The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

Chapter Seven

In Where Our Hero Dreams.

Disclaimer: Me: Poor, JKR: Rich, do I need to say more?

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


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Pushing through the silvery grey fog that surrounded him, Harry couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. The fog seemed to hold an icy grip over his skin. Glancing around he could see nothing and it felt as though he had been walking for hours.
\"Helllloooo? Anyone there? If this is the dream with the dancing cheese I could so do with out that tonight.\"

Harry Peered around him as the fog moved in strange swirls and a tint of red broke its solidity. The cold seeped into his skin and made his bones ache, and he could hear a noise getting louder and louder. The sound was of metal sliding along metal, it reminded him of when Vernon would sharpen the butcher’s knife on the steel before cutting up the Sunday roast.
The slick snick, snack of steel against steel echoed strangely in the rapidly changing fog.
\"Of course, if this is the dream with Lavender and Padma covered in whipped cream and calling me lord and master, I’m all for it...\"

His forced cheerfulness dwindled as the fog seemed to grasp at his skin.
The snick, snack of steel was not getting louder but the fog was swirling around Harry like he was stuck in a blender. Slumping down Harry sighed.

\"Look unless something happens soon I’m going to wake up.\"
Looking down at the ground he groaned; dark, warm liquid was seeping around his legs. He jumped up out of it. In the strange light of the dream it looked black. Not knowing if he should, Harry stuck his finger into the liquid. It clung to his hand making a sucking noise as he brought a finger up close to his face to see what it was. A dark red stain covered his hand. ‘Ah blood, now bring on Voldemort and this would be just like the usual’.

Fighting off the feelings of dread Harry laughed uneasily and tried to keep a light side. He started to whistle.

\"Always look on the bright side of life, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum.\" Wiping his finger on his top Harry rubbed his hands together and tried finding the source of the strange noise. Crying out in frustration Harry demanded. \"Do something, why don’t you?\"

Blood oozed around his ankles and the red tinged mist flowed around him. The only noise besides his breath was that of the slick sliding metal. After what seemed a few minutes, or an hour, a feeling of dark dread seeped through the mist, he could feel something coming; it cut through the ice of the mist. As the fog began to thicken again Harry could feel his pulse speeding up and his breath caught in his throat. Dread lay heavy on his shoulders as the mist turned around him. The presence was somewhere in somewhere in there and he couldn’t see it; he only hoped that ‘it‘ had the same problem.

Staying where he was Harry tried to peer into the thick fog and find what was out there. He hoped to hell it was the bloody, dancing cheese. The mist’s red tinge was changing, growing dark and Harry could feel the warmth of the liquid around his ankles rise.

\"I am going to wake up now, I am going to wake up now. Where the fuck are the pair of ruby slippers when you need them?\"

The weight of the dread pushed down on his neck and he bowed his head. Whatever was moving through the mist, glided round him, he could sense the fear it projected. Muttering under his breath Harry brought his eyes up while his head remained bowed.
\"There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.\"
As he felt something slide through the liquid around his knees, passing between his legs. Closing his eyes Harry shuddered at the feel of the thing circling his legs.
The dream world began to fade. The waking world intruding on the dream, the voice of one of his roommates became the best noise Harry had ever heard.

\"Do you think anyone will notice if I just chuck my robe over my P.J’s?\"
Dean’s voice, pushed lightly into Harry’s mind. With each word, the world of mist faded and the dread slipped away, until Harry was awake and staring up at the curtains around his bed.

Dim daylight illuminated his bed and the memories of the dream faded with the light, as dreams do. Outside the curtains he could hear his roommates getting ready for breakfast and their first day back.
\"Ha, Ron is that hair on the palms of your hands? Get yourself a girlfriend mate or you’ll go blind.\"

It sounded like someone had got a look at Ron’s porn collection. The boy treated it like it was his baby and Harry wondered sometimes why his mattress wasn’t a meter off the base from the amount of wizard porn he kept under it.
The reality of his friend’s arguments and jokes blew away the last fragments of his dream.
Jerking back his bed covers Harry pushed the dream out of his mind until it was a distant memory. Pulling his curtains aside he climbed out of bed, just in time to see Ron scream and crash tackle Dean who had got one of his precious magazines and was flipping through it.
\"No, don’t crease the pages!\"

Harry laughed and got ready for the day.

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Draco started awake, ‘Oh goody, another year of picking up everyone’s stray dreams and nasty delusions’. First night back and he had forgotten how hard it was to keep everyone\'s dreams in their own heads. Being reminded that a certain roommate had a strange fascination with another roommate’s feet was not the best way to start the year.

But it was strange, just before he woke up there had been a waver in the dreamscape. When he travelled through people’s dreams it spread around him like the back of a complicated tapestry, each thread a persons thoughts, a bump or knot in the thread showing they were sleeping, and dreaming.

Just as he woke up it looked to him as though some one had plucked the weaving. It had shuddered and if he hadn’t of been nearly awake he didn’t know what could have happened to him. He hadn’t seen anything like that happen before, of course, he admitted to himself, he hadn’t been watching people’s dreams for very long, but what had happened struck him as very wrong. Dragging a hand over his face Draco rubbed his eyes. Hopefully it was something he didn’t have to worry about. If not he would mention it in his letter to his Mum.

