"ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ʀɪᴘᴘᴇᴅ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴍʏ ʙᴏᴅʏ, ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ʟᴇꜱꜱ ᴛʜᴀɴ ꜱᴘɪʀɪᴛ, ʟᴇꜱꜱ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴀɴᴇꜱᴛ ɢʜᴏꜱᴛ… ʙᴜᴛ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ, ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ."
Chapter Two: The Diary of Nostradamus
The last few precious weeks of the summer burned away, and soon time was hurtling itself towards the first of September.
Looking back, Harry hadn't learnt as much that summer as he would have liked to in hindsight. Professor Sprout was always accepting of an extra person in the greenhouses, and McGonagall and Flitwick were forthcoming enough to questions, though Snape was as sour as ever.
Perhaps the strangest discovery, given that it had come so late, was the fact that the seventeen minutes that separated his and Ruby's births meant that their birthdays were actually on different days; Harry's on the night of the thirty-first of July, Ruby's on the morning of the first of August.
This was odd, he thought, as Ruby noted that it was eleven o'clock, meaning the Hogwarts Express had just left King's Cross. Odd to find that out after eleven years.
But perhaps not, seeing as the other only person who, prior to last year, celebrated either of their birthdays was Dudley, who for some reason found it amusing to give them paired pieces of junk, like a matching pair of shoelaces.
But afternoon passed quickly, too, and Harry dragged himself back up to Gryffindor Tower, with a distinct sense of trepidation about the coming school year.
He unfolded his uniform, put it on, and then critiqued his reflection in the blotchy, floor-length mirror.
Harry had never been particularly fond of his reflection, the only thing he liked being the lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead, or, at least, it had been before he came to know what it signified.
At the thought of Voldemort, he felt the shadows creeping in.
Go away.
Even when he couldn't see them, Harry could feel the slippery ghosts of his own shadow sliding around his fingers. He'd like to soap them up and have the Obscurus pour down the sink like grease, but that was impossible.
He was a twelve-year-old Obscurial. Whether that made him some sort of magical medical miracle or some kind of supernatural circus freak, Harry didn't know.
Anyone who saw Quirrell's body last year (nearly everyone who read the Daily Prophet) wouldn't want their children to go to school here. Even though there had been barely any of Quirinius Quirrell left in that awful corpse, Harry just felt guilty.
He let Voldemort go. He failed.
He killed, but failed to protect.
That will never happen again.
It was only a matter of time before Voldemort came back.
Harry gritted his teeth, glaring at his reflection.
"When he comes back, I'll do it," he said.
I'll kill him. But Harry did not say that part aloud.
When he made his way down to the Great Hall, they whispered. Every sound made Harry want to curl in on himself and hide, and so, he forced himself to hold his back straight and walk forward past the staring crowd.
Dangerous. Monster. Freak. Dark Lord in training, that's what I say.
But his sister stuck to his side like glue, glaring at the whisperers, and when he got to the Gryffindor table, Ron and Hermione sat on either side of him, glaring at the people who came close.
"Can't believe people are carrying on like this — you must be furious, Harry," said Hermione, looking around.
Though no one else but them spoke to Harry directly all through the Sorting, people still craned their necks to get a look at him, as if expecting him to transform into his shadow form once more before their eyes. Half-frightened, half-hoping to see it up close this time.
"I've lost Scabbers," said Ron morosely as they watched a first-year join the Hufflepuff table. "Can you believe it? Dad said he must have died in a corner somewhere, and we'll find out if it starts to stink at home."
"He was old," said Hermione. "You and Percy've had him for years."
Harry could see that this was likely going to spiral into an argument, so he said:
"Malfoy's going to Durmstrang this year."
Ron said "Good" at the exact same time that Hermione said, "That's awful, Harry!"
"How is that awful?"
"Haven't you been reading the papers?" asked Hermione, exasperated. She attempted to tuck the voluminous sides of her hair behind her ears, failed, and frowned. "Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, is trying to make out that you're dangerous! Taking his son out of school is a direct protest against Dumbledore's decision to let you stay here!"
"In case you haven't noticed," said Harry, equally exasperated, "I have killed someone. I am dangerous!"
