Curse of the Dark

There was silence in the room for quite a while after the roaring stopped. Hermione and Ron lay on the floor, both unconscious and breathing heavily. Finally a small voice from the depths of the shadows called softly, yet still loud enough in comparison to the silence to make everyone jump, “Dumbledore? What’s going on?”

“I have no clue,” was the response.

Out in the field bathed in moonlight, the dark form of the human lay motionless in the silence around it. Not a single animal was around to see its labored breathing coming softer and softer with each breath. Not a soul was around to see as it coughed up a bit of blood and then sat up quickly in a coughing fit, choking down blood all the while. After several minutes, it seemed to get the repulses to calm to a point of almost normal breathing. Falling back in the grass, its arms spread out tiredly, the animal began to breath more and more normally until, to an outsider, it would have seemed a mere human lying on the ground in the moonlight. Far from it.

“Wh-where am I?” coughed Harry through lips covered in dried blood. The statement caused another coughing fit. After a while, it too became subdued. Fighting another round of vomit and blood down, Harry slowly stood up on shaky legs, only to find he was glowing which surprised him so much he jumped and fell back down again. Something powerful was surrounding him of which he had never felt in such mass amounts before: magic.

“I believe the first thing we ought to do is to find Mr. Potter and convince him that we mean to help him.” Dumbledore said. “He will more than likely not remember any of us and he will be armed with this power that you all felt. If he has collected such an amount, not just from us, but from the Phoenix as well, he could easily take out the lot of us. And he will most likely see us as a threat that needs to be destroyed. So we must be careful. We’re treading on soft ground.”

“Oh, God. My head,” Harry moaned, trying to calm his headache. Taking inventory, he could feel several cuts and rapidly forming bruises at odd places in his body that he could’ve only gotten in his former body. Both his knees were skinned and bloody and as he put his hands on them to slow the bleeding, he could feel them already starting to heal which surprised him again. Taking his hands off, he saw the last bits of blood sinking back into his smooth skin. That’s never happened before, he thought curiously. And where am I? Looking around, he couldn’t see a single animal stirring. He was in a field that went on for many miles laterally but was bordered on either side by forests.

I’ve seen pictures of this place - this is the border of the Hogwarts land. But that’s about twenty-five miles from the castle. How the Hell did I get here? But in the back of his mind, he knew. He could still feel a pulsating force that wanted to run as fast as it could to wherever it wanted to go. It wanted blood and flesh and only to kill.

Shuddering, Harry quickly searched for something else to think about and found, to his surprise, a wealth of knowledge that did not seem his. He felt as if he had lived a thousand lives at a thousand different times and could remember every moment of all of those lives. For a moment, he wasn’t sure which memories were his and which weren’t and which were dreams and which weren’t, because of course he couldn’t have the knowledge of other people in his mind.

But that didn’t really tell him anything. Pushing those other thought out of his mind as he was in no fit state to explore them now, he tried to get up again. Slowly he stood up, balancing unsteadily. His heart rate increased as did his breathing as he managed to stay up straight for a moment before losing his balance and almost falling again. He began to walk around in a small circle to regain his ‘human legs’ which he seemed to have momentarily forgotten how to use. As the feeling began to come back into them, he decided to venture a bit into the forest to see if he could go back to Hogwarts. He felt so alive with magic that he didn’t seem very afraid of anything at the moment and besides, he was a teenager. He wasn’t supposed to have a lick of sense (which wasn’t quite true but it did seem the only logical option seeing as he didn’t have a wand).

After a mile of traipsing on unsteady legs, Harry didn’t feel any closer to the castle. On the contrary, he wasn’t even sure if he was going in the right direction. All he could see around him was trees and trees and a bit of sky and trees and…lo and behold! More trees! Which was not a pleasing thought.

“If we can make search parties, perhaps a tracker charm may be able to find Mr. Potter in the near future,” called Dumbledore over the bustling of people moving about, collecting things and of odd spells being performed. “The tracker may not work, though I feel it is worth a try.” He made his way through a particularly large group of witches and wizards up to the golden colored Phoenix that no longer glowed. Both Hermione and Ron were lying on their backs, still unconscious, with a medi-wizard bending over each. “No luck waking them?” asked Dumbledore softly.

