10. THE HAUNTING PAST 2.

"It's not going to be that easy. Mr. Thompson's fear was easy to face since it was pretty straightforward and he was saved from the fire that burned his parents apartment. I don't really know WHY Mrs. Thompson's nightmare is a centaur. I need more information."

Harry continued flipping through the album when he noticed that some pictures had been removed.

"There are pictures missing. Look around, see if you can find them."

Harry began looking around Mrs. Thompson where she lay while Domino began searching the room.

"Found something!" Domino announced carrying a waste basket.

Dumping the contents of the bin revealed several photos that had been crumpled and torn to pieces. A simple repairing charm resulted in more equestrian related photos.

"All the photos have this guy in them." Domino noticed, pointing out a ruggedly handsome man in his mid 30's that was present in all the previously destroyed photographs.

Harry flipped through the album again and found that no pictures of the man remained.

Harry took the most recent of the discarded photos but began to get frustrated with the limitations of working with normal, non-potion prepared photos.

"Can you zoom in on his shirt in this picture?" Domino asked handing Harry a solo picture of the man.

The shirt appeared to be a staff shirt for a stable and a nametag identified the man as 'Laurence'.

"I don't think we'll get anything more from this and if she's stuck in a nightmare like her husband …"

"Ok! Get in there and get her out. If you're not out in 10 minutes I'll try and snap you out of it."

Harry nodded back and plunged into the woman's nightmare.

Harry found himself in the dark hedge maze once more. A low rolling fog hugged the ground.

A full moon cast the maze in dark shadows.

Harry picked a random direction and began walking.

A shadowy figure ran past Harry's path further ahead.

"Mrs. Thompson! It's Harry, Harry Potter. I've come to help!" Harry cried out as he ran forward.

There running up ahead was a naked Emily Thompson.

"Mrs. Thompson!" Harry cried out causing the woman to stumble and fall.

As Harry approached her darkened form, she began scrambling backwards in a blind panic as she attempted to cover her naked body.

Harry's silently cast light spell bathed the path in light revealing her scratched, bruised and nude body curled into a protective ball.

"Emily, it's Harry, Harry Potter. I've come to help."

The woman remained silent, shivering on the ground, unresponsive.

"Let's start by giving you back a bit of modesty". Harry offered and with a swish of his wand, he conjured a large cloak.

Feeling the cloak settle over her, the terrified woman finally turned to look at Harry.

"What the bloody hell?" Harry whispered as her face finally came into view. Where her mouth should be was a patch of clear, unmarred skin.

"Mrs. Thompson, what happened to you?" Harry asked as he knelt down by the cowering woman.

"Right, you can't answer. Look, we were able to free your husband. This is your nightmare, you just need to realise that and face your fear." Harry explained but the woman had stopped listening, her terrified eyes staring over Harry's shoulder.

There at the end of the path stood the silhouette of grotesquely deformed centaur a massive turgid member hanging below it's equine body.

Lifting the woman from the ground, Harry urgently guided her down the path.

"Run, I can't fight your fear for you. I can buy you some time but you have to face your fear yourself." Harry explained as he guided the woman forward. A simple transfiguration raising an earthen wall between them and their pursuer.

They turned a corner and entered a clearing that contained apex, horse jumping obstacles.

Harry gently set the woman down and rushed through the clearing to block all three entrances to the with earthen walls.

"Mrs. Thompson, I don't know how long those walls will last. The being that controls these dreams has some power to reshape it to fit it's needs so we need to work quickly."

The woman silently sobbed from her prone position on the ground, covering her shivering form with Harry's conjured cloak.

"Emily, I guess this has to do with your horse riding when you were a girl?" Harry asked.

The woman looked up at him nodding, pain and shame radiating from her eyes.

"I wish you could tell me what happened but obviously you can't unless …"

Harry's thoughts were interrupted when one of his earthen walls shudder under some great impact.

Pulling the woman up off the ground Harry dismissed one of the earthen walls and guided her down the path beyond. They ran quickly down a few twists and turns into another clearing where Harry closed all entrances by forcing the hedges to grow over the gap.

"Let's try something different. Emily, remember in my office when I asked you to focus on the memory of your dream? I need you to focus on the memories that focus on … this."

