HP: Monochrome

Snape's battered copy of Extreme Incantations, was a rather bold text, as far as spell recipes went, often choosing to describe spells with questionable origins and effects. It made sense, considering the author, a certain Violetta Stitch, was a war veteran who survived through the Grindelwald-era.

Just as Snape had said, the pages were scribbled with hastily written text on the sides. Most of them were just addendum to the text, maybe a modification here and there. There was an entire section on the different variations of the Shield spell. Harry was unsure of what 'Diabolica is better and worse than Maxima' and 'Horribilis might as well be a curse' was supposed to mean, but he decided to finish the book first before getting into the nitty-gritty details.

Harry turned over the page, and now stared at the hide-piercing curse, the same one Victor Krum had used against the dragon during the First Task. In retrospect, he should've chosen to do something along those lines instead of going ahead with Moody's insane idea.

Brazenly trying to out-fly a dragon? That thing was born with wings, for Merlin's sake.

He turned the page again.

Ossio Fragmen — the bone-breaker. It was an offensive spell derived from two sister spells — Confringo aka the blasting curse, and Reducto, aka the disintegration curse. The former's function lay along the lines of undoing the forces of attraction within objects, causing individual bits to split apart. The latter, true to its name, operated on the principle of pure disintegration of the object to the tiniest possible fragments. Combining both of them and reducing the area of effect, the Bone-breaker allowed the caster to splinter, if not outright disintegrate a bone with a single hit.

"This could be useful," he muttered to himself, running his fingers over the page. There was even a tiny PostScript at the bottom about Skele-Gro and how it could heal bones affected by the use of this curse. Following that was a note from Snape, about a related spell called Ossio dispersimus, which caused the complete removal of bones at the point of application. A healing spell by origin, Grindelwald's henchmen shamelessly used it during the war to insta-paralyse Hit-wizards.

There was even a helpful, hand-drawn, moving picture of a wizard running and then falling down from the sudden disappearance of their kneecaps.

Harry felt a chill go down his spine. Suddenly, his own episode of bonelessness back in the second year felt far more sinister than before. Whether that fool Lockhart had done what he did intentionally or not was another matter altogether.

Still, the rational part of him mused, very useful. It wasn't on par with the almighty killing curse or anything of the sort, but still a clever addition to his admittedly limited arsenal of spells.

Silently, Harry memorised the wand movements. Every wizard's spell, modern or archaic, could trace its origins in magical languages like Elder Futhark, or Sumerian and Egyptian Cuneiform. The older the language, the more powerful it was.

It explained why most spells taught at Hogwarts were in Latin. Or pseudo-Latin. A relatively new language, both easy to understand and safer for the young, bright-eyed pupils of Hogwarts. Meanwhile, more powerful spells— especially those with healing or destructive attributes —were drawn from older languages. The bone-breaker curse, for instance, could be written using three symbols from Egyptian Cuneiform. When all three symbols were put together in a specific geometry, the superimposition matched the wand movement of the spell he was about to cast.

With time, witches and wizards had grown to prefer subtlety and precision over raw, intimidating force. The killing curse, for example, had Turkish roots, with the word kedavra referring to cadaver. Several magical linguists associated the word kedavra with a similar verse in early Aramaic script, a mostly pagan mnemonic used to show spiritual creation. However, arithmancers of the late nineteenth century proved that a word associated with spiritual creation would only impede upon the functionality of what was essentially a curse of unmaking. Or, as lay-wizards put it, a killing curse.

All things considered, it had been a fairly interesting read. Why the intricacies of magical theory were never discussed in McGonagall's class was beyond him. Personally, he'd have loved to learn the reasons behind all those random wand flourishes they were taught.

Instead, they got to turn matches into needles and buttons into pincushions.

Apparently, that was considered a more fulfilling learning experience.

Without further ado, Harry replicated the wand movements. Twin slides downward with a forty-five degree angle in between, then a flick forward in the direction of the point of application.

"OSSIO FRAGMEN!"

Immediately, the large, empty closet opposite him exploded into dust.

Damn. Too much power. He needed to significantly trim the power if he wanted to use the spell. If he wasn't careful, this could land him in yet another murder charge.

And this time, it'd be my damned fault too.

