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Qui Mortui Sunt (Those Who Are Dead) by Nagini Riddle

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A huge thank you to Vicki for being an awesome beta!
Qui Mortui Sunt (Those Who Are Dead)

I. Repertum (Discovery)

In the dark, I linger,
Playing shadowed games;
There's a hunger that I ponder
As death intervenes again.

And tho I list among
These darkened, fallen halls,
I welcome here the broken:
Living, dead, and all.


There was an eerie silence stretching over all the crumbled stone, slashed portraits, fallen spires, and demolished walls. Stranger even the quietness that hovered over the still and lifeless bodies, white as cracked ice, yet red as the blood dawn. Red to be sure, for the pools of dark blood suggested the gruesome way in which death had taken over.

Yet, the oddest of all was the numb sensation spreading through my mind as I gazed upon the destructive scene. I felt I should be screaming, crying up to the bloodstained sky, throwing myself onto lost friends, frantically searching for a way to bring them back. But I watched in silence.

And in solitude. It hardly occurred to me that might also be a peculiar thing, for all I could do was wonder what had happened, to try to piece together the events that had preceded such carnage.

After a few moments of agonizing thought, frozen in place, I turned to survey the rest of the grounds. More bodies, more silence, more blood. I could not seem to strain my eyes in order to see more, though, for the scene soon blurred into a hazy grey horizon.

Grey. It surprised me, for I half expected to see red, for all the blood spilt, or green, for those untouched valleys further away. But it was all a dark, lifeless grey.

The unending silence was becoming rather stark, and I could not place why it was so odd within my mind. I found I could not rightly focus on sound, either, and instead, bright flashes of some unknown image ignited in my eyes.

Shaking my head, I glanced downward and saw a familiar face among the debris, though I could not place where I had previously seen her. She seemed older, and probably once had a wise face amongst all the wrinkles. Yet all I could divine was an expressionless manner. Some say that those passed on look peaceful, but she appeared an empty vessel.

Quite abruptly, the weight of all the carnage pressed heavily on my heart, and I felt quite alone. Surely there had to be someone who had survived, someone else I could talk and breathe and cry with?

–Hello?” I yelled out. –Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

My voice reverberated strangely, as though I was surrounded by crystalline walls. Nobody answered back. I tried again, this time louder, and my voice seemed to suddenly be everywhere at once. Again, there wasn’t a response.

Desperation overcame my senses, ridding the numbness. I bent down to the familiar woman, in hopes of finding a pulse and perhaps reviving her. I reached for her wrist, but when I steadied her palm, I realized I was not holding anything. In fact, I could somehow see through my hand, and it became all too clear that my skin was a hazy grey. The woman was also of the same hue, as was everything surrounding her.

In awe, I stood up, rotating my hands to see better the affliction that had settled on them. Doubt nudged me rather harshly, and I found myself attempting to clap, to snap my fingers, to rub my arms. A curious sensation arose with each attempt, as though a light breeze was actually passing through my flesh. But was I flesh anymore? Was anyone around me?

–Miss?” I said aloud, approaching the familiar woman again. –Miss, can you feel your skin? I think I was hit with some strange spell…”

Again, flashes of images, this time a little clearer: crowds of people running, bright streaks of light colored red and green, a heavy darkness, masked figures, a shattered mirror and in those shards, a face reflecting back, her face…my face…

I tried to hold my chest (to no avail) as the semblance of breath left me. I could not keep my eyes off the emotionless woman on the ground, the woman who bore my face, my arms, my body.

I screamed an unearthly, wretched sound that echoed without resistance against the unseen crystal walls. It couldn’t be; it wasn’t possible.

I was dead.

But how? I tried to run through all the lingering memories and broken images, but nothing would settle, not even a name. How was it possible that I could not remember my own name?

The sight of my body upon the desolate floor was too much to bear, and I could not stare at it anymore. Yet, everywhere I looked, there were more bodies, more familiar faces that I tried to place in my spotty memory. As I did so, I wondered why nobody had answered my shouts. Surely, those who were dead were also roaming around like I was?

With one last sweep over all the mangled destruction, I found I had to retreat, or else lose what little sense I had left.

In a final effort, I fled the silence, the carnage, the life I once had. After a few moments, I found myself in the girls' lavatory, where all I could do was sink to the floor and cry.


