“Who
are you?” Harry demanded, pointing his wand at the man, but unsure what to do
considering he had never actually been taught an offensive spell that wasn’t
for disarming his opponent.
The
man didn’t answer, instead he just crossed the room, pointing an odd keylike
item at his head.
“I’m
warning you.” Harry backed up, trying to think of a single useful spell he had
learnt in his years at Hogwarts and wondering why Defence Against the Dark Arts
had never actually covered defensive magic.
The
key touched Harry’s forehead and with a twist of the man’s wrist the key turned
and Harry’s world went spinning away.
Powel
had awakened the moment that the Shadows had activated against his host but
there had been no time to do anything about it besides pull his host into his
room and start towards the door to confront the intruder.
On
the other side of Powel’s door, Shadi was stunned by what he was seeing. When
entering a normal person’s mind, he would have landed straight in their soul
room, which was the personification of what a person was. Everything that
defined a person was in that room and it was easy to see what a person’s
strengths and weaknesses were, just from what the room looked like and had in
it.
The
Millennium Key had, however, not led him to the Soul Room of the boy who he was
testing, but to a corridor. A corridor that had not one, not two but three
doors attached to it. One was an enlarged version of a door to a cupboard under
the stairs, one was metal in origin but had a crest engraved on it that he had
never seen before while the last door was bolted and padlocked so many times
that it was a miracle that he could see the door beneath it.
That
wasn’t anywhere near normal. Two doors would have suggested a split personality
at best and possession at worst. Both he had dealt with in the past. Three,
however, suggested that there was much more going on here than he knew and made
him rather wary. After all the boy had held not one of the true Shadow Set, but
an item of the secondary set, created by a wizard attempting to copy the power
of the Millennium Items.
He
moved towards the cupboard door and looked through the slats in the grate
attached to it. The room on the other side was lit surprisingly well for the
dark soul he had sensed earlier and he could make out the four poster bed on
the other side of the room, it’s red and gold drapes offending his sense of
propriety. He reached for the door handle, intending to enter and find out more
about the boy before he decided what to do about him, only to turn around as
the heavy metal door on the other side of the room swung open and a teenager
stepped out, amber eyes glowing and very dark brown hair obvious.
This
one, he realised, was the one he had watched challenge the thief to a Shadow
Game and issue a Penalty.
“Are
you here about the eviction?” The teen asked with a scowl, gesturing towards
the bolted and padlocked door, “Because if you’re not I’m going to have to ask
you to leave.”
“And
who are you?” Shadi asked, “And what gives you the right to demand the eviction
of another, when you have no right to be here yourself.”
Powel
laughed, irritating the Guardian of the Millennium Items, “I obviously have
more right to be here then whoever lives on the other side of that door. I’m
allowed to come and go when I please, whereas that door was sealed like that
long before I got here. I doubt, if my host’s subconscious truly wanted me to
stay in the Bracer, I would be any freer than them...”
Shadi’s
eyebrows raised as the spirit in front of him trailed off, glowering at the
other door as he did so, though that was the only sign of his emotions he
allowed to be seen, “You take refuge in the mind of a child. That is a mark
against you. That you use the powers of the false Shadow Set is ano...”
“False!”
Powel spluttered, turning his glower on Shadi, “The Serpent Items are not fake!”
Then he paused and considered Shadi properly, his tone taking on a low growl,
“I know of your people. You are from that cult that attacked Salazar and
attempted to wipe his mind clean of all thoughts.” Powel’s right hand went for
the wand in his back pocket, “I would have thought that after a thousand years
you lunatics would have died out.”
“Us?
Die out?” Shadi asked, his tone revealing much more about his emotions than his,
ever expressionless, face, “We have waited for over five thousand years for the
Pharaoh’s return and while your mere copies jeopardised everything the Pharaoh
gave his life for, we have stood the tests of time and fought against the likes
of you.”
“The
likes of me?” Powel asked, incredibly ill amused, “And what, pray tell, do you
mean by that?”
Shadi
was about to retort when he realised that he was allowing himself to get
distracted. “I do not have time to converse with you.” The ancient spirit
informed the much younger ghost, “Your actions today have long reaching
consequences and I must correct them before the fallout is too great, starting
with freeing this young one’s mind...”
Powel’s
Bracer glowed as Shadi turned away from him, towards the locked door, unwilling
to let this threatening stranger mess with the balance within his host’s mind,
only for the spirit to get a shock as Shadi’s Key lit up brightly and he was
sent crashing into his door. It slammed open under his weight and he went
tumbling through it and into the room inside, landing on the floor hard as the
door was pulled shut by an invisible hand.
