The Long Night

Chapter One: Yharnam

The moment Harry's hand went through the archway's gauzy veil, he knew he'd screwed up. It had been pure impulse to jump after Sirius, to try to yank him back out. He met Hermione's terrified gaze for the briefest of seconds, tried to say something - but before he could get a sound out, there was a dizzying sense of movement, a feeling of a great hook lodging itself into his naval and yanking. And everything went black.

Harry slammed into cobblestone ground with his palms first. If not for his Quidditch-honed reflexes, his wand would have gone flying out of his hand from the impact. It took close to a minute to blink himself out of his disorientation, another thirty seconds until he noticed Sirius kneeling unsteadily a few meters up ahead, looking a second away from bowling over. 'Not dead, then,' Harry thought, and it sounded much more glib in his head than how he really felt. 'Neither of us.' There should have been some relief in that knowledge, but as Harry stared at the buildings lining the street around them, what he mostly felt was a kind of creeping, bewildered dread.

To their right was a path to what looked like some kind of church or castle, a gigantic structure with black-roofed towers reaching for the murky skies above. The path was lined with abandoned carriages reminiscent of the ones drawn by Thestrals back at Hogwarts. These looked even older though, and like they'd been left where they stood a long time ago.

Somewhere above him, a church bell rang. It was a distant, ominous sound that coupled with the dark structural silhouette of everything in sight reminded Harry of the bells that had sounded out the funeral of one of his classmates in primary school, what felt like a lifetime ago. But the ringing kicked him into movement, a sudden sense of urgency carrying him forward to Sirius side.

"Sirius?" Harry shook his godfather's shoulder, gently first, only to yank on it with proper force when Sirius just wobbled in place. The church bell rang again, and the sound made Harry want to hunch his shoulders anxiously. The stones underneath his feet were cracked and dirty, and when Harry leaned forward the gravel made his sneakers slide backwards.

"Mhhh? Harry?" Sirius voice was a quiet, papery rasp, but it bolstered Harry all the same. He clutched his wand tighter to his chest, trying to understand his own need to find something to hide behind. It was just a gut feeling, an overwhelming sense that something was very off about this whole place, and Harry had learned to trust this particular instinct of his.

"Sirius, something is wrong. I don't know where we are, but-" Somewhere to their right, Harry heard footsteps pass softly over stone. The back of his neck prickled, but before he could decide to drag Sirius behind cover, the sound of those steps faded into the distance.

Sirius was staring at the sky through a great arch of stone ahead of them. Dawn or dusk was tearing through the clouds and staining them a deep red color. "I don't think we're in England anymore, godson mine," he murmured, the corner of his lips riding up in what was clearly more of a nervous tick than any real amusement.

"Yeah," Harry breathed quietly, and brushed his scraped palms against his jeans before helping his godfather stand. Sirius right knee didn't want to bend properly and he took a few steps backwards to lean against an ornate iron gate behind them. Harry eyed a dusty coffin someone had dumped into an old flowerbed just beside the gate, and tried not to think about what might be inside it.

The church bell rang again, and Sirius twitched at the sound. Harry pulled up the leg of his jeans and waved his wand over the scraped skin. His Episkey wasn't as good as Tonks' or Hermione's, but at least the skin mended itself.

"I should have paid more attention to healing spells in school," Sirius muttered. "All I ever got around to were a few painkiller spells. And that was mostly for Remus sake…" He tapped his wand over his knee and then leaned his weight gingerly on his leg. "It'll do for now."

He stood more firmly, surveying the area with an uneasy calm that Harry envied. His stomach was a tight knot below his ribs. Dust motes moved slowly in the cold air and Harry turned to examine a timeworn iron lamppost to their right. It was dirty and unlit, bent over itself like something had at some point smashed into it. And it didn't look like the modern, electric kind. 'Does that mean we're still in the wizarding world?'

He glanced at his godfather. "What do you think is going on?"

"I never cared for the extravagant myths surrounding the Department of Mysteries," Sirius began, his forehead creasing into deep furrows as he thought. "But there were a whole lot of uncanny stories about that veil. I think I remember something about how it was a passageway to the underworld, or hell, or something like it. And other, less common stories of alternate dimensions… though the prevailing belief was that the veil just killed you."

"You… when you fell in, your face slackened," Harry started, staring hard at the stones beneath his feet. "And your eyes were like milk." A hand landed on his head, ruffling his already tangled hair.

