The Malfoy Heir

Chapter 2

A Meeting with Dementors

The squeal of brakes and the sudden lurch of the train woke Rose from a deep sleep. It was a bit of a surprise to find herself sprawled across the floor of the compartment in an odd tangle of limbs. She had been dreaming of home before her rude awakening but it wasn't a place that she recognized even though she could still sense a feeling of belonging.

"I wonder if the stop is always this sudden. I don't think that I ever heard anything about the train jolting about like a sick dog." Peering out the window, she realized that it was too dark out for them to be at the school. There were no lights in the gloom ahead or anywhere around them. 'This is getting really weird. I hope it's just a routine stop that nobody mentioned to me because it is simply routine.'

A sudden chill shook her and she wrapped her arms around her waist. In the same breath, all happiness was sucked from her as if it had never been at all. She tried to dredge up the memories of her father and the good times they had but nothing happened, nothing showed up in her mind's eye. All that she could remember was the pain she had felt when he had left, the complete loneliness and despair.

Rose was so wrapped up in the battle she was having with her emotions that's she didn't even notice the ice beginning to creep and crawl along the windows. Nor did she notice the complete silence that came from outside. There was nothing from outside the train and nothing from within it. It would have been a welcome silence but for the eeriness of it.

Rose stumbled to her feet and wrapped her robe even closer around her. She curled up in the corner of the bench, trying to get warm and stay that way for as long as possible. The chill still crept closer and closer to her as she shrunk away, spreading icy fingers out to catch her bones and steal them away to some dark forbidden city far away from the normality of life and into the chaos of darkness.

Her now dull eyes lifted to look out the window as she sought the light of the moon and stars. Her eyes didn't meet the light of the night, but rather a darkness that wasn't entirely normal or even human. The darkness moved back away from the window and her eyes focused on the figure. A tattered hooded cloak covered it from head to toe. She wasn't sure what it was until it drifted up almost out of sight. At that point, the moon shone through the clouds to reveal an entirely unexpected sight. Dozens of the figures lined the trees and floated in the air above the train. Nothing but the ends of their cloaks moved in the slight breeze outside.

"D-d-dementors," she whispered softly. A new sort of dread filled her at the thought of the strange creatures and their evil history. There was a sudden sound at the door of her compartment. A skeletal hand slid past the window of the compartment scraping across the glass. Rose shrunk even closer to the wall. At the last minute she remembered the dementors outside and scampered back away from the window. She cast a wary glance at the hand still on the window. The body of the dementor soon followed the hand.

"Please, please don't come in here. Please stay away," she whimpered. It turned it's head as if hearing her quiet plea and if Rose could have seen it's face, she knew that it would have been smiling at the thought of something as frail as her thinking that something as completely inhuman as it would care. The creature, if it even merited that name, stayed standing there for a few moments longer before moving on. Rose didn't move the entire time.

The train lurched to movement but Rose still didn't do anything. When the door to the compartment opened, she jumped expecting something as ghoulish as before. Instead the calm concerned eyes of the candy lady stared back at her.

"Are you doing okay, dearie?" she asked, taking in Rose's huddled form. Rose nodded and muttered a reply. The woman paused, placing something on the seat nearby, before closing the door and going on to check on everyone else. A single bar of chocolate was left behind. Rose gratefully unwrapped it and almost immediately began to feel better. "Boy, I thought chocolate was only good for mood swings but it's more all-purpose than I figured."

Rose had been scared before, but now that this had happened, she wasn't sure what to expect. It wasn't the brightest beginning to her school year.