"You're not dangerous; you're our friend," said Ron. "And you were trying to stop You-Know-Who, which is a lot more than anyone having a go at you can say."
Harry sighed. He felt tired already.
"I would have killed anyone who came too close, Ron. Even you, Hermione, Ruby, Anthony, anyone. Malfoy's dad is right. You're not safe here with me."
And even though it was only halfway through the Sorting, he stood up, pushed his way past the first-years huddled close to the door, and left. He could hear multiple people running after him, calling his name… but he really needed to be alone right now.
Maybe the Clock Tower Courtyard wasn't the best place to hide since all of the people he was trying to get away from knew where it was, but it was full of fresh night air and silence, at least.
Harry sat down heavily on the stone floor, leaned against the wall, and shut his eyes.
When it was quiet like this, he could pretend like nothing bad had ever happened to him.
He never lived with the Dursleys. He never met Quirrell, trusted Quirrell, killed Quirrell.
He'd been here forever, in the velvet darkness of his closed eyelids and enveloped in the soft sounds of the night.
A raspy, small voice, lower to the ground than a person sitting or crouching down should have been, spoke.
"What troubles you, hatchling?"
Harry opened his eyes slowly and looked around. The only other living soul belonged to a brown snake, about three feet long with cruel red eyes.
Talking animals wouldn't be the weirdest thing he'd experienced in the past few months, Harry thought.
"Did you just speak?" he asked.
"Ah. So this is your first time," said the snake.
"First time doing what?"
"Speaking it."
"What's it?"
"What you are speaking now," said the snake.
"I'm speaking English."
"Evidently not."
Harry sighed. "I suppose you have a name?"
"I do not."
"I'm Harry," he said.
The snake seemed displeased.
"Things are coming, hatchling. I can feel it in the air."
"What sort of things?"
"Things are waking up," said the snake. "Things are breaking down, just as they did once before. Prophesied things are coming. Someone who has not been here for a very long time has returned..."
"Who?" asked Harry. "Who's returned?"
"A son," the snake answered. At least, it sounded to him like the snake had said son, but the meaning did not come clearly as the other words did. But before he could ask for clarification, the snake slipped away, disappearing somewhere amongst the stones and ivy.
"We've been looking for you!"
He turned; it was Ron, followed by Hermione, Anthony, Ruby, Mafalda, and a short, redheaded girl who Harry didn't recognise.
The whole welcoming committee, he thought ruefully. But not wanting to appear rude, he stood up and went over to them.
"Gilderoy Lockhart's our professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts!" said Hermione. "Professor Dumbledore announced it at the end of the ceremony; isn't it —"
"—Deplorable," interrupted Mafalda Prewett, crossing her arms and frowning. "I'm telling you; the man's a fool."
"He's not a fool!" said Hermione.
Mafalda sighed, annoyed. "Try having an idiot teaching your N.E.W.T. level classes, and see how you feel."
Hermione looked miffed, and Mafalda continued:
"Fine. If you can't get over a little crush on Mr. Colgate Toothpaste, you will once you spend an hour in his presence. Had to sit next to the moron on the train; that's time I'll never get back."
Sighing to herself, the seventh-year turned on her heel and left the courtyard with not so much as a goodbye.
"Oh, by the way, this is my little sister, Ginny," said Ron, nudging her forward. "Ginny, this is Harry."
"Hi."
Ginny had all of a sudden arranged her hair so that most of it was in her face and was glaring at him with the only eye visible in the red curtain.
Then, like Mafalda, she disappeared.
"That's weird," Ron mused. "She's not usually like this; usually, you can never get her to shut up."
"Yeah, I think I know why," said Ruby.
"Why?" asked Anthony.
Ruby just shrugged, smirking to herself.
"Anyway, what were you doing out here?"
"Nothing," said Harry quickly. He didn't know much about the whole talking to snakes thing, but he had the distinct feeling that he shouldn't talk about it. "I'm going to get an early night."
Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room, which was filled with boisterous laughter for the first time in months.
Laughter which stopped the moment he walked into the room.
His gaze was drawn to the other second-years: he saw Dean, Seamus, Neville, Lavender, and Parvati all staring at him and looking slightly afraid.
Harry supposed he couldn't exactly blame them, seeing what had happened last year and all that their parents had told them about Obscurials.
