Welcome, welcome to another chapter of Bad Moon Rising in which we delve into the Department of Mysteries, learn a few things with Scáthach and Harry gets a bit of a tour of the DoM.
On with the show.
The Department of Mysteries.
Harry didn't know what the Department of Mysteries did, then again, he guest he shouldn't know due to the very name of the Department, Mysteries, and all that rubbish. But as he, Scáthach, and Director Bode walked down the labyrinthine-like corridors of the Department Harry's head wouldn't stop moving while looking at all the weird and creepy shite they had stored down in the dark recesses of the Department. From a huge tank filled with brains and spines to a huge hourglass filled with what looked to be golden sands that glowed even in the dark of the overly creepy Department, Harry still thought most stuff they had come across was rather neat.
"So, where are we going?" Harry finally asks after stopping for a moment to inspect what seemed to be a brain with legs growing out of it locked up in a glass cage before jogging to catch up with the two adults.
"We are heading to the Death section of the DoM, it's a little further in than thought, time, and love, just past fate," Bode says in a bored voice as he continues to walk forward.
Scáthach, who was up to this point content to just stay quiet, speaks up, "Those are some dangerous concepts you study down here, Director Bode, some would argue that they were something no mortals should ever know," she comments while looking at Bode's back with narrowed eyes.
Bode just shrugs, uncaring about the unspoken warning, "It's our job to poke and prod around the edges of the unknowable, to understand what the underlined rules of reality are and the limits of magic, though we do try to be careful for we know full well that some things aren't for mortals to know, Lady Scáthach," Bode says, causing Harry to freeze mid-step and look at the man who had just said his Teachers real name in the same bored tone he had been using this whole time.
Scáthach however has another reaction entirely as she throws her head back and lets out a single loud laugh that reverberates around the department before she looks back to Bode with a smile, "What gave me away, Director?" she asks, finally causing the man to stop and turn to look at her with an eyebrow raised.
"Scaithanna Árd-Greimne, Queen of Shadows of the Lone Tower, you were telling the court who you were, a shame that it seems that I'm the only one who figured it out," Bode says with a flat voice and a smirk on his lips as Scáthach smiled back at him.
"Very sharp Director Bode," Scáthach says before Bode turns and continues to walk deeper into the depths of the Department of Mysteries before Scáthach and Harry follow quickly behind him.
"What I'm about to tell you, Mister Potter, is something you will need to keep in the strictest confidence, for if this secret would get out, not even I would be able to guess how the Ministry as a whole would act and that is something I would very much like to avoid, do you understand?" Director Bode says as he walks leisurely through the department.
"Um, Sure?" Harry says looking over to Scáthach, confused, who looks back at him and shrugs.
Bode sighs, "I guess that will have to do," he mutters under his breath, "The DoM was founded in the year 1236 A.D, a full four years before even the Wizards Council was created, it is due to this reason we enjoy a certain amount of freedom that the other departments do not, what the Ministry and most of the magical world at large do not know, is the reason for why we were established," He says as he continues to walk, the three of them making it into a rather large chamber with racks that hold glowing glass spheres counting in the thousands.
"The reason why the DoM came into being was because of an event known as the March of the Bloody Eagle when a legion of Roman Demigods cut a bloody waft through the circles that still called England home before being stopped by Hecate herself, she and Athena then petition both Zeus and Jupiter to fully separate the magical and divine worlds using the Mist and to make sure both worlds would be as separate as possible, and then they created the Department of Mysteries to protect the mystery of both worlds," Bode says as Harry watches Scáthach's hands clench behind her back as her face remained carefully blank. Harry couldn't blame his teacher for getting angry over the mention of the Romans, the very same ones that sealed her away and tore down her original castle.
Harry reaches out with his good arm and lays it on his teacher's arm, drawing her attention to him as he mouths "You have Hogwarts" to her, to which Scátchach smiles at him before nodding once.
