ruins ; harry potter [1]

prologue ; the weapon

There was a war coming.

It slithered in beneath the windows and sills, a putrid fog of hate and fear and darkness. She smelled it in her room every time she dared try to fall asleep; it crept in, an intruder of the night, cloaked in all of the faces she's ever dreamed and all of the faces she hasn't yet. It seeped into her skin like a smell sunk beneath flesh. No matter how many showers she took, the smell never left. Like an itch that will never be scratched. It tore at her.

The tick tock of the clock on the wall reminded her just how little time they had left until He rose to the power he so desperately seeks, and just how little time left until he gains it, soon pillaging the castle of the famous school for the boy in the prophecy and killing everyone in his path. No one believed her, but she knew. She knew the fate of the Wizarding World. She knew of the role she and Harry played in this war, and she knew what she would have to do.

Of course, she had never met Harry Potter. She had heard all of the rumors and of course she knew about him. Everyone did. She had only caught the snippets of the newest rumor towards the famous young wizard in every newspaper and the quiet gossip of the nurses at the main station, but she had never met him, or even laid eyes on him for that matter, other than the moving pictures in the papers.

The nurses didn't believe that there was a war coming, and that Voldemort was coming back. No matter how much she screamed at the top of her lungs at the voices in her head, telling them that they needed to help them, help them all, because they were going to die if someone didn't help them win this war. They were going to die. They were going to die. She would scream and scream and scream until the nurses had to restrain her, tie her wrists down so she wouldn't claw her eyes out, tie her ankles down so she didn't run. They didn't believe her. No one believed her, but she knew.

They were going to die.

There was a war coming, a war so powerful and destructive that she had to press her hands over her ears and clamp her eyes shut so tight that no light could pass so she would keep herself from hearing the evil to come. There was a war coming that would leave the Wizarding world, her world, in ruins, and one that would carry so much death in its wake that there would be bodies piled so high you'd have to tilt your head until your neck strained to see the top. There was a war coming. There was a war coming.

There was a war coming.

The knocking on the door of her room brought her out of the inevitable spiral and her head snapped up to meet the face of one of the nameless nurses. "You have a visitor," she said, which was peculiar. The girl never had visitors.

She nodded once, and adjusted herself so she sat further up in her bed, and the nurse opened the door wider until it revealed a jolly looking old man, with a magnificent white beard and half-moon spectacles. The lines carved upon his withered face held entire stories within them. 

"I was wondering when you'd come," she said quietly, returning her gaze to the window to the left of her, looming at the dreary, dull gray skies of London. Her throat tore against itself from lack of use. She didn't speak much. "Albus Dumbledore, the Only One He Had Ever Feared."

"Well," he mused, "I suppose introductions are unnecessary, then." He was kind, which was something she was not used to. He looked at her as if he had no idea who she was. He looked at her as if her namesake didn't make him sick to his stomach.

"I've been wondering when you'd come to see me," she said quietly. Momentarily, Albus Dumbledore wondered if she had even been talking to him. "I dream about you a lot, you know. About all of you."

He smiled and looked towards the same gray sky she had been staring at just a moment before. It wasn't a happy smile, though. It was one of pain, like he knew just how hard this would be for everyone. Just how hard it would be for her.

"Well, then, I suppose you know why I'm here?"

"There's a war," she said, the words sounding foreign on her tongue like this. She was so used to screaming it, or carving it into her skin over and over, or having it yelled at her in her head so many times that the words wouldn't sound like words anymore. "And you need my help."

The seconds ticked by as she was painfully reminded by the wall clock she hates with so much of a passion. To her, the silence was painful. To him, the silence told him everything he needed to know. "You're smarter than they say you are," he said with a chuckle, one of amusement and curiosity. He couldn't get a read on this girl, which he found a little unsettling.

She laughed. This, too, was foreign to her. She never laughed in here. "Is that right? What do they say about me?" she muttered, the smile stretching muscles in her face that hadn't been used in years.

"Your file described you as cold, clever. You were deemed a psychopath, which I found rather odd, if I do say so myself. I'm surprised they named you with a muggle affliction," he said. He crossed his legs. "Vivid hallucinations and delusions. They say you killed your family," He paused and leaned forward in his chair. "I think they're wrong."

"So do I," she said, a tone of resentment and a hint of malice. "And they weren't my family." She wasn't crazy. She wasn't, she wasn't, she wasn't.

He chuckled, taking off his glasses and placing them in his breast pocket. "I know they weren't your family. But the people here don't know that. No one knows that." He paused, contemplating his next choice of words. "I would like to propose a deal," he said, staring so hard at her she felt the need to stir. She never felt the need to stir. Usually she was the one who made others feel the need to stir.

"Enlighten me."

"You help me win this war, I get you out of here forever and your name cleared. You and I both know you have no reason to be here." She could tell that he was desperate. They both knew she was their only hope.

They both knew that she was the only thing they had left in their arsenal.

She sat up, staring at him with a red-hot fury in her eyes. She could feel him try to enter her mind. It didn't work. "I have known about this war for years," she said. "I have felt it for so many years with no way to help anyone. I want him dead. I want him in so much pain that he cries for mercy. I want him to beg for the forgiveness of every single person he's wronged," she said. She was fired up, fidgeting with raw energy and rage. "I hate him more than anyone, Albus. You should know how that feels."

Dumbledore nodded slowly, pleased, yet slightly put off. He had only sensed that much hate in one other person before in his lifetime, and he knew of their relation.

"I know about the prophecy," she said, before he could say anything else. "I know what I have to do."

He looked down at the ground for a moment, then he met her eyes. "I need to be able to trust you. I need to know where your loyalties lie."

"My hatred for him surpasses any sense of loyalty I might have toward him. Luckily, I don't have any."

He smiled at her, one of a proud father. It made her uncomfortable.

"Diana Riddle, welcome to the Order of the Phoenix."

crystal reed as diana riddle