REQUIEM - [h.p]

III; complexities

| YEAR 3; CHAPTER NINE |
COMPLEXITIES

     HE DIDN'T KNOW WHY HIS BODY DRAGGED HIM TO THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE SCHOOL. Yet, the longer he stared beyond the inky foliage, the more his stomach churned violently. His fingers twitched at his side, grasping for the wand that was abandoned beneath his pillow. The darkness threatened to swallow him whole, and even so, that very same foreboding shadow drew him in like a moth to a flame. Like a siren, it beckoned him forth with its melody.

Edwyn thought that if he listened closely enough, he could almost hear the forest's song. It was a chilling, despairing hum that echoed throughout the Forbidden Forest; like a thousand, lifeless warbling birds.

His legs moved without command, moving him closer to the entrance. Dark trees shrouded the grey sky till it was scarcely noticeable, and Edwyn was certain that the entire forest must be a constant, neverending night. Like a predator, it threatened to engulf his very being beneath its unending, gaping maw. 

It was with a brief flash of razor-sharp canine teeth in he snapped out of his trance. His loud footsteps jarred to a halt, and his eyes widened in realization. It only took a single glance at the school for unease to claw at his gut. The road back looked far more sinister than he thought it had before. 

The tempestuous clouds saturated the school in darkness, and if Edwyn looked closely enough, he could see ominous black figures drifting through the sky. That familiar biting frost smothered the air almost painfully and the hair on his arms rose. His senses were all on high alert as the dementors hovered not too far from him.

He wondered for a moment, how in Merlin's name he had come here in the first place. Sure, he was more than a little distraught. He thought he had gotten rid of that thing, but apparently, he wasn't thorough enough. Maybe he should have set it on fire. That should've done the job.

He let out a shaky sigh before a resounding snap from the twisting branches from behind, had him jolting back. He could've sworn he recognized Weasley's rat staring at him beneath a wilted bush. Yet in the blink of an eye, the animal fled to the safety of the forest. Edwyn put it down to nerves and guilt because that's what it was. 

This was just another excuse for his mind to send a cursed reminder of the other rodents he left hidden inside his trunk, despite Hera's annoyed hisses of the smell. The fate of those creatures was already set in stone, and Edwyn knew he would have to stop stalling soon. He was getting somewhere, and it wouldn't be too long now until he'd have to put his theories to the test.

-

The air was as frigid as just about every day in Scotland during the winter. The morning could not have affected Professor McGonagall as much as it did when one of her lions came ramming into her office with panic and hysteria in their eyes as they cried about a rotting thing outside the quidditch field.