The Door to Chaos

Chapter 5 - A New Victim for the Potion Master

"Ooooh Professor McGonagall! Hogwarts has a new scarecrow! Dead and back again, dead and back again! Oooooh the Riddick frightens everybody!"

"Peeves!" The witch took out her wand. Peeves cackled madly and floated backwards. With a rude noise and hand gesture towards the ghosts and another loud "pop!", he disappeared.

The whole hall was silent now and staring toward the teacher's table. Low whispering began as the children put their heads together. All eyes were turned to Riddick.

"I am so sorry for this unacceptable incident, Professor Riddick. Peeves - our resident poltergeist at Hogwarts, Professor - knows very well that he has nothing to do here at meal times! Students - this is Professor Riddick, our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Please give him a hearty welcome."

And to the ghost from Gryffindor house, "Sir Nicholas, may I have a discussion with you in my office in five minutes."

She clapped, trying to start the usual welcoming applause for new teachers. A couple of her colleagues followed her example (Hagrid being one of them) but from the hall came only uneasy looks, and so they stopped soon.

The ghost with the plumed hat seemed to pull himself together. He took his hat off with a shaky glowing hand, bowed low to the teacher's table and to Professor McGonagall and mumbled an apology. His head detached itself from his shoulders and dangled from some pearly tendons and a bit of transparent skin. The teenagers sitting near to him made disgusted exclamations and leaned as far from him as they could get. This seemed to embarrass him further and he straightened in a hurry, grabbed his head with both hands and put it back on his neck. He gestured toward the other ghosts and together they floated through the hall and vanished into a wall.

The short man with prominent eyes, a large belly and an enormous silvery walrus-like moustache sitting next to Riddick leaned over to him.

"How very interesting, how very intriguing. Welcome to Hogwarts, Mr Riddick, welcome to Hogwarts. You certainly have made a spectacular entry. Very spectacular, yes. You will have to tell me everything about your strange powers over the ghost world. You will have to tell me all your secrets! Slughorn, Horace is the name. I am the Potions Master of Hogwarts."

Riddick's eyebrows rose as he took in the lavish old-fashioned royal blue waistcoat with gold buttons the man was wearing.

"Potions," repeated Riddick.

"Indeed. Indeed. Love potions, happiness potions, liquid luck and I have to confess some of the more deadly variants too of course. Poisons and antidotes... you know?"

"Poisons." Riddick's deep rough voice was less than welcoming. A sliver of ice slowly ran down his back.

The man pursed soft lips as if he was going to pout.

"My dear Professor, please tell me that you don't share that totally incomprehensible aversion some people have to the brewing of poisons. I have not poisoned somebody for a very long time, you know? Haha. Just my little joke..."

Riddick noticed that the noise in the great hall had returned to a normal conversation level, nobody was paying him any special attention anymore, not counting his irksome neighbour. He pushed his dish away, he was n't hungry anymore. Poisons.

"Poisons and antidotes are such a fascinating subject my dear Professor. Why, your predecessor, Professor Snape, could have told you all about this subtle art (he was one of my most gifted students when I was teaching here the first time) ... such a shame that he has turned out so badly. What a shame...about Albus..."

The man drew a silken handkerchief out of a pocket in his waistcoat and dabbed at his eyes, reminding Riddick of a very chatty old woman. A very ugly old woman with keen, shrewd, appraising eyes. The man was a typical coward, but far from harmless if pushed into a corner. Riddick felt disgusted by his obvious vanity and pushy, curious manners. He decided right away to keep his distance.

Tuning out the chatty little man, he let his eyes wander around the great hall, admiring the heavy stone architecture, then swept the tables with his piercing gaze. Part of his mind took in the general manners of the kids he would have to teach soon, deciding at once that the students from the tables Slytherin and Gryffindor would give him probably the most trouble for different reasons. The rest of him went back to the obvious trouble his sight had caused in the local undead community.

Ghosts. Nobody told me anything about meeting any fucking ghosts. The Necro-holy half-dead are bad enough. Now I have to deal with totally dead? And why were all these ghosts so frightened of me? Most time I'd take that as a compliment, but usually people stop being scared of me once they are dead. Besides, these guys know nothing about me or where I come from. Even that limping minister, what's his name...Scrimgeour ... doesn't know. They think I'm just a ...wizard who knew Sirius Black. Wonder what the ghosts have seen in me that I don't know myself is in there? And what the fuck did that Peeves thing mean, dead and back again? I've never been ... dead...

His throat closed at a strong, very strong unbidden memory of a floating bleak existence without feeling, without feeling ANYTHING...just being... somewhere, being just a thought, lingering, refusing to move on! Being an idea of hate and revenge, just existing, slowly turning mad ...and before that - burning, ripping, tearing pain in his guts, paralyzing him. The sound of a metallic recipient rolling, clanging on stone. Vaako turning white faced to his wife. Her gleeful voice whispering in his ear "You keep what you kill..."

Poison. The treacherous bitch poisoned me.

Cold sweat ran down his back.

I ...but that means...

Dimly he heard his table neighbour's voice happy droning on and clung to that, concentrated on it.

"... will have to present you with another of my most gifted students, takes after his mother Lily, yes, you'll love young Mr. Potter and Professor McGonagall has told us that he has got an outstanding in his OWL in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Ah! there are promising young people at this school, very promising... "

Harry Potter. Riddick's mind grabbed at that straw, that name, linking him to the present. He was exceptionally relieved and very grateful to the vain man for his continual chatter now.

Riddick reached for a piece of some reddish cake that had appeared with many other sweets on golden plates on the table, before turning and fully facing his neighbour.

"Fascinating. Do tell me more about Harry Potter, Slughorn."

The man's bald head reddened with pleasure at finally having caught the interesting stranger's attention.

"Oh, I could tell you stories...ah... well for example just last year, he saved his best friends life with a Bezoar! Can you believe it, somebody was trying to murder me..."

No kidding. You were lucky. Could have been me.

While Riddick listened to Slughorn spinning his tales the dinner was finished, the golden plates and beakers vanished from the tables and the hall emptied. Riddick saw that Harry and his tall red-haired friend and the smart girl with the bushy hair were still sitting at their table and talking quietly in an overly relaxed manner, while glancing repeatedly to him and Slughorn. He suppressed a smile.

Somebody is interested in me, mmmm? That might come in handy.

* * *

His neck started to tingle again, a sure sign that somebody behind or very near was observing him. He inhaled slowly and smelled a distinctive mouldy smell that triggered a rush of hate and bad memories from the Sirius side in him.

Riddick jumped up, his hand shot forward and down under the table and grabbed something hairy. He yanked, and a short, filthy creature with large bat-like ears was struggling and dangling in his grip. He lifted it up by its ear at eye height and stared. A disproportionate wave of revulsion for something this small, ugly and helpless shot up in him.

Slughorn yelped and knocked his glass over.

Riddick's whisper and Harry's astonished shout were simultaneous: "KREACHER!"

The house-elf croaked in a surprisingly deep voice, "Master. It's my Master. Please don't hurt old Kreacher, Kreacher has done nothing wrong, Kreacher did not know..."