Become one with hallows part 1

Harry took a step forward and Fred took one back, out of reach of his young friend's touch.

"I don't want you to touch me."

"What? Why?"

A humorless smile quirked too pale lips, a far cry from the usual mischievous smirk. "It hurts to look at you. It burns. I'd hate to find out what it feels like to touch you."

There was so much wrong with that statement, so much wrong with this situation, Harry didn't even know where to start. "You're dead. But you're here, are you-are you a ghost?"

Fred shook his head. "I don't think so, they can see me and speak to me, but they're different. I'm different."

"What are you?"

"Stuck. I think I'm stuck."

Harry winced, his hands crawled up the sides of his face to press into his ears. The whispers were no longer just desperate, they were louder and angrier and clamoring to be heard. They weren't overly loud, he could still here the catch of his own breath, the brush of his feet against the carpet, but the mutter of those voices was comparable to the slow drag of jagged nails on chalkboard.

"They don't like being ignored." Fred tilted his head, hearing what Harry couldn't. "They want you to listen to them."

"Yeah? Well, let them know not to hold their breaths. Their voices are wooly, like static, I couldn't listen even if I wanted to."

"They don't like that."

"I don't like this."

The shadows lurking on the edge of his vision twisted unhappily, they grew longer, stretching, reaching for him, before drawing back suddenly. Harry shuddered and his jaw clenched uncomfortably, the discordant rasp of each whisper, each moan, each wail, sent a lance of not quite pain, but most certainly discomfort, through each temple.

"Enough."

"They just want to be heard."

"I said enough. Shut up!"

A switch flipped and the voices fell absolutely silent, Fred reeled back, struck by an invisible force that clamped his jaw shut. As if in direct contradiction, Harry's own fell open. He was momentarily taken aback by the immediate response to his ire.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout."

Without thinking, he reached out and grasped Fred's elbow, as if to help him regain his kilter. A part of him was expecting his hand to pass through the limb, despite his denial Fred had to be a ghost, there was no other explanation for his presence. But Harry's hand met solid, if not a bit too cool flesh.

It took a moment for the contact to register, it had happened unconsciously and in the stilted moment between two blinks of an eye. They were utterly still for one long second but then it registered and Harry realized that the touch didn't hurt Fred like the redhead had feared, it hurt him.

It started off as an itch, a heavily uncomfortable sensation that held the promise of pain if not relieved in due time. But then the itch became a burn, radiating from the point where Harry met Fred and sweeping throughout his body into his core. Harry tore his hand away and staggered back several steps, but the damage had already been done; he let out a distressed whimper when his blood turned to acid sludge and yet continued to chug laboriously through his veins and burn a pathway through his heart.

Frantic hands tore into the thin, worn fabric of his shirt, granting him access to the itching, burning, excruciating flesh beneath. He scratched until bloody furrows carved searing pathways across his torso, but the drag of his fingers did nothing to relieve the pain. He gasped and he writhed until his legs gave beneath him and his fingers no longer had any flesh left to carve. Was this how he was to die? Prostrate between the unused beds of the boys dormitory? Darkening the rich burgundy of the carpet with his blood and tears and sweat? This ailment, whatever it was, was going to do what the darkest wizard in centuries had failed to do, and it would have him wishing for it to hurry up and finish the job as it did.

Harry heaved with the effort of pushing himself to his knees, if he was going to die he would do so on his feet. And to his surprise, that one act of determined fury caused the pain to falter; he was so focused on rising without ending up with his face planted in the carpet once more that the pain was, not forgotten, but at least momentarily not at the forefront of his mind. Bolstered by this discovery, Harry forced his body across the room and through the open door to the attached loo, each step tempered the pain that had only minutes before had him likening his bones to gelatin.

The uncharacteristically loud blast of water bursting from the faucet and the splash of frigid water he threw at his face helped to ground him a bit, though it did nothing to calm his violently shaking hands or clear his eyesight, which was painfully blurry and causing his head to ache.

He inhaled deeply, inflating his lungs for several seconds before releasing the oxygen in a heavy gush. Once. Twice. And again. The familiar routine forced the blood he could feel pounding behind his eyes to slow and, in turn, steadied his hands. The sharp burn of agony lessened with each breath he took, but his entire body remained coiled and tensed, half convinced the inexplicable pain would return any moment and refusing to be caught off guard once again. He was burning (in the metaphorical sense this time around) to work out what had afflicted him. What had caused his body to rebel against him so violently? And it seemed the only person with even the faintest idea of what had occurred had gone uncharacteristically silent.

Blessedly steady legs led him back out into the main room where he found himself to, once again, be alone.

"Fred? I didn't scare you off with all my writhing and flailing, did I?" Disquiet twisted Harry's stomach when he received no response. "Fred?"