Disclaimers: HP world not mine. Cue weeping.
Notes: Merry Christmas to all! I realize how long I've abandoned this story, but fear not! I read the first parts again just now and realize so many things were badly executed, but all that will change… oh yes, I am rewriting this fic, somewhat MS-ish premise or not, if only to prove to myself that I can do it well. Either way, I had a lot more of Cursed written before I stopped updating more than a year ago, and for the sake of having it go somewhere… I'll continue posting it on a more or less weekly basis… However, be aware that the problems of typos, awkward style, and awkward execution will not really be fixed… Because I'm now focusing on the completely edited and hopefully better-written 'Promises to Keep' that is Cursed with better writing and a few plot kinks worked out!… I hope you support 'Promises' also. Thank you all!
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Part 6
Another's Story
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It was rather anticlimatic, all things considered. A simple incantation was all it took, although that can disillusion one as to how much it actually takes to succeed. But I did, in bringing the poor man back. Konnor Lambert, I remember that he used to be the rather quiet and uncreative sort, the kind who might make their living writing drafts of utterly boring regulations for the Ministry or something like that. Officially he does that, actually, as an assistant to some desk-bound official in the Department of Magical Transportation. Unofficially though, the implications are mind-boggling, to say the least. How he could end up so badly damaged, to be truly on the veritable brink of death, I don't know and would rather not have explained to me.
To my own credit, if we can consider it so, I chose this of my own free will with full knowledge of what it could possibly do to me. I did all the research, in the old books that this volume happens to be a set with – I magically inscribed my own accounts of these days' proceedings into some extra pages I inserted, also with magic. Perhaps one reading this would frown upon me for diluting the quality and authenticity of these old records, but I feel that I ought to write out my own views on the 'olde gifts of Adhlar blood' for reference to those in the future. Call me obnoxiously self-centered, but I don't feel that an objective accout has not been given in these 'ancient' tomes. The fact that in their time, they must have chosen to gloss over many things becomes far more apparent now.
Poor Konnor, I only chanced upon him because I was passing by one of the Spell Damage wards at St.Mungo's. Suprisingly, even when they're a wizard hospital, they actually see very few cases that are true emergencies. (I'd like to make a side note that I'm seriously taking into consideration the option of leaving my training to be a Healer, the site of blood and some of the more messy effects of spells gone awry puts me in panicked hysterics.) I was supposed to be fetching some bandages and pain-killing potions for one of the Senior Healers, but when they brought Konnor in, they were roping all the available staff in to help out. Even a Healer student like me managed to get dragged in, if only to keep a check on some of those Healing Web spells that are only brought in for the most desperate cases. (Likely because it takes so much out of a person, leaving it sustained for more than twenty minutes will leave the one casting it out of action for almost an entire week. It's only useful for people who are really walking a fine line, only thing it's very good for is preventing the further degeneration of an already grave situation, preventing further blood loss, and things like that.)
I didn't think it was possible for anyone to be in such horrible condition as a result of even the most severe bout of cursing. (Wand-waving kind, not familial.) I've seen patients in very unusual predicaments, but we don't see life-threatening afflictions much at all. There was a sort of unspoken tension in that ward. (after clearing the other patients out) We've read 'between the lines' of the Daily Prophet, just like any other people who want to understand what's truly going on these days, and this is unquestionable proof that dark days are coming over us, Konnor's wounds could not have been caused by mere accident. He must have had a run-in with someone bearing very ill intentions. Such things can not possibly have occurred by accident, as most cases we see at St. Mungo's are. (What else can cause things like hats that are stuck convering the heads or whatnot? Entirely benign, but also utterly annoying, having to come up with ways of removing such hats without decapitating the patient, something that was always a temptation. That paticular condition is becoming overly common as of yet thanks to some defective Zonko's product.)
I suppose it's fate causing a rather sudden sort of coincidence, that I had been reading up on soul-chasing just a few weeks earlier. I don't know what possessed me, having read the parts where all sorts of horrific pain and suffering were implied as being the due of anyone who used the Adhlar gift instead of keeping it locked up, but it was a simple matter when I actually made the decision. A whispered 'Reverto Anima' with the full intent behind it to bring someone back, when he would otherwise have likely strayed beyond the point of possible return. My wand was out of course, though I got the feeling that the actual process of soul-chasing doesn't require it, since it seemed that it used my own spirit, soul, or whatever one calls it as a conduit for the powers being channeled. It's nearly impossible to explain in words, but it's the sort of thing that should be easily recognized for what it is, at least in the individual feeling it. Though I believe all the other Healers felt that something was going on, with me as the source of the subtle disturbance. Thankfully, none of them actually thought to interrupt it, though I don't think I could have been stopped at that point, and the entire process of soul-chasing would have continued whether they dragged me from the ward or tried to shake me back into my senses.
