Prologue
Harry stared at the ceiling, his body was heating up terribly with his blankets already thrown to the floor. He couldn’t sleep. Not with the nightmares of what happened at the Triwizard Tournament, they always swarmed his mind whenever he was awake and asleep. Harry felt like it was his fault that he let Cedric die.
He died in his arms after all… Harry sat up quickly and rubbed his face, groaning. “No, Harry. Don’t- Don’t think about that.” He shook his head and contemplated for a second, he looked over to his table and saw the papers he was writing to his friends. No reply as of lately, horrible really. He wanted to know what was happening in the wizarding world and he heard nothing. Harry sighed and looked away at the table, he really needed to get his mind off of everything right now. But how? Everything in his room reminded him of Hogwarts and he already reread every book from Hogwarts in this room! But he then looked over to the pile of books by the closet that Aunt Petunia had dumped. He recalled what she said a while back...
“Since we’re running out of space I’m dumping this here!” Aunt Petunia angrily spoke in a snappy tone, dropping the books in Harry’s room.
“What- Hey! Don’t do that!” Harry tried to retort back but Aunt Petunia already dumped everything there. “It’s books from your mother, heavens know why I kept them!” She kept her snotty nose up and left Harry’s room. Leaving him with a pile of dusty books he probably won't read.
Harry stood up from his bed and rummaged through the books that were from his mother, moving aside the ones that were from her early years at Hogwarts since he’d heard most of it already... “What’s this one?” He was talking to himself now. He cleaned the dust off of a dusty blue book that had adorable drawings all over the cover. “‘Diary Book number nine..’ Jeez Mom, how many diaries do you have?” He laughed to himself before embarrassingly brushing it off.
“..Uh… ‘Strange Creatures..?’ What?” He was intrigued already. He opened the first page and blew the dust, immediately being shoved into a coughing fit due to accidentally inhaling dust that was in the air. After he cleared his throat he started to read the first entry page…
“‘Diary Entry: 2,342.I am in my 6th year in Hogwarts and even during this horrid war, I will never know when it’ll ever end,..” Harry gulped as his eyes trailed down the page of the diary. “‘Enough about the war, I’ve already complained enough about our worries… I’ve been seeing things lately, it goes on and off and I don’t know if it’s because of stress or something else. I see floating black spheres in the air with pointy ears and a tail, sometimes I see round green-red creatures around the corner causing chaos. Then a day after that, they’re gone. I can’t explain these occurrences, They often confused me…’”
Lily Evans was writing in her dorm with a couple of other sleeping girls, she kept a small candlelight on as she eyed a few of the black spheres floating around her. She’s been seeing them quite often and she knows they’re not creatures that wizards know. She would’ve known what these were by now, she searched every library, discreetly, about all the creatures she’d seen. The only time Lily had actually been successful in learning about what these creatures were was when she found some old dusty books in a muggle library.
Lily pulled out her drawer and took the book out, ”I wish I could read the title.” She mumbled sadly, only being able to see the word ‘TRUE’ barely, the symbol and the three other words were barely eligible. She sighed and opened the book to her bookmarked page. “I can barely read these books either... They’re so worn out I can just rip the papers out.” She always complained about the poor qualities of these books, but it was the only way to get the information of the things she’d been seeing.
“I can’t believe this was in the back of the library, under a bunch of other books… collecting dust.” Lily sighed, if only she had more information on this. “Okay um… if I remember correctly… This one over here…” She took her eyes off of the book and looked over to the nearby jar. Some days it would be empty but today it was the same mentioned black sphere that had green eyes and two pointy nubs like cat ears, as well as a long tail. “Is called a… Coal Tar. If I can read that correctly…” She pulled up her book and stared into the words.
“‘Kin of Astaroth… King of Rot…’ I still don’t understand what that means, a King of garbage..?” She sighs. “‘ Possesses fungi, gathers around dark gloomy and unclean people, places, and things.’ The way this book explains it, it’s like a demon... But they aren’t real in the wizarding world.. Unless..” She started to contemplate, poking at the jar with the singular Coal Tar, It bounced around the walls of the jar continuing to look as dumb as ever. “It isn’t a living thing either… I didn’t have to poke holes in the jar and it’s been alive for a week.”
Lily groaned and gripped her head, ever since she’s been seeing these weird occurrences she forgot about the strange things happening in the wizarding world. She hasn’t even focused on her own studies in Hogwarts, she was so focused on solving a mystery that she thought only she could see. Lily began to start mumbling a little louder than usual while she read her books, it wouldn’t be until a balled-up piece of paper was thrown at her head. Lily immediately shot up her head and looked over in the direction where the ball was thrown. “What…?” She squinted her eyes.
“Lily, can’t you go to bed? You basically woke me up with your endless muttering.. You’ll end up waking up the others..!” Marlene, one of Lily’s roommates, had woken up from her slumber. She rubbed her eyes and groaned a little. “I’ll go back to bed soon Marlene, I still have enough time to-” Marlene quickly threw another balled-up piece of paper at Lily. “Lily! It’s literally in the middle of the night! It’s probably 3 AM right now..” She whisper-yelled at Lily.
“Seriously..? I didn’t think that time ran by that fast!” Lily rubbed her head, closed up her books and stacked her papers in an orderly fashion. “Sorry for waking you up Marlene, I didn’t mean to..” Lily sighed and blew up the little candlelight. “Well you better head to bed, I heard we got some serious quizzes tomorrow,” Marlene whispers as she turns her back on Lily, snuggling peacefully into her blanket. “Uh-huh.” Lily did not hear a single thing. She headed to bed and fell asleep quite fast. Maybe she needed the sleep to get this off her mind.