theBlackStaffAndNightMarE

ACT2CH27 - Scandalous Betrothals Part 2

The quickest way to get someone’s attention is to no longer want it.

It was a mantra that her Mum had taught her as a child. A mantra that had shaped her life, and one that she had religiously adhered to.

A mantra that had now failed her.

Ginny Weasley watched as Harry Potter excused himself and left the Great Hall. She hadn’t missed the way the napkin had shimmered with words appearing on it, only to reform the moment he read the message within.  She hadn�...

ACT2CH26 - Scandalous Betrothals Part 1

When Harry came down to breakfast the next day, the Sunday Prophet had already been delivered, and more than half of the Great Hall had already read it, if not halfway in the process. He could tell that all conversations seemed to pause the second he walked into the hall. There was no doubt that he was the sole topic of conversation currently taking place on every table, including the staff. But the last four years had gotten him inoculated against staring and mutters so he casually ignored e...

ACT2CH25 - Despair of the Damned

“The nature of a malediction, on a conceptual level, is centred around two concepts, Flow and Bind. The concept of Flow ties in with the transference of the curse down a bloodline, though certain conditions might be added or removed to enhance the lethality or obscurity of the curse. Just like water may spread across a  larger area, decreasing its overall density, a malediction grows weaker as more and more people get exposed to it. This is where the concept of Bind, ...

ACT2CH24 - Offer

“Seriously mate, that was just horrible,” claimed Ron, “Every single good thing I’ve ever claimed about Quidditch practice, I take that back. Angelina’s a monster. That’s what she is.”

Harry’s lips curved upwards, as he dug into his mug of orange juice. Had this been last year, he’d have been served pumpkin, but Sirius, being the rigid taskmaster that he was, had changed his diet plans, substituting it with cucumber and orange, and added an early morning workout before...

ACT2CH23 - Power

For most witches and wizards, Sunday was a day of spending time with family. If you were a teenager and at Hogwarts, it was the day you lounged around in the Common room, playing chess or gobstones, or catching up on homework. If you were Hermione Granger, you were reading ahead, probably trying to mug things up for the next month in advance.

And if you were Harry Potter, you’d be lying on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets, spreadeagled and somewhat short of breath after a particula...

ACT2CH22 - Susan

“Damn it!” cursed Harry as he nearly tripped against a piece of enchanted armour next to the staircase as he dashed towards the seventh floor. Missing McGonagall’s class was manageable, but Flitwick’s too? At this rate he’d be summoned to Dumbledore’s office before dinner.

And the worst part? It wasn’t even his fault.

Well, not totally his fault anyway.

His escapade into the Chamber of Secrets, facing Ananta-Shesha, and the fierce duel that followed ha...

ACT2CH21 - Hope

Daphne felt it in her guts and her soul as the shafts of burning white flame struck Harry.

She had known that her fiance was powerful. You didn’t get to cast a corporeal patronus capable of defending against a hundred dementors by collecting chocolate frog cards. The blood curse might have made her frail, but Daphne was not lacking in mental or emotional strength. Her father had exclusively trained her in the Patronus charm during the summer before third  year, and she had made i...

ACT2CH20 - Audition

According to the Pureblood Directory, a rather obnoxious book authored by Cantankerus Nott in the late 1930’s, the Sacred Twenty-Eight was a listing of truly pureblood families with the aim of helping such families preserve the purity of their bloodlines. Any houses that had possible muggle ancestry or blood ties to muggles, like the Potters, the Ollivanders and the Weasleys, were cast off from this list, regardless of the history of their lineage or their contribution in various m...

ACT2CH19 - Secrets of the Chamber

It was pitch dark.

Correction. It was pitch dark, and oddly enough, they could see things perfectly.

It reminded him of the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder Sirius had shown him during the summer. Apparently the Marauders used it a lot to get away with their pranks whenever any of the Prefects were on their trail, and Sirius continued using it even as a Hit-wizard whenever he needed to escape or needed a distraction. Given the kind of trouble he attracted, Sirius had insisted he c...

ACT2CH18 - Parseltongue

Some things just weren’t meant to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste.

Harry Potter and Normalcy.

Harry ignored the glare Daphne was giving him, and instead looked around the Chamber. The last time he had been there, he had been too caught up with the adrenaline rush of finding a mythical Chamber, saving his friend’s little sister and of course, grasping for ideas at surviving a basilisk. Not necessarily in that order. Professor Kettleburn was a...