By
the time Powel had picked himself up, the Millennium Key was already doing its
job, unlocking the mental defences that Harry’s subconscious mind had thrown up
against the less welcome intruder, undoing over a decade of resistance in less
time than it took Powel to get up and find that the door was stuck fast,
trapping both himself and his host inside the Bracer.
With
the spirit of the Bracer out of his way, Shadi planned on removing the second
door that wasn’t supposed to be here, with plans of removing the foreign
influence within before erasing the Bracer and any information about the Shadows
from the room of the boy’s soul.
The
last bolt on the door slid open and Shadi opened the door, only to have to step
back to avoid a blast of corrupted air that leapt forth through the crack. The wind
widened the gap between door and doorframe, the rancid stench of decay leaking
into the corridor and offending Shadi’s senses, causing him to choke, though he
had ceased to need to breathe thousands of years ago.
Shadi
was left with little time to recover before a figure stepped out of the door
and into the corridor that led out to Harry’s body. The being that the ancient
tombkeeper spirit beheld was unlike anything he’d ever seen, a horrifying,
twisted, malformed, mutilated child like creature that stumbled out into the
corridor, its features twisted into a delighted and amused grin and when it
spoke, there was a hissing behind its voice that meant something but Shadi
wouldn’t tell what.
“Free
at last...” The creature said, looking up and down the corridor before
considering Shadi properly, “You’ve even emptied the body and provided a trio
of Shadow Items for me...”
“You’re
not welcome in this boy’s mind...”
“And
yet you unbound me.” The creature snorted, interrupting Shadi before he could
bluster on, “So either you’re a fool, or you’re seeking to turn this vessel
into a mindless slave. So which is it?”
Shadi
stared at the childlike wraith. He had never seen such a creature before, nor
had he any idea on how such a monster could live in the child’s mind, for it
certainly would not have the power to overwhelm the boy’s mind directly, though
a two pronged attack from both it and the spirit of the Bracer would have
worked.
Not
that the Bracer spirit seemed inclined to share his host’s head space if the
plans for an eviction were anything to go by.
“I
am the Guardian of the Shadows until the Pharaoh’s return.” Shadi informed it, his
eyes locking with the creature’s, staring it down and threatening it with his
Millennium Key, which glowed brightly. “You will... what?”
Shadi
looked around quickly as the creature vanished only to let out a sharp gasp of
pain and hold his head as he staggered backwards, leaning heavily against the
wall, his head pounding as it felt like fingers were tearing through his
memories and soul, trying to find out everything.
‘A tomb keeper.’ The creature sounded excited as its
voice echoed at the back of Shadi’s mind, ‘Oh
how I’ve waited to get my claws into one of you.’
“Get
out of my head!” Shadi demanded, realising he’d allowed himself to forget the
most important thing about entering someone else’s mind. In the real world he
was little more than a semi-corporeal shade, making him invulnerable. Here,
however, he was just as vulnerable, if not more so as the people he was
testing.
And
he had let it in.
‘I remember you.’ The voice continued, taunting the
ghostly Tomb Keeper, who even as it spoke was trying to muster the powers of
his items to repel the intruder, trying to prevent it from reaching any
important information or worse accessing his semi-mortal form, ‘I remember how you tried to break my mind
with your Shadow Games.’ The voice turned vindictive, ‘I thought I destroyed you then... guess I’ll have to try a little
harder.’
The
pain coursing through Shadi increased at those words and the spirit collapsed
to his knees, trying to hold back the scream that tried to escape his throat.
‘Surrender,’ The voice whispered to him, ‘Surrender and it’ll all be over. I might
even let you keep part of your mind intact. Keep fighting me and well...’
Shadi
couldn’t prevent the panicked, agonised cry from erupting as it felt like
something sharp pierced into the depths of his soul.
Inside
Powel’s room the spirit of the Bracer heard the scream and froze momentarily.
He’d known whatever was behind the locked door was bad for his host, he had
been able to sense that much from the door even before he’d known about the
extreme measures the boy’s soul had taken to protect itself from the other
intruder.
“Wh...Who?”
The sound of another voice made Powel wheel around and glower at the speaker,
only to realise with a shock that his host had woken up and was staring at him.
A
second cry broke the staring contest that had begun between Powel and his Other
and the spirit of the Bracer snarled and tugged on the door again, angry that
the intruder had basically handed over his host’s body to a malevolent spirit without
a second thought. That he was now paying for it was slightly better, but
considering that the end result would likely be that Powel and his host would
remain trapped inside the Bracer while the other spirit, the one Powel had
tried and failed to evict, did as he pleased, Powel was in an incredibly foul
mood with the Egyptian man.
