Something Like the Truth
Book One: How to Disappear Completely
Chapter Nine: Writing on the Walls
Author's Note: I greatly apologize for the wait. I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I also apologize if it seems a bit rushed in the end. I just greatly wanted to post something seeing as I haven't done so in months. Special thanks to all of you have read, liked, added, and/or reviewed. I appreciate all of your feedback and your criticism. If you have any ideas that you wish to share with me or if you just want to yell at me, the review box is all yours.
It dripped from the walls in a fabrication similar towards the crimson liquor of blood. Its E's were imbalanced, towering above the others in its slanted reach for the heavens as the S's coiled underneath their own credence of delight. Truly horrible penmanship, if I may be so inclined as to add.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood abashed before my very sight, mouths forming a fissure amongst their ashen faces. From their wide, oppressing eyes I could tell that this was not some ailing derision fashioned by the iniquitous hands of the Slytherins. There was no prank, no joke, and certainly no laughing matter. This was real. And perhaps that's what scared me the most for the truth is never an easy one to swallow.
I too must look slightly astounded for I could feel my breath leaving my lungs, never returning until a moment's desolated gasp later, all owed to my absentmindedness that breathing is of course a vital requisite. My lids fell heavily upon my eyes as I blinked in irresolution, hesitant of the veracity of this matter. I contemplated pinching myself yet saw it unfit in this certain time and place. I will have to wade in this nightmare for a moment longer.
"What do you think it means?" Hermione asked breathlessly, forcing the air to come from her lungs and form its inquisitive words. Her upper lip arched in the form of a repugnant expression that stretched across the rest of her facade as her eyes hastily scanned the lines of the arrant markings once more.
"Nothing good." My speculated words pressed forth from the air in a tainted whisper, baring calamity upon every syllable as reprimand for forcing its way through my gated lips. Nonetheless, the subsequent silence seemed to endorse my counter for no one dared to offer a punitive response to replace my own.
Ron trembled beside me, rendered speechless from the script. However, I concurred his subordination by the way his clasp tightened upon my shoulder. His fingers dug further into my flesh, painting his knuckles an insipid shade of white as they evidently left their fingerprints as reminders.
Within the burning of curiosity, I followed his gaze that trailed peculiarly bellow the writing. There, hanging by the torch's iron bracket, was Mrs. Norris. She, who is viewed rather odious by us all, hung wretchedly by her tail in a seized attempt at a hiss with her dust colored fur raised and matted, mouth curled back to embellish the sharper of her teeth, and ears pressed firmly towards the back of her skull. She was no longer a nuisance but a mockery, transformed by the very hands that may just kill us all.
Before the thoughts of running even begun to deluge our mind, we were enclosed by the rest of our classmates. Each one stopped short of their conversation as they witnessed the memorandum in a tainted shade of crimson, eyes stained gray as they scanned the words in wonder of their denotation. The hallways once filled with the low hums of conversing friends and profound sighs of contented stomachs now rested upon a dithered silence. One by one their hands fled to cover their gaping mouths. One by one they turned to face their friends for any recognition of hope or optimistic words. And one by one Hogwarts began to fall.
The first words to be spoken were perhaps not the superlative for they made us all cringe in the recognition of a blinding truth we all wished to disregard. "The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware?" Audacity ran wild within the blithered tone of Malfoy's possession. His eyes, generally dull in appearance, gained a spark of life that bewitched them jade as a wicked smile skimmed the surface of his visage, distorting his lips in a way unknown to the solicitousness of man. It was the type of smile that only appears from the melancholy of others.
"What Malfoy?" I sneered, feeling my upper lip rise within the vile of my words. "Just learned how to read?" I am painfully unaware of how much more of his presence I can stand. Right now it is enough to push me to the very edge of insanity. I grow quite tired of his ever persistent smug expressions and his must be bleached blond hair for it surly could not exist in our gamut of genomes to be considered natural.
"Can it, Williams!" He barked at first before the smile widened, embellishing his teeth as it strained the corners of his eyes in an aloft whorl. "Although I suspect we won't have to put up with you for much longer, you and all the other filthy Mudbloods."
This earned a chorale of laughter from the Slytherins. However, those more sensible, such as Ron and Hermione, cringed upon his words and if it weren't for their hands clasped securely over my shoulders, then I would have shown Malfoy the true color of his blood.
"What's going on here?" The gruff voice of Argus Flinch caused us all to halt our bickering long enough to stare at the man who was about to lose it all. "Come on here. Make way. Make way," Irritation was clearly present in his words as he tried to maneuver his way around Fred and George who took the liberty upon themselves to form a human barrier between him and his requested destination. Exasperated, he simply pushed passed them, not willing to put up with their antics on such a day. "Potter," his auburn eyes passed warily over the boy through their slits, allowing his voice to falter a few octaves. "What are you –" There was no longer a need for any blathered elucidation for he found for himself what we were all so inquisitively staring at. Eyes widened in a daze as his voice trembled over the name of his venerated pet.
