2:00 am

The night was old, or the morning was young… however you want to look at it. A soft, chill wind blew in from the open window. The raven haired boy had listened to the advice of his peers, had moved his questionable magical practices indoors and away from nosy eyes. Tonight, Elijah Fitzroy Grimlish was sat in an empty classroom; candles brightly lit with purple flames filled the room casting creepy shadows along the walls. Rings of chalk covered the floors, accentuated by runes that seemed to glow with an ethereal light.

The Ravenclaw was clad in black, from his socks to the hood of his cloak that covered most of his face. Upon his face were markings, markings of power and clairvoyance. Tonight, he would not be denied. It had been a little over a month since Elijah’s dormant Seeing abilities had burst painfully into life. A long, hard month of random visions overtaking his consciousness. When a vision overtook him, it seemed as if Elijah was ripped uncontrollably from his own mind and thrust out into the ether, to be replaced by whatever futuristic event wanted to invade his space. Being a displaced soul was no fun.

There were bags under the student’s eyes, a sure sign that he’d not been sleeping well. He was stood in the center of the circle, a string of words spilled from his tongue in a low murmur. This was critical, and if he’d been able to convince his vegetarian self to do it, a freshly slaughtered animal would have helped. Alas, it was not to be, and Eli would just have to deal with herbs and poultices that were scattered around the circle in a seemingly haphazard manner.

His darkened eyes were rolled back into his head, and his focus was ironclad.

The sight of students wandering the corridors, lost and confused, wasn’t an uncommon one, particularly during the first few weeks of the year. But for a sixth year to be looking around in confusion, staring at the suits of armour in the hope that they would magically give her directions, was unusual. Luckily, Ji-Hyun was the only person in the corridor, and she wasn’t lost exactly – although she had lost something. It probably would have helped if she’d remembered that before one in the morning, but she hadn’t, and she really did need to find it. Even if it meant leaving her bed after curfew, which was fine, so long as she didn't get caught.

Yawning, she travelled onwards, checking a classroom only to realise that it wasn’t one she’d been in that year. Probably. She didn’t think so, at any rate, but then she was mostly lost, so it wasn’t that much of a big deal. Another classroom along, and instead of empty space, there was – an arcane ritual?

It looked a lot more wizardly and occult than most things she had learnt did, at least. Potions was sort of traditional, because there was a bubbling cauldron of unnatural colours sometimes, and obviously unicorns and the other things that they learnt about in Care of Magical Creatures were super magic-y and show-y, and hand gestures and the specific pronunciation were sort of like a more diluted version of the whole dancing naked at midnight that she might have been expecting a tiny bit.

But only a little bit.

The room was clearly not a subject classroom, or Eli wouldn’t be using it for his ritual-type-thing, but Ji-Hyun stepped across the threshold anyway. “So, um, Eli – unless you’d rather I called you Grimlish, but there’s Evie too, so I just thought it would save confusion. Or it might, if Evie were around at the moment. Is she around at the moment?” Ji-Hyun would have expected to see her when she was wandering along the corridor if she was. But then, she hadn’t really been looking to see anyone, so it was possible that Evie was around and she’d just missed her going past. Staring at the esoteric set up, an idea began to form uncomfortably in Ji-Hyun's mind, "are you practicing necromancy? Because you know black would be more traditional, and also, necromancy is forbidden."

The psycho-babble seemed to end abruptly, and Elijah Grimlish had heard not a single word. In truth, Eli wasn’t even aware of another presence in the room. Was he trying to perform necromancy, which was indeed illegal? He thought not, but then, was summoning the undead any different from raising the dead? Either way, surely the staff of Hogwarts would frown upon a student trying to bring a vampire into the sacred hallowed halls of the castle.

A strong wind blew in through the open window, causing more than half the candles in the room to sputter and die, casting the room in a dim glow. The seer’s feet lifted from the ground and as he levitated from the floor, his body spun in slow spirals, arms spread wide. When he ceased moving, he stood facing the girl, feet high off the ground. His eyes were open wide, startling white against the blackness of his attire. When his mouth opened to speak, gone were the sounds of youth, and in its place was a voice of power – a voice of otherworldliness that implied clairvoyance and omnipotence.

“This one is less dead than he assumes. His candle burns bright with the fires of life. But fire can burn and bring only doom. And life is full of trouble and strife.”

And with the end of the prophesy, another wind stole the flames from the rest of the candles, throwing the room into pitch dark. Elijah’s body was dropped unceremoniously from the sky to land in a heap upon the cold stone floor, a green mist fled from his body.

The boy opened his eyes slowly and rubbed his elbow. "Ouch!" He exclaimed, "What the hell..." his voice trailed off as he looked around and noticed the figure of Ji-Hyun in the background. The room was so dark he only could garner a silhouette and the resulting, "Who's there?" sounded a little harsh, even to his own ears. 

Waiting for an answer, Ji-Hyun was alarmed when she didn’t get an immediate denial. Necromancy was bad, it was wrong, and if Eli wasn’t saying no, then he was doing it and was in a lot of trouble. She was already backing away, reaching towards the door, when the lights flickered and she froze uncertainly, eyes adjusting to the loss of light and seeing her classmate lift from the floor. All thoughts of necromancy flew from her head, replaced with concern.

That was not normal. Even for wizards, levitating and weird possessed eyes like in a movie were not normal. Mostly because it was like in a movie, muggles in general didn’t get magic right, which had led to some disappointments. A lot of disappointments, in fact, particularly that elves weren’t very elven, or at least not elven like in Tolstoy’s work. She started forward, only for Eli to start speaking – but he didn’t sound normal at all, the situation was starting to seem more and more like he really was possessed.