"That explains why people were so sure it was a veil of death, I suppose," said Sirius, not commenting on how thick Harry's voice sounded. He rolled his shoulders, gaze passing over the buildings that towered up ahead. "We can't stay here."

"I heard footsteps over there," Harry said, pointing to where the carriages stood. Sirius stared hard in the direction Harry pointed, and then he raised his wand again and gave it a flick. He tilted his head to the side, like he was listening for something.

"Yeah, there is definitely someone there. Maybe they'll know what's going on?" Sirius mused, though he didn't look particularly eager to move. Maybe Harry wasn't the only one with that gut sense of dread.

"They might not be helpful. Maybe they don't speak English here. Or maybe… maybe they're hostile." Sirius made an agreeing sound, but Harry wasn't done talking. Huffing out a breath, he continued, "But we should probably try anyway, don't you think? Or we won't get anywhere."

"I agree. But be on your guard," Sirius said, eyes flicking up over the dark towers and then down to meet Harry's eyes.

'As if I could be anything else,' Harry thought. His shoulders were so tense he had to make an effort to relax them.

They moved towards the first carriage, Sirius a few steps ahead and Harry following close behind. This time he was going to keep an eye on his godfather. Hermione had been right when she'd called Sirius impulsive, though it had angered Harry at the time. Now he wished he would have listened. 'Feeling guilty won't help right now, though.'

There was a red door set in the dirty brick wall behind the second carriage, but the footsteps came walking back towards them before either of them could remark on it. Sirius flicked a look at Harry, who nodded. The footsteps weren't hurried, or heavy, and they had no reasons to assume anything of the people in this - place. Just because the atmosphere hung over the whole area like a funeral shroud that didn't mean… well, it didn't mean anything concrete yet.

Sirius stepped out into the street as the person came closer, hand raised in greeting. Half heartbeat later, Harry threw himself into his godfather and they both went careening into the wall. The man swung a big axe in an arch that would have cleaved Sirius in two if Harry hadn't crashed into him in time. Instead the axe met the hard ground. Breath in his throat, Harry threw himself backwards when the man jabbed a lit torch at him.

"Stupify!" he yelled, brandishing his wand, and the man went down like a sack of potatoes. Harry exhaled harshly, fingers tingling with adrenaline, but turned to look at Sirius before he dared take a step towards their downed opponent. He spotted a metal device, perhaps a lever, next to the wall behind his godfather.

"Shit," Sirius muttered, righting himself while kneading his injured leg. "What in Merlin's name was that?"

"He didn't get you?" Harry asked and Sirius shook his head before bending forward to take a closer look at the man's weapon. The blade was darkened and discolored, its edge dotted with rust-colored blood.

"There are more people over there," Sirius said, squinting over to the narrow street that continued on their right. "But they don't seem to be moving."

Harry backed up towards the red door, but though it was clearly unlocked, it wouldn't budge no matter how hard he pulled on the handle. He didn't want to try a Bombarda. Who knew what sort of people would hear that and come running?

"I think this is a dead end," Sirius said, grabbing the axe from the crazed man's prone body. With a twist of Sirius wand, the man's torch was no longer burning.

"There's some kind of lever here," Harry said, staring at the metal contraption. He could have suggested that they go back to the iron gate the veil had spit them out next to and climb over it, but frankly, he didn't want to run around these unfamiliar streets haphazardly. "And… I think that's a ladder up there," he continued, squinting to make out the outlines of what he at least thought was a folded ladder somewhere high above.

"Try pulling it?" Sirius suggested, scratching his neck with a look of disquiet. "I doubt it'll cause crazy people to fall from the skies."

'In for a penny…' Harry thought, and wrapped his hands around the handle. The metal was cold and rusty in his hands, like it hadn't been used for a good long while. With a metallic whine, the ladder above unfolded towards the ground.

"I guess you were right," Sirius said, limping slightly as he came closer. He'd strapped the axe to his hip and kicked the ladder before he took a step up. Harry would have volunteered to go first, but their very short fight had obviously further hurt Sirius leg. He'd rather be in position to catch his godfather if he slipped on the slick iron rungs.

But they made it all the way up with relative ease, though a deep, inhuman shriek from somewhere down below almost made Harry jump out of his skin. 'What is this place?' He didn't think it was "hell" or "the underworld", but Hermione had once mentioned reading about other dimensions with strange creatures and stranger people. He hadn't really paid attention to her then. Maybe he should have.

