Disclaimer: Please see previous chapter.
Now that you've done that, I would like you to explain why you think that I have been, suddenly and (most likely) unwillingly, Transfigured into J.K. Rowling between chapters.
Go on, I'm waiting.
A/N: Never one to disappoint my readership base, I'm pleased to announce that the distressing lack of updates is due more to high school than anything else. Unless you would prefer, in lieu of actual updates, a pompous lecture on the complete works of John Stuart Mill, when fandom and academia clash, fandom goes. If you, for unknown and probably unnerving reasons,
would prefer such a chapter, however, I would be pleased to offer you "Marked for Death II: Slytherite and the Academic Update Curse of Deadly Doom."
Moreover, November was National Novel Writing Month. December was National "Holy Crap, It's Finals Month, And Look At All The Shopping Slytherite Has To Do" Month. Draw your own conclusions.
Warnings: I find myself rather amused that I'm still warning the readers about foul language, eleven chapters in. As usual, there are some disturbing moments and references to violence. Yes, it's gratuitous vulgarity. I need to justify the M rating
somehow. On a less degenerate note, there are also Rabastan's odd stream-of-consciousness interludes. And there's pseudo-incestuous squee, unfortunately punctuated by suspiciously insistent declarations of heterosexuality. Rabbykins isn't fooling anyone. A poorly characterized small child is implicitly horribly injured, but no one actually cares. Slytherite inserts a very subtle Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference. Yes, there actually is one, and yes, it's extremely subtle, and it would have gone completely unnoticed had I not mentioned this. Feel free to drive yourselves crazy looking for it.
Summary: Rabastan comes back in a gloriously anticlimactic scene. Gobs of purple prose are devoted to this purpose.
He came back.
Rabastan knows perfectly well that he's a coward. Bellatrix has reminded him of his exalted abilities in the field of irrational terror many, many times; if she wanted someone less neurotic, she should have said so earlier. She should have stopped abusing him long, long ago. Everything that's wrong with him is all her fault. Unless it's Rodolphus's fault for getting piss drunk and beating him to within an inch of his life; that's quite possible, too. Roddy and Miss Bellatrix, of course, are only relevant if we discount the ill-founded notion that perhaps Rabastan's brutish father (the father Rodolphus resembles more and more) made him the nellie boy that he is (and that's only after his mother's death in childbirth left him melodramatically scarred). In simpler terms, it's all genetics, or else he's got a bad case of hormones, or just bad luck. Blame anyone. The end result of the stories (all along the lines of what went wrong) is always the same: Rabastan's a miserable, girlish little twit.
And he came back to the people who made him that way…if that's what you choose to think. (Have it your own way, then, and don't come to me to complain.) He's strolling brightly into the lion's den, asking to be mauled.
But what other options does he really have? He's scared. And, he reminds himself every so often, just to make sure that it never quite slips his mind, that's pathetic.
Disheveled and drugged to the gills, full of hate topped up with sick, masochistic longing to be loved, and, above all, scared (and, yes, pathetic), Rabastan has come home.
Besides, he can walk (without pissing himself and risking a heart attack—those little details are all-important for the self-respecting manly man) now. Bellatrix won't stand a chance.


I suppose that, now that I've piqued your curiosity, I have to justify myself. Rabastan's come back, yes, but it's not for tea and biscuits.
We're going back a few hours. Let's set the scene for our little psychological drama. Imagine a windowless room somewhere in the bowels of the esteemed St. Mungo's. We've been here twice before. It's small (cozy, we might call it) and Spartan: our invalid hero has to his name a cheap cot, two chairs, and a nightstand. The Healers, well-intentioned bastards that they are, took away his coffee and his wireless.
Nevertheless, Rabastan is still an incorrigible insomniac. The slats of the bed are digging into his back through the thin mattress; the candlelight is too bright and it hurts his eyes; his throat is full of something rather viscous and thick, which, every so often, he tries to suck back into his chest; and he can't feel anything else. How is he supposed to sleep? The Healers are barbarians, expecting him to recover from what, he's sure, is no more than a mess of cuts and bruises (though he's equally sure that Bellatrix slit him open and pulled out his guts—how is he supposed to know? He can't lift his head to see it), and then giving him such tender care. Perhaps he'll take it to court.
Putting my trust in our legal system, he thinks sullenly. I've lost all hope, haven't I?
I suppose it could always get worse.
Perhaps Bellatrix will kill me next time—if there is a next time!—and I can miss out on the
joy of lying here, imbecilic and rotting, waiting for the old biddies to bring me the potions that taste of piss, while Barty and Regulus go off and be men in this big wide old world of ours, and only visit me on Christmas—
Something far too irrelevant to interrupt his dramatic monologue goes thump in the distance. People are yelling on the floor below him and rushing madly about on the floor above, sweeping the ceiling with hollow thuds and crashes and making the chandelier wobble merrily above Rabastan's head. But I won't burden you with the details. In other news, there's a fly on the wall. It's buzzing.
Damn insect. As if it has nothing better to do, really, than torment me—"I'm alive and free and loving it, and you're rotting in this hell"—don't I get enough of that as it is? Is everyone in this godforsaken country out to get me? What the hell did I do, that it was me? Why not Rodolphus, big strong Rodolphus with his moronic stare and that stupid bint he likes so much? Why not the bitch herself? Evan Rosier? Edmund Wilkes? Stupid poofters, too damn clever and selfish for women, what did they ever do for us? Why me?
I wish I had Algernon Garvenbach's or Millicent Bagnold's or—hell, why not?—Barty Crouch's job. I'd reinstate the death penalty and give out life sentences in Azkaban for saying half the things Bellatrix says. She'd be punished. I'd make myself a lord among Wizardkind. I'd fix everything that's wrong with our backward little nation, and…and I'd still be a crippled pansy, and I still wouldn't be able to do anything about that bloody insect!
His mental rant trails off. There isn't much more to say. He still boils, though, and his rage is all the worse for being impossible to express. Rabastan wants to scream—
He feels a muscle in his shoulder twitch, almost as if the fly's cousins are climbing around on his scapula, and dislodges it with an awkward jerk. His tendons burn.
Across the room, the fly dies, dropping unceremoniously down the wall and vanishing against the dark molding.
Did I do that?
Rabastan raises his head a few centimeters, feeling his muscles creak and stretch as he does so. He doesn't see his wand anywhere, even when he makes a special effort to check his hand. The wall isn't clean, per se, but it shows no sign of recent magical damage. I knew it. I couldn't have done anything like that. Not me, no. Besides, I'm seventeen. Only little children use magic and don't know they're doing it. No, it's just a coincidence, and I'm deluding myself into thinking that I have any power whatsoever in this world

