FicL 'The Nightmare Box' Gen R
Title - The Nightmare Box
Author - softly_sweetly
Beta - silenceofcedars
Rating - R
Word Count - ~2,000
Characters/Pairings - Harry, Scorpius, Draco, Astoria, Rodolphus, Lucius
Warnings - Horror/Mystery, Non-Explicit Character Death/Suicide, Mind!fuck
Disclaimer - I own nothing but the plot lines. I make no money from this, and mean no offence by any scene depicted within this story. All characters depicted in sexual situations herein are above the age of consent.
Summary - Harry hates letting the badge down, so he asks again, for them to tell him every little thing that led to this moment.
Author's Notes - Written for prompt #8 "Be Careful When You Fight The Monsters, Lest You Become One" - Nietzsche of my mission_insane Themed Table: Quotes
This story is loosely based around a short story found in the novel Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Thanks to the girls for their insights!
Scorpius is dead.
Not biologically. His heart still beats. His diaphragm still expands and contracts as latent bodily functions suck air in and push it back out. If the layers of skin and muscle and fat were not there, his intestines would be visibly undulating slightly, attempting to carry out the digestive process even though it has been six days since he’d eaten. If a person were inclined to watch, they would see his hair and nails growing further out from the follicles and beds of skin.
But Scorpius is dead.
His mouth hangs open slightly, lips slack and tongue just poking over perfect white teeth. His eyes are empty, dry, unblinking and windows to nowhere.
Harry pushes up from his crouch, backing out of the bedroom and closing the door on the body. The case came across his desk this morning, completely random chance that he would be assigned to a case involving the family of his childhood rival.
The badge on Harry's chest, pinned so proudly to his slate grey robes, marks him as an Auror. As an authority. As knowledge.
Harry hates letting the badge down, so he asks again, for them to tell him every little thing that led to this moment. Draco does. Tells the story again while Harry listens and Astoria weeps.
Scorpius left the Manor on Friday morning. Smiled fondly at his mother's fussing, assured his father he would return before dark. Scorpius left the house a perfectly normal young man, seventeen years old and with the world before him.
Fourteen hours later - and already concerned as to their son's whereabouts - Draco and Astoria received an Owl. Scorpius had been found wandering down the road that led into Hogsmeade. He was unresponsive, but no spell revealed a medical or magical cause. Could they come and pick him up, as the Healers needed the bed.
Now it was Thursday, and Scorpius had said nothing, done nothing, just slumped down his bedroom wall and stared into space. Astoria had cried, Draco had used every spell and contact he knew. Now they were turning to the Auror Department. Now Harry had to find an answer.
Back at the office Ron asked, why not use Legilimency? Harry shuddered and shook his head. There was no sign of spell damage, and no resistance when he probed at Scorpius' mind. But Scorpius' mind was blank. Not empty, or hexed, or Confunded. Blank. As though he had simply stopped any and all mental processes.
Scorpius' wand had been signed into his possession and Harry put it to use. Forcing the wand to back trace itself he follows it. Harry walks up the road Scorpius had walked down, soon finding himself stood at the fence that partitioned the Shrieking Shack from polite company. The wand wanted to go on, so Harry climbs over the rotting wood and carried on walking.
The wand takes him into and through the dilapidated building, right to the room where the floor was still stained with Snape's spilled blood. A ring disturbed the dust settled on the floor, occasional spots showing it was created by a person walking in circles for a prolonged length of time.
By Scorpius walking in circles for a prolonged length of time.
Perplexed, Harry follows the wand back outside, drawing his own when the slim holly begins to vibrate. Priori Incantatem shows an Apparation and Harry takes a chance. His badge allows him through the wards and Harry doesn't know whether it is a break or a dead end when the wand confirms that Scorpius had Apparated from his home straight to the Shrieking Shack.
Two days pass, in which Harry gets no further with the case.
Early on Sunday morning he is woken at home by an Owl. Scorpius Malfoy, his wand still on Harry's desk, had hung himself from the balcony of his bedroom.
