Acids and Bases

a violent exothermic reaction to Kristel’s role-play

He isn’t really sure what to say when the redheaded man bumps into him on the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley because his previous experiences in the wizarding world have taught him that very few people sport obnoxiously large zippers and dangling jewelry on their cloaks. The facial tattoos and black around the eyes just makes it more complicated.

“S’up,” says the tall man, and Harry is downright convinced that he must be either foreign or a bloody lunatic.

“Come again?” he asks with an eyebrow raised. He doesn’t think that the strange man would dare to pick a fight in the Alley, but he reminds himself that his wand is in his back pocket, just in case.

But then the man responds with “I’d love to come again,” and then throws his head back and laughs, and Harry realizes that he’s crossed paths with danger once again. Fate still refused to leave him alone, it seems. Before he can sneak away into one of the clothing shops, the man places a large hand on his shoulder. He’s had to deal with obsessed fans in the past, yes, but this was pushing it.

“Do forgive my first impressions; I’m afraid they’re always ghastly,” the man says in a terrible imitation of the Scottish accent, though Harry doubts that he comes from north of Hadrian’s Wall. “Call me Axel. Hello, guten Tag, bonjour, ciamar a tha thu - god, I hope I’m speaking the right language this time.”

“You are,” says Harry, nodding encouragingly and hoping his frantic head movements would loosen Axel’s grasp. And, of course, against his better judgment, he strikes up a conversation. “I take it that you’re new to the area, Mr. Axel?”

“To this area, yes.” Axel scans the Alley with a smile. And then, “See ya around, kid.”

Harry is about to retort to being called a “kid” and make his age clear, but when he blinks, the man is gone with nothing but a few acidic black wisps and hollow echoes of laughter behind him.

He shudders, not before noticing that the man’s presence brought on something much similar to that of a dementor’s, but with less iciness and more emptiness.

There is definitely something Not Right about the encounter, and he wastes no time in asking Hermione about his acquaintance.

“It was as if he were missing something important,” is the most information he can give, which is not saying much. Either way, Hermione considers it and flips through her books for possible leads, until she tosses the last text away with a sigh.

“As far as we know,” she says, “it was nobody.”

Two days after this, he appears again – Apparates, it looks like, but in a cloud of black and purple threads. It all but scares the wits out of Harry, because certainly no one is even supposed to be able to Apparate into Gringott’s and more specifically, into his vault while he was inside.

“Shiny,” Mr. Axel says. Harry drops the handful of Galleons he was trying to organize and rubs his eyes from the acidic feeling the black threads give.

“You can’t – you’re not supposed...” he babbles lamely. Axel only smirks at him.

“Next time I’ll knock.”

And knock he did three days later. Harry opens the door of Sirius’ house and simply stares.

“I knocked, didn’t I?”

“That’s not the point,” Harry sighs, and invites him in for tea. He might as well treat Mr. Axel as a guest – out of all the madmen who have gone after Harry’s head in the past, Axel was by far the most mellow.

That changes rather quickly, though.

“What business do you have in stalking me, anyway?” Harry asks politely while pouring his guest a cup.

“Just like to know your thoughts on the darkness,” is the answer, and tea is spilt all over the tablecloth when Harry drops the pot and digs his wand into Axel’s throat. Those acidic green eyes simply glitter back. Harry feels as though something is trying to clip his heartstrings, one by one.

“All Death Eaters should have been arrested,” he growls. Axel just raises an eyebrow.

“I’m afraid I’m not into cannibalism. Even though I am missing some vital organs.”

He tosses his head back and laughs again, and Harry can do nothing more but clean up the tea and listen to Axel’s story about black bugs with yellow eyes underneath a moon shaped like a cold heart.

There’s something about Axel that’s definitely different. Who else searches for darkness but has no intention to join it? By the sound of it, Axel is already in the strange darkness against his intentions, as though he has no choice but to use it for survival. His drawings of the yellow-eyed bugs are rather adorable, in a morbid sort of way. Harry keeps his acquaintance-stalker a secret between him, Hermione and Ron, and the two are just as lost as he is.

“It seems as though he’s seeking something,” Hermione says, “and that something directly involves you.”

Harry immediately moves his hand to touch his old scar, but she shakes her head and he, too, understands that anything having to with the late Dark Lord is unlikely. So, when he comes home to discover Axel cleaning out his stock of butterbeer, Harry takes a deep breath and asks.

“You’re either here to start another magic war,” he deadpans, “or you’re just a pervert.”

“One of those is correct,” Axel replies, and his smirk informs Harry that the correct one is definitely the second. He grimaces, which only makes Axel laugh.

“Don’t worry your pretty mess of tangled hair,” Axel assures. “I don’t know squat on your kind of magic. Don’t need sticks where I come from.”

“Wands,” Harry groans for the umpteenth time.

“Sticks. Right.” Axel downs another butterbeer and tosses the bottle haphazardly into the sink.

“You could spare yourself the trouble of stalking me by telling me what you want,” he says.

This has the right effect, and those green eyes glitter. Harry’s stomach churns when the green glow resembles a heart-stopping curse he knows too well. Axel looms in and, without speaking, pokes the left side of Harry’s chest.

