DISCLAIMER: I am but an angsty and melodramatic puppet master, cruelly toying with characters that I do not claim to own, nor make money off of. Forgive me, for I know not what I do.
ANATOMY OF A DEATH EATER
CHAPTER ONE
PROLOGUE
It would be so cruel!
For that one moment, Percy understood his twin brothers. Standing there, staring at the simmering cauldron with cheeks burning, he knew the pre-prank anticipation his brothers must feel, and why they must yearn for it.
It was truly exhilarating, looking at the cauldron's bubbling, shiny surface, his hand hovering over it, a little pinch of black powder between his thumb and forefinger. A truly wicked thing to do, he knew it, but it would be ever so funny. It would be funny to him, at least, if no one else.
Maybe his mother would lecture him. Perhaps she would sit him down in the kitchen and scream so loudly that the whole house would hear. He wished she would. He wanted to hear how much he'd disappointed his mother. He wanted to hear how she didn't know what on earth had gotten into him, and what was he thinking, and did he really find his little prank to be funny? Did he really find it amusing, not only to ruin the opening of Fred and George's joke shop, but their eighteenth birthday as well?
Yes, mum.
It was very amusing. The twins, the happy twinsies, would feel that pain for once. The joke would be on them. Percy smiled, and with a light feeling in his head, let the black powder fall into the cauldron and soak through.
Complimentary sample of Screaming Gumballs: ruined.
Weasley Wizard Wheezes Grand Opening: cancelled.
When Fred or George tested them in the morning, instead of the gumballs crying out when bitten, they would become as sticky and foul-tasting as tar. Percy could see them now, one or the other, both if he was lucky, trying to pull their jaws apart and picking the goo out of their teeth all day.
A mean little prank, perhaps, but harmless.
And funny!
* * * * * *
The room was enormous, easily as big as the Great Hall (there you go, thinking childish thoughts again), but the ceiling wasn't enchanted to look like the sky above. The ceiling was a swirling, sickly orange, mingling with an even nastier green- abscess green, vomit green.
The ceiling clearly wasn't meant to be looked at.
(gazing upward tends to make one think of bigger and better things)
He looked, regardless, felt his stomach sour, and they (my brothers, my new brothers) took him by the elbows, walked him forward, onward to where the red carpet led, to The Birth, the great gold leafed throne-like chair where he would become his Master's servant.
(there are no bigger and better things).
He was nervous (there is no room for such emotions).
For a moment his shoes seemed to catch on the red carpeting, but with a smooth jerk they (my brothers, my new brothers) freed him, and he was walking again. He had no sensation of moving his legs, but knew he must be moving of his own free will (this is the right thing! don't you be a coward), for they would not steer him wrong.
His Master would never steer him wrong.
It burned, it burned like seeing his brother, laying dead on the floor (it's alright now!), but he did not flinch. He could not flinch, lest he displease his Master. It was not so hard, to not flinch, not so hard at all, for underneath the burn was a tickling, a somehow giddy sensation that all was well.
He looked down at his arm, seconds earlier so pasty and skeletal, and saw strength. Strength in the black skull, and strength in the snake.
His guilt drained out of him; he saw it himself, it was blue, royal blue, flowing down his legs and out onto the floor (there is no room for guilt), spreading with the thickness of blood (only this).
His wrong was fixed.
(only this)