Human error.

Men were the danger. Men took. Men drowned. Men hit.

“And who are you?” The potions professor asked it after the latest meeting with the mind healer. Its boy was dormant. He slept soundly in the cupboard that locked from the inside. It told the girl in the striped pyjamas to leave its boy alone, to let him rest. “Do you have a name?”

Did it have a name? There were those that called it ‘the ghoul’. It did not truly have a name. What was it to have a name? To be a name? It was not the sort to have a name.

It checked the vessel for bruises and marks. Since its boy went dormant, there had been no more cutting. The wounds had clotted and scabbed and faded. Still, it had to be checked. It had to note if the Matron’s boy was fooled by the potions professor. It remembered when the uncle had agreed to its boy’s desperation.

No more sex, its boy had pleaded. No kissing. No beating. Its boy had held a knife to his wrist and begged on his knees. 

The uncle had agreed. Okay. Okay. Just stop, okay? 

The uncle had lied. It remembered the broken promise. The oath was broken. Oaths were made to be broken.

The potions professor had lied, too. The potions professor had made an oath to be broken. 

If your aunt is lying and she has done this to you, I will impart every justice you deserve upon her. 

The aunt had lied. The aunt had whittled the boy to the bone. The aunt had brought the boy to hell, just like the uncle did. The aunt had done this to the boy. The potions professor imparted no justice that she deserved. The potions professor had stood and done nothing.

He took us in, the Matron’s boy said, nervously, taking its boy’s place in the vessel. The Matron’s boy was younger than its boy. Naive. Unbroken. Untouched. He blood-adopted us, remember? 

Of course it remembered. It remembered the cat that was not a cat overriding its boy’s power and rushing forward for blind vengeance. It remembered the cat that was not a cat dragging the knife against the vessel’s palm. It remembered the drip drip drip of syrupy blood into the drinking bowl. The memory-taker had put the dish up to the potion professor’s lips and then the vessel’s. Both had drunk the mixed blood. Both had been bound with a dark familial magic.

It did not need to be reminded of the dark magics that lay beneath familial bonds. It had lived that lesson too many times to count.

It remembered the cursed little bastard and the potions professor lunging towards the cat that was a cat. It remembered its boy slaving over books for a pointless lesson only to be told that he cheated. It remembered harsh blame laid onto its boy: there was only one loophole and the boy used it and sold us down the river. Its boy - who had given up the stone to the dark lord. 

Its boy - who held his life in the balance to save his goblin keeper. Its boy - who had been taken and drowned and hit and beat and lashed with words and lashed with belts. Its boy - who was foolish, was jaded, was courageous in the face of death. 

Its boy - who had been put to sleep, in part, to stop the cursed book from overtaking him.

It remembered everything. It knew more than the Matron’s boy and knew that the potions professor should not be trusted, not even if he offered chocolate ice cream.

“Sorry, sir,” the chameleon chittered, “I must have zoned out.”

Good, it praised him. Perhaps the chameleon was not as loyal to the Matron as it had feared. Perhaps he could be swayed in the right direction. He must not find out who exists, boy.

ˏ₍•ɞ•₎ˎ

The Matron’s boy did not sleep fitfully. He did not remember any dreams. That was left to the toothless thing who resided in the guardhouse’s lowest accessible level. Roused by the girl in the striped pajamas, the toothless thing remembered the loss of the vessel’s baby teeth. No teeth, boy. No teeth. The uncle was a man despite what its boy believed. The uncle was not a monster but a man.

It did not soothe the toothless thing. The thing did not want to be soothed by anything tall or grown. The thing was safe and ignored in the guardhouse. It was unseen. It felt its dream-memory on the behalf of the Matron’s boy. The toothless thing was very brave and took its medicine. The toothless thing did a very good job. When the girl in the striped pyjamas rocked the toothless thing in her arms, it did not chastise her. It gave its permission.

