January 12th: Speak of the Devil
I luuuurve this *g* dark imagery is easy to write for some strange reason, and I think I've just exhausted my Remus' emotional capacity. I adored Lily in this, and well, I'm just incredibly happy with the way this chapter turned out. I didn't intend it to be that long, really, that just happened.
Title: Speak of the Devil
Rating: R (for dark themes)
Word Count: 1947
Author Notes: Written for this prompt in blanketforts. Rumor says the Potters defied Voldemort three times in their short lives. What not many know, though, it's that the first one they weren't alone.
Fireworks series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
There’s a girl bleeding on the floor, purple skin where the whiteness of rigor mortis hasn’t arrived yet, dull open eyes staring right at them, piercing their souls like no knife could ever do. Voldemort walks towards her prostrated form, stepping onto the coagulating blood with ease, the ends of his robe tinting deep scarlet. He rolls the girl with his bare foot, leaving another red stain on her skin as the body faces the ceiling instead.
She only looks a few years older than them, and her hair is the exact same color as Remus’ mother sitting on her late husband’s chair and looking out of the window with a void expression.
The runes mingle with the blood, sizzling as it reaches the fire. “Is that all?” wonders Voldemort aloud, looking bored, and Lily whimpers with the sobbing sound the boys all wish to make. Thirteen heads (such a wrong number) turn towards them and Lily shakes as she covers her mouth with her long fingers, ashen color on the cheeks. Their eyes open wide, mouths trembling, and Voldemort smiles with death on his lips as he advances to them, bloody fingerprints signaling his pace.
A long finger is extended, and the echo from his voice sounds louder than it really is in their minds as he says, sedated, “kill them.”
They run, and Remus takes strength from Lord knows where as they flee for their lives.
---
They cry as they run, hearts still beating out of sheer will and matching their desperate strides. Lily says “I’m sorry” a million times, and Remus repeats it with her as this is his entire fault. The wall sends a message of sound of their passing through, and Peter runs with his wand pointing at the endless black behind them, erasing the tracks they leave in the inch-thick dust on the floor.
The five of them retrace their steps, getting lost on purpose in hopes the masked men will too, running along a thousand of equal-looking hallways, a stone archway after another one, humidity under their fingers as they feel their way whenever they hear footsteps and their lights have to go off, the yellow light showing a last portrait of scared faces and dirty cheeks. Remus tears at his clothes, the scent of death plaguing his senses.
Remus’ body can’t keep on going for a lot longer, but he keeps on putting one foot ahead of him, wanting life so much it hurts, screaming at himself from wanting oblivion before.
It feels a bit late to realize this, but as the air burns in his lungs he makes a silent oath of never doubting his existence again. He trips a little with a bone, and he seals the oath with tears.
---
The darkness has been covering them like a shroud of black intentions for five minutes since they had turned off their wand-light the last time when a voice comes in front of them, rich with madness and scorn. “Just take a look of the little fishies I caught,” The terrified teenagers freeze at mid-step, eyes straining to see the source of the voice. “all warm and ready to be gutted.”
Remus’ blood runs cold in his veins, the wickedness in the voice turning his bones into such fine ash he doesn’t think he could run if he wanted. They back up slowly, trying to keep any kind of noise to themselves, holding their breaths, cold sweat on Remus’ neck. There’s an invisible wall behind them, and as they turn desperately it looks almost sardonically fun, a bunch of mime-children with their hands pressed against thin air that just doesn’t give.
Light fills the emptiness suddenly, and they turn slowly to see the white mask staring at them from a short distance. Peter’s teeth begin to chatter, and Remus’ hands can’t seem to stop shaking, knees still weak from the Apparition. The man suddenly laughs, and it feels wrong to think something as inhuman looking as the shapeless white nothing mask can hide a regular, flesh and bone person inside.
