The Houses Competition
House: Hufflepuff
Class: Potions
Category: Drabble
Prompt: (genre) Suspense
Word Count: 740
Warnings: there might be a slight bit out of characterness in some of the characters, and Vampire!AU. Also a warning for mentions of canon character death. I'm looking at you, Severus Snape.
I hope you all enjoy Shrouded in Mist.
The mist rolled over the ground shrouding everything touch bleakly. It was an urban legend or so they say that things travel with the mist—hungry things. Something that would take young people from their world and never return them.
"Hogwash!" Hermione exclaimed to herself, pulling her sweater closer about despite it not being all that cold out.
She continued to walk through the mist-shrouded town of Little Whinging. She had come here to help her friend Harry and his cousin, Dudley. She didn't know how Harry had talked her into helping Dudley. During their school years, she and Ron did not like Dudley at all after the Dursley boy had been abusive to their friend.
The sound of footsteps made Hermione stop in her tracks, her mind once more going back to the urban legend. What if it was true? What if something was in the mist? What if it was looking at her right now trying to decide if she was a good enough snack?
"Stop it, Hermione!" she chided herself. "You're being utterly ridiculous. There is nothing in the mist. Nothing is following you. You're scaring yourself with these urban legends you've been studying."
She was about to take a step when she heard a soft, dark chuckle from within the mist. It sounded close, she noted. Her skin prickled with goose pimples. The chuckle sounded human. Decidedly masculine. Perhaps it was Harry playing games with her.
"Not funny, Harry!" she chided, hoping that the dark-haired boy would walk into view laughing and apologizing for the whole ordeal.
But her hopes were dashed when that didn't come to light. She could feel herself starting to get angry.
"Whoever you are, this isn't funny!" Hermione chided, looking around for any person who should be lurking nearby. "If you don't come out right now I'm going to the authorities."
The chuckle came again. This time it was on her right side. It almost seemed like the person was amused at her anger which in turn made her even angrier. A tingling sensation went up her spine as she felt a cold hand placed upon her arm. She could feel it even through the sweater she was wearing.
She went to speak following the arm of the figure that had touched her, but the words died on her lips as she saw who it was.
"Professor Snape?" she asked, sounding quietly shocked to see him here. She shouldn't have sounded shocked. She knew he lived in the area since childhood, but since she had also seen him die—
She reached out a hand to touch him to see if what she was seeing was real. Her hand met the coldness of his arm sending shivers through her once more. She looked at him once more. She could see the pin-point marks of Nagini's fangs on his neck.
His grim face seemed even grimmer than she remembered from her school years. But there was also an almost sadness in his eyes as he looked at her. And there was something else. Something that made Hermione's blood run cold as the icy hand tightened around her arm.
"Professor Snape," she tried once more to get him to speak to her. Trying to get him to look at her as something more than food. Which is how he was looking at her, she belatedly realized, fighting to get loose from the iron grip on her.
His features contorted into something sinister. Something she couldn't recognize as her old school professor. His grip on her arm tightened to a painful one as he pulled her towards him.
Dudley looked at his watch as he waited for his cousin and his cousin's friend to arrive. The mist that shrouded Little Whinging since the end of May hung suspended as though by magic. He'd heard rumors of what was in the mist but he never believed them. After all, the Dursleys of number four Privet Drive had always been perfectly normal. Nothing of interest had happened on Privet Drive since—he shuddered remembering the horrid feeling of the Dementors as his cousin had called them what seemed a long time ago.
"Hello, Dudley," a cold voice whispered out of the mist.
A hand clamped around his arm from behind and that was the last thing he remembered before waking up in a strange house with his cousin, a girl, and a strange, cold-looking, dark-haired man standing over him.
I hope you all enjoyed Shrouded in Mist as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please let me know if you would like a second chapter.