My best assumption is that I was in a deep trance for some time. While I still knew that I was back in the ward at St. Mungo's, one of many Healers tending to Konnor, I also knew I wasn't entirely there. In that 'other place', everything was rather dim and I couldn't see any light yet it wasn't completely dark. Before me was this sort of rounded doorway, an arch if you will. Around me, I felt things brushing by me, going through that portal, yet nothing came out. I looked beside me, and there was Konnor, or rather something unsubstantial and shapeless yet it felt like Konnor's presence. Unlike all those other undefined somethings passing by, though, he couldn't get any farther than the archway, yet he couldn't leave either. Perhaps it will sound rather preposterous, but it was as if I suddenly knew what I had to do, and even while everthing was all shadows, chill winds, and nothingness it was both calm and serene for a moment. The me in that place put out her hand, and that shapeless form that was Konnor seemed to accept it, and suddenly I was back in that ward and of course the fully trained Healers were yelling at me. Half because they thought something bad had happened to me, and they were relieved that I was awake, half because it was wholly unacceptable to mentally wander off like that at such a crucial point in time. (I had the urge to ask them why they weren't paying any attention to the patient right then, if it was such a crucial point in time, but wisely decided against it. It didn't do me any good for them to continue on their tirade, this time for not respecting authority, and being impertinent.)
One of them gasped and her eyes widened in surprise, I'd never seen any Senior Healer toss aside her dignity enough for that. She dropped the bottle of some medically-driven potion, but it didn't shatter since we only use magically reinforced glass, it just bounced and rolled under the bed. His bleeding had been stopped completely, something none of the Healers despite their best efforts had been able to do, and half those horrible bloody gashes were gone. No longer was his pallor that of one dead, as opposed to the deathly pale look he'd had earlier, it seemed that he looked as healthy as anyone else now. It'd worked, and for a moment it was exhilerating, I'd done it, used the power of the Adhlar line, and I was perfectly fine, none of that 'raging fever and pain unequaled' that one paragraph in these old records had been describing.
Here now I put down my words of warning, as honestly as I can describe the aftereffects of soul-chasing, which is better than I can say of what other information on it these records contain. The backlash hit about ten minutes after I had come out of the trance, and very suddenly. One moment I was helping the others put away supplies, ignoring their questions as politely as could, the next I was falling to the ground, breathing hard because everything hurt with pain greater than I'd ever encountered before. Then everything was a blur, in the back of my mind I was aware that someone was putting me in a bed, calling for others to come over, but that was the least of my worries then. First the pain and then something else entirely.
Memories and thoughts that weren't mine suddenly filled my head. So many, I couldn't process all of them, a lifetime's worth to be exact. Then I just shut down, it was too much. For just a second then, it was dark, peaceful, all that I expected from a unconcious spell. Then everything continued crashing in, and it wasn't long before I realized this was Konnor's life flashing before my eyes. Not just important memories that might have been floating about his head, but abolutely everything he'd ever known and could possibly have remembered, and most of the things he probably didn't. It's hard to describe, but I attribute it to that moment of contact before I came to from the first trance, and my best guess is that when his soul took my hand to be led back, it somehow replicated all his memories in their entirety to me. What I gave to him was another chance at a life that he would otherwise have forsaken, what I was given in return was all the thoughts and memories that he'd ever had in his life. All in one moment, that was probably what caused me to faint, more than the pain and feverish physical aftereffects of soul-chasing.
I don't know what happens to others who do this, but I feel that it's probably all those extra thoughts and memories that will inevitably drive a soul-chaser insane. It's just too much to absorb in such quantity all at once. As if all that one can remember of their own life doesn't already fill the mind to top capacity already… Though it's said that some manage to soul-chase several times, I suppose that some of my ancestors could endure the onslaught on someone else's memories for much longer than others. I thought I'd lose hold of myself, although I was finally able to push away Konnor's memories, even if I knew then and still know now that they'll always be there, waiting for when I lose my guard to come back in a rush.