His gaze wavered over Harry and me, and I for one could feel the heat ablaze within them. Uncertain of the proper actions to take, he settled with an expression of ache that shook our very foundation of moral coding. It was never an effortless thing to witness a man in his sorrow. Even if that man declared to be an adversary.
"You've murdered my cat," Hesitation laced his words as he tried to find the ones that matched his level of betrayal. He stumbled upon them through a mouth that was irresolute of what form to take, as if it pained him to see his beloved cat dangling wretchedly upon her iron clamp yet it killed him to admit her defeat. The influence of his words drummed clearly through the anticipated silence, causing us all to withhold our breath and quake our heads in response. He began to laugh over a curt period of time, hoarse at first but soon growing into copious chuckles. "I'll kill you," he spoke through a dubious smile as his shoulders jerked wildly within the grasp of his laugh. "I'll kill you!"
None of us questioned his tactics. We all knew what he was capable of committing and it is because of such we saw it fit to back away, offering the man space instead of our lives. By the quivering lurches of our muscles, we were all fighting the ache to vacate and recoil.
"Argus!" It was the prevailing voice of Dumbledore that saved us all. He swayed through the crowed with ease, approaching Filch in a matter of seconds despite his burden of tyrannized glances. Filch never laid eyes on Harry after that yet the anger that stitched his eyebrows up never quite left.
Lockhart stepped out next, followed by a cluster of other professors all sharing the same frenzied look of despair. His eyes swarmed over the hands clasped tightly over my shoulders and his mind began to race. "You caught the culprit!" He bellowed with a smile that melted a couple of first year girls' hearts, causing them to forget the imperiling devastation at hand. It must have melted their brains as well. "Of course I knew all along that she was a rotten one; never once complimented me and my work. Must be evil that one."
Irritated, for no other word could describe the substantial feeling growing inside me, I easily shrugged off their clasps. "Are you suggesting that I'm threatening myself, sir? Because I can see no other reason for me to write that on the wall considering that I am, indeed, muggle born."
His smile faded into a thinly lined purse, contemplation swam throughout the vibrant hue of his irises. "I suppose you could be lying. I would not hold it against someone of your stature." The words congealed upon the tip of his tongue, never quite reaching a level audible enough for the awaiting crowed to concede.
"That's quite enough Gilderoy," Dumbledore spoke earnestly as he took hold of Mrs. Norris, cradling her tentatively within his arms. "Come with me Argus. You four, too."
"But it's just an innocent splatter of blood upon the wall," I tried terribly hard to reach a conciliation, all intentions vain upon this point. "That happens to form words that spell imperiling doom for all muggle borns," I mumbled the truth in a hurried frenzy under my rigid breath, shrugging off all inept glares. After a deep sigh, I was willing to speak rationally. "We're in trouble aren't we?"
Silence was all that replied for no one else knew precisely what was brimming inside Dumbledore's mind. He was already walking ahead with his powdered spring blue robes grazing his steps.
"It's always us," mumbled Ron as he entered into a peevish state, the likes of which he will be unable to return from until a couple of hours have passed.
We followed blindly behind the headmaster, leading us towards a contiguous room. We stepped indolently into Lockhart's office with picture frames teeming with life and desk layered thick with fan mail. Curlers still in integral, a painted Lockhart peered from behind the stained gold frame of his incarceration. He eyed us all with the utmost inkling of wariness, only allowing himself to move in a nod of accord with the original Lockhart.
"It was definitely a curse that killed her – probably the Transmogrifian Torture – I've seen it used many times, so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her . . ." The man blabbered, unaware of the animated glances of vexation we were bestowing upon him.
"Can I just stop you there, Professor?" I asked, unable to withstand the artificial tone of knowledge in his accent.
"Certainly, my dear." All eyes were turned towards me, beckoning me further with my clarification.
"Oh, I have nothing to say." I concluded once deducing that they expected more terminology upon the matter. "I merely just wanted you to stop talking." A spared glance towards Hermione was not needed in order to infer her morose expression. I could quite easily decipher her disproval through the wide scale of heat coursing through my vertebra that most noticeably occurred through her glower. However, there were those present who chose to snicker in the presence of my comment; Those such as Harry, Ron, and surprisingly the majority of faculty and staff.
"Five points from Ravenclaw for disrespectful behavior. We all hope it teaches you to hold your tongue Mrs. Williams." Snape blathered yet he was unable to deny the smirk that was commencing to emerge. Nonetheless, perhaps that was already there from the frail quandary of Mrs. Norris.
