Chapter 44: The Forbidden Room Part 2
Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 44: The Forbidden Room Part 2
The door swung open with a low groan, revealing the darkness beyond.
Harry stood frozen for a moment, his heart pounding so violently he could feel it in his throat. His right hand was still tightly gripping his wand, waiting to see if something would jump at him.
The door had opened so easily, so smoothly, as if it had been waiting for him.
"...lumos." He conjured a light charm, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.
The room beyond was vast...far larger than he had expected after seeing the door.
The ceiling was tall enough to become lost in shadow, and the walls were lined with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, each one filled with objects that glinted faintly in the dim light.
The stagnant air carried a smell that made Harry's stomach turn...a mixture of old blood, preservatives, and something else, something foul that clung to the back of his throat.
Harry raised his wand higher, and the light from the Lumos charm pushed back the darkness, revealing the true horror of the chamber.
He saw jars.
Hundreds of jars lined the shelves, each one filled with a pale, murky liquid that seemed to glow faintly in the wand light. And inside the jars...there were body parts.
Harry became frozen from the initial shock.
He saw fingers floating in the greenish fluid, their nails intact, their skin wrinkled and pale like something that had been dead for decades.
He saw eyes...dozens of eyes, staring blindly from their glass prisons, their irises frozen in a permanent gaze of terror.
He saw hearts, livers, lungs, all preserved and labeled with tiny, handwritten tags that fluttered in the still air like dead leaves.
His stomach turned, and he forced himself to look away before he made a mess on the floor of the chamber, but his eyes landed on another shelf...this one was lined with smaller vials and different contents.
Small glass vials, each one filled with a dark red liquid that seemed to pulse with a faint, malevolent light.
Blood.
Harry's breath caught in his throat. He moved closer, his legs trembling, his wand hand shaking so badly the light flickered.
He read the labels on the vials, his eyes moving from one to the next in growing horror.
Minerva McGonagall – 1956
Severus Snape – 1971
Sirius Black – 1973
Remus Lupin – 1973
Peter Pettigrew – 1973
James Potter – 1976
Lily Potter (née Evans) – 1976
Harry stared at the last two vials. His parents' blood. Dumbledore had taken their blood. He had preserved it, labeled it, and stored it like a collector's item.
No... this was much worse.
If what he knew about blood magic was true, an expert on the subject would be able to cause much harm with just a small amount of an individual's blood.
Harry felt sick...was this the true face of this twisted version of Albus Dumbledore?.
Was this the secret that he was adamant about keeping from the public?
Harry's hands clenched into fists. He wanted to smash the vials, to shatter them all and watch the blood spill on the floor. But he forced himself to continue, to explore the chamber, to learn its secrets.
The shelves also held tools. Nasty-looking implements that Harry did not want to identify.
Metal clamps with rusted edges, curved blades that glinted with a sickly sheen, needles with hooks at the end that seemed designed to cause maximum pain.
Chains and manacles hung from the walls, their surfaces stained dark with old, dried blood.
A wooden rack stood in one corner, its surface covered in dark, crusty stains that Harry did not want to examine too closely.
A brazier sat nearby...it was cold and dark now, but Harry could see the remnants of bones poking in between the ashes.
'This looks like a torture chamber,' Harry thought. 'This must be where Dumbledore performed his most depraved rituals. This place...'
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a voice.
A voice that spoke from the shadows.
"Who are you?"
Harry spun around, his shaky wand hand raised to aim at the potential threat.
The voice was deep and rough, like gravel scraping against stone.
It came from the far end of the chamber, from a space that had been hidden by a cluster of shelves and a heavy curtain of cobwebs.
"You don't smell or sound like my usual jailor," the voice continued. "And you certainly don't move like him. Whoever you are, you're not supposed to be here."
Harry then realized who this was... the prisoner.
He had almost forgotten that crucial piece of information after the initial shock.
This must be the prisoner Snape and McGonagall were talking about. The one they were going to move very soon.
"Who are you?" Harry called out, his voice trembling despite his best efforts. "Show yourself."
"I can't do that," the voice said, a dry, rasping laugh following the words. "I'm rather… tied up at the moment."
Harry stepped forward cautiously, his wand light cutting through the thick darkness.
The chamber opened into a larger space, and at its centre, Harry saw something that made him stop in his tracks and gasp.
A man was chained to a massive metal frame. He was dressed in rags, his body thin and wasted, his skin stretched tight over his bones.
His arms were stretched wide, his wrists bound in iron cuffs that were bolted to the frame. His legs were similarly secured, spread apart, his ankles chained to the base of the structure.
He was suspended in the air, his body forming a perfect X, like the famous Vitruvian Man featured in many old anatomy books.
Blood runes covered the metal frame, pulsing with a soft red light that seemed to sync with the man's heartbeat.
They were the same type of runes Harry had seen in the cave and in these cursed chambers...blood runes.
They were doing something to this man. Draining him...feeding on him, keeping him alive but weak.
The runes were carved into the metal, and Harry could see thin trails of blood flowing from the man's wrists and ankles, moving into the frame itself.
The man's face was obscured by a leather mask and a tangle of dark hair, matted and dirty.
But his mouth was visible...he had thin lips, cracked and dry, with a faint smile playing at the corners.
Harry approached slowly, his wand still raised. "Who are you?"
The man let out a dry rasping laugh that held no humor.
"You don't know? That's interesting. If I didn't think it was impossible, I would assume you managed to sneak in here."
