Kassandra Bauer and the Deathly Hallows. (Book 7)

Chapter 43: The World Between Worlds.

I was lying face down, and the silence was deafening. I was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. No one else was here. I wasn't even sure if I was truly here. 

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it occurred to me that I must've existed. Must've been more than disembodied thoughts because I was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. I still had the sense of touch, and the thing against which I was lying existed, too.

Almost as soon as I reached this conclusion, I became conscious that I was naked. Convinced of my solitude, it didn't really concern me. I wondered if I could feel, would I be able to see? In opening my eyes, I realized... I still had my eyes. 

I was laying in a bright mist, though it was nothing like I ever experienced. My surroundings were not hidden by a cloudy vapor, rather the misty haze had not yet formed in my surroundings. The floor on which I laid seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be. 

"Is this... death?" 

I sat up. My body appeared unscathed. Any pain I felt disappeared, and the events of the battle could have happened a million years ago.

And suddenly, a noise reached me through the unformed nothingness that surrounded me. The sound of small, soft thumping's of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful. 

Really wished I was clothed. 

Barely had the wish formed inside my head did a set of robes appear a short distance away. I took them and pulled them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they appeared, just like that, at the precise moment I needed them...

I stood up looking around. Was I in some great Room of Requirement? The longer I looked, the more there was to see. A great dome glass roof glittered high above me in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by the mist...

This didn't look like the Field of Reeds. Or the Duat. Was this the Palace of Osiris? Somehow I didn't think so. 

I turned slowly on the spot, and my surroundings seemed to invent themselves before my eyes. A wide open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear, domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. I was the only person there, except for-

I recoiled. I had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It was the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed looking, and it laid shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, and struggling for breath. 

I'm going to be real that I was afraid of it. Small and fragile, the thing was, I did not want to approach it. Nevertheless, I drew slower nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon as I was standing near enough to touch it, yet I couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt like a coward. I really should control myself, but it repulsed me. 

"You cannot help." 

I spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward me, sprightly and upright, wearing robes of a pale like blue.

"Professor Dumbledore?" I asked stunned. 

"Harry." He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and undamaged. "You wonderful boy, You brave, brave man. Let us walk. There's someone who is most anxious to meet you." 

Still stunned, I followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading us to two seats I did not notice before, set some distance away under the high sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them and I fell into the other, staring at my old Headmaster's face. His long silver hair and beard, the piercing blue eyes behind half moon spectacles, the crooked nose. Everything was as I had remembered it. And yet...