If it were my place to formulate a theory on it, I'd say that all memories by nature are always fighting to push to the surface, even if they have to crush other thoughts and memories to do it. Perhaps because they don't actually belong to me and didn't just trickle in by a normal process, these were making a very powerful effort at taking over. Even as I did my utmost to ignore them, I was learning more about Konnor than I'd ever want to know, right up to the moment he had been hit with enough malevolent cursing to almost end his life. I'd have to say I was surprised… Studious yet helpful Konnor Lambert, once a quiet and unassuming Head Boy out of Hufflepuff House – a combative agent of goodness that fought Death Eaters every so often? If I'd been able to, my expression would have been of incredulity, as it was I was conclusively asleep in the physical world, and only able to look on as I tried to sort out my own memories and separate them from Konnor's. People that I'd never met myself, I would now know by sight forever after if Konnor knew them, and I wondered if his personality, even the confident, calculating, and ruthless side of him that hunted down Death Eaters in the name of good would also carry over to me. Some of what he knows scares me, like most people I guess I'm the sort who'd rather not know about all the evil and horrible things going on in our world today.
I heard later from the Healer supervising my training, that I was out cold for nearly two weeks, and I was alternately mumbling nonsense and crying out in pain the whole time. They had decided to contact my parents, and they'd come for as long as they could leave their work but it hadn't done anything for me. The ones assigned to working on me got as much Deep-sleep Potion into me as they could, although it didn't seem to help me any, as far as the Healers could tell.
When I finally woke up again, I'd managed to get all of Konnor's memories to more or less be pushed to a far corner of my mind, no small task I'll assure you. I woke up quietly, still feeling dizzy from being out of it for so long, and it took a while to realize that there was someone sitting there beside me. They'd drawn the curtains around me, so I didn't know what ward I was in, and with the lights dimmed and all the funny shadows caused by said curtains, I was surprised enough to scream when I actually noticed, though no sound came out because my throat was pretty much dried out. (Too much sleep without people being regularly able to dunk fluids in through my mouth.) The person remained silent, watching warily, as if not certain what to expect.
I swallowed a few times, something that was rather uncomfortable, but I managed to talk in a slightly cracked whisper. He was a familiar face, a family friend more closer in years to my older siblings rather than myself. Gideon Prewett, who I remembered as being an Auror of considerable ability, by all accounts. I knew him, but it was hard to divide my memories of him from Konnor's thoughts about him. Not a formidable man, he actually was more homely and benign than anything else. Ordinary hair somewhere between light brown and blond, and eyes that seemed to be those of one who was open with his words and emotions. Not a very tall or powerful man, by first appearances, I knew him to be soft-spoken but obviously intelligent from the few times I'd ever had the oppurtunity to speak to him.
Before, I'd always thought that it was rather unlikely that he was a well-respected Auror who'd dispatched several wizarding criminals throughout the course of his career. Now, after receiving Konnor's memories, I knew differently. Yes, he was a capable fighter just like Konnor was, someone who'd taken down people more dangerous than any 'average' wizarding criminal without thinking it anything special because he'd done it many times. For the last year or two's worth of Konnor's life, Gideon Prewett had been more than just a casual acquaintance by virtue of working in the same place. He'd been a comrade, and like Konnor he'd seen hell in a war that had barely been acknowledged by the general populace yet. If it didn't scare me as much as it did, I would have been laughing at the notion of it, as it was I was frozen in fear. Why else would someone who knew me only because the rest of my family worked in the Ministry or went to school with him turn up now, if not because of his more secret profession. Had I somehow become a threat to their activities, willingly or not, through assimilating Konnor? Or where they even supposed to know that such a thing had occurred? Soul-chasing was a very rare gift, limited to the Adhlar family and it was impossible to know about the memories one gained of the person whose life had been saved, it wasn't even written out for family members to see. That fact at least, should still have been a secret to him.
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"What do you want, Gideon?" Pyrane whispered, before she had to stop speaking in order to cough, "Well? It's hard to believe I'm worth a visit since I'm not close to dying and you're obviously very busy."
If he suspected that she knew about his more dangerous activities and profession, he didn't show it. For now, Pyrane was left to wonder whether Konnor might have imagined all those memories. Gideon still looked more like some eternally calm and thoughtful intellectual rather than an active fighter against what Konnor had known as forces of darkness.
