A prophecy of horror filled

Through the coasts of dark destruction

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:24:24 GMT

I'm insane for starting two more stories when I've already got so many unfinished ones on my plate. I blame the rabid hell-spawn plot bunnies that breed like there's no tommorow.

Anyways, the first story is a Harry Potter AU one-shot about that minor little detail that's commonly known as honor. It completely screws canon over and, as usual for any fics coming from me, has absolutely nothing remotely resembling a happy ending.

§Honor§

‘Remember, honor always comes before life. It is a law older than magic itself.’

“Professor Snape, sir, may I-”

“Take it.”

Dark eyes gleamed by the light of the dying fireplace as the somberly dressed boy left with a dusty leather-bound book, closing the door behind him with the same grace that she had. The book was inconsequential, as were the few hours he had spent teaching the boy traditions and customs long forgotten by the masses.

Honor before life.

He turned away from the door and stared at the pictures sitting on the mantel of the fireplace – one of her, long before she had lowered herself to marrying a blood-traitor, and one of a marble tombstone surrounded by black roses.

‘There is no life without honor. There is no honor in being forgotten in death. Honor before life, before death – because there is nothing without honor.’

“To your honor.” He raised a glass of red wine in a toast to the pictures before downing it, extinguishing the flames with his wand before sweeping out of the room.

‘You have been dishonored and it falls to the living to regain – and avenge – that loss.’

He was not the only one to reach that decision. Two other men did as well.

‘Honor before life. Honor before death. There is nothing without honor. Honor lost is everything lost; honor regained is everything.’

§Forget§

“I’d like you to meet my son, Harry Potter. Harry, this is…”

Green eyes – Lily’s eyes in death, her window to a world which had destroyed in death – flickered from the smiling black-haired man and the blond woman by him to the portrait hanging above the mantel of the fireplace.

“Harry, aren’t you going to say hello?”

The black-haired boy, dwarfed by the black armchair in which he sat, stared past the man at the wall he was blocking.

Veneratio pro vita.

“Too soon.”

Startled hazel eyes widened before narrowing as the woman was ushered out with sweet smiles and promises to visit soon. “What are you talking about?” the man snapped angrily, flushed from embarrassment. “I told her you were a well-behaved child and you don’t even have the decency to greet a guest!”

Green eyes impassively stared back at him, too large for a face made paler by black garb. “It’s only been two months.”

His eyes once again flickered over to the portrait hanging from the wall, a silver-plated inscription inlaid into a dark mahogany frame.

“Honor before life.”

The man tensed, fists clenching at his side as he stared at the boy before storming out, the door slamming shut behind him.

“Already forgotten…”

‘Where has your honor gone, mother?’

§Vanish§

“She’s lovely, Prongs…but-”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to start spewing out that ‘honor’ crap too, Sirius?”

The black-haired Auror stared at his counterpart as James Potter ran his hand through short messy hair, an exasperated look on his face.

“First it was Harry, of all people, and then Snivellus found out somehow and now even Dumbledore thinks that I’m ‘dishonoring the memory of Lily,’ and then Remus decided that he needed to spend some time alone ‘to get accustomed to the idea,’ and now you too!” The hazel-eyed man sighed, picking up his butterbeer and taking a large gulp from it as he rubbed his eyes tiredly. “It’s not that big a deal. I mean, I’m only making her my girlfriend – it’s not like I’m marrying her or something.”

Sirius watched his erstwhile partner with something akin to regret before suddenly standing.

“I just remembered I’ve got a report to write by three or Bones is going to have my head” he offered as an excuse for his conduct before leaving the café. Once outside, he began to walk towards the Ministry, steeling his heart against what would inevitably come.

“You don’t understand, Prongs” he whispered into the wind. “You never did understand it, even when we were in school.”

Veneratio est panton.

“I can’t just stand by and watch it vanish, you know. She’s a wonderful girl and all, but this is more important that that…I’m sorry.”

The crumpled picture of James Potter was blown away by the winter breeze as Sirius entered the Ministry of Magic.

And the second story is an original story that's possibly set in the future of a post-apocalyptic Earth after decades of warfare fueled by religious-based terrorism and rapidly diminishing oil supplies. It might end up crossing over into a fandom, most likely LOTR or Naruto based on the half-assed plans floating around my head, but as of right now, it's still original. I'm ~2,000 words into the first chapter.

And I think I've been reading too many fics involving unethical, immoral scientists conducting experiments on unwilling human test subjects because, wonders of wonders, my fic features that too. Or maybe it's just the fact that I can easily see something like that happening in the future of humanity. After all, we're selfish, base creatures that rarely think with this wonderful little thing called a brain.

If I knew just a bit more about that wonderful ~~parasite~~ entity known as Jenova in FFVII, I would probably have the time of my life writing my perfectly dark and twisted fanfic in that fandom. Unfortunately for me, I don't. It's worth keeping in mind, though.

And, on a much happier side not, look at the lovely ~~horridly-bright pink~~ egg [if the thrice bedamned html coding would just work properly]. Doesn't it just beg to be clicked on?

P.S. Anyone known how to make the text before the LJ-cut turn white already? I've been trying for the last ten minutes...

Pro obscurum reigns, Eternus

Tue, 27 May 2008 03:49:23 GMT

Well, I have managed to finish that AU Harry Potter [current] one-shot that has been nagging me and irritating my muses at last. Of course, I've since re-read the story, decided that the ending is quite unsatisfactory and hurried, and am being plagued by new ideas.

...I'm just going to post it now and declare it prematurely finished. I'd quite like to be able to focus on the three epic originals that I'm working on and, considering the sheer numbers of fics I read each week, it's already highly unlikely without my nitpicking at [presumably] finished stories.

Title: Decay
Summary: He may have won the war, but he cannot live forever and with each passing day, more of himself is lost. Calignis volui regere sempiterna. [Voldemort has been defeated twice now, but he still lives on - for one cannot kill the physical representation of man's darkness anymore than one can kill God himself.]

