A/N:
This is a Dark World AU, where the world has been overrun by a certain eight-legged creature…
Thanks to Di for reading through!
Does Velvet Burn?
He raised the Deluminator, took a deep breath, and clicked it nine times. Nine balls of light sped into the device, leaving him standing in a lone circle of light from the remaining street lamp.
Pocketing the Deluminator, he shivered and pulled his jacket tighter as he looked up at the house, the wind whistling in his ears. Ron gripped his salvaged wand in his sleeve, contemplating his chances.
If he stayed, the odds of the hatchlings finding him here weren't very high. But if there was another nest in there...
Ron swallowed the growing distress in his gut and concentrated. With a rumble and an almighty heave, the gloomy facade of Number 12, Grimmauld Place expanded between the two Muggle houses.
Out of habit, he glanced behind him, his stomach churning at the thought of swarms of spindly, hairy legs and the clicking of pincers emerging from the darkness all around, but there was nothing of the sort in sight or earshot.
He ascended the steps to the door, twisting the tarnished doorknob and swinging the door open.
Ron swung the door shut behind him and collapsed against it, allowing himself one minute to breathe.
Of all the things Voldemort could have unleashed upon them at the Battle of Hogwarts, it had to be one of the most versatile pests in the known world.
It also happened to be Ron's worst fear.
They'd stormed the castle, sinking their fangs into any living thing they could find, washing over everything in their path like a tidal wave, their unnaturally sharp legs planting cracks in the marble and impaling the wizards who dared to stand against them.
At first, they thought themselves capable of fighting the spiders, but they soon found that the blasted things were impervious to spells. Not to mention that they had hides harder than granite. Voldemort had done his homework, all right.
He'd managed to hide in the Room of Requirement, along with Mum and Dad and a few other DA members. But when the clicking subsided and the screaming stopped, they'd emerged to find the school—
He squeezed his eyes shut, dispelling the memory, and raised his wand.
"Arania revelio."
The revealing spell whooshed down the corridor, branching in different directions as it spread through the house. Ron held his breath, praying to Merlin and Paracelsus and all the wizards who couldn't possibly do anything to help him now that he wouldn't hear the warning—
A shrill whistling pierced the stagnant air, accompanied by a faint scuffling high up above him.
Legs.
Millions of them.
Panic swept through his veins, turning his mind to a block of ice as he fumbled behind him for the doorknob.
Instead, his hand snagged on the dark curtain covering a certain screaming portrait.
"Traitors, blood traitors tainting the noble abode of my family—" wailed Mrs Black, the fury of years long gone bursting free in her screams, snapping the sense back into his brain.
"Shut up, you old hag!" Ron grabbed the curtains and tried to draw them shut again, but the clattering of something hard against varnished wood stopped him in his tracks.
He slipped his hand into his pocket, closing his fingers around the Deluminator, and pulled it out again. With a shaking thumb, he clicked it once.
The ball of light sped down the corridor into the kitchen, illuminating the frothing mass of hairy bodies coating the walls, ceiling and floor.
Ron cursed and clicked the Deluminator again, and again, and again. The spiders screeched and cringed away from the light, scrabbling over each other in their hurry to get away.
Mrs Black was still screaming like a house-elf had spilled tea on the carpet. Ron tore the curtains off the portrait and touched his wand to the first piece of cloth.
Does velvet burn? he wondered.
"Incendio!"
Normal fire might not have ignited the velvet, but, fortunately for him, the magical flames consumed the curtains readily. Ron sent them into the swarm of spiders, and the creatures screamed and scuttled away from the flaming fabric.
His heart seizing with revulsion, Ron plunged into the horde of spiders, shoving them aside with Banishing Charms and, at times, his bare hands.
The spiders seemed to notice where he was heading and rallied one last time, creating a wall at the end of the corridor, blocking the doorway to the kitchen.
Here goes, Ron thought, gritting his teeth.
"LUMOS MAXIMA!" he yelled, and the explosion of light enveloped everything in sight, including the now-clear doorway.
Ron leapt for the door and slammed it behind him. Instantly, the sound of pincers scratching against the door started up, and Ron pushed hard against it.
"C-colloportus," he incanted shakily, "protego maxima, protego horribilis—" he had to pride himself on that, it was a new one he'd perfected after countless failed attempts, "—impervius..."
After finishing the protective spells, Ron clicked the Deluminator, sending another ball of light to join the one he'd sent into the kitchen earlier.
He sank to the floor, pulling off his rucksack and digging around in it. Sighing through his nose, he extracted an apple, a book and a blanket, and cast a Muffliato Charm on the door, before he snuggled up and began to read from where he'd last stopped.
The new spell on the corner of the page read "Langlock" (nothing useful, then, seeing as there was no one left to cast it on). Ron crunched into the apple as he read through the Half-Blood Prince's textbook, careful not to waste any of the precious juice that spurted out when he bit into the fruit.
"What is Master's friend doing here?"
He scrambled to his feet, the book tumbling to the floor. "Merlin's ratty beard, Kreacher!"
The wizened house elf whistled a tune that Ron recognised as a Celestina Warbeck ballad. Back from when Celestina Warbeck still wrote ballads.
"Stop it, Kreacher," Ron snapped. "I'm trying to read." He sighed and retrieved his book. "Do you have any food, by the way?"
Kreacher bowed and backed away into the gloom where the Deluminator's light did not reach.
Ron sniffed, gagging from the dust, and drifted into a hazy sleep.
XXXXXXXX
Mum was crying, sobbing into Dad's shoulder, and Ron knew why.
They'd found her foot caught in a trick step. They knew it was hers—even through the step you could see the little silver charm anklet that she'd refused to take off even for Bill and Fleur's wedding, cinched tight around her leg between the ragged flesh and the cotton of her sock.
Even in death, they had taken precedence in their parents' minds, clinched the top spot with their martyrdom. Bill. Charlie. Percy. George. Ginny. Hell, even Fleur.
Ron cursed himself for thinking such thoughts.
And all of a sudden, he was backing away, running through the rubble and smoke...
A sharp pain on his shin jolted him to wakefulness, and he shrieked as he fumbled for his wand. How the hell had the spiders gotten in the kitchen, he'd done all the spells, and the fire and lights outside should have kept them at bay for longer than this—
"Kreacher has brought food."
He tensed, then smacked his forehead in relief. "Bless you, Kreacher," he breathed, accepting the turkey sandwich—he didn't know where he'd gotten it, and honestly, couldn't care less.
Kreacher bowed stiffly and snapped his fingers, vanishing with a crack.
Holed up in Sirius Black's old house, with a grumpy house elf, a screaming portrait, a horde of arachnids and the darkness for company? A few years back, he would rather have gone on a date with a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
But now, sitting with Kreacher's scavenged food in his hand and listening to the wind whistling outside, Ron was going to take whatever he got.
He adjusted the book and turned the page.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Team: Appleby Arrows
CHASER 1: Write about a parallel world where the character's worst fears come to life.
OPTIONAL PROMPTS:
#3: [Setting] 12 Grimmauld Place
#5: [Action] Whistling
#10: [Creature] Spiders
Word Count: 1309