At the top of the ladder, Harry and Sirius stood in silence for a long moment, looking out over the area from their high vantage point. There was a bridge somewhere off to the right, and everywhere in the distance were more of the dark, high-towered buildings. They had the same type of high arches and vaulted windows that medieval muggle churches had. Maybe some of them were churches; several of the buildings had weather vanes atop their pointed towers. Perhaps that was where the ominous bell ringing was from.

But there was a sense of abandonment blanketing the panorama before them. Though every building was ornate and gave the impression of having been crafted with careful attention to the smallest detail, they looked uncared for. The high brick walls and corrugated metal roofs were dark and dirty with old age.

The sun lent the black rooftops a dark reddish glow and that underscored the otherness of the whole environment. Like there was something wrong with everything, a layer of something invisible but easily felt covering everything in sight. Or from sight.

"Definitely not England," Harry murmured and Sirius snorted half a laugh. The slight sound made it easier to breathe, made the silence and the sporadic staccato screeches in the distance a little less oppressive.

There was a low stone fence lining the ground on this level, just as ornate as the iron gate had been. It was even topped with little gargoyles that seemed to leer at him when he glanced over. 'We went up the side of the building, so why are we now on a street? Shouldn't we be on a roof?' he thought, gaze darting from one building to the next. The cobblestones were cracked and wet up here, and the air had that rusty tang that he thought might be how old blood smelled when it seeped into the very foundations of a place. It was a morbid thought, and difficult to put aside once it entered his head.

"I wonder what these black shrubs are?" Sirius mused as they headed towards the closest building. He kicked at one of them and it swayed like seaweed under water. It looked like a caricature of a real plant, like someone had only half-remembered what this plant should look like and planted those shadowy memories in the ground.

"I saw some down there too," Harry said, though his focus was more on the heavy-looking wooden doors up ahead. Above the doors was a stone relief that reminded him of a nativity scene from a church Petunia had once made him attend. There were five figures, perhaps angels, looking out at the street with peaceful expressions.

"There is light in the window," Sirius said quietly, and indeed there was light shining through the heavy curtain of a window on the left. "Somebody is obviously home."

"Another axe murderer?" Harry suggested, hoping he sounded more nonchalant than he actually felt.

"Let's hope not." Sirius walked around the house trying to look in through the window, so Harry decided to approach the leftmost door. He went over how he would dodge if the occupant was another crazed axe-wielder, and how he would have to direct his wand if he wanted to stun them quickly. Then he rapped his knuckles on the door.

"I can see you both lurking out there," said a male voice from somewhere inside, and Harry almost jumped at the perfectly even, perfectly sane tone.

"Uh, hello?" said Harry carefully through the wood. "We, uh, mean you no harm?" he tried, when there was no reply. He exchanged a look with Sirius, who'd come to hover behind him.

"Hunters, are you?" the voice asked, but before Harry had a chance to ask what that was supposed to mean, the man inside continued, "And not from around here, either."

"That's true," Sirius said. "We're a bit lost."

"And we're not 'hunters'," Harry added, uncertain if the man's refusal to open the door was due to that misconception.

"Huh," the man said, with a laugh that sounded like creaking wood. It ended in a raspy cough, and it was half a minute before he spoke again, "And yet you made it here? That must have been difficult. Yharnam has a special way of treating guests."

"Yeah, we were just attacked," Sirius said, frowning. "But we made it out alive, so all's well that ends well, I guess. Think you could let us in?"

Harry's eyebrows rose with incredulity. 'All's well that ends well? That's a bit optimistic, isn't it?'

"Let in two outsiders?" The voice paused. "Well, I suppose it would be rude of me to refuse, since I'm just as much of an outsider myself. Though I should warn you that I'm sick."

"We won't be long," Sirius said and added, "And we'll be careful not to catch whatever you have."

"Ah, it won't spread to you. It isn't that kind of illness. Come in, then. The key is in the small hole above the doorframe. I'm afraid I have weakened too much to stand…"

Sirius retrieved the key and turned it in the keyhole. Harry was still on his guard, wand-hand raised and ready to fire off a hex. The door opened with a heavy slam that released a whirl of dust into the air. A cough tickled Harry's throat.

The man on the other side was skinny and stooped, and Harry suspected he looked older than he actually was. Slumped over himself, he reminded Harry of a marionette with cut strings. But he smiled faintly when they stepped over the threshold.