ACT2CH17 - Daphne's Little Adventure

When Harry Potter had shared his memories of his time in the Chamber of Secrets, he had dropped right into the final chamber, with him walking to the giant statue, with Ginny Weasley’s unmoving form lying on the wet floor. That had led to his encounter with Tom Riddle, his survival against the basilisk and his eventual victory over Riddle’s shade by stabbing the basilisk fang into the diary. Daphne’s imagination had filled up the rest, adding in a myriad of ideas about where the Chamber...

ACT2CH16 - Daphne's Date

It was half-past seven, and Daphne was standing in front of Medea’s portrait on the third floor. She had yet to knock or utter the password, even though she was all by herself. After two subsequent date cancellations, she had developed a little insecurity about her relationship with Potter. Granted, the cancellations weren’t intentional — the first when he had taunted Malfoy into attacking him, and the second, because of Snape’s detention, but again, he just had to provoke the man, ev...

ACT2CH15 - Training

“Pathetic, Potter!” sneered Snape. “If that’s all you can do, you might as well give up.”

He was back to Snape’s quarters, continuing with the training regimen. Snape had still not progressed to teaching him any spells, content to keep firing the projectile jinx over and over hundreds of times, while the targets kept zooming around him, taking note of the number and accuracy of successful hits. So far, he had been unable to hit the bullseye even once. A fact that wa...

ACT2CH14 - Counterattack

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

Dolores Umbridge slowly rose from her chair and made slow, steady steps towards him. It didn’t matter if Ron was the one who voiced it, Umbridge would consider it his fault.

“I do not wish to criticise the way things have been running in this school,” said Umbridge, an unconvincing smile stretching her wide mouth, “but you have been exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this class, very irresponsible indeed, not to...

ACT2CH13 - Ripples

It was past supper, and the halls of Hogwarts were eerily silent save for the occasional prefect making their rounds.

Harry made his way through the corridors, treading towards the dungeons where Snape’s office was, just half a dozen yards away from the Slytherin common room’s entrance. The last two days had been pretty exhausting for him, what with McGonagall forcing him to spend several hours before supper working on his self-transfiguration. It was hard work, but he didn’t comp...

ACT2CH12 - Transfiguration

No one ever underestimated Minerva McGonagall. Not on purpose. Everyone knew what to expect of her, the Transfiguration Professor of Hogwarts, the Head of Gryffindor House and the Deputy Headmistress that managed the school administration as Albus Dumbledore’s right hand. She was also fair in discipline, in that she treated all Houses evenly. If anything, she tended to be harder on her own house than the three others. It was why she received a special kind of respect from everyone, especial...

ACT2CH11 - Friends

Walking with Daphne Greengrass within the halls of Hogwarts was a queer experience. But he had been getting a lot of those recently, so he had stopped being surprised. Every time they crossed a student, they invited curious stares, seeing a Gryffindor and a Slytherin walk together. It made him wonder if half of Wizarding Britain’s troubles stemmed from these House lines.

“Planning to join your friends?” She asked, as they took the stairs towards the dungeons. They had double potio...

ACT2CH10 - Babbling

Fleur had left him while it was still the early hours of the morning.

Walking to the Great Hall alone felt strange. For one, he was used to climbing out of the portrait hole, and coming down from Gryffindor tower. Instead, Harry found himself walking downstairs from the third floor, ready for his very first class of the new year. Knowing his luck, it’d probably be with Toady and then double potions with Snape. He and the dungeon bat might have a common interest, but that didn’t mean...

ACT2CH9 - The Shackles of Freedom

Cinnamon Grove.

Standing before the twin doors, Percy Weasley hesitated. He wished to walk away from the manor without a second thought, but his body did not seem to obey his wishes. Every time the thought to walk away crossed his mind, his hidden Gryffindor roared a Weasley did not shy away from confrontations, especially when it dealt with a Lord of an Ancient house and certainly not when said House was ennobled. Not for the first time, Percy wondered if the House of ...

STF:ACT2 INTERLUDE - FOR WANT OF A FRIEND

Dreams were ethereal things that spoke of your innermost feelings. They could be fears that haunted you in the dark, or desires buried so deep within that you yourself did not know what they are. Some dreamt of power, others of pleasure and then there were those who were micro-ambitious, constantly seeking smaller and newer dreams instead of following a larger, time-consuming one.

