A/N: the timelines in this fanfic are all mixed up, so you can expect things from the year 2000 and above to appear. OocTomRiddle.
Fear- Or plural: fears. What are they?
They are an inevitable and unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. They give a feeling to avoid or be afraid of the cause of it. The cause can be anything, something or someone likely to be dangerous, painful, or harmful toward you. Once such emotion comes, sometimes our brain decides we are unable to take on the threat nor are we able to escape and as a response, our bodies might remain still, unable to move, numb or "freeze". We may feel as if we are not actually a part of our bodies. Experiencing this, leaves an impression on you, however small. Because of this, people choose to avoid the main cause to not experience the same trauma over again. It would be easier this way rather than to face it head on.
In my case, I don't have the luxury to avoid it. If it was possible to describe fears with a physical appearance for each person, this was how mine would appear. In a word, ineffable. Seeing all your fears in one place will obviously be uncomfortable, and hard to describe but experiencing it is a whole other level of discomfort really...
It didn't have a humanoid shape as you would have thought, since monsters imagined by humans at least have a bit similarity to a human's appearance. But of course, monsters don't just come in one shape, they come in anything, whether it'd be shape, colour, object. My fear is a mix of all.
It was a white door, not just any door, but the door of my cupboard. Surrounding is darkness, but in that darkness there were small outlines of eyes and echoes of muffled whispers. The door itself was tightly chained as if it was purposely there to fuel the fear, it is actually... Probably... Behind the door, I could hear footsteps fading away along with joyous laughter leaving me locked away as whoever behind the door enjoys their day out. I looked back and saw the deep abyss glaring back. Usually that would comfort me, I only feared the dark when I was small, well... Smaller. This time, the abyss felt sinister, as if there was something threatening there prowling around, waiting for me to turn my back again so that it could pounce on its prey. Because of this, I felt pusillanimous to fight against it. But I knew I had to try. If it notices my discomfort, it would get stronger. Much stronger than it is now... At least that's the theory, as much as I want to say, I came up with that by myself, I can't since it's in so many books...
I'm getting off track,I know I'm weak against, a lot of people would be weak against what they fear most. All I can do I probably put it at bay, but how do I do that? No.. that's not the question I should ask, it should be how should I do it? I don't need to ask for an answer, there are many, instead I should ask what is a better way to put it at bay.
Maybe use a facade? No.. that wouldn't work, maybe for a second but I'm sure even fears are smart enough to know something's off. So how should I do it? Hmm.... since this is my own core, I should be able to control the objects that appear, right? I just have to be honest. I don't think a cage would work, this monster has been near my core for who knows how long! I also need to find a quick solution... Looking back at the monster, I noticed it seemed surprised? Confused? I don't know, but my instincts tell me so and it has saved my life countless of times.
...
Wait....
If it felt confusion.... Then.... Could it feel fear?
Maybe....
But how do I make it feel that?.....
An imaginary light bulb appeared floating above my head as I come to a realisation. What if, I use a facade to scare it? What is something that I'm not afraid of?.... "Ah!"
Insanity! A deranged as I may sound, insanity would work best, I mean I don't mean psychopathic-killer insanity or whatever, I'm thinking of following-an-idiotic-plan-that-has-low-chance-of-success kind of insanity. And I know just the plan. Perfect.
First, I imagined my outfit.
A Black shirt underneath a red polo shirt with beige jeans with black sport shoes. Then, I imagined holding a pizza bag, and wearing a red cap and sunglasses. You never know, if the saying "the eyes are windows to your soul" is real. As much as my plan is plain idiotic, I should at least lower the risks a bit.
Imagining, my surroundings changing, and altering the fear's appearance is a bit harder than I expected, but not to the point of impossible. I managed to change the scenery to a porch and the shape of the cupboard door to a front door with a doorbell.
After taking a moment to gather up the courage, I walked towards the door and rang the doorbell.
*Ding* *Dong*
"Pizza Delivery!" As I said that, I felt the fear's confusion turn into dumbfounded.
"Hello? Anyone home?" It must've gotten out of it's shock because the whispers grew louder and louder. This time, I could actually hear them.
They were.... In a word, degratory. They were also words of abandonment and hate. I guess I know what kind of fear the whispers are then. Social anxiety and autophobia. I decide dto ignore it and continue my act.
"I got a half pepperoni and a half meat feast pizza for uh... Ree snuts jr. ...?" Real mature Harry, real mature (ಠ_ಠ)....
"Uh... Can someone come out? I got to get to the next house... Here if you don't trust me I even got proof in my phone. I put my hand in one of the pockets of my pants and made a mobile phone appear. Taking it out I went and enter an app and clicked on something to show the proof.
Suddenly, music started to sound out...