Harry's eyes flitted about the hallway as they approached the man. Red silken wallpaper was peeling off the walls and every piece of furniture he could see in the spotty light had a coating of dust. The furniture were all heavy wooden things, dark and at some point well-polished. Most of them met the hardwood floor on clawed paw feet.

It was like something out of a museum. 'Exhibition one: How people lived a hundred years ago, something like that,' Harry thought. He'd had a similar feeling when he'd first stepped into Gryffindor dorms, but never this strongly. The Gryffindor dorms always had a sense of warmth and life to it, and this house lacked that entirely.

"I'm Gilbert," the man said, coughing weakly into a bony hand. "Who might you be?"

"Sirius and Harry, at your service," said Sirius and smiled winsomely. Harry nodded in greeting, his gaze trailing down to the wooden wheelchair that looked oversized cradling Gilbert's thin body.

"You must not have been here long," said Gilbert, looking Sirius over with a tired grimace. "Not many people around this cursed town still know how to smile…"

He invited them into his kitchen with a brittle, welcoming gesture that spoke of longtime exhaustion. They took a seat around his crooked kitchen table. Harry held back a grimace at the sight of dead, long-legged insects in the corners of the windows.

"We're not entirely sure of where we are," Sirius began and that was half a lie. They had no clue at all where they were.

"Never made it this far before? Central Yharnam, this is. One of the less… infested streets." Gilbert coughed again, the corners of his lips turning down as he spoke. "You two are brave to trot about during the night of the Hunt."

Harry leaned forward. What would be the point in pretending that he understood what the old man was talking about? They'd end up revealing their lack of knowledge sooner or later anyway. "Sorry, but where is Yharnam exactly?"

Gilbert squinted at him, eyes dark with a kind of disbelief that told Harry he'd probably just revealed himself to be a bit more of an outsider than Gilbert himself was. "In an old and terrible dream… a sick and festering Yharnam atop the Yharnam in the waking world."

The wind picked up outside the window, carrying with it mumbling whispers and far-away howls. Harry saw Sirius throw a tense glance at the stained glass and clutched his wand tighter. Refocusing on Gilbert, Harry said tried not to show any skepticism. That sounded like the sort of thing Trelawney would say, for Merlin's sake. 'Soon he'll be predicting our deaths and waving crystal balls around.' Harry cleared his throat. "Uh… right. We just dropped into this place, completely by accident, about an hour ago. Could you tell us what you know?"

"Huh… and here I was, thinking that you were looking to cure yourselves…" Gilbert leaned back in his wheelchair and began speaking.

-.-.-

Two hours later, Harry was curled up in the window with one of Gilbert's books, trying not to listen to the sound of the harsh wind outside. 'It's no wonder he thinks this town is cursed,' Harry thought and glanced over at where Gilbert and Sirius sat bent over an old map. 'Maybe it is.'

The people of Yharnam were sick with some strange beastly plague, according to Gilbert. Madness had taken even the ones yet untouched by this sickness, making them unable to distinguish between the infected and the clean. There were things in the shadows, Gilbert said, and whispers of occult rites being performed by the Healing Church that had once done so much good.

'I've never even heard of a place called Yharnam. And though Gilbert clearly knows of England, his knowledge is a fair bit out of date, to say the least,' Harry thought, resting his chin on his raised knees. 'And this Healing Church seems kind of… dark.'

Sirius had balked at Gilbert's descriptions of the Healing Church's "blood ministrations", as he called them, and the rumors that they could cure whatever ailed you. It seemed like a last hope for the hopeless, at least to Harry, more sad and desperate than immoral or corrupt. 'Though Sirius did grow up in the darkest of families, so I can see where he's coming from. He knows how ugly it can get.'

Harry looked down at the book again, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He'd been reading for a couple of hours now, scouring various texts for a way to get out of this horrid place. It was starting to feel like a lost cause. All the books focused on was the history of Yharnam and its Church. And what a strange and bloody history it was.

He turned to Gilbert, who was still leaning over the map with Sirius, and raised his voice. "This Vicar Laurence founded the Healing Church, right?" When Gilbert looked up with a nod, Harry continued, "And the basis of the Church was that this 'Old Blood' would let them-" He glanced down at the opened page in front of him, "- 'rise above humanity and grow into something greater'?'"

The words looked portentous on the yellowed page, but they sounded even worse when he read them out loud. Sirius was scowling, eyeing the book like he wanted to snatch it out of Harry's hands. And maybe burn it for good measure.

