Disclaimer:I'm too poor to own Harry Potter.
A/N: My first fanfic! I honestly hope you enjoy; I've got everything planned out.
Review!
Pretending To Live
Chapter 1: Time
'Harry's scar had not pained him for nineteen years.
All was well.'
Rubbing my eyes tiredly, I closed the book in my hands and tossed it on the sheets next to me, yawning. This was the nth time I'd stayed up well into the hours of the morning, just reading. I didn't even like books.
I put my arms behind my head and stared at the ceiling, examining the familiar green swirls of the hideous wallpaper that covered its surface. It was my friend that had suggested the series to me, had begged me, forced me, coerced and threatened me to read it. So I did.
I liked it. What wasn't there to like? Kid finds out he's a wizard, gets sent off to some school somewhere to learn magic. It was nice.
My eyelids fluttered shut; my mouth stretched as wide as it could go as I yawned again. And then I drifted off to sleep, curled underneath the mound of blankets piled haphazardly around me.
Snip.
Time.
Time can be explained in many ways.
A mathematician will tell you how to count the number of seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day.
A physics professor will explain time in relation to velocity, or perhaps speed or distance.
Time equals distance divided by speed.
A watchmaker will explain the mechanics of the devices that record it-how the gears are made to move in perfect synchronization with each other, what materials give more accurate vibrations in order for the mechanism to work.
Time is something that is constantly measured and that we always seem to never have enough of.
Time is something that governs our whole lives; each tick of each passing second is another moment of life stolen.
Time is irreplaceable.
Time is unceasing.
And time is relentless.
The grains of the hourglass do not rise. They fall, and they have been since the dawn of its existence. The Keeper of Time knew this, and he also knew that it was not something to be tampered with.
The Keeper saw what no human being or creature of the earth could see- the invisible, cobweb-like strands that stretched throughout space indefinitely and connected the lives of those who were bonded. Thin and wavering, as delicate as the slightest strand of silk, but infinitely stronger than any metal to be found in the universe, these strands represented Time itself, and they bonded those meant to be present in each other's lives together in an unbreakable web of tangled circumstances.
The Keeper scoffed at the human term 'coincidence'. There was none.
People, places, events happened because Time had dictated it, had spun its cocoon around the partakers and had sealed their Fate.
Time was inescapable and unchangeable. But something had gone wrong.
The Keeper stopped.
And being Time's guardian, caused that to stop as well.
This was a minor situation, usually occurring maybe once or twice every thousand years. The Keeper sometimes paused the grains of Time for a moment or so, to double check the Strands.
Normally, everything would be fine, and Time would resume once more.
But this August 23rd 2010 was not a normal day.
The Keeper followed a particular Strand, an extraordinarily fine one, almost invisible to even the Keeper himself. This strand was more chaotic than most- usually the Strands flowed in a smooth curve, gracefully entwining around those connected, or who would soon be connected, to the owner of the Strand.
This one, however, was completely haywire.
It seemed to carry on forever, often zigzagging in a certain direction before hurtling back the other way and was decidedly uncertain- out of control, as if it was not sure who to be linked to.
It belonged to a sixteen year old orphan named Ariadne de Lioncourt, currently sleeping in her bed at 4:43 am.
Yet that was not the strange part.
The Lord Keeper and Master of Time had followed the Strand to find that it had been severed halfway through.
And for the first time in his long, long existence, the Keeper was afraid.
Never before had something like this happened. The consequences were virtually unknown, unchartered- Time did not simply just halt in the middle of someone's life. It was supposed to be linear, stretching on indefinitely, continuing until the end of Eternity and Space.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
'Ari! You'll be late!"
I jumped violently at the sound of my foster-mother's voice, and glanced at the analogue clock on my nightstand.
The hell...?
Reaching for it, and turning it over in my hands, I tapped the front twice to try and get it going again. I couldn't, and the hands remained stuck at 4:43 am.
Cursing, I stumbled out of bed looking for the pair of jeans lying somewhere here on the floor that contained my mobile. Upon finding it, I shook out the tiny device from the back pocket, causing it to land unceremoniously on the floor, and picked it up, flipping it open to check the time.
It read 8:50.
Dropping it again in shock and muttering a few more choice expletives, I ran for the bathroom.
Twenty minutes, a broken toothbrush, several stubbed toes, and a few dozen more swear words later, I was sitting safely in the bus on my ride to school, which, the driver had so kindly informed me, I had been approximately 17 seconds away from missing.
I sighed and leaned my head back against my seat. I closed my eyes, on the verge of falling asleep once more when-
A sharp nudge in the arm closest to the empty seat beside me woke me up.
"Hi there," I muttered.
"Hey. Who shat on your sneakers?" My best and probably only friend Anna said as she collapsed in the seat next to me. I eyed her for a moment, hoping she didn't mean that literally.
I shrugged. "I had a bad dream. Hey, I finished that series, by the way..."
"Oh? And how was it?"
"I liked it," I said seriously. "It was funny."
"Funny? Is that really all you have to say?"
