Hogwarts Legacy: The Dark Veins In Time

Somnambulism

AESOP

There in the center of the darkest sky is a full

It's raining, harder than I've ever seen rain fall before.

How can I see the moon if it's raining like this?

The briny smell of the ocean, thoroughly blended with the smell of rot and fresh blood ruined my viewing of the pale Goddess in the night sky. I can hear the crashing waves outside of the cold, gray space in which I'm trapped in. Four blank walls, the missing ceiling giving off into the starry, moon-filled, rain-drenching sky. My knees and palms seared with so much pain against the concrete floor that my body desperately wanted to collapse, but I wouldn't allow it.

I hadn't come here alone.

I drop my head down and crawl forward into nothingness, seeking signs of life and finding nothing but the smell of death, putrid and salty, forming a thick cloud of despair around me. The next time my hand comes up and falls to the floor it doesn't meet with the chill of the gray stone, it finds something warmer that sticks my palm to the ground. When I raise it up again to continue my advance, both hands come down on the sticky substance, dragging my knees through it. The rotten smell stings at my eyes, tainting the air and I'm now struggling to inhale.

I have to get them out. Another crawl forward. It was all a trap. Two legs appear in my path. We weren't prepared for this. They kneel down. I'm so sorry. A mane of fiery red hair dripping with muck, a gorgeous face battered and bruised with their jaw jutted to the side, out of alignment. I'm sorry... I'm sorry. An endless stream of coagulating blood coming from her right eye. Clara...

"Where are they, love?" Please don't answer that.

"DEAD."

******

I jerk myself awake from the nightmare, reaching out and grabbing harshly onto the nearest thing, which happened to be the lapel of a dark velvet winter coat being worn by Clara Taylor.

The headache floods in the moment my eyes adjust to the waking world, sending a bit of bile up into my throat that I quickly swallow back down. My body aches and cracks from nodding off in such an uncomfortable crumpled position in the armchair by the fireplace within my private quarters. The flames crackle loudly, flaring up to emit more heat as the wind and rain rise in intensity against the windows and frame Clara's face hovering over mine in the perfect light, highlighting the pout of her lips and reflecting licks of fire in her pupils.

"It's just me, Ace," she whispers softly, "You were cursing in your sleep, were you having a nightmare?"

They keep coming these days.

"Unfortunately, though now its subject matter has escaped me." I lie to her. We never talk about that day. "What time is it?"

"Eleven o'clock in the evening. That's now the last five meals you've missed."

"I'm sorry." I sigh, even though I'm not sorry in the slightest. I couldn't bear to leave Y/N here with the possibility she would wake up alone, so I've secluded myself with her and placed the auror Arthur Wells in charge of Potions classes until further notice.

It has been three full days since Y/N and Sebastian returned from their excursion into the past. An accidental excursion, if I am to believe what Sebastian told me.

I would have never thought him to ever lie to me, but now the stolen Time-Turner dangles in the space between the part of me that still has the highest faith in the boy and the part that loathes the act of betrayal. Even having him pinned down in Hecat's office didn't spur him to tell me the complete truth of what happened, as if I were some senile old man who wouldn't be able to catch on to his withholdings. He wouldn't spare me the date they went to, any details of what they did, and though Dinah had said there wasn't any change in the present to be concerned about I still felt a gnawing at the back of my thoughts that was trying to tell me otherwise.