II. Puer Innoxius (Innocent Boy)

I was extremely groggy as I struggled up, and I wondered why I wasn't in pain. I could feel the phantom of a cruel spell driving knives into all my nerves, yet now all I experienced was a numbness. It occurred to me that maybe I was in the Hospital Wing, and that perhaps Madam Pomfrey had worked her magic again to fix me up.

I attempted to open my eyes, but everything was out of focus, quite like when a camera lens has been damaged or is turned slightly enough off angle. Now how did I know that?

I tried harder to see out of my eyes, only to be met with a blanket of grey, quite liked in underdeveloped photos, or at least, I think so. The grey wasn't too harsh to look at, though. Maybe some shadows here and there would make it a worthy composition.

I turned my head in hopes of seeing the nurse. I had to tell her my eyesight was damaged. But the moment I turned, I was met with an expressionless face whose eyes were staring off into some unknown place.

In a panic, I wondered if the person was Petrified. I recalled my first year at school, having experienced it myself, and the many tales I had heard afterward of what the Petrified looked like.

As I sat up, however, I noted I was on a floor, and that I was surrounded by a sea of bodies, some just as Petrified, others whose eyes were closed and appeared at peace.

I heard an unearthly sound from far off, so quiet I am sure I would have missed it if not for all the silence. I could not pinpoint the exact direction it had come from, but I felt the need to investigate.

It entered my mind that I wished I had a camera on me, though I could not fathom why. Something threatened to burst in my mind, but I believe that all the dead bodies surrounding me was enough to keep my mind elsewhere.

Again, the ethereal noise sounded, a little louder. Curiosity fueled me forward through all the grey haziness, and I made a mental note to ask Madam Pomfrey how I could fix this strange phenomenon.

I stepped around body after body, fallen statue after fallen statue, and I marveled at how easily and silently I was able to walk through it all. It occurred to me briefly that I should be witnessing a battle of some sort, but I couldn't seem to figure out why.

The spine-chilling sound came again, this time a screeching cry that I could tell was full of anguish and fury. Was someone dying? Were they being tortured? Did someone need my help?

I hurried my steps, still marveling at the ease with which I moved. I arrived at a place that was littered with more bodies than where I had woken up. I had barely taken in all the carnage when I saw something eerily grey float around a corner. It reminded me of something I had seen at school, but my memory refused to budge on just what I knew.

I followed after it, wondering why I did not feel some sense of foreboding or anything resembling fear.

The grey something disappeared into a part of the castle that wasn't completely destroyed, and although I realized that I was now surrounded by emptiness and darkness rather than destruction and death, my only focus was on the eerie entity.

After a few turns, I knew I had lost the grey something, and I couldn't figure out where I was. I tried to backtrack my steps, but found I couldn't. A tinge of frustration came over me and I slammed my fists against the wall, only to find that my hands went right through it!

It was at this very moment that I could see I was a similar shade of strange grey, and I tried to recall where exactly the Hospital Wing was so I could ask the nurse to fix me.

A loud lament broke my thoughts, and without hesitation, I hurried after it, determined to get some answers as to what in the world was going on.

I found myself facing a girls' bathroom, where the crying was definitely coming from.

"Hello?" I called out to the sobbing.

A harsh silence suddenly fell, and I passed through the door into the bathroom to find an older woman, colored a glowing grey, and of little substance that I could see straight through. She appeared startled to see me; her mouth was wide open in shock, and she was trying to clutch her chest. She wore some loose grey robes that bore the Hogwarts crest, and I guessed she must have been a teacher, though I had never seen her before.

"You're--you're a ghost," I commented shakily.

"So are you," she answered rather defensively, though her heart clearly wasn't in it.

"I am?!?!" Incredulous, I glanced down at my grey hands, and it suddenly hit me: I was a ghost. I was dead.

"H-how?" I asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. "I don't even know what happened out there."

We both fell silent, pondering our predicament. And though it seemed foolish to do, I found myself crying just as she had been.


III. Concursum (Convergence)

The little boy was crying, and even though I felt like joining in, something inside me wanted to straighten him out.

"Boy, what is your name?" I questioned, though in as soft a manner I could.

"I don't remember," he sobbed, and I guessed that the act of dying must have jumbled our memories around.

"What do you remember?" I persisted, hoping that he would say something to spark my mind.

"I don't know. Weird, random things, like about cameras, or my first year at school and all of us were being attacked by a giant snake."

School. We were at a school, I remembered, and I had been woken up from my sleep by jets of light coming through my room... And then the memory of a young boy with a camera, lying in the Hospital Wing, frozen stiff, came to mind.

