Acquainted With the Night

Chapter 11

A.N.: Sorry it has taken forever for this next part. I got busy with moving and getting a full time job and going to college full time… then I kind of forgot about the story, but I am back and hope people are still interested and don’t egg me in contempt.

I Have Become Acquainted With the Knight

November 1st

Harry shifted in bed as the morning dawned clear and crisp. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. He steeled himself for the inevitable before opening his eyes and looking down at his chest, hands running frantically over his body in search of any scorching holes in his body. There was nothing.

He sighed and closed his eyes once again, ran his hands over his face… and paused. His eyes jerked open and he cupped his face. A hard, smooth something - pointed - seemed to cover his face. It felt like a… beak. Panicked, the boy shot out of bed and ran to his dresser mirror. He stared at his face but there was nothing out of the ordinary there. He looked like he did any other day, albeit with a slightly red glint in his eyes and a hot, flushing warmth - not unpleasant - coursing through his veins.

Harry sighed as he relaxed in front of the mirror, his shoulders sagging and his breath releasing. He felt different. Stronger. Faster. And at the risk of sounding like a Jedi, one with the world around him. He shook his head and turned back to his bed. It was time to dress and get ready for school.

---

It had started at breakfast. The tingling feeling. As if he was being watched. He swiveled this way and that as he walked down the hall, hoping to catch just one glimpse of it. He knew it wasn’t Donald. No, Donald emanated a different, moister feeling, as if a leech or two were stuck to his body. This feeling was more fetid. It sent chills down his spine. Sometimes, he could hear a clattering rattle, as if someone were taking their last breath, as if the Grim Reaper were shadowing this person’s every last move.

The feeling dogged his every step, gaining in intensity as the hours passed. He was walking through a fog, the edges of reality blurring until he existed only in the bubble of space that was left. Time seemed to slow to a sluggish ‘chug-chug’. The people surrounding him froze where they were, what they were doing. Voices trailed off into deep, distorted versions of the real thing.

Harry turned in a slow circle, his eyes wide in disbelief. He could feel the Feeling freeze along with the rest. Not as much, no whatever was haunting him was stronger than all the rest. It still moved, slower now. It wriggled through the encapsulated fog like a slug through salt. Painfully, but single-mindedly.

The boy wizard was confused. He knew he’d done it. He had slowed the pursuit. He had cast a spell, somehow, he had cast something so powerful that his entire perception had been altered. He could see things through the fog that he’d been blind to outside of it. If he had to take a guess, Harry would say the spell he’d cast was some form of a Revealing Spell. Altered just so, of course, to also act as a barrier, an impediment to pursuers.

The air inside the perimeter of the fog turned slightly green. Not a sickly, evil color, but a deep, vibrant color - there to guide Harry, not mislead. So Harry did as he was expected… he followed. He walked through Hogwarts, stepping this way and that to avoid the solid bodies around him.

His eyes slid over most of the students, not noting anything of interest. He reached the Great Hall, where most had convened for dinner. His eyes swept the hall, raking the over each and every body. In the Slytherins he saw dark swirls, some bigger and more prominent than others. In the Ravenclaws there was nothing but harmless brown dots, some with rather more harmful black edging - no doubt those who believe some of Voldemort’s ideals. The Hufflepuffs had sweet pea pink. The Gryffindors had bold red, some with a deep black to match.

Hermione had a pea green surrounding her red, tentacles shooting from the green into her aura, squeezing and sucking, like a leach. Ron’s aura was affected as well, with a green tentacle attached to him from Hermione.

Harry clenched his jaw and turned to the Teacher’s Table, for he knew it wasn’t over yet. He was right. Sirius’ aura was a swirling vortex of chaos, red mixed with black. It wasn’t a natural black, no, Sirius was not naturally evil. It was a black of control. Harry had only an inkling that it had just gotten there that day, after all, Sirius had been pretty normal. He was content to have figured it out and about to turn away when his eyes widened in horror.

Most of the professors - Dumbledore included - were captured by the swirling black. The only one free of control, free to be himself, was Professor Lupin. All the rest had been captured. All the rest could not be trusted until they have been freed… if they could indeed be freed.

Something was infesting those at Hogwarts, right before Harry’s eyes. Harry whipped toward the rest of the hall and watched as the Ravenclaws, then the Hufflepuffs, the few Slytherins who weren’t already so inclined, and the Gryffindors fell one by one to whatever was hiding in the castle.

Then it came after him. It slithered and swayed back and forth, stalking him. It gained speed, somehow forcing its way through the fog at a faster pace than the Feeling was able to. It sped toward him, barreling forward… and SLAMMED into Harry. Or so it thought. As it made contact with Harry’s personal space, a shimmer appeared around Harry. This shimmer was obsidian black with a red phoenix emblazoned on the chest. It was full body armor - not solid enough to obscure Harry from sight, but there enough to see it clearly - complete elongated beak on the mask… the beak that Harry remembered feeling earlier in the morning. Another one of his new abilities it seems.

The Thing writhed on the ground for a bit and then redirected itself. Before it could move, Harry launched himself towards the Head Table. He had to protect Remus because he couldn’t be all alone in the castle. He couldn’t do this alone.

Once again, the Thing slammed into Harry, jarring itself backward and away from the professor. The Thing drifted up, came slowly toward Harry and drifted around him, sniffing it seemed. It was clear it still thought it couldn’t be seen, that Harry had been twice lucky. Nevertheless, he drifted off, not bothering to try again.

So, now not only did he need to purge Hermione - and now Ron, it seemed - of Donald, he needed to purge the whole school of something completely different and new. And he something else following his every move. Why, oh why couldn’t he have a normal year? And apparently he was now a Knight. What the hell was going on?