The unexpected touch bursts into something terrible. Suddenly, all of his veins are on fire and his lungs close off all passageways. He is not prepared for the loss of breath, or the way his fingers turn blue, or how it feels as if a cold hand has reached into his chest and squeezed his heart, threatening to burst the vital organ and tear it out in a crushed mess. Harry falls to his knees and clenches his chest, gasping.

Axel licks his lips to catch the last few traces of butterbeer, his eyes more spellbinding than ever.

“What an intoxicating spirit you have,” he grins.

Harry Apparates the hell out of there because the fear he’s feeling is nothing he’s felt before. He lands outside the Burrow and when he runs inside, he nearly Stuns Ron for mistaking his red hair for Axel’s. That’s just silly though, he reminds himself, because Axel’s hair is a mix of blood and cherries.

“I suspect that this Axel guy is from a different world,” Ron blurts out. He blinks, surprised with himself, and Hermione huffs when she realizes that there is no other explanation.

“Older books have briefed on the idea of other worlds,” she explains, “but no one really knows how to get to them.”

“What about people trying to steal other people’s hearts?” Harry asks, and from Ron’s exaggerated kissing noises in the background, he mentally smacks himself for wording it so stupidly. Hermione, thinking of the actual organ itself, gives a disgusted face.

“Not like that, or that,” Harry says. Ron ceases his lip smacking. “But the spirit, I guess? The idea of a heart, if you will.”

The concept intrigues Hermione and she asks for more details. Harry describes his experience of being poked earlier that day, and everything overall sounds absurd, but his friends seem to understand it. The worst part in his description is revealing that whenever Axel is near, Harry feel as though Axel is nothing but a hollow shell. He does not steal the atmosphere’s happiness like a dementor, but it’s almost sad how that emptiness wants to be filled when it never can be.

Hermoine stands up suddenly, her face bright despite how dreadful the topic is.

“Mr. Axel is trying to steal hearts,” she says excitedly, “and he targets only the best hearts around, so he’s picked you because your heart is one of the most genuine around.”

“Lovely,” groans Harry. “Makes me wish I were a jerk more often.”

“You can’t have it,” he threatens the next time Axel appears in his kitchen. Axel only smiles sweetly.

“Have what?” He looks as innocent as he can, which is not saying very much.

“My heart,” says Harry, pulling out his wand. Curse-green eyes shine back at him.

“It’s not so bad, being a Nobody,” says Axel, holding out his arms. “You can get all the minions you want and never have to worry about emotions again.”

“And do you like being a heartless bastard?”

Axel laughs, probably the loudest and most sinister laugh Harry has ever heard from him. He places his hands on his hips and shrugs nonchalantly.

“We could have done this the easy way, but I suppose you like it rough.”

Axel disappears in his acidic black cloud and Harry realizes a second too late that Axel had avoided his question.

Later that night, pale black clouds come in and drop bitter rain. Harry barely gets out of bed and finds his wand in time before a mass of yellow-eyed bugs leak out of the walls. Stunning gives him enough time to get away, but they keep coming and he gives in to the fact that he must kill these creatures. He makes the next one explode and it simply fades into black mist and threads. His stamina cannot hold out forever, so against his will, he Apparates outside the Burrow and shakes his friends awake.

Axel meets him inside the living room the moment he, Ron and Hermione are about to run outside, green eyes full of beautiful and sickly demise.

They Apparate to the hills beyond the Burrow, wands ready. The clouds are still above them and grow bigger as the bugs increase in number. The three manage to destroy the army despite the odds and the frantic pulls on their heartstrings. Their chests ache with the need to stay strong and with the seduction to give in. Axel’s smile does nothing to help their victory.

With the bugs disintegrated, Axel’s hands spin fire and two strange weapons appear in his palms. Harry’s attempt to Disarm him does nothing, and Axel simply melts the ice Hermione sends at him.

“It’s a shame I love London,” Axel laughs. He raises his arms and Harry is almost sure that the last thing he will see is Curse-green eyes pouring black acid down his throat.

The heat underneath his feet fades before it can do anything but singe his shoes. A great beam of light shoots over their heads, resembling a meteor. Ron and Hermione duck under the white sparkles it emits over them, but all that Harry can do is stare in wonder. Axel curses and burns the particles around him.

“That mouse is too flashy for my tastes,” he says, spitting out sparkles from his mouth and grinding them under his shoe. The grimace on his face scrunches up the tearful face tattoos and from that, Harry knows that this man will never be sorry.

When Axel looks up, Harry almost wants to believe that there is disappointment in the dangerous pair of killing green eyes, but Axel’s grin ceases the sympathy. Still, though, the emptiness Harry feels in the air seems to ache.

“A pleasure meeting you, buttercup,” says Axel, “but I’m afraid a mice infestation in your world forces me to discontinue my stay.”

They stare at each other for several moments until Harry can find what he wants to say.

“That’s so sad, to not be able to feel.”

Axel bows to that, and flames erupt around his legs.

“About time you answered that question for me.”

By the time Harry unravels his sentence, the black clouds swallow the darkness and disappear into the sun’s light.

Harry wants to say that he saw another creature with large, circular ears following him for several days after Axel’s leave, but he has had enough with the bizarre in his life.

It must be sad to lose your heart and not have a chance to tell it goodbye, he thinks, so he presses a palm against the left side of his chest and takes a deep breath.

If he ever loses his heart, at least his own green eyes will not glow with such regret.