‘I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling ion the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; morn came and went – and came, and brought no day’

Lord Byron, Darkness

º¤§§¤º

It was no longer something that he thought about, the repetitive movements of his wand-less hand – snapping wood and the splinters dug into his cheek, blood red as the feather fell – as the bodies crumpled to the ground. It was simply something that needed to be done and he had always done what was needed, no matter what the cost. There were days when he wished that the only things that needed to be done were chores – never his true family (long dead and rotting) but all that was left – but those days had disappeared in green light and fire. All that he did now was act as the executioner, a stand-in for death on grimy, ruined spaces where the forgotten bodies decayed. Those were the days that would never disappear – etched into him like so many lines of pale ink on dark parchment – and once he had tried to forget for months before giving up, shoving everything down the link with Voldemort and feeling the same phantom pain as bones snapped and flesh burned.

(“Look at itty-bitty baby Potter! Does it hurt, baby?”

Blindly lashing out at the voice only to discover that nothing was there. More pain, a thousand knives cutting into him as laughter bounced off the walls, a cold cruel sound.

“Does baby Potter want to play a game? All you have to do is say yes, Potty, and it’ll be over for you.”

Silence – never say a word and it will all come to pass because nothing is forever – and more laughter as a foot nudged his bruised stomach.

“Is itty-bitty Potty giving up? Tsk, tsk…your mutt would have been so disappointed, the traitor – oh, but he’s dead now, isn’t he? You left him to die, baby Potter. You led him there and left him.”

The voices were louder (closer) now and he lashed out again, the magic coming unbidden to him and burning him from the inside out as the darkness lifted in an explosion of color and sound.)

It was always something that haunted him, the fear that he would one day slip over that invisible border and snap again. The magic called to him, a siren’s song that tempted him to draw closer until he was ensnared again. Two slips already and the third one would be his last – third time’s the charm, Hermione had teasingly told him once when they had been still children and the world had been a small place of black and white (but he had never been a child, always too old and stained) – but he couldn’t afford to bring anything else to ruin. He had already painted the world in shades of red once and it would never recover, the taint of his magic still too heavy on everything.

º¤§§¤º

Luna, widowed Luna with nothing left but bad memories and pictures, was the first one to notice his trembling hands as the magic threatened to overwhelm him again. Luna, with her blond hair and silver eyes, had seen what he would never allow himself to see – magic overwhelming him and it was killing him from the inside out as he let it free again, coating the muddy ground with red – and she had made all the arrangements, appearing before him one day with the documents.

“Go.”

It was just one word but that was all he needed hear because anything else would have been useless. She wordlessly took the map and invisibility cloak, both remarkably clean despite everything, and handed him his passport and a letter.

“They’ll come looking for you” she explained and that was enough for him to understand what was needed.

He could feel the heat of the fire behind him as everything started to burn and she let the fire grow. She had always known before he did, known that this world was no longer his to dwell in. She had seen everything before he had, he knew, and she handed him the map and the cloak again, watching as they burned in the fire as well. They weren’t needed anymore, relics of a war that had begun and ended at the same place.

“Don’t leave any traces.”

He understood what she meant, knew what she wanted him to do – Cho, eyes pleading with him to end it all as she took another hesitant step towards him, a white mask behind her as the Death Eater laughed. He hadn’t been laughing when the marionette’s strings had been cut and turned to him. This was Luna, the one who always knew what he would do and never questioned him, and he turned away.

“Will you be free again?”

The undertone of the question – “forgive me (us) for everything” and Hermione’s whisper “Live for all of us, Harry. You’re not just a weapon” – made him stop and he shrugged, turning around again.

“I’ll let you know when I am.”

Luna laughed, the cheerful sound almost covered up by the crackling of the fire. She knew what he meant and she wouldn’t wait for an answer.

“Go. We’ll still be here if you return.”

He left with a sharp crack and Luna’s dreamy smile as she fell into the fire was the last thing he saw as his world spiraled into a blur of colors.

º¤§§¤º

She had sent him to a far-away country that he didn’t recognize and it took him a full week to shove the knowledge of the language and culture into his head. She had sent him to Japan, the land that had never recovered from the second War and welcomed anyone with power (and he was the most powerful of them all and they loved him for it, just like England once had). No one looked at him differently there, another foreigner running away from his past with blood-stained hands that would never be clean again.

Getting a new name had been remarkably easy. One trip to a government office, his passport, and a few forms was all that was needed. He didn’t understand the irony of his new name until he gave his name to the clerk at the bookstore he inadvertently entered.

Kage Akashikyo.

The clerk had shakily explained what his name translated into in halting English and he had been hard-pressed not to burst into laughter tinged with hysteria and insanity (he could never escape from the blood on his hands, it seemed.)

Things had gone relatively smoothly after that as he settled into a routine, mundane life as just another wealthy eccentric man (compensation for all his trouble, the Minister had called it with a false smile even as his eyes tried to kill him a thousand times over). Then the inter-species trouble had started up again and he had been one of many who simply vanished one night, spirited away.

º¤§§¤º

He woke up feeling disoriented the afternoon after he had been taken from his apartment just blocks away from magical Tokyo and a government that would have guarded him with its life (he had killed more than some Death Eaters ever had and they still worshipped him for it). There was a mirror across from his bed and he looked into, simply blinking when his new appearance registered. He turned away when the door opened and a man-woman wearing a Healer’s uniform stepped into the room with a fake smile and cold eyes. The Healer was followed by a woman wearing a traditional Japanese kimono with her hair done up in an equally traditional manner.

“The boy’s awake and healthy?” she asked, ignoring him in favor of watching the Healer with eyes the color of the Fiendfyre that had devoured McGonagall, Tonks, and Shacklebolt. When the Healer nodded, carelessly waving a hand and forcing him onto his feet by the bed, the woman turned to him and viciously smiled, displaying elongated canines that soon morphed back into normal teeth. “Good. Follow me, brat. Someone else is here to take you off my hands.”

