Chapter Warnings: gory, disturbing theme
Lull
He can't describe what he's feeling. Something overpowering and vast, terrible and mysterious. It's presence weighing him down on already shuddering knees.
Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack!
Harry gasps aloud as the sound of teeth snapping together rushes at him. He twirls, ripping himself out of Farley's hand and falls onto his back. Kicking both feet, the frantic male scrambles over the moist ground. The skin on his palms tear from sharp rocks, causing him to slip onto an elbow. Heart thundering wildly, he glances down to see his blood smeared on the menacing shards.
The noise suddenly stops.
Prefect Farley has her wand raised up, the charmed light bobbing behind her back is still bright and a Lumos shines at the tip of her medium. She's standing above with a frown on her face and worry lines crinkling her forehead. "What is it, Potter?"
"Y-you didn't hear that?"
"I didn't hear anything." The older Slytherin grumbles. If it's any other kid, she'd be sure that the brat is trying to scare her, but this is shy quiet Potter who doesn't bother playing pranks. With the strange crawling feeling inching across her skin and darkness leaning on them, the boy's reaction only frightens her more. She wants to be out of this cave as soon as possible, so she reaches and helps pull the other to shaky legs. "Let's get out of-"
Her voice is lost under the deep grinding of stone against stone, filling up the place and echoing off the formations. The ground below them vibrates and they turn as one to watch as the circular portal rolls in place. Carved pieces rotate and slide through a series of patterns not unlike an endless maze, the center indenting as the parts feed into itself, until the other side beginnings to be revealed. The gaping hole grows larger and larger as the stone works into the spinning circular frame, and then, that too works into the sides of the wall. Above, the Celtic symbols flare to life as if in warning, the faint yellow glow falling over the two students.
Darkness.
Yet... it's not just darkness in there is it? There's a flickering light from a possible fire within, and if you squint against the brightness of the charm, then one could make out a room beyond. There are things, still and lifeless, but with questionable shapes that make Harry shudder. Gemma though, is curious... uncharacteristically curious. There isn't the odd 'teeth' her companion had said there is. It's more like... like... like someone humming.
"Is that my mum?" Gemma breaks the silence. An odd look morphs onto her face. One of confusion and intrigue. She can hear the sound of her mother humming that usual tune only used for when prepping dinner. A smell then blossoms from nowhere, of a warm cooking hearth and feathered blankets. The smell of home. Senses altering, the sight before her changes into the side of a small cottage among the hills of Wales, with a thatched roof and hanging vines. The front door is open and there's a light on somewhere within. Her face smooths over and she nods in confirmation to herself, she takes a step and calls out "Mum?!"
Harry's stumbles in surprise when Prefect suddenly moves past him walking towards the portal. "W-wait. What are you doing? Prefect Farley, shouldn't we just go back the other way?"
"No, no, stop worrying and come inside, Potter. Don't be so shy, mother's in the kitchen and she's always wanting to meet students from school. She says I need more friends. It's tea time isn't it? She makes the best Shepard's Pie." There's a smile gracing her face. Pure and serene.
Coming to a complete halt at the entrance to the unknown, Harry lets out a frustrated whine as the girl steps into the room and walks away from him. His breathing escalates as he watches her make a path through the space. A feeling of desperation scratches inside his chest. "Farley! Your mother's not in there dammit! What's wrong with you? It could be dangerous! We need to leave!"
The girl ignores him, or maybe she simply can't hear him as she treks farther from the youth's spot. At some point she turns a corner within and disappears, the orb of light following after.
Nerves on edge, Harry peers into the area. Only the soft glow of the words above the entrance letting his eyes adjust. The distorted shapes he made out earlier are lonely pieces of furniture. An ancient looking sofa bends in the middle, fabric deteriorated. There's a chair with a broken leg by a table on its side. Two more lower seats rest silently by an alcove and a single chaise lounge is situated by what looks to be a smashed piano. A sitting room or office perhaps? Dust permeates the air, and covers the room's surfaces along with scattered papers and shattered objects, which have fallen from aged shelving along the walls. The only signs of recent life are Gemma Farley's footprints across the floor. Hesitantly, he steps inside.