He hears the thump this time, and an icy feeling floods his lower body (the first indication today that he still has one). The yelling continues, and if he strains, he can make out words. Of course he tries:
"Out of the way! We have a seriously injured man here—"
"—a very serious situation! I ask for your complete cooperation and that you remain calm and absolutely silent!"
More running, more yelling. Someone thunders past Rabastan's room, making the door quiver on its hinges. Straining heroically, Rabastan manages to pull the meager blanket up over his shoulders, and though its pilled and loose threads grate across his sensitive skin, it provides some kind of barrier from whatever might be coming in. To kill him, of course.
Obviously, St. Mungo's has been attacked by Death Eaters.
If he hides his head—especially because he'd, at the moment, quite like to—he's a coward. If he closes his eyes and waits until it's all over, he's a Last Man, a moron, blindly self-deceiving, as if he hasn't read any Nietzsche, Voynich, or Schopenhauer (though he hated Schopenhauer: the poor man was only ever a stupid, deluded Muggle, who, moreover, never had much to do with Rabastan's arguments, instead being blindly tossed in to give the veneer of intelligence), and he doesn't deserve the name of wizard. So he waits for something to happen, and, in the meantime, he trembles and strains so hard to sit up that his back bends and some blood comes oozing out of his mouth.

"Are you in here, love?" says a voice; Rabastan recognizes the dulcet tones of one of the Healers, an unassumingly maternal woman in charge of giving the uncooperative young man his hourly potions. She pushes open the door and pretends to beam, though he sees through it instantly; what is she hiding from me? No one smiles like that! (Well, except Rodolphus…) "Oh, good, you are…"
"I'm not going anywhere, am I? Look at me!"
Healer What's-her-name bobs over to the bed, carrying a tray stacked high with vials and interesting twisty things. She carefully locks the door with her wand before setting the tray down on the nightstand, by Rabastan's glasses, and peeling his hand off his calf. "Yes, love," she says placidly, rolling up her sleeves and picking up an empty bottle. "I hate to do this, love, but it's all for the best, and we have to know—"
Rabastan jerks his hand away, his upper arm protesting all the while. "Don't touch me!" But it's too late, the damage has already been done, and a few drops of his blood are resting neatly at the bottom of the bottle. The Healer gives him a bovine look of sadness, passing her wand over his fingertip and closing the cut instantly. Not that it stops Rabastan from complaining. "You're mad, you could have killed me—look, I have blood on my finger! Blood! Merlin's beard, woman, I'll have your license revoked—"
The Healer gently dabs Rabastan's finger with a piece of damp gauze, and his indignation shrivels up. She's so motherly. Shouting at her isn't the same as shouting at Bellatrix, or at Barty or Regulus; she's like Rodolphus, apparently. She stonewalls, and he feels embarrassed for trying. "What's going on out there?" he demands, a tad halfheartedly. He needs something to complain about.
"Everything will be fine," she murmurs, and ruffles his limp hair.
"I heard shouting! Shouting! No, you can't tell me everything will be just fine and dandy—"
Healer Something unscrews the lid of one of the potion flasks, dribbling the contents into a spoon. Rabastan watches them bubble with a wary eye. She pats his shoulder. "Go on, love, drink it all, there's a good boy. There you go." She waits patiently until he tilts his head back, gulping for air, and his throat twitches slightly as the potion runs down his gullet. "Now, there's been a bit of a…a disturbance out there in the world, and a few of our good Aurors have been hurt in the line of duty, but it's all going to be just fine, you wait and see, and—"

Rabastan chokes, and blue spittle flecked with blood runs down his lips. Pain shoots through his chest, and he feels rather as if the sudden coughing fit sent a rib out of alignment and straight into his lung. "It was the Death Eaters, wasn't it?!" he demands, and the faux-interrobang says it all, really. Even though he's just had the potion, it takes a bit of an effort to hold on to sanity, thanks to his hardy Lestrange genes. Oh, God, yes, the House of Lestrange, Death Eaters all—when they weren't gallivanting with Grindelwald or Slytherinwell, he reminds himself conscientiously, Slytherin was a right-thinking man. And Grindelwald wasn't so bad. But the Death Eaters are reckless, they're terrorists, and they're going to doom the purebloods by even existing—people like Rodolphus and Bellatrix!
DAMN them!

Unusually for Rabastan, he shows almost no external signs of this horrible revelation. There are only so many facial tics to spare. His eyes twitch. What's-her-face nods, filling another spoon. "As I hear it, they attacked Algernon Garvenbach while he was eating supper with his family, and…and, well…" She looks away. "It didn't go too well for him," she says finally. "Poor man."
"Algernon Garvenbach?" Rabastan fairly screams. "THE Algernon Garvenbach?" He winces at the cracked sound of his own voice. Of course it's the Algernon Garvenbach! There's another one, is there? No! I'm so, so stupid, and I should have said, I should have told someone while I could, but I didn't, and...His train of thought abruptly hits a brick wall. He tries to swallow dramatically, but his muscles aren't quite up to the challenge. And who was harmed, really? Garvenbach? Some kids? What did kids ever do for me that I should be sad for them?
He grapples with the questions in silence as the Healer adds a few dabs of something yellow and fizzy to the spoonful of potion. Philosophy—even Rabastan's untrained brand of philosophy, born from his somewhat random education—is a rather effective distraction from what, exactly, she's about to put in his mouth.
Rabastan tosses back the concoction, and doesn't feel up to gagging. It does taste of piss. What a price to pay for temporary lucidity (or the appearance of same, anyway; it tends to fall apart when closely examined).
"So Garvenbach is dead?"
The Healer makes a creditable effort to look busy. "I don't think so…" She trails off, and covers the moment by fiddling with something shiny and unidentifiable. "Look, love," she tries, "it's over. I'd get some sleep if I was you."
"I'll try that, yes, shall I," snaps Rabastan, "and hope I wake up tomorrow—"
"You do that, dear."
He watches her until she's out the door. In his empire of elitism, shit, and terror, people like her (whatever her crimes were) will go first.

