undergrowth; the gleam of sharp teeth, the flash of a pale hide, the trails of a tracked animal.
The vision was gone almost as suddenly as it had arrived and Harry was left blinking in the dark with a bereft feeling and utterly blind, now that the darkness permeated his senses once more.
Harry waited patiently until he could see clearly again, then warily peered out of the window once more. The forest remained in its proper place and Harry could see no more than the vague outlines of the trees at the forefront of the forest.
He shook his head distractedly and sighed. It was late and he was beginning to see things. Not a good sign for someone who had to spend the next day searching for a ball the size of a walnut. He should get some sleep.
Casting one last suspicious look out of the window, he turned and, after a failed attempt at traversing a staircase that decided to move when he was halfway up, hurried back up to Gryffindor Tower and bed.
Hogwarts slept on, unaware of what had just transpired within her walls. Outside, in the cold dark night, shadows moved restlessly in the forest. Neither the moon nor the stars appeared that night; the clouds refused to budge despite the prevailing winds that had developed by early morning. Owls that had left only hours before under a calm night sky, struggled to return in the early dawn through the buffeting winds.
And in Gryffindor Tower, the window of the fifth-year boys' dormitory, slammed open with a resounding crash and the wind rushed in, moaning mournfully. Seamus leapt up off his bed and ran to shut the window firmly.
Harry sighed deeply and watched the dry leaves that the wind had carried inside eddy around in circles before dropping to the floor.
These were *not* the ideal conditions for a quidditch match.
Tbc.
A/N Well there you are. The next chapter involves a very exciting and a VERY important quidditch match, plot-wise of course. Until then, don't forget to review!
Thanks go to:
Nameless
Mop Head and her Daemon
Erik
Kat
Jocelyn
Ashie
Bob
dota
Stardusted
Genevieve Sente
Sarah
bobalong
Buffynick6
Thank you all so much. You really make my day and encourage me to write more quickly. Also, I'd like to say a massive great big thankyou to the six people who have me on their favourite's list! Thank you sooo much!!