His robes buttoned in the wrong holes and his face rough with stubble, Harry walks past the Scene Wizard taking pictures of the noose that still hung, swaying in the light breeze with no body to weigh it still. He finds Draco and Astoria in the drawing room, both their faces wet with tears. Before Harry has asked more than a few questions Draco has left the room, left Astoria to apologise for him. He must be forgiven, must be excused, this is so close to his father's death. The vacant existence, arriving with no explanation. The living death for days on end. The suicide.
It's a lead that Harry follows vigorously, breaking the charms on the room Lucius once occupied at the Manor and pouring through his belongings. There is nothing, no hint of what was to come, how Lucius' life was to end.
But tucked away at the back of a drawer is a drawing of a box. It is not unlike the first Muggle cameras; a black cube on a spindly tripod. There is no description, just a beautifully intricate drawing.
It takes him two full days, but Harry finally finds a lead in the tiny initials drawn into the patterning on the side of the box.
R.L.
It takes him a further day to get the clearance he needs to get into the high security block of Azkaban, and Harry can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he walks the corridor to the cell he wants.
Rodolphus Lestrange looks drawn and old, older than his years as he sits on his bed and watches Harry enter the cell and draw up a chair. For hours, he says nothing at all, denies all knowledge of Lucius' illness and subsequent death. Finally, desperately, Harry takes the picture from his pocket and shows it to Rodolphus. Rodolphus doesn't have to say anything; his expression gives away that he knows exactly what the box is, and what it contains.
His expression gives away that he fears it.
The hours continue passing, with Rodolphus giving Harry no more than a name, and a demand for a trip out of Azkaban in exchange for more information. Harry is damned if he is going to bargain with a Death Eater, so he storms out of Azkaban armed with a name and his determination to discover what the name means, and how it ties in to the death of Scorpius Malfoy.
But no matter who he asks, Harry can find nothing. No books give him an answer, no searcher-parchments sent through Ministry archives return with case numbers or references. Even after Harry has sent McGonagall out of her office to question the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, he has nothing more than a name.
The Nightmare Box.
After three weeks, Harry has to admit he is beaten. He organises the necessary protection, fills in the necessary forms, and removes Rodolphus Lestrange from Azkaban. Stood looking out over the Yorkshire Moors, Rodolphus begins to speak.
He made the box at the request of Voldemort, a measure to create eternal life before Voldemort began creating Horcruxes. Harry is surprised Rodolphus knew of them, but as Rodolphus talks it becomes clear Voldemort told him as a way to keep him close, to keep him from telling the Light of the box, of what it was and what Voldemort was trying to do to ensure his victory in the war. And things make more sense for Harry now; how Rodolphus Lestrange, who harmed no one except the Longbottoms at the behest of his wife, how he could be in Voldemort's inner circle.
The box was built using hand tools and old magic. A safe box for Voldemort's soul, so that should his body be killed his soul would be safe and intact, able to keep him alive by moving into another body and shaping it into his image.
But when the time came, when Voldemort tore his soul from his body to place it in the box, it did not work. His soul was returned, broken and bruised, to his body, and the box was irrevocably altered. Splitting his soul into seven parts was painless after what the box did to it. Rodolphus told Lucius about the box the final time Lucius visited him in prison, answered Scorpius' questions on it when Scorpius visited him wanting answers about his grandfather's death.
Harry asks again and again, but what does the box do. Rodolphus doesn't know for sure. Even Voldemort didn't. The box felt evil, felt wrong, and Voldemort was not prepared to look into it and see for himself what it was. Caradoc Dearborn, captured from the Order of the Phoenix, was forced to look into the box. Rodolphus thinks the box shows you a world without a soul, yourself without your soul, the shell that humanity is without the very thing that Voldemort showed such contempt for as he split it off in his desperation to attain eternal life.
The thought is so chilling that Harry lets his guard down for a moment, and in that moment Rodolphus wrenches his wand from his robes. But instead of turning it on Harry, Rodolphus turns it on himself, choosing death over returning to captivity. Harry drops to his knees and tries to resuscitate Rodolphus, but it's too late. On the last breath to leave his body, Rodolphus whispers that the box is in the shack.