The woman's expression morphed to incredulous incomprehension.

"I know, this seems insane but you are mouthless in a maze being chased by a demonic centaur … nothing here makes any sense so I'm hoping you can suspend your disbelief and trust me?"

After a moment of hesitation the woman nodded in agreement.

"Ok now focus on your memories, when you are ready, open your eyes and look into my eyes."

The trembling woman closed her eyes taking deep steadying breaths. After a few moments, she opened her eyes staring intently into Harry's.

"Legilimens!"

Harry found himself floating inside the woman's endless black starfield. Unlike his previous foray into his clients mind where she had been relatively calm and collected, memory sphere whizzed by moving at great speed with only a few memories floating fairly still nearby. But even these memories appeared .. skittish, like a frightened hare ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

Harry approached the nearest sphere and as he slowly reached out to touch it, the sphere shifted away from his hand a short distance.

Harry made a quick snatch at the orb causing all the nearby orbs to fly off in formation like a flock of spooked birds.

"Bugger!" Harry exclaimed into the darkness as he envisioned a broom between his legs and shot off after the spheres.

Chasing through the vast expanse of the woman's mindscape was very different than chasing a snitch in a Quidditch match. There was no air and so no wind, no sense of direction such as up or down, no gravity… even the projection of a broom lacked the feel and interaction of a real broom and was simply the manifestation of Harry's will..

The only real challenge of course was a time constraint. Harry was uncertain how time flowed inside the memories of a dream and there was no telling when they would be found by either the god like being that ruled over this dream realm or the manifestation of his clients fear.

The one saving grace was that the memories Harry wanted to see were apparently the only ones fleeing from him making it obvious what memories were important.

After a short chase, Harry reached one of the memories and he was pulled into it as his fingers skimmed it's surface.

Harry suddenly found himself on horseback riding towards some stables. It was a sunny summer day and his host and the horse she rode, were drenched in sweat. As they neared the stables, Emily Smith gracefully dismounted and guided her horse to it's pen.

Removing the horse's saddle and tack along with her own vest and hat, the young girl began to cool down the horse with a wet rag from a pail cooling the beasts tired muscles.

"You did pretty good back there Emily."

The girl turned around suddenly dropping the cloth.

"Thank you Mr. Laurence." the girl replied hesitantly as she backed away from the man blocking the gate out of the stall.

The man approached, his eyes cleary undressing the young woman in front of him.

The girl looked down at her chest, noticing that the water she had been applying to her horse had drenched her shirt, making it transparent.

"I should finish taking care of Stormy." the girl explained as she made to pass by the instructor but was blocked by the man in question.

"It can wait a sec, you seem to have gotten yourself all wet." he said licking his lips slowly. "Maybe you should take off those clothes before they get ruined."

The memory seemed to glitch severely at this point, as if Mrs. Thompson had repressed it even further and resumed with the man standing over the girl, buttoning up his pants while she sobbed helplessly, nude at the back of the stall.

"If you say a word about this to anyone there might be a small accident in store for Stormy over here. You do know what they do with race horses and competition horses that have had a broken leg?" The man asked as he left the stall.

The girl crawled over to her horse, hugging it, sobbing as the memory slowly ended.

Harry pulled himself out of the woman's mind to find her on her knees, softly crying, her head lowered. At the clearing's entrance stood the centaur, but it looked less demonic, and its features could be more clearly seen. The human portion resembled Mrs. Thompson's assailant.

"You don't have to be afraid anymore, Mrs. Thompson. You're not that defenseless little girl who can't defend herself anymore. You are a grown woman with a loving husband, and this predator isn't some mythical monster. He's just a sick, cowardly, depraved man who can't hurt you anymore. You don't have to stay quiet about this anymore, Emily; he has no power over you. Say it, say it with me."

Suddenly, the skin covering the woman's mouth ripped, and a primal scream burst forth, shaking the entire dreamscape.

"THE BASTARD DOESN'T CONTROL ME ANYMORE!"

And with that scream, the dream shattered, and Harry found himself once more sitting on the floor.

"Did it work?"