HAH BET YOU NEVER EXPECTED THAT AUTOPHOBIA!
...Did you really think I would get a pizza app and show it proof? OF COURSE NOT!
I'm supposed to be scaring it! Not satisfying it.
Of course to scare it, I decided to find a video that's traumatic and more what's traumatic than showing it videos of vines and memes and changing the scenery to the videos itself? Nothing!... Well there are but, I'm being nice for now...
Seeing it distracted, I rushed towards the orb. For a quick second, I noticed that there was an almost invisible wall coating it. It's texture is similar to soft ripples of water. The only thing that made it not give such an illusion was that it was cracked, like how a glass would look like when it's at the edge of shattering with one tap. It seems to be protecting it from external harm which I'm thankful for. Just imagine if that monster managed to go into my core. I'd probably fall into despair and be useless. I touched wall and it seemed to accept me and allowed me to enter. I suddenly felt a weird feeling, as if my guts were shrinking and twisting so I close my eyes.
When I opened them again, my surroundings were blank. Not really blank, but mostly blank. In front of me, I saw a black piece of glass shard. My body became tense yet again. Was it a friend? Or a foe? It doesn't feel like it's threatening, instead I felt comfort from it. The same comfort that would come after receiving a punishment from my relatives. Was this the reason? Deciding that it wasn't a foe I quickly went towards it and placed my hand forward. Maybe it also had a conciousness. Maybe it could help me... Right when I touched it, black smoke started to swirl around. No, rather than smoke, it was like air- or shadows...
I took a step back readying myself for whatever I had to fight. As the swirls got larger, a humanoid form appeared amidst of it. As quickly as it came, the swirls disappeared, revealing a boy who seemed to be Harry's age. He had a dark hair colour, with an aristocratic face. His eyes were dark with a contrast of bright blue specks and silver streaks going along with it. He looked healthy but I noticed he was a bit skinny but not as skinny as me. His stature could almost be described as domineering but seemed to be overwhelmed by the fear of a new presence; me. Giving others an impression of being meek
I realised I still I had my outfit on, so I quickly changed into my old one. Baggy clothes. The atmosphere immediately went awkward.
"Uh..." The boy blinked in surprise, unsure what to say about my sudden change.
"..."
"Hullo" I decided to start
"Who... Are you?"
"Me? I'm Harry Potter. You?"
"I-... I'm not sure... All I remember is the name 'Tom'..."
"Then, maybe that's your name?"
"I guess.. what- what are you doing here?" Tom asked
"I should be asking you that..." I said drily.
"You're in my soul, more specifically my core" I explained
"Oh.. really...? Then that means this must be yours" Tom took out a small chained cube and gave it to me.
"Oh, thanks... How exactly are you here?" I asked Tom.
"I don't really know, the first time I opened my eyes, it was here. I tried to remember what happened but I just couldn't, as if me opening my eyes was my first ever memory.
When I tried to find something that could help, I came across this," He pointed at the cube and continued, "When I grabbed hold of it, some memories came to me but it wasn't mine. I think they were yours, but whenever I saw you, you always seemed hurt so I tried to comfort you however futile it may be... After that, I tried to exit but there was a monster lurking outside, I think it was trying to come in. I instinctively pulled something from my body, it looked wispy. I think it was magic and covered the outside with it... " Hearing that, I felt a bit teary. My theory was right, he was the one who comfort me when I was at my lowest.
"T-thank you," I said quietly, "you don't know how much that means to me..."
I put aside my feeling knowing I had to focus and began to appraise the cube in my hand. It was a all white with wispy streaks of powder blue. And had a soft light blue glow. I closed my eyes and touched the chains and felt something thrumming in my veins. It felt warm and brought peace to me. Instinctively, I imagined it as calm rivers flowing through my veins and coming out. I felt a curious gaze on me but ignored it to continue with this process. Then, I heard a soft sound of a crack, I think it was the chains, I couldn't find out as I've closedy eyes to imagine. I knew that to bring more out and to fasten the process, I had to be at peace. So I imagined a white bird flying high in the sky with soft winds caressing its feathers.
After a while, I heard a snap and a gasp. The latter probably being Tom. Before I could do anything else, an intense surge of familiar energy filled me. My head began to ache and I began to stagger. Before falling unconscious, I heard someone calling my name.
When I came to be, I opened my eyes easily but my vision was blurry. It seems that I'm in a dark place. Did the nurse turn off the lights? Oh no... Did the Dursleys realised I fainted? Then, all of the memories came rushing back. I'm not in the hospital, I don't think I've even moved from the spot I fainted at. I took of my glasses in an attempt to clean them, but right when I do, my vision clears up almost instantaneously. I looked around and realised I'm back at that strange world I was in before I went to unlock my soul. I noticed that there were sighs gathering around something's and realised it was Tom. They seemed to be curious about the new visitor.
