Eda lay on the ground, listening to the silence around her. All she could see was a vast expanse of white, dreamlike and cloudlike. There was no one around, nor any suspicious sounds.
Eda could not even determine whether she was really lying here. Just a few seconds ago, she had been in a cemetery, but now she was lying stiffly here. This sudden change was completely incomprehensible to her.
Eda carefully recalled everything that had happened in the cemetery. She had noticed the sneak attack from behind, and her body had reacted in time. She should have managed to dodge that Killing Curse.
Yet now she had inexplicably appeared here, having lost control of her body and unable to move.
Had she failed to dodge completely and merely been grazed by the Killing Curse? Or was this life ultimately nothing more than a dream?
It seemed like a very long time had passed, or perhaps there was no time at all. Eda regained control of her body. She moved her head and found that everything around her was white, seemingly stretching endlessly into the distance.
After a while, Eda sensed someone approaching. She did not get up, only turning her head to look. The first thing she saw was a pair of small bare feet. Whoever was approaching seemed to be a child.
She looked upward and saw slender ankles and a pure white dress. It was a girl.
The girl looked about eight or nine years old. She was holding an ugly teddy bear in her arms, and her appearance left Eda staring blankly. She looked exactly like the little Eda from her memories.
Heavy confusion rose in Eda's heart, and she immediately sat up. Only then did Eda notice that her own clothes had changed as well. They were now the same style as the little girl's, except that the color had become the opposite, black.
One black and one white, one big and one small. Everything was the opposite.
The little Eda in the girl's form curiously looked at the grown-up Eda sitting on the ground. The little girl tilted her head, displaying the childish innocence unique to her age, and looked incredibly cute.
Eda rubbed her long hair in confusion and tentatively asked, "Eda?"
Everyone had called her that all these years. Suddenly having to use the name to address someone else made Eda feel particularly awkward.
The little girl nodded in confusion and answered in her adorable childish voice, "Your name is Eda, and my name is Eda too. We are both Eda. You're a strange person, and I'm a strange person too. We are both strange people."
Strange? That was indeed true. Even Mrs. Mary had once said that Eda was a somewhat peculiar child. She had been adopted twice and abandoned twice. Wasn't that also because strange things kept happening around Eda?
"Where is this?" Eda asked again. "Are we both dead?"
The little girl shook her head. She said, "I don't know. I don't know the answers to the questions you're asking either." Then the little girl leaned close to Eda's ear and whispered very quietly, "I've been hiding here the whole time. There's a monster outside!"
"A monster?" Eda asked softly. "An Obscurus?"
The little girl immediately covered Eda's mouth. She said nervously, "Shh... Keep your voice down. That monster is really scary! It used my body to do so many bad things, and now even Mrs. Mary doesn't like me anymore."
By the end, the little girl's voice had become aggrieved. She pouted, and her eyes grew slightly moist. For little Eda, who lived in an orphanage, Mrs. Mary was her entire world after being abandoned twice.
"How long have you been staying here?" Eda asked again, voicing the question that had been troubling her.
"I don't know. After that monster came, I've been hiding here the whole time," the little girl said. "Later, you came. After you arrived, that monster hid too. I haven't seen it for a very long time."
At this point, the little girl paused before continuing, "I think you must be an angel sent by God to good children."
Eda's face instantly turned red. Having a conversation with herself and listening to herself "praise" herself was a little too much even for someone as thick-skinned as her.
"That monster has already disappeared. I destroyed it. You can leave now," Eda said. This was another one of her tests. Tricking herself was probably an experience that only she in the entire world could have.
The little girl shook her head like a rattle and said in rejection, "No. Everyone outside treats me like a monster. They curse at me, throw stones at me, and sometimes even hit me. Only Mrs. Mary and Aunt Nancy are kind to me..."
Strange animals would be protected, but strange people would be ostracized. The Muggles, who knew nothing of magic, feared the unusual things about the little girl and treated her like a monster. That fear gradually turned into bullying.
When ten people bully one person, that is bullying. When a hundred or a thousand people bully one person, it is no longer simply bullying. To an eight or nine-year-old girl, human nature was far more frightening than any monster.
