[Editing] Expecto Patronum: Harry Potter One-shots

10 - The Chase [ Blaize Zabini]

[ Requested part for _stellastyless. The reader is named Lyra Lestrange. This is part one. If you like it, feel free to comment and vote.]

THE SIGN WAS FRAYED AND BATTERED, betraying little but the worn remains of calligraphed font decayed by time and age. It was the marker of a place filled with mystique and thrill - a place where a man could descend slowly into madness or scramble, shrieking in untamable ecstasy, to meet it.

Circus Arcanus. Established in 1923.

There was light everywhere - pulsating, dazzling, tantalizing. The colors swirled, whirled and twirled in an elaborate dance of seduction as it cast ribbons of light that beamed onto the stage, decorating the dark faces of the entertainers and revealing their mystery: pointed Elvin features, splintery teeth, cloven feet, forked tongues. Beings of shadowed silhouettes that once prowled in the dark veil of night.

The searchlights raced across the rows of velvet seats, hunting fresh victims like wolves tracking spilled blood. It hovered indecisively over the emptying stacks, dogged in its search. The mechanical instrument gyrated to a stop, its gears clicking and hissing - it bathed me, its newest victim, in its polychromatic glow of scarlet, amethyst, emerald and ochre. Trapped, I tilted my neck back and breathed in the scent of magic.

I was overwhelmed with the feeling of sensation; the blinding searchlight, the crackle of popcorn, the whistle of magical streamers through the air as they exploded into sweets, the sickly perfume on necks, the iron tang of blood, the salt of sweat and tears. My ears prickled. A feverish tune wafted in the air from an ancient phonograph: the thunder-clamor of symbols, the screech of brass trumpets, the wails of guitars, the heavy pounding of drums. Above the cacophony: a high, seductive voice smooth as a siren's.

When the lights cut out, I was suddenly and utterly alone.

My cousin Draco and his friends, once snickering at the performers and tossing cornels of popcorn, were nowhere to be seen. The adult chaperones had been devoured by the gloomy darkness, too. They would not realize my absence, I knew, since Alecto and Amycus Carrow had been doing no chaperoning other than scowling, snarling and jeering at the "freaks" in the cages. The row upon row of luxurious velvet seating had been stolen from view. Even in darkness, I could feel that the seat was gone beneath me and I was sitting, cross-legged, on an itching mound of hay. There was nothing to mark as vibrant anymore; gone were the scents of popcorn and burning sugar from exploding candy streamers, taken were the ribbons of fluttering searchlights and lost was my safety.

I didn't move; paralyzed by a sudden and constricting fear. If there was one thing I truly feared, it was the dark. Not for the creatures that lurked in its ink - those were fightable, assailable- but for the darkness itself, being quiet and formless. It had a cold touch of death.

I scrambled to fling my wand out.

"Lumos," I commanded.

The illumination from my wand was meager in the enormity of the room, but it cleared the black screen of my surroundings so that I could see the Hall of Mirrors. Silently, it beckoned me. I glanced away, searching for an escape from this madness, but there was no solace to be sought; the ceiling was hazed by an infinite blackness and the outer walls made invisible by the dark. There existed only a silver sheen from the labyrinth of mirrors, the light glistening hauntingly. The enigmatic sight prompted me to journey into the mirror maze, to become lost in its clutches and forget about my problems. The hay crunched underfoot as I was drawn closer to its relflective depths. 

A vision of myself appeared reflected in the mirror.

I was my mother's duplicate. Long, dark tendrils of coiled hair spilled down my shoulders like midnight waters. Skin so pale and lips a pink so pastel that they almost blended into the creamy pallor of my face. The only keepsake of my father's were my eyes; deep-set and intense. The one likeness missing was my mother's derisive smile and bloodthirsty gaze. The formidable glare of Bellatrix Lestrange that had frightened me as a toddler with a fear that had only grown in my adolescence. Would those dark, soulless eyes be my inheritance one day?