Prompt 14 - creepy
A/N: thank you, Anna Fay, for giving me the inspiration I needed to finish this. I'd still be stuck if it weren't for her help with this.
One thing that Scabior and Draconius had in common was that they didn't like spiders. Neither one of them liked finding one of the tiny arachnids in the house, but for Draconius it was a problem because she had a genuine fear of spiders, as well as centipedes and millipedes. Wherever a spider went scurrying across the floor, Draconius would scream and run to her husband, telling him to hurry up and kill it before it got away. Their daughter would then watch as Scabior chased the spider through the house with a shoe, trying his best to squash the unfortunate insect.
Melody was the only person in the house who liked spiders, as well as lizards and frogs. Sometimes she would go outside and catch lizards and spiders, then bring them inside and make pets out of them. Which was fine as long as she kept her pets a secret. But then one day her pet spider escaped from his container and went running off through the house.
Loud thumps could be heard throughout the house as Scabior kept trying to hit the spider, missed, and ended up bringing his shoe down on the hardwood floor.
"Dad! What are you doing?" Melody cried, running behind her father as she tried to shove him out of the way, catch the spider and release it outside. And all the while her mother was panicking and had leapt up onto the couch to get away from the spider.
Another time Scabior and his men had caught a pair of Hogwarts truants that had, unbeknownst to him, stuffed their pockets with Creepy Crawlies from the Weasley twins' joke shop. The boys unleashed a barrage of centipedes and spiders, and Scabior was surprised when a few of his men actually screamed and ran, thinking the insects were real.
Jeremy ran and climbed the nearest tree when a foot long centipede went running towards him. Silis yanked his pants off and ran screaming into the woods because a swarm of hairy tarantulas had started crawling up his legs. Even Morvin hesitated before going after their targets to try and restrain them. Greyback and Ranca were the only ones who weren't bothered by the Creepy Crawlies, and pursued their targets into the woods regardless of the hoard of fake insects at their feet.
Scabior tried ordering his men to come back, but Jeremy was scared stiff halfway up a tree, and Silis was sprinting across the woods in his underwear. The head Snatcher looked back at the hideous Creepy Crawlies that went skittering across the forest floor. The sight of all those nasty insects made his skin crawl, even though he was pretty sure they were fake. He couldn't stand looking at them, and tried to detour around the oversized bugs as he followed Greyback and Ranca into the woods.
When he returned home later that evening, Scabior told his wife about how one of their targets had managed to escape by scaring off half his men with Creepy Crawlies. Melody was listening to their conversation, and when she heard the part about Silis ripping his pants off and running into the woods, an idea came to her, and a devilish smile spread across her face.
That night when her parents were asleep, Melody snuck into her parents bedroom with a packet of Creepy Crawlies tucked in her pocket. She lined the inside of her father's jacket with them, then quietly crept back to her bedroom.
A short while later, Draconius was awoken by the sound of her husband screaming when he put on his jacket and discovered it was full of wriggling, crawling insects. They were all over him, crawling across his chest and down his arms.
Melody rolled on the floor, laughing as she heard her father's screams from down the hall. This was revenge for Scabior not letting her keep anymore spiders as pets.