"But, a little over three hundred years ago Lady Hecate contacted the DoM to inform the then Director that the Flame of the West was preparing to move and, as thanks for all our hard work, made sure the department would never be caught up in the political cesspool that the new Ministry was becoming allowing us to move away from a department that protected the mystery to one of research with a word of warning to never delve too deep into the high powers, to which we have respected to this day," Bode says before taking an abrupt turn in between two racks of orbs and walks down it, Scáthach and Harry follow only to see the man stop and turn around to face Harry.
"Now we come to a rather awkward part of this visit, Mister Potter," Bode says before pointing at one of the glass orbs with a blank face. Harry turns to look at it and is surprised at what he sees.
S.P.T to A.P.W.B.D
Dark Lord
and (?) Harry Potter
"That, Mister Potter, is a prophecy made about you and the dark lord, it is yours to take and hear if you wish or destroy," Bode tells Harry as he tucks his hands behind his back and simply looks at Harry.
Harry frowns as he walks forward to look at the orb no bigger than his fist, it glows with a soft white light as the mist inside of it shifts and twists showing faces he didn't recognize in it due to the distortion the swirling caused. This was the thing that caused him so much grief and pain in life, these stupid words spoken by a batty drunk in the dark of a pub on a cold and wet night, Harry was tempted to smash it right there and then, just out of spite of the stupid thing.
"Do you know what it says?" Harry asks Director Bode before looking at him.
"No," The Director simply says, "The only person who does is Albus Dumbledore, he made sure that not even our record keeper knew what it said by enchanting it and placing it there himself, and he seems very keen on protecting it," Bode says as he looks to the orb with a thoughtful frown.
"What do you mean by protecting it?" Harry asks while turning back to Director Bode.
The grim and gaunt-looking man turns to Harry before speaking, "We at the DoM, unlike the rest of the Ministry, believed you and Dumbledore when you both said that the dark lord had returned because we here at the department know that what may seem impossible could merely be improbable," He says, his voice flat with cold hard fact, "We are also aware of Dumbledore's, let's say, group of friends that like to play guards right outside our door when the Ministry is closed, we haven't said a word nor are we going to, for now, you and Dumbledore have our silent support if nothing else," Bode says with a blank face as Harry nods slowly before looking back at the Prophecy.
"Why was Dumbledore protecting it?" Harry thought to himself, He already knew the prophecy Dumbledore was the one who told it. Why hadn't the Headmaster asked him to come here and snag it and just smash the damn thing? Harry reaches out with his good arm, a scowl growing on his face as anger boils in his guts, the Headmaster has avoided him since the start of summer, kept things from him, and refused to even look at him. As Harry's hand rested on the orb, the want, and overwhelming need to do something with it nearly made him take it, "It's like he's just leaving it here like a piece of…" Harry thought before his eyes widen in realization and a smile crawls over his face.
Department of Mysteries, Scáthach, 10 minutes later.
Scáthach had no idea what Broderick Bode wanted from her after they had left the Hall of Prophecies and made their way deeper into the Halls of the DoM, Bode had warned the Greaca not to touch a thing and to consider everything that wasn't his Wand, Jacket, and Spear highly cursed and extremely deadly. The further they walked into the deepest part of the DoM the more Scáthach felt connected to something deep within its confines, it reminded her of a time long ago of her spear pierced the chest of the monster that had sired her and her sister, needless to say, she didn't want the Greaca anywhere near what was ever giving her the feeling.
When they finally came across the Greacas things, laid out carefully on a table, his spear slowly levitating above it, Director Bode had asked to speak to her privately and had hinted at it being something of a personal nature. She frowned at that, she didn't want to leave the Greaca alone in a place that reeked of death, but she was curious as to what the director wanted to speak about, so she told the Greaca to stay put and not touch anything before being lead off by the director down one of the many corridors of shelves that made up the hallways and corridors of the Department of Mysteries; and walked in silence for a few minutes, just long enough to get far enough away where the Greaca couldn't even overhear their conversation.
"Forgive me, Lady Scáthach, as this conversation is about something of a personal nature to you, I didn't know if you wanted your student to be a part of it or accidentally overhear it," Bode states calmly as he continues down the hall.