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Whistling drifted through one of Hogwarts’ west wing corridors, someone was piping away a happy tune.
Not far away Harry Potter was stumbling along trying to find this year’s Charms classroom for some reason it had been moved. Of course he would lose his way. He knew the room was in the east wing, and he hoped that was were he was, but Potter‘s luck said he was as far as possible away from the East wing.

Late for his first class after lunch, he should have left with Seamus and Neville who had Charms class at the same time as him. As he walked further through the corridors Harry watched the paintings and looked for one of a portrait that could lead him out.

Six years at Hogwarts and he could still get lost. He had been able to hear the whistling for a few minutes and hoped he was getting close to the whistler. The corridor led down a short flight of stairs into a small foyer with several big wide doors leading off.
Across from the stairway a pair of heavy honey coloured wood doors were wide open and Harry could smell the sap from freshly cut wood. A light pile of sawdust had drifted out of the doors and Harry could see sunlight from the stairwell he was standing in. The whistling was coming from inside the room. Slowly walking slowly walking forward Harry stuck his head around the corner and peered in, he didn’t want to interrupt anyone who could make his day worse.

Inside a man was hard at work with a plane, smoothing off a cut length of wood. Surrounding him were piles of fresh timber and semi-finished furniture. Nothing was Chippendale material. It looked very much like the tables, desks, and chairs that were found throughout the castle.
The carpenter was whistling along to the music from a little wizard radio. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up and Harry could see the cuts and scars of someone routinely working with wood, and heavy metal blades. Harry coughed politely. \"Excuse me, could you point me back towards the west wing.\" The man jumped and put the plane down on the table to which the wood he was working on, was clamped.
\"Oh young sir, you did give me a surprise. Now what can you be doing down in this corner of Hogwarts?\"

Harry smiled and shoved his hands behind his back. The man turned towards Harry and he saw his dark blonde hair pulled back in a short ponytail sprinkled with sawdust and wood curls. A gentle smile sat on his face and laugh lines circled his mouth, echoed by the happy creases around his eyes. Putting a hand behind his head Harry sighed.
\"My names Harry. Well, I kind of got lost. Do you think you could point me towards the west wing?\" He repeated.
The carpenter walked forward and held out a hand, \"Hello there, I’m Alaric Scuta the new care-taker. I am down here working on fixing some of the tables that the first years scorched.\"

Harry grinned; the guy seemed nice. \"Why do you need to fix them by hand instead of with magic?\"
Scuta drew a hand over a smooth tabletop waiting to be polished. \"Magically created objects tend to be temperamental and with as much magic we have flying through the school, we don’t want a desk turning back into a pile of gravel half way through a third year’s potion experiment. So they are made by hand here and have spells inlaid into them.
When Mr Filch heard of my talents with a saw, he had me down here quicker than two shakes of a lambs tail.\"

\"Oh Okay. So you are the new caretaker. How is it working with Fil…Mr Filch?\"
Scuta laughed at Harry verbal slip. \"Well you would know him better than me but he has come over as a little bit grumpy.\"
Harry laughed lightly. \"Ahh yeah, so, the west wing?\"
Scuta’s smile widened. \"That’s easy Harry, just go through the first door on your left, follow the corridor and at the end there is a painting of a lily pond, poke the frog and it will open out into the hallway beside the great hall.\"
\"That’s good, how do you know that?\"
Scuta laughed, \"Oh Mr Filch has been showing me ways to make sure that the students are caught unaware.\"
Harry laughed with him and waved as he walked out of the room. ”Thankyou Mr Scuta.” Smiling the caretaker waved in return.
“My Pleasure, have a good day.”

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Mr Scuta smiled; it had been such fun to meet the great Harry Potter. As a nefarious baddy out to do no good at Hogwarts he had made sure the first student he would talk to was the boy-that-lived. Nefarious, he liked that word, next time he saw Voldey he was going to have to work it into the conversation. Drawing the word out in his mind William grinned.

Every time ‘The Fuchsia’ Lord came up with a plan to sneak into Hogwarts, he sneaked around or sent someone that was so obviously a spy that a blind hermit could spot them at fifty yards. Let alone a bunch of kids who had to fight Voldemort at the same time as they went to class and got their assignments in on time. They probably had some name for themselves the ‘famous five’ or the ‘secret seven’ or something else out of an Enid Blyton book. Every time he walked around a corner at Hogwarts he expected to see Noddy and Big ears.

Harry Potter was always at the front of any catch-Voldey scheme, it amazed him that either Harry or the Dark lord were still around. Oh well he did like money and some habits were expensive. So part one of his plan: Bumbling – Caretaker, was underway. Sooner than he knew it, Voldemort would have the Erinyes, and he would have the money, a beach house in Hawaii, and someone to annoy. Smiling he picked up the wood plane, this was going to be fun.


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Authors Note

And so Harry enters the land of Denial from this chapter where nothing bad can happen to you. The Longer he avoids what has happened the worse everything is going to be when the sky falls around his ears.

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