Instead, she stepped forward, then back again, fluttering uselessly on the outside of the chalk lines, unsure of what she should do to and so doing nothing. She regretted her inaction when the Ravenclaw dropped suddenly, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and gasped in horror at the mist that left his body. Whatever that had been, it wasn’t something that was supposed to be there, and she was convinced now that her earlier wonderings about possession had to be along the right lines. It was what had been possessing him that was the question.

“Eli?” Ji-Hyun tried, audibly aunxious. “Are you – are you okay? It’s me, Jeun. Jeun Ji-Hyun, remember?” She wasn’t sure what was going on, and it scared her, “What happened? Why were you all – all funny?” It wasn’t a very polite way of putting it, but asking why he’d been possessed was definitely less nice.

”… Why were you all – all funny?”

Elijah lifted his head weakly from the floor and glanced toward his fellow Ravenclaw. His eyes, back to their normal hue, were bloodshot and wet from the tears spilling from the corners. Confusion was plain in their depths, as he had no recollection of the last few moments. Thankfully a familiar face was mere feet away, but when the boy pushed himself to his feet, his ankle gave way and with a groan he dropped back to the unyielding floor.

With an apologetic look toward Jeun, the boy opened his mouth again, “I think my ankle’s sprained. Wha…what happened?” He knew he shouldn’t tell his fellow student about his activities… though not as bad as Necromancy, summoning dangerous vampires into the castle through arcane magics was surely against the rules. That said… Eli couldn’t be sure of when the lass had entered the room, perhaps she already knew what he was doing.

“I don’t remember much… did I have a vision?” He winced as he said the final word. Words surrounding divination had quickly become curse words to the Grimlish boy. The way his energy dropped after a vision, the lack of memory, and the crazy looks people gave him in the halls was enough to make Eli loathe his new abilities. And it did no good to try and lie, tell people he was just as normal as them, because the stupid visions happened at odd times, even in the middle of class. 

At the mention of his injury, she hurried forward, heedless of the lines on the floor. “Which ankle? Do you want me to check it, although I probably won’t be able to tell what it is. I could make you some ice, though, that’s good for lots of things other than sprains.”

The mention of visions was enough that she forgot about her concerns, and she stared at him in shock. “A vision? I don’t know, but, um, you sort of – well, you did lift up off the floor, that must be how you hurt your ankle so you should probably stay on the floor until we can do something about your ankle, and even if I do make some ice for you then you’ll still need a splint to move at the least, probably crutches. I suppose I could support your weight, but you’d still have to get all the way to Ravenclaw tower – maybe the best thing is to get a teacher? Or you could stay in the Hufflepuff common room for a night.”

That would probably get them both in lots of trouble, though, and the teachers would probably ask about what they were doing that had lead up to it, and she was a terrible liar. And whatever happened, Eli probably needed medical attention for his ankle, or at least something more useful than what she knew, which wasn’t really helpful at all.

Ji-Hyun was a smart lass, but didn’t seem to grasp the situation as fully as it needed to be grasped in Elijah’s opinion. “Ice might work, it’ll probably be fine. I can transfigure one of those candlesticks into a big stick if I need to… use it as a crutch to get me back to the common room,” With a wince, Elijah tried to pull his leg a bit closer to his body to see how serious the damage was. Hopefully it wasn’t broken… that would take a bit of explaining to Madame Nadge.

“When I rose off the floor, did I say anything? Something mumbo jumbo? Maybe something that didn’t really make any sense? It’s super important,” The Ravenclaw looked at the Hufflepuff with pleading eyes. He hated having visions, but they always, always meant something. And if the visions were happening in the middle of an arcane ritual in the middle of the night, it was probably something super-duper important that Elijah needed to know.

“And, completely off topic, it’s really a bad idea to enter a circle without being properly trained in what the ritual does. What if I was summoning the dead and you just stepped in the circle, out of the protection area. You could’ve just been attacked by a zombie and there’d be nothing I could do about it,” Elijah offered Ji-Hyun a small grin to let her know that he was mostly kidding, though everything he’d said was technically true.

That made sense. That was a very sensible idea, in fact, one that Ji-Hyun should have thought of. But even if he did have a crutch, walking would still be difficult, especially with all of the stairs. It was still better than nothing, though, and she could walk with him to his common room to make sure that he got back alright. It still wouldn't be easy, with the patrols, and of course he'd have to work out something to say about his ankle the next day, but that should be easier with some time to think about it.

His next question was a little strange – if she were him, she’d be more preoccupied with her leg, but he seemed very dismissive of the injury, like it was insignificant. Like it wouldn't make getting him back to his dormitory without getting caught, which she assumed he didn't want to be, almost impossible. But if he wanted to know about what he'd said, probably for a strange experiment or something, she would do her best, “Uh, you talked about… not being dead? Or not as dead, or something, so does that mean that there are degrees of being dead? Um,” she paused, considering, her eyes moving about the room.

She’d been paying more attention to the whole floating in the air thing than what Eli had been saying, but now she thought about it they were sort of ominous. “And something about a fire,” she recalled, but the details were a little more difficult, “um, that it can burn. Which is obvious,” her thoughts went to the injury that she’d had so recently in charms – although it was healed now, she could still remember how much it hurt. “It wasn’t very positive.” That was an understatement, the only positive thing was that someone wasn't totally dead.

She frowned, “but wouldn’t the zombie already be there?” it wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the warning, because it was true – but surely Eli wouldn’t summon the dead. And anyway, sometimes it was safer inside the circle! But those were just excuses, she knew he was right; she shouldn’t have done it. “I won’t do it next time,” she suggested eventually, “I didn’t mean to, I promise, I was just worried about your leg. Why is what you said so important?”