FANFICTION ALERT ▴━━ introducing creature agendas !
Hermione’s startled gasp draws his attention, and Harry turns to find her standing frozen with fear, metal clenched tightly in shaking hands, as the shackled beast opens its great maw and an orange glow starts from within, growing brighter and brighter until, with one hoarse roar, it unleashes a jet of fire at them.
Harry’s mind goes blank, his body moving before his brain has the chance to process what is happening. He wastes no time at all in throwing himself at Hermione who hasn’t budged from her spot, Ron’s frantic, “‘Mione!” sounding in the background. But in his haste to reach her, Harry stumbles over a loose rock in the ground and lands hard on his knee, ripping a hole into the knee of his pants and scraping the skin, even as his hands unerringly find Hermione’s shoulders to push her out of the way of the flames.
She hits the ground with a groan, her fearful gaze locked on Harry just as the flames reach him, swallowing him whole, her piercing scream echoing off the rocky walls, matching Ron’s cry of shock.
Orangish red fills Harry’s vision, the stifling wave of heat settling around him like a cloak set aflame, blurring the edges of his vision until it finally whites out. He blinks rapidly, trying to relieve the stinging in his eyes. (It hurts.) Merlin does it hurt, the feel of the flames licking at his skin a blistering sensation teasing his nerve endings into a frenzy of tingles and itches and stings, a hint of the pain and destruction to come—pain that soon turns excruciating.
It radiates through him, not unlike the Cruciatus he was once subjected to, threatening to cripple him as a shroud of inky blackness lurks at the edges of his mind, so thick he can barely tell his up from his down.
Until, between breaths, the black spots flickering in his eyes finally dissolve, and he’s suddenly met with the awe-inspiring sight of a gargantuan skeletal dragon looming over him like some great, insurmountable mountain, with thick, bony wings stretched as far as the eye can see, pitch-black and tipped with a pair of sickles, from whence coils of shadows writhe around them, beckoning him forward.
“Greetings, Harry James Potter,” says the being, several voices overlapping Their unearthly, whispery-soft tone as They lower Their head until They are at eye-level with him.
Harry stares in stupefied astonishment at the sheer size of the thing, hardly able to hold Their opaque gaze without flinching. Their eyesockets are twice the size of dinner plates, as black as the skeletal frame They don proudly—and just as unnerving, the ancient intelligence in Their gaze as unfathomable as the deepest, most unexplored parts of space humankind yearns to touch but never will. Shadows lovingly cling to Them, all but sinking into Their bones with every minute shift of Their body as They continue to regard him with some foreign emotion akin to familiarity, an aura of fondness surrounding Them that is as surprising as it is compelling.
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