The girl in the striped pajamas was a soft-hearted girl. She was lissom enough that the toothless thing did not cringe from her. She did not go into the sun and had grey skin and did not see colour. She did not see that which she did not require. The girl in the striped pajamas was unlike the one who saw everything. The girl in the striped pajamas was different in that she felt what she did see. She felt all that she saw so potently that if she saw colour, she would quake and split and become useless.

All of the parts had a use. All of the parts had a reason for being. That was the why of existence: to be was to be of use. 

(It was eat or be eaten, it was use or be used. Hurt or be hurt.)

The one who saw everything was it. The one who knew everything was not it.

“Ghoulie-ghoul!” The girl wrung her hands excitedly. Pitiful, it thought. “Have you seen Harryboree’s mental-healer-whatsit?” Its ears swivelled like radar dishes towards the girl. It did not look at her. She did not like to be seen, either. “I spoke to them yesterday! They said I was very important!”

“Do not speak to the mind healer,” it chastened her. “Do not give out secrets.” Somedays it felt as if it was surrounded by useless unseeing children. 

Women were the danger. Women clawed. Women took. Women starved. Women crawled inside the brain. Women twisted. Women hit.

“They’re really nice though,” the girl in the striped pajamas whined in that begging tone that meant she was teetering on the edge of being undone. “Do you remember Henryhop’s Head of House? Healer Sprout is related to her!” 

The girl continued to speak, warbling and whining on, enough to fill the void of the guardhouse. No one spoke in the upper levels of the guardhouse. When all were accounted for, there were seven other than its boy and the girl in the striped pajamas: the shadow, the dog girl, the toothless thing, the glass doll, and the faded ones.

There were lower levels of the guardhouse inaccessible to the girl where it knew speaking folk resided. It did not know how many resided there. It had ventured down there only once to find her a friend when its boy had first forgotten about the guardhouse. It had not found a friend. No, it was where the Garden Keeper was born. The Garden Keeper resembled the uncle and the aunt both. The Garden Keeper kept children under their thumb. 

When the Matron next visited, after the desolation wrought against the girl in the striped pajamas, the Garden Keeper had been sent to the Within. The Keeper of the Gate, the Matron’s half-self, had sent them back to the Without after further children were kept under further thumbs. The Garden Keeper had squashed too firmly the mute girl of Within. The Garden Keeper was to be watched very closely by it, the Matron advised. 

The Dark gave and the Dark took. The Garden Keeper was of the Dark but pretended to be of the Calm. This it used against them. This it used to keep quiet the Garden Keeper’s sharp debilitating tongue.

“Are you even listening to meeeeeeee?” 

“No,” it said. The girl in the striped pajamas pouted and returned to her game of stacking rat bones into towers. It watched her carefully, ensuring that she would not wake its boy due to her boredom.

It inhaled. Its ribs clicked as the stale air steadily ballooned its abdomen. The air held an unmistakable smell; a distress signal from the forest. Its obsidian heart rattled in its chest. It scaled the stairs and leapt off of the guardhouse tower.

ˏ₍•ɞ•₎ˎ

The elder sapling was not diminished by the cursed book’s absence. Despite the Garden Keeper’s best poisoning attempts, the sapling was steadily growing its roots into the base of the guardtower. 

Worse than that, trees in the forest were beginning to fall. At stochastic moments unchosen by Dark, large foreboding pines met their ends. It noted claw marks at their bases. An interloper was penetrating their hulls so that the Dark’s venom could access the vulnerable insides. Each tree held a part of the soul of the Without. Each tree was a part of it and it was a part of each of them. 

It did not know the significance of these felled trees. Why was it these were chosen? Was it random? What evil was perpetrating this and for what ends? It irked the one who saw everything who did not see this.

There was a rustle.

“Who goes there?” It rumbled, taking its hostile form. Cold trickled down its back as its metallic feathers turned into inky black. Its legs extended into the ground itself as it connected to the fungus of the forest. 

Who dared intrude over our domain? It asked of the fungus, stretching its consciousness out along the black-gold threads. Show me.

Hello, the ghoul. The fungus of the forest greeted it coolly but respectfully. Then, without answering its critical question, they asked, will the Child of Dark visit again?