"Interesting, just how much does this mortal know?" Scáthach thinks to herself, Director Bode knew about the enhanced senses that the Hunt bestowed to everyone who had its cursed blessing, as to how, she could only guess, perhaps the department worked with the Greacas mother before and kept the records somewhere. "It is fine, Director Bode, while I wish to leave this place as quickly as possible I won't lie and say you haven't piqued my interest, I would imagine that there are very few things in the modern era I would find of a personal nature other then my school," she tells the man calmly.
"Yes, well, perhaps I should start at the beginning," the Director says with an awkward cough as he stops at a seemingly random section of shelves, "You see when Mister Potter first used the Géa Bolg at the first task of the Tri-Wizard Championship last year, we here at the DoM were all terribly confused," Bode says as he reaches up and taps a long flat box with his wand, and Scáthach feels the snap of magic that undoes a no doubt nasty curse before the man pulls down the box. Bode turns and with a wave of his wand, he conjures a small table at about waist height for them before setting the box down.
The box was made from ashen wood, almost a pale color of an Elder Tree, with silver bands of metal with runes inscribed upon it. The whole thing measures maybe four feet in length and half a foot from top to bottom, the Director taps the top of the box, and Scáthach watches the seams of silver click and pop open, unlocking it.
"We were confused because before you explained that there were two Géa Bolgs in existence, we thought we had the only one," Bode says before pulling the top off of the box and sitting in the dark velvet-lined interior was the Géa Bolg, the other Géa Bolg. Scáthachs eyes widen at the sight as Bode places the top of the box on the side of the table, with a shaking hand Scáthach reaches out and softly caresses the spear. It was broken in half, snapped in the middle, and the blade and pommel were chipped, pitted, and worn down with age and mishandling, the runes she had watched and helped her sister, Aífe carve into the ivory of the Curruid they had slayed together before the rift between them formed after slaying their sire were all but gone, even the curse that she, Aífe, and Fúamnach had created was no longer resting in the spear.
Scáthach feels the burning anger in her breast, she feels her teeth grind at the thought of how the spear had gotten here, and the corners of her eyes begin together the countless years of unshed tears over the tragedy that befell the last one who used this weapon before her head snaps back to Bode, her blood-red eyes aglow with rage and ancient power, and before Bode has a chance to take a step back from the now enraged goddess, Scáthach's hand finds his throat. Scáthach pulls him over the table before turning around and slamming the man into the shelves behind her, holding him up by the throat with one hand she thrusts her hand out and calls forth her Géa Bolg, the true Spear of Barbed Death. It answers her call of anger and despair, folding itself into existence at her whim in a twisting vision of red light and shadows before she draws it back, ready to pierce the heart of the man she had in her grasp.
"Not me! Already here! Had no choice!" Bode chokes out as he thrashes about in the goddess grasp as she had the spear leveled with his heart. Her face twisted with grief and rage, the temptation of ripping the mortal apart from the inside out gnawing at her mind, she fights it back before tossing the man to the ground, and as the man choked, coughed, and sucked in air Scáthach places the tip of her spear to the hollow of his throat.
"You better have a damn good explanation as to why that-" Scáthach says, pointing at the other spear, her sister's spear, "-Is here because it should be resting with the last warrior that wielded it," She tells the Director who she had at spear point.
"The DoM discovered it some two hundred years ago in a burial mound in Ireland, it was found with a body that was perfectly preserved, as though it had died days before and not the millennials that we dated it to, so the department head at the time decided was too dangerous to be found by anyone," Bode says pushing himself up to his hands as he eyed the divine weapon of swift death wearily, "The mound was filled with divine power and magical trinkets, we couldn't let the muggles find it because of the body and the trinkets and we couldn't let the MoM find it because of the divine power there, so they made the call to remove the body and everything in the mound to the DoM for safe keeping," Bode quickly explains, giving Scáthach pause for a moment, "Please, My Lady, I swear, the department had no choice and the decision to move the body was not made lightly and we did so with the highest respect and re-entomb the remains here, at the DoM, in secret," he tells Scáthach.