Wincing, he quickly cast Reparo. Clearly, the spell was going to need some practice before he got the hang of it.

The sound of a large, antiquated grandfather clock tolling somewhere in the house broke his reverie.

He looked around and cast a quick Tempus.

3:36 PM.

Still afternoon. Sirius had left for some serious 'shopping', something about renovating the house, talking to builders and wardmasters. There was something involving a Gringotts visit and a dozen other things that sounded a little too monotonous for his tastes. Harry had chosen to stay back, and practise some spells until then.

He looked around at the vast, empty Ancestral House of Black. It was dark, grim, and old— very fitting, given its name. Of course, whether the lane had gotten its name from the House or some Black with questionable sanity decided to name their home after a muggle street was anybody's guess.

Whatever the case, staying here felt… odd, for a lack of better terms. The Dursley home apparently had powerful wards cast around it. Wards that instilled a feeling of safety and comfort inside him. As a kid, his feelings regarding the home never made sense to him, but over the last two years, he came to understand what was truly happening.

He hated the Dursley home with a passion. Hated the home, hated what it represented, hated the people in there, hated his cupboard. He hated everything about it.

And yet, a part of him loved living there. His rickety cupboard under the stairs was sizably small, but it felt comforting. The people he called his 'relatives' were hostile and ill-mannered, but the house, reinforced by the power of the wards, still gave him a sense of being protected while he stayed within its confines.

Come to think of it, that was probably why he'd never tried to escape.

Aunt Petunia probably wouldn't even have cared. And the less said about Vernon, the better.

And while their apathy was understandable, their hostility certainly wasn't. Had it all been a façade to make him walk away. To leave them and escape? For muggles that were obsessed about public appearance and normalcy, Petunia and Vernon Dursley were way too aggressive towards him.

For practically no reason at all.

Other than the magic, of course, but the point stood.

Had there been more to his sufferings in the Dursley household than what was visible at first? And more importantly, why the hell was this house reminding him of Number 4, Privet Drive so damn much?

Harry frowned. It wasn't like this was his first stay in any magical dwelling. Compared to the Dursleys, the Burrow had felt like a breath of fresh mountain air. Warm. Comforting. Welcoming. And Hogwarts… Hogwarts matched those feelings and dialled them to eleven.

Plus it had literal mountains surrounding it.

There was no reason why the Black House wouldn't feel the same. This was his godfather's home. A man who, despite being from a dark family of witches and wizards, was doing more for him than anyone else had ever done. Sirius was attempting to give him a chance at a normal life.

A childhood.

Family.

So why was there an unshakeable feeling in his gut that he was back at the Dursley household all over again?

"You're just seeing phantoms, Potter," Harry muttered to himself. He really needed to get his mind checked. First with Ollivander, and now this? Whatever that… thing in the graveyard had been, maybe it had knocked a couple of his screws loose.

He shook his head, returning his attention to the book at hand. There were a couple of spells he'd marked for practice. In their fourth year charms class, Flitwick had taught them the standard stunning spell— Stupefy. From what he understood, the spell produced a controlled amount of electricity that discharged directly into the nervous system.

Kind of like those taser-things the muggle police used to apprehend criminals. Electrical discharges used to render people temporarily paralyzed or unconscious— a state Flitwick described as being stunned. But here, in this book, were different variations of the stunning spells, and none of them described anything nearly as temporary as unconsciousness.

The clock gonged again.

Something for another time, Harry decided, promptly closing the book. He needed a distraction from all this learning, and the half-open tome on the sofa described the perfect activity.

Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests.

Say what you would about the fraud, but he certainly did have brilliant taste. Whoever he had conned to get all the information compiled into this book was truly a genius on the subject. Probably some kind of magizoologist or something, though of course not anymore. Not after Lockhart was unfortunately done with them.

The book reminded him of the doxy infestation on the first floor. Sirius had locked the entire zone shut, telling him to let it stay until he returned from the day's errands. Harry had been curious about what his godfather was upto, but couldn't bring himself to pester the man.

He glanced at the stairs.

He had dealt with doxies before in his third year. They were basically the same as cornish pixies, except only darker, madder and deadlier, with their venom causing victims to hallucinate or something. He knew Sirius had stored several vials of doxy-antidote in the kitchen. The last thing he needed was to fall down and start hallucinating in this house of horrors. He'd probably start dreaming about the graveyard all over again.

