by salemboy » Monday 13 October 2008 4:22:07pm
The very first Damien noticed in the next hall was that, unlike the rest of the castle except for the chamber above him, it was not lit by torches. He raised his wand even higher, trying to illuminate the hall as much as possible, when he realized that while they were not lit, there were torches along the walls. He walked up to it, the sea of dust around him, ankle deep, was kicked up even more around him, put did not reach much higher than his knees. He aimed his wand at the torch, and said quietly, "Incendio." The torch lit up, and through some irreversible magic placed upon the torches, they all lit up.
"Handy," he thought to himself. He walked along the hall until he came into a chamber. Nothing seemed exeptional about it, so he just continued through. The next chamber caught his attention. Covering the floor were hundreds and hundreds of keys. Just sitting there, doing nothing. "Repulso," He said, knocking them away, unsure of what might happen if he touched one. The sound of the clanking and clattering was deafening. He covered his ears as the sounds continued to clank, clatter, never stopping as the sound continued to bounce off of the walls. He finally couldn't take it. He dropped to his knees, raised his wand, and yelled the silencing spell.
Then, all of the sounds stopped, only his voice echoing three or four times on the walls, before eventually receding into nothingness. He gave a sigh of relief as it stopped. Never before in his life had he hated sound more. And never before had he loved silence more. He sighed again. He got back up to his feet, and slowly tiptoed over to a door at the far side of the room, avoiding touching the keys at all cost. He looked at the door, a key was already jammed into the keyhole above the handle. He grasped the handle lightly, and turned it, opening the door with a quiet creeeeaaaaak.
The door opened into yet another very large chamber. The floor was covered in a pattern of black square, then white square, black square, then white square. To Damien, it looked just like a giant chess board. Then Damien the noticed hundreds of scratches, scuffs, burns, and even craters all over the floor. It would seem that there had been a great duel within this chamber. Suge scampered off of his arm, down onto the floor, and looked around bewildered.
This shocked Damien. He had completely forgotten that he had brought Suge with him. How the monkey had survived the Devil's Snare, he had no idea. Yet, even with his great amount of surprise, Damien was unsurprised. The monkey was rather clever.
Then Damien realized, with a start, that this really must have been a giant chess board. Not a great duel, but a giant game of wizarding chess. There were exactly the correct amount of squares, and off in the corner, he actually saw a stone arm. "Wow," he thought to himself. "The teachers at this time sure knew their magic." He walked across the room, wondering what it must have been like with the enchantments intact.
Well, whatever is- "Or was," he thought to himself, realizing that if it was still there, the enchantments would still be going at it- must have been important. He decided that it was going to be another thing to talk to Hagrid about. He slowly opened the next door, beginning to hate the creeeeaaaak sound.
This was a chamber, with nothing in it, the only remarkable features being the two deep black scorch marks on opposite sides of the room, going the width of the room, leaving scorch marks along even the walls.
As Damien began to walk through the door, he felt the alarm he had set go off again. He pulled out his parchment, hoping that it was Geneve. He scanned all the way to the bottom, until he eventually came to the last name on the list. Etched clearly on the parchment was Nikolaus's name. Damien almost crumpled the paper into a ball, the only thing causing him to refrain from doing so was the fact that it was the only thing that actually kept records of when his alarm was set off.
He punched the wall. Where was that man? Damien needed his help finding Geneve, and there he was, playing with dark magic. Playing with Dark Magic.
Damien dropped to his knees. Playing with Dark Magic. A tear rolled down his cheek. Playing with Dark Magic. Another tear fell down his face. Playing with Dark Magic. Playing with Dark Magic. Playing with Dark Magic. Those words, "Playing With Dark Magic," danced around his head repeatedly, as his memory opened up.
He was there again, watching Chi Inu, and his mother. Damien had a bite mark in his shoulder, where Chi Inu had bitten him right before the sun had risen. Damien had been protecting his mother, telling her that Chi Inu didn't know what he had been doing. That had been a lie. Damien knew perfectly well that Chi Inu had planted himself as close to civilization as possible. As close to his mother as possible. The last second before Chi Inu had turned back into a human, Damien's mother had pushed him away, wandless, not wanting for him to get into the ensuing fight.
When Chi Inu was finished changing into Human form, he had not seen Damien. The homocidal maniac had then drawn his wand, and without thinking twice, snuffed the life out of Damien's mother. And then he left, without making so much of a sound, and Damien knew that Chi Inu knew who that woman had been. Damien had shown him a picture of her.
And all of this started when Damien decided that he had wanted to play with Dark Magic, and became a killer, and had joined Chi Inu's gang, the Sadistic Six.
Damien looked down at his hands as he kneeled in the fire-schorched room. He imagined seeing the blood of every single person he had killed. Had he been no different? Just a misguided boy who loved Dark Magic a little too much? No, there was no difference between the man Damien was twenty years ago, and Nikolaus. That meant that Nikolaus had to be saved from Dark Magic, even if it meant losing his life in the process.
Damien slowly stumbled to his feet. From now on, Hogwarts, and the inhabitants thereof, had his wholly undivided attention. And that included finding Geneve. He stumbled, wiping his eyes, into the next room, where, unbeknownst to anybody at this castle besides Proffessor Longbottom, Harry Potter had taken down Quirrel, and protected the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's stone.