"I did sneak in here," Harry said, his voice steady despite the fear coursing through him. "Now, can you tell me who you are? Why is the Headmaster keeping you here?"
The man was silent for a moment, his head tilting slightly as if he were studying Harry. Then he said, "Tell me how you entered this room. If I remember the stolen goblin design correctly, that door is not something a young boy could open with an Alohomora. And the blood wards before the corridor were even more tricky. The old man put a lot of effort into those." He paused. "What is your name, boy?"
Harry hesitated. He did not know if he could trust this prisoner. But the man was chained, helpless, trapped. What harm could it do?
"Harry," he said.
"Last name." The man's voice hardened, a hint of steel beneath the exhaustion. It was a command, not a request.
"Potter."
Silence. A long, heavy silence that seemed to stretch for minutes.
"I see," the man said slowly, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. "You must be James's son."
"You knew my father?" Harry stepped closer, his mind racing. There were a few names that came to mind, but one stood above the rest. A name that had been mentioned in the history book, in the notes, in the whispered conversations of the castle.
"Did you sneak here to finish your father's job?" the man asked. "Are you here to kill me?" He laughed again, a hollow, bitter sound that echoed off the stone walls. "To be honest, I don't hate the idea as much as I used to. A decade of this…" He rattled his chains. "…makes death seem like a mercy. So go ahead. Make it quick at least."
"I...I'm not here to kill you," Harry said quickly, his voice rising. "And I am nothing like my father."
Another silence. Then the man's head lifted slightly, and Harry caught a glimpse of the engravings carved on the leather mask covering his face.
"You really don't know who I am?" the man asked, his voice softer now, almost gentle.
"No."
"Then what are you doing here? Are you looking to steal some of the old man's secrets? Because you won't find much here, let me tell you that much. What you see in this chamber is nothing but the tip of the iceberg. He keeps his deepest secrets somewhere else, somewhere safer than Hogwarts. This is just one of his many… workshops."
Harry shook his head. "I just came here to discover Dumbledore's secrets. To see if I could find something I could use against him. And also, to find clues about the whereabouts of one of my friends...a girl called Pansy Parkinson and her brother, Alistair."
The man was quiet for a long moment, his breathing slow and laboured. "Parkinson, I do remember one man with that name, he may still be rotting in Azkaban...I don't know anything about your friends," he said finally. "But I can assure you that no other living beings are kept here. If you're looking for a corpse, the Headmaster keeps them locked in containers on the side of the chamber. He likes to keep his trophies close."
Harry's blood ran cold. He turned and walked to the side of the chamber, his wand light sweeping across the shelves.
There, in a row of large glass containers, were corpses. Dozens of them, preserved by dark magic, their faces frozen in expressions of terror and pain.
They were stacked like logs, their skin pale and waxy, their eyes closed as if in sleep.
The glass was cold to the touch, and Harry could see faint runes carved into the lids...more blood magic, keeping the bodies preserved and their spirits trapped.
Harry forced himself to look. He scanned the faces, searching for one he recognised.
And then he saw him.
Alistair Parkinson. His face was peaceful, as if he were merely sleeping.
But his body was pale and frozen, and the chains that had once bound him in the cave were gone. Someone had moved him here, to this chamber of horrors. Someone had placed him among the other trophies, a collection of Dumbledore's victims.
Harry stood there, staring at Alistair's face. He had found him. He had finally found him.
"He is here," Harry whispered, his voice cracking. "They put him inside some kind of glass container... it's..."
"Dead?. I thought that much was obvious."
"No!" Harry huffed. "Why did they put him inside that thing?"
"To contain their spirits." The prisoner responded.
"What?..." Harry glanced at him. "Why?" He knew there was something strange about this whole thing.
Why would Dumbledore keep Parkinson's body around?. If he was afraid of what the ghost could say to them...why not get rid of the body, or send it somewhere far away? Why keep it here?.
"That...is complicated." The prisoner's tone changed. There was a hint of pity now. "Look...all I know is that the old man got his hands on some ancient rituals that require tormented souls to use as fuel. I am not aware of the details, as magic is too dark and ancient. You are better off not knowing some things."
"An ancient ritual?..." Harry glanced at the stacked glass containers and the bodies inside. "He is using them as materials?"
"Something like that."
Harry couldn't believe this...this went beyond what he had imagined about this twisted version of Albus Dumbledore.
He moved closer to the container, keeping Parkinson, and aimed his wand at it.
"Dont."
The man's voice reached his ears as he was concentrating on a "Verbero", as it was the only spell in his arsenal that could carry enough force to break this glass.
Harry turned his head. "What do you mean by that?. I may be too late to save his life, but I can save his spirit... It's the least I can do."
"Yes, I can feel the determination in your magic." The man said. "But whatever flimpsy spell you were about to use...it won't work. And even worse, you may end up triggering some security protocol left behind by the old man."
Harry remained silent, but still undeterred.
So the man spoke again. "But...if you can help me with something, I'll take care of that for you."
Harry glanced at the bound prisoner. "What do you need?"
A.N: - Remember to comment, vote, and/or leave a review if you have the time. Those things help me a lot and I would really appreciate it.
You can support me on P@treon if you like and get 10 advanced chapters. You can also find character images to view for free in Collections/Harry Potter: Mirror Images
-.com/Kriogenix
For donations and commissions, go to .com/kriogenix