"You know what? Killing doxies is exactly the kind of distraction I need," Harry huffed, completely unbothered by the fact that he was talking to himself. He'd spent hours as a child, trapped inside the cupboard, engaged in that very activity.

It was a miracle no one at Hogwarts ever found out about that particular tidbit. So far, he'd already been called a liar, a dark wizard, and a gloryhound, among other titles. Nutcase wasn't something he wanted to add to the list anytime soon.

Standing up and stretching his hands, Harry quickly made up his mind and strode out of the room, stepping forward with purpose as he headed for the stairs.

It was time to go hunt some doxies.

If he'd paid closer attention to his surroundings, he would've noticed the darkness just outside the room stirring up a little.

The corridor felt like a burial ground. It was as if the very air spoke of a person's dying breath. Soft hissing noises and old-fashioned gas lamps sputtering to life on the walls welcomed Harry in, casting a flickering, insubstantial light over the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a large, gloomy room. A cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and age-blackened portraits hung crooked on the walls. He even thought he heard something scuttling across the baseboard.

Alright… what next?

Pulling out his wand, he raised it upward as his other hand held the door's edge firmly, ready to pull it back shut at the slightest noise.

"Lumos Solem!"

Doxies were creatures of wyldfae origin that thrived in cold and dark environments, which was why old and dilapidated houses were the perfect targets for infestation. So when a blinding white orb of light exploded out of the other end of the wand and shot towards the centre of the room, the doxy swarm screamed.

The sound that ensued wasn't the volume of an air horn. Or a marching band. Or the Hogwarts Express train horn. It was far beyond anything he'd ever heard in his life. And it all happened inside the relatively small, enclosed acoustically reflective area— the room he was currently standing in.

Every single piece of glass in the room shattered. The window panes burst open, allowing the afternoon sunbeams to flood into the room. For Harry, it didn't feel so much like sound as it did being thrown into an enormous vat of jelly as he felt himself suffocate, the pressure prickly against his skin and painful in his ears. His balance had long since vanished, and he'd doubled over in acute pain. His heart was in his throat and his shoulders— no, his entire body —was shaking as if he'd been doused in ice-cold water. And before he realised it, there was a large mass of inky blackness, composed of thousands of doxies— reptilian, winged and fanged, their dark, hungry, feral eyes staring at the intruder.

The only defence between him and a death-by-poison was a mass of glowing sunlight.

A defence that was slowly shrinking.

But the damage was done.

Cursing under his breath, Harry grabbed at the doorknob, forgetting his fallen wand. With a vicious pull, the rickety, wooden door began to close with a loud creak. Just another second, and the room would be shut once more, keeping the doxies away and—

Thud!

The door stopped.

And Harry froze.

Semi-translucent hands, going through his chest and pressing against the door, palms open, kept it from fully closing.

What the fu—

An icy fear began to spread across Harry's chest. Against his better judgement, he slowly turned around. Levitating in the air, mere inches from his face, was the spectral shade of a woman. She wore a proper high-necked shirt and a long, dark skirt. Other than the fact that he could see right through her, she seemed solid. Like she was real. Her face was pretty in a strained, bony sort of way, and her hands were still going through him, pressed against the door.

Large, bulging eyes met Harry's own.

In the silence of the moment, Harry could hear his wand slowly rolling across the darkness of the room.

Away from him.

The glowing ball of light finally whimpered and died.

The spectral shade continued to stare at him, before throwing her head back and screaming. It came out as a deafening, bestial roar that rattled the walls as her voice— loud, strong, grating like a rusted sword dragged over stone —boomed.

"FILTH! SCUM! HOW DARE YOU BEFOUL THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS?"

The doxies attacked.

Being a seeker had its merits.

Acting on raw instinct, Harry threw himself down, his hands covering his head as he pressed his face against the floor, hoping to not get hit by debris and stay conscious. If he'd had his wand, he'd have tried to raise a shield. But without it, there was only so much he could do.