One borrowed memory stood out especially, one where they and Gideon's brother had been cornered somewhere by people in masks and dark hooded cloaks. The energy trails of various powerful curses flew by them, and Fabian had bitten down a scream as it left an angry reddened burn mark on his shoulder. Gideon looked enraged, his eyes filled with more rising emotion than Pyrane had ever seen, and he'd went to face those black-hooded enemies, firing off a spell that few outside of working Aurors were allowed to use, something Konnor at least had recognized as a powerful offensive spell that was far above the ability of the average witch or wizard. The attack had stopped, and Konnor had come out from behind the ruins of a wall and surveyed the results with a dispassionate eye.
One of those masked men now lay dead, the others were nowhere to be found – Konnor had thought they'd fled like filthy cowards, without enough honor or courage to stand and fight the moment one of their targets had turned and attacked. Gideon Prewett was different in that memory, with the air of one still in the bloodlust of open battle, and Konnor had just cast a disdainful look at the corpse, then told them it was time to leave. None of them with any care for a life Gideon had taken, whether it was to defend a brother or not. No mercy, no pity, nothing but acceptance where earlier there had been cold rage that most were incapable of.
"The Healers here reported that they didn't know what to expect, your parents and Thisbe were worried, though they couldn't stay." He said, mentioning her sister and the rest of Pyrane's immediate family with the exception of her brother, "There's also bad news, Castor met with an unfortunate accident three days ago."
Pyrane's mind was still saturated with confusion from all the extra memories she'd gained recently, and from being out cold for so long that she didn't really understand what he was saying about her oldest sibling, a brother. Very funny, she wanted to tell him, but Castor worked in a job with nearly no risk of true danger, and lived in similar fashion. In fact, he probably had built himself the safest life of anyone these days, even accounting for all the knowledge of the 'Dark Lord' and his doings that Konnor's mind had implanted firmly in her head. By Merlin's beard, Connor maintained a kennel for Krups, Kneazels, Puffskeins, Owls, and the like on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Even all the surprising things Konnor had known didn't add anything to what she knew of Castor.
"Don't jest, Prewett, it's not becoming." She felt a bit of Konnor seeping in to her manner at the moment, his quiet despair at the dangers he faced so often, something that had been hidden deep within him by what she knew lending a slight icy bite to her words.
He seemed slightly surprised by that, though, for what little he knew of Pyrane he'd only ever met her while she was at her best. The last time had been at a small Yule party her parents had invited him to, where she'd been as friendly as she usually was, a person prone to smiling and laughing with sincerity at any appropriate time through almost anything. Though he hid it well, but from what she knew now he had to be a good actor because of his arguably more important duties, as part of the 'Order of the Pheonix' group that Konnor had been so deeply involved in.
"I do not lie to you, Miss Adhlar, it was however, an accident. Criminals that had yet to be apprehended had come for other targets, one of your brother's neighbors. As far as the investigation has been able to discover, your brother came to their aid only to be overpowered and killed just as they were." He said this all with not even a hint of feeling, as if he played courier to many such messaged of tragedy, which in this day of many sudden disappearances and death from foul play he probably did. "I'm sorry." He added as a perfunctory gesture.
A saying came to mind right then. "Don't kill the messenger", but it was something she very much wanted to do just then. That or cry for a brother who, while never paticularly close was still that – a brother, family, of blood that flowed through her veins also. For a moment that 'I'm sorry' was nothing but a slap in the face, an accusation that today she had as good as saved the life of another, yet someone much closer to her had been lost. Some part of her mind wondered if it would feel to her that Castor's death was her fault, that snatching another away from death's reach, it had chosen to take someone else away. An accident, Gideon said, but as she stared at him, wide-eyed with shock battling disbelief, she wondered whether or not it was an accident. The only question was whether her brother had died at the hands of Death Eaters, as Konnor called those he fought against, or perhaps Castor had fallen victim to one of them, Gideon's crowd. No matter what she knew through Konnor's memories, she wondered whether she could ever be certain which side was the 'correct' one.
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I always think that they suspect it, after all, how could they not? Every time one of their 'Order' was miraculously saved, there was always one Healer-trainee recorded as being present, one who eyewitnesses say had fallen into a trance momentarily while others desperately tried to save the patient through more conventional means. One Pyrane Adhlar, me, who would then fall ill for a week or two, and now would always look upon them with barely concealed curiosity and occasionally suspicion.
Perhaps my name 'Adhlar' gives it away, what I've been doing. Certainly most of the older families who pays attention to the tendencies of certain family lines in order to look after their own interests, would recognize me for what I was. Soul-chaser, one who was returning those whose souls had balanced precariously on the proverbial cliff, yet was ever more noticing that the price would be exacted in due course.
