(no subject)
Title: Unknown unknowns
Summary: Quirinus encounters an unexpected complication in his final showdown with Harry, and is thankful for planning ahead with Nagini. Written for the prompt "Surprise", and a followup of Infinite Shores, which is set in the background story for Quirinus that's more fleshed out here at ffnet.
Characters/Pairings: Quirinus/Nagini, Voldemort
Genre: Drama, with a dash of horror and romance
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, for some descriptive content
Medium: Ficlet
Word Count: 626
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Sure
If yes, your Tumblr username: N/A
Words spilled from me with only flickers of awareness. I’m quite sure I was babbling, but our Lord was running the show so I let the wave of his inexorable will lift me along.
Seize him!
The boy, yes, Potter, the Stone, our one purpose here...my hand closed around his wrist, and then there was pain. It seared through the haze of my fogged awareness and I blinked muzzily down at my empty palm, second degree burns blossoming across the skin like bloody roses.
Well. That was unexpected. A spark of clinical detachment inside me made a wry comment about the bleeding edge of dark magic coming home to roost, and then it blinked out in a wave of neural liquefaction.
Quirinus! Nagini's voice pulled along our golden familiar braid, one of the few things that still suffered only minimal deterioration. Quirinus, be ready.
Rea-dy, rea-dy, reeeeeeeeady...for what? I knew it, it was just beyond the crumbling edge of coherent thought, sliding away like sand...
My mouth was still moving with nonsense about my hands. Irrelevant. I knew that. Our Lord's will slapped through me with icy precision, raising my hands in the comfortable precursor of Avada Kedavra, the curls of crystallized honey, salt, green tea, and peppermint tickling my semi-functional olfactory nerve. But then the searing pain was on my face, eating away the skin in an unholy sizzle that went suddenly, blessedly numb. Third degree burns. Lovely.
But the burning kept burrowing, worming deeper, past skin, past bone, to the soup of neural tissue beneath. The pain jumped to my arm -- a visual of the boy hanging on to my arm, charring, blackening, then numb - but it was ancillary. The neural tissue was paramount. The last threads of the web that sustained thought were dissolving away from that burn, like cleansing phoenix fire...
Quirinus. Now. Nagini's voice was a thrumming hook that rooted me, reeled me. The golden braid was the only thing I could see, shining, filling my vision, beckoning with its infinite fractal shores that held the promise of home.
I'm coming.
I went towards the golden light, enveloped by Nagini's love, a coiling, muscular thing that I knew so well. The first anchoring of myself into the snowflake shoreline brought a cooling wave of clarity, like bathing in a mountain pool. I was tied to this new resting place but I was I, with coherent thoughts and logic and familiar inclinations.
Honey, I'm home.
Nagini's love nudged me in a gentle headbutt. Idiot. Let's get out of here.
Do let's.
And with that, we slithered away towards the Forbidden Forest.
Bowtruckles? I asked.
Bowtruckles. It's been a trying day and I'm hungry.
As you wish, darling.
I do. Let's go. Honey.
Her endearment tickled along my consciousness like a feather. Our lips curled up in a very unreptilian smile.
And then, suddenly, we were three.
Our Lord's presence hovered like atmosphere along the infinite shores of my new resting place, nearby but apart.
A quiver of fear zinged through the curls and whorls of my being, harmonized by Nagini's own fear. My Lord?
I prefer not to merge so completely. You may stay as you are, Quirinus. There does seem to be enough room for three here, so your abode doesn't concern me.
Thank you, my Lord. What would you like us to do now?
Barely controlled rage flicked at my being. I'm in a particularly poor mood, Quirinus. Events, as you may have noticed, did not go as planned. Do what you both must and leave me be.
Nagini and I were of one accord. Bowtruckles.
If atmosphere could have rolled its eyes, our Lord would have.
Nagini and I, however, slithered happily on our way.
Summary: Quirinus encounters an unexpected complication in his final showdown with Harry, and is thankful for planning ahead with Nagini. Written for the prompt "Surprise", and a followup of Infinite Shores, which is set in the background story for Quirinus that's more fleshed out here at ffnet.
Characters/Pairings: Quirinus/Nagini, Voldemort
Genre: Drama, with a dash of horror and romance
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, for some descriptive content
Medium: Ficlet
Word Count: 626
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Sure
If yes, your Tumblr username: N/A
Words spilled from me with only flickers of awareness. I’m quite sure I was babbling, but our Lord was running the show so I let the wave of his inexorable will lift me along.
Seize him!
The boy, yes, Potter, the Stone, our one purpose here...my hand closed around his wrist, and then there was pain. It seared through the haze of my fogged awareness and I blinked muzzily down at my empty palm, second degree burns blossoming across the skin like bloody roses.
Well. That was unexpected. A spark of clinical detachment inside me made a wry comment about the bleeding edge of dark magic coming home to roost, and then it blinked out in a wave of neural liquefaction.
Quirinus! Nagini's voice pulled along our golden familiar braid, one of the few things that still suffered only minimal deterioration. Quirinus, be ready.
Rea-dy, rea-dy, reeeeeeeeady...for what? I knew it, it was just beyond the crumbling edge of coherent thought, sliding away like sand...
My mouth was still moving with nonsense about my hands. Irrelevant. I knew that. Our Lord's will slapped through me with icy precision, raising my hands in the comfortable precursor of Avada Kedavra, the curls of crystallized honey, salt, green tea, and peppermint tickling my semi-functional olfactory nerve. But then the searing pain was on my face, eating away the skin in an unholy sizzle that went suddenly, blessedly numb. Third degree burns. Lovely.
But the burning kept burrowing, worming deeper, past skin, past bone, to the soup of neural tissue beneath. The pain jumped to my arm -- a visual of the boy hanging on to my arm, charring, blackening, then numb - but it was ancillary. The neural tissue was paramount. The last threads of the web that sustained thought were dissolving away from that burn, like cleansing phoenix fire...
Quirinus. Now. Nagini's voice was a thrumming hook that rooted me, reeled me. The golden braid was the only thing I could see, shining, filling my vision, beckoning with its infinite fractal shores that held the promise of home.
I'm coming.
I went towards the golden light, enveloped by Nagini's love, a coiling, muscular thing that I knew so well. The first anchoring of myself into the snowflake shoreline brought a cooling wave of clarity, like bathing in a mountain pool. I was tied to this new resting place but I was I, with coherent thoughts and logic and familiar inclinations.
Honey, I'm home.
Nagini's love nudged me in a gentle headbutt. Idiot. Let's get out of here.
Do let's.
And with that, we slithered away towards the Forbidden Forest.
Bowtruckles? I asked.
Bowtruckles. It's been a trying day and I'm hungry.
As you wish, darling.
I do. Let's go. Honey.
Her endearment tickled along my consciousness like a feather. Our lips curled up in a very unreptilian smile.
And then, suddenly, we were three.
Our Lord's presence hovered like atmosphere along the infinite shores of my new resting place, nearby but apart.
A quiver of fear zinged through the curls and whorls of my being, harmonized by Nagini's own fear. My Lord?
I prefer not to merge so completely. You may stay as you are, Quirinus. There does seem to be enough room for three here, so your abode doesn't concern me.
Thank you, my Lord. What would you like us to do now?
Barely controlled rage flicked at my being. I'm in a particularly poor mood, Quirinus. Events, as you may have noticed, did not go as planned. Do what you both must and leave me be.
Nagini and I were of one accord. Bowtruckles.
If atmosphere could have rolled its eyes, our Lord would have.
Nagini and I, however, slithered happily on our way.