CHAPTER ONE
chaimoigen wrote on 20 May 2024 17:17:
Harry quickly turned the corner, and sighed in relief. He hadn’t been seen. Ducking furtively down a side passage, he made his way back to the dank room off the side hallway near the dungeons.
“Back so soon, Potter?” , hissed a leering voice, as one of the ghosts who haunted those halls popped in and out of the wall.
“Go away”, muttered Harry, as he hunkered down in the corner. The ghost looked at him for a moment, almost understanding , and vanished into the gloaming shadows.
He took out the quill he had stolen from Umbridge’s office and looked at it curiously. Why did it have this strange fascination and appeal? He raised it to the light looking at the small reflection of his face in the shiny, hard top of the quill. There was a dab of bright red there… interesting.
Watching almost from a distance, Harry saw himself shudder, as he began to write with the quill, almost in a frenzy.
The letters he wrote immediately cut angry, red lines into his skin, slivers of sharp, carving rawness etching into himself, and he watched in horrible fascination, as blood welled and the painful tears were dripping onto the filthy floor, watching as he kept feeling the full hurt of his not-feeling-nothingness, without knowing why…
It was a long time before Harry made his way back to Gryiffindor common room that night. And a part of him did not…
And high in the tower, far, far above the dungeons, Albus Dumbledore sat silently, keening, as he rocked back and forth in pain, silent tears falling onto his beard. It hurt more than ever this time. To have to watch, and hold back and not help . Sometimes it was just too much …
The men and women in the pictures surrounding the Professor watched in frozen silence, not really understanding. There were just no words.
CHAPTER TWO
Albus Dumbledore sighed.
It was 3AM, and the night was darkest before dawn, and he couldn’t sleep. Again. Resplendent in his flowing purple nightshirt, he climbed out the window to stand on the invisible balcony he had conjured so many years ago.
The stars were still bright now, shining in the deepest black velvet of the skies, but their glimmering didn’t bring any gladness to the Professor’s heart.
Because all around him, as always, he could feel the distant throbbing. It was like an infection, right there, just where it couldn’t be soothed or even itched…
He could taste and actually
feel the nightmare as it was taking place, five floors below, in the Gryffindor dormitory. Harry was twisted up in his sweaty sheets again, writhing in his sleep as he confronted the dementors lodged in his soul again. It hurt to absorb the blank terror the poor boy felt as he faced those eyeless stares…
And from the dungeon came another aching now. Yes, Draco again. He was reliving the abject humiliation he had suffered at a family dinner when he was 7 years old. The story all but forgotten now everywhere except in his dreams, where his father’s taunts that broke him hadn’t faded with the passage of time. The jeering still polluted his mindscape now, as so many other times, the hurt was there…
Like brilliant pinpricks of light, haloes and auras bearing the psychic sweat of tangled painfulness and harsh emotion continued to assail Albus, bound to him by his Oath, in an encircling smothering blanket of need, hopelessness, and desperation. He was choking again.
Thinking back to that fateful night, he could still see it now, the gloom and deep shadow in the cleft of the towering black monolith at the summit of Mount Ararat. Before him, in the dank cave stood the stooped shape of the ancient wizard who guarded the treasure he sought. “Will you take an Oath?!?”, the hunchback has hissed. “The power you seek must be used only for the greater good!! Take the Binding Oath ! To serve and protect! To steward and teach!! The very fabric of their
souls will be connected then to yours, only
then can you save and protect them from the shadow!!!
He remembered the ropes of fire that had erupted and burned their way into the recesses of his soul, flaying open the well of his deepest emotions, laying him bare, facing a gale of
need. The shrieking hurricane of
voices surrounded
him, ever afterwards they were there with him- pulling, whispering and sighing in his brain, at all hours. He could hear and feel and see and know.
Now he had the power- he could heal and regenerate and soothe…
Sometimes. Only
sometimes. And sometimes he could do nothing. but watch helplessly …
…..feeling it all…
But now there was a soundless shriek coming from the window right beneath him now. One of his own, weighted down with a terrible sorrow so deep and tangled, mixed with fear and guilt and self-loathing. A miasmic creeping fog of hopelessness.
Albus simply couldn’t face it tonight….
Dumbledore picked up the bottle of unique elixir he had hidden out on the balcony. He hefted it thoughtfully, remembering how it tasted going down, the mixture of spicy sweetness and effervescent bubbles, vanilla and cream, fire and ice. Oh, did that stuff pack a punch!! The stuff was illegal to make, its effects marvelous and long lasting. But it made the pinpricks dim and the voices still.. at a terrible cost. But it felt so good, just to have some quiet…. Maybe just a small sip, it wouldn’t do much, a tiny taste…
Then he put the bottle firmly down again. “Not today”, said Albus Dumbledore. “Not today.”
But he kept it close at hand, nonetheless.