Scáthach reaches down and grabs the mortal by the collar and drags him to his feet, looking into his eyes with her glowing ones, the Witch-Queen of the Land of Shadows then orders the mortal, "Show me, now!"
Harry Potter, around the same time.
It had taken Harry a few minutes to get his wand holster and jacket on with only one fully functioning arm, his hurt one was doing better thanks to the healing magic and potion treatment, but it still wasn't a hundred percent. But Harry was able to get both arms into the sleeves before putting the sling back on with a smile and reattaching his Wand holster with his wand inside, which was easier than the jacket thankfully, before finally snatching his spear out of the air and spinning it with a flourish and a smile.
"Good to have you back," Harry says under his breath to his spear and wand, before folding up his spear and slipping it into his jacket pocket, finally feeling complete with all his things back. Harry's head then snaps to the side as he feels something shift in the atmosphere, like when one felt the weather suddenly changing and you know that a storm was on its way, the only thing was that storm was coming from the same direction that Harry's teacher and Bode had taken off in. Harry tilts his head and narrows his eyes, considering taking off to find the two down the corridor-like shelves that seem to make up the Department of Mysteries.
But just before Harry could take his first step, the sound of someone speaking stopped him, "Excuse me, but what are you doing here?" a voice says, causing Harry to whip around, eyes wide and reaching for the tap in his mind on instinct alone.
Harry could count on one hand the number of times someone had successfully snuck up on him without giving off some type of sound or scent and still have a finger left over, Harry stops his mental reach for the Hunt when he sees who came up behind him, it was just a girl. Well, Woman really, she was maybe a few inches taller than Harry and dressed in slim-fitting robes that cover almost every inch of her with the hood drawn up and covering the top half of her face, Harry could only see the cute button nose and full lips covered in black lipstick, her cheeks were hollow and gaunt looking with sharp cheekbones, a slight frown was set on her lips as she looked at Harry, at least, that's what Harry assumed she was doing because Harry couldn't see her eyes as they were covered by the hood.
"Ummm," Harry says, blinking at the woman before shaking his head, "Sorry, didn't-didn't hear you walking up behind me, er, I'm here with, ah, Director Bode he was giving back my things but he kinda left with my teacher to show her something, I-I think," He says to the woman and watches as her lips twitch before sliding into a smile.
"So, you're Harry Potter," The woman says, but her voice comes out oddly, like a whisper in a distant hallway or muddled through static on a telly, "It is very nice to finally meet you in person, Harry," She says as she walks forward toward Harry, her footsteps never making a sound and her smile never leaving her face. "I'm the poor intern they set upon the task of examining your things, a bit of a challenge, but that's what makes this job fun," she says with a tilt of her head as she stops a respectable distance from him.
"Oh," Harry says, shuffling his feet as his free hand taps at his thigh, "Did you find anything cool about them?" he asks the girl.
She shrugs, "Nothing that you probably don't already know, like how your coat is both basilisk and dragon hide with something akin to muggle kevlar that covers the back and from of the jacket, or how the spear is a composite of both ivory and silver, very odd but interesting things like that," she says with a smile.
"Oh, ah, cool," Harry says before looking back toward where his teacher and Bode had disappeared, wondering what was taking them so long.
"Would you like a tour?" The girl asks, causing Harry to look back at her with surprise and confusion on his face, "Of this part of the department, we have a lot of neat things down here we're not allowed to talk about outside of the department," she tells him.
"Um, won't that get you in trouble or something?" Harry asks, before watching the girl shrug.
"Or something," she says as her smile grows wide at some joke only she knew, "Normally we're not allowed to talk about what's down here outside of the department, but we're not outside of the department, now are we?" she asks, her distorted voice echoing with something like joy and Harry frowns a bit.
"I'm supposed to wait here for when my teacher gets back," Harry says slowly, eyeing the girl up and down, "Besides I don't even know who you are," He says, shifting back a step from her.