A gust of warm air sweeps by, sending up a wave of dust and fluttering the papers. Harry swears if it's not a room, then it can be a mouth, breathing and living. Coughing as the tiny particles settle again, he jerks a look over his shoulder as if expecting the stone to seal back up.
Nothing happens.
His hackles rise regardless. In his peripheral, where the frame to his glasses cut off, there's a dark figure against the back corner. Harry slowly turns his body, eyes wide and fingers clutching the transfigured ring on his finger.
'What good would it do now?'
He's defenseless, the wand broken and unless now. Still he faces the shadow, only to let out a whooshing breath as he glares at a curtain hanging in the corner. The dark fabric is only one end to a massive mural on the back wall with its sister curtain still covering half of the paint and 'fresco', Harry's mind supplies him. Cautiously, the boy takes another few steps into the room. Eyes glance fervently to the portal. The raven-haired youth decides that if it does try to shut, than he can be ready to bolt.
'I'd be leaving Farley behind though.'
The Potter heir shakes his head from accusing thoughts, because now he's standing before a piece of art he can't help but admire.
It's a scene of a massive ballroom, larger and much more impressive than Hogwart's Hall. With the way the design in the arches and columns are, Harry takes a guess that this must be a real place in Italy or Prague. There are hundreds of people painted within the space, not moving like wizarding portraits, but still fascinatingly detailed. The party's attendants are wearing all sorts of outfits over the span of generations, as if this is just one massive ball to celebrate mankind's style since the beginning. There are a few men and women dressed in little more than peasant rags, several different types of respectable soldiers that carry their swords, but the majority of the guests are styled in the various years of the Renaissance period.
Harry's fingers touch a pale blue dress, frilled and exquisite on a lady in conversation. Even though the unknown girl's bodice and puffed outfit is outdated now, it's one of the more recent ones in the mural. Then he notices something else, not a single occupant of the painting is made to look out to the viewer, in fact not a single figure looks happy at all. They appear caught in whispers, or arguments. Even one robust woman, that Harry had thought to be singing, is actually screaming.
The boy is confused... he finds himself pushing the curtain to the other side of the corner. More and more frowning or fearful faces in beautiful clothing with equally attractive features appear. Then he stops, lungs breathless as his eyes fall upon a single person parted from the crowd and standing on a terrace in the left corner. This individual is different from all the rest, no doubt, but is it because of the more modern style of clothing? Or the predator like posture leaning over the little balcony to observe the mass of people below? Maybe it's the fact those hardened blue orbs are the only ones peering back out of oil. Staring at Harry mockingly and looking for all the world as if knowing a secret no one else will ever know.
"Raaaggghhhh!"
The sudden scream ignites some part of him to awaken. A side that seems almost giddy and Harry pushes it aside, because he can't focus on something like that when his own fear is climbing. "Farley?! Are you okay?"
There's a choking sound from deeper within and Harry uses a burst of speed to dash to the exit where she passed through. A wave of dizziness makes him collapse against a bookshelf close by. The hairs on his neck are standing on end as he gathers himself and moves further inside. His framed eyes dance across a path of chiseled stone. He realizes that whoever built the room behind him, didn't bother to do anything more than dig a way straight into the rock's surface. Where could this tunnel possibly lead? The passage cuts sharply to the left, earth slopping downward slightly. There's another turn ahead where a stronger light is cast and Harry can tell there must be a fire of some sort. A faint gurgling reaches his ears, of Farley sobbing.
Gulping, the male advances until he can peek around the next corner. Another chamber lies beyond, too large to try and look into the endless darkness, yet there are two torches blazing at the end of the crude corridor. The Prefect is on her knees facing away from him. Huddled and trembling. "Farley?"
She doesn't respond and it takes the shorter student a full minute to decide that he should do everything he can to drag the other girl out of this strange place. The boy enters and immediately freezes as his shoes shift into the unexpected flooring with a crunch. Harry's face drains of color. He stares at the ground littered in heaps of bones with a building sort of fear. It doubles as his eyes track the expanse of silent skeletons, it triples as green irises rise into the endless darkness, it quadruples as shocked orbs reach the vaulted ceilings held up by stylized columns.
There are many different forms of fear; there's the quick and hot kind that lances through your body, the second tends to be a swallowing deep sort, and then the final one is a realization of something so horrendous that's always been there lurking by your side... that same fear that existed since the day you were born. An all consuming fright that drives people mad from things they shouldn't know.