That was the thing about explosions. They were loud, with no real way to convey the sheer violence of the act. It didn't even register as a sound. Rather, he felt a terrible power thrumming in the air, just as the doxy swarm slammed into the wooden floor with a hammer blow of disorienting pressure, sending stone and wood scattering in all directions.

His hearing was the first casualty, a constant high-pitched tone ringing in his ears like those TV broadcasts back in the Dursley home. Harry tried to move, but his muscles protested against his instructions. His senses were in complete disarray— it was hard to tell which way was up versus down. He knew how to stand and where to go, but actually doing it became a tall task.

This wasn't the first time he'd encountered a ghost or pixie-like creature before. But nothing about the wraith or doxies truly felt normal. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't really describe the situation.

Danger.

Yes, that was an apt description for it. He was in danger.

So, faced with perilous circumstances, Harry did the only thing he could do.

He stood up and rushed towards the staircase.

After all, a moving target was much more difficult to hit.

Holding on to his wand with his clumsy fingers and a sizzling pain in his back— wooden shrapnel, no doubt —Harry raced down the staircase, stumbling as he missed a few steps in his haste. His right hand twitched as he made a grabbing motion for his wand, but empty air greeted him. His wand wasn't with him.

And no twig, magical or not, could have survived an explosion like that.

The doxies screamed as they zoomed after him, a resonant sound of talons grinding rang in his ears. Doxies were meat-eaters, he faintly remembered reading, though they were only content with dead and decomposing flesh. Lockhart's book, however, went on to explain that doxies loved to hang their prey until it began to rot and stink to high heaven.

Then, they'd blissfully feast upon it.

In other words, if he wasn't dead when they found him, they would make him dead. Painfully.

"BLLOOOODD TRAITOR!" he heard the sinister wraith bellow from behind him, her high-pitched voice sounding like nails against a blackboard. As if the doxies weren't enough. "YOU DARE BESMIRCH THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS?"

Malice slithered up his spine like a spiteful serpent. Harry could sense the wraith's hostility, and it was no mundane feeling. Not the mindless anger of a fellow student, or Snape's perpetually mercurial contempt. Hell, even Voldemort and his indignation at being bested by a child felt pale in comparison to this. It was something entirely different. An old, accursed poison that could almost make you choke blood by sheer exposure to its unrestrained vileness.

Now, this thing wanted to destroy him. To hurt him, to break him down, and enjoy watching him beg all the while. Nothing he said, nothing he did, would ever change that. He, Harry Potter, was something to be eradicated in amusing fashion.

The wraith had no fear in its being. It had no mercy to spare.

And it was coming for him.

Harry picked up his pace even more. Running was a skill that had always served him rather well. Both in escaping Dudley and his motley crew, and also in taking shelter behind gravestones and tombs as dark wizards lobbed dangerous curses at his back. Now that he thought about it, running had saved his hide in almost every life-threatening situation. Today was just one more to add to that tally. Hopefully.

He rounded the far corner of the corridor, only to slip on the draping curtains along the wall.

"Damn it!" he cursed, scrambling back up. But the momentary lapse was enough for the doxy swarm to come within striking distance. Picking up a fallen walking stick, Harry whirled it around and slammed it into several pairs of doxies, dropping them for good.

"Blasted fuzzy little pests," he grimaced. "If there were only a handful of you, Hedwig would eat you for lunch."

He ducked two more kamikaze-style attacks from the barrage of doxies before swerving around and shooting off in a different direction. In a way, running through the Black household was almost like playing Quidditch. Only, he was on his legs instead of a broom, and instead of catching the snitch as usual, he was trying to dodge angry bludgers. Thousands of them.

"Maybe, if I, get through this," he panted, "I'll try my hand at—"

He ducked, hurling the first thing he could grab at a nearby doxy's face.

"—Chaser!"

It was dead before it hit the floor.

Harry looked forward, but a mini-swarm of doxy was waiting between himself and the other side of the corridor. As they rushed forward, Harry planted the heel of his boot against the first doxy that decided to get clever and swoop down towards him. He was no lightweight, and the kick burst through the creature's nose and through the rest of its body until it was nothing more than a mass of blood and tissue. He laughed gleefully, adrenaline rushing through him as—

Something frosty and ethereal clenched around his neck like a noose. It felt soft as silk, but somehow sturdy as iron shackles. Before he knew it, he was being pulled backwards. Harry tried grabbing at the spectral hand clenched around his neck, his legs twisting and stamping as he tried to break her hold.