He followed – prisoner again and he could dimly hear distant screams as the blood ran down his chest as Macnair smirked, lifting the bloody knife that had been used on him and using it to extract the eyes of a screaming Lavender Brown – and when he was roughly pushed into the arms of a man who looked just like Lucius Malfoy, he could feel the magic rising again. He forced it down, locking it away and burying the key deep in his mind as the man rudely grabbed his wrist and disappeared from the woman and her falsely-bright rooms.

When the man told him, in no uncertain tone, that he was a pure-blooded vampire who would be trained as a gift to the Master of Asia, he simply stared at him with green-red eyes before laughing.

(Fate hated him, it seemed, and now he was just like the ‘monsters’ that Britain’s magical world had condemned and ostracized. He had never been fully human, it seemed, and he bled monster (always) just like Voldemort had when the Dark Lord had been killed outside Hogwarts in a magical battle that brought the wards of the castle to ruination.)

º¤§§¤º

He had been with the Malfoy look-alike long enough to establish a reputation as a pacifist who only fought back when direly provoked – a Russian vampire, skin ripped from his face as the magic forced the blood he had just consumed to turn into holy water – when the reports of a vampire who had allied with demons began to flood magical Japan. The Malfoy look-alike (he later learned the man’s name was Kirathas) had been one of the first to fall and the magic had roared up again, beggingdemanding to be used to fight against this interloper. He had kept it suppressed for all of a week before the invading vampire had killed a fledging with hair as red as Ginny’s and stormy grey eyes (just like Draco). He distinctly remembered the red film that had covered everything he saw before the magic overwhelmed him again and took control, whispering promises of revenge for Ginny – poor deluded Ginny, who had honestly believed they had a chance until the very end, when Voldemort himself had tortured her to death – and Draco, who had sought refuge from everything in alcohol and cigarettes, reduced to a shell of his former stature and arrogance when his father had been murdered for failure to bring down the wards of Hogwarts (a suicide mission – everyone had been saying it, even Voldemort’s staunchest supporters – and that had been what had won him pity and dubious safety in the heavily warded castle).

When the magic eventually loosed its hold on him, all that remained was rubble from the ruined manor and the dead bodies covering the grounds (“More corpses than grass,” the Aurors shakily whispered to each other. “Take a step and your foot comes away red with blood.”)

º¤§§¤º

He had been found by a fledging of a vampire, one that was Cho (but not Cho); and he reacted instinctively, magic welling up in him again as he was startled from his not-sleep by her pale hand reaching out to touch his shoulder.

‘Threat’ his mind hissed, sounding more like the basilisk’s insidious hiss than ever before. ‘Hurt – must kill – defend – destroy – evil…’

When he calmed down, the not-Cho was hanging in the air, eyes wide as her hands tore at the invisible vice-grip on her throat, leaving behind deep bloody scratches that would kill her (a pulp-like mess, all that remained of Neville, poor brave Neville who had fought to give Remus time to run from the Whomping Willow to the boundary of the wards. Fenrir Greyback had paid dearly for that, arm cut off by molten silver that had poisoned him from the inside out.) The magic released her and she collapsed to the ground as he fled, stumbling to a stop next to the bloodied, muddied remnants of a decorative pool. He looked into it and his wavering reflection stared back at him, emerald-eyed pale face morphing into the serpentine visage of the man-beast who had called himself Lord Voldemort.

(“So much alike, you and I” the snake-like man hissed in Parseltongue as he reached out to touch the scar on a chained Harry’s forehead. “You can’t escape from me, Harry Potter – I am the one who made you, molded you into what you are – you cannot escape your maker. I am you, you are me, and as long as one of us survives I will always live on.”)

He lashed out, sending the water splashing out of the cracked stone basin; and he would have destroyed the stone too if his hand had not been caught in an iron grip that burned (so unbelievably cold and the metal burned him more than any fire ever had.) When he forcefully wrenched his hand free, ignoring the sharp pain of breaking bones, he met eyes as blue as Sirus’s had been and he knew no more.

º¤§§¤º

Harry Potter – Kage Akashikyo, his mind insistently hissed, tryingwantingneeding to distance itself from the past – woke at exactly 6:13 A.M. on July 13th, nightmares of crimson eyes (Voldemort) staring out of his face weighing heavily on his mind. Exactly five years ago, Hermione and Ron’s son and daughter had been murdered before his eyes (little James Orion Granger-Weasley and Elizabeth Lily Granger-Weasley, innocents in a war-torn world that he had created with his bare hands.) He watched the play of the harsh, unforgiving sunlight on the white walls of the empty room he had been left in – ‘You don’t deserve to see the light.’ Unspoken words that drove another razor-sharp needle into him, a needle that twisted and dug until it left behind a gaping hole that led straight to his pulpy beating heart – and closed his eyes, seeing bright spots behind his eyelids. If he tried to, he could replace the white walls with the red and gold of proud Gryffindor and the sunlight with the flickering light of a fireplace late at night; he could remake the world to suit him.

‘But you can’t bring back the dead.’

He ignored the voice, choosing instead to imagine how simple it would be to let the magic run free (close his eyes, concentrate, and everything would be crystal-clear, exactly like it had been) and create a world from the fire and death that clung to everything he knew. He would be the Creator, the master over everything; and the world would know it and worship him, worship the magic that had created it. It would be so very simple…

He shook his head forcefully, chained hands rattling as the cold metal cut into his wrists, and let the darkness take him again. ‘Not Voldemort,’ he thought to himself, repeating the phrase over and over. ‘I’m not Voldemort. That’s something he would do, not me. I’m not Voldemort…’

It was a cold, bitter comfort for him in this unknown place of white walls and harsh light – but it was all that he had.

(“Harry, what are you doing?!”

