ruins ; harry potter [1]

twenty three ; the dream

She was standing on a beach.

Here hair whipped in the whistling wind, making her eyes water and causing goose bumps to appear on her thin forearms. She was in a dress, a beautiful royal purple gown with gems and crystals of all colors and types adorning the fitted bodice. She new she should be cold, what with the wind and bare arms, but she wasn't. She felt nothing. As if caught in a trance, her legs moved on their own accord, her gown trailing the sand behind her, but miraculously, the fabric was untouched by any element. No sand clung to it, no water had made a small, dark stain. It was peculiarly perfect. Too perfect.

The icy salt water now nipped at her toes, the white sea foam leaving a small blanket of foamy bubbles on her feet. To her left, she noticed, were giant, jagged rocks near the face of a cliff, with the constant pummel of sea spray. The surfaces of them were uneven, bumpy and imperfect through years of hard water eroding the rock away. Behind them, sunken deep into the cliff face, an inky cave sat precariously high, too high to climb and too low to scale down from the top of the cliff. It looked like a black hole, and it felt like one too; she could see nothing through the darkness that veiled the inside of the cave from onlookers, but she felt an eerie pull, like a hook had sunk into her stomach and was yanking her gently to get closer. She needed to get to the cave. She needed to get to the necklace.

A voice pierced behind her through the calm sound of the waves lapping idly on the shore. Normally, it would have startled her, but she was in a calming state of ecstasy. She knew this would happen. She expected it.

"You shouldn't be here."

No malice, no emotion whatsoever. She recognized the voice, and it would've normally seemed odd to her; it didn't right now. Diana turned slowly, her unblemished gown creating an arc in the sand as it swept around with her.

There, standing before her, was herself. An obsidian black gown, only accessorized with a single emerald on the high collar. The dress looked old and seemed to stick out like a sore thumb; an anachronism among the new age Diana grew up in, a relic of a time long unknown by anyone living. Most likely centuries old. She didn't know why she thought it could be so ancient, seeing as it was perfectly intact and looked as if it had never been worn before, but something deep in the crevices of her darkened mind told her that this dress holds the kind of memories only someone old and wise enough could know. The figure of herself staring at her now was barefoot, her feet scratched and bloodied, maybe from walking through a sharp wooded area or rocks. The most striking thing about this darkened, shadowy version of herself were the eyes. Her eyes were a crimson red, matching the color of the blood staining her feet. Through slitted pupils, a restless darkness lurked, like flames licking a wall, desperate to emerge and spread, to consume. It was contained, but the gowned Diana had a feeling it might not be for much longer.

One thing that caught her eye, though, was a small pendent that hung from a thin, silver chain from the figure's slender neck, stopping just above the gleaming emerald. A globe. The same one she wore religiously around her neck every day. The same one she has had for as long as she could remember.

"You shouldn't be here," she repeated, in the same voice and tone that she had before. It would've been strange for Diana to watch herself like this, to hear her voice slip through the rosy lips she often saw in the mirror; it wasn't. Diana didn't answer as she watched the clone of herself slip her fingers behind her back and pull out a thin, slender, knotted wand. It was ancient, passed through the hands of generation after generation, though barely withered or even a scratch blemished the wand as she held her arm up, the wand tip aiming straight for Diana's heart. She cast no spell, nor made any move to strike; she opened her mouth to speak again. "Tick tock, Diana. Isn't long now until the sky falls and you're left to bear the weight alone." It was a reminder. A threat. A warning.