"I wasn't aware we were allowed to proceed into the negatives," came the mock of my tone, wondering how I should go about explaining this predicament to my housemates. Aliens commonly make a respectable fall back story yet would they be believable even in the real of magic?
While lost in the wilderness known as my thought, Dumbledore took the time to decipher Mrs. Norris's state. His extensively immaculate fingers clashed against the grime of her fur, causing them to be momentarily lost through a swirl of ginger, honey, fuscous, and milky white. His nose, unusually crocked for a man of such stature, pressed closely against the matted fur. His fingers continued to poke and prod as if looking for an "on" switch concealed cleverly amidst her pelt.
All the while, Filch's arid sops chocked the room of any merriment that might be left wondering about the corners. Overwhelmed, he wilted upon a wooden chair off in a far corner where he covered his face with his aged hands, too mortified to look upon the world that took his only love.
"For Pete's sake Mr. Filch, she's not dead!" I presume that there is no longer a need for me to explain my rash detest for crying, especially from grown men. I despise it perhaps because I know no way to defeat it or counter act it. I generally fall in towards its demands if it continues on for so long.
"How would you know unless you had something to do with it?" He countered through tear stained hands. I have to admit, it was not quite the response I was intending.
However, Ron had something else nagging away at the corners of his mind. "Pete?" He permitted his lips to fall over the word as his tongue shaped its existence, wondering if it was either a muggle or American term.
"See!" Filch brusquely stood from his corner of sorrow, allowing his hands to slink from his face, revealing his scarlet rimmed eyes. "She's probably murdered him too!"
"A valid observation Mr. Filch," Lockhart joined in, rendering back towards his previous accusations. "She has probably been killing for years. Of course, I knew it all along. It's quite easy to tell that she has derived from Jack the Ripper. They do share similar qualities."
"Are you done writing the novel of my murder mystery or should I explain my reasoning without your presence?" Regardless of if it were from my harsh words or the glare I was bestowing upon them, they stilled. "If she were truly dead then she would not be so stiff."
"A wise deduction Miss Williams." A small smile escaped the white covering of Dumbledore's beard before his tone turned somber once more. "Almost too wise. It seems the sorting hat was correct to place you in Ravenclaw for indeed Mr. Filch, she is not dead." The air was released from out compressed lungs, allowing us all to breath freely from the reality of death unmasking itself to be a mere illusion.
"But," was the only intelligible word out of the man as he sank back to his chair stammering. "But why is she so stiff?"
"She has been petrified." Lockhart immediately seized the new information and managed to turn it towards his advantage, rambling on about how unfortunate fate was to not grace Mrs. Norris with his presence during the attack so he could shriek and run all the way home. Of course, I may just be paraphrasing a bit.
Despite this revelation, Filch refused to let up on the belief that one of us four unlawfully committed the crime. If it wasn't me then it must be Harry. Of course, everyone rushed towards his defense. Even Lockhart saw it ailing to indict the prominent Harry Potter. Filch pressed on with his words of "squib" and "Kwikspell letter," determined to see some form of punishment administered.
"Perhaps I may be so inclined as to add," Snape drawled from the shadows, seeming out of place amongst us in the light, like the sudden flash of life from the closet where the alleged monster lurks. My sense of premonition augmented maliciously. Whatever Snape said was sure to be enough to sentence us all towards a hanging. He had that effect on people. Perhaps it was his all black attire or the way his eyes seemed to be void of all joy as if the very word was foreign to their world of dusk. (A/N: I have to interrupt this story for a rather obscene report. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but the first time that I wrote this I misspelled dusk for duck. When I found it I thought it was hilarious enough to share. Perhaps I'm just a dork but it made me laugh so hard that tears formed. Just imagine it will you? You're reading along a serious plot line to find duck. Completely ridiculous right? His world of duck? . . . Oh come on, that's funny! Anyways, sorry and back to the story.) The words that came next were unexpected by all. "Perhaps Potter and his friends were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time." I guess he will be receiving a Christmas card by us after all.
"However," and there it lays, the qualm that always taints his words through its malice. A deep insistent sigh came from us all, excluding all optimism that he had turned towards our side for once. We should have been wiser for we knew all along he would be inexorable. "We do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why weren't they at the Halloween feast?" He drowned over the words as the faintest hint of a curl seized his blatant lips in a perpetual state of ecstasy. He would always be deemed a rather cruel man for basking in the moments of other's misery. He was always remembered as the one smile in a room of pained frowns.
Sparing no moment's worth of hesitation for it could likely cost us all a month's worth of detention, we hastily explained our little predicament. The words seemed to hodgepodge together and conform towards some sort of literary swine composed of our broken and fragmented explanations that when it came to speak, it was quite unrecognizable and misinterpreted. Luck chose to deal us in favor for our ramblings were silenced with the clarification of Hermione's righteous tone. "We attended a deathday party. There were hundreds of ghosts there if you are in need of a witness."