In fact, Dean, who had been brought up as a Muggle like Harry, seemed the least afraid. Neville, on the other hand, looked likely to faint.
"Hi, Harry!" squeaked Parvati as he went past on his way to the second-year boys' dormitory, and the others followed suit.
"Oh, who do we have here?"
"Is it the most fearsome wizard to walk the hallowed halls of Gryffindor Tower?"
"Dunno, it might be, Fred!"
Harry turned to face the Weasley twins and sighed. Not for the first time, he was thankful that he and Ruby didn't feel the compulsion to start up a duet every time one of them felt like talking.
"Look, I'm not in the mood!" he snapped, perhaps a little too loudly, because people shrank back from him.
This is going to be a long year, thought Harry, as he did his best to ignore them and went up the stairs.
A few hours later, the other boys evidently decided that Harry wasn't going to turn into an angry shadow at the slightest disturbance, so they filtered into the dormitory (Dean first, Neville last) and went to sleep, but very quietly compared to the usual racket from the previous year.
Whatever the circumstances, Harry supposed he couldn't argue with a good night's sleep.
The boys were just as silent in the morning, each chirping an over-cheerful "Good morning, Harry!" as they left the dormitory until it was just him and Ron.
He put on his uniform, which had been collecting dust in his trunk for the past few months, and shuffled down to breakfast with Ron and Hermione, where he realised with a weird sort of resignation that everyone was going to treat him like a live mine for the foreseeable future.
The only person who seemed to be unafraid of him was Colin Creevey, a tiny and excitable boy with mousy-brown hair, who was Muggle-born, hadn't been around to witness the incident, and wouldn't stop talking Harry's ear off.
"I know all about you. Everyone's told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you, and how he disappeared and everything and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead... It's amazing here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts."
Still, Harry supposed annoying hero-worship was a step up from fainting, even if he wouldn't call his parents being killed by an evil wizard who nearly killed him too amazing.
"I didn't know about magic, either," he said.
"Really?" asked Colin, his eyes wide. "How?"
"I grew up with Muggles. My aunt and uncle."
"Oh...What were they like? Did they know about magic?"
Even Ron and Hermione turned to listen now. Thankfully, his friends were not the nosy sort and hadn't asked him any pressing questions last year. Still, Harry supposed they must be curious as to why his and Ruby's guardians were never mentioned; and more specifically, how Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, became an Obscurial.
"They were great," Harry lied, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. "Don't think they knew about witches and wizards. They were very normal. Everything was just so."
Regardless, everyone seemed to believe him, and Colin moved on to chatting about wizard pictures and how they were developed.
As long as he doesn't ask for a picture of me, thought Harry, I'm fine.
"Let's go," Hermione interrupted. "We've got our first lesson in ten minutes; you too, er, Colin."
"Oh, wait a second, please!" cried Colin as the other three stood up. "Harry... D'you think — would it be all right if — can I have a picture?"
He muttered an excuse and dashed off.
The Gryffindors did not get to meet Lockhart first; it was the second-year Slytherins and Ravenclaws upon whom that honour was bestowed, while the other half of the year had History of Magic with Professor Binns.
It was precisely eight fifty-nine in the morning; all of the seats were filled except for the one next to Ruby because she knew Anthony would get there at nine (perhaps even one after nine) and not a second before.
Lockhart (who Ruby admitted was handsome if you were the sort to get giggly over teachers, even ones who thought turquoise robes and a matching hat were the right sorts of thing to wear on the very first day of class) arrived right in front of Anthony, who dashed over to the empty seat, looking half-awake and winded from running all the way from Ravenclaw Tower.
"I think I forgot my books," he said, after a long moment, staring past her.
Ruby shrugged and shoved her pile of seven (seven!) books towards the middle of the table.
He had also forgotten to comb his hair or tie his tie, it seemed.
Lockhart cleared his throat in a very obnoxious manner; Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis, who were sitting directly in front of Ruby and Anthony, sat up straight. To their left, a group of Slytherin boys were paying absolutely no attention.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said Lockhart in a grand voice. "I am Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award." Here, he let out an attempt at a self-effacing laugh. "And, of course, your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher."
"Oh, heavens," Ruby heard Tracey say. "Isn't he dreamy?"
