*Discontinued* No Longer

Hallway Encounters

Harry Potter**

Harry was practically giddy with happiness. Lucius and Narcissa were separated, and even better, Narcissa was going to jail. He wanted badly to be the one to tell Draco, but he knew that was for Lucius or Severus to do.

It was while he was traveling to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, nearly skipping, that something intercepted him. It was like he'd run into a wall, one that appeared suddenly and was made of concrete.

He fell to the ground, winded, and felt a coil of magic wrap itself around his neck. As Metus walked up from behind him and came around into his view, Harry felt dread like a block of ice in his stomach.

Stupid. Stupid of him not to have been paying more attention to his surroundings! It was just that he'd assumed Metus wasn't going to go after him physically because all he'd done up til now was attack his mind in the Great Hall. Harry didn't know what was going to happen to him, and wasn't eager to find out.

The magic cord around his neck tightened and he gasped at the pain, scrabbling at his throat with his fingers to try and get more air. It didn't work, and he found himself being floated in the air behind the false Dumbledore.

Metus walked through a wall of the castle, and desperately, Harry tried to reach out to Hogwarts for assistance. She didn't answer him. Or, as was more likely, she couldn't answer him. After all, for Metus to so seamlessly become Dumbledore, he must've stolen the liar's mind, the liar who knew better than anyone how to bind the castle.

The liar had done it successfully, the only thing he lacked being the strength to hold Hogwarts when Harry allied himself with her. The faux Dumbledore obviously didn't have the same troubles with power deficit that the original did.

Since Metus also seemed to be more powerful than Harry as well, he didn't have a shot at saving himself or her. He thought over the last few days. He hadn't corresponded with Hogwarts in. . . three days? And he'd met the replacement liar yesterday morning. He was just so stupid!

They crossed through the wall and into. . . somewhere. It was a large chamber, made of white-gray stone, and shaped like the inside of a cylinder. There were no doors, and it was frigid cold. Harry's teeth began to chatter immediately upon entering. His breath steamed the air in front of him, but it was a bit hard to see properly through the tears welling in his eyes.

What had he ever done to deserve this? Harry wondered if it was for killing his relatives. After all, wouldn't it be karma for the murderer to suffer a worse fate than he'd dealt out, especially considering the torture he'd put the Dursleys through by making them experience the abuse they'd performed on him before they died?

Metus put him inside a sort of transparent sphere of magic, and released the hold on Harry's neck. Gasping, he desperately tried to fill his lungs again, his vision clearing of any tear induced haze. The air was only slightly warmer on the inside than out, and he found himself shoving his hands under his arms in an attempt to keep warm.

That was when the first barrage on his mind began. Wave after wave crashed barriers down, then zipped through the useless memories stored inside, and repeated the process. He was rapidly constructing more walls, but not nearly fast enough. Trapped inside the sphere, he was at the mercy of his kidnapper, and no one was going to be able to help him.

He struggled as hard as he could, fighting to be strong enough to defeat this adversary. He was drawing on a lot of magic though, and the painful lava-like feeling of magic poisoning began again. There was fire coursing through his veins, and it grew hotter and faster on more deadly as he erected more barriers.

His eyes were glowing along with the rest of his body, his bones and organs becoming translucent with the power of the light. Tears began to run down his cheeks, and clinked as they hit the bottom of his sphere. He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow against the pain, but this body wasn't as strong as Era's, and just when Metus began to tear through his memories, he fell unconscious.