“Why, you’re the Lupin boy!” Remus starts at hearing his name, and the man edges closer, dangling his wand, knowing he’s in complete control of the situation. “Ah, it is so odd that we find each other like this, boy, when I only met your father personally a few days ago.”
Remus vision bleeds to red, and his shaking turns into an anger trembling that tears through his entire body, stomach acids boiling inside him. “Rosier?” he asks with a tight voice, and the man laughs.
“Corpses don’t spill names, kid, so your disgusting lycanthrope mind will be put at ease about his poor daddy’s death very soon.”
The words come out of Rosier’s lips, and then there’s no movement from Remus’ part to warn him as the boy takes strength from his burning anger and pounces on him with all his might, wand in hand. “No!” yell the other ones, trying to stop him too late on his momentum. Remus falls on top of him, dragging him to the ground with his weight, and the white masks falls to reveal a regular looking middle-aged man with mild surprise on his eyes.
Rosier reacts immediately, and it’s only his crooked position that keeps the blue jet of light from his wand to hit Remus’ heart, and even with that, he doubles up with pain, his internal organs feeling as if they had been mixed up. He punches Rosier in the head and a bit of satisfaction blooms on his stomach as green spreads across the Death Eater’s face.
It only takes the others a second before deciding on what to do, and then they all throw themselves on top of Rosier too, fighting with magic and hands and teeth sometimes too. In the back of their heads, there’s a voice telling them they just wouldn’t make it against a full-trained Dark Wizard, so they fight dirty, security in numbers, five teenagers and an adult rolling in the filthy floors, wishing and hoping for a miracle.
A particularly well aimed hex from Peter makes Rosier stop moving for a second, grimacing with pain, and that’s all the time Remus needs to point his wand directly at Rosier’s head, as he sits on the man’s side, staring at him with unveiled intensity. The other four are sprawled somewhat alike him on top of Rosier, each holding down a piece of Death Eater, his wand having rolled some feet away in the tussle.
“You killed my father,” Remus states, each word laced with cold and hate.
“Yes. What are you going to do about is, you dirty scum?” the confession isn’t like anything Remus had dreamt about since his father’s funeral, and his wand doesn’t waver at all.
“Avada Kedavra,” he says, and immediately regrets it.
One second (eyes opening, from both attacker and victim, warm vibrating with the effort of bringing the magic out of Remus’ body). Two seconds (flash of green materializing out of pure will and confused hatred, a breath filled of dread from the man and the boy, and then he can’t inhale again). Three seconds (and the curse is over, and the eerie light permeating the filthy passage is turned off as fast as it began).
Remus forces himself to watch, and a whimper from the horrified Death Eater matches his own, a small crater of steaming, broken stone three inches away from his temple. Another three seconds in which no one breathes, and Remus’ wand shakes so much he couldn’t aim if he wanted.
Sirius pushes him aside quite violently, anger and relief and fear mixed in his actions, and he holds his wand against Rosier’s throat, which is bobbing up and down nervously. “The way out. Where is it?” he asks concisely, as Remus covers his face with his hands and leans slouched against the opposite wall, afraid of himself. Rosier’s sweating, salty droplets sliding along his face and neck. Lily’s wand joins Sirius’ at his neck, looking menacing; carrying no hint of the schoolgirl Remus knows her to be.
“Speak,” says James coldly, but his hands are warm as he helps Remus up from his semi-crouch, looking him in the eye with none of the judgment he’s always feared more than anything. Peter takes Remus’ left arm and puts it across his own shoulders, and Remus can’t help but wonder just what he did to deserve knowing these too brave, too reckless, too amazing people.
Rosier tries masking his trembling, covering it with sneers, but Sirius wand starts sending burning sparks that leave marks and boils on their wake, and he curls his lip in disdain as he speaks. “Through the first hallway at your right, up a flight of stairs, there should be a trapdoor disguised in the ceiling somewhere.” he spits the words, as if every letter coming out of his lips tasted of poison.