Susan’s voice, still strong but with an unmistakable undertone of pure fear, forced him back to reality and the fog cleared from his mind. Somewhere beyond the invisible boundary of the wards, Voldemort coldly laughed and stroked Nagini – a puppet master, confident in his ability to control his marionette when needed. Such a foolish boy he was, this shell that would one day become his to break and remake.)

º¤§§¤º

He had lost track of how long he had been kept in the white room with the unforgiving sunlight – days? Weeks? Months? Years? It no longer mattered to him anymore, the passage of time – when the door had opened and the one with Sirius-blue eyes walked in, followed by faceless guards with archaic weapons that shone under the bright light (but they weren’t so archaic, coated with a deadly poison and etched with acidic runes of blood and death) and sung with death.

“What – Who are you, strange little one? Kirathas did not inform me of a new fledging and, no matter what Sakura might insist, you are not one.”

He ignored the stranger, hearing the cultured, not-quite arrogant voice of the Ministry worker instead, the man who had made the Minister’s role a ceremonial one and seized the power for himself. He did not see the stranger for what he truly was – ancient, powerful Master of Asia, one of the last true elders of the race – and instead saw what might have been if he had not wrapped the world of magic in Avada Kedavra green and blood-red.

“Can you not speak, strange little one?”

A cold hand touched his cheek, guided his face away from the sunlight and into the dark; and when he opened his eyes to truly see for the first time, the stranger laughed and led him from the sterilized white room with its chains and false light.

“What a wonderful gift he left me, my new broken little doll.”

Deathly cold hands cupped his face, forcing him to meet Sirius’s eyes in a stranger’s face, and the stranger smiled in a manner that reminded him of smug, self-satisfied Draco before his world had shattered with one hard blow.

“I wonder, who broke you, little doll of mine?”

He did not answer (voice long forgotten, throat paper-dry and lips cracked and bleeding – “Scream for me, Potter” and Macnair’s whisper-soft voice left his ears as a bone snapped, half-out of his arm) and the stranger did not ask again, instead leading him to some other place every bit as false-luxurious as proud Malfoy’s ancestral home.

‘No answer, doll-mine? Ah, well, it does not matter anymore. You are mine now.”

Somewhere far away, he could hear Sirius laughing his bark-like laugh and see Draco’s pale pointed face, sneer firmly in place as they watched him from high up in the Astronomy tower.

º¤§§¤º

The first time he saw red eyes, he instinctively lashed out with magic and his world bled monster as faceless people screamed in pain/anger/terror. He could see Voldemort standing before him again, serpentine face twisted in unholy glee with pure malice in his eyes; and when he looked for others he saw them all again – Macnair with his bloodied hands and empty smirk, Lucius Malfoy with his sneer and disgust, Bellatrix with her grating laughter and mocking words, and all the others he had killed.

“As long as one of us survives” the not-man hissed, becoming a human-snake that lunged for him, jaws apart and teeth dripping poison. ‘You can’t escape.’

He was torn away from the snake-creature by a burst of cold that burned him, left him trembling and frozen in place.

“Stop” someone was telling him, voice infused with power as the cold ebbed and then returned full-force. “Release them.” The magic paused, stopped, and there was faint screaming as the magic came back, a roaring wave that swept into him and brought blissful quiet and darkness with it – escape from the pain that ripped and tore at his nerves until they were frayed to nothing.

When he was dragged back into the light, fighting the pull every second, he saw Dumbledore, the twinkle gone from accusing blue eyes that stared at him from over half-moon glasses.

‘I expected better from you’ they whispered, disappointment in every syllable. ‘I thought that you knew better than to turn Dark, just like Tom.’

He struggled against invisible bonds; a red haze overtaking his vision as the magic surged again, lashing out at the specter that dissolved when it touched.

“I didn’t” he shouted – but he was not speaking and, although his lips moved, it had never been so utterly silent and it frightened him more than Voldemort’s possession of his body ever had – lose your voice and you lose whowhat you are.

‘Then what do you call this?’

The fog cleared from before his eyes and everywhere he looked, there was death clinging to the air. Sirius-blue eyes were watching him from behind that invisible wall that separated the carnage from the eyes of the world (children cowering behind the wall; never grow up and everything would always be fairy-tale perfect and safe – but he had never been a child, just like Tom; and they were one and the same, children trapped in a world of adults that twisted them until all that was left was cold blood and power that ripped and tore) and he took a step forwards before stopping.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way” he quietly said to no one in particular. His words had never sounded more hollow and worthless to his ears.

º¤§§¤º

He was left alone after his last breakdown – “no one wants a monster like you,” the man with the quivering mustache and purpling face had roared before he had died – and the only one who would visit him was the vampire with Sirius’s eyes.

(“You are not normal, doll of mine.”

Laughter, a cold harsh sound that he did recognize and did not realize was coming from his mouth.

“What is normal?” he asked; and the vampire did not respond, instead watching as he turned away and stared at a white-washed wall – because there was no point in waiting for a reply that would never come. )

He did not sleep anymore – Sirius, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Tonks, Shacklebolt, Lavender, Susan, Pavarti, Padma, Ernie, Justin, Terry – the list of the dead went on and on and on in his head and he could still see their bodies, twisted and broken in death – for there was no sleep to be found, no respite from a life that shredded him to pieces and taped together again in a mockery of a person.

(“Harry!”

High-pitched voice, one that was tinged with hysteria – Hermione then. He turned to face her, lowering his wand as the beginnings of a curse faded away into nothingness; Hermione, self-righteous Hermione who still dreamed of a perfect world where everyone would live in peace, was not his enemy yet. She stared at him – flesh-and-bone, clothing hanging off a figure more dead than alive – and shook her head, backing away as another crack distorted her dream.

“No…not my Harry anymore…not the Harry that I knew…”

She turned and fled – just like everyone else and it was for the better because to be near him was to die because death walked in his footsteps and it was death whom they saw, not him.)

“Do you never sleep, doll of mine?”

He turned to look at the doorway with deadened eyes and then looked away. There was no need to answer because they both knew the answer, through experience if nothing else.

Never again.