Barty (though perhaps not Regulus) will be interested to hear what Rabastan has to say on this momentous occasion. Whatever Barty has to say (and Barty will have something to say, and plenty of "something" to go around), Rabastan will listen, and they'll both be glad that someone else thinks the country's going to the dogs.
And it's all down to the Death Eaters, thinks Rabastan, staring up at the ceiling once more and listening vaguely for any helpful shouts of "Garvenbach's dead!" They're hurting the pureblood cause, no, no one wants to listen to a bunch of terrorists…it's just insurrection, that's all—nothing substantive. It won't last. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named isn't enacting any real political change. All he's really doing is scaring people, and people don't like to be scared. If they think you'll kill your children, they'll go with you, oh, yes, but will they stay with you? Will they believe? They will not. Civilized dissent, that's the only way to make sure our opinions are still heard around here… (It might be appropriate for me to remind you, in the face of Rabastan's thoughtful and unbiased conclusions, that purebloods and bigots are, as far as politicians are concerned, the only people with any opinions.) The Dark Lord isn't having any of that. He can't look to the future.
(I bet he's
never read any Voynich!) Remember Voynich, Wizarding philosopher extraordinaire. He will be popping up again.
And lunatics like Rodolphus and Bellatrix eat it up, of course.

An image pops into his head. Rodolphus is in it, savage, menacing, almost overwhelmingly…good-looking…and as huge as he is from poor Rabastan's perspective. There are Muggles in his imagination, too, if we assume that the thick, soupy splatters on the walls were at one time (not very long ago) Muggles. Rodolphus is standing over Rabastan's hospital bed, smoking a cigarette and leering without knowing what he's grinning about, and Rabastan feels, almost simultaneously, two conflicting urges. He wants to run, screaming his lungs out, and never look back at this man he trusted with so much. Rodolphus's eyes are fixed on the headboard, and his pupils are fully open even in the cozy light. I know how you got those scars, don't I? Rabastan tells him. Bellatrix, my arse! Some Auror did that! No doubt he has the Dark Mark on his arm—and as soon as Rabastan thinks it, there it is. Rodolphus's sleeve is rolled up, and the brand is exactly where it was on Bellatrix. Rabastan rather thinks he'll be sick (though it doesn't happen).
But he's deceiving himself. Rabastan keeps looking. Occasionally, he has a few nasty little thoughts that make him wince with humiliation, and he counters them with images of himself in pain. This helps initially; however, all too quickly the pain gets mixed up into those treacherous fantasies and produces things that he never wanted to feel—and already has, of course.
This, I suppose, is where I should start squawking, sounding most starchy and utterly didactic, about the defilement of innocence and the loss of childhood.
But Rabastan is a Lestrange. Eventual defilement is all that can ever really be expected of him.
Rodolphus, dear Rodolphus, what have you done to the boy who loves you and trusts you even when he knows that he really shouldn't? (It will only end in tears.) Must you break every pretty thing—Bellatrix, Agatha—that comes into your filthy, leering sight? Must you lust after tragic beauty, knowing all the time that you'll eventually tarnish it with your own unworthy caresses? Of course! It isn't tragic if the butterfly lives to fly away!
Rodolphus knew all along (perhaps), and he let her do it (possibly), and Rabastan went mad (undeniably). And perhaps Rabastan wouldn't have cried himself to sleep so many, many times had Rodolphus put a stop to it. Perhaps Rabastan might never have fallen in love, or lust, or Stockholm syndrome, with a man so blatantly unsuitable.
He is quite handsome. I suppose that that justifies everything. Rabastan stares in the present tense, his gaze twitching over Rodolphus's smirk and his deadened eyes, and he hurts without quite knowing why. (This has been your daily dose of pathetic whining.)
Look at me, making moral judgments! It seems that dear Rabastan has gotten me to sympathize with his unfortunate plight! And we can't have that.
Rodolphus, he thinks, you really are a bastard. Words will be had when he gets home…in a decade or two. And you'll…you'll…He picks over his brain, and comes up empty-handed. You'll damn well be sorry, he adds as an afterthought.
Where was I? Oh, yes—the Death Eaters. Terrorists, all of them, powerless to start a real revolution, which they no doubt wouldn't know what to do with if they had one. Merlin, someone has to do something. The Death Eaters are a disgrace to the pureblood cause. It is—or it should be—all for the greater good, as Grindelwald said…
He trails off mentally. It is beginning to occur to him that he is that "someone".
Several seconds later, Rabastan Virgil Lestrange has a bad idea. Even Barty would rightly dismiss it as pointless, machismo-fueled suicide.

We have a new rule, boys and girls: if our young friend Barty would laugh an idea off without considering it for a second, said idea is best thought of as a rather painful and quick route to eternal damnation.


We'll skip the next few minutes. Nothing interesting happens until Rabastan has an opportunity to kick the glacially slow plot back into motion—what, you expected literature? Great Art is out there. There's absolutely no doubt about it. The Western Canon is available to you, free of charge, in your local library…what's that? You're still reading? Obviously, you slept through your English classes and you deserve whatever you get. Academia is important; if only you had paid attention in school, you wouldn't be here. And here you are, lapping up the horrific tale of Voldemort and his toadying cocksuckers and being mocked by a self-righteous twit who, obviously, has the poor taste to continue telling you just a little less than everything you want to know.

Self-deprecation is a lost art. I don't aim to revive it. I aim to remind humanity why it was not so much lost as thrown out.


"I'm afraid I can't do that," says Healer "Obstinate," in medias res.
Rabastan's facial muscles twitch feebly. He gives the Healer an extremely nasty look. If he could manage it on his own, he would even sit up. "Five minutes! You can't spare five minutes for me? I need to talk to him—no, you don't need to know why—it's important—and you're too busy. It's because I'm a pathetic wretch, I suppose? Is that it?"
"Sir," says the Healer, "an unauthorized use of the hospital owls, for a nonessential purpose, at a time like this, is more than my job's worth. I can't and I won't."
Rabastan has another idea. It's only slightly better, and just as dangerous. "Aren't you a Parkinson?" he asks, eyes narrowing as he scrutinizes the man's face. Yes, there's the upturned nose, and the famous squint.
Healer Parkinson rolls his eyes. "I don't see why it matters, but yes—"
"Wonderful," chirps Rabastan, forcing a smile. "Smashing," he adds as an afterthought (it might be a bit much). "I think my brother Rodolphus might have mentioned you once—Rodolphus Lestrange, you know? I suppose you probably know who he is? Lots of people do."
The very next thing you know, Regulus and Barty will be name-dropping Rabastan himself: "I know a bloke whose brother knows a bloke who's Lord Voldemort."