“Thank you,” says Lily, all mannered and faked innocence, and her face stays like that as she continues. “stupefy.”
---
They run again, the four of them holding Remus up, who has just lost his last strength. The stairs are missing steps, stone turned into dust at some parts. They can’t risk light, so they go up in the dark, their hard breathing the only sound they can hear. The ceiling is quite low when the stairs end, and they run their fingers over it, cutting themselves with sharpened pieces of stone, blood running under their sleeves in ignored rivulets.
“Please, please, please…” Lily is chanting by herself, some of the desperation she wouldn’t show early finally coming across. James lights his wand finally, and they look for cracks, for an opening, for anything in the enclosed space, Remus’ mind tricking him into thinking the air will run out.
“Fuck it,” says Sirius, and without a second thought, he transforms into Padfoot. Lily gasps in surprise, but they don’t have any time for explanations, they don’t have any time at all, so James only lets Padfoot lean against him as he stands on his back legs and sniffs the air.
It only takes a few second, and then the large dog is signaling to a rather inconspicuous part of the ceiling. They run to it, and in no time the trapdoor has opened. They help each others up, silently.
The sun is coming out. The sudden light hurts their eyes, and the way it reflects and shines in the thick snow makes them put a hand over them. A small castle stands somewhere close, the fog and dew of the new day covering it up with a dream-like quality, a cloud of pure innocence hiding the devil himself under it’s depths. Padfoot urges them to the close trees, and he looks far too dark against the whiteness, his paws leaving a path covered in light and melted ice, shimmering under the new day’s sun. As soon as they reach the trees, Sirius transforms again, and grabs onto Remus for dear life. “Apparate!” he mutters, and the others nod in approval.
The pull at his stomach makes Remus want to puke, but the swirling colors of world changing around him end soon, and then they’re outside Hogwarts.
The five of them drag themselves inside the gates, and as soon as they’re in the grounds they left themselves fall to the ground, drained with terror, tiredness, hunger, and other thousand emotions running through the brains.
Remus holds onto Sirius’s warm torso, and his brain shuts down, sending him into thick sleep.
(He dreams about blood, but he forgets about it as soon as he wakes up).
Title: Speak of the Devil
Rating: R (for dark themes)
Word Count: 1947
Author Notes: Written for this prompt in blanketforts. Rumor says the Potters defied Voldemort three times in their short lives. What not many know, though, it's that the first one they weren't alone.
Fireworks series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
There’s a girl bleeding on the floor, purple skin where the whiteness of rigor mortis hasn’t arrived yet, dull open eyes staring right at them, piercing their souls like no knife could ever do. Voldemort walks towards her prostrated form, stepping onto the coagulating blood with ease, the ends of his robe tinting deep scarlet. He rolls the girl with his bare foot, leaving another red stain on her skin as the body faces the ceiling instead.
She only looks a few years older than them, and her hair is the exact same color as Remus’ mother sitting on her late husband’s chair and looking out of the window with a void expression.
The runes mingle with the blood, sizzling as it reaches the fire. “Is that all?” wonders Voldemort aloud, looking bored, and Lily whimpers with the sobbing sound the boys all wish to make. Thirteen heads (such a wrong number) turn towards them and Lily shakes as she covers her mouth with her long fingers, ashen color on the cheeks. Their eyes open wide, mouths trembling, and Voldemort smiles with death on his lips as he advances to them, bloody fingerprints signaling his pace.
A long finger is extended, and the echo from his voice sounds louder than it really is in their minds as he says, sedated, “kill them.”
They run, and Remus takes strength from Lord knows where as they flee for their lives.
---
They cry as they run, hearts still beating out of sheer will and matching their desperate strides. Lily says “I’m sorry” a million times, and Remus repeats it with her as this is his entire fault. The wall sends a message of sound of their passing through, and Peter runs with his wand pointing at the endless black behind them, erasing the tracks they leave in the inch-thick dust on the floor.