After answering the questions and filling in the forms related to the death of a prisoner in his care, Harry finally gets out of the Ministry. Instead of going home he Apparates straight to the Shrieking Shack, turning the ground floor upside down before he moves to the first floor.
There, in the room with the blood stains and the pace marks. There, hidden from his view until he knew he was looking for it. There, centre stage in front of the fire. There stands the Nightmare Box.
Harry takes it to the Ministry and has it tested in every way that he can think of. The best of the best, witches and wizards at the top of their field, none of them can answer him as to what the box is. None of them can explain the box, what it is, what it does, or how it could possibly cause the deaths of Scorpius Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Caradoc Dearborn, and anyone else who may have looked into it since its creation.
The case on Scorpius Malfoy is closed with a ruling of accidental death due to causes unknown. Harry is assigned to new cases, and he feels guilty when he hears that Draco and Astoria have moved out of the country to escape their ghosts.
But the Nightmare Box is always on his mind, always there as a niggling doubt. Less than a month passes before Harry finds himself in the evidence room, walking around the Nightmare Box like a lion around its prey. Revealing charms show nothing untoward, nothing magical about the box. Time and again, Harry walks to the door to leave but pulls his hand back before he can turn the knob.
Time and again he walks to the front of the box and runs his fingers over the glass circle that provides a view into the box.
Time and again he bends down and leans close to the box, pulling away at the last moment and chastising himself for being stupid enough to want to look, and scared enough to not be able to.
Until finally, Harry bends down and presses his face against the box, his eye peering into the blackness within. To catch his weight his hands naturally come up and close around the handles on either side of the box. Hidden on the underneath of the right side handle is a little button, and Harry's index finger caresses it, exerting gentle force over the button and causing a flash of light that illuminates the contents of the box…
His hands fall from the handles, falling to his sides as Harry steps backwards, staring straight ahead without seeing as he slumps to the floor.
Harry is dead.
Author - softly_sweetly
Beta - silenceofcedars
Rating - R
Word Count - ~2,000
Characters/Pairings - Harry, Scorpius, Draco, Astoria, Rodolphus, Lucius
Warnings - Horror/Mystery, Non-Explicit Character Death/Suicide, Mind!fuck
Disclaimer - I own nothing but the plot lines. I make no money from this, and mean no offence by any scene depicted within this story. All characters depicted in sexual situations herein are above the age of consent.
Summary - Harry hates letting the badge down, so he asks again, for them to tell him every little thing that led to this moment.
Author's Notes - Written for prompt #8 "Be Careful When You Fight The Monsters, Lest You Become One" - Nietzsche of my mission_insane Themed Table: Quotes
This story is loosely based around a short story found in the novel Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Thanks to the girls for their insights!
Scorpius is dead.
Not biologically. His heart still beats. His diaphragm still expands and contracts as latent bodily functions suck air in and push it back out. If the layers of skin and muscle and fat were not there, his intestines would be visibly undulating slightly, attempting to carry out the digestive process even though it has been six days since he’d eaten. If a person were inclined to watch, they would see his hair and nails growing further out from the follicles and beds of skin.
But Scorpius is dead.
His mouth hangs open slightly, lips slack and tongue just poking over perfect white teeth. His eyes are empty, dry, unblinking and windows to nowhere.
Harry pushes up from his crouch, backing out of the bedroom and closing the door on the body. The case came across his desk this morning, completely random chance that he would be assigned to a case involving the family of his childhood rival.
The badge on Harry's chest, pinned so proudly to his slate grey robes, marks him as an Auror. As an authority. As knowledge.
Harry hates letting the badge down, so he asks again, for them to tell him every little thing that led to this moment. Draco does. Tells the story again while Harry listens and Astoria weeps.
Scorpius left the Manor on Friday morning. Smiled fondly at his mother's fussing, assured his father he would return before dark. Scorpius left the house a perfectly normal young man, seventeen years old and with the world before him.