"Yes but why not return towards the Great Hall? Why descend back towards your dormitories?" This conversation approached the acceleration of a snail's pace before regrettably becoming slower. It had been a severely long couple of hours and I do not think it wrong of me to wish for the one thing I truly needed at the moment; and that would be for Professor Snape to silence his accusations and halt this trivial trial in order to allow us all to proceed towards our dormitories.
I managed to last several more seconds before my patience ran thin and I lost all alleged control over my tongue. "Have you ever attended a deathday party before, professor? It has the boisterous tendency to make one lose their appetite with all the rotten food and all."
Professor Snape was mulling over my words, finding no thread to snag and watch it all unravel. It did not take long for his wish to be fulfilled for Ron's stomach let out quite a perceptible rumble from the depth of his barren intestines indicating his approaching hunger pains. A look of repentance vacated his once timorous idiom to clear space for its remorse. They would find him dead by morning if Hermione and I were to have a single hand in his assassination. It was lucky for him that we feared our conviction for carnage a great deal more than our expulsion.
"Well, it appears that Ron has found his, but doesn't he always? I am sure we would reach a famine if he were to continue with his eating habits." My words no longer contained benevolence for the ginger headed dupe. He would be the one to entangle us within the lines of our own red tape despite his friendly disposition.
"I suggest, headmaster, that these," Snape momentarily paused before resting upon a more suitable word that harmonized his tone, "delinquents are not being entirely truthful."
"And lie to you professor?" I asked in such a saccharine tone that I was sure to become ill from its sugar, "I dare say that that is not in my nature."
A deride was received as a token from his affection, all that he chose to convey upon his blank canvas of a face. Naturally Snape proclaimed that certain measures should be taken which conveniently happened to involve revoking Harry's Quidditch privileges. Professor McGonagall, after being hushed for quite some time, decided to finally grace us all with a bewildered expression and words that wielded a similar dialect. She declared it all unjust, however, we all knew her outburst to be for the fact that without Harry, Gryffindor could not even begin to fashion dreams of wining.
Bored, and possibly diseased ridden from it to a point of no return, I decided my attention would be better placed upon the golden trio who stood there as if made by wax, dripping with in anticipation from the words of the professors that burned like flames. All except for Harry, who unremarkably produced such a look of utter distaste at Snape that even I felt its raining chill. He did not bother listening towards their "appropriate punishments" with the intensity of the rest towards where he was hanging upon every word no matter their trivial merit. "Why do I get the sinking suspicion that this is just a typical day for you?"
"We are normally getting accused for something by Snape. We try not to make it a habit, but as you can see, Snape generally has other plans in store for us." I found little reassurance in his nonchalant words with his indifferent tone. It was as if this were typical routine for them all. I would greatly need to rethink the positions of my friends in what little spare time that was not detained by the fluttering pages of books or the memorization that was required to master all its lessons. It is never too late to instigate a call back for I find myself no longer in need of their mischief and the consequences that likely follow. I am perfectly capable of running our house score perfectly bellow the negatives without their help. Although, the adventures does far outweigh its price.
As their blundering performance of an argument continued, proving to be hardly anything but subtle, I took this time as a break in my day's worth of adventure, back handed compliments, and all around insubordination. Truly, I was a horrible child but, honestly, can you find the will to blame me? I just recently discovered that magic exists and now someone's arranging our deaths by it. Highly unfair if you ask for my opinion.
Regardless of my personal opinions, my gaze began to wonder until settling upon the rigid from of Mrs. Norris. She would be revived in a couple months' time, plenty of time to permit me to squander in any other delinquencies that I can imagine without the ever nagging apprehension of being caught. Absorbing the strange nature of her facade, I would be as convinced as to argue that the culprit might not have even been human. It was not in Mrs. Norris nature to hiss, she usually left the dirty work to Mr. Filch. She was merely the seeker.
"Innocent until proven guilty, Severus." The empowering words of Dumbledore silenced the quibble before it had a chance to resort towards name calling and spell casting. In an instance where that were to happen, my money would be safety secured on Professor McGonagall. "You four may go." The cerulean within the elder man's eyes coagulated towards some detrimental outline of steel as they skimmed the surface of the petrified figure of the once notorious feline. It hardly possessed the vigor to enthrall the lines that delimited his mouth and curve it towards its lack of hope. But what it lacked in strength, it made up for in idiosyncrasy. It might have slipped between the fissures in the other's attentiveness, but that did little to trump the notion that something was surly erroneous here at Hogwarts.
Author's Note: Thank you all for your patience and for reading this far. I have great plans for this book and I hope that all of you will be able to see what I have in store.