Speaking of Regulus and Barty:
"That would be 12 Grimmauld Place and 10 Carthier Boulevard?"
"Correct!" Rabastan croaks lightly. It's amazing how fast Healer Parkinson acquiesced when Rodolphus's name came up, and how quickly the blood drained out of his face; almost like magic, really.
The Healer nods. "Well, I'll see what I can do." He leans over and flicks a strand of hair out of Rabastan's eyes. "This had better not come back to bite me."
Rabastan attempts a reassuring smile. Something watery and reddish is trickling from the corner of his left eye.

And he waits.
It would be a lie to say that nothing is happening, and besides, Rabastan knows all too well that it isn't entirely true. More accurately, nothing is happening to him. The yelling outside slows to a throbbing buzz, too loud to ignore and too quiet to make out, and his muscles spasm to its beat. Pain goes, just slowly enough to make its progress hard to trace, up and down his body; it turns cold and squeezes his ribcage, rolling across his muscles and making him twitch where he still can. Breathing becomes, almost imperceptibly at first, a lot harder. His legs tingle, and he wants to get up and investigate the noises outside, just to for something to do.
Where are they?
Of course they've forgotten me. I never really thought that they would come, did I? I should hope not! Oh, I don't blame them…I'd do the same thing, if it were me. Who cares about poor Rabastan? They abandoned me here to rot, and why, it's perfectly justified, isn't it?
But still.
He rehearses things to say to them if and when (and it will definitely be when, not if; poor clingy Rabastan can't really countenance the thought that, just once, he might be right about how much everyone hates him) they turn up. Where the hell were you? Too prosaic; also a bit crude. We have Rodolphus to say those things. The universe doesn't need another foulmouthed Philistine. (It doesn't even need one…except, of course, for yours truly. Shit, bitch, fuck, hell.) Nice of you to turn up. No, that one's sarcastic or overly passive, depending on the delivery. Altogether too much like Rabastan himself. I'm sorry to bother you. Too apologetic. What if Regulus and Barty don't realize that they're being insulted? It might even imply that it's Rabastan's fault for being…well…Rabastan. Which, of course, it is.
Perhaps he'll just go with "Where the hell were you?" after all.
Rabastan stares at the wall, twitching occasionally. Everything hurts.


"Where the hell were you?" pops out of his mouth, exactly as he planned, as soon as the door moves the tiniest fraction of a centimeter.
And here I was, thinking that, perhaps, I could come up with something better. But I couldn't, could I? Barty and Regulus are going to think I'm stupid.
The door opens all the way, and Barty darts inside, closing it as soon as the hem of his cloak slides around the corner. Regulus apparently will not be gracing us with his presence.
Rabastan smiles, and though the tired look in his eyes doesn't lift, they brighten a little all the same: at least one of them is here! Barty glowers.
"Do you realize how late it is?"
"Yes, I…What's that? Come here—oh, you're wet…" Barty's blond hair is plastered to his scalp, and his robes are heavy and go squish when he walks. Rabastan raises an eyebrow. "It's raining?"
"Yes. I flew here." Barty wrings out his cloak, splattering water across the floorboards and saving St. Mungo's from washing them for another year. "All the way. In the rain, Rabastan, and in the middle of the night. If this is anything less than an emergency—"
Rabastan's eyes soften, and he beams in monochrome. "Thanks, lad," he whispers. Something stings. Tears (just as bloody as they were the last time Barty was here) dribble over his cheekbones. "So I have friends, hm? Even someone like me—I can have friends. That's pathetic…"
"It is." Yes, indeed.

"Where's Regulus?" asks Rabastan a minute later, grimacing as a damp, official-looking piece of parchment is scraped, none too kindly, across his stained face. "…that hurts…" he adds in a faint whisper, screwing up his eyes as Barty dabs just underneath them. It's parchment, not paper (that really ought to go without saying, and I'm a tad annoyed that I have to state such an obvious fact), so of course it doesn't do very much good, but Barty feels a bit less guilty for trying, which gives him license to be annoyed. Still, he doesn't react immediately:
"Regulus? He was coming?"
"He was supposed to come. Though it's not his fault that he didn't, of course. I suppose he has more important things to do…well, Barty, I wouldn't want to make him. I'm not that sort. It's perfectly fine with me, yes, if Regulus doesn't care to turn up—"
"—in the middle of the night. In pouring rain," Barty says under his breath, wiping the parchment off and stuffing it back into his pocket.
"I didn't know it was raining, Barty. If I had, perhaps I wouldn't have…but it is important…"
"Right. It's important." He takes his hand away and cocks his head, inspecting Rabastan's temple. "You called me out here for a reason?"

Rabastan nods softly, his damp skin shimmering and making Barty a little ill. "I need you to help me."
"There's a surprise." Rabastan shrinks back, whimpering, and hints of red begin to bubble up around his clammy eyelids. "What do you want me to do?" Barty asks more gently, though it might be out of self-defense (mopping up Rabastan's face once is bad enough).
"I'm going home."
Barty's face does something reflexive and unpleasant. His eyelid flickers. "You aren't! You can't possibly be—"
"It's my decision, Barty. Please don't…yes, you're right…" he mumbles. "I'm a sick masochist." (No, dear, that would be Rodolphus.) "But what else is there for me?"
Barty looks away. Swallows hard and nods. "All right. You're just going to waltz out of here. Fine. Can you walk?"
"My dear Barty," says Rabastan, almost laughing with the absurdity of it all, "if I could, would you be here?"


No, the phrase "my dear Barty" isn't intended to imply any kind of romantic relationship. Get your filthy minds out of the gutter. There's nothing here to see, so move along…

Of course it's romantic! Predatory, too.

There's something very wrong with Rabastan. Why don't you ask Bellatrix why? Or rather, don't. She'll do it to you too. And that's heinous.


Barty is certain that he's saved Rabastan before. He can't remember precisely when these circumstances might have occurred, but he knows that he's lived through them.
This is a common psychological phenomenon, generally known as deja vu (that is, "seen already"). However, feel free to interpret it as another sign of Barty's impending madness. Who can really disprove your theories, no matter how unlikely they may be? For all you know, Barty and Rabastan's relationship could be an obvious (therefore, it's your own damn fault if you miss it) metaphor for the French Revolution. If it is, no one's informed me.
Clearly, you'll have to read it through this lens from now on.
I suppose that Mr. Crouch, Senior, is Robespierre, then, if only because I can hardly expect poorly-educated, special little snowflakes to have heard of anyone else. In that case, allow me to designate Rodolphus and Bellatrix as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Perhaps they'll die.