I couldn't stop though, even knowing that as I assimilated more lives' worth of thoughts and memories, my own mind was as surely being eroded away as was my health. What kept me at it was seeing Konnor's wife and children one day, at Diagon Alley some weeks after I had saved his life, and seeing him with them. He was smiling, happy, and for a moment even I could believe he was just another wizard, who never had any excitement in his life yet was perfectly content. I knew that was far from the truth, yet that is also the image I am faced with every time I see a case like his. As I keep a copy of their memories for myself (by no will of mine), I know that each and every one of them are part of that 'Order', and although I am leaving them to fight and kill some of the less innocent in the world, something I wouldn't condone; I also know I am leaving them free to experience happiness one more time, something they have in very short supply.
I wonder if it is possible to raise the dead. How can I not wonder, after bringing back four unfortunate souls to date? Last time, I entered the trance a bit early, murmuring the incantation 'Reverto Anima' a bit early. So then when I first stood at the doorway to wherever souls went for 'true death', I stepped in. It is said to be death, a point of no return, or at least that was what I had assumed, but it doesn't need to be, apparently. Because I managed to return, although that might have been because I had not gone far in.
Someone stopped me before I'd gone five steps. It was a surprise, because even as I felt lives rushing by me into that doorway, all the time, even occasionally felt their presence, no one had ever come through with a physical form before. Or rather, not exactly a solid form, but close, although it looked as if it'd faded a bit. It didn't speak in a conventional manner, though I felt every intent it meant to portray. Time seemed to stop, because we conversed a considerable amount, yet I had actually been out of it real-world wise for a very short time. But the passage of time is always a strange thing in that place.
When I asked whether he or she was human, it seemed to say yes it was, although it didn't remember what it had been. It looked more masculine than feminine, but not decidedly so. I asked who he was, and the reply was that he no longer remembered, but he thought of himself as a Gatekeeper, for the rare time when someone wandered through the door and didn't belong, yet could still have a chance to escape. Something like me, for at the moment I had gone where most can only reach through death, though not very far. It started to ramble then, conveying many messages with little meaning to me, but it seemed to think were important. It told me to remember these things.
That it, or he had once been someone who wandered through the door while stil physically alive. Long ago, when the doorway existed in the 'real world' too, although he said it still stood now. He'd never been able to find the doorway again, to leave this place that was death. Yet souls of the dead do move on to other places, this was only a sort of limbo, but he could not because he had never died, per se. That if I intended to come in further as I was now, I must be wary, because I could easily become lost like he was, leaving my physical form behind. That I couldn't raise the dead, because that was not possible, with no living body to anchor a soul, it can not return to the living world. His parting words as I rushed to find the person I had first come to save, on the living side of the door were that the gift I had could do extraordinary things, but I should stop because it would destroy me. I never intend to wander again, that experience was too odd and unsettling to be repeated. It's not as if I haven't noticed how hard it's been on me, I'm acting more and more reckless and rather nasty at times, probably from the mix of people inside me, can't choose who to act like anymore. I've also been losing weight, and generally look somewhere between very pale and slightly gray.
- - -
It's nearly the end of the year, now, I don't think I'm going to be intact to see it though. While I'd been doing a decent job keeping everyone else's memories back, when I brought back a seventh person I'd started having trouble with it. Tried a Pensieve, but none of the thoughts would allow themselves to be removed. Feel ready to collapse, afraid to sleep because every time I close my eyes I can't remember who I am, Konnor or one of those other 'Order' people, or myself.
Pyrane Adhlar
- - -
Julianne swallowed as she closed the journal, too distracted to make sure she wasn't accidentally folding any of the yellowing pages. She'd been as upset about her rather distant cousin's death, more over the fact that it was a Curse she could also fall victim to than out of knowing Pyrane was a good person who did not deserve such a sudden death. But it was another thing entirely to know about her last moments – not of life, since as far as Julianne could recall her cousin had been in a state of insane rambling with little ability for anything but yelling and screaming while trying to claw at anyone else who came near, at least until the healer wizards at St. Mungo's had drugged her before she slowly died.
While her cousin's account was by no means written in exemplary fashion, and couldn't straight-out communicate the depths of pain and emotion that could easily have been present in the happenings being detailed, it upset her to read them. To have all of someone's memories transcribed into one's own mind – that couldn't be pleasant, and she had no way of being certain whether or not it would happen to her if she succeeded.