(“You never sleep anymore, Potter.”

Angry green eyes glared at him hatefully and Voldemort mentally gave the brat credit for his impression of the infamous Snape death glare – it was quite fierce and if looks could kill, he would have died thousands of tortured deaths by now.

“Come, why so spiteful? It will be easier for the both of us if you talk.”

If anything, the glare only intensified.

“Why should I sleep? If I sleep, then you grow more powerful.”)

Fool. That was what he had been then. Regardless of whether he slept, Voldemort had still grown more powerful and he had grown weaker – parasitic relationship, he classified it as, even though there was no relationship save hatred.

’Sleep and I will take your place, rip your soul from your body and keep only a small piece alive to watch when I rule the world and shape it as I wish.’

º¤§§¤º

It had lasted for almost three years before he had snapped again, the magic taking over and destroying everything beyond repair – dead bodies, newly-made ruins as the bloody dust settled – and leaving him the sole survivor of a second apocalyptic disaster. Three years of pretending that he was tamed – insane, yes, but tamed. Three years of a constant decay, until he was little more than a shell that saw, heard, and remembered – but did not see or hear that which was flesh-and-blood. Three years of Voldemort biding his time, just a fragment of a soul – but a powerful fragment all the same because he knew.

Voldemort knew what it was that had kept him alive – “If I die, then he will have won and so I will live for all of eternity - for who can kill me if I have the magic?” There was no response from the cold, long-dead body of Daphne Greengrass and he was not quite sure why he sat there, staring at the painted red sky and talking to a rotting corpse – and the creature laughed from the silence of the ruins of his mind. When the magic spilled forth one final time, it was Voldemort who rode the never-ceasing wave that sung of death and destruction and a longing for more and laughed with his new-found freedom, crafting a new body from his old.

In the end, Harry Potter had been nothing but a fool – a darker representation of a fool, true, but a fool nonetheless. He had been fighting a battle that he could not win ever since the beginning (and he had known that at one point, known that it was a hopeless struggle that would end in senseless death and ruin, but he had still fought on because it was all that he knew by then).

º¤§§¤º

“Struggle, then, lost little lamb, so you may claim to have fought. Struggle and kill for the sake of a flickering light that does not exist anymore. And when you are dead and dying, little lamb, remember this day; this day where the world came to a crashing halt and everything fell to ruins in the name of what you called holy. There is nothing holy here, poor little lamb. All holiness is but an illusion – a nightmare created for our amusement to torment your kin – and there has never been a light – and there will never be one.”

Relinquo totus spes, vos quisnam penetro hic;

Pro obscurum reigns, Eternus.

The ending is Latin, if anyone is wondering. And I do know what it means, but my brain refuses to cooperate with me.

In addition to the random ideas (for my originals) that have been floating around my short-circuiting brain, the plotbunnies have apparently mutated once again. They're quite insist that I choose from one of the three new demon-spawn that are gnawing away at my senses.

Unfortunately, each one of them is equally strange and likely to develop into an epic that will never be finished (and, by now, I must be growing infamous for never finishing my stories).

Meh. Anyways, I think that I will end up scribbling down the beginnings of each and [hopefully] typing them up and posting them [for no reason other than a complete lack of motivation to do homework]. I'd put some obligatory ending about enjoying my insanity in the form of words, but then that would make me a good person, which I fundamentally refuse to believe I am.

But I digress. And continuing that line of thought would lead to some introspective rant in which I discover my true self or something equally full of BS.

If anyone wonders, I blame the last two paragraphs on horoscopes and the whole crappy deal with the 12 star signs and whatnot.

I met Murder on the way

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:55:49 GMT

Your Score: INTJ

You scored 90% introversion, 78% intuition, 100% thinking, and 71% judging!

ABOUT THE TEST

This personality test is heavily based on the Kiersey Sorter. In essence, it measures your personality across four variables: Introversion-Extraversion, Intuition-Sensing, Thinking-Feeling and Judging-Percieving. There are both positive and negative attributes to each of the traits.

Introversion-Extraversion: Generally, people who score high on "introversion" are reserved, quiet people who keep to themselves whereas people who score low on "introversion" are outgoing, friendly people who are extraverts.
Intuition-Sensing: People who score high on "intuition" are guided by gut instinct, they go on intuition as opposed to people who score low on this trait, who prefer to rely on established fact and their senses, rather than their own belief.
Thinking-Feeling: People with high scores on "thinking" rely more on their head to make decisions, whereas people who score low on "thinking" rely more on their heart to guide them. (Note: this has no bearing on a person's intelligence level; it merely refers to the way in which they make desicions.)
Judging-Percieving: People who score high "judging" are firm, decisisive people, whereas people who score low on this trait are flexible, accomodating people.

YOUR RESULTS

Stats: Approximately 6% of population.
DN characters with this type: Near.
In a nutshell: "Everything has room for improvement."

Desciption: Independent, original, analytical, and determined. Have an exceptional ability to turn theories into solid plans of action. Highly value knowledge, competence, and structure. Driven to derive meaning from their visions. Long-range thinkers. Have very high standards for their performance, and the performance of others. Natural leaders, but will follow if they trust existing leaders.

Mm, this was the most interesting online test that I've found in a while...
xD

And I just wasted 10 minutes taking it, analyzing the results, and posting this.

No wonder I never have time to do anything.

New Story (Unnamed) - Introduction

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:54:04 GMT

Let's see...I've started yet another story that looks as though it'll become an epic. And that's just counting original stories...

This one is different from my other two in that it's somewhat based off true events that are happening, though.

Anyways...this story doesn't have a name yet (and most likely won't have one until I'm a few chapters in).

Title: [Un-named]
Warnings: None yet - will most likely include physical/mental child abuse (explicit/non-explicit)
Summary: Blood is supposed to be thicker than water - but, then again, family was always supposed to come first. Apparently no-one thought to give the warning that his family could care less. [My life was normal once...I was normal once, years ago when my world had still been...full of happy smiles and bright eyes that hid nothing.]

