Katherine Frances's Blog, page 257
February 1, 2016
Kim Shimmers and the Diviner’s Curse
A Harry Potter Fanfic by me (and sequel to Kim Shimmers and the Screech Owl)
(Art not mine, couldn’t find credits. Let me know if you know them!)
This Harry Potter fanfic will be posted, if all goes well, every weekend.
Chapter 18
The Man in the Purple Robes
There was barely a week left until the final challenge now, and Kim could feel herself slipping under the stress. She’d wake up in the morning and look at herself in the mirror, bags under her eyes, and think, this isn’t even your problem. You won’t be facing any challenges. You won’t be going up against any danger… But that never made the stress lessen in the slightest. She stopped trying to tame her hair that was getting wilder from tossing and turning endlessly through the night. A hooded figure haunted her dreams, and a gut wrenching feeling greeted her when she awoke. Every sound, someone dropping the lid of the toilet seat, shutting the door a little firmly to the girl’s bathroom, a bag being thrown from someone’s shoulder and onto the floor carelessly, would make her flinch and clutch the edge of the sink or the desk or her knees, whatever was in reach. She dug her nails in and tried to remember I still have ‘till next week to figure this out.
“Are you eating all right?” came a sudden voice that made Kim jump so hard she nearly came out of her own skin. She clutched her heart that was thundering in her chest and looked wearily over her shoulder at Fred who was coming to sit beside her at the Gryffindor table for breakfast. Her eyelids lulled when she saw him and she dropped her hand.
“I’m fine,” she said dully, turning back to her food which, were she being honest, she would’ve admitted she had no appetite for. She forced a bight to make her lie seem genuine.
“You seem… on edge…” he said tentatively.
“Where’s George?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.
“On his way…” He let out a sound of forfeit and leaned in a bit closer so he could speak under his breath. “Kim, this isn’t about…”
She looked up at him, waiting, but he just searched her eyes in silence for a while, frank concern that was so rarely found on his sharp features hiding in every wrinkle and crease of his brow.
“About what?” she prompted.
“You know… you and I?”
Kim stared at him dumbly for a second before she let out a joyless laugh, or more an exhale of exasperated air that sort of sounded like a laugh.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Fred immediately hardened and straightened up, looking away and seeming a bit regretful. Kim thought she should perhaps feel sorry for being so blunt if she had the capacity to feel anything besides creeping dread.
“No, it’s not that,” she continued. “Though it hasn’t helped.”
At this he seemed a bit sorry again, if only for an instant. “What is it then?”
“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand it anyway…” She didn’t realize how painful it was that she found it to be true. He wouldn’t understand. Anyone who she told would simply think she was worrying for nothing. But she wasn’t. She just knew it.
Either Fred didn’t know how else to coax the information out of Kim, or he lost interest in trying to do so, but he stopped bothering her about it and they didn’t speak much after that. Once Kim had the chance, she made her way to an abandoned classroom that she’d been visiting on her off times. She shut the door and drew the herbs out of her bag, setting them out to burn beside where she sat on the floor, cross legged. Strix was perched on her shoulder, more fidgety and needy than usual. Perhaps she could since Kim’s discomfort.
Kim inhaled a deep breath, feeling the herbs already beginning to take her mind away from her. She didn’t have to try and clear her mind; that was what the smoke was for. The hard part was keeping her mind focused during all of this. She had recently been out to visit the quidditch field, or what once was, and what was now the grounds for the third challenge. She thought having an image of the maze in her mind might help her. She clung to it now, and though she was sure it wasn’t fully finished and it didn’t look as it would on the night of the challenge, Kim felt it aiding her focus. She simply grasped onto the image of the tall shrubs creating winding patterns as she was pulled into nonexistence. She imagined Harry at their entrance, small in comparison to the long dark expanse, misty tendrils coiling up from the grass and into the cool night sky. What awaited him within? What was to come…
“Crucio!” came an unfamiliar voice, followed by a man’s screams. Kim was standing in contrasted darkness, all eerie green shadow, her wand lighting her path which was closed in on either side by great bushes. Her breathing drew in sharply, realizing something terrible was happening on the other side of the bush she stood beside. She ran frantically up the path trying to round the corner of the bush, but there seemed to be no end to the wall. Beyond the small halo of her wand light was shrouded in darkness. Perhaps she could run for ever on this path and never find a way over to the screaming boy. So she returned to where the scream was the loudest, gulping in breaths as she tried to think clearly.