“None so far,” replied one. “We’ve tried the Ennervation Spell as well as a few potions for this but they seem to be in enchanted sleeps stronger than anything we have here.”

“Let them sleep,” Dumbledore said firmly. “As long as there is nothing seriously wrong with them, they seem to be fine asleep. And if there’s nothing more we can do for them, why not let them rest? I daresay they seem to have gone through enough to have earned that.”

“Yes, Professor.”

An odd rustling off to his right made Harry start. From off to the side came a footstep, then another, and another. Harry stopped dead in his tracks, unsure of himself. The footsteps got a bit closer and Harry, worried that it might be a giant spider, leaped behind the nearest tree, not out of fear, but because he was not prepared to fight it off. To his surprise, it was not a spider, nor a centaur which would have been helpful. It was a mooncalf.

What did I read about mooncalves? Harry racked his brain in vain in an effort to try and remember what he had heard about them. He had just read about them this summer! And Hermione had been talking about them over dinner the night of the Sorting. Thinking of Hermione made his heart sink just a bit, but he straightened up, stuck his chin out defiantly, and peeked around the tree. The mooncalf didn’t seem to be afraid of him in the slightest which, now that he recalled, was quite unusual. Aren’t they supposed to be afraid of humans? Maybe this one’s rabid. Magic animals don’t get rabies. A fragment of something that someone had once said, possibly Hermione, drifted to the surface of his mind along with a paragraph or so of information that he didn’t know he possessed about mooncalves. Magic animals don’t get rabies. Hermione had said it. His defiance left him momentarily in remembrance of her. Gaining it back, Harry stepped back out from behind the tree.

There was an odd beam of moonlight shining through the trees above him where the mooncalf was standing. It turned to look at Harry who was still glowing with a light much like the moon itself. But wait… Don’t mooncalves only come out on the Full Moon? And don’t werewolves only change on the Full Moon? Something’s seriously wrong here.

The mooncalf slowly walked up to him and touched his knee with the end of one front appendage. It nuzzled him a bit, as if to draw him into the clearing. So Harry, having nothing better to do at that particular moment, followed.

Then it started to dance.

From the moment it started, Harry could feel a magical radiance emanating from it, though nowhere near as strong as his own. It began to glow a bright silver as it danced, which had Harry completely mesmerized. He had never seen anything like it. For that matter, he had never seen anyone dance except for the few leaps Lavender or Parvati diid across the Common Room when they were happy. But this was completely different.

The mooncalf in its form looked rather ungraceful. Cute, but not graceful. Appearances were deceiving, weren’t they?

To Harry, each leap seemed as new and natural and fresh as someone who was just beginning to dance for the pure joy and not just of one going through the labored motions of it. But everything was so perfect, it must have been rehearsed for years. There were all sorts of twists and turns and leaps until Harry’s head was spinning from it and all he wanted was to see more. And the mooncalf appeased him. Hours went by with Harry doing nothing but watching and wanting to join in, but of course he couldn’t watch it for every second and dance at the same time. And besides, he didn’t like dancing humans too much in comparison to this. Not that he had seen any worth seeing before.

He was vaguely aware of the Sun starting to come up again, but he paid it no notice until the mooncalf stopped dancing and scurried off, breaking his hypnotic spell. Harry suddenly found himself very lonely in the middle of a half-lit forest at dawn.

“This day is so not working for me,” he muttered sitting down. “And where is help when you need it? Or even Dumbledore? AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I HATE THIS!” He got up and started stalking off in the opposite direction from which he had come.

“Now remember: he will be strong. Do not attempt to fight him on your own. Summon us and we will work together. Try not to get too close; you might scare him.” Dumbledore’s voice echoed across the front lawn of Hogwarts to the hundred or so wizards sitting astride their brooms, all carrying bulky packages of some sort. “But most of all: be careful. None of us are very strong at this point and he is strong beyond belief. This will not be easy. Go with my luck.” He raised his hand and, as one, the brooms rose and shot out of sight across the tips of the trees of the forest.

