Exploring the magic of words…
In the Noble House of Black,
You’ll be welcomed with taunts and shrieks
And slave heads shall greet you from the rack,
In the Noble House of Black.
For hiding secrets, its walls have a knack,
So be careful when a wooden step creaks.
In the Noble House of Black,
You’ll be welcomed with taunts and shrieks.
~Diksha
Home I brought,
His Champion, dead;
The father’s cries
Still ring in my head;
Cold, grey eyes
Stared up, undead.
A boy of seventeen
Now lay on his eternal bed;
To bring about his end
Had been my stead;
Guiltily, I look at his visage
On his immortal, wooden bed.
A decade old enmity
Had lain my parents dead
And now this innocent boy
Whose father stood with tears unshed;
Squeezing my eyes shut, I wonder,
Why couldn’t it have been me instead?
~Diksha
Peter Parker panted under his Spandex suit. Sharp gusts of the cold London air were tearing through his lungs. He looked up at the angry sky from where he stood atop the clock tower.
He did not have much time now.
A fantastically ugly and dangerous mutation had escaped from Oscorp barely 24 hours ago and Peter still couldn’t believe the wild chase the ridiculous thing had given him. If only that little girl hadn’t got stuck on the wings of the cargo plane (even he was incredulous how that one happened) and hadn’t obliged him to deliver her safely back to her mother, he would’ve caught the sucker before it managed to reach the Eurasian landmass.
And yet, here he was, royally exasperated with his life and quite at a loss regarding the whereabouts of the said mutt.
With a quick leap, Peter cut through the air like a bullet, soaring towards the ground while he shot out his spider webs onto the walls of the tower, climbing down gracefully.
A few people stared at him as his feet touch solid ground and he groaned. He could almost envisage the headlines in the newspapers tomorrow, “Spiderman’s Stunt in London.” And he’d have to be back at home before Aunt May could miss him too much. No time for a quick London tour either, as luck would have it.
Deciding he needed a change of clothes, he was just about to look around for a clothes shop or something when a voice called out behind him, making him jump.
“Merlin’s beard!!”
And so the English have arrived, he thought, rolling his eyes. He turned around, fully prepared to find someone opening gaping at him, camera at the ready to click his picture, perhaps even a selfie with him. Instead he saw before him two young boys, probably the same age as himself, big identical grins on their identical faces and their identical hands free of any (identical?) cameras. He sighed inwardly in relief.
“What’s up, boys?” he called out, nodding towards them, hoping they’d direct him to someplace where he could lay his hands on some free clothes.
“Didn’t think you frequented London, mate!” one of them said enthusiastically.
“But you’re welcome all the same!” the other chimed in.
“This is Fred-,” the first one said, pointing to the other.
“And this is George,” Fred said, pointing towards his brother.
“Spiderman,” Peter returned, extending his hand towards the two. They shook hands quite firmly before Peter asked them casually, not expecting an affirmative response, “Seen anything big and hairy on the streets lately?”
“Not really,” Fred said. “Unless by hair, you mean fur.”
“You have?” Peter asked, surprised.
“Just heard on the Wizard’s Wireless,” George replied. “Big rabbit-like monster at Diagon Alley. We were just going to check it out.”
“Yeah, definitely didn’t sound native so figured we might as well try and experiment some of our Dungbombs on him and see if his fur absorbs the smell,” Fred chuckled.
Peter stood with his mouth open, staring the twins, unable to make head or tail of what they said. He shook his head. “Enough with the jokes guys,” he said, turning away from them and starting to walk away as the two placed a friendly hand each on his shoulders and laughing and talking nonsense, led him through London to a funny little inn on a funny little road. They led him through the inn quickly and he was sure that they were two very disturbed people when they tapped the wall at the outside the back of the inn in randomly strategized places.
But when the wall separated and revealed a busy market place to him, he wondered if he himself was going mad.
Right in front of him, however, stood the object of his quest. The white Rabbit Monster was flailing around wildly, its hair flying about and covering his face, through which his vicious fangs glinted dangerously.
Peter tensed at the sight, ready to lung at the creature, heedless of the dozens of people surrounding the monster, waving wooden sticks in front of them that shot out jets of different colored lights at the creature, each jet making it angrier than before.
Quick as lightening, he ran towards the Rabbit Monster, shooting out his webbing from his wrists towards the thing so that its limbs were entangled and useless. It thrashed about as the whole of Diagon Alley looked at Peter, completely spell bound.
“I’ll handle it for you, folks,” Peter shouted confidently as he raised his wrists again. But the Rabbit Monster seemed to absorb the webbing into his white fur, making his fur coat even thicker and shinier.
Okay, so this changes things, he thought, worriedly.
Suddenly, from behind him, small objects made their way towards the monster and before he could get a good look at them, disappeared in a puff of black smoke right at the feet of the Rabbit Monster. He turned around to see the twins saluting at him, wicked grins on their faces.
While the monster was distracted, Peter ran towards it. He shot out his webbing at the monster again, though he knew it wouldn’t hold it off permanently. Landing on the roof of a shop right beside the wild monster that was struggling with the webs, Peter jumped onto the monster’s head, balancing himself expertly on the silky fur and bent down towards its face.
The Rabbit shook its head violently, making him clutch at its fur. Struggling to retain his balance, he still advanced towards its face.
Suddenly, the ground beneath the creature’s feet began to transform into a swamp, stopping the creature in its head-shaking and buying Peter enough time to shoot his webbing at the Rabbit’s eyes, blinding the creature. With its paws arrested in the swamp and darkness behind its eyelids, the creature stopped in its wild thrashing around and grunted loudly and Peter quickly took out the syringe filled with the antidote and injected it into the monster.