The boy is sleeping. It knew how the Dark favoured its boy. They cherished him like the ocean would cherish its moon for making the tides. Show me the intruder. 

The Child of Dark is missed, the fungus of the forest said, like a poorly orphaned Oliver Twist. Tell Child that he may lay dormant in our grasp. Child of Dark would show us images of the Outer and we would shield him from all terrible memories and dreams.

A sharp protectiveness rose up inside itself. Its boy would not be consumed by the forest whether or not the intentions were positive. The boy sleeps in the guardhouse where he belongs. Becoming frustrated with the fungus of the forest, it threatened to remove its tendrils of communication. If there is no information to share, I will take my leave.

Wait, the ghoul! Do wait and listen! Panicking, the grip of the fungus tightened around its ankles. The one who saw everything settled, smugly. The beasts of yore have noted disturbances in the forest. Images flitted behind its eyes as the fungus shared what they had witnessed.

-sleek brown hair coiffed to the side. A knife wedged into the base of a tree until it weeps slick red sap-

-a serpentine smile of satisfaction-

-”Harry… Harry… come out, come out wherever you are…”-

Tom Riddle, it groused. It knew the cursed book’s name because its boy had traced the indents of the letters of the cover over and over. Worshipfully writing with quill and ink, thoughtless as to how the book made him tired and weak, as if this aberrative diary was worth his body and mind. 

Now, it was too late. The hooks had sunken in. Despite sending its boy to sleep, Tom Riddle was still skulking around inside the mind, breaking things and making a mess. 

Keep watch, it advised, testily. Do not give up your cards. This is a true evil that is present here. We must all be vigilant in weeding out his presence. 

Yes, ghoul, the fungus chorused. 

ˏ₍•ɞ•₎ˎ

“It’s that Tom, isn’t it?” The Garden Keeper sneered. “He’s the one poisoning trees.”

It observed them coolly. The Garden Keeper was good at pretending to be on one’s side but they were a product of the Deepest of Darks. The less information they had, the safer they would all be.

“That boy never should have written in that diary,” the Garden Keeper continued. Their face grew even uglier at the proclamation. “Diaries are for girls, not boys. If that freak had ever listened to the lessons I instilled, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

They scoffed when it said nothing to rebuke them. “You truly don’t care, do you? You only kick up a fuss when the rugrats are in ear-shot.”

It knew that the Garden Keeper served a purpose. Everyone had a use. It did not comprehend what that purpose could be - other than as an irritant. 

“You think you’re sooo much better than me,” they laughed. “You puffed-up cockerel, you sat there every time he was hurt. You sat and did nothing. I bet you enjoyed the show, didn’t you? You cheered his rapist on, I’ll bet.”

The Garden Keeper eventually tired themself out. Their niggling and taunts would not work on it. It knew it held no responsibility for the crimes of its boy’s captors. It would serve no time in the wizard prison. It would hold no guilt.

There was no point for guilt. There was only a need to persist. For this, it gathered information. For this, it remained vigilant.

Measuredly, it tilted its beak downwards to groom its chest feathers. It did not wait for the Garden Keeper to leave. There was no shame in what it was. Their judgemental scoff did not phase it. 

The one who saw everything did only what was needed, necessary, and heeded.

ˏ₍•ɞ•₎ˎ

It was five days until they returned to the Scottish Highlands. It was counting down the time exactly to be sure that the potions professor would not try to shortchange it. The boy would not be late for Hogwarts this year. The boy would not be trapped in a cupboard or a neatly pressed polo shirt. 

There had been no more cuts or bruises except when the Matron’s boy fell off his broom. He was not as skilled at flying as its boy. It did acknowledge that what the Matron’s boy lacked in physical prowess he made up for in magical ability.

It was fortuitous that the chameleon had been the one to sit the memory-taker’s exam. Despite the hesitance that their wand held for them, the Matron’s chameleon had greedily consumed the knowledge that its boy bartered from it. It was a wand of darkness, safety, and deception. The Matron’s boy had whispered into the wood of the wand about what a grand trick they were playing on the memory-taker.