Lockhart sighed, casting a glance at the artfully placed mirror as he arranged his blond waves. Now Ruby saw that the turquoise robes had been chosen with utter care to make the best possible impression on the first day of class; they did indeed match his eyes, as his gaze swept over the class, noting with glee the piles of books on each desk.
"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books — well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz."
And at the resulting chorus of groans, he added: "Merely a simple exercise, students — not to worry — just to check—"
He began to move through the rows of desks, handing out the exam papers.
"—how thoroughly you've read them, how much you've taken in—"
As Lockhart passed her the quiz face-down, Ruby was struck with the realisation that he had neglected to take attendance. No one else cared to remind him, and he returned to the front of the class and said:
"You have thirty minutes — start — now!"
Ruby turned her quiz over immediately and glanced down the list of questions, expecting to be questioned on the specifics of the creatures in Lockhart's books, such as banshees and werewolves.
She read through the whole quiz, checking the back and front of each page, shook her head, then reread it. When she looked up, everyone, even Lockhart, seemed to think everything was normal.
Ruby couldn't help but think of the Bloody Baron's words about Quirrell: "Off? Anyone who takes that position after it was jinxed is a little bit off, my dear girl."
"Anthony?" She nudged him. "Anthony, could I see your quiz for a minute? I think something's wrong—"
"No cheating, you there in the second row!" called Lockhart, winking at her.
"Kill me," muttered Ruby. She read, for the third time, the beginning of the quiz.
1. What is Gilderoy's favourite colour?
2. What is Gilderoy's Lockhart's secret ambition?
3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date?
All of the questions concerned Lockhart's personal affairs, all the way down to 54. When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?
It had to be a nightmare, Ruby decided. She half-heartedly filled out the quiz with the most ridiculous answers she could think of and only answering How many times has Gilderoy Lockhart won Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award? correctly because Lockhart had mentioned it not five minutes ago.
"This is stupid."
"You in the second row again," said Lockhart. "Would you care to share your thoughts with the class, Miss?"
Everyone found this vastly more interesting than the quiz (except Tracey and a few others) and turned around to watch.
"Potter. I said, this is stupid. I just don't see—" Well, she had already put her foot in her mouth, so she might as well finish "—don't see what knowing the answer to Which is Gilderoy Lockhart's best side for photographs? has got to do with learning Defence Against the Dark Arts! Aren't you supposed to teach us about hags and ghouls and stuff?"
A couple gasps (and suppressed giggles) went up around the room, but Lockhart only smiled.
"My, my, my. I understand completely! A classic case of sibling jealousy!"
"I'm not jealous of Harry!"
But Lockhart was all too gleefully certain of his most recent discovery.
"Classic, classic. Not at all unlike the subplot of the siblings in Holidays with Hags," he said, with a meaningful nod. "You see, when one sibling appears to be favoured over the other, in this case, world-famous while the other is obscure and unimportant, the one who feels abandoned may act out for attention. Yes, I understand completely, Miss Potter."
"No, you—"
Daphne turned around and gave her a steely glare.
"Don't you even think about disagreeing with him, Potter. We are not losing the first points of the year."
"Who knows, Daph, Longbottom might've beaten her to it," said Blaise Zabini, fellow Slytherin.
But Ruby, this time, wisely kept her mouth shut and reluctantly finished the 'little quiz' with no further incident.
Afterwards, he sat at his desk, shuffling through the quizzes and commenting on the class's lousy performance, to the amusement of most. However, Tracey Davis remembered that his secret ambition was to rid the world of evil and to market his own range of Occamy egg yolk shampoo, conditioner, and styling gel, and received ten of the least-deserved (in Ruby's opinion) points Slytherin had ever won in history.
"You know," said Ruby to Anthony, once they had left the classroom, "I almost prefer Quirrell to him, even if he did have Voldemort stuck on the back of his head."
At least Quirrell wasn't infuriating.
Soon after classes, Ron familiarised everyone with the phrases 'Harry Potter Fan Club' and 'Cornish Pixies' as well as why they now elicited a long-suffering sigh from Harry himself.
Of course, the perpetrator of both crimes was none other than Gilderoy Lockhart.
