Post by briar.reeyne.michaels on Nov 19, 2011 17:57:10 GMT -5
BRIAR MICHAELS.
but at times i wondered
if i had not come a long way
to find that what i had been searching for
was something i left behind
[/i][/size]but at times i wondered
if i had not come a long way
to find that what i had been searching for
was something i left behind
[/blockquote][/blockquote]
Okay. Okay.
Briar’s mind quickly warmed up into rapid problem-solving mode. She knew she couldn’t stay here—the place simply reeked of Dark Magic. The sooner she got out of this weird black-and-white world (she got distracted staring at her gray-scale hands for a full minute or so) the better chance she had of not getting messed up for life. Seriously.
The Hufflepuff kept on hand on the wall, skeptically staring at the real Hogwarts with a blank face. There was a lot of movement on the other side caused by some blurry shape (which she assumed was Colton due to the rather white-yellow head). Briar suddenly felt a wash of embarrassment trickle inside her, why hadn’t she just listened to the first time Colton expressed his concerns? Her face felt hot for a moment, and Briar lifted her hand off the wall and turned her face away—watching out of the corner of her eye as the brilliant picture of reds and gold vanished and left her in the silent gray world.
She shuffled her feet for a moment, before turning with an almost uncomfortable aura and walked over to the edge of the astronomy tower, her robes swishing behind her as she walked through the stone carnage. Reaching the crumbled (almost nonexistent) stone barrier a good twenty feet away—Briar carefully leaned against it and stared out into the black sky.
It was unsettling, to say the least. Even on the blackest of nights in there was at least Mars to pretend to be a star—the brightest one there. Everyone could point out Mars as the brightest star in the sky, most of them didn’t even know it was actually a planet, not a star that shone so brightly. But now, even Mars was silent—leaving the sky empty and black without a moon. It was almost like it went on forever, an empty void that would come and swallow her up eventually.
Right. Which is why she didn’t want to stay here.
Briskly, shaking herself out of the world of daydreams, Briar turned and faced the stone wall. If she couldn’t get back by finding another mysterious white light (trust me, Briar had already looked)—maybe she could simply blast her way out! Briar moved forward a few feet or so, briskly retrieving her wand and holding it out in front of her—pointing it at the wall. She was still a good ways back, so anything the fourth-year tried shouldn’t backfire too badly…
Impedimenta!”
”Reducto!”
“Expulso!”
“Specialis Revelio!”
“Incendio!”
Briar even tried,
“Diffindo!”
—again out of desperation, but nothing seemed to work. Her wand seemed to be doing less and less with each spell she tried—Briar half-growling with frustration at her pathetic Diffindo scratch on the wall’s surface (which could’ve easily been mistaken for a chip one might get by throwing a stone). She blew a blonde strand of hair out of her face with a huff, driven to the end of her very long list of spells to blow things up with. It looked like—
Wait a second.
Briar blinked, peering more closely at the scorch marks that lined the wall’s stone. At first, it looked like aftereffects from her valiant, flaming, Incendio,—but now, it looked rather like the marks caused by a spell that sent Briar flying every single time she even half attempted it.
Confringo.
It did a very good job of blowing things up. Defense Against Dark Arts had moved down from one of her more favorite classes to less liked after a particularly fateful class learning that curse. Not only did it blow things up, but it set them on fire (a totally unnecessary overkill, Briar had decided) as well—note the scorch marks higher up on the wall.
Still.
It was accompanied by a rather large explosion sound, Briar realized, one that may or may have not been the exact same thing that had nearly blown out her ears a few minutes before on the other side of the wall. Is that what had caused that huge bang? Well, there was really only one way to find out.
Briar didn’t know if it was better to get further away from the place the explosion was going to happen—or closer. Being too far away could send her flying over the already unstable safety walls, and being to close could, well, kill her. The girl eventually settled on a happy-medium about fifteen feet away from the wall. Slowly, she raised her arm, spreading her legs and getting a solid stance on the rather slip-easy stone.
One breath.
Two breath.
“Confringo!”
…
Nothing.
Briar opened her eyes, not even realizing she had shut them, cautiously. To her utter confusion, nothing had happened. No new scorch marks lined the ancient stone walls, no cracks had emerged—no ringing filled her ears. Annoyed slightly, but still rather confused—Briar raised her arm and again shouted, “Confringo!”
Nothing, and this time Briar had watched. Lowering her arm slowly, the witch peered down at her wand—shaking it a few times as if checking to make sure it was still alive. That’s the thing though—Briar curled her hand around the magic filled wood and started. The wood, which had felt so alive and real and filled to the brim with underlying magic—was dying.
The girl could feel it. Her growing horror slowly filled her face, and Briar stared mutely down at her wand for several seconds. Quickly, jolted into action by adrenaline—Briar snapped her hand shut, raised her arm and cried, “Lumos!”
The tip of the wand flickered for a moment, and then died. What—how, without her wand—the magic that was once there could hardly be felt. In a panic, desperate to get her plan done—Briar raised her arm once more and shouted Confringo once more.
“Confringo!”
Silence.
“Confringo!”
Death.
“CONFRINGO!”
Vulnerable.
“Work,” Briar hissed, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that told her how crazy she must look talking to an inanimate object. Her wand felt like a dying animal in her hand, the flow of magic she used to feel so cleanly dimming to a faint pulse—and in her fear, Briar grew angry at it. “You bloody wand, I need this to work—I can’t do this without you—what if something got out when I came in? I have to get back and seal it—!” Her wand, whatever was happening, continued to ‘die’. A pang of desperation began to line her voice. “I, I—work! You have to work—please!”
For the first time, her wand felt like a piece of wood in her hands.
“Please!”
Nothing.
Empty.
Empty. Nothingness.
Slowly, Briar lowered her arm.
It came to a rest beside at her side, still wrapped in cold, trembling, fingers—all but hidden in the sleeves of her black uniform. Briar lowered her head, averting her eyes from the crumbling stone wall, feeling as though she had just watched someone die in front of her own eyes. Which, to her, someone may just as well have. She stood there, as still as a statue, for a minute—? an hour? a second?—whatever it was, Briar, for the first time, felt totally alone.
Please.
Nothing.
And then a little spark.
Not enough to inspire hope or to bring the suffocating curses of this black-stared world to a close. It was only a trickle of magic, a trickle of magic that somehow fluttered through the blocking spells and murky haze brought on by not shouts of anger—but children tears. It was not strong enough to last for more than three seconds, or break this whole thing into a million pieces—but it was strong enough for Briar to feel it and to snap her head up and to raise her arm and scream,
“CONFRINGO!”
And the world dissolved into a flash of white light.