Harry looked up to Domino, but before he could answer, Mrs. Thompson awoke crying.

"Yeah, it worked. I think it'd be best if I wasn't here. Take care of her and come back to the office when she's calmed down."

Before stepping into the hallway, Harry stopped and turned back to Domino.

"Find out what you can about him … I want to find him," Harry added, pointing to the pictures strewn about the table.

With that, Harry walked out of sight of the two women and disapparated with a soft crack, reappearing in his apartment.

Domino found him in the darkened living room sipping some firewhiskey; Harry handed her a small glass, and both sat in silence.

It had taken a few days, but Domino, with information from Mrs. Thompson, had tracked down the woman's aggressor.

And so Harry stood on a cloudy day in a cemetery in a small town just outside New York, looking down at a gravestone.

"How did he die?"

Harry turned to his companion; Mrs. Thompson's expression was closed off.

"Domino found his obituary; he died in a motorcycle accident."

The woman simply nodded.

They remained in silence for a few moments, listening to the local sounds of birds, children playing in a park not too far away…

"I'd worked out what I wanted to tell him, you know. I was going to confront him, make him understand what he'd done to me … but I guess this is about as much closure as I'm going to get."

Harry remained silent for a few moments, his hands toying with a box in his pocket.

"I figured that might be the case … I might have something. I don't like doing this because it can be addictive and it can also be unpleasant."

"What, you can perform a seance?" The woman asked, a ghost of a smile gracing her lips.

"Sort of. I can call him, here. Force him to appear to us … if you want."

The woman turned to him in surprise.

"I … I can see why you wouldn't want to use this power needlessly. Being able to call your loved ones from beyond the grave could be … addictive, as you said. On the other hand, the old adage of 'Dead men tell no tales' doesn't really apply to you now does it?"

"My old headmaster … er principal, I guess you would call him here ... once told me 'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live'."

They stood in silence for a little longer.

"Could you … could you call him please?"

Harry pulled out the box containing the Resurrection Stone and turning it in his hands three times, whispered the name of his client's aggressor.

Suddenly, standing there by his tombstone was a ghostly apparition.

"Why did you bring me here?" the spirit asked looking slightly confused.

"You are here to face one of your victims," Harry replied.

"She's too old for my tastes," the spirit leered at Mrs. Thompson.

"You've been dead for a long time. You don't remember her?" Harry asked.

"I've had so many sweet little things over my life. It's hard to keep them straight at this point," the spirit answered with a shrug.

Harry shook his head in disgust.

"Do you have anything you want to tell him or ask him Emily?"

"Emily?! Oh, I remember you! You were my first. You always remember your first," the man interrupted, his expression changing from bored disinterest to lecherous ecstasy.

"Why?! Why did you do this to me?" Emily asked in a quiet voice.

"Why do you think, you stupid woman. There you were all hot and wet! Just begging for a nice fat c**k!"

"You're a monster," she spat back at him.

"You know, you could have stopped me. All you had to do is speak up … tell an adult, and all those other little girls would have been safe," the man explained, an evil smirk on his face seeing the look of horror on the woman's face.

"All those tears, all that begging … you could have stopped it, you know." He laughed evilly. "But no! Instead, you decided to save a freaking horse!"

Just when he was about to laugh further, he felt chills and saw Harry's shining green eyes staring at him.

"All right, that's enough." Harry whispered as he dismissed the spirit.

"This … didn't turn out how I thought it would." Mrs. Thompson whispered after a moment of silence.

"He was a monster." Harry agreed.

"You've done a great service for my husband and me. Here is your payment, and this might also be useful to you. We have some invitations to a rather high-profile event, but Howard won't be in any condition to attend."

She reached into her purse and drew an envelope, handing it over to Harry.

"It would be a good chance for you to network with some influential New Yorkers. Get your name known by some of the elite, or at the very least get an amazing meal."

After Mrs. Thompson had left, Harry opened the party invitation she had left.

The invitations were for a party being held by a company called Stark Enterprises.

Again, don't really like these few chapters but overall story is good. these are like fillers anyway. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

patreon.com/whitethief274 

check out my patreon. you can support me there too. It also has some visual reference to add value to my page so go check it out.