Chapter 8
Bill startled awake in the hospital wing. The sudden pain he felt when he tried to sit up was a vivid reminder of where he was and why he was there. He could barely remember or make any sense of the dream that had woken him up. Something about the world being an oyster? He could have sworn he thought he saw people looking at him through some sort of screen at some point, but the dream was all a vague blur now.
A few days later, Madam Pomfrey released him from the hospital wing. She still wanted to keep him there a bit longer to make sure he was completely healed, but after he followed her around for a few hours asking if he could leave yet, she got annoyed enough to let him go. Bill was very happy to see Rober and Alistair again after getting released, but even more so that he had missed the first Potions lesson because he had still been in the hospital wing when that class had happened.
Bill, Robert, and Alistair had the afternoon after the first Potions class off, so they spent it wandering around the castle grounds outside. After a while of walking, they came across a small group of students who were playing catch with a frisbee of some kind. Robert was very quickly invited to join the game, and Robert then got Alistair to join, and finally all three of them were playing with the small group. Except that Bill couldn’t seem to throw the frisbee to the right place, it either fell way short or went way long. Reginald Barkley was very quick to start making fun of him for that.
“It’s not that hard, little weirdo,” Reginald said angrily after Bill latest failed attempt at throwing the frisbee to someone else.
Reginald then picked up the frisbee and threw it back to Bill, who seemed to have trouble telling how close it was to himself and ended up getting hit in the eye.
“OW,” he yelled, rubbing his eyelid. He then picked up the frisbee and tried to throw it back at Reginal and hopefully hit him with it, only for the frisbee to go flying far away from the rest of the group and almost landing in the lake.
“Why did you even join in?” Reginald yelled at him. “You can’t catch it, you can't throw it, you apparently can’t even see it most of the time. You are nothing but a ugly, one-eyed little freak of nature. Why do you even exist?”
Bill felt like he was angry enough that he was about to snap, but he pushed it down, forced himself to stay yellow, and responded.
“Wanna say that to my face, kid?” he said, trying to sound calm.
“You don’t even have one,” Reginald said, kneeling anyway.
Faster than anyone expected, himself included, Bill reached up and latched onto Reginald’s shirt color with one hand and reached towards one of his eyes with his other hand. Before Reginald could react, Bill turned burning red and shoved his fist wrist deep into his left eye. The rest of the group started screaming and running to get help, but Bill didn’t notice anything but the sounds of Reginald’s agonized screams, the feel of the goop of the eye burning away to nothing. It was beautiful to him, and he couldn’t help but laugh long, loud, and completely unhinged. Reginald tried to throw Bill off him, but only succeeded in burning his hands, his face was covered by now in blood and liquified eyeball. Bill didn’t notice when running footsteps started coming towards him, and he didn’t notice a shouted word and a bright flash of red light.
Dumbledore was working in his office when Snape burst in through his door mid-rant and threw a flameproof piece of cloth wrapped around something on his desk.
“I told you,” Snape hissed angrily. “I told you. That thing,” he gestured at the bundle on the desk. “That thing just attacked one of the students.”
Dumbledore carefully unwrapped the bundle of cloth to reveal Bill, who looked like he was sleeping peacefully.
“Which student?” he asked.
“Reginald Barkley, my prefect,” Snape replied. “That demon burned his eye out in front of at least ten other students. Madam Pomfrey immediately rushed him to Saint Mungo’s, but it’s still very likely that he will die.”
Bill’s right hand relaxed in his sleep and dropped the mangled remains of Reginald’s eye and optic nerve onto the piece of cloth he was in.
“I told you that that thing was a danger, but you insisted on letting him come here and now a student is about to die,” Snape growled.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Dumbledore said sadly.
“Of course you did,” Snape retorted.
“I’ll help ya with your little problem if you will help me in the future, I’ll need you to do whatever I say when the time comes.”
A black hand surrounded by blue flames. A firm handshake.
A locked dormitory in the dungeons.
“No,” Dumbledore replied. “I made a mistake many years ago, Severus. My hands are tied.”
When Bill awoke, he had been locked in a small, windowless room. He got shakily to his feet and started walking towards the door to escape when one of the castle ghosts floated through the wall next to him.
“You’re not allowed to leave this room,” it said.
“Oh, yeah, and what are you gonna do to stop me?” Bill said.
“There are three more ghosts outside ready to go get Filch or Dumbldore should you escape,” the ghost replied.
Bill went back to the bed in the room and sat down on it. After a few minutes, he got really bored so he snapped a small laptop into existence to play on that. He eventually found a game called mk48.io where he, of course, used his real name as his username and played that for a while. He ended up playing with two other players, named Kitsune and Duck!!!, and they fought a fleet called pirates together in a fleet Bill made, called triangles because of course it was. But only after pirate fleet decided to keep breaking peace agreements and accuse him of being everything from a rat dog to schizophrenic.
Robert and Alistair were both very much in shock after seeing what Bill did to Reginald. It didn’t help that all the other students assumed that since they’d hung out with him a lot, then they must be just as crazy and dangerous as him. So, everyone else avoided them, whispering rumors to each other in the halls.
It took Stanford a while to find Lisa, but when he did, he went to her house with Stan to ask some questions about Bill. It was a normal-looking two-story house surrounded by a neat little fence and a neat little yard. Lisa answered the door quickly and was revealed to be a slightly taller than average woman with a long, thin face and shoulder length black hair.
“Who are you two?” she asked upon seeing the twins.
“My name is Stanford Pines and this is my brother Stanley,” Ford replied. “We’ve come to ask you some questions about Bill Cipher.”
“Why?” she asked, sounding a little suspicious.
“Because he is a liar and manipulator and I want to know what he was up to before he went to Hogwarts,” Ford replied.