One of the sighs seemed to notice that I was awake and zipped right in front of me.
[ There you are! You're finally awake. We were all getting a bit worried why you were taking so long!| ]
"Sorry, I came across Tom and there were allot that happened" I explained
[ Well, as long as you're fine then... Anyways! Regarding the question you asked earlier, there are three hosts in this world including you, one had unfortunately passed on due to an accident. The other one isn't currently a host but is going to be after requirements are met. The soon-to-be host is the same age as you, so there may be a chance that you'd meet up with him. Because the other host had passed, we are to give you and the other host more power than the usual due to the world's DC (Destructive Capabilities)| ]
"I see... But what if there was a situation that the hosts don't get along and end up destroying each other? Wouldn't that be bad?"
[ That wouldn't just be bad, It'd be terrible! But we have a way to counter that. Hence the requirements we have. One of them, is making sure all hosts are able to get along some way or another.| ]
***
An: soooo plot convenience?
System: hush Author, they don't need to know
***
"That's quite convenient..." If only there was a system like this for the world... No, scratch that, it'd probably be humanity's end if there was... Somehow... You never know, humans are naturally born idiotic geniuses...
"Harry!" I heard Tom calling my name with a face of relief and saw him jogging up to me.
"Tom! How are you here actually? I thought you'd stay at my core?" I question. He replied with, "I knew you had something important to do since you were there, so I went outside. Thankfully, whatever thing you gave your fear seemed to still work so I managed to sneak away and help you get out. Once we got out, I was surrounded by these glowy things and they assured me you were safe. They also gave me a visual on how the outside world was! It was interesting to say the least. Having seen that convinced me to want to get out more, so I decided that I'll be with you once you wake up in the real world again."
"Oh wow, that's something... But wouldn't people see you? I doubt my relatives wouldn't try to kick you out..."
"No need to worry about that, I'm only visible to you since my soul is connected to your soul only." Soul? Was that what that black shard was? How on earth did it get there!? Whatever... I'm not in the mood to open that can of worms yet...
[ Sorry to interrupt, but we should really get on with creating your system!| ]
"Right! You're absolutely right." Remembering the second and last part of the manual, I closed my eyes and imagined my 'mana pool' circulating around my body and reaching into my soul to gather my 'magic signature' to form into the bot that would represent me. As my eyes are closed, I saw a spectrum of swirls dancing everywhere in the dark with bursts of gold and silver occasionally appearing. Slowly, the colours decrease into only a handful. A beautiful Russian violet Purple that's so dark you could only see the colour when the light shines on it. Then, there were specks of gold and silver swirling into the shape of an orb reminding me of the golden orbs the medieval kings held in portraits representing power and earth. Suddenly, mixture of mint green and lawn green shot downwards in straight lines.
Then it went black. I felt a soft pressure slowly increasing. Soon enough, the weight stopped increasing to be as heavy as a wallet full of coins. I opened my eyes yet again and saw my newly made System. It was the shape of a sphere the same shade as the purple I saw with the same green I saw running down and around it. It had beautiful floating crystal sticks mimicking the shape of wings. It also had a strange shape encasing its vertical-facing oval eyes that had the same green shade as the lines. The casing was similar to a snorkel but without the long stick attached. I remember the manual stating that each feature has a meaning... I thought hard but decided to think about it later when I have the chance to go to the library.
[ Hello Host! I am your system, GH?_8#. Would you like to re-name me?| ]
"..."
"It's... Artistic...? in a strange way?" Tom spoke up, breaking the silence.
"Hello, uh... System... I guess I should re-name you... What about.... Neo?" I asked
"
I'd doesn't sound too bad.. at least in ain't Billy..." Tom mumbled the last part but I heard it clearly
"Who's Billy?" I asked
"Don't know, just know that the name does not please me..." He replied shrugging his shoulders
"Oh ok then, well how does it sound?" I directed my question at the bot.
[ I love it Host! It's short, and unforgettable. Just how I like it (≧▽≦)| ]
"Very well then." Tom started "Shall we get going?"
"Yeah, we should, uh.." I answered and turned to the sigh that helped me answer all my questions "How do we get back?..."
[ Don't worry Host and friend, in a bit, you will be automatically transported back to where you lost consciousness| ]
Just like it said, everything went dark. When we came to be, we were exactly where I fainted. I looked at the fortunately working clock in the room and realized it was almost 6:00 am! I scrambled up but realised the Dursleys would only come back a week later and relaxed a bit. I turned around and-
*oomph*
After falling down, I looked up and-
WAIT IT WAS THAT SUSPICIOUS FLOATING BOOK FROM LIKE NINE HOURS AGO-