"Do you think if we asked Mafalda to push him down the stairs, she could make it look like an accident?" asked Ruby.
"Oh, don't say that!" protested Hermione. "He's done nothing—"
"—Nothing but be an irritating git, you mean," said Ron.
"Can we please just stop talking about Lockhart?" asked Harry, who had been cross the whole day.
"Cornish Pixies," said Anthony, laughing when Harry groaned. "I can't help it," he explained. "It's a perfect conditioned response. Anyway, I'm off to the Ravenclaw table; Terry wants to show me something. Bye!"
And with that, he ran off.
Hermione cleared her throat.
"Anyway, I never got to ask because of all the trouble last night; how was Hogwarts during the summer?"
"Fine," said Harry. "Well, fine except for being examined under a microscope by Snape, Pomfrey, and Flamel, I mean."
"Professor Sprout let us re-pot stuff," added Ruby. "But it was mostly pretty boring. The professors were all busy, so we sort of had to entertain ourselves. In other news, a lot of the Slytherins have left, not just Draco Malfoy. Crabbe and Goyle followed him, and some girl who was supposed to be in the first year went to Durmstrang as well. All the upper years are still around, as far as I can tell. Is anyone gone in Gryffindor House?"
"Some girl called Rionach O'Neal is being homeschooled," said Ron. "Can't think of anyone else."
"No," said Hermione. "It's been people like Lucius Malfoy who have been threatening to pull their children out, as far as I can tell. Most people trust Dumbledore's judgement, even if they wish it had been something different."
"I'm not sure if that's a good thing," Harry muttered as he stalked off towards the Great Hall. "See you, Ruby."
"See you," she said, dreading her return to the Slytherin table already, where Pansy was as loud as ever, but Tracey, saddened by Draco's disappearance, morosely pushed food around on her plate until Daphne dragged her outside to distract her.
Ruby found herself incredibly bored until Lavender Brown slipped her a note as she walked by the Slytherin table, asking her to sneak out and meet her and Parvati outside the tapestry on the third floor at eight-thirty.
Silently, she folded it, trying to decide whether it was a good idea or not. Of course, if Snape caught her out of bed after curfew on the first day, there would be hell to pay; but after all, she had learnt a great deal about the secret passages and shortcuts in Hogwarts Castle this summer...
"Shh!"
"We've got to be quiet!"
"No, we're almost there!"
Together, the three second-year witches shoved open the doors to the Great Hall, their momentum propelling them into a heap on the floor and resulting in a torrent of giggling.
The floating candles cast a warm, inviting light over the room, and the ceiling showed the image of a velvety night sky, the stars twinkling like tiny diamonds.
It was Parvati who stood up first, climbing on top of the Ravenclaw table and surveying the hall.
"What are we doing here, anyway?"
"I'll read your fortunes," said Lavender, pulling a pack of cards from the pocket of her pyjamas.
"I don't believe in that stuff," said Ruby, scoffing. She cast an admiring look at the professors' table, eyes lingering on Dumbledore's chair.
"Oh, yeah? You'll believe me when that dead boy from Walpurgis Night turns up."
Ruby shivered instinctively, remembering the harrowing sight. Could it really come to pass? To be honest, during the Welcoming Feast, she had looked carefully at anyone who bore a resemblance to the mirror-reflection through the puddle but did not find him.
Scrying, she knew, was purportedly possible; an ancient art popularized in Europe by Nostradamus himself.
Nostradamus... but... the diary... how strange. It couldn't be anything real; she didn't know how to scry, didn't believe in it, and furthermore, what could Borgin possibly know?
"He won't turn up, Lav, 'cause he's dead!" she retorted before the thought grew too worrying.
"Read mine!" said Parvati.
Lavender then picked three cards, things she described as The High Priestess or The Hermit or The Hanged Man, and then began to come up with all sorts of explanations for them, which seemed ridiculous to Ruby.
"That's not even real Divination," she said, jumping off the table. "Real Seers have to go into a trance."
"Is, too. It's called cartomancy."
"You made that up!"
"I did not!"
Ruby sighed. "Anyway, want to see something weird? Here's the book Borgin gave me."
"You went to Borgin and Burkes? In Knockturn Alley?" asked Lavender, her voice full of envy. She slid off the table, too. "That is so cool."
