Future Nostalgia / Harry Potter Fanfic

The Inferi and the Lightning-Struck Tower

Estella could smell salt and hear rushing waves; a light, a chilly breeze ruffled her hair as she looked out at the moonlit sea and star-strewn sky. She was standing upon a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning below her. She glanced over her shoulder. A towering cliff stood behind them, a sheer drop, black and faceless. A few large chunks of rocks, such as the one which they were standing, looked as though they had broken away from the cliff face at some point in the past. It was a bleak, harsh view, the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep of grass or sand.

"What do you think?" asked Dumbledore. He might have been asking their opinion on whether it was a good site for a picnic.

"Did they actually bring kids from the orphanage here?" asked Estella, who could not imagine a spot less cozy for a day trip.

"Not here, precisely," said Dumbledore. "There is a village of sorts about halfway along the cliffs behind us. I believe the orphans were taken there for a little sea air and a view of the waves. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his youthful victims who visited this spot. No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers, and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous. I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes. And he brought two small children with him, probably for the pleasure of terrorizing them. I think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?"

Estella looked up at the cliff again and felt goosebumps as Harry took her hand.

"But his final destination-and outs-lies a little farther on. Come."

Dumbledore beckoned the two to the very edge of the rock where a series of jagged niches made footholds leading down to boulders that lay half-submerged in water and closer to the cliff. It was a treacherous descent and Dumbledore, hampered slightly by his withered hand, moved slowly. The lower rocks were slippery with seawater. Estella could feel flecks of cold salt spray hitting her face.

"Lumos," said Dumbledore, as he reached the boulder closest to the cliff face. A thousand flecks of golden light sparked upon the dark surface of the water a few feet below where Estella and Harry were crouched; the black wall of rock beside her was illuminated too.

"You see?" said Dumbledore quietly, holding his wand a little higher. Estella saw a fissure in the cliff into which dark water was swirling.

"You will not object to getting a little wet?"

"No," said the two Gryffindors.

"Then take off your Invisibility Cloak-there is no need for it now-and let us take the plunge."

And with the sudden agility of a much younger man, Dumbledore slid from the boulder, landed in the sea, and began to swim, with a perfect breaststroke, toward the dark slit in the rock face, his lit wand held in his teeth. Estella moved out from under the Cloak and followed, Harry close behind her.

Estella hissed as she submerged herself into the icy water. Taking deep breaths that filled her nostrils with the tang of salt and seaweed, she began following the shimmering, shrinking light now moving deeper into the cliff.

The fissure soon opened into a dark tunnel that Estella could tell would be filled with water at high tide. The slimy walls were barely three feet apart and glimmered like wet tar in the passing light of Dumbledore's wand. A little way in, the passageway cured to the left, and Estella saw that it extended far into the cliff. She continued to swim in her grandfather's wake, Harry directly behind her, the tips of her fingers occasionally brushing the right, wet rock.

Then she saw Dumbledore rising out of the water ahead, his silver hair and dark robes gleaming. When Estella reached the spot she found steps that led into a large cave. She clambered up them, water streaming from her soaking clothes, and emerged, shivering uncontrollably, into the still and freezing air.