With her wand she blasted a small fire into the bush beside her. It was effective enough to smolder away a torso sized hole, filling her nostrils with ash. She kicked her leg through the shrub, letting the thick brambles scratch against her skin as she forced her way through until she broke to the other side. She thrust her body through the hole, sticks and thick leaves scraping her face, stinging, tearing her clothes. Then she was on the other side, and there was a handsome boy with golden brown hair, writhing on the ground as though a strong current of electricity was probing through his body. Kim stared at him with wide eyes, fear bubbling up into her throat, just before she looked up to meet the vacant gaze of Victor Krum.
Kim gasped, eyes flying open. Strix was flapping around Kim’s head, circling her and causing light from the windows to flash into her eyes disorientingly. She blinked as Strix landed and prodded at Kim’s shoulders with her feet. Kim’s breath was still coming in fast draws when she propelled herself off the classroom floor, gathering her things hastily and tossing the ash of the herbs in the trash. She slung her bag over her shoulder and marched from the classroom, and strait to Dumbledore’s office. She’d endured this long enough; feeling, knowing that something terrible was going to happen. Now she was even surer. This wasn’t simply a suggestion. Someone was going to die the night of the Triwizard Tournament. And Kim was petrified it was going to be Harry.
“Dumbledore,” Kim demanded before the statue leading into his office. “I need to speak with you right away please….” She waited, staring stupidly at the gargoyle. The last time she had come to see Dumbledore, she had managed to see him quite by chance as he was about to enter his office. As for now, she wasn’t even certain he was inside.
“Please, Headmaster, it’s very important. It’s about Harry.” She wasn’t even sure why she felt he could hear her, only that there was something about Professor Dumbledore that assured her if a student said they were in need of him, he would be there. She waited another moment, and just like that the statue started to move, sliding upward and revealing the staircase. Kim hopped on and rode it upward toward the door to Dumbledore’s office and gave it a rapid knock.
“Come in, Kim,” came his deep and wizened voice. She opened the door and shut it behind her hurriedly, finding Dumbledore standing behind his desk, resting his fingers against its surface.
“Yes?” he asked after she’d stood there for a moment. She’d come strait here, full of determination. Now that she was before the headmaster though, picking out the right words to say was proving difficult. Again she found herself faced with the likelihood of sounding crazy. But then she thought of Harry in that maze and her stomach churned. She remembered what Sirius had asked her before she’d left his cave. Look after Harry. If you can.
Kim sighed, preparing to take the plunge, and took another step closer to Dumbledore’s desk. “Professor, I’m sorry to disturb you all of a sudden. I-… I’ve just seen something. In the future, I mean.”
“Ah, another vision then. Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the wooden arm chair before his desk. Kim sat as did Dumbledore in his own chair. “Tell me what you saw that has you so concerned.”
“It was in the maze. The third challenge. Victor Krum,” Kim said with malice. “He used the Cruciatus curse on Cedric Diggory.”
Professor Dumbledore showed no emotion except for the light incline of one of his eyebrows and the faintest tightening around his wrinkled eyes. He drew in a breath.
“Well, unfortunately Kim, we cannot prosecute someone based on actions that they haven’t yet done. No matter how certain it is that they will,” he said, lowering his head a bit to look at her over top of his half-moon spectacles.
“But sir, you don’t understand… I think we-… We have to stop the challenge. We have to cancel the Triwizard Tournament,” she said desperately.
He seemed to be mulling this over for some time before he said, “We simply cannot.”
“What? But something terrible is going to happen! Not just what I saw, but something else. I’m sure of it. I’ve felt it since the first day the Triwizard Tournament was announced!”
Dumbledore was studying her wordlessly, and his silence was enough to drive Kim mad.
“I have to stop it!”