Let's shift perspectives on the action for a moment. Imagine that we're standing in the hall of St. Mungo's, just outside Rabastan's room. The candles on the walls flicker as someone just down the hall rudely disrupts the air currents, and that someone's shadow, stretched to nightmarish proportions, flitters round a corner and projects itself on the wall in front of us. Another shadow follows, sliding against the first. We hear snippets of conversation, all of which are interesting and beyond my ability to reproduce:
"—dittany—" says a man's voice, in between stretches of burbling.
"—levels are dropping dangerously low," a woman puts in, perhaps answering him.
"Burns," says another gloomily.
The shadow play on the wall comes to an abrupt and bizarre conclusion as the door in front of us opens, slicing the shadows in half. A disheveled young boy with a gaunt, pallid face peeks out, the shadows dribbling across the warped contours of his skull. He cringes in the light, and fends off any dangers with the bag he clutches, which contains all his worldly possessions, and then darts back inside. Even though we're invisible and intangible, it's hard not to get the impression that he's seen us; but then, this is Rabastan. Perhaps he sees into other worlds after all. (He wouldn't appreciate being described as a "young boy," by the way, and would carefully and diplomatically remind us that he is, after all, seventeen. He might then go off to find Rodolphus and cry, or have hysterics, or else feebly ask that Rodolphus do something about us, please, thank you, Roddy, I don't know what I'd do without you, and of course I don't think that your wife is the Antichrist.)
Rabastan clings to Barty like a frightened toddler as the two of them step out into the hallway. Coincidentally, the Healers round the corner just a few seconds later. What lovely conflict I've built!
The Healers barely look up at first; why should they? Rabastan is just one of many, many patients. Yes, he's sickly, small, and strange-looking, but then, he's in the hospital.
Then they notice Barty, and Rabastan, feeling their sudden gaze, glares defiantly even as he shivers. That proves to be a very bad move.
Of course, they'll get out of it. The plot demands it.
One of the Healers, a redheaded man with a flask of potion in his hand, stops dead. I'll summarize his mental processes for your benefit: Visiting hours are over. What's that kid doing here? Oh, Merlin's beard, what if he's
Some boys, when caught in a situation like this, have to suppress the urge to swear. Rabastan finds himself fighting to hold his mouth closed; he can feel strands of thought rising out of his mind, and they're easy to slip into, but he must not say those things in public. Word salad tends not to impress the authorities. He's normal, sane, psychologically healthy, perfectly normal, perfectly sane, et cetera, et cetera…he's perfectly stable enough to go home. Of course. And if he's stable and healthy, he can't say all of those nasty little things that don't...don't make very much sense sometimes.
He twitches and trembles and stares up at the Healer, looking sulky and bitter, as if he already knows that he's been caught doing something Naughty.
Yes, we'll all burn, burn, and that's grand and lovely…grand and…why does it hurt? Why? I like that, though, it feels nice—but this is wrong, so wrong—no, stop, he'll find out and we'll be—what are you doing? God—no—it hurts—pretty boy, pretty boy, yes, we'll put you in and fuck you up and you will bleed.
Feel free to interpret that any way you choose. Has he (kindly gasp as you read this) been abused, or is he a filthy little liar who deserves no more than our rightful and sneering scorn? Or does he just like to tell himself stories (and stories aren't a crime)? Who can say?
"What are you doing?" asks the Healer abruptly, and Rabastan's hands fly to his chest. He clutches tightly at the cloak, pulling it around himself and hitching the wireless up underneath it, looking for all the world like a child with his security blanket. It isn't his cloak, and feels wrong, somehow, but he'll take anything to shield him from their inconvenient questions—
He's being quite childish, of course. Security is of utmost importance immediately after a Death Eater attack. Rabastan, you selfish boy.
"Nothing," Rabastan whispers, and as he says it, he hears the soft bubbling and the girlish breathiness and decides that he rather deserves to be caught after all. Do something, Barty, he thinks desperately, and stops dead; so I can't save myself? So I'm a helpless little pansy poof? Is that it? "We—we're leaving," he says, and his voice is louder but, alas, still cracked and quavering. Damn it.
The Healer, nameless, desperately unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and shortchanged by me as much as by anyone, frowns.
"Who gave you the authority to—"
Barty's mind is working far more quickly than it has any right to. Sod Rabastan, he thinks, like an ordinary teenager, whiny, pathetic Rabastan, expecting other people to solve his problems for him—in the middle of the night—
And he expects me to play along—
He thinks I can save him—
And he's
right!

Barty's mind crackles with the speed of his thoughts. He rejects lie after lie, stumbling through a forest of alibis until he hits on one that just might work. And he follows it to its logical conclusion.
"Barty Crouch wants to see him," he says in a rush, inventing wildly, "from the Ministry, mister, and I came all the way here, mister, to get him as a witness, mister—"
The Healer's eyes narrow to slits. "A witness?"
"Because of his family, mister," Barty gasps, adding a bit of wild-eyed mania to it as well (though that's all too convincing), "the Lestranges, mister, and his gran—"
Rabastan's strength fails, and he slides quietly onto the floor.
"Prove it," says the Healer, and his compatriots murmur generically behind him.
Rabastan goes cold. He imagines Barty's stunned face, and thinks, Barty, damn it, why did you have to risk everything? Why couldn't you make up something plausible?
And yet Barty doesn't seem fazed at all. Rabastan, on the floor, hears a rustle of parchment and the coos of a bureaucrat confronted with an Official Document.
Barty, Barty, Barty. Where do you get these things, lad?
He pushes a lock of unkempt hair out of his eyes and crawls to his feet. The Healer gives him a suspicious look, and he smiles back as best he can. He can feel the tics. That can't be good, can it?


They leave by broom.

