Horrors equals Spiders
House: Hufflepuff
Category: Drabble
Prompt: Spiders
Words: 453
Thank you Blue for your expert beta advice!
Spiders were not very popular with people. They have eight long legs, lots of eyes, and were creepy looking. Lots of people hated them, quite a few people felt sorry for them; but there was a very small number who liked them. Padma Patil was one of those very few people.
Padma liked spiders; they were peaceful creatures in her opinion, and they liked the dark, like Padma. Whenever a spider came into the house, Padma was the one who put the spider out because Parvati hated them. If Padma didn't do that, the poor creature would get killed by one of her parents.
In their house at least, there seemed to be more spiders and more bigger spiders; around Halloween. Padma's parents searched high and low for a reason for this, but they never found one. It was very odd.
One Halloween after Padma finished school, she was cleaning out the house. Parvati had moved out, (for several reasons, but the spiders were definitely one of them) and Padma's parents were travelling around. Despite all the happy memories,Padma didn't want to live there so they decided to sell the place.
A week after it went on the Market, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, bought it. So now, Padma had a few weeks to clean it before she had to be out of there.
As Padma cleaned the basement, she noted there were a lot of cobwebs. As she cleaned away another web, Padma apologised, "Sorry, Spiders!"
Then Padma saw a trail of spiders going through a small hole in the wall. Finding this odd, Padma went over to investigate. As she touched the wall, it collapsed- which gave the spiders and Padma a terrible fright.
But, because of the wall collapsing, a new room was revealed. In the middle of this new room, was a box, and the box was letting out a green glow. Padma noted that the spiders were coming out of there. Padma went up to examine the box.
After a while, she decided someone had done a ritual so that on every Halloween, hundreds of spider eggs, which magic had created the week before, would hatch. Padma found this odd, but then a thought dawned on her! Because of Padma selling the house, she would have to destroy it because Harry Potter probably didn't want all these spiders.
"Sorry, I am afraid I have to do this," Padma whispered, pulling her wand out. She pointed it at the box and whispered the exploding charm. The explosion blew the box up, destroyed the eggs and the ritual, (so it couldn't happen again) but the explosion sent Padma flying against a wall.
Then, a fourteen-year-old Padma sat upright in bed.