Chapter Text
"This is horrible.", Hermione whispers as she watches dementors swoop down on a few hours younger Harry and Sirius Black.
"Don't worry. My dad will come. He'll conjure the Patronus.", Harry tries to reassure Hermione as much as she tries to reassure herself.
She isn't sure why, but it feels like a lie. Still, she remembers seeing a light so bright it couldn't be anything but a patronus. She remembers seeing the shape of a stag. It couldn't be anybody but her dad. And yet it feels wrong somehow.
She rubbs her arm, the magical, cold feeling she woke up to shifting in a way she can't quite describe. It's different from the cold the dementors leave her with. Softer, more fluid, but at the same time more sharpedged than the all encompassing, rigid cold of the dementors.
"Any minute now. Right there, you'll see.", she insists the words feeling more wrong with every second that passes. Harry can feel the magic rising inside her, it crawls underneath her skin making her itch, urging her to do something but she doesn't know what.
"Harry, listen to me. Noone's coming."
Harry isn't sure what Hermione is trying to accomplish by telling her that. She can see that nobody has come yet. She can feel that something is not quite right and that time is running out quickly. But she doesn't know what to do about it and that helplessness makes her quietly choke on a lump in her throat. What if she's missed something? What if she didn't do something she should have and now she has to watch her younger self be kissed by dementors? What would happen to her if that were to happen? What would happen to Sirius?
A whine wants to slip past her lips. She swallows it down ignoring how it gets stuck in her throat and weighs on her chest. Something is not right.
"Don't worry. He will. He will come.", Harry insists weakly. She doesn't delude herself into thinking that Hermione believes her. The words sound wrong in her own ears and her best friend is too smart and knows her too well to not recognize a lie Harry herself doesn't believe in. Still, the mere thought of leaving feels even worse. Feels like giving up, like abandonning herself. And Harry can't do that. So she stays and watches as the dementors swoop down on her and Sirius, feeding on their souls, absentmindedly rubbing at her chest where a cold pressure grows and grows.
"You're dying. Both of you.", Hermione tries again, for what Harry doesn't know, but it makes her angry just as much as it terrifies her. She wants to say something, give her best friend an answer she doesn't know to a question Hermione hasn't asked, but no words leave her mouth.
Instead the pressure on her chest shifts, something cracks, the magic crawling underneath her skin boils over and then she gives a keening cry, resonating from her very soul. Small and weak and helpless, but a cry none-the-less.
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Stone scraping against stone makes Ardyn narrow his eyes at the entrance to his prison. The noise breaking the silence that has reigned outside of his head for who knows how long. It's not as if he has any way of telling time beyond the crack in the ceiling that lets in a sliver of sun or moonlight. Counting days is unreliable at best considering he sometimes loses himself in his own head for unknown ammounts of time. And nobody's ever come to visit him - why would they? - so it's not as if he could ask someone how long it's been.
The people that enter his prison are soldiers - the armour is a dead give away - and a bunch of civilians in white coats. They don't speak much, but the language they use sounds close enough to the common from Ardyn's time to recognize the language and understand the gist of what is being said - the white-coats are apparently the ones in charge as they are giving orders to the soldiers - and yet is different enough for him to realize that it's likely been more than just a couple centuries since he was imprisoned for the language to have changed so much.
Some of his deamons screech and howl, angry at having been robbed of so much time. Others cheer and cackle at prey having come into such easy reach. And then there are some that purr quietly, waiting, watching what this prey is about to do. Personally Ardyn likes the last group best. They don't drive him to madness as much as the others do. He is aware that they are still deamons, that they still hunger for death and destruction and nothing short of utter carnage but they at least aren't completely senseless about it and have realized early on that bound as he is he can't possibly play to their whims, so there is no point hounding him about it.
At least he likes to think that. It's better than acknowledging that he might've gone insane and started searching for some sort of personality in creatures that are commonly known to be mindless killing machines just so he can attempt to have conversations with them and doesn't feel as lonely. And to distract him from thinking about what brought him here. Those are memories he doesn't ever want to think about.
The soft clinking of chains and the jostling of the meathook in his side draw him out of his musings. The pain is negligible but it won't do for these people to think him weak or, even worse, broken and tamed, so he bares his teeth and growls. His deamons howl in eager anticipation. Maybe they'll give him a moment of peace if he gives them what they want. Not all of it, burning down the entire realm is far too much effort for that. But this guy very graciously - and unknowingly - just volunteered to be a sacrifice.
With sharp, yellow eyes Ardyn - and his deamons - watch in anticipation as one by one the meathooks and magical, binding chains come undone by the hands of the soldiers.
The last one to fall away is the chain holding him aloft. His body supported by two soldiers a third has climbed up on a ladder to take off the chain. The moment the chain falls Ardyn feels the bindings on his magic break. Even if he'd meant to control it, he couldn't have prepared for the powerful surge following the breaking.
The soldiers holding him up don't even have time to scream, nevermind set him down before his magic and deamons lash out at them. In rapid succession black spots appear on their visible skin, their veins blacken with the scourge, their eyes tint yellow for but a moment and then their bodies crumble into dust in the very fashion that earned the scourge the name of Vanishing Sickness. All that's left behind is their armor and the stench of absolute terror.
Their comrades don't fare much better. Not all of them vanish, some transition into becoming deamons, but that doesn't change that within seconds most of them are dead. The only one not dead is a white-coat that bears the marks of the scourge just like all the others did but has yet to transform or dissolve. Something he will do in short order unless Ardyn does something about it. Hearing a commotion from outside - sounds like people are fighting - he figures this is probably his best chance to send a message to whoever sent these people.
He reigns his magic back in, withdraws it from the white-coat to keep it from killing the man just yet. If the scourge is left to progress on its own from here on out the man has a week, maybe two, before the scourge kills him. Enough time for him to crawl back to wherever he came from and deliver a message.
"Thank you for your service, gentleman. But whatever it is you were trying to accomplish here, I am not interested. And I would appreciate it, if you didn't come looking for me. I am sure you can imagine what would happen if you did. Won't you tell that to your master for me, gentleman?", he purrs voice honey sweet, smile too sharp and wide to be even remotely friendly, and eyes burning a sickly yellow.
The white-coat nods frantically staring at him with wide, terrified and painfilled eyes.
"Wonderful. Now-"
Magic not his own flares in his chest, pulls him to somewhere, his deamons fall silent all at once. The only thing he can hear is a keening cry.
Weak and helpless and oh so desperate.
The pull gets stronger, around him magic surges, and then in a flash of bright white light he's gone.