Bet you thought this was dead well, you thought wrong now go enjoy the new chapter :)
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Moxxie and Millie didn't speak much on the cab ride home, nor did they communicate their feelings about the night to one another. They simply sat, feeling the polluted air of Hell beat against their faces, the liberation of not being in that pompous room with Stolas and Felicius bringing a sweet release as they were all too eager to free themselves from their creepy stares of them.
Millie in particular - if Moxxie was not mistaken, he thought she had received one too many lecherous stares from Felicius. He seemed more interested in her private life than his when they weren't discussing business. The silence was only broken every once in a while when Millie barked at the cab driver that he was taking a wrong turn. With intertwined hands, Moxxie and Millie looked out the window, settling into their much-needed lack of pressure and the oddest sensation that they were part of something massive and scary.
It was weird to think that two random Imps, such as themselves, had ended up where they were. For Moxxie, it almost seemed fitting that his secrets had caught up with him, but he couldn't understand how Millie was putting it all into dimension. As they paid the cab driver that nearly got them killed twelve times, Moxxie wondered what he had signed up for and what it meant for him personally.
He was suddenly struck by the realization that it was almost certain that if James and Lily Potter had been alive, they would've frowned - no, cried - at what he had done and the side he had decided to take. But they hadn't raised him, and he wasn't one of them, and no amount of martyrdom or the great and selfless things they had done for him would ever make him not be an Imp.
Millie knew that Moxxie was particularly silent for a reason, and since she understood him so well, she knew better than to stop his ruminating, much as he had known that he couldn't interrupt her rages.
With their hands still held, they headed up quietly amidst the hustle and bustle of the streets below. Millie offered him a cup of tea, which he took, and they sat on the couch, Millie leaning against him, stroking his leg and giving him some comfort. Meanwhile, all Moxxie could think about was family.
He had always had a turbulent relationship with the very term of 'family.' Still, when his Imp parents had taken him in, he thought he had made his peace with it, that he understood what it meant, and even more so when he met Millie when he projected a future and his own form of a family with her. He had always discarded himself as an orphan to two, if not ordinary, even base people, with a maternal family that detested him and had never accepted him.
That was easy to let go of. But James and Lily Potter? Since he had learned what they were like, the great power that they had possessed, and the things that they had done to keep him safe, they weren't so easy to detach from himself.
They were like ghosts that he thought he had completely discarded and now came back to haunt him day and night. He felt a sort of resentment towards them, even though they had really done nothing to him. If anything, they had been great parents to the extent that they could. Family, family, family, the words reverberated through his brain and bounced back and forth. In the end, he didn't think of Felicius or Stolas or the literal deal with the devil he had just made, the alliances he had forged, and the falsity to which he would be submitted.
All he could think of was family: the kids that he might have with Millie, his Imp parents, the long shadows of Lily and James Potter. Family, family. He fell asleep with his teacup still steaming on the coffee table, and Millie, plagued with her own sort of overwhelmed state, sat listening as his heart rate slowed and his breaths evened out. When she had finished her cup, looking into space and thinking, thinking, thinking, she scooped Moxxie up in her arms so as not to wake him (a feat that she had always been able to do, but Moxxie was too embarrassed to let anyone know about) and carried him to bed.
Once she had gently laid him down and then cupped herself against him, they both fell asleep, plagued by their immense and ever-growing problems and yet always together, in the solace of their embrace. _ The early evening meant they both woke early and had a pleasant breakfast, even though a small bomb exploded and wrecked a downstairs neighbor's apartment. They managed to speak about the previous evening and dissect it to the best of their abilities, but there wasn't much that they could infer from the cryptic instructions that Felicius had given them.
Still, as they talked, Millie could tell that Moxxie wasn't all there, his mind rather wandering around that same concept of family, but now in a more abstract way, like something that nagged at him but that was more or less repressible. They arrived at I.M.P before Blitzo, but Loona was there, passed out on the front desk with her phone plugged in its charger and firmly clasped in her hand as if it might escape from her. A little while later, Blitzo burst in, sunglasses on, a massive cup of coffee in his hands. "Jesus. Fucking. Fuck.
I had the worst night, and I'm pretty sure my coffee has literal shit in it," he complained. "What happened, boss?" Millie asked casually as they headed to their meeting room. Blitzo didn't even bother to wake Loona up. She was in one of her comatose-like states. She would've eaten him if he tried. "Stolas was in a good mood," Blitzo huffed, sinking into a chair and huffing. "And that's bad because…" Moxxie inquired. He wondered whether the outcome of yesterday evening had had