3:00 A.M.

It’s oddly bright outside for a Friday night in the middle of winter. Then again, it’s been oddly bright out for months now. I would know – I have not slept easily since spring came years ago, bringing rain and tears and never-ending screaming with it.

It is a cold night, a lonely night – bright, fading stars in the sky and the pale, wan moon hovering just over the rooftops as the sky becomes brighter and brighter - the type of night where the cold seeps into your bones and never truly leaves you. My hands are cold, so pale that I can see the veins running through them – the color of snow and ice, Mother fondly told me all those years ago before everything fell to pieces.

This is the Witching Hour, or so they all say. This is the hour when the Devil is closest, the hour where impossible things happen. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is not. I have seen the impossible happen before my eyes – but I have seen that which was right before me disappearing at the same time.

It is snowing outside – another storm has come. The sky is still bright, covered in grey clouds that make it impossible to see the moon and the stars. I do not need to see them to know where they are – stars that are disappearing, the moon that is falling below the rooftops – and they do not concern me.

What use are the stars and the moon to one who has seen the world decay beyond hope of reparation?

3:13 A.M.

I should sleep. I should have slept hours ago, long before the grandfather clock announced it was midnight in low, booming chimes that echoed in an empty house filled with lies – but I cannot sleep. How can I ever sleep peacefully when I close my eyes and see my mother’s face, made all the more painfully tragic by the tears running down her cheeks as she tells me everything? How can I sleep when I look into the mirror every day, every hour, and see my father’s eyes staring back in my mother’s face? How can I sleep – how could anyone sleep – when I close my eyes to rest and see the face of my father, twisted by hatred and triumph – the face of his family, inexhaustible greed shining in dead eyes – as the verdict is announced?

I have not slept peacefully since that day and some part of me knows what the toll extracted from my body is – pitifully weak and fragile, a child’s body with ancient, jaded eyes and fine-boned hands that are as cold as the ice that gathers on the fountains. It is not that I do not feel exhaustion or weariness – on the contrary, it plagues me – but I simply cannot sleep. Anytime I close my eyes and rest, I remember the past, remember those five minutes that had ruined my life and turned me into this doll. It is not a past I wish to remember, but it is a past I remember all the same.

The moment the verdict was announced, something in me shattered. I could still see the judge’s lips moving, feel the sharp edges of the table digging into my hands as I clenched at the marred wood, but I could not hear anything. It was a dull roar, one that grew in intensity as my eyes moved, of their own accord, to a face I had once known a long, long time ago. But, it was not my father who sat there anymore, another lady with painted nails and a plastic face smiling her dull smile of bleached bone sitting next to him. My father had died the moment the phone call had come – not physically, perhaps, but I did not know him anymore. He was another faceless stranger in a mass of strangers – and I have never felt such hatred as I felt in that one moment. It was a stranger who had ruined my life, my future – a stranger who had left my mother a broken, dried-up husk of a person and sucked all the life out of her.

I looked to the right, towards the lady who sat besides me, and something else was torn apart – my mother’s eyes had always been her weakness, the mirror into her mind. Her eyes were blank, unfeeling pools of grey – and that was when I knew that there would be no more bright future, no more whispered words of encouragement. She had died the moment the verdict had been announced, destroying her last hope, and it was an empty shell who sat besides me, cold hand clasped in mine. I have never felt as cold as I had when I saw her eyes in my entire life – and I have never felt so cold since then. My mother had been the only light in my world – a beacon of hope as my father and his family ripped everything else into pieces.

My father had destroyed that only light too – and he had done so with a smile on his face. I would never – could never – forgive him for doing that. It was the last time I ever acknowledged him as my father unless it was by blood – it was poison running through his veins and that was a poison that I whole-heartedly embraced.

3:46 A.M.

It is odd how fast time passes by when one is reminiscing. Here, in this house built of lies and half-truths, I have built my own utopia – a world away from the world, where everything happens exactly as I dictate it. It is my paradise, my escape – for although I do not live here anymore, it is still mine, more so than anything else I have – and for this reason, I have made it my own. It is my right – for I have lost everything else and there is nothing left for me.

What am I to do when my entire world has collapsed into a dystopia as I watched?

But even my utopia is not perfect. There are places that I will never enter again – a dystopia of hell in the utopia that I have created to escape the dystopia of the world, if you will. These are the irrevocably tainted places – the places where I saw another small part of my life crumble.

4:00 A.M.

Do I confuse you, my dear reader? Perhaps it is just as well, then, that I mean to fully explain everything. My life was normal once, years ago when the sun still shone brightly and warmed my body. I was normal once, years ago when my world had still been young, a place full of sunshine, happy smiles, and bright eyes that hid nothing.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning. That is where all stories start, my dear reader. Isn’t that true? Life is more cyclic than anything, but stories always start at the beginning, even a story of life.

4:13 A.M.

Ah, but I have gotten off topic, have I not? It is so very easy for me to become distracted now…

But I digress again. The story of which I speak began many years ago, when the sun still shone with a bright light and I was but a child.

Writer's Block: Meaningful Words

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 03:33:32 GMT

What is your favorite quote? And why?

View other answers

Currently (because it changes every few weeks)?

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."
-Socrates

I'm not sure why I like this quote so much, but it just sticks in my head no matter what. And it's totally, 100% true. Seriously.

[And I will now end this post before I begin a lecture!rant about why the point of living in so that one dies and how society is totally death!centric in one way or another and why death is something that should be loved/worshipped...

I'm in a strange mood and it's my parents' fault for making me feel like a worthless failure/waste of space over my grades (that aren't that bad, really). And I really probably should stop this post. Really.

Oh, and that HP one-shot I started? It's almost close to being done. And that means it'll be done by the end of March. And I'm telling the truth this time.]