I smiled and turned my head to the side, watching the other cars go past in a blur of color. It looked surreal—but, then again, today was the day when everything became strange, out of touch to me. Today was August the 23rd. It was a date that to me was like a sucker punch; it hits you when you least expect it, and after it does you could only look back and exclaim, 'The hell?'
It wasn't just because that it was the anniversary of my parents' death. It was also because it was always, always and without fail, one of the strangest days of the year.
Last year I had woken up to a black sky filled with stars, their cold fire glittering like diamonds. Which wouldn't have caught my attention...except for the fact that I was still in my bedroom when this had happened. I'd blinked and then they were gone.
The year before, I'd taken a stumble during class; when I had looked down, I saw not the wooden floor of my classroom, but a blanket of blue and violet flowers underneath my hands. And it felt so real—I could even smell that light, heady scent of pollen and dew. But the teacher's voice telling me to stop 'screwing around' shattered the illusion, and I was left with only the sting of the small splinters in my hands and my own bewilderment.
It wasn't always visual. When I was younger I used to hear people, just talking. It wasn't clear enough for me to discern the words—sometimes it sounded like they were only hissing without drawing breath. But in the recent years, these strange commodities had become stronger, more vivid. More real.
With an effort, I forced myself to pay attention to the still nattering girl in front of me, pushing my worries away.
"—and I was all like, 'Come at me, bro!' and then he said—"
"Wait, what?"
"Oh, pay attention will you?" she said irritably. "I was talking about this incredibly rude fellow I met at the bus stop this morning—he asked me whether I saw—"
Snip.
I jumped in my seat but forced a smile on my face at the girl who was now shooting me strange looks. "Yeah, I'm listening."
"Right—"
Snip. I felt my eye twitch in annoyance. So that was going to be the punch today, huh? The sound of someone opening a pair of scissors, except at least a hundred times louder? Well, it wasn't as frightening as the past years', but it was certainly annoying.
I massaged my right arm absentmindedly as I tuned out the rest of my well meaning but talkative friend's words. Snip. Snip. Snip.
I had that Algebra test today, too. How was I going to concentrate with that ringing in my ears?
A tingling had begun to form in my right hand and I shook it out, thinking it was probably just pins and needles. But it grew stronger and became less of a tingle than a sharp and painful tug.
"Ouch!" I said, staring at the offending appendage. Anna gave me a startled glance.
"What?"
"My arm...it's...," This time the pull was so strong I actually leapt to my feet, a surprised expression on my face as if wondering how I got there. And it was getting stronger...!
Shocked, I stared down at my arm. The punch had never gone on this long before, or had really physically affected me like this. It was never this persistent, either. This was different.
Impulsively, I got to my feet and yelled out, "My stop!" to the driver.
"Ari, what...?" Snip.
"Sorry An—I'll see you in school later, alright?"
If it wants me out of the bus, I'm gone, I thought as I ran helter skelter out of the vehicle. This thing's persistent; it'd just keep at me until I did something.
This insane line of thought appeared to be correct; the moment my feet touched concrete, the phantom tugging stopped. I sighed, and kicked at the ground as I began to walk. I didn't exactly know where I was headed- no, forget that, I had absolutely no idea in hell where I was going, but I knew I was going the right way.
It was like- how could I explain it?- like a very, very, fragile thread was connecting me to the place where I was meant to be, and I followed its pull towards it. The whole time I walked, thoughts such as 'This is stupid' and 'I'm gonna get mugged' ran through my head, occasionally drowned out by—
Snip.
-well, that.
I found myself in a street that was a replica of all the others I'd walked past on my way here. Rows of apartment buildings lined up on the side of the road, worn down and dilapidated, the dark gray of the bricks of which it was made only a few shades darker than the sky above. It was utterly deserted, save for the occasional stray that lurked around the edges, and the lamp posts that adorned the streets were flickering on and off.
I drifted through it, taking all of this in.
I was very sure that this was the place I was meant to be in, but why? Why would someone- or something- want to take me to this dump?
The thread I had felt earlier had vanished now, leaving nothing but a dull knot of disappointment in my chest.
Sighing with annoyance, I stopped in the middle of the street.
I can't believe I actually went out of my way just to see what that bloody noise was, I thought irritably. It could've been someone clipping their toenails for all I knew...
I stopped my internal fuming for a second, putting my hands on my knees.
Did the air get...thinner, somehow?
The breath was whooshing in and out of my lungs, but I felt no satisfaction in the oxygen that rushed in. In fact, it was like I wasn't breathing at all. Gasping for air, I fell on my hands and knees, scraping my hands against the rough cement surface.
What was happening?
My entire body was shivering, wracked with violent, irregular shudders that shook my frame. I felt dizzy- bright, pulsing auras seemed to surround everything around me and I could taste the hot, metallic taste of blood coating the inside of my mouth. My whole form was vibrating, pulsing with a thrumming energy that seemed to originate from nowhere.
The world blurred in front of me and as I tumbled into darkness, drowning in my own blood, a sudden lance of pain shot directly into my heart.
I let out a sharp cry.
And then I vanished.
A/N: Wow, I changed quite a lot of this chapter. But it fits the story much better now...*insert troll face here*. Review, my darlings!