"Oh! My how rude of me, I haven't even introduced myself have I?" She asks, shaking her head as her pale cheeks became flushed with color, "We're not allowed to share our identities with anyone while working, not even our coworkers, you know, the whole Unspeakable bit," she says with a gesture to her concealing robes and hood, "But you can call me Didi, it's like a codename," she tells Harry while twisting back and forth making her robes fan out and her smile never leaving her face.
Harry looks back one last time, his lips twisting this way and that considering things as his head rocked back and forth before he sighs, "Yeah, sure, it's not like anything is gonna try and kill down here if I don't touch it, right?" he asks, looking back at Didi.
"Yup!" Didi says cheerfully before spinning in a circle, "At least not most things, but don't worry, I won't take you anywhere near those things I promise, just stick by me Harry, and I'll show you some super neat things!" Didi says before turning back around and beginning to walk off deeper into the shelves of the DoM.
Scáthach, The Forgotten Tomb.
It had taken Bode almost fifteen minutes of leading Scáthach through the labyrinth of shelves and racks of the Department of Mysteries that make up the corridors of the secretive department before reaching a black obelisk that sat in the middle of a four-way intersection of corridors and shelves. She watched Bode walk up before tracing out a few of the hieroglyphics on it with his wand that glowed a soft blue before Bode looked at her and stepped into the Obelisk, disappearing from view. Scáthach, who was now carrying the resealed case of the other Géa Bolg by a handle, frowns at the sight, this Obelisk wasn't native to the islands and felt older than the department, possibly older than herself, but still, she moves forward and through the Obelisk to the other side.
The feeling of icy water splashing across Scáthach fades as she fully steps through the other side and finds herself standing in a massive space the size of the Great Hall back at Hogwarts. Black limestone made up the floor, ceiling, and walls of the hall, the walls and ceiling were without decoration or carvings as if someone had created the space and had simply forgotten to add anything on the inside. But the hall wasn't empty, however; for in the middle of the room stood four sarcophagi.
Scáthachs steps echo in the chamber as she walks forward toward Bode, her eyes narrowed as she looks around the room, "What is this place?" Scáthach asks as Bode stops beside the closest sarcophagus on the left-hand side.
"This-," Bode says with a sweeping gesture of his wand, causing Witchlights to spring into existence, "-Is what we like to call the Forgotten Tomb, the place we hide only the most important bodies, Lady Scáthach," he says before patting the one he stood next too, "And this is the one we are looking for," he says before doing a long series of complicated gestures with his wand before bringing it to his hand and slicing his palm open and letting blood drip onto the lid before Scáthach feels the Snap of the wards that surround it fall.
Bode takes a few steps back before running his wand over the cut across his palm before looking back at Scáthach, "It's clear to open now, Lady Scáthach," he tells her before Scáthach walks forward to the sarcophagus before placing down the broken Géa Bolg and placing her hands on the lid and pushing the lid off with a resounding boom that echoed in the chamber as she looks into the standing grave with a blank face.
"I thought you said the body was preserved?" Scáthach asks Director Bode, as she looks down at the skeleton that was laid within the sarcophagus.
"I said that was the reason why the DoM moved it here some two hundred years ago," Bode says as he was wiping the blood from his hand with a conjured handkerchief, "But about sixteen years ago, the body began to rapidly break down to what you see now, it had baffled us when it started and confused us, even more, when we couldn't stop it, so, we just let it happen," He says with a shrug as Bode watches Scáthach look at the remains with a blank face and pain filled eyes.
"I see," Scáthach says before sighing deeply and turning to Director Bode, "Where are the things he was buried with? The items that were buried with the remains?" Scáthach asks before Bode waves his wand at the sarcophagus before a small draw pops open by Scáthach's feet.
"Everything the remains had on them is in there," Director Bode states as Scáthach kneels and begins to dig through the draw, tossing out bits of armor, leather straps, and a rotted belt before finally freezing and with a shaking hand reaching into the draw to pull out a single golden ring that she turns in her fingers, face blank and a mixture of emotions in her eyes before she stands up and tucks the ring away before turning back to Director Bode.