Fourteen hours later - and already concerned as to their son's whereabouts - Draco and Astoria received an Owl. Scorpius had been found wandering down the road that led into Hogsmeade. He was unresponsive, but no spell revealed a medical or magical cause. Could they come and pick him up, as the Healers needed the bed.
Now it was Thursday, and Scorpius had said nothing, done nothing, just slumped down his bedroom wall and stared into space. Astoria had cried, Draco had used every spell and contact he knew. Now they were turning to the Auror Department. Now Harry had to find an answer.
Back at the office Ron asked, why not use Legilimency? Harry shuddered and shook his head. There was no sign of spell damage, and no resistance when he probed at Scorpius' mind. But Scorpius' mind was blank. Not empty, or hexed, or Confunded. Blank. As though he had simply stopped any and all mental processes.
Scorpius' wand had been signed into his possession and Harry put it to use. Forcing the wand to back trace itself he follows it. Harry walks up the road Scorpius had walked down, soon finding himself stood at the fence that partitioned the Shrieking Shack from polite company. The wand wanted to go on, so Harry climbs over the rotting wood and carried on walking.
The wand takes him into and through the dilapidated building, right to the room where the floor was still stained with Snape's spilled blood. A ring disturbed the dust settled on the floor, occasional spots showing it was created by a person walking in circles for a prolonged length of time.
By Scorpius walking in circles for a prolonged length of time.
Perplexed, Harry follows the wand back outside, drawing his own when the slim holly begins to vibrate. Priori Incantatem shows an Apparation and Harry takes a chance. His badge allows him through the wards and Harry doesn't know whether it is a break or a dead end when the wand confirms that Scorpius had Apparated from his home straight to the Shrieking Shack.
Two days pass, in which Harry gets no further with the case.
Early on Sunday morning he is woken at home by an Owl. Scorpius Malfoy, his wand still on Harry's desk, had hung himself from the balcony of his bedroom.
His robes buttoned in the wrong holes and his face rough with stubble, Harry walks past the Scene Wizard taking pictures of the noose that still hung, swaying in the light breeze with no body to weigh it still. He finds Draco and Astoria in the drawing room, both their faces wet with tears. Before Harry has asked more than a few questions Draco has left the room, left Astoria to apologise for him. He must be forgiven, must be excused, this is so close to his father's death. The vacant existence, arriving with no explanation. The living death for days on end. The suicide.
It's a lead that Harry follows vigorously, breaking the charms on the room Lucius once occupied at the Manor and pouring through his belongings. There is nothing, no hint of what was to come, how Lucius' life was to end.
But tucked away at the back of a drawer is a drawing of a box. It is not unlike the first Muggle cameras; a black cube on a spindly tripod. There is no description, just a beautifully intricate drawing.
It takes him two full days, but Harry finally finds a lead in the tiny initials drawn into the patterning on the side of the box.
R.L.
It takes him a further day to get the clearance he needs to get into the high security block of Azkaban, and Harry can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he walks the corridor to the cell he wants.
Rodolphus Lestrange looks drawn and old, older than his years as he sits on his bed and watches Harry enter the cell and draw up a chair. For hours, he says nothing at all, denies all knowledge of Lucius' illness and subsequent death. Finally, desperately, Harry takes the picture from his pocket and shows it to Rodolphus. Rodolphus doesn't have to say anything; his expression gives away that he knows exactly what the box is, and what it contains.
His expression gives away that he fears it.
The hours continue passing, with Rodolphus giving Harry no more than a name, and a demand for a trip out of Azkaban in exchange for more information. Harry is damned if he is going to bargain with a Death Eater, so he storms out of Azkaban armed with a name and his determination to discover what the name means, and how it ties in to the death of Scorpius Malfoy.
But no matter who he asks, Harry can find nothing. No books give him an answer, no searcher-parchments sent through Ministry archives return with case numbers or references. Even after Harry has sent McGonagall out of her office to question the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, he has nothing more than a name.
The Nightmare Box.
