Fear (Sequel to Love: ADS)

Chapter 1. The Voice

The first thing you feel is pain; it surrounds you, thrumming uneven pulses through your head, down to your feet. It is as if every inch of you has been squeezed, and all of your blood flow simply stopped, and was only just coming back.

The second thing you feel is panic. Wave after wave of panic, thinking, “Where is she? Where is Hermione?”

You look around, but see only darkness. It is only then that the panic subsides into the more immediate, “Where am I?”

The pounding in your head dissipates as you stand, your legs wobbling. The world around you shifts, though you do not know if it is in your head, or actually moving. You peer through the inky darkness, looking for something, anything at all, that could lead you out. 

But there is nothing. 

Nothing, except a voice.

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Laughter, bubbling in from the darkness, surrounding, coming closer and closer, sinking towards me. It echoed, amplifying the euphoric giggles. My blood ran cold, a chill seeping into the core of my being. The laughter continued.

“Hee hee!” the voice came, high pitched and cheery. “Litt-le Dra-co Mal-foy!” The voice separated each word into two syllables.

“Who are you?” I managed, my hand groping for a nonexistent wand.

“Oh ho ho! Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Hee! If only I knew!”

“What-” my voice cracked as I scrabbled backward, “What do you want with me?”

“Thought that would be ob-vi-ous, litt-le Dra-co.” Now it sounded petulant. “Perhaps silly little me was wrong about you.”

“What do you want?” My voice was stronger now.

The room went dead silent, stillness falling like a blanket over everything. A whisper came from around me. “I want to play a game.”

~

The next time I was aware of anything - for I didn’t know how much time had passed, there was only a darkness in my mind - I was in a brightly lit, sterile white room. A welcome reprieve from the overwhelming darkness of before.

I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light, before standing up and studying my surroundings. As far as I could tell, there were no doors, no windows, no nothing. I tried to cast a simple revealing spell, but suddenly there was a flash of pain oh god so much pain don’t do that burning slicing pain that lingered for far too long.

“Good litt-le Dra-co!” the damned voice came again. “Finally starting to T - H - I - N - K!”

I spun around, trying to figure out where - and what - this thing was. “Why-” I stopped. No, that question would get me nowhere. “What do you want me to do?”

“Hee hee! T - H - I - N - K, silly boy! Use that funny little head of yours, for once! No magic in here, oh no! It’s all up - in - here.” As the last word was spoken, a wind rustled through my hair. I shivered involuntarily at the feeling, my scalp prickling.

“I don’t understand! There isn’t anything here-” 

And then the sterile, white room was no longer a sterile, white room. Now it held a sofa, a desk, a small stool, and an expensive looking mahogany door. I immediately ran up to it and twisted the door knob; no luck. Must be locked. I rifled through the drawers of the desk, hoping to find a key, or a note, or hell, anything, because I was about two steps away from a full on breakdown, because I was sort of really confused, and there was this sort of terrifying voice that wanted to play with me.

There was nothing.

I checked on the floor, underneath the sofa, behind the desk. Hell, I even tried to smash the door in with the stool. 

I ran a hand through my hair. Think, I told myself. You need to think.

I let my eyes roam around the room, flying over curtains, carpets. There wasn’t anything here.

“Keep on a-trying, Dra-co!” the voice said. 

I groaned, running a hand through my hair again. I sunk onto the sofa, growling, when suddenly-

“Smart little Draco! Good little Draco, so very cle-e-ever!” the voice sing songed.

I dug beneath the cushions for what was digging into my thigh. I small, rather ordinary looking key. I ran over to the door and twisted the lock, and thank god the door opened. 

Unfortunately, the door opened to nothing. You may think I mean a bare room seemingly holding nothing of value, correct? Nope, I mean literally nothing. Just darkness, that went on and on, interspersed by points of light, almost like stars? As my eyes adjusted to the lighting, I could get a better view. And as I did, I started internally freaking out. Because there was no way in hell that anybody, anybody ever, could transfigure a room (if it was a room) to look like the universe, especially this detailed. And if it wasn’t possible in reality, than the only other place I could be was somewhere where reality didn’t apply, like in my head.

Except that it all felt very real. And the whole telling yourself to wake up and pinching yourself thing really didn’t work. 

“I’m so confused!” I felt like bashing my head against a wall. Except, there weren’t any walls to bash my head against, and I was slightly afraid that the entire incident was due to bashing my head against something. 

“You have to learn to be better.” the voice sounded petulant now.

“Well I’m sorry if I’m not your idea of better-” I looked around for something to kick. 

“You’ve just got to learn. It’s all about learning.” The voice moved again, from one side of the universe to the other. It seemed to be emanating from my left, a galaxy a few hundred light years away. “How are you going to pass the test if you don’t learn?”

“What test?! Just tell me what to do!”

“You need to learn to tell yourself what to do first, Draco.”

And then everything went cripplingly, startlingly black.