Rabastan is none too pleased when he discovers this unfortunate little fact.
"You have a choice," says Barty as Rabastan snivels and moans. He's chosen to leave from an alley behind St. Mungo's, and the echoing wails hurt his ears and make him long to slap the man he did, after all, choose to rescue. "You can fly home with me, or you can crawl on your hands and knees—"
"—and catch cold."
"You're quite right," Barty snaps, "you are a coward."
Rabastan cringes. Yes, I know, Barty, but you aren't allowed to say that! You're supposed to sympathize—I'm sure that you've heard this argument before, in one of many repulsive forms. Generally it's considered to be a sign that the one making the argument is, now and forever, irrevocably, with no take-backs, marking him or herself as a whiny little twat who wants a good kick in the pants. As such, it's slightly self-defeating.
He hangs his head, staring at his bare feet—why are they bare? Didn't he have shoes at some point?
The memories he trawls through are unpleasant (why is she laughing? Why won't he help me?), and he doesn't spend a lot of time there (oh, Merlin, it hurts), but he comes back with the conclusion that (and yet he saved me) Rodolphus (damn him) swooped him off to the hospital (he picked me up as if I was nothing) barefoot and pajama-clad.
Damn it.
It might well add to his general Ophelia air if he chooses to wander, gibbering (but only half-mad, really) and shivering, barefoot and disheveled, and ready to be ravished by some poor sod who will be in for a nasty shock, down the streets of London Town in the middle of the night.
And, after all, he'll be with Barty. Barty is a clever boy, and he's quite good with a broomstick.
And it's stopped raining…

He looks around for the second broom, thinking that perhaps he can learn to fly after all and blocking unpleasant memories of first year from his mind. Barty follows his gaze, looking puzzled, and Rabastan realizes that something is very, very wrong. The cold sweat on the back of his neck almost persuades him to look up to the sky and check for rain. And Barty sees his opportunity.

Whoosh! Up they go in a swirl of robes and a tangle of pale limbs and wild eyes and banshee wails.

Somewhere in London, not too far away, a little Muggle girl shrieks and runs for her mum.
"I sawed a ghost!" howls Kathee Jenkins, brat extraordinaire, as she thunders out of her room. Halfway down the stairs, she trips over an expensive toy, guaranteed to improve brain development, and hurtles the rest of the way at a slightly faster clip. As the floor rises up to meet her, her screams slide through the Doppler Effect and out the other side. Her brain development is about to go to waste—
We'll leave the scene there, thank you very much.

They zoom, poetically enough, past the moon. Perhaps they even cast shadows on the clouds.
Rabastan can't weigh more than Barty's trunk. Thirty-six kilos? That's nothing! It's so unlikely that they'll plunge to a horrible fate, in fact, that there's no reason for me to mention the fact at all, dear readers, aside from the sad fact that I am, as we have already established, a prick.

Rabastan doesn't quite understand the mechanics of it. What an idiot. He's such a promising young man, too. Well, he was, before Lucius and Bellatrix and even Lord Voldemort himself actually looked at the boy whom they thought (or rather, assumed) would change the world.
Now Barty and Regulus are the saviors. How nice that there's a ready supply of innocent pureblood boys! Let's not think about what will happen when, inevitably, they run out!
Where was I going with that paragraph?

The wind nibbles at Rabastan's face as he clings, shivering, to Barty.

There's quite a lot of sky underneath them, and if he falls, he might have a few minutes to reflect upon his plight.

Words flow out of his mouth. He'd like to catch them and drag them back where they belong, but they're too fast, and he can barely hear them even as they slide from his frozen tongue: "God, boy, you'll get us killed, and we'll fall, freezing our little arses off, and burn up as we hit the ground, like little shooting stars from hell, and that's wonderful, isn't it? Oh, yes. Damn it. And she will get us, lads, and she'll—who wouldn't want a woman like her?

I've read Nietzsche, you know.

He had a very dashing mustache, and I think he was a wizard, really."

He catches the occasional whiff of smoke, and it stays in his nostrils and makes him cough. He can taste it, sooty and bitter, even long after the wind clears out the back of his throat when he foolishly opens his mouth.
They pass lighted squares and darkened alleys. The rooftops pave the way beneath them, overlapping like the scales of a massive fish, and Rabastan and Barty are riding the waves that crest and break over the body of that Leviathan, which will rise up to devour them at any moment—Rabastan struggles briefly for a conclusion to his metaphor, and concludes that it was a bad idea to begin with.

As soon as he's almost used to it, Barty shouts, "This is where you live, right?" and even if Rabastan could be sure of what he heard over the throbbing wind, he has absolutely no idea where he lives.

He lives in a castle in Scotland. He lives there with Spinks the silly elf and Rodolphus the still-handsome teenager. He lives there with his grandparents and the pretty pureblood girls from the village, whom he beats off with sticks. He does not live there with Bellatrix, because Rodolphus has never met Bellatrix, and no doubt dear Roddy wouldn't take a girl who wouldn't lift her wand to save him over loyal, intelligent, brave, debonair Rabastan even if he had met such a girl. And he can bring back the dead, too.

He does not live in this house. Even as he points vaguely to the rooftop, and even as Barty drops out of the sky like an angel (an angel encountering a machine gun-wielding atheist) and alights cleanly on the balcony, helping the shaking Rabastan to his feet, and even as Rabastan vomits into the street like a drunk, clutching the railing for support and vowing that he will never be such a damn fool again, he does not recognize this house. This is not his house. He does not belong here.

And he came back!

"This is your last chance," says Barty, as the damp moonlight fractures into pieces on his forehead, sliced neatly to shreds by his flight-mussed hair, and Rabastan stares, "so tell me. Why are you doing this? You know it's mental."
"Oh, it's completely mental," Rabastan whispers. "But here I am, lad, nonetheless."
Barty gives him a disgusted look.
"You're mad."

He steps neatly onto his broom and kicks off from the railing. Rabastan watches him go without a word, and, silently tapping the lock with his wand, slips inside.

He drags himself through the dark corridors, enduring the whispers of the portraits on the walls, and jumps at every creak and every sudden flicker. Every step is a bit harder; suddenly he feels very tired, very alone, and very, very scared.

Where the hell is Rodolphus?

Let's learn a word today, boys and girls. Codependency. Co-de-pen-den-see. A situation in which a person such as the adored baby brother of a serial killer is demented enough to feel that he needs to feel needed by the crazed old sod. See: cheap narrative trick. My definition isn't particularly applicable, I fear, but you may get some points if you helpfully provide it on your English test. Perhaps you'll even be paid a visit by some very nice men! (Verree-niss-men. Charming fellows who just want to help you out, or so they (ever so kindly) assure you. See: Evan Rosier and Edmund Wilkes, psychiatrists, the horrific thought of Rosier and Wilkes as psychiatrists.)

I'll spare you the ensuing panic attacks. They do get quite boring on the page, even when narrated by a charming old fuck such as myself.