School/Story Snippet - Harry Potter (AU, long one-shot)

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:38:33 GMT

I suck at updating stories and sticking to one story at a time. I think it's safe to establish that as a fact, especially when I consider how many stories I've started (and mostly abandoned) in the last few weeks. And I have an unhealthy obsession with reading fanfics before I even consider finishing my homework, which leads to last-minute scramblings to finish homework that really should have been done earlier...

In my defence, I was sick for the last week (some bronchitis/cold mixture - or so the doctors say. I didn't know bronchitis or colds resulted in migraine-like headaches that made using a computer impossible...). And I missed school on a day I really shouldn't have missed and I'm still trying to make up all the work I missed. And I completely ruined my grade in at least 1 class by missing two test reviews and one in-class essay that I can't figure out for the life of myself. (Spanish IV sucks, especially when it's taught by the teacher I currently have. How does watching some Spanish movie about a quadriplegic man who wants to commit suicide relate to a chapter that centers on vocab about basic political/ideology crap? Especially when the actors talk so fast that no one can figure out what they're saying, even with subtitles!)

And I'm ranting. That's another thing I'm hopelessly guilty of - even thinking about school seems to put me in rant!mode right now...

Anyways, I did manage to get started on a Harry Potter one-shot that I'm fairly confident I can finish within the next few months...hopefully...if I remember and put my mind to it. (Chances of that are slim - I'm more likely to completely finish writing that epic original story I'm working on that looks like it will have at least 3 story arcs. I can hope/dream/wish, though.)

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I need to get back to writing a mini-paper/letter about Columbus Day and whether or not my town should celebrate the holiday after taking the slavery/sex slave trade/genocide that Columbus basically started. And then I need to research a Spanish movie, study for a Physics test, and write a rough draft of a Spanish essay and then memorize it. And I need to come up with an English vocabulary presentation and activity. And I have less than three minutes to do this.

Summary: Death followed his footsteps wherever he went. [Voldemort is dead now but Harry cannot~~willnot~~ forget the magic that threatens to take control any moment now.] (Summary subject to change as the one-shot continues)
Warnings: Implied character deaths, ~~slightly~~insane!Harry

It was no longer something that he thought about, the repetitive movements of his wand-less hand – snapping wood and the splinters dug into his cheek, blood red as the feather fell – as the bodies crumpled to the ground. It was simply something that needed to be done and he had always done what was needed, no matter what the cost. There were days when he wished that the only things that needed to be done were chores – never his true family (long dead and rotting) but all that was left – but those days had disappeared in green light and fire. All that he did now was act as the executioner, a stand-in for death on grimy, ruined spaces where the forgotten bodies decayed. Those were the days that would never disappear – etched into him like so many lines of pale ink on parchment – and once he had tried to forget for months before giving up, shoving everything down the link with Voldemort and feeling the same phantom pain as bones snapped and flesh burned.

(“Look at itty-bitty baby Potter! Does it hurt, baby?”

Blindly lashing out at the voice only to discover that nothing was there. More pain, a thousand knives cutting into him as laughter bounced off the walls, a cold cruel sound.

“Does baby Potter want to play a game? All you have to do is say yes, Potty, and it’ll be over for you.”

Silence – never say a word and it will all come to pass because nothing is forever – and more laughter as a foot nudged his bruised stomach.

The voices were louder (~~closer~~) now and he lashed out again, the magic coming unbidden to him and burning him from the inside out as the darkness lifted in an explosion of color and sound.)

º₫¤§ûûûû§ ¤₫º

“Go.”

“They’ll come looking for you” she explained and that was enough for him to understand what was needed.

“Don’t leave any traces.”

“Will you be free again?”

The undertone of the question – “forgive me (us) for everything” and Hermione’s whisper “Live for all of us, Harry. You’re not just a weapon” – made him stop and he shrugged, turning around again.

“I’ll let you know when I am.”

Luna laughed, the cheerful sound almost covered up by the crackling of the fire. She knew what he meant and she wouldn’t wait for an answer.

“Go. We’ll still be here if you return.”

He left with a sharp crack and Luna’s dreamy smile as she fell into the fire was the last thing he saw as his world spiraled into a blur of colors.

º₫¤§ûûûû§ ¤₫º

So...tell me what you think?

Such a Sweet Poison - Chapter 1 (:Sweet Temptation:)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:24:12 GMT

I'm surprised I managed to come up with another chapter for this story so fast...must be because I skipped over actually studying for 90% of my exams.

Summary: He was such a sweet poison, this young child of shadows and blood. [He had thought himself above temptation and sin, once. That was before he had tasted the addictive poison of the boy, though, and now he was just another victim of the Devil’s temptation]

Warnings: Um...involves the Devil and may include the nature of humans and sin? Later chapters will include things such as implied shota-con and yaoi.

º₫¤§ûûûû§ ¤₫º

: June 6, 2006 - Sweet temptation:

His eyes were the first thing that gave him away in the crowd of people. They were a dark shade of black and red, the colors of death, and they looked so very out of place in the face of a little doll-like boy. Those eyes were focused on someone else behind me and when I turned around, there was a tanned man standing there with a look of horror on his face.

“Le Diable” the Frenchman whispered, pointing and backing away. “Il est venu pour nous tuer!”

The man turned and ran, the look of abject horror never disappearing. When I turned around again, the little boy was looking straight at me and I found myself moving forwards until I had stopped right before the child.

“What is your name?”

Eyes the colors of death stared up at me, seemingly studying me before morphing into the innocent eyes of a child.

“They call me a demon. Mother and Father called me the Devil before they died, though.”

There was an utter lack of emotion in the not-quite childish voice and I found myself noticing miniscule details – the way the boy’s eyes never left my own, the way the boy tilted his head slightly when watching me, the way the boy’s lips parted for a breath…all little things that I had never before paid any attention to in anyone else.

“What do you call yourself?”

He simply blinked, reaching out and tugging on my sleeve until I knelt to his level. Those odd eyes were still staring at me and the boy leaned over to whisper into my ear, hands holding onto my arm.