The five of them retrace their steps, getting lost on purpose in hopes the masked men will too, running along a thousand of equal-looking hallways, a stone archway after another one, humidity under their fingers as they feel their way whenever they hear footsteps and their lights have to go off, the yellow light showing a last portrait of scared faces and dirty cheeks. Remus tears at his clothes, the scent of death plaguing his senses.
Remus’ body can’t keep on going for a lot longer, but he keeps on putting one foot ahead of him, wanting life so much it hurts, screaming at himself from wanting oblivion before.
It feels a bit late to realize this, but as the air burns in his lungs he makes a silent oath of never doubting his existence again. He trips a little with a bone, and he seals the oath with tears.
---
The darkness has been covering them like a shroud of black intentions for five minutes since they had turned off their wand-light the last time when a voice comes in front of them, rich with madness and scorn. “Just take a look of the little fishies I caught,” The terrified teenagers freeze at mid-step, eyes straining to see the source of the voice. “all warm and ready to be gutted.”
Remus’ blood runs cold in his veins, the wickedness in the voice turning his bones into such fine ash he doesn’t think he could run if he wanted. They back up slowly, trying to keep any kind of noise to themselves, holding their breaths, cold sweat on Remus’ neck. There’s an invisible wall behind them, and as they turn desperately it looks almost sardonically fun, a bunch of mime-children with their hands pressed against thin air that just doesn’t give.
Light fills the emptiness suddenly, and they turn slowly to see the white mask staring at them from a short distance. Peter’s teeth begin to chatter, and Remus’ hands can’t seem to stop shaking, knees still weak from the Apparition. The man suddenly laughs, and it feels wrong to think something as inhuman looking as the shapeless white nothing mask can hide a regular, flesh and bone person inside.
“Why, you’re the Lupin boy!” Remus starts at hearing his name, and the man edges closer, dangling his wand, knowing he’s in complete control of the situation. “Ah, it is so odd that we find each other like this, boy, when I only met your father personally a few days ago.”
Remus vision bleeds to red, and his shaking turns into an anger trembling that tears through his entire body, stomach acids boiling inside him. “Rosier?” he asks with a tight voice, and the man laughs.
“Corpses don’t spill names, kid, so your disgusting lycanthrope mind will be put at ease about his poor daddy’s death very soon.”
The words come out of Rosier’s lips, and then there’s no movement from Remus’ part to warn him as the boy takes strength from his burning anger and pounces on him with all his might, wand in hand. “No!” yell the other ones, trying to stop him too late on his momentum. Remus falls on top of him, dragging him to the ground with his weight, and the white masks falls to reveal a regular looking middle-aged man with mild surprise on his eyes.
Rosier reacts immediately, and it’s only his crooked position that keeps the blue jet of light from his wand to hit Remus’ heart, and even with that, he doubles up with pain, his internal organs feeling as if they had been mixed up. He punches Rosier in the head and a bit of satisfaction blooms on his stomach as green spreads across the Death Eater’s face.
It only takes the others a second before deciding on what to do, and then they all throw themselves on top of Rosier too, fighting with magic and hands and teeth sometimes too. In the back of their heads, there’s a voice telling them they just wouldn’t make it against a full-trained Dark Wizard, so they fight dirty, security in numbers, five teenagers and an adult rolling in the filthy floors, wishing and hoping for a miracle.
A particularly well aimed hex from Peter makes Rosier stop moving for a second, grimacing with pain, and that’s all the time Remus needs to point his wand directly at Rosier’s head, as he sits on the man’s side, staring at him with unveiled intensity. The other four are sprawled somewhat alike him on top of Rosier, each holding down a piece of Death Eater, his wand having rolled some feet away in the tussle.
“You killed my father,” Remus states, each word laced with cold and hate.
“Yes. What are you going to do about is, you dirty scum?” the confession isn’t like anything Remus had dreamt about since his father’s funeral, and his wand doesn’t waver at all.