If it isn't for his condition. For being stalked and haunted by that same monstrous feeling every night as he lay awake, Harry's sure he'd be huddled and crying on a carpet of bones as well. Instead, something bubbles out of his throat and before he can stop himself-
"H-eh, heh, hahahahaaaaah!" His fingers curl into his hair, grasping as he's laughing aloud into the immense ballroom. He'd been wrong! It wasn't Italy or Prague, or even Florence or Greece. It's here! The scene is here! With all the people dressed in their pretty clothing, littering the once gleaming marble with their corpses. The males head bends back as his laugh turns to a howl, and his eyes catch sight of the terrace above to the left. In that brief second, he's sure that the same smoldering gaze of blue-gray pierces him. No one is there though. Only him and Farley exist, living and breathing among the voiceless dead.
For a long moment, Harry stands gripping black locks until his arms grow tired and fall aimless to his sides. His head lowers too and stares at the Prefect's back. An empty state has taken over him, his feelings shot and mind closing everything off in an attempt to keep from loosing himself in madness. Now that he can think clearer, looking past the bones that safeguard some enormous secret kept below the foundation of Hogwarts, his senses come back to him. A scent... something mouthwatering.
'Since when have I smelt anything tasty before?'
He can't distinguish what it is exactly. It's sweet, but dark. It's rich, but bitter. Appetizing, delicious, inviting, tantalizing, succulent...
Harry shakes his head forcefully and balances his way on the brittle bodies as he takes hold of the girl. The smell is strongest here. In whatever trance she had been in, it breaks. Her head turns to him with watery eyes, a look of pure horror that doesn't reach her mouth. Can't reach her mouth, because her jaw is detached as if something had ripped it from Farley's face. The upper lip down is a gory mess of meat and blood that covers the front of school robes. The torn flesh hangs. Her tongue flaps.
His own mouth opens as if to shout aloud, but nothing comes out. His mouth snaps shut. In his mind, he's frantic and howling, tearing and clawing at himself. Harry's subconscious rises up and latches onto that screaming form of himself and drags it somewhere to lock it away. Hand slipping from her shoulder he steps back.
She reaches a trembling arm to him. Pleading.
He turns away.
The Prefect chokes, exposed throat muscles quivering. What's happening? She wants to ask... Why does it hurt?
The boy takes off.
Her mother wasn't in the kitchen. Instead, there had been someone else. A strange man waiting for her. He'd said her mother wanted to see her and Farley was confused, because hadn't mum died last year? She's sure the vacation cottage had collapsed in during a storm when Farley was still in school. She never got to say goodbye... The handsome man had smiled at her when she confessed; told him that she'd yell at her own mother before she left from Yule break. She'd wanted the woman to stop asking about friends that she pretended to have, or boyfriends she made up. She finally told her mother that no one liked her and she didn't need anyone! Didn't need friends! Didn't need a mother! The man had smiled, he even wiped away a tear, but... Why does it hurt?
Harry is running. Mind blank, body alive, heart thundering. Running up the carved path and back towards the first room. Maybe he should be taking Gemma Farley with him... maybe, maybe, maybe! But he can't! He isn't running from the room, not from whatever did that, not even from her... he's running from himself. Because in that moment when she had turned and he saw her horrifying mutilated face, the first thought in his head wasn't to help her.
Appetizing, delicious-
His instincts are telling him to eat her.
-inviting, tantalizing...
"No! No, no, no, no!"
-succulent.
He trips over a rug before he can reach the circular portal. Thick glasses in their wiry frame come loose from his ears and fly off. They clatter away as his body makes impact. An audible snap follows. There's the signs of pleasant sensations traveling up his ankle and even without his glasses, Harry knows the bone is broken. The male cries out in the blurry world surrounding him.
The furniture looms with their strange angles and the curtains sway. There's the fuzzy image of a figure standing in the corner again and Harry's fingers are searching frantically for his glasses. Something had gotten to Farley. Is it already here? In the same room as him?
Then a sound stirs the very air. A petrifying noise that makes him look upward with denial and desperation. Through his horrible sight, Harry watches as the portal closes.
End Chapter.