The wand had acquiesced.

The goblin-keeper visited under her rights as a marriage partner. There were goblin laws around visitation rights and thus as much as the potions professor despised its boy’s goblin, he could not prevent her from spending every afternoon in proximity. Hence why the chameleon had fallen from his broom. The goblin-keeper asserted that this year she would try out for the magical broom sport that the children liked to talk about.

The goblin-keeper was permitted to attend Hogwarts as was her marital right. As to whether she would be allowed to attend classes remained at the memory-taker’s discretion but it was best not to break the goblin treaties. Marriage rights, especially, were bloody rights. Bad things happened to those who attempted to subvert them.

Despite its misgivings, the goblin-keeper had not yet taken the vessel to hell. She had not even attempted to and been thwarted. Despite numerous hours alone and with opportunity, the goblin-keeper preserved the space between them. She was aware that its boy was not quite there. The Matron’s boy did his best to pretend but it was a futile endeavour. He was too cheerful to be its boy, too untainted.

He did not carry the Dark within him. The goblin-keeper could sense that.

It was wary of the goblin-keeper. For all her promises I can say as many times as you like that I don’t want to fuck you or use you it held onto a core suspicion: that she wanted something from its boy and sooner or later she would take it. There was a tenet that it lived by. Those with fangs would one day bite.

The goblin-keeper hadn’t yet. She had done the opposite. She had protected. She had done what it could not. When its boy had been overcome with grief and hopelessness and had wanted to die, she had interlocked their arms and stopped him. He couldn’t have jumped while they were together. He couldn’t have hurt her. 

Physically, she could do something that it could not. She was more than a voice. She was a presence outside of a mind. 

It had wanted to sacrifice her for the stone. It would admit to that for it was the truth. Its boy had saved her. Its boy, the bleeding heart. Their most villainous enemy had that which could doom them all: a path to immortality. In its thoughts, the goblin-keeper was not worth a fervid ruined world. In its boy’s thoughts, the goblin-keeper was the world. It had been she who had carved the moon from the night. It had been no question to sacrifice the moon for the one who had carved it.

It would wait and see whether she betrayed its boy. She could not betray it because it did not give her the stupidity of trust. It remembered too much to give that up. It knew too freshly the cruelty of the world. For all it had not felt, for all it had witnessed, for all it had seen repeat: it would trade her life for anything survivable. 

It thought, tersely, that things were unravelling badly. It felt as if the worst was inevitable and drawing closer. Selfishly, it wished it could rouse its boy from his slumber. It would have to trust in the uncertainty of the Matron’s ilk. It would have to do its best to weed out the rot that corroded its domain.

It would because it must.

As the goblin-keeper spiked the potions professor’s goblet with garlic juice, it watched. For all her terrible power over it, it did agree in this aspect. The potions professor was a bad man deserving of bad things. 

“For the last time, goblin, I am not a vampire!”

The goblin stood tall and met the man’s eyes, one to be feared. “Which is exactly what you would say if you were one. I don’t know what potions you have concocted to make you resistant to the most common measures but I will find a way to defeat you, you immortal exsanguinated beast.”

Be quiet, it told the Matron’s boy. Do not draw her ire.

Aurora won’t hurt us, ghoul, the boy said, foolishly. She’s our friend.

This boy was harder to instruct. He had not endured the same horrors as its boy. The chameleon did not truly know what he hid from, only that he did. Trust me, it said the old words that had worked once before. Sure enough, they worked again.

Okay, the boy muttered, mulishly, and let the goblin-keeper and potions professor argue without interference. He faded into the background like his namesake. But I think you’re too paranoid, ghoul. Not everyone is out to get us. 

You don’t know the consequences of slipping up, it thought. You haven't seen what bad people do when left unattended. When you let them, when you fall into their traps, there is no second chance. You don’t know, Matron’s boy, and if you are careful, if it keeps watch, then you never will.

It did not tell the boy so. He was not its boy but the Matron’s. It was her decision how much the boy knew. 

ˏ₍•ɞ•₎ˎ