Harry had been walking for quite a while and still had not gotten anywhere worth mentioning. In fact, he hadn’t gone anywhere at all. He could vaguely remember having seen that branch before - and that tree with the funny root. Funny how those things worked. I’m walking in circles in the middle of nowhere. Lost, alone and HUNGRY! Harry fought the urge to give up and yell for help again and ended up winning. Though, a few moments later, a yell could be heard echoing through the forest with enough volume to be heard miles away.

“The Ford!” yelled Harry happily. He ran over to where the car was wedged in between two trees and patted its hood, suddenly in good spirits. With a slight screech of metal on metal, the car shifted a bit as if waking up and looked up at him. Harry was suddenly given the impression of a dog who was very happy to see its owner. Too happy.

“Oh, geez. Look at you,” Harry murmured. The car was scratched up and dented, but, most of all, it was stuck. “Now what?” The car revved its engine and tried to move forward to greet Harry, but, of course it couldn’t.

Harry groaned and then let out a growl of anger. “Why does the whole world hate me?” he vented in frustration. He slammed his hand against one of the two trees holding the car and to his surprise, it was suddenly sheared off in a neat cut across the bottom and standing about two feet away. Harry jumped. It was a bit off-putting to see a tree hovering next to the rest of its trunk.

The car, however, did not seem fazed in the slightest. It opened its passenger door excitedly, waiting just long enough for Harry to be inside enough so as not to shear off his feet before slamming the door and driving off. Looking back, Harry could see the tree gliding back to its original position.

The car seemed to be going a bit faster than was necessary which gave Harry shivers considering he was in a forest. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and said to the dashboard, “ could you take me back to Hogwarts? I’d really appreciate it,” he finished hopefully. The car made no response except to drive even faster, dodging trees and bushes with the skill borne of going along the same paths many times before.

Watching the trees flying by made Harry tired just to see them and he soon drifted off into a deep sleep inside of a pink car flying (not literally) through a forest of deadly animals somewhere deep in the heart of Great Britain.

Brooms in pairs were drifting across the top of the forest searching, but finding nothing.

“Do you think we’ll actually find him?” asked Sirius Black hopefully to his partner, Albus Dumbledore.

“Hardly. But we can try.” Sirius’ face fell slightly.

“We will find him. I know it.”

“We may not find him. But he will turn up eventually. The only question we have to worry about is when.”

“Or where,” said Sirius softly, gazing down into the endless mass of trees.

The Ford rumbled along for some time with its sleeping cargo before screeching to a halt. Its doors flew open, waking Harry, who slowly got up and climbed out. He stood for a moment, not quite remembering anything while his head cleared. He shook it once, gave the Ford a pat and a ‘thank you’ and walked to where he could see the start of the trees. The car gave a rumble and drove off, soon hidden by trees.

Walking slowly, still dazed from sleep, Harry traipsed his way up the front lawn of Hogwarts which was completely void of life. Harry gave a little shiver as he passed the same place he had been only the night before. Could it really have been only yesterday? Where the werewolf came. He shivered again.

As Harry made his way up to the front doors, he couldn’t help but feel a bit spooked by the eerie quiet that had settled around him. He had never been out here without at least one other person somewhere making some sort of noise or signal that they were still alive. All in all, he was a bit unnerved by the whole experience and was rather glad to be back.

Pulling the huge doors open, Harry was startled to not see nor hear anything. Not a soul stirred in any of the classrooms. Harry’s arms began to prickle. He wanted to scream out, “I’m here now!” and have at least Hermione or even Ron come running down to break the silence.

Cautiously, he made his way up to the Common Room. Even the Fat Lady was gone. Harry stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do before he made his way down to the gargoyle behind which was Professor Dumbledore’s office. He stood there for a moment before realizing he didn’t know the password and, after reciting every candy he knew, went to the Hospital Wing. Someone was always there to watch the poor, unfortunate children who had accidentally spilled a Burning Potion on themselves or the selected few students who had decided to practice spells on themselves or their friends.

Entering the Hospital Wing quietly, he noticed the lack of people in the Hospital Wing. But…in the far corners…was that?

“Hermione! Ron!” Harry ran over to the two still figures on their separate beds. “What happened to them?” he murmured softly. “Hermione? Wake up.” He touched her arm softly. She was unnaturally cold.