“Kim,” Dumbledore said firmly. “It simply can’t be done. The goblet of fire which chose the champions is a form of strong binding magic. Why do you think we have not taken Harry out of the tournament already? Certainly you don’t think I want him competing underage?”
“No, of course not, but…” Kim rubbed her head, certain this was the point where she would cross over into the territory of sounding insane. “I think someone is going to die, Headmaster. I’ve thought it, and I’ve ignored it for some time… but I can’t ignore it anymore.”
At this, Dumbledore’s brow creased into a frown. “This feeling,” he said, “could you describe it for me.”
“I don’t know… it feels… terrible. Like that feeling you get when you hear something in your room at night, but you can’t see anything, and you know nothing should be there… but you can feel it. You can feel something there, watching you from the darkness… It’s like that, all the time. In the pit of my stomach. It’s making me sick…” she said desperately, her eyes pleading with Dumbledore to take this burden away from her.
“Have you ever had a vision come true before? Have you ever seen something that was confirmed to be real?”
“Yes,” Kim said assuredly. “A few times. That first time I came to you about Harry being in Hogsmeade. Well, I interpreted that vision all wrong, but it turned out to be true. What I saw really did happen. And again over the summer…” she didn’t want to tell Dumbledore about the gambling on the quidditch game so she skipped over this detail. “And-” again she paused, looking sheepish and realizing how often her divination got her in trouble rather than the opposite. “I knew about the dragons,” she admitted. “At the end of last term I had a vision of Harry facing dragons, I just didn’t know it was real until I found out about the tournament…”
Dumbledore gave her a small knowing smile for a moment before it faded to a much more serious, strained expression.
“You must realize something,” he said. “The futures that you see are set in stone. The visions that you’ve had, the ones that are in fact visions of the future, cannot be undone. They cannot be changed. To attempt to do so, would be to toil away your life in constant turmoil.”
"People always think you cry, when you’re unhappy. They think you spend your days sobbing into your..."
- extract // broken thoughts (via br-o-ken-poetry)
January 31, 2016
"I want to be the person
who eases you to sleep.
I want to be consumed by the
fire lanterns in your..."
who eases you to sleep.
I want to be consumed by the
fire lanterns in your morning stare.
I want to be the reason
you wake up feeling rejuvenated”
- onlyscratchedthesurface (via wnq-writers)
Kim Shimmers and the Diviner’s Curse
A Harry Potter Fanfic by me (and sequel to Kim Shimmers and the Screech Owl)
(Art not mine, couldn’t find credits. Let me know if you know them!)
This Harry Potter fanfic will be posted, if all goes well, every weekend.
Chapter 18
The Man in the Purple Robes
There was barely a week left until the final challenge now, and Kim could feel herself slipping under the stress. She’d wake up in the morning and look at herself in the mirror, bags under her eyes, and think, this isn’t even your problem. You won’t be facing any challenges. You won’t be going up against any danger… But that never made the stress lessen in the slightest. She stopped trying to tame her hair that was getting wilder from tossing and turning endlessly through the night. A hooded figure haunted her dreams, and a gut wrenching feeling greeted her when she awoke. Every sound, someone dropping the lid of the toilet seat, shutting the door a little firmly to the girl’s bathroom, a bag being thrown from someone’s shoulder and onto the floor carelessly, would make her flinch and clutch the edge of the sink or the desk or her knees, whatever was in reach. She dug her nails in and tried to remember I still have ‘till next week to figure this out.
“Are you eating all right?” came a sudden voice that made Kim jump so hard she nearly came out of her own skin. She clutched her heart that was thundering in her chest and looked wearily over her shoulder at Fred who was coming to sit beside her at the Gryffindor table for breakfast. Her eyelids lulled when she saw him and she dropped her hand.
“I’m fine,” she said dully, turning back to her food which, were she being honest, she would’ve admitted she had no appetite for. She forced a bight to make her lie seem genuine.
“You seem… on edge…” he said tentatively.
“Where’s George?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.
“On his way…” He let out a sound of forfeit and leaned in a bit closer so he could speak under his breath. “Kim, this isn’t about…”
She looked up at him, waiting, but he just searched her eyes in silence for a while, frank concern that was so rarely found on his sharp features hiding in every wrinkle and crease of his brow.