Ruby just shrugged. "Snape took me. Anyway, Borgin says it belonged to Nostradamus, but Snape says it was purchased—" She frowned in concentration "—on Vauxhall Road in 1938. And there's no writing in it; well, there is, somebody wrote in pencil on the first page, T. M. Riddle. It could be somebody's name, or it could be telling us that the book's part of some kind of puzzle."
"Nostradamus? Really?" asked Lavender.
Ruby grinned. She knew Lavender liked weird, esoteric stuff like that and that she'd be totally all-over a mysterious book sold in a Dark magic shop, possibly owned by a Seer himself.
"Could have been resold," said Parvati, pulling the book closer to the middle. "C'mon. Let's join hands and cast a magic ritual to find out."
"Hocus pocus," said Lavender in a vague imitation of a Seer's breathy, smoky, almost comically serious voice as she took both of their hands. "Higgledy-piggledy. Abracadabra."
Parvati and Ruby broke out into laughter, and grinning, Lavender continued.
"Moonshine, crocus, eye of tiger, hear my voice beyond the veil and tell me what this diary holds!"
"Very nice, girls. It's two hours past curfew."
They all jumped; a familiar figure was standing at the entrance to the Great Hall. It was Alastair Montague, Head Boy and Slytherin Prefect.
"Sorry!" they all chorused, scrambling to their feet. Ruby retrieved the diary and hid it under her cloak as they shuffled past.
"Don't let me catch you out here again!" called Alastair. "Five points each from your houses."
"But Alastair!"
"Just be grateful I'm not Professor Snape."
Lavender giggled nervously as she and Parvati waved goodbye to Ruby, who went on alone towards Slytherin Dungeon, slipped into the dormitory, where everyone, including Hephaestus, her aloof black cat, was sound asleep.
Before she shut her eyes, it seemed as if the diary on the nightstand was trying to open itself. But it must have been one of the strange half-dreams that happen when sleep comes slowly, and so, she ignored it.
Being stuck here wasn't very pleasant, he could tell you that.
Not that he was sure where here was, much less where he'd been before and furthermore if there had even been a before or whether he was really a he in the first place, but it just seemed easier to pick a pronoun and go with it.
But whatever this was wasn't his preferred mode of being.
This being an expanse of white nothingness. No smell, no sound, no feel. And it wasn't quite seeing so much as perceiving.
There was just the feel of falling.
The reason why he thought perhaps there had been a before was that he remembered things.
Annoyingly, not his name or his age or anything actually useful like that.
There were disjointed things. Green and Gaunt and Heir.
Things like Wool's Orphanage and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and what he thought must have been a list of magic rituals or something.
Actually, there was quite a lot about magic. Strange memories of a world filled with things, in which those things never failed to obey. A lost sense of control.
A crippling sense of fear.
So why was he here? What was here?
Nothing.
One pinch of lavender and a bezoar from the stomach of a goat and the blood of a human killed less than two hours ago may be substituted with fresh dragon blood but has milder effects. Things like that. Along with the knowledge (belief?) that he was human, so he probably had a body and whatnot in the Before Time (before he'd gone and probably done something inordinately stupid to get himself stuck here).
It followed logically, however, from the fact that he'd gotten in here, there must be a way to get out.
Too bad it would probably require one pinch of lavender and a bezoar from the stomach of a goat and the blood of a human killed less than two hours ago.
As per usual, he resigned himself once more to eternity and the mildly entertaining illusions that were just barely keeping his mind tethered to its strange existence. Keeping him conscious; thing rather than the abyss, insignificant speck of matter rather than empty space.
It was then that something happened.
A sound.
It interrupted the white, silent abyss.
Yes, sometimes his hallucinations manifested sense and sensation, but not like this. This felt real.
And then, he sensed the words, too. It was like he was a piece of paper, and the keys of a typewriter were slamming into him.
Wake up.
He knew that this meant something must have changed, that maybe someone in the Before World knew of his existence — and he wasn't going to risk losing this chance. Here was something real, something solid, a slippery, treacherous foothold in a rough sea.
For the first time in days? Months? Years? Centuries? he tried to communicate with someone else, thinking as firmly and clearly as he could: Please get me out of here.