“Avada Kedavra,” he says, and immediately regrets it.
One second (eyes opening, from both attacker and victim, warm vibrating with the effort of bringing the magic out of Remus’ body). Two seconds (flash of green materializing out of pure will and confused hatred, a breath filled of dread from the man and the boy, and then he can’t inhale again). Three seconds (and the curse is over, and the eerie light permeating the filthy passage is turned off as fast as it began).
Remus forces himself to watch, and a whimper from the horrified Death Eater matches his own, a small crater of steaming, broken stone three inches away from his temple. Another three seconds in which no one breathes, and Remus’ wand shakes so much he couldn’t aim if he wanted.
Sirius pushes him aside quite violently, anger and relief and fear mixed in his actions, and he holds his wand against Rosier’s throat, which is bobbing up and down nervously. “The way out. Where is it?” he asks concisely, as Remus covers his face with his hands and leans slouched against the opposite wall, afraid of himself. Rosier’s sweating, salty droplets sliding along his face and neck. Lily’s wand joins Sirius’ at his neck, looking menacing; carrying no hint of the schoolgirl Remus knows her to be.
“Speak,” says James coldly, but his hands are warm as he helps Remus up from his semi-crouch, looking him in the eye with none of the judgment he’s always feared more than anything. Peter takes Remus’ left arm and puts it across his own shoulders, and Remus can’t help but wonder just what he did to deserve knowing these too brave, too reckless, too amazing people.
Rosier tries masking his trembling, covering it with sneers, but Sirius wand starts sending burning sparks that leave marks and boils on their wake, and he curls his lip in disdain as he speaks. “Through the first hallway at your right, up a flight of stairs, there should be a trapdoor disguised in the ceiling somewhere.” he spits the words, as if every letter coming out of his lips tasted of poison.
“Thank you,” says Lily, all mannered and faked innocence, and her face stays like that as she continues. “stupefy.”
---
They run again, the four of them holding Remus up, who has just lost his last strength. The stairs are missing steps, stone turned into dust at some parts. They can’t risk light, so they go up in the dark, their hard breathing the only sound they can hear. The ceiling is quite low when the stairs end, and they run their fingers over it, cutting themselves with sharpened pieces of stone, blood running under their sleeves in ignored rivulets.
“Please, please, please…” Lily is chanting by herself, some of the desperation she wouldn’t show early finally coming across. James lights his wand finally, and they look for cracks, for an opening, for anything in the enclosed space, Remus’ mind tricking him into thinking the air will run out.
“Fuck it,” says Sirius, and without a second thought, he transforms into Padfoot. Lily gasps in surprise, but they don’t have any time for explanations, they don’t have any time at all, so James only lets Padfoot lean against him as he stands on his back legs and sniffs the air.
It only takes a few second, and then the large dog is signaling to a rather inconspicuous part of the ceiling. They run to it, and in no time the trapdoor has opened. They help each others up, silently.
The sun is coming out. The sudden light hurts their eyes, and the way it reflects and shines in the thick snow makes them put a hand over them. A small castle stands somewhere close, the fog and dew of the new day covering it up with a dream-like quality, a cloud of pure innocence hiding the devil himself under it’s depths. Padfoot urges them to the close trees, and he looks far too dark against the whiteness, his paws leaving a path covered in light and melted ice, shimmering under the new day’s sun. As soon as they reach the trees, Sirius transforms again, and grabs onto Remus for dear life. “Apparate!” he mutters, and the others nod in approval.
The pull at his stomach makes Remus want to puke, but the swirling colors of world changing around him end soon, and then they’re outside Hogwarts.
The five of them drag themselves inside the gates, and as soon as they’re in the grounds they left themselves fall to the ground, drained with terror, tiredness, hunger, and other thousand emotions running through the brains.
Remus holds onto Sirius’s warm torso, and his brain shuts down, sending him into thick sleep.
(He dreams about blood, but he forgets about it as soon as he wakes up).