“About what?” she prompted.
“You know… you and I?”
Kim stared at him dumbly for a second before she let out a joyless laugh, or more an exhale of exasperated air that sort of sounded like a laugh.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Fred immediately hardened and straightened up, looking away and seeming a bit regretful. Kim thought she should perhaps feel sorry for being so blunt if she had the capacity to feel anything besides creeping dread.
“No, it’s not that,” she continued. “Though it hasn’t helped.”
At this he seemed a bit sorry again, if only for an instant. “What is it then?”
“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand it anyway…” She didn’t realize how painful it was that she found it to be true. He wouldn’t understand. Anyone who she told would simply think she was worrying for nothing. But she wasn’t. She just knew it.
Either Fred didn’t know how else to coax the information out of Kim, or he lost interest in trying to do so, but he stopped bothering her about it and they didn’t speak much after that. Once Kim had the chance, she made her way to an abandoned classroom that she’d been visiting on her off times. She shut the door and drew the herbs out of her bag, setting them out to burn beside where she sat on the floor, cross legged. Strix was perched on her shoulder, more fidgety and needy than usual. Perhaps she could since Kim’s discomfort.
Kim inhaled a deep breath, feeling the herbs already beginning to take her mind away from her. She didn’t have to try and clear her mind; that was what the smoke was for. The hard part was keeping her mind focused during all of this. She had recently been out to visit the quidditch field, or what once was, and what was now the grounds for the third challenge. She thought having an image of the maze in her mind might help her. She clung to it now, and though she was sure it wasn’t fully finished and it didn’t look as it would on the night of the challenge, Kim felt it aiding her focus. She simply grasped onto the image of the tall shrubs creating winding patterns as she was pulled into nonexistence. She imagined Harry at their entrance, small in comparison to the long dark expanse, misty tendrils coiling up from the grass and into the cool night sky. What awaited him within? What was to come…
“Crucio!” came an unfamiliar voice, followed by a man’s screams. Kim was standing in contrasted darkness, all eerie green shadow, her wand lighting her path which was closed in on either side by great bushes. Her breathing drew in sharply, realizing something terrible was happening on the other side of the bush she stood beside. She ran frantically up the path trying to round the corner of the bush, but there seemed to be no end to the wall. Beyond the small halo of her wand light was shrouded in darkness. Perhaps she could run for ever on this path and never find a way over to the screaming boy. So she returned to where the scream was the loudest, gulping in breaths as she tried to think clearly.
With her wand she blasted a small fire into the bush beside her. It was effective enough to smolder away a torso sized hole, filling her nostrils with ash. She kicked her leg through the shrub, letting the thick brambles scratch against her skin as she forced her way through until she broke to the other side. She thrust her body through the hole, sticks and thick leaves scraping her face, stinging, tearing her clothes. Then she was on the other side, and there was a handsome boy with golden brown hair, writhing on the ground as though a strong current of electricity was probing through his body. Kim stared at him with wide eyes, fear bubbling up into her throat, just before she looked up to meet the vacant gaze of Victor Krum.
Kim gasped, eyes flying open. Strix was flapping around Kim’s head, circling her and causing light from the windows to flash into her eyes disorientingly. She blinked as Strix landed and prodded at Kim’s shoulders with her feet. Kim’s breath was still coming in fast draws when she propelled herself off the classroom floor, gathering her things hastily and tossing the ash of the herbs in the trash. She slung her bag over her shoulder and marched from the classroom, and strait to Dumbledore’s office. She’d endured this long enough; feeling, knowing that something terrible was going to happen. Now she was even surer. This wasn’t simply a suggestion. Someone was going to die the night of the Triwizard Tournament. And Kim was petrified it was going to be Harry.
“Dumbledore,” Kim demanded before the statue leading into his office. “I need to speak with you right away please….” She waited, staring stupidly at the gargoyle. The last time she had come to see Dumbledore, she had managed to see him quite by chance as he was about to enter his office. As for now, she wasn’t even certain he was inside.
