This week we've got a contribution from our incumbent president, Kalina, inspired by a collaborative prompt from various HPSoc members - feel free to have a guess at what those prompts were in the comments below!
Dennis crawled on all fours, but he didn’t really have to; at just four and a half feet, he was quite inconspicuous, even when he needn’t be. He did an elaborate tumble and swerved left, seeing his objective in sight.
Tired of crawling, he dashed to the slightly ajar door, not believing his luck that his mother’s new assistant had left the forbidden room open to his wandering eleven-year-old mind.
It wasn’t Dennis’ fault; if his mother didn’t want him to infiltrate the room, she shouldn’t have declared it out of bounds. That was just pleading with him to try and break-in, after all, he was destined to be the next best curse breaker England had ever seen.
His chest tightened slightly at the thought, a memory of a tall man with wavy blonde hair, shaking his head animatedly to dislodge the sand that had taken up residence from the previous sandstorm they had just experienced.
Dennis could make out, it was slightly foggy, for it had been six years ago, but he could remember the large triangular objects off in the distance, and he could almost feel the sun striking his pudgy, reddening face.
‘Dennis! Look here!’ His brother called to him in his memory, teetering on a stepladder. Colin was eight years old, and had just received his first camera, a gift from their father, and Colin had been very insistent about taking the perfect picture.
Dennis remembered how Colin had kicked up a fuss about that camera. It seemed ever so silly to him; their father had just died, and all Colin could go on about was some silly camera, insisting that they go back and look for it, as if their mother was ever going to let that happen. That pyramid had been where their father died, and within two hours of their father’s passing, Dennis, Colin and their mother were back in England. And an hour after that their mother had been back at work, and that’s where she remained, every moment she could, for years. Working on whatever it was that she had been working on in this very room.
A noise pulled him out of the memory, and he snapped back to reality. The room was multitudes bigger than he expected, cavernous and cave-like, with nothing but a humongous stone like feature at the centre. Dennis had been surprised that he was only 2 feet away from it. He must have absentmindedly walked over, and the next second he was right in front of it, that strange murmuring noise more persistent and consistent, almost as if it was internal, like his heartbeat.
He looked at the fluid like substance ahead of him, finding it hard to find an adequate word to describe it. It looked like air and liquid and solid all rolled up in one, and then he squinted.
There, amidst the grey-ish substance, stood him. Or what he thought was him.
Was this, in fact, a mirror? Had his mother been working on a mirror?
Just then, his reflection had lifted up its finger, pointing it straight at him. How odd, thought Dennis. Looking down to be sure that, yes, both his hands were planted at his side, but then he remembered that movie his father had made them watch when they were little, the one with the little alien and the flying bicycle. And without thinking, he lifted his finger up, to press it against that of his reflection.
‘Dennis!’ snapped Cress Creevey, hurtling through the door, furious that that inept assistant had not been able to answer confidently whether he did, in fact, lock lab room A. This all was expertly timed with the sudden disappearance of her youngest son, which had her hurtling over to said room at speeds only a parent could accomplish, knowing just where he would have wandered off to.
She sighed as she saw him, relief quickly replacing the anger.
She couldn’t lose anybody else.
She dragged the little boy out of the room, where her older son Colin was patiently waiting, with his camera ready. He clicked. ‘Oh, not now, Colin,’ she chided. His face fell, and she didn’t have the time to feel guilty about that. But then he looked at her, suddenly, utterly perplexed. Staring from the little boy to her side, to her, his face fell further if possible, the confusion growing. He shook his head, as if to shake on an image on a Polaroid.
‘Miss Creevey,’ stuttered the soon to be fired assistant. ‘Erm, your meeting with Mr. Fudge-‘
‘Oh Goodness, is it 4pm already. Okay, okay,’ she muttered to herself, patting down her pockets for her notebook, trying to remember the figures that Fudge had requested. ‘Colin, look after your brother, I shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Oh okay,’ Colin moaned. ‘Come on Nigel’, he muttered to the younger boy, gesturing he follow him down the corridor.
A small smile flickered across Nigel’s face, glancing back at the now locked door.
He had made it out.
And so it begins.
Dennis sat, cross legged, staring at the grey not quite liquid, not quite gas, ignoring the whispers around him. He had no idea how long he had sat there for, there was nothing to gauge the passing of time. Not shadow, or light, or heartbeat. Just the whispers.
Suddenly, a man emerged, a rugged man, a familiar man. He had seen him somewhere; he couldn’t quite place it.
The man looked about, and then down at Dennis, he immediately turned about, but just like it had been for Dennis, he couldn’t get out. He ran at the grey entryway, again and again and again.
‘It’s no use,’ said Dennis. Looking up at the man, with the grey eyes, and the black hair. A handsome man. ‘You’ve been unveiled.’
The man continued to run back at the veil, again, and again. And Dennis knew it was no use. There was no getting out without pulling someone in. And who could do such a cruel thing, except fucking Nigel. It was murder, stealing a person’s life like that.
Dennis knew there was no use talking to him.
He was but a whisper now.