The Houses Competition (or THC)
House: Gryfindor
Class: Potions
Category: Standard
Prompt(s) chosen: [Magical Creature] Romanian Longhorn (Dragon), [Word] Create, [Prompt] A mistake you made has caused unimaginable consequences. [Prompt] The girl who stole the stars
Word Count: 1087
A creeping darkness
The blood of the Romanian Longhorn was the final ingredient. Not just any dragon's blood, this – this was the blood of the fiercest, the most cunning of all dragons. So close to sentience that it had seemed almost a crime, but definitely a sin, to slay it.
But slay it she had, and rendered it for parts, carefully putting aside the pints and pints of blood, the ropes of sinew and piles of scales. She did not need them now but later – later she might have need of them, and there was no need to be wasteful, was there?
They called this the darkest of arts. And perhaps it was, being so closely akin to necromancy. But instead of an act of death, this was an act of life. Take a life to create a life. It seemed like a fair trade to her.
And didn't the book say that not all who die deserve death? Well in this case, she could be sure that that was the case. A good man should not pay for one mistake with his life, and she would not abide it. Could not abide it.
She refused to allow it, and so it would not be.
The research had taken years. Their age difference, so large when she started, would be almost nonexistent now, if she succeeded.
No. Not if. When. When she succeeded, they would be nearly the same age.
She had spent months preparing. Gathering ingredients, the rarest and most precious metals, the most powerful reagents. The stone had been the hardest to find. Who left a valuable ancient relic in a forest, for crying out loud?
But she had done the research, and she had gathered the ingredients. Yes, even the stone, and though the vague and passionless spirit it had summoned was not in favor of the plan, it could not stop her.
Death was, after all, the final choice. Once you had made that choice, all the others became moot.
And now she had spent days in the lab.
Grinding.
Slicing.
Measuring.
Stirring and pouring and simmering and waiting.
She was exhausted. The weariness pulled at her bones, making them weigh more than they should. It turned her eyes gritty and her ever-sharp wit dull and foggy.
But the instructions were detailed and precise, and she knew it would work. She knew she could bring him back.
It was going to work. She could feel it in the rising power, in the thickening of the witch's brew in the man-sized cauldron.
She took the dragon's blood, which she had harvested herself at moonrise on the second Thursday of August. It had already been measured, already been prepared in all the ways it needed.
Her hand wanted to shake as she poured, keeping the stirrer moving evenly with magic. She didn't let her hand shake. This would go perfectly.
It went perfectly.
But no amount of perfection in the final steps would overcome one single, tiny oversight in the first.
There was a spell known as See-All. Had she used it on the dragon – as the faded and ancient parchments had urged in the sections lost to time and ill use – she would have seen it. Just the tiniest fragment of shadow clinging to a drop of blood. Just a touch of evil in a creature otherwise as pure as all wild animals are. The curse of sentience, some called it – with the ability to reason came the ability to do evil.
The dragon had been as old as the hills. Old enough to develop what was nearly a mind. Not quite sentience, but close enough.
And to that spark of sentience, evil had attached.
It resided in the blood and, with the blood, entered the cauldron.
There was no explosion.
There was no sound.
There was just movement in the brew, and then a man-shape stood there, flickering slightly before it steadied. Naked and entirely beautiful, crafted of alabaster with eyes of obsidian and midnight hair, he stood in the cauldron and stared at her and, in that moment, made her his even more than she had been before.
Before, she had been his acolyte, his beloved, his devoted one. Now she was his slave. Wholly and entirely his, her mind bound to his as his was to hers.
The growing shadow leapt between their eyes, from him to her.
In unison they moved toward the door. He conjured a cloak of shadow, of darkness and despair, which fluttered behind him like his robes of old.
They spoke no word, made no gesture, but together too, they ascended the stairs until together they stood under the open sky.
The stars reflected on their open eyes, glittering against the darkness in them. The moon attempted to illuminate them, but moonlight slid off their skin like oil and turned to writhing shadows at their feet.
She turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth.
Wide, then wider, until it seemed her jaw would unhinge. And inside, instead of the red and white of tongue and teeth, there was nothing but shadow. A great dark mouth that yawned and gaped and hungered.
And the darkness poured out from her mouth and reached to the sky, covering the stars, and if anyone had been watching – but no-one was watching – they would see the stars blinking out one by one as the shadow spread over them.
With each devoured star the darkness grew in power, feeding her, feeding him. It poured in through his hand on her shoulder, but was never enough.
The darkness could not be satisfied. While there was life in the world, it would hunger, and so he, too, opened his mouth and sent the darkness forth. And in the Forest the great spiders screamed and became silent in turn, and the centaurs fled but were run down by a shadow they could not foresee.
And the trees became grey and shriveled before them, and they grew and grew in power and darkness.
And the darkness spread and grew, and spread and grew, and eventually devoured all life and then it threw itself against the prison the world had become and it raged, raged against the hunger that never ceased, while the souls of billions wept bitter tears at their fate before they, too vanished into the endless shadowy maw.
Such a small thing, to end a world.
A missed spell, a speck of shadow. One small mistake, and darkness claimed it all.