“Please, Headmaster, it’s very important. It’s about Harry.” She wasn’t even sure why she felt he could hear her, only that there was something about Professor Dumbledore that assured her if a student said they were in need of him, he would be there. She waited another moment, and just like that the statue started to move, sliding upward and revealing the staircase. Kim hopped on and rode it upward toward the door to Dumbledore’s office and gave it a rapid knock.
“Come in, Kim,” came his deep and wizened voice. She opened the door and shut it behind her hurriedly, finding Dumbledore standing behind his desk, resting his fingers against its surface.
“Yes?” he asked after she’d stood there for a moment. She’d come strait here, full of determination. Now that she was before the headmaster though, picking out the right words to say was proving difficult. Again she found herself faced with the likelihood of sounding crazy. But then she thought of Harry in that maze and her stomach churned. She remembered what Sirius had asked her before she’d left his cave. Look after Harry. If you can.
Kim sighed, preparing to take the plunge, and took another step closer to Dumbledore’s desk. “Professor, I’m sorry to disturb you all of a sudden. I-… I’ve just seen something. In the future, I mean.”
“Ah, another vision then. Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the wooden arm chair before his desk. Kim sat as did Dumbledore in his own chair. “Tell me what you saw that has you so concerned.”
“It was in the maze. The third challenge. Victor Krum,” Kim said with malice. “He used the Cruciatus curse on Cedric Diggory.”
Professor Dumbledore showed no emotion except for the light incline of one of his eyebrows and the faintest tightening around his wrinkled eyes. He drew in a breath.
“Well, unfortunately Kim, we cannot prosecute someone based on actions that they haven’t yet done. No matter how certain it is that they will,” he said, lowering his head a bit to look at her over top of his half-moon spectacles.
“But sir, you don’t understand… I think we-… We have to stop the challenge. We have to cancel the Triwizard Tournament,” she said desperately.
He seemed to be mulling this over for some time before he said, “We simply cannot.”
“What? But something terrible is going to happen! Not just what I saw, but something else. I’m sure of it. I’ve felt it since the first day the Triwizard Tournament was announced!”
Dumbledore was studying her wordlessly, and his silence was enough to drive Kim mad.
“I have to stop it!”
“Kim,” Dumbledore said firmly. “It simply can’t be done. The goblet of fire which chose the champions is a form of strong binding magic. Why do you think we have not taken Harry out of the tournament already? Certainly you don’t think I want him competing underage?”
“No, of course not, but…” Kim rubbed her head, certain this was the point where she would cross over into the territory of sounding insane. “I think someone is going to die, Headmaster. I’ve thought it, and I’ve ignored it for some time… but I can’t ignore it anymore.”
At this, Dumbledore’s brow creased into a frown. “This feeling,” he said, “could you describe it for me.”
“I don’t know… it feels… terrible. Like that feeling you get when you hear something in your room at night, but you can’t see anything, and you know nothing should be there… but you can feel it. You can feel something there, watching you from the darkness… It’s like that, all the time. In the pit of my stomach. It’s making me sick…” she said desperately, her eyes pleading with Dumbledore to take this burden away from her.
“Have you ever had a vision come true before? Have you ever seen something that was confirmed to be real?”
“Yes,” Kim said assuredly. “A few times. That first time I came to you about Harry being in Hogsmeade. Well, I interpreted that vision all wrong, but it turned out to be true. What I saw really did happen. And again over the summer…” she didn’t want to tell Dumbledore about the gambling on the quidditch game so she skipped over this detail. “And-” again she paused, looking sheepish and realizing how often her divination got her in trouble rather than the opposite. “I knew about the dragons,” she admitted. “At the end of last term I had a vision of Harry facing dragons, I just didn’t know it was real until I found out about the tournament…”
Dumbledore gave her a small knowing smile for a moment before it faded to a much more serious, strained expression.
“You must realize something,” he said. “The futures that you see are set in stone. The visions that you’ve had, the ones that are in fact visions of the future, cannot be undone. They cannot be changed. To attempt to do so, would be to toil away your life in constant turmoil.”
holy-crap-someone-finally:
Book characters that at first make you think “Holy shit this guy is an...
Book characters that at first make you think “Holy shit this guy is an asshole” and by the end make you think “If anyone touches this person I will destroy them” are the best tbh