Eda silently pieced together the timeline, and she already had an idea in her heart. This place, this location, did not exist in the real world at all. It was merely a corner of her own heart, a part of her own mind.
The little girl before her was not a real existence either. She was not the soul of the original Eda who had already died, despite possessing the original Eda's memories and emotions.
Rather than calling the little girl a soul, it would be more accurate to say that she was another side of Eda that had split off from the depths of her heart, another personality that had never been revealed. It was Eda's own nightmare and her sense of detachment from the world that had created the existence of this little girl!
Eda still did not stand up. She looked at the little girl and said, "I'm leaving. Do you want to come outside with me and take a look? The world outside is wonderful. No one will bully us anymore."
The little girl shook her head again, but this time she was not as resistant. She said softly, "No. I still prefer it here. There is no one here, and there are no monsters."
"Are we going to be separated? Will you not come again in the future?" The little girl asked a question for the first time. She was reluctant to see Eda, or rather, herself, leave.
Eda stood up and pressed her forehead against the little girl's forehead. She said gently, "You and I are both Eda. We are originally one person, so how could we ever be separated?"
One big and one small, one black and one white, the two of them smiled at the same time, warm like sunlight in winter.
The little girl held up the ugly teddy bear in her arms and presented it to Eda. She said, "It's for you! This is my favorite toy. Mrs. Mary gave it to me as a birthday present."
Eda took the teddy bear and asked, "Want to take a walk together?"
The little girl nodded vigorously. Eda stood up, took the little girl's hand, and casually chose a direction to walk. The two barefooted figures strolled through the pure white world, as though they were walking among the clouds.
The white mist around them shifted and changed shape, forming one scene after another.
The London orphanage that had long since been demolished, the homes of her adoptive families, Hogwarts, the Burrow, the cemetery in Little Whinging, the Champs-Élysées... At the end of all the scenery was that nameless, pitch-black cemetery.
At that moment, Eda suddenly felt the weight in her hand disappear. She turned her head and saw that the ugly teddy bear had vanished. When she turned to the other side, the little girl in the white dress was also slowly fading away, eventually merging into the increasingly blurry scenery around them.
When the scenery around them had completely blurred into a mass of pixels, the pure white world suddenly darkened, and then everything became pitch-black.
Eda once again felt herself lying on the ground. This time, she could also feel the chill of the earth beneath her, as well as a bone-deep pain spreading throughout her body.
Stack the thickest blood, take the most vicious beating. It seemed Eda had ultimately failed to dodge the Killing Curse after all, achieving the accomplishment of "taking an Avada Kedavra to the face."
The night wind blew past, and Eda could not sense anyone's presence nearby. She moved her fingers slightly and touched the yew wand that had fallen beside her.
Thankfully, no one had kept watch over her "corpse," and no one had taken the trouble to destroy her wand. In the other side's eyes, she was probably already dead. A corpse could not cause much trouble.
Eda slowly opened her eyes. The night sky was as black as ink, making her feel somewhat oppressed.
Not far away came the frenzied, devout voice of a man. He chanted, "The bone of the father, given unwillingly, can make your son be reborn!"
Eda carefully shifted her body, doing her best not to make any sound. The man's voice came again as he chanted, "The flesh of the servant, willingly given, can make your master be reborn!"
The pain in her body gradually faded, and Eda finally saw what was happening in the cemetery. She saw Harry bound to a gravestone, Barty Crouch Jr. standing in front of a large cauldron, and Foley trembling as he knelt beside it.
Why was Barty Crouch Jr. here? Wasn't he supposed to be at Hogwarts, patrolling around the maze? And where was Dumbledore? Why hadn't he arrived yet?
Standing before the cauldron, Barty Crouch Jr. continued to chant devoutly, "The blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, can make your enemy be reborn!"
In an instant, the cauldron began to boil. Diamond-like sparks flew in every direction, so bright and dazzling that everything around them seemed to turn the color of black velvet.
It was too late. Even if Dumbledore arrived now, it would already be too late.
Then, a man's black figure slowly rose from the cauldron, tall and thin, like a skeleton.
...
(～￣▽￣)～Read 12 Chapters ahead:
Patreon: Dragonel