Disclaimer: I do not own any Harry Potter characters, plots, or anything else; they all belong to J.K. Rowling. Please don't sue. No money exchanged hands for this story, it was written for entertainment purposes only.
A/N: Hi people, sorry it's been so long for the update. I wasn't even sure if I was going to continue the fic, and I'm still not. I don't know if it's any good, nor where the plot should go. Any comments, reviews, or suggestions would be really helpful :)
Beautifulfirestone: My first review! Thanks, I hope these chapters were ok.
Katemary: Yeah, length is always one of my biggest problems, I have absolutely no concept of how long something is going to be. But on this one I wasn't sure if I was going to continue, or where the story was going. I think these last chapters were a little longer though, (I hope at least,) I'll work on that, thanks!
Six: Giant squid and Magic sticks
She winced and drew her arms over her head in anticipation of the impact from the fall she knew would kill her, but it never came. Or rather, it came belated.
First she felt a great swirl of energy around her, as if she had been tossed into a whirl pool rather than nothingness, the air sucked out of her lungs, pressure on her head. And then came the fall. Flat on her chest, she hit the ground and immediately bolted upright,heaved, andpromptly threw up. But the floor was soft, and fragrant!
She looked around; no more was the dark silence of the hospital wing, it had been replaced by a bright, dense forest. She stood, shaking. She hoped this wasn't death, hoped it wasn't heaven. She would have liked wings. And she certainly hoped it wasn't the other place...
She shook her head, trying to snap herself out of her little death spiel…she didn't feel dead, not that she'd know what they would feel like.
She tried to take in her surroundings. She had emerged from the forest, and was now standing by the edge of the lake.I wonder where the giant squid is she mused to herself. Wait, what? Squid? Why am I talking about squid? She continued walking. The forbidden Forest. Hogwarts castle. Hagrid's hut in the distance. Names, strange, foreign and mystical sounding names and places were popping up randomly in her head!
She was so distracted by this that she didn't hear the footsteps close in behind her until an arm slinked up beside her. She spun around to see a cold, haughty looking young man standing before her.
He spoke; "Young girl walking all by herself in the forbidden woods? Not so wise…you don't even have your wand on you…For all you know, I could be dangerous."
The boy was tall lean, with penetrating, icy blue eyes that searched her, and sleek blond hair. He could have been handsome if not for the harsh, focused expression on his face, looking at her as if she were prey. Hecontinued walking forward until she realized that he had backed her into the darkened woods. She froze. She was not going back in there alone with this boy.
He frowned. "Now, now, be nice. If you don't go with all the other boys and girls to Hogsmeade, you must be lonely. Don't you want to play?"
He put his hand on her shoulder. He was so much bigger than she was! Her petite figure was surely no match, and he had a wand, like the ones the people in the hospitalhad carried…the wizards and witches, said the voice, as if that were important now.
His other hand started slinking, lower, harder….but something in the girl clicked, suddenly and violently.She jerked, twisting around in his grasp and grabbed his other arm. She elbowed him in the stomach making him keel over before flipping him over her shoulder, leaving him spiraled out on the ground, breathing sharply.
His eyes followed her, "You little—" He jumped up, reaching for his wand, but she kicked it outs of his hand before smashing her own upwards, cleanly breaking his nose. Grabbing his wand, she didn't even look back before running.
She kept running for at least five minutes, before slowing down. She was still around the perimeter of the lake, and she paused. Had he followed her?
She listened. Nothing. Wait, there—footsteps! They were close! She whirled around, wand held aloft and arms in a defensive position. She briefly wondered how she knew this defense, but the thought went quickly out of her head. Operating on pure adrenaline and anger, she didn't much care.
Just before striking her pursuer, she realized that it was not in fact, the boy from before. It was someone else entirely. Three someones, actually.
"Whoa, easy there!" One of the boys chasing after her quickly halted, his hands flying upwards in gesture of peace, "We're not trying to hurt you." He was strong looking, with flying dark brown hair, contemplative eyes, and a grin on his face.
"Yeah, we only wanted to talk to you –you know, after that shit you pulled on Malfoy, who wouldn't want to congratulate you?" said the second boy. Ember frowned at the name. Malfoy. Deatheater. Hate, bad, we hate him, he kills…
This second speaker was a stocky boy with unruly black hair and brown eyes. She noticed he stood protectively close to his friend. In the distance, she could see another boy walking calmly towards the, sandy blond and a calm demeanor, and a fourth, trying to run and catch up to his friends, but panting heavily and failing. She shook herself out of her tangent again, focusing on the boys at hand.
"Who are you?" Ember demanded, annoyed and still shocked and slightly intimidated and edgy.
"Calm down, we're friends, okay?" The dark-haired boy spoke, " My name is Sirius," Sirius? Met him, helped you, but dead now, veil of death, ministry,
"And these are my friends, James," dead, so sad, tragic, murder, he gestured to the boy next to him, "Remus," monster! He patted the blond on the shoulder as he walked up, "and Peter," he pointed off in the distance to the pudgy boy still running towards them all. A rush of hatred swelled in the pit of the girl's stomach, though she didn't know why. Betrayer, betrayer, betrayer! The words echoed inside her head and she squinted in contempt. She tried to ignore the words that seemed to take a form of their own within her head.
She stumbled backwards slightly, overwhelmed by the strange voice in her head. At first she had been hopeful, thinking, perhaps, that it was her memory coming back, maybe she had been a student here at Hogwarts. But the realization was beginning to dawn: she couldn't have been, she wasn't magical.
She gaffed at the thought: magic! She wouldn't have believed it, except for the strange sights she had seen. But what about the voice? Well, she was talking about wizards and witches and magic and time-travel, it seemed plausible that she gone insane.
Wait, time travel? The Ministry man had mentioned that! Perhaps that could explain everything. The liquid he'd shoved down her throat! Was that a…what was the word….potion?
Contemplative, she gazed back at her current situation. The boy with the messy hair had offered her his hand. She followed a whim of trust, and took it, still fiercely meeting his eyes.
She then looked at the useless wand in her other hand, and figuring that it seemed unlikely that all four of them would try to jump her (Peter had since rejoined the group), and that even if they did, hitting them with the wand would likely make little difference…She brought the wand down, grasped in both hands, and rammed her knee up, snapping it in two. Sneering, she threw it contemptuously into the lake before turning her back on the boys and heading towards the castle, which now seemed eerily familiar to her.
A/N: Okay, was that confusing? I'll try to clarify:
The words like this are meant to be the speaker's own thoughts. Right now, that's Ember, but in chapters 1 and 2 it was Remus, Sirius, and Ember, so that could change.
The words like this are meant to be this new, unknown voice/memory/knowledge-giver that is currently and bewilderingly popping up in Ember's head as she takes in her surroundings.
And lastly, the voices comments, such as calling Lupin a "monster" because he is a werewolf. Anyone who read the Harry Potter books is supposed to see that such biased and ignorant judgements are discriminatory and morally inept. But I figure that since these perceptions came from a part of the Ministry that was willing to experimentally send a girl to an unknown fate, that they are from a more proactive and conservative and perhapsmore militaristic faction. So it would perhaps be biased against werewolves, but still know the truth about Black's innocence, Pettigrew's betrayal, and of course, Jame's Potter's death. So Ember gets vague, sometime's biased or opposing views on people and things (maybe the voice is coming from more than one person, we don't know yet) But ultimately it is up to her to decide about how she feels about people, if they're trustworthy, and how to interpret any of the given information.
Perhaps thatexplainationjust made it all even more confusing and annoying. If so, by all means, ignore and just read the story and interpret it how you will.