Gilbert nodded again. "Yes."

"But how did that lead to 'blood ministrations'?" It wasn't a line of questioning that would give answer to how to get back home, but Harry thought it might still be useful knowledge.

The book focused less on blood healing and more on some creatures called 'Great Ones'. Frankly, the reverential way they were referred to made the hairs on Harry's neck stand on end. The author seemed to think they were gods, or at least something very close to it. There was that feeling again, that something was very wrong, that something dark and deep and terrifying was just out of sight. Maybe this was it.

"Master Laurence found that the Old Blood could cure illnesses in humans, and so he shared it with the ailing masses of Yharnam." Gilbert looked a little wistful as he spoke, taking Laurence name in his mouth like a religious person would take a pope's, and Sirius stared at him like he wanted to be sick.

There was an apprehensive squirming in Harry's stomach as he turned Gilbert's words over in his head. 'So they've all been drinking this weird blood?'

"Don't look so horrified. We got ours in the end. A punishment for our arrogance, I suppose." Gilbert folded his hands together in his lap, tightly enough to whiten his knuckles. "It's what caused the plague, you see. This terrible plague and this long Hunter's night. Master Laurence meant well, no doubt, but you have surely heard what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions."

"That's what happens when you muck about with dark magic," Sirius said, voice hard and shot through with abject disgust. He drew his robe close about himself until it seemed to swallow him. It looked to Harry like he was trying to shield himself, maybe ward off Gilbert's words.

"Magic…? Perhaps. And certainly those who studied the Blood weren't always so careless with it. 'Fear the Old Blood' was a saying of theirs. Or so say the books, at any rate. It was long before my time." He sighed, long and low. "What those curious few scholars found in the Tomb of the Gods should have been left alone."

"How do we get out?" Sirius bit out, very brusquely. When Harry looked over, his hands were clasped tight around his chair's armrests.

"Out? Of this night?" Gilbert's thin lips curled up in to an incredulous smile. It had a strange, cruel slant to it that made Harry want to draw closer to his godfather in defense. "My friends, if you ever figure out how to accomplish such a thing, do be kind enough to return here to tell me."

Cold sweat crept along Harry's spine and he swallowed drily as he parsed that statement. "You mean – we're stuck here? There's no way out?"

"Unless you return the same way you came, then yes."

"Isn't there anybody in this forsaken town that might know a way out?" Sirius asked. He heaved himself out of the chair and began pacing over the ratty carpet, jittery with unfocused energy.

Gilbert gave a low, dismissive snort. But he seemed to catch himself before he could give an equally dismissive answer and his gaze turned downward for a moment. There was a look on his face like he was struggling to remember something. "…They do say the last Vicar remains in the Grand Cathedral. Dressed in white and ever praying."

He offered the information so reluctantly that Harry first thought he might be lying. But when Gilbert looked up again, his eyes were tired and his shoulders so sloped that Harry reconsidered. 'Maybe he doesn't want us to go there, for some reason.'

Sirius stopped his pacing. "And this Vicar knows -"

"It is your best chance, but I do not know for certain." Gilbert sounded like he regretted mentioning it at all. "The Vicars are more knowledgeable than anybody else here, but they are not necessarily accommodating."

"We'll get our answers, one way or other," said Sirius and the look on his face as he stared down at his wand gave Harry a brief flash of Bellatrix. He sometimes forgot that for all that Sirius was laid-back and as aligned with the light as could be, he was still a Black. When he glanced up and caught Harry's eyes, the intensity in his face thawed and was replaced by an easy smile. Harry thought it was probably meant to be comforting.

"How do we get to this Cathedral?" he asked and Gilbert sagged deeper into his wheelchair.

"Like I showed your friend. Through Cathedral Ward." He handed Sirius the map and then leant back to cough into his hand. Blackened mucous dribbled between his fingers and he wiped it away with the ease of old habit.

Sirius unrolled the map and traced a path over the paper with his index finger. "Alright. Let's go find this Vicar."

Gilbert grabbed Sirius' sleeve lightly. When he spoke, his voice was a croaky plea. "If - should you find a way out, please send a message. I grow so weary of this non-life, of the fear and the loneliness. Of this endless night."

When Sirius hesitated, Harry stepped forward. "We will. I promise."

A/N: I'm not dead or on hiatus, just moving again. Still working on ES, no worries! Until then, have some HPxBloodborne? There just hasn't been enough gothic cosmic horror in my life lately.