Random idea I had: Skitter controls spiders. Skitter goes to the forbidden forest. Skitter finds BIG spiders. Voldy'll never know what hit him.
Disclaimer: I don't own Worm or Harry Potter. This is likely a Crack-With-Plot fic.
Enjoy
~Pyro
-.-.-.-
Taylor Hebert was a 'mudblood', a muggleborn child with magical ability. Getting accepted into Hogwarts was a bit of a surprise, and even more baffling when she discovered what it was all about.
A school for magic.
After a quick sorting ceremony and a troubling welcome (*cough* don't go here unless you wish to die a painful death *cough* stay the fuck outta the forest *cough*), Taylor had been absolutely terrified about the talking hat.
"Gryffindor!" it exclaimed, after much deliberation. She could remember hearing it talk about Slytherins and Ravenclaws and completely refusing to put her in Hufflepuffs grasp. The first few weeks actually went pretty well. Taylor had a couple of new friends, a girl called Emma from Slytherin, though she only ever saw her in class, and another Gryffindor named Madison.
After years of feeling out of place in the world, she finally felt like she belonged. But there was one problem.
Her magical ability sucked. She was tied with the kid who's wand exploded with every second spell when it came to grades. Half the time her mind seemed to have its own agenda, completely fucking up the pronunciation in spells or flapping about improperly when it came to swishing and slashing with her magic-stick. Wand. Zappy-wood.
It didn't help that Madison's lewd mind picked up on the fantastic innuendo opportunities her nicknames for the devices. "Having fun with your magic-stick? I heard so-and-so's has a vibrator function!"
Innocent teasing, in the beginning. Then Sophia heard it.
That's when things went downhill.
By the second year, after some kid named Harry Potter went and killed one of the teachers (who was apparently a siamese twin with the baddest most evillest wizard who ever lived, died, lived again, and then got killed by a first-year magic student), Taylor began to notice that the teasing had become less friendly and more… hurtful. Emma had drifted away, to talk to that Sophia girl.
In potions class, whenever they thought she wasn't looking, they'd throw a little something across the room and into her potion pot. Sometimes it was no bigger than an apple seed, once it was a dead rat. Taylor had gotten splashed and had to go to the infirmary to deal with the lasting burns to her arm and legs.
Madison joined in too. Whenever Taylor kept an eye on the Slytherins, Madison would pop an ingredient into the pot, change the temperature by a little bit, or even blatantly swap the entire goddamn pot for something else.
Slowly but surely, they were wearing her down. Once, she'd overheard a conversation in the common room, heard the term 'mudblood'. She asked, and got told, "A mudblood is a derogatory term for a witch or wizard who were born to one or two muggle parents." Taylor made the fatal mistake of saying, "Like me?" while Madison was in the room.
Two days later, between classes, she was shoved into a broom closet by Sophia and Emma. They locked the door, left her unable to escape, no matter how hard she tried to use magic or might to unlock it. When they returned, it was only long enough to scream at her, "Filthy mudblood!" and throw the contents of what they could, later, only assume had been chamber pots and waste buckets from the cleaning trolleys.
It was horrible.
When someone had finally found her, screaming and clawing to get out, Taylor felt something inside her snap. She went into shock, her condition deteriorated into a coma that lasted a week. Eventually, she woke up. But she didn't wake. The doctors and nurses tried everything but she simply remained in a vegetative state. There was something at the edge of her consciousness, a buzzing, a constant overwhelming stream of sensory input.
Three days later, she blinked twice in succession. Nurses scrambled about, thinking it was recovery. Two weeks later, Taylor grunted. Every day after that, she seemed to get better. Moaning about a constant buzzing, infinite heartbeats, too many eyes, so many bodies. Fifteen days later, she had a seizure and returned to a coma for eight hours. When she awoke from that, she realised what was wrong.
She had senses that weren't her own. She could feel a now-muted drone, like a hivemind of activity she couldn't explain.
The nurses released her, told her to take it easy for a week while she got her bearings back. Wandering the halls in the middle of the night, nobody had warned her of the danger. She stepped through puddles, thinking nothing of it. In the back of her mind, a tiny voice screamed danger! at her. She didn't understand it, but she was drawn to look at the wall, where a large blue beetle with a shiny carapace lay lazily on a banner. In its reflection, she saw it.
And she snapped again.
The next day, barely a few hours after she'd been found, Taylor regained consciousness in the infirmary. "What happened?" she asked, only to be told she'd been petrified by a Basilisk. A giant snake whose gaze could kill any who made eye contact with it.
She wasn't supposed to be awake.
But inside, she knew now. The bugs, the hivemind, it was all there, open to her. Experimentally, she reached out, calling the bugs to herself. A stream of spiders, ants, cockroaches, beetles, and all manner of creepy-crawlies made their way to the infirmary before she'd told them to go away.
If anyone knew, they could kill her.
But at the same time, knowing who caused this, and that they hadn't been punished in any way, Taylor made up her mind.
There had been rumours of spiders the size of elephants roaming the Forbidden Forest. Apparently a sentient car had somehow rescued Harry Potter the wonder-boy himself from the clutches of the beasts. Taylor wanted to see them for herself. She felt… drawn to them, to the forest. She could feel every little insignificant insectoid mind making its way through the rotting wood, corpses, and what-have-you in the area.
Nobody saw her, nobody raised an alarm, nobody made a fuss as she left school grounds and went to the one place she was told she was guaranteed a painful and drawn-out death.
Taylor strode through the woods confidently. Nothing dared attack her. A centaur screamed at her, she sent ravaging worms up through his hooves, spiders and ants digging into his skin, mosquitoes and sandflies into his lungs. When it was done, she stepped over the corpse as though there were nothing wrong.
When she found the spiders, she smiled.
-.-.-.-
And that's about the point where everyone is DOOOOMED.
Review, pretty please?
~Pyro