And so here we are. He came back.


He decides to check up on Rodolphus and Bellatrix before he wanders off to bed. He will later curse himself for this and blame his own stupidity for everything that will happen to him. Didn't he learn from his first go-round?
Slowly, he pushes the door open. Stops. Nudges it another few inches. He thinks he hears a noise, and he drops the door, recoiling as if by doing so he can dispel whatever monster he's conjured up. And then he peeks around the door, because he's an idiot.
Something lurches in the darkness, rearing up. Rabastan's chest seizes, and he longs for his medicinal potions. He's almost due for another dose! What will he do? Something is sitting in his throat and blocking his breathing.
To his vast relief, as his eyes adjust, he recognizes Bellatrix. She stands out, pale against the dark sheets that coil around her, and he watches her twitching movements with something like awe.
Rodolphus? Oh, yes, Rodolphus. He's in there somewhere, too.
Rabastan glares defiantly into the marital lair, refusing to make the first move. Bellatrix and Rodolphus stare back at him, wondering if his first move will be funny.

Both men half-expect Bellatrix to greet Rabastan with a syrupy sneer of, "Hello, little boy," but reality falls short of their expectations, and as she unfurls herself from Rodolphus's arms (and, incidentally, exposes quite a few things that none of you, readers mine, have seen since Mummy got fed up with nursing), she rasps, "So you've come to join us, have you, in our den of sin?"
Rabastan could be wrong, but he's fairly sure that he doesn't remember saying that the Temporary Lestrange Townhouse was a den of sin. Then again, who is he to correct her? His eyes find her naked breasts, and he goggles and twitches and breaks into a sweat. He looks away, like a virgin.
She clambers across the bed, wand suddenly in hand. To the disappointment of all those who longed for dramatic tension, she's smiling.
Rabastan doesn't want her, does he?
Well, that's perfectly fine with her.
The world would be a much nicer place, and I say this on my behalf as well as hers, if fewer respectable gentlemen did.
If you miss the heavy hints now, dear readers, I really will have to question your innocence. Are you eight years old, my dear sir, and sneaking this story away from your perverted big brother's mattress? Put it back. Get the Playboys instead. The articles are much better.

Her hair dribbles over her collarbones as she moves in for the kill.
Rabastan takes a step back. He takes another step back, and is not particularly shocked to discover that he's quite good at strategic retreats. Damn it! Damn damn damn damn! She's going to—Merlin!
He means to say, in a final act of defiance, "You bitch," but "Please, Miss Bellatrix, don't—" comes slithering treacherously out of his mouth instead. Those tricky little "word" things.
Bellatrix crawls into the light, never taking her eyes or her wand away from Rabastan. She smiles in a rather unpleasant way that suggests that she's been wanting to blow him into little pieces for a very long time.
"Please don't?" she repeats, as if she didn't quite hear it and longs for him to say it again.

Meanwhile, Rodolphus feels the loss of her warm body next to his a little too deeply. Suddenly, his arms are around nothing at all, and his Bella slips so easily out of his grasp. She's an independent sort of lass. That's perfectly all right with Rodolphus, as long as she knows when to stop.
He suspects that he may even feel worse than Rabastan looks.
The light carves out little chunks of skin and bone along Rabastan's chest, and to Rodolphus's agonized eyes, his dear baby brother is not a pretty sight at all. Good God, is that a liver? Are those sores contagious?
Rodolphus Dante Lestrange, concerned brother, loving husband, violently racist serial killer, needs another drink. Preferably a strong one. Served with a cigarette and a potion that tastes of piss, which, if he's lucky, will make the pain go away.
Rodolphus, as previously established, does not understand medicine. He does not understand a great many things. He is rather scared of medicine. He is scared of almost nothing else. He is scared that Rabastan will die. He is not frightened by the prospect that Bellatrix will get it into her head to turn her wand upon either brother, because if all else fails, wands snap. So do fingers. So do necks. And Bellatrix will stay warm for a few minutes, pretty for a few days, and amazingly willing and pliant until Lucius and Rosier and Wilkes and the other bastards tear her from his loving hands.
But Rodolphus can't find the energy to do it right now. "It" being defined as anything more stressful than lying, drained, in his warm bed and watching Bella do whatever she does.

Rabastan's eyes meet Rodolphus's, and he thinks, You, Roddy, are evil.
Please note the interesting juxtaposition of the condemnation and the pet name.
He shakes his head, feeling the wand tucked beneath his chin, and takes another step away.
"This wasn't how I wanted to arrive," he whimpers.
"Pity," she says, without giving him any.
He glances away from her and squinting, sees something that makes his stomach turn. His facial muscles tug against one another.
"You're hurt, Roddy!"
Behind her, Rodolphus mutters, "Fuck, yes." It isn't particularly cathartic, but it does confirm to all present that he's alive.
All fear forgotten, Rabastan walks past Bellatrix with a perfunctory shudder. He hops into bed. Not that way, you pervert.
"Is that blood?" he whispers, caressing Rodolphus's mutilated hand. "She did this to you, didn't she?"
There are little smears of sticky gore on his fingers when he pulls them away. What a pleasant detail.
Bellatrix, crouched, animal-like, on the edge of the bed, watches them. Her face is unreadable; perhaps that's all for the best. She sees the moment of intimacy without being invited to, or feeling obligated to, join in. Such a voyeur.
"You think," she whispers, "that I don't know what you're doing?"
Rodolphus glares at her dully. "Fuck off. Where's the elf? Get her. Tell her we need the damn bandages."
Incest! she thinks, and it isn't entirely clear even to her what holds her back from dealing with the problem with two swift Avada Kedavras and Lucius's much-needed testimony in court.

She gets the bandages herself, and watches them unspool themselves and wrap around her shoulder, with a sense that they're the most beautiful things that she's ever seen. She flicks her wand again, and the loose end of the bandage tucks itself away. A gram or two of dittany might accelerate the healing process—but, then again, perhaps she won't.
There's something nicely poetic about the thought of ripping out Crouch's throat while the wound that he gave her still pulses and stings. His blood will hit her mask, dribbling down onto her throat like warm rain, and his sharp black eyes will widen in fear and pain before they glaze over and go blank.
Perhaps she'll share that thought with Rodolphus when he finishes with the boy. But who can really say? Possibly he never will lose his sick fascination with young Rabastan. Possibly—she stares—he'll break the boy into a million bloody pieces:
"I'm fucking Rabastan up," he said.
Yes. You are, aren't you, Roddy?
Or is it the other way around?

