Otherwise known as: How Luna tore apart the fabric of reality so that her friends could get decently laid, and accidentally saved the world in the process.
A/N: Welcome to Chapter Thirty-Seven! I know it's short, really fricken' short, but there's an explanation! It needs to stand alone. Please pay attention to the warnings. That's all.
Enjoy!
Love always,
Eli x
Disclaimer: I do not own the works herein, all characters from the Harry Potter Universe belong to JK Rowling, and all characters, storylines, situations, plots and the like do not belong to me. I make no money from this work.
Warnings: Rated M for situations, swearing, violence... The whole lot, basically. This particular chapter has descriptive parts about insanity and slow, natural deaths, as well as physical abuse and arson.
Iacta Alea Est
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was nearing dawn, the world outside of the house still living in peaceful slumber, the darkness like a comforting blanket. Grimmauld Place shivered and groaned, but stood proud even after the onslaught it had experienced when the Dark Wizards had smashed their way through its formidable wards. There was a sense that the visitors were unwelcome, seeming to vibrate from the very walls, but it was not malicious nor dangerous, so they ignored it.
They were congregated in the Lady's Parlour at the front of the house, where the Dark Lord himself had brought them. The lady of the house was there, curled in an armchair. She didn't flinch when they'd broken in, only staring at them dolefully for the wilful destruction of her property. Walburga Black didn't do much at all, nowadays, sick as she was. Nobody knew which had come first, the insanity or the deterioration, but all were aware that Walburga was worse than useless now.
That did not prevent the Dark Lord from questioning her, however.
"What do you mean, 'he's gone'?" Lord Voldemort asked in a silky tone. Walburga turned her head to look at him, a maniacal smile fitted onto her face, a face so stiff from years of disapproval that the flesh stretched grotesquely over her skin; a horror. Where had her looks gone, Severus idly wondered. What happened to the proud woman he'd met seven years ago, so handsome and strong?
"Gone." She reiterated, her voice trembling with supressed… something. "Gone, gone, gone. They're all gone." She threw her head back, cackling to the ceiling. "The house of Black, desolate and crumbling. There's only Kreacher and I left now!"
The Dark Lord let out a hiss of anger. "Where?"
"Who knows?" Walburga's dim, lifeless eyes rolled in their sockets. She was dying. It was clear from the pallor of her skin, the loss of weight; she sat before them skeleton-like, flesh dripping off of her bones as though it were melting away before their very eyes. "Killed, probably. That – that – Dumbledore. He always hated us."
"He – is – not – dead," The Dark Lord gritted out, glaring at Walburga with disgust. They had been contemporaries, Severus remembered idly. She was only a year older than him. And yet, here Walburga sat, shrivelling to dust, while Riddle was more beautiful and powerful than ever. It was odd how things worked out. "I would know if he were dead."
"So would I," she replied, nodding sagely, bone grating against bone disturbing the stillness of the air. "And he is dead. Gone. I can feel it, here." She lay a spindly hand against one withered breast, the rings she wore obscene in their sumptuous wealth when she held them against her desiccated body.
"HE IS NOT DEAD!" The Dark Lord roared, leaning close to the woman so that his spittle flecked her face. She did not flinch, gazing obstinately into his face – or what would have been obstinate, were she not so terribly vague. "He is hiding from me," he whispered, his face only an inch from hers, their noses almost touching. "You will tell me where he is, hag, before I burn your precious house down around your ears!"
Another tinny laugh was released from her mouth, her eyes fixed on his chin as though it were awfully interesting. Severus fought down a chill. She was insane – entirely and completely. There was nothing of the once-formidable matriarch left in this shell, only a spirit with similar mannerisms and a familiar face. Empty, he thought her, and tried to battle back the nausea she elicited. He was here because the Dark Lord wished him to see what would happen if he were found to be harbouring Regulus. His job was to stand back and watch, never moving, no matter what he deigned to do to Walburga. She was his third visit this day – Severus had come first, as Regulus's closest friend. The Dark Lord had kindly fixed him up after his own 'questioning' in order to allow him to observe the other interrogations. Then, he had visited Lucius, who now laid at home overcoming the effects of the Dark Lord's Cruciatus.
It didn't look like Walburga Black would be surviving this encounter.
"My sons are dead," she murmured softly. "All gone."
The Dark Lord did not give her another opportunity to defy him.
As they turned to admire the flames from the park opposite the house, the Dark Lord spoke again. "We must return to Malfoy Manor," he drawled, a smirk playing at his lips when screams began to emerge from the neighbouring muggle residences.
Bellatrix Lestrange, stood at the front of the group, conducting the flames with her wand, scowled fiercely. "Why, my Lord?" Her voice, Severus could have told her, was not compliant enough. Not trusting enough. He would not take it in the spirit it was meant – curiosity, to the Dark Lord, was defiance.
Predictably, He reached out and grabbed a hunk of her hair, yanking backwards until she stumbled and fell into the mud at his feet. "You think to question me?" his voice remained level, almost pleasant.
"No, my Lord, I apologise, my Lord," Bellatrix grovelled, not moving from the mud, her eyes peering up at the Dark Lord with slavish devotion. Severus, not wishing to watch her display, turned his attention to the fire. 12 Grimmauld Place had been consumed, a darkened husk remaining as the flames spread through neighbouring houses in search of fuel. He tried not to consider Walburga Black, her corpse the human version of the house, blackened and singed, the fire feeding off of her flesh until all that was left was her diminutive frame.
Severus often wondered at exactly which point he became disenchanted with the Dark Lord's cause. Perhaps it had been then, as he watched the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black turn to ashes, while Lord Voldemort watched on in apparent victory. There had been near a thousand years of history kept in that house. If the walls could talk, they would have told stories of the many great wizards who had lived in those halls, Dark and Light alike. Artefacts the like of which Voldemort, with his lack of true magical and cultural knowledge, would never appreciate but many scholars would kill for had been destroyed in that fire. The pureblood tradition, so proudly upheld by members of the House of Black, had been destroyed.
How could one follow a leader who toes the line of the pureblood dichotomy by day while destroying their history, their people, their culture and their beliefs by night?
If many of his followers had not been insane, they also would have left at the first sign of any such atrocity. Sadly, there were too many like Bellatrix – fanatics who would lay their wands at the feet of any man who would allow their bloodlust to slip its leash.
"You are forgiven, my pet," the Dark Lord hummed, still admiring his handiwork.
His lips tipped up at the corner as he tilted his face to the sky, revelling in the screams of muggles as they flooded the streets, mothers carrying newborns into the cold, dark night and watching their worlds burn down, university students gawping in half-drunk, half-hungover shock as their flats are gutted by that most volatile of elements.
The Dark Lord took all of this in with an air of complete satisfaction, his fingers flicking as he locked the occasional door and watched the fallout from it as the people trapped inside trampled one another to reach windows which blew outwards in lethal shards of glass from the heat.
Eventually, he turned back to them all, the line which consisted of Severus, Mulciber and Rabastan Lestrange, stood silently watching the destruction. Hiding their true thoughts, their screaming rejection of the scene they had just witnessed, behind thick Occlumentic walls. "To Malfoy Manor," he repeated, a terrifying grin spread over a face that seemed even brighter than it had before all of the killing, as though the premature taking of someone's life rejuvenated him somehow. "I find myself in need of a House-Elf."
A/N: My Muse, this morning: "Gosh, Eli, d'ya know what would be really fun? BURNING SHIT DOWN"