"I'm taking the Géa Bolg and the remains," Scáthach tells the man, for this is what she was going to do, this was what was going to happen, she did not care what the man or his department wanted with the body they were both leaving with her today.
"Of course, Lady Scáthach," Bode says solemnly, "I wouldn't try to stop you even if I could, but if you'll answer aquaria of mine and the department as a whole, really," he asks as he waves his wand to conjure another one of the multitudes of boxes that could be found on the shelves in the department before levitating the remains gently into it in the correct positions of a skeleton.
"You may ask, Director Bode," Scáthach says as she watches as the man works.
As the final bone was laid in place before the box shut and Bode levitates it over to Scáthach he turns to her, "Is it who I think it is?" he asks as Scáthach shrinks the boxes.
The Witch-Queen was quiet for a long moment before tucking the boxes away with the ring as she turns on her heel and begins to leave the forgotten tomb, "It doesn't matter, Director Bode," she tells the man, but knowing all too well that it did.
Harry Potter
Harry was, unexpectedly, having fun as Didi showed him around the Department of Mysteries and explained a bit more about the Department as a whole. She was showing him around the deepest part of the Department, as it was broken into different sub-departments, like its own mini Ministry of Research. They studied different esoteric concepts in the DoM, Thought, Emotions, Time, Space, Dreams, Death, Destiny, and other such things as that, as well as the effects of Magic and Wixen on each one. She explained at a rapid-fire pace while walking through the shelves, as well as explaining where all the stuff in the department had come from.
Starting sometime in the earlier Sixteenth century and going until the early nineteenth century the British Empire went on a bit of a tizzy with colonizing large parts of the known world, from the Americas to Papua New Guinea and Fiji and the newly instated Ministry of Magic saw an opportunity to expand as well and had sent ward breakers and Hit-Wizards to the newly claimed territories to "lay claim" to all the "lost artifacts" the world over or to just "loot" them after helping put down uprisings in those areas, and she had honestly used air quotes while saying it all.
"So, we stole all this stuff?" Harry had asked, summing it all up in such a way that made Didi burst out laughing.
"Yes, pretty much," Didi said back, looking at him with an unnerving grin.
"Shouldn't we, I don't know, give it back or something?"
"Probably,"
"Are we?"
"No," Didi said while smiling at it all in such a way Harry just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all with a smile of his own. Didi couldn't pull down any of the cases or boxes to open them up whether it was because she would get in trouble or she didn't know the spell to remove the curses she never said, but there were a few items on open display she could talk about, like the Jeweled Skull of Acererak.
"Who's Acererak?" Harry had asked, looking at the crystal skull with two large sapphires for eyes that sat in the warded glass box, leaning forward a bit to get a better look at it.
"No idea!" Didi answered with a huge grin, "He? It? Showed up when the department was experimenting on entropy in combination with space and started shooting fireballs everywhere, we've tried to kill it or send it back wherever it came from a few times but failed each time, so now we just keep mister grumpy noggen in his box," She had explained with an uncaring shrug before they moved on.
Didi also asked him a lot of weird questions like his favorite food, Where would he want to visit when he was older? What was his favorite time period? What did he think his happiest memory was? If he could tie any one person in history to a chair and beat them to death with his bare hands, who would it be? What did he think of the color black? And so on as they walked through the halls of the Dom as they stopped to talk about one of the items on display, like the weird iron hand scythe that wouldn't stop bleeding(Found in the fertile crescent around a hundred years ago that dated back to six thousand B.C), The Weird black top hat that sat on a hat rack with a lit cigar and a glass of rum sitting next to it(Found that on a gravestone in Haiti, whatever you do, don't put it on,) and what seemed like a jaw bone of some kind of horse sitting on hooks with a sign next to it saying Do Not Touch; Insights Murderous Rage in whoever is holding it, Harry made sure to not get anywhere near it, he had enough anger issues to deal with.