So much for familial love. So much for maternal instinct. Rabastan will shudder as the spell hits him, then go limp and lifeless in Rodolphus's arms. Rodolphus will stare, uncomprehending, and then snarl like a dog. He'll draw his own wand—no, perhaps he won't remember that it's there—and he'll attack her, roaring in pain and loss, eyes dark with fury, and he'll rip—tear—wound—and she'll have to kill him.
Not that she's jealous.
She does feel, however, that she's missed her opportunity to say something witty and biting. Silently, she hopes that he finds out that she burned his books.


Seven o' clock in the morning.

Even in July, there are rain clouds over London. Sheets of rainwater cascade down the windows of the front parlor, making them rattle and creak. No candles have been lit inside; the room is grey and dreary, while streaks of light dribble across the table before vanishing in a matter of seconds. If the weather is symbolic—and who knows? It might be—it represents the futility of anything that our "heroes" have hoped to achieve today.
Rodolphus, unfazed, sips his coffee and flicks through the Daily Prophet. The worst of his crimes are pictured on the front in artistic black-and-white.

Bellatrix has very important things to do today, on this day of futility and despair, and she downs her breakfast in seconds, pausing only to glance at the front page of the newspaper.

Oh, what an ominous headline it is. Algernon Garvenbach is mentioned. So are "atrocities." The ante has been officially raised.

She can't help but smile. Rodolphus grins back, and the effect is unnerving in the extreme: he looks ten.
They share an adorable marital moment as he touches her hand. Hang onto this one. It'll be the last one that you'll get for a while.
Rabastan scuttles in, truncating the moment considerably. Rodolphus looks up and awkwardly removes his hand, then returns to the newspaper; Bellatrix, of course, was just about to jinx him away anyway, and through her posture and expression she makes it quite plain that that never happened. At the very least, it didn't happen because of her. Rodolphus must have had her under the Imperius curse, the bastard.
"Morning," growls the bastard.
Rabastan nods awkwardly and sits down. He notices that Bellatrix has slung her traveling cloak across the back of her chair; he isn't entirely sure where she plans to go, but as long as it doesn't include him, he's perfectly satisfied.
Bellatrix greets him with a curt nod as she gets to her feet.
"You're going to the Ministry, right?" Rodolphus asks her, glancing up over the Prophet once more. "With Lucius?"
"He wouldn't change the plan, even to spite you," she spits, and, tossing the cloak over her shoulders, she leaves. The elf peers feebly around a sideboard and watches her go, shivering.
"Bitch," says Rodolphus to the closed door. "Ah, well, can't be helped. Coffee?"
"Thanks."
Silence, punctuated at odd intervals by Rabastan's labored breathing. What more is there to say? "Sorry that I just, I suspect, drove your beloved wife out of the house? Sorry about possibly wrecking your marriage?" "Sorry about being an abusive drunk? Sorry about being the entirety of your tragic backstory?" "Sorry about not following in your footsteps, brother, and joining the Death Eaters at seventeen?"
Actually, that last one has some potential. Rabastan, you sly dog, you're advancing the plot!
"Where is she going?" asks Rabastan after a while. "Or do you not know?"
"Government crap: what with last night and all. Ministry's bound to get suspicious."
Rabastan considers this as he sips his coffee.
"With Lucius Malfoy?"
"Yeah."
"I met him once," says Rabastan awkwardly. "I think that you must have been there." He dabs nervously at his lips with a napkin. "Pleasant man, actually, considering…"
Rodolphus looks up briefly and laughs.
"In comparison to the rest of our mates, right?"
"No," says Rabastan, "I wasn't going to say that, Roddy." He leaves out the part about Rosier and Wilkes sending him into the throes of madness, or possibly an extremely inaccurately written bastardization of post-traumatic stress disorder. You silly narrator, mental illness doesn't work that way!
"Damn good. Damn good." He stares off into the distance; of course, the muscles that move his eyelids are strangely missing from his skull, and he can hardly avoid staring. Rabastan stares with him, hoping that Rodolphus can't see anything that he can't. His glasses were current only a few summers ago. "If they're such nice men," Rodolphus says finally, "you want me to introduce you properly?"
"No, really, Roddy, it's fine—maybe they're busy—"
"Stubborn little fuck. Actually, I was going to see them today anyway. Might as well take you." Rabastan could swear that he's smirking. "Last time, I don't think they saw you at your best."
Rabastan is not sure what to say to this.
Damn.
Pride will get me killed. Pride is arrogance and arrogance is a grave sin against—something—and I can't have such a thing. Not at all. Not someone like me, clever and witty and possibly the second coming of Merlin. Damn. No, not damn. Fuck. There we go. That's manly and nicely crude. I like it.
Will "they" like it, I wonder?
Who the hell are they?
And they say I'm paranoid. Well, perhaps they're quite right.

Rabastan hasn't earned his reputation for paranoia quite yet. Of course, his assumption that "they" say that he's paranoid when really, "they" don't exist, really says everything that we need to know.


And there we have it. Originally, this chapter was going to include a lot more; however, I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that there's only so much that my loyal readers are willing to slog through. So actual plot will have to wait for next chapter, in which I remember that Avery exists.

Remember Avery? Neither did I. For four chapters, which works out to about six months.

If you, dear readers, review in great numbers, I might be able to churn out another chapter over the three days remaining in Winter Break. This works according to the following principles: Reviews make me happy. When I am depressed, a state that here refers to "being terminally unhappy," I mope about, play Minesweeper, and eat cookies. When I am eating cookies, I have something in my hands and, therefore, cannot type. If I cannot type, I cannot produce melodramatic fanfiction. However, if my melodramatic fanfiction garners me a large number of enthusiastic reviews, I begin to think that I may have actual talent. My ego sufficiently swelled, I can put down the cookies and type. If I think that I am an absolutely splendiferous special snowflake, I will not bother to edit what I write, because, after all, it must be absolutely marvelous if it is being written by Slytherite, the Special Snowflake. Therefore, though the overall quality of the update will go down, the word count will go up. In fact, the word count will rapidly rise into the stratosphere. If we accept Sturgeon's Law, which postulates that 90% of everything is utter crap, we can see that, with more fanfiction, there will be more fanfiction that is, amazingly, not crap. Perhaps this theoretical non-crappy fanfiction will even have Avery in it.