Black Blood

08 - Cold Calamity

She felt calm as she watched the raindrops pitter and patter upon the window her head rested upon, leaving long, individual trails that meshed together as the train sped its way through the Scottish countryside.

'I wish it weren't raining,' she thought to herself, and despite the calming effect the water droplets upon the window produced, the girl much preferred bright, sunny days that promised warmth and comfort.

The door to her compartment suddenly opened, interrupting her transparent observings, and she wondered who was bothering her, before the person in question made their intent clear.

"Treats, dear?" an older woman's voice sweetly asked.

"No, but thank you," she idly replied, never taking her sight away from the window and the dim, wet scenery beyond its see-through aperture.

The door closed without delay, and she sighed, not quite from the loneliness she felt, but alone she remained.

'Days like this make me feel so...' she began to think, yet the thought never finished, as she didn't quite know how such dreary days made her truly feel.

She felt calm, serene even, lonely yet not truly, and she wished for warmth, for company and social stimulus, but made no move to acquire it. What this emotion was she could not say nor could she accurately describe it, but it didn't bother her despite it filling her thoughts wholly with its persistent, unwanted nature.

'How strange I am,' she mused, her eyes suddenly flicking up towards the dark-gray sky as a bird or some other flighted beast flew below the endless, all-encompassing rain clouds. 'I like it, but I don't. It's good, but it's bad. Am I, perhaps, in mourning?'

She'd been quite sincere when she'd told Kreacher that no love had been lost between her grandmother and herself, yet here and now, and a week after her ashes had been placed onto the mantle at Grimmauld Place, her grandmother's dreary home and her father's birthplace, a location Cassiopeia never again wanted to see, the pureblooded girl found herself wondering if the death of her grandmother was, in fact, what ailed her so.

The rain continued to fall upon her window, and she continued to feel colder and calmer as she watched wet droplets splitter and splatter, gliding and disappearing with nary a breath as she continued to contemplate her grandmother's innocuous passing. All the while, she continued to feel worse inside, but she found not a Knut of concern for her diminishing mood, as even that seemed to calm her solemn spirit. And then, for a reason she couldn't fathom, the train began to slow, which caused her to blink twice and pull away from the gray vision outside to glance towards the compartment door as though it held some answer to her silent curiosity.

'We're not at Hogwarts yet,' she mused, certain of the assessment, and for good reason. 'There yet remains light through the clouds, so why are we coming to a halt?'

Before she could stand and exit her compartment to seek an answer, a hard, jerking sensation rolled throughout the train, almost forcing an impromptu meeting of floor and face, and which caused her immense ire for the sloppy stop.

'If I'd been standing, I would've been injured!' she angrily thought, adopting a sour expression as she sent her compartment door a look of utter outrage.

Finally standing as all motion ceased, she gently opened her door and gave a glance out and about, noting her face wasn't the only one peering throughout.

"What's going on?!" a voice belonging to a boy shouted, one she'd heard many a time, yet couldn't place.

'Indeed, what, precisely, is happening?' she wondered, stepping from her compartment and marching her way towards the front of the carriage, intent on hearing the answer directly from the conductor.

Before she'd made it even ten paces, however, the calmness returned, and the coldness soon followed. But where it had been brought on by somber mood before, it now felt forced and hollow, crushing her where she stopped and stood.

'I can't breathe!' she thought in alarm, frozen fully in place as something crept up behind her, inciting terror within her freezing heart.

Her legs, as though they had a mind of their own, forced her to the side, placing her back against a closed, compartment door, and she watched in fascinated horror as something black and eerie, partially humanoid in shape, drifted and loomed past her still, frightened form. She gulped through something hard and heavy within her throat, and this seemed to be the wrong thing to do, as its head turned in her direction, with a face shadowed by a black hood, yet she knew one was there, hideous and horrifying beyond all imagination.

"I thought...maybe you'd...rectified that disgusting part of yourself..."

"Gran...ger?!" she choked out, unable to believe the looming monstrosity before her, a dementor, some vague part of her whispered, had spoken to her in a voice that had haunted her dreams for a time.

And then, for seemingly no particular reason, it was moving on, its cloaked head turning back towards the front as it glided and drifted in the direction she'd been headed before it had appeared behind her and forced her frozen body to evacuate its path of travel.

'Why?!' she silently screamed at no one in particular. 'Why, in the name of Merlin, is there a dementor roaming the Hogwarts Express?!'

As soon as its looming, malignant form passed from her carriage to the next, she scampered back into her compartment, sliding the door closed with as much care and precision as was possible so as not to make a single sound in fear that it would return if it heard her, then she locked it and pulled out her wand in futility, aiming it with a shaky hand at the sealed portal.

"Why?!" Cassiopeia whispered in horror, shivering from a deep-seated cold that didn't seem to want to abandon her, one she was not at all comfortable with, and one that robbed her of all calm thought. "Why?!"