"I know you!" I cried aloud with a joy I had never felt before. "You're that Creevey boy who took all those pictures and followed a certain student around."

He pondered my statement, then smiled. "My name is Colin! How could I forget that?"

I felt so happy, until I recalled my own memory loss. "Do you know me?"

He glanced me over, and after a moment's hard thought, gave me a sad frown. "No. I think you were a teacher, though. You're wearing those robes."

I let his words wash over me, hoping that thinking "teacher" would bring back some memories. Nothing surfaced.

I could feel the shame billowing in my cheeks, and I turned aside from the ghost boy, unable to face him.

"Hey," he said tenderly, more than I could ever expect from a teenage boy. "It isn't so bad. I am sure your memories will come back. All the ghosts at Hogwarts seemed rather knowledgeable about who they were."

"There are others?" I inquired quietly, still turned away.

"Yeah!" he brightly answered. "Nearly Headless Nick, and The Fat Friar, and The Grey Lady...I can't name them all, there are so many! They roam the halls all the time, and they would sit with us students during meal times and talk with us."

Why couldn't I remember that? And where were these ghosts now? I kept these thoughts to myself, though, preferring instead to think more on how everything could possibly not be "so bad."

"What are we going to do?" I pondered out loud. "We're nothing but floating spirits that can't do anything."

"We can talk," he said. And then he screwed up his face in slight disgust. "I am sure we will eventually get used to the strange way our words echo."

"And how everything is all grey? And how I can barely concentrate on one thing?"

He laughed. "Actually, I am starting to get the hang of it. You are in much sharper focus than a couple minutes ago."

I faced him again to see innocent delight in his features, and I wondered how he could possibly be happy about it. How, when my only memory was seeing myself lying on the ground, dead? Surely he had to feel the same anguish and terror, didn't he?

As I wondered at this, there was a sudden change in Colin's features, though I could not discern anything different about him. The only noticeable thing was his gaze that had turned upward, and his innocence was even more pronounced than ever.

"Are you coming with me?" he asked rather abruptly.

"Coming with you? Where?"

"There," he said simply.

I wildly looked around to where he was gazing, but saw only the tiles of the bathroom walls.

"Where?" I repeated, bewildered. He just smiled and held out his hand for me to take.

I shrank back, unsure of what he meant by it all. The image of my dead body would not leave my mind.

He stood there a few minutes more, hand outstretched, his expression welcoming. But I would not take it.

With a slight sadness in his eyes, he turned from me, and faded out of sight.


IV. Quid Sequatur Post Commendatam (What Follows After)

The following silence was deafening, enveloping my entire spirit so that I felt utterly empty and alone. A single cry escaped me; an ethereal tear glided down my transparent cheek. Any will to move from my spot dissipated immediately.

As I wallowed in the lavatory, a wisp of words came to mind, staving off the memory of my corpse for a few seconds:

In the dark, I linger,
Playing shadowed games.


A steady drip of water from a broken sink mixed with the silence, magnified a thousand times more in death, resounding off those unseen crystal walls.

There's a hunger that I ponder
As death intervenes again...


Slowly, I managed to make my way to the entrance of the bathroom, the all-consuming hunger for life now burning within. My expressionless face loomed before me, each second passing more gruesome and painful.

As death intervenes again...

It always would, wouldn't it? Each time I would try to breathe, each time I would try to touch, each time I would try to see or hear--Death would interfere.

The halls were dark and gloomy and grey, some preserved, others destroyed. I strayed as far as I could from the courtyard, where all the carnage lay strewn, unsure of what would happen. Would others join me? Or would they fade out, like Colin? What of those still living? Would they be a part of this grey world as well? And could I bear it?

Could I? Or was the better question here: would I?

More bright images tried to break through, but the picture of me lying on the ground stunted each attempt. I realized with a fright that I did not want to know what happened. I feared the memories too much.

The urge to flee back to the bathroom was great, but I continued my listing among the castle corridors. Amid all the strange silence I actually heard mute sounds of cries and shouts in the courtyard, though I could not tell the emotions of the tones.

And somewhere there was a ghost of a laugh, as though Death himself taunted me. He seemed to chant foreboding words that refused to leave my mind, words that seemed to indicate my destined doom, and the misery I was bound to forever:

I welcome here the dying,
the miserable, the faint of heart;
I welcome here the broken:
Living, dead, and all.
Chapter Endnotes: I welcome here both living and deceased thoughts