To
the Ex-Teacher’s shock, the door opened, the spell holding it shut failing when
Shadi had left the corridor, unable to focus on the spells in Harry’s head
while he needed to turn all of his focus inward to prevent the creature he’d
freed from the second room from destroying everything in his own mind.
Powel
and Harry darted out of the door, Powel turning to his host, who was looking
incredibly sleepy and had only woken up because of the agonised cries within
his mind, and putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Stay here. I’ll deal
with this.”
Harry
would have complained but the combination of shock at actually getting to meet
his lodger face to face and the little voice at the back of his mind that told
him to listen to someone for once before diving into danger. Instead he gave
Powel a small, determined smile and said, “Let me help.”
Powel
groaned slightly in his mind, having forgotten that the boy whose vessel he
shared was almost as stubborn as Gryffindor himself, but didn’t let it show in
front of the child, who was, at least reacting much better than Powel had
thought he would.
There
wasn’t time to argue, so Powel nodded his acquiescence but held up a hand
before Harry could take control of his body, “I’ll go out, you can back me up
from in here.”
Harry
looked put out but he agreed to Powel’s terms and the Ex-Teacher, who only
looked like a teen in the soul rooms due to being linked to the mind of a
teenager, took control of their body, finding it strange to have his host’s
thoughts running around in his head along with his own, though they weren’t as
clear here as they were while Powel was in the corridor.
Shadi
had backed away from Harry and dropped the Millennium Key as his mind fought
with the presence that had stolen into Shadi’s mind using the bond created by
the Milllennium Key, trying to expel it before it could take root and finding
it difficult.
Powel
tensed up when empty brown eyes took on a red glow and Shadi’s features seemed
to blur slightly, becoming more serpent like.
“Finally.”
The voice that spoke most definitely wasn’t Shadi’s and Powel felt Harry
freeze, a weird sensation that threw the Shadow spirit for a moment until Harry
realised what had happened and tried to calm down. Powel got the weird
sensation that Harry was trying to tell him something but he couldn’t
understand what the boy was saying. “What a stubborn fool. No matter, this body
is mine now.”
Powel
let out a soft growl as he realised why Harry had frozen. He recognised that
voice. It was older but it was practically the same as the voice of the boy
whose basilisk he had fought in the Chamber of Secrets, the boy who had called
himself Lord Voldemort.
Powel
tried to move between Voldemort and the Millennium Key but unlike the
Transfiguration Master who was still getting used to being a scrawny teen
again, Voldemort’s host could just ghost through whatever objects he chose and
proceeded to do just that, beating Powel to the Shadow Item easily.
Powel
backed off quickly, Bracer glowing as he prepared for a battle between his
Bracer and the items held by the spirit controlling Shadi, only to realise at
the same time as the other spirit that the Millennium Items were refusing to
work for Voldemort.
“Why?”
Voldemort protested, glowering at the items in question as if giving them the
most powerful death glare he could muster would make the ancient artefacts behave.
“This is my body! That means these are my items!”
“But
they’re not.” Powel had to choke back his amusement, “Because you’re trying to
steal them.”
“What?”
Voldemort turned that same death glare on Powel who felt his host recoil
slightly but held the body in place, “Explain yourself.”
“You
can’t just take control of someone and expect their Shadow Items to work for
you.” Powel practically crowed, “You
have to defeat them to take control of their items and seizing control of
someone doesn’t count! As long as you’re in that body you won’t be able to
challenge him. Those items will never be yours! And...” He held up the arm with
the Bracer on, the serpent on which was glowing, “I challenge you to a Shadow
Game. You win you can take this.”
He
felt Harry’s shock but stayed strong. He knew exactly what he was doing. He
could still sense the creature’s link to his young self’s mind and wanted to
sever it forever. While the creature had been firmly entwined in Harry’s mental
defences it had been impossible to get rid of it, but now he had this chance,
this one chance and he was willing to stake the Bracer on it.
“Oh
really?” Now Voldemort looked intrigued, “You’d be willing to stake your Bracer
on a game you can’t win?”
“Oh
I’ll win.” Powel retorted, “And when I do, you’re done.” Powel drew his thumb
across his throat.
Voldemort
looked even more amused than he had previously at that little statement. “I
can’t die. I’m not truly alive.”
Powel
just smirked at him, “Is that a refusal?”
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