Return to Ithaca
A few months ago, I was sent this submission by a lovely anon:
It’s been an embarrassingly long time, anon. I’m sorry. But, thank you for sending it. I hope you enjoy the scene that’s come from it, which I’m using as my submission for @hp-12monthsofmagic’s October prompt.
Warnings: it’s not really spooky, but it’s very claustrophobic.
Nothing exists in isolation.
Jacob’s father had taught him that as a young boy. Links, patterns, and connections; they were always there, if one only looked hard enough to find them. And one had to find them, because that was how logic worked, how problems got solved. It all came down to that one clear rule: nothing in isolation.
On the day that Jacob became trapped inside the Portrait Vault, he stopped believing in that rule. There was something in isolation. Jacob was in isolation. Other than him, there was nothing.
Or so he had thought.
At first, he had wandered between the portraits, through countless frames, each leading him to an identical depiction of the Vault beyond them. He should have become lost and disorientated, but somehow, he always managed to find his way back to the frames he could not get through, the ones that looked onto the real Vault.
It was as if the Vault were calling him back to it.
As much as he had tried to resist them, the Vaults always managed to lure him back. Jacob had been bitter about it until then. Now, he was glad that something other than him existed in this dark and desolate place. He no longer existed in isolation. He had found a link, a connection.
From there, there were more connections. The Portrait Vault was connected to the Forest Vault before it, and to the ones before that as well. They were all connected to each other, and all of them were connected to the final Vault, the one Jacob had yet to find. When Jacob reached out with his mind, he could feel them, all of them.
Jacob’s Legilimency had been a talent before. Now, it was a lifeline. With practice, he managed to find connections to people in close proximity to the other Vaults. When someone traversed the corridor below the Ice Vault, or walked through the library’s Restricted Section near the Vault of Fear, or a centaur cantered past the Forest Vault, Jacob could feel their presence. It was reassuring, to know that even here, he was not truly alone.
Nothing in isolation. Not even Jacob, not anymore.
As time went on — he assumed that time went on, anyway — he actively sought out the brief links to others as they passed by the other Vaults, trying to reach out to them using his Legilimency. It did not work, not the way he wanted it to. Until, one time, it did. His mind made the connection to someone else’s, and it was not just anyone else. It was her. It was Artemis.
It made sense, of course. His younger sister had the same natural gift for Legilimency as he did. It seemed only natural that the first time he would truly make a connection with another human from inside the Vault, it would be with her. And if she was close enough to a Vault for him to make that connection, that meant that she was at Hogwarts, which meant that…
It was time.
This was the moment he had been preparing for. He stopped trying to connect with people, and instead he made the connection to the first Vault, the Ice Vault.
Open… he told it. Open…
He could feel that this had been enough to agitate the Vault, to activate it and trigger the curse. After what might have been a month, or a year, or three, he felt the Vault open, and sensed a presence — Artemis’ presence — inside. The same had happened with the second Vault, and the third, and then…
He knew that the fourth Vault had been activated, not just because he could feel it, but because he could see that on the other side of the portrait frame, the crystal column inside the Vault had started to glow. All there was left for him to do was wait for Artemis to find her way to it.
And, eventually, that moment arrived.
Someone was coming. He could feel them, moving closer and closer to him, to the Vault. He could hear them, their footsteps echoing louder by the second. The light that emanated from the glowing column was dim, but when the newcomer entered the heptagonal room, he could see that they were small-framed and dark-haired, like Artemis. Was it Artemis? It felt like a logical conclusion to draw, but Jacob knew that it might only be wishful thinking on his part. Wishes could do that, they could make you lose your head. Jacob couldn’t lose his head, he had to remain logical. He couldn’t afford to wish, not anymore.
The person on the other side of the frame approached the glowing column of the Vault, and as they stepped closer to it, their shadow elongated into the darkness behind them. Their profile, though illuminated by the column, was obscured by their hair.
Jacob wanted to reach out, to feel for them with his mind and find out who they were, but as they reached out to the glowing crystal with one hand, he called out to them instead:
“Don’t touch it!”
“Jacob?”
His name, a girl’s voice. The hand retracted, and as the girl looked about the Vault, her half-shadowed face turned towards him. Jacob’s heart skipped a beat.
“Artemis?” he breathed, and the girl who looked like Artemis’ eyebrows furrowed. She continued to peer into the darkness, clearly unable to see him through the shadows.
“Jacob, where are you?” she asked.
“I’m inside the portraits.”
“How do I get you out?”
“Open the column,” Jacob told her. She took a step back towards the column, and he reached out as if to stop her, though he knew it was impossible to reach her. “Don’t touch it,” he repeated his earlier instruction. “Use Legilimency.”
If she had managed to open the door to the Vault, she had to know how to use Legilimency. Jacob could only hope that she could use it well enough to open the column as well.
The girl nodded her head, just once and so quickly that it may have been a twitch. As she narrowed her eyes at the glowing crystal, her thoughts were even louder and clearer than her voice, and they echoed Jacob’s own sentiments as he watched the scene from within the portrait frame.
Open… Open…
It had been a long time since Jacob had seen a light as bright as the one that emanated from the column as it opened. He shielded his eyes with his forearm, and as he lowered it, still found himself needing to squint as he stepped towards the edge of the portrait. He paused there for a moment, scarcely able to believe that he might be free, before stepping out through the frame.
“Jacob?”
The girl was watching him with wide and hopeful eyes. Jacob knew those eyes: hazel, with a green ring around the pupils. Her dark hair fell untidily to the level of her chin, and though it was escaping from where she had tried to tuck it behind her ears, he could still see that she had a small scar on her right cheek.
“Missy.” Though Jacob’s eyes were still adjusting to the light, he could recognise his sister. “You did it. You found me.”
He wasn’t sure who hugged who first. He wasn’t sure when he had last hugged anyone. It was a wonder that he still knew how to hug at all.
“I can’t…” Jacob couldn’t finish the sentence that he started to muffle into her hair. There were too many words, too many emotions for him to express. “It’s you.” To be certain, he held Artemis at arm’s length to look at her again. “You’re all… You look so grown up. Are you sure it’s really you?”
Artemis pushed her tears away from her cheeks with the heel of her hand.
“It’s me,” she told him. “Is it really you?”
Of course it was really Jacob. Who else would he be? He wanted to ask her as much, but her dark eyebrows had furrowed, and the look in her eyes had changed. She no longer looked hopeful. If Jacob hadn’t known better, he’d have said that she looked afraid. But that couldn’t be the case. His sister could never be afraid, not of him.
Artemis’ face kept that peculiar expression as she asked, “You’re not a Boggart, are you?”
“Why would I be a Boggart?”
Though he managed to keep smiling as he asked the question, Jacob could feel his heart sink in his chest. He felt suddenly hollow. Everything felt hollow, as if he were entirely alone in the world.
While he was stuck in the portrait, he had tried not to imagine what freedom might feel like. He had never thought that it might feel like this, that he might return to his loved ones only to find that they no longer even recognised him. Worse than that, they feared him.
Nothing in isolation.
And yet, Jacob felt more isolated now than when there had been nothing.
