Thousand-Year War

"Professor Binns, where are you?"

McGonagall squeezed her palm, numb from the cold. The unique chill of her fingertips passing through the Ghost Professor's body had vanished without a trace. She opened her eyes to rolling white fog, completely shrouding everything she could see. The smell of oil and metal at the tip of her nose left her dazed.

Weren't they supposed to be going to Limbo? Then why did this place smell so unbelievably like the real, bustling world?

She thought of Platform 9 3/4 at the start of every school year. Compared with that moment in time, all this place lacked now was the clamor of voices.

As the thought rose in her mind, McGonagall felt the ground beneath her feet become hard and solid. She lowered her head, and the station floor tiles outlined straight, intersecting grid lines, exactly like Platform 9 3/4.

Where was this?

With that question in mind, McGonagall took a step forward, but her movement drew the white fog's attention. Pale hands stretched out from the mist, grabbing toward this living person who made them drool with hunger.

McGonagall's body was seized tightly by hand after hand. She felt a force that was almost impossible to resist. The hands reaching from every direction showed no mercy, nearly tearing her to shreds. She had heard from Dumbledore about matters concerning Nelson and Limbo, and knew only that this was a pure-white forbidden land for the living. She had never imagined that the moment she barged in, she would already be wrapped in the malice of the dead.

The whispers of departed souls sounded from those hands condensed out of white fog, dense and countless, pouring into McGonagall's ears like a tide. Her spirit could hardly withstand death's pull, and as her body was dragged