“Way to go, Bunny!” Peter cheered as the Rabbit monster began to transform back into a regular sized rabbit.
He jumped down onto swamp-free ground and let his eyes stray towards the twins among the joyous shouts and cheering of the queer folks about. Their usual triumphant grins on their faces, Fred and George nodded at Peter. Peter grinned behind his red and blue mask and nodded in turn.
My limbs were locked in excruciating pain. My vision clouded in darkness. There was a sharp ringing in my ears. My throat and lungs seemed to be on fire as I shrieked loudly. For my life. For my sanity.
A woman’s merciless laugh rang out from above me. And the pain got even more unbearable. My legs began flailing about of their own accord, desperate for an escape from the grotesque torture. Each muscle in my body was on fire. It felt like someone had cut open my head and was tearing through my nerves one by one while pouring boiling hot liquid into my skull.
But all that pain seemed nothing more than a mere interlude. Between the bright light that had been my life before. Full of hope. Full of fight. Full of my determination to strike brutally at the monsters that lurked at the corners of the path I’d chosen to walk. The path of a brave soldier. And the gloom of the darkness that was sure to shroud me once the torture ended. The ageless immortality that death’s oblivion was sure to throw me into. Leaving me to deal with the memories of the terror that had been inflicted upon me. Forcing me to drown in the ghosts of my past. Bit by bit, at an excruciating slow speed, the cold hands of pain began to withdraw. As the darkness receded, consciousness returned to me in pools of surprise. And with it, came the frustration and anguish.
Cautiously, I opened my eyes to the reality of the infuriatingly familiar room. And to the face of a young, concerned boy leaning over me, his expression soft and gentle. Instantly, a warm feeling filled my chest. His presence calmed me. Gave me hope. Or what my heart faintly remembered hope to feel like.
I wanted to smile at him. Gently whisper to him my gratitude. I wanted to get up and stroke his beautiful blonde head and ask him who he was. But when I tried to do so, the words would not reach my mouth, instead getting stuck in my brain and forming an endless and illogical loop.
“Alice, dear, are you awake?” The approaching lady called in a rather too loud voice. I closed my eyes again, pretending to be asleep, wishing the woman would go away and leave me alone with the boy for some time.
“She’s still asleep,” came the sweet voice of the boy beside me. Ah, was I fond of him! I felt her linger around for a while longer and then stalk away.
“She’s gone now,” he whispered.
I opened my eyes once again and looked at his adorable, round head and grinned again. Finally. The fight was over. And in spite of all my losses, a giddiness filled my chest. For I had this. My prize. The boy smiled at me with tears in his eyes. “I love you, Mum. You know that, right?”
~Diksha
Cho took a sharp intake of breath. The smell was heady, to say the least.
The mustiness of the rain beating against the castle walls and soaking through her cloak, down her back, as she balanced herself on the window sill. The smell of the lonely corridor that had just been cleaned by Mr. Filch. And the smell of him. So close to her. His breath falling on her nose.
Cedric had his hands planted on either side of her on the window sill as she leaned into him, facing away from the window.
The rain pattered above them, onto the roof of the deserted Astronomy Tower, drowning out the sound of their heavy pants. Cho had her half shut eyes fixed on Cedric’s yellow and black tie, for she couldn’t bring herself to look up after the moment that had just passed between them. She was certain her cheeks were bright pink and her eyes glistening strangely by now.
The rain continued to stream down her back in little rivulets, making her shiver slightly.
Cedric was regarding her carefully, letting his eyes rove over her crimson face framed by her smooth black locks. Not even the success of stealing the Golden Egg from the Swedish Short Snout or rescuing this same beautiful girl from the bottom of the Black Lake could parallel the exuberance and exhilaration he was feeling now. No Quidditch victory had ever made him happier. No moment in his life had made him feel quite like this. Except, of course, the day he had danced with this same girl in front of him now, at the Yule Ball on Christmas Eve, she looking like an angel in her silver robes, ethereal and graceful.
He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her down onto her feet in one quick move. She turned her face up at him in surprise, her shining, brown eyes widening as he pulled her closer to himself.
His grey eyes twinkled back at her, mischief apparent in the half suppressed smile round his mouth. One of his hand moved up her back to rumple the wet hair stuck at the back of her neck.
Cho shivered again as his fingers lightly brushed against the cool skin of her neck. Her own fingers, resting against the soft fabric of his cloak, now knotted around them, her eyes fluttering close.
She felt his face lean down nearer to hers again.
“Weren’t you saying something earlier?” He breathed down quietly at her, his other hand gripping her waist tighter.
“Uh…” She struggled to make sense of his question, her skin tingling with new sensations. “I…”
“Yeah?” He prodded on, holding back his chuckle.
A thought, lost in the feelings of the moment, resurfaced hazily in her mind now.
She swallowed. “The Task.”
“Hm?”
“Good luck for it,” she whispered, finally opening her eyes to look at him, a small, shy smile on her lips, pride and hope glimmering on her face as she gathered some of her senses again. “I really hope you win.”
He grinned at her, excitement ready to burst from within him. The Tournament would soon be over. If victorious, which he really wished to be, he’d take Cho to Hogsmeade. If not, well, he would get quite a few kisses to cheer him up later, won’t he?
With his hope raging strong, he picked his girl up in his arms, making her giggle softly, and pressed his lips gently against hers again while the rain fell quickly outside the window, cocooning them in the safety of its noise and making their special moment even more magical.
~Diksha
A Writer's Cauldron 