After three weeks, Harry has to admit he is beaten. He organises the necessary protection, fills in the necessary forms, and removes Rodolphus Lestrange from Azkaban. Stood looking out over the Yorkshire Moors, Rodolphus begins to speak.
He made the box at the request of Voldemort, a measure to create eternal life before Voldemort began creating Horcruxes. Harry is surprised Rodolphus knew of them, but as Rodolphus talks it becomes clear Voldemort told him as a way to keep him close, to keep him from telling the Light of the box, of what it was and what Voldemort was trying to do to ensure his victory in the war. And things make more sense for Harry now; how Rodolphus Lestrange, who harmed no one except the Longbottoms at the behest of his wife, how he could be in Voldemort's inner circle.
The box was built using hand tools and old magic. A safe box for Voldemort's soul, so that should his body be killed his soul would be safe and intact, able to keep him alive by moving into another body and shaping it into his image.
But when the time came, when Voldemort tore his soul from his body to place it in the box, it did not work. His soul was returned, broken and bruised, to his body, and the box was irrevocably altered. Splitting his soul into seven parts was painless after what the box did to it. Rodolphus told Lucius about the box the final time Lucius visited him in prison, answered Scorpius' questions on it when Scorpius visited him wanting answers about his grandfather's death.
Harry asks again and again, but what does the box do. Rodolphus doesn't know for sure. Even Voldemort didn't. The box felt evil, felt wrong, and Voldemort was not prepared to look into it and see for himself what it was. Caradoc Dearborn, captured from the Order of the Phoenix, was forced to look into the box. Rodolphus thinks the box shows you a world without a soul, yourself without your soul, the shell that humanity is without the very thing that Voldemort showed such contempt for as he split it off in his desperation to attain eternal life.
The thought is so chilling that Harry lets his guard down for a moment, and in that moment Rodolphus wrenches his wand from his robes. But instead of turning it on Harry, Rodolphus turns it on himself, choosing death over returning to captivity. Harry drops to his knees and tries to resuscitate Rodolphus, but it's too late. On the last breath to leave his body, Rodolphus whispers that the box is in the shack.
After answering the questions and filling in the forms related to the death of a prisoner in his care, Harry finally gets out of the Ministry. Instead of going home he Apparates straight to the Shrieking Shack, turning the ground floor upside down before he moves to the first floor.
There, in the room with the blood stains and the pace marks. There, hidden from his view until he knew he was looking for it. There, centre stage in front of the fire. There stands the Nightmare Box.
Harry takes it to the Ministry and has it tested in every way that he can think of. The best of the best, witches and wizards at the top of their field, none of them can answer him as to what the box is. None of them can explain the box, what it is, what it does, or how it could possibly cause the deaths of Scorpius Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Caradoc Dearborn, and anyone else who may have looked into it since its creation.
The case on Scorpius Malfoy is closed with a ruling of accidental death due to causes unknown. Harry is assigned to new cases, and he feels guilty when he hears that Draco and Astoria have moved out of the country to escape their ghosts.
But the Nightmare Box is always on his mind, always there as a niggling doubt. Less than a month passes before Harry finds himself in the evidence room, walking around the Nightmare Box like a lion around its prey. Revealing charms show nothing untoward, nothing magical about the box. Time and again, Harry walks to the door to leave but pulls his hand back before he can turn the knob.
Time and again he walks to the front of the box and runs his fingers over the glass circle that provides a view into the box.
Time and again he bends down and leans close to the box, pulling away at the last moment and chastising himself for being stupid enough to want to look, and scared enough to not be able to.
Until finally, Harry bends down and presses his face against the box, his eye peering into the blackness within. To catch his weight his hands naturally come up and close around the handles on either side of the box. Hidden on the underneath of the right side handle is a little button, and Harry's index finger caresses it, exerting gentle force over the button and causing a flash of light that illuminates the contents of the box…
His hands fall from the handles, falling to his sides as Harry steps backwards, staring straight ahead without seeing as he slumps to the floor.
Harry is dead.