It was a little while later that Didi showed Harry what she called pièce de résistance in the weird and spooky shite that the Department of Mysteries owned: The Veil.
It was set in what looked like a large stone bowl set into the floor and looked as if the Department had taken the land that it sat on with it when they brought it to the bowels of the Department. A large section was just earth and stone with what looked to be a riverbed cutting through it, two pale white trees stood on either side looking limp and dead but stony at the same time. The archway came up halfway across the riverbed sitting on a grand bridge that went to the other side of the river, both the large arch and bridge looked to be made out of bones, human bones, he could make out the skulls and rib cages of dozen and dozens of people, more than he could count but to Harry, that wasn't the creepiest thing about it.
It was the whispers he heard coming from it.
"It was found in a small little town right a few miles north, just outside of Blackburn some seven hundred years ago," Didi says breathlessly, but she wasn't looking at The Veil, but at Harry, as the boy slowly started to move forward to The Veil.
Harry takes the steps up the stone bowl and onto the earth and stone that sat on it as he walked over to the start of the bridge.
"Haaaaaarrrr-" he could hear, faint and far off, he tries to strain his ears as goosebumps shoot up his arm.
"Do-Do you hear that?" Harry asks Didi without turning around as he takes his first step onto the bridge an icy comforting cold shot up his leg.
"What do you hear, H-" Didi says, sounding almost excited.
"-aaaaaaaarrry,"
"That," Harry says in a whisper of his own as he walks forward toward The Veil, unable to ignore the haunting feeling of deja vu in the back of his mind, as if he had seen this before, been here before, but couldn't place it, "That Voice," he says to himself because he knew that voice. The Veil shimmered and waved like mist on a lake, and in the mist, he saw a shadow walking forward toward it, featureless and shaped like him, Harry took it as his shadow in the mist as he got into arm's reach of the Veil. Harry raises his good arm and watches the shadow do it too before letting it fall, just like the shadow does, but as Harry tilts his head to the side trying to figure out why he heard that voice from the gray mists, he gets the fright of his young life as the shadow tilts it's head the other way.
Harry jumps back from The Veil in shock and watches as the shadow leans forward and wraps its hands around its stomach as if it was laughing at him, going so far as to point at him. Harry could hear the musical laughter echoing from the mists like chimes in the wind but through the bad static of a telly on the fritz. Harry walks back to The Veil as the shadow straightens up to look at him before raising its hand and pressing it against the Veil of gray mist as it tilts its head at Harry.
"There you are," Harry hears as he lifts his hand and reaches out to press it against the gray mist like the shadow was doing, his heart hammering in his chest and his eyes wide as he could feel cold arms encircle him, "My Harry, My Promised End, come on, Harry, just a few more inches and I can finally hold you once ag-" the voice whispered, and so full of longing, until…
"GREACA! GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THAT! NOW!" Scáthach screams, voice full of panic and fear as Harry feels his teacher grabs the collar of his jacket and yank him away from the veil, and drag him off the bridge. Harry turns to shout, turns to tell her to let go, to tell her he was so close to finding out, but the look in Scáthach's eyes choked the words in his throat.
He had never seen Scáthach look so afraid, never seen such deep primal fear in her eyes as she looked at the arch behind them, so deathly scared, and never would again for as long as he lived. Scáthach dragged Harry out of the Department of Mysteries, shushing any questions he had of why she had dragged him away or what the hell was the Veil, and when she wouldn't answer, Harry had turned to ask Director Bode the man was silenced by one glare from Scáthach, and Harry could only wonder "What the hell could scare Teacher so much?"
Chapter done!
Okay, so this isn't "I want to stay at your house", but it is an equally important chapter as in it we learned a lot.
Who was in the other sarcophagi? Well, a sleeping English King, his court mage, and his half-sister don't ask because they won't be important.
Didi? Who the fuck is Didi?
Harry was alone most of this Chapter, wasn't he?
Kingsaxcul, out!