VOID, harry potter

i. deadly dementors

————————————

CHAPTER ONE

deadly dementors

————————————

JULIET AND HER BEST FRIENDS, Kate Troy and Callum Martin, were sitting happily in one of the many carriages of the Hogwarts Express, laughing and talking like friends do. They were discussing their new upcoming subjects they had chosen to take in their third year, wondering who was going to be the first to get a detention this year. To no one's surprise, their other best friend, William Dawson, had his nose buried in a particularly thick-looking book.

Their joyous conversation was brought to an abrupt halt when the train began to slow, unusually early in their journey to the school.

"Why is the train stopping? We can't possibly be there yet," Juliet asked, very confused as she watched the window fog up and freeze.

"I don't know, or care, I'm starving!" Callum said, with a ravenous look on his face.

"How? You just ate three pumpkin pasties like twenty minutes ago!" Kate said, rolling her eyes.

"I'm a growing boy!"

"Is that why you haven't even grown an inch this summer?"

"I've grown at least three!"

"We have ages to go until we make it to Hogwarts, I don't know why we've stopped." William said, interrupting Kate before she could retort back to Callum.

The four friends listened silently as the train slowed down and the sound of the pistons died away. The sound of the rain pounding the windows was more prominent now that the train had stopped.

"I'll go look outside to see if anyone else knows what's happened," Juliet said, beginning to stand up. She walked over to the compartment door and slid it open; she peeked her head out of the compartment, only to find various others doing the same; it seemed that no one else knew why the train had stopped either. Juliet found herself locking eyes with none other than Harry Potter, who appeared to be in a few compartments down from her. Giving him a brief smile, she pulled her head back into the compartment.

Closing the compartment door, Juliet shuddered as she felt the temperature decrease unusually quickly.

"It's so cold! I wonder—" Callum began, but was cut off by the lights in their compartment going out, plunging them into darkness.

A creaking sound made Juliet and her friends whip their heads round. Bewildered, they watched, as much as they could make out in the dark, as the door of their compartment slowly jerked back open again.

Juliet felt her stomach jolt as she felt around for her wand, and muttered 'lumos' when she had found it. William did the same and they both simultaneously lifted their arms up to illuminate who had opened the door.

But it wasn't who had opened the door, it was what. What had opened the door seemed to be a creepy, dark-cloaked figure. Its hand still laid on the edge of the compartment door, Juliet saw its twig-like fingers; they looked as decayed and black as a corpse that had been rotting for over centuries. The four friends could only scramble backwards as far away as possible, their backs hitting the far end wall of the compartment.

They watched, horrified, as the thing beneath the hood began sucking in a long, intense, rattling breath, like it was trying to suck in more than the air in the room.

An intense cold swept over them. A cold like no other. One that flipped their insides and doused them in a chill from head to toe.

It was over faster than they could blink. The lights had turned back on and the creature had gone. Juliet didn't notice her eyes were closing until she snapped them wide open again.