But the bundle of angry feminine wrath didn't budge.

Instead, it flung him through a nearby door, into a room filled with antiquated furniture. He landed against a nearby table, his back hitting its wooden edge before he painfully slid down to the floor.

His ribs ached.

Badly.

Somewhere between registering the feeling of wet blood oozing down his back and his brain rebooting, everything suddenly snapped into focus. There was a wraith in this house, not unlike the ones at Hogwarts. It was a woman, a staunch purist, and extremely angry.

And she'd just tried to feed him to doxies, who wanted to eat him alive.

One of those winged fiends pivoted in mid-air and flew towards him. Harry tried to jerk away from it, his rash movements still clumsy and predictable, and felt a flare of agony in his left cheek.

Screaming, he reacted on blind, animalistic instinct as he swatted his hands madly in whatever direction he could. Sometimes, his palm hit a thick, sturdy hide. Other times, he felt it slash against sharp talons. The pain flooded through him like firewhiskey, decreasing his inhibitions and making his vision clearer.

Fuck Voldemort and his Death Eaters. These stupid household pests were going to be what did him in.

The fifteenth talon dug into his neck, causing him to thrash out in agony. For the first time in what felt like a long time, even though he knew it wasn't, Harry felt utterly helpless. Stunned, even, at his inability to counter such a regular foe.

At least Voldemort was a powerful, feared wizard. At least the basilisk was seventy feet long and could fell any creature with little more than a gaze. And in his plethora of life-threatening adventures, he'd always had his wand. And if not that, a sword.

Now? He was all alone.

It was like St. Gregory's Primary School all over again. Surrounded by Dudley and Polkiss and the rest of his little gang. Angry, bruised, beaten. Day in, day out, with no way out. It was jarring, the helplessness reminding him of his most vulnerable moments. And now, like his bullies once surrounded him, were countless poisonous pests.

Several dozen of the nightly creatures rose into the air before him, scuttering and grinding their talons mid-air. They flew up in a V-formation, and Harry got the impression that he wasn't going to last much longer. He needed some way to hide, something like—

The Cloak!

The cloak was still there in his room, spread out over the sofa. He eyed the door on the other side of the swarm, mentally calculating where in the house he currently was and the fastest way to get to his room. If he managed to make it past the swarm and through the next corridor, it was a quick flight of stairs before he could get the cloak. But with all these doxies in front of him, how could he possibly—

"Aarghh!" Harry yelped, flinging away one that had bit his neck, drawing blood. Whimpering in agony, he lurched forward as the effects of doxy venom began to cloud his senses. He needed to escape, and for that, he needed help.

Getting his wand was out of the question. Even if it somehow survived the explosion, there was no telling where it had gone. No, his best chance was to hide.

If he wanted to survive, he needed his cloak.

"YOU WON'T ESCAPE SO EASILY!"

"Watch me!" Harry coughed, trying to push himself back up, only to miserably fail.

"ALL BLOOD-TRAITORS AND FILTH MUST BE PURGED!"

"A bigoted ghost!" he scoffed, wincing all the while. "And here I thought I'd seen it all." He tried pushing himself up again, feeling jolts of pain flare through his spine. Between the doxy bite and the thrashing he received, it was a miracle he could still move.

But this time, he was successful. Despite the random spastic twitches and the shaking in his knees, both feet were underneath him as he stood upright.

Almost mirroring his motions, the doxies rose up in three different swarms, surrounding him from three sides, with the wraith guarding the way towards the door. He was completely boxed in, and the only way out of this mess was forward, through the angry horde of poisonous creatures.

"To be fair," Harry wryly smiled, "I've been through worse."

The wraith raised a skeletal hand, and a wave of terrible force struck him head-on, powerful enough to send him tumbling down onto his arse. But Harry, despite the overwhelming power, held his ground. As soon as it petered out, he mustered every last bit of energy he had and sprinted towards the doxy swarm.