“I don’t have a name yet” he whispered, mouth so close to my ear that I could feel each little breath hat left him. “Mother and Father never named me formally and they died before anyone ever found out.”

That, more than anything, may have been what prompted me to offer my home to the little boy with no name – in the utopian society that was in the process of developing around us, having no name meant that one was doomed to be an anathema. When I asked, the boy simply shrugged and took my hand, silently following me as I walked towards a nearby recording studio. My chauffeur would be waiting there with the car, I knew, and then I would take this strange boy to the Adoption Offices. The Naming Offices would be next, I decided, following by a trip to the Healer’s Lodge. Afterwards…well, that was something that I would work out once I was that far in my plan.

“Why do you want me?” the boy asked, looking up at me with his strange eyes. By now, we had reached the studio and my chauffeur opened the back-seat door for me. The boy scrambled in after me and stayed on the edge of his seat, eyes never leaving me. “Everyone else calls me the Devil and says that I will taint them and cause them to fall.”

Truthfully…I myself was not even completely sure what had driven me to reach a decision so hastily, but there was simply something about the boy that forced me to pay attention to him. The boy’s lips curled up into a smile that was every bit as strange as his blank eyes and he got onto the seat, crawling over until he was right next to me. “Aren’t you scared that I’ll taint you?” he asked, almost in my lap by now. “Aren’t you frightened that I’ll drag you down with me to the depths of Sheol with me?”

His voice reminded me of another one that I knew, a young man my age with laughing blue eyes and hair just a shade lighter than the gold-plated walls of the King’s Palace. That one was the son of the elderly Deputy Regent and he was the reason why I had been in the streets that day. The boy was in my lap now and, for a brief moment, the image of the blond Regent’s Heir was overlaid on the boy.

“They say that anyone who touches me will be cursed and that anyone who tried to redeem me will fail” the boy continued as the image flickered before disappearing. “Someone tried to, once, but he failed and then they called me the Devil after that. Why do you think you’ll be any different from him?”

Something was warning me that I would be better off not knowing who this “him” was but there was something compelling me to ask.

(In retrospect, it probably would have been better if I had not asked at all because, even knowing what the boy had done – what he was capable of doing – to that other one, it only made it harder still to see him as a boy. I have no doubt that the boy~~Devil~~ knew it too.)

“Who?”

The boy tensed slightly and there was a flicker of anger in his eyes before he smiled with a hint of hitherto-unknown viciousness. “The exalted Aurisitan Cardinal” he purred, malicious delight evident in his eyes when he pronounced the name. “The fool, trying to ‘redeem’ me.”

I involuntarily gasped – the Aurisitan Cardinal had been revered across the world before he had, for all appearances, gone insane. The media had eagerly devoured every scrap of material on the issue – the Cardinal had claimed that the Devil had been reborn and that he brought the original Sin that had tempted Adam and Eve with him. Exorcisms had failed and he had continued to make increasingly wild claims before reporters uncovered the fact that he had taken in an orphaned boy just a few months before he went insane. Investigators hired by the Church had reported that the boy, however, was an innocent and that he was a veritable angel. The Cardinal, upon hearing this, had flew into apoplectic fit and insisted that the boy was the Devil and that he should be exorcised and burned at a stake.

“You…him? But he – you – that was you!”

The boy laughed and did crawl into my lap, hands gripping my shoulders as he stared into my eyes. When I reached up and made as though to loosen his hands from my shoulders, he reacted unnaturally quickly, grabbing my hand with his own and leaning closer until his lips were right next to my cheek.

“Are you scared now, papa? Le danse infernal de feu is calling for us and Le diable waits.”

How the boy came to know that term, I never found out – Le danse infernal de feu was a term used by the religious scholars to describe the seduction and temptation that the Devil presented.

“It was so simple, making him scream and run away just like a frightened little mouse. Just a few simple words and a touch or two before he started to fall, just like everyone else did. Do you want to see it, papa? I can show you everything, watching the world fall around us.”

He didn’t sound like a little boy, some little part of my brain was whispering then. Not that I had paid that voice any attention – his voice had been too captivating and there was something about the way his voice crept into my brain and remained there, tempting me to say yes and take everything that was being offered.

“Don’t you want it, papa? To see how the world falls to temptation and how Le diable returns to us?”

He looked at me from under his long eyelashes, eyes half-closed, and there had been a tiny lazy smile on his lips as he pressed his cheek against the hand that he still held. There was something about him that beckoned for me, tempting me with unspoken promises and whatever I wanted.

“Will you say yes?”

He turned his head slightly, still meeting my eyes as he pressed a kiss to my hand, cold puffs of breath chilling the skin.

“Will you give in to me?”

Involuntary anger mixed with that voice whispering for me to prove who was in control and the boy hadn’t made a noise when he was roughly pushed to the side. He had stared up at me with those black and red eyes and when I moved from my seat and held him down with my hands on his shoulders, there had been a smug smile on his lips. He had been expecting my response, some part of me dimly realized as I stared down at the tiny boy.

(Why I still believed he was but an innocent boy, I do not remember anymore. There are many things that I no longer remember now, as I write this. It was the work of the Devil, he who came and manipulated my every thought until I was but a marionette in the hands of a puppet master.)

Chilled by the thought that everything I did was being predicted by this…this boy who was more than just a boy no matter how he looked, I let go of him and moved back to my seat. When I glanced back over at him again, the boy was sitting there where I had left him, looking out the tinted windows with an inexplicable smile on his face.

‘Le danse infernal de feu is calling for us and Le diable waits.’

I should have listened to the uneasy feeling stirring in my stomach when the boy slowly, deliberately turned his head and gave me a smile tinged with a hint of smugness. I didn’t, though, and when the car stopped outside the Adoption Offices, I simply got out of the car and waited for the boy to join me.

º₫¤§ûûûû§ ¤₫º

So...tell me what you think, please?

Exams are almost over!
^.^'
I just have a week's worth of catching up to do in music before everything's back on track for me...