As far as dreams went, Arah’s was much, much simpler.

He just wanted a friend.

It was easier ...

STF:ACT2CH35 - INANNA

The world screamed as Inanna cut it in half.

But then it would. Complaining sonofabitch, it was.

It was a scream heard in dreams, on the edge of the wind, and across the wastelands of this lava ridge. A near-silent scream of mercy unheeded, of regret turned into Forget. The crimson radiance of the borderland seemed to freeze as Inanna’s power cut through its rules.

Lukas wasn’t sure exactly what Inanna had done. One moment, the behemoth of flame and lava was rising, its ...

ACT2CH8 - Monster

Harry awoke to a massive, mind-numbing headache. Every time his heart beat, it sent a pulse of pain straight into his brain. Against his better judgement, he blearily opened his eyes, only to be blinded by the burning morning sunlight, filtering into the room from the rimmed window on the other side of the room. He shut them immediately, but even closed, Harry could see bright flashes of multi-colored dots dancing around in the darkness.

It took several minutes before he tried opening h...

STF:ACT2CH34 - ECHOING AND AWAKENING

Everfrost!”

The moment she uttered the word, something resonated with the world, a command that was imposed by the will of an impossible force upon the world around it. Wintry plumes that had formed around her exploded, covering the terrain with genuine sheets of ice. The freeze extended, stretching and thickening, coating everything in near inch-thick sheets of frozen shelling. The ice erupted in spots, forming enormous teeth-like stalagmites, swelling and e...

STF:ACT2CH33 - DESPERATION

Current Energy Level

184,945,980 units

Lukas stared at the screen prompt in mounting horror. His reserves hadn’t just gone down, they had come close to depletion, within a second of connecting with the bruise. Seventy-three percent, and that was only because he pulled out. Fuck! If he had been another second late, the bruise would’ve drained him dry.

“What’s— what’s wrong?” Tanya asked, worried.

Lukas breathed in and out,...

ACT2CH7 - Purpose

“Are you well, Potter?”

Harry looked up at Minerva Mcgonagall’s worried expression and silently nodded. Just as Dumbledore had said, the Transfiguration Mistress had indeed been waiting for him right next to the gargoyle statue. His new quarters had been refashioned from the old unused classrooms on the third floor, the same place that housed the Fluffy and everything beneath the trap door. Only this time, it was transfigured into a private dormitory for himself, a guest room, and...

STF:ACT2CH32 - ANOMALY

“It’s only fair, Lukas,” said Tanya, “I’ve been completely upfront with you. With my past, my powers, my secrets, everything. There’s no one in this world that knows me more than you.I think I deserve to…” she paused, and turned her palms out invitingly, “I think it’s only fair that you do the same.”

Knowing that her hopeful face was probably a mask crafted out of years of practice did not make it any less effective, Lukas observed. Actually, it did make i...

STF:ACT2CH31 - MEMORIES OF ICE PART 4

Months ago, inside an anomaly, a shard of a Goddess did something unexpected.

As Lukas’s body lay frozen, stuck on the horizon between life and death, his mind lost in a haze of limbo, his soul obliterated by a memory of a world’s apocalypse, the Goddess relentlessly waited for his return. She was Patience incarnate, and watched as the Omphalos kept trying and trying to revive the body in a hundred thousand ways, all of them unique. But none would bring him back.

And so she di...

ACT2CH6 - The Headmaster and the Warlock

“Goo-goo clusters!”

Harry stepped off the stone staircase past the gargoyle and stood directly in front of the Headmaster’s office. He had been approached by Nigel, a third-year Gryffindor, with a note from the man, inviting him to visit his premises before retiring to the dorms. Harry had been called to this office several times in the past, but never this early.

Knowing his luck, the news about Hecate and Cho had already reached his ears. The Hogwarts rumour mill was terri...

STF:ACT2CH30 - MEMORIES OF ICE PART 3

The cold woke her.

Tanya came to her senses, the pounding headache making the injuries on the rest of her body feel pale in comparison. Except for her wrists and shoulders, those hurt more. Her neck felt stiff, and it took her a second to realize that she was vertical, her hands bound together over her head. Her feet were tied too.

And she was naked. Her muscles started jumping and twitching, as she tried to look around. She was hanging from the ceiling, her ...