He ignored the slashes he could feel littering his skin. He didn't let the multiple injections of poison into his system deter him from moving forward. And when the wraith stood between his quickly moving form and the door, Harry continued running straight through her, wrenching open the doorknob and hightailing it down the hallway.

He did it! He was out of that mess! Just a bit further until— just a little— just—

Harry felt his eyelids droop against his will. Back when he was bit by the basilisk, the venom was corrosive and painful, but this was different. It was slower, insidious, preferring to be more subtle as it debilitated all his motor functions.

Straining his neck, Harry turned around and looked behind him. The swarm tumbled out of the door like an angry horde of bees, seemingly scattering in all directions before they collectively locked onto him and shot towards him. And in the centre of it all was that pale, ghostly wraith, with a malicious smile on her face.

"NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU! YOU ARE ALONE AND HELPLESS!"

And now she's done it, Harry offhandedly wondered. Every time someone had uttered those words, something always entered the equation and helped him survive. Despite his lack of experience, despite his wounds, despite the overwhelming odds, he always pulled through.

Harry's legs wobbled, but he continued to put one foot in front of the other, even as he staggered side to side as he continued. The swarm was gaining on him, only a few seconds from consuming him utterly, but he was a gryffindor. He wouldn't quit till the very last moment.

If only I… had a wand…

In all his misadventures, he'd always had his trusty companion with him. Luck or not, it was always somehow his ticket out of the messes he'd gotten himself into. But not now. And without his wand, he didn't have any way to use his magic except—

Except— except— except—

An old memory hit him like a sledgehammer as it resurfaced.

It was something he'd done a long while ago. When he was surrounded by Dudley and his gang back in primary school. Having the shit scared out of him by Vernon had made him forget all about it, but now that he remembered, he knew what he'd done, and exactly how he'd done it.

And if he could do it in the past, he could do it now.

Just like the Patronus charm.

"You're right," Harry murmured, spitting out more blood as his trembling form turned around. The mere act of moving hurt, as his whole body felt like one giant bruise. But even so, his bloody grin didn't falter. "You've got me all alone. There's no one around that can help me."

Shiny, beetle-like wings began to beat more rapidly.

"Here's where you're wrong. I'm not some powerless child you can scare."

His fists clenched as he fought to keep himself awake.

"I'm a wizard."

His eyes met the wraith's own. Bright emerald met dull, lifeless grey.

"I've burned a sycophant to death with my bare hands. I killed a seventy-foot basilisk with a sword. I've scared off hundreds of dementors, outflew dragons, and survived Voldemort. I'm not going to let some has-been ghost kill me."

His lips twisted.

"This is the Black House. The House of my godfather. My house. And you… you don't belong here."

The wraith let out a vengeful warcry as it lunged towards him, the swarm right on its tail. Not that he could feel it. Not that he cared. Instead, Harry allowed a familiar blackness to ensnare him like a cocoon. He could feel vague impressions of skeletal hands grabbing at him and teeth going through skin, but he was already away, pressed in all directions as he felt squeezed through an impossibly narrow orifice—

CRACK!

Harry collapsed to his knees, confused and disoriented. A moment later, a robust feeling of victory overtook him as he spied a large, silvery cloak spread across the couch just in front of him. He didn't know how, but he'd pulled it off. Apparition.

He was back in his room.

In the distance, he could still make out a rumbling that felt like it was drawing closer and closer to his location— the wraith was still roaming the house looking for him. Shakily, he got to his feet and staggered forward.

Closer.

The buzz of rapid wing beats and talons scraping against one another was louder now. Enough to start drowning out the confidence in his mind. But he wouldn't quit just yet. Not when the cloak was within arm's reach

Just a bit more.

The door slammed open but it was too late for the vengeful wraith or its pet army of doxies. Even though his legs stopped working, even though his arms no longer moved, even though he had nothing in working order save for his mind, Harry still took perverse pleasure at the indignation on the wraith's face as his lips twitched into a stiff facsimile of a smile.

"I win," he mouthed, as his body tipped over. With the last vestiges of his strength, Harry pulled on the edges of the cloak with his fingers, letting it gently fall over him as he fell to the floor. He could slowly feel his body shutting down. Maybe he'd die. Maybe he wouldn't.

But one thing was for certain.

The doxies could no longer get to him.

Because Harry Potter had vanished.