𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

18 | ﴾ Tik Tok ﴿

The summer night was warm, mild and even sweet to the taste. Above in the sky sat a large and pale moon surrounded on all sides by twinkling stars which were dotted like a minefield. Frogs in the gardens and the ponds belched a symphony of noises that sounded like they originated from a hundred plastic balloons rather than creatures of flesh and blood.

Madeleine had slept with her windows open by accident, as she had been using them to eavesdrop on the party below earlier in the evening. The room ergo had reached a stifling temperature uncharacteristic of the Malfoy Manor and was terribly discomforting.

Three o clock struck.

On the dot, an aggressive, ancient grandfather clock located on the second floor landing went off as it did every hour, chiming out of tune like it would perhaps die at any given moment. Typically, the punctual mechanism was not an irritant to anyone's sleep, but for whatever reason Draco's eyes shot open.

Again, he was greeted by a chilling and overwhelming sense of dread. The fear that struck him was so immense that he felt paralyzed to turn over in the bed in anticipation for what he might see. His lip trembled and his breathing began to cut short and harried.

His eyes darted around the room as the stench of rotten flesh monopolized his senses. He squeezed his eyes shut harshly before pushing up onto his elbow.

He snatched his wand from the bed stand and rolled over onto his back with the tip extended and lit. No one was there; nothing hovered in the air, not even Madeleine was in the room.

His eyes wandered down to her sheets were she had evidently pushed out of the bed and abandoned him in the middle of the night. He sat back trembling like he was fighting to stabilize during a 9.0 earthquake, shoving his back against the headboard and frantically searching for the source of his terror.

That was when he noticed that a lump had formed under her fluffy white carpet to his left. It was approximately the size of a standard watermelon. He squinted his eyes, trying to exhale in a controlled manner, when it rolled forward and stopped in the centre of the rug. It then pushed straight upwards, dragging the carpet with itself to a point that reached the ceiling in an inhuman height.

Draco froze on the spot willing himself to scream but nothing came out. He opened and closed his mouth as a freezing sweat washed over his skin. The ghostly visitor that was hiding below the carpet inched forward agonizingly slowly, tugging along with it the expensive carpet and the legs of multiple furnishings that were attached to it. A loud screeching of angry wooden items erupted into the silence.

When it had almost reached the bedside he finally found his strength and leapt from the bed, pointing his wand at the wall of fibres that hung there unnaturally on the opposite side of the bed.

The rug dropped like a waterfall and piled into a mass.

"Who is there?" Draco asked boldly, but the moment the spectre was revealed he already knew. The gaunt and decayed ghost of Neville Longbottom had come through the floorboards to haunt him once again, hovering mere inches above the carpet with a crooked looking jaw and lifeless eyes.

Draco whimpered, "Please, what do you want from me? I don't remember."  It was quite curious that it was presenting itself in the form of a boy he had known only vaguely, that was famous for having a benign and clumsy nature.

Nevertheless, it could easily be a trap meant to lure and confuse. He made up his mind immediately that he was not going to entertain the idea of following it back down to the dungeons for what would surely be a supernatural ambush.

Neville lifted his arm and bent it behind himself towards the windows facing the back of the property without adjusting his intense gaze ahead. 

Draco squirmed on the spot, "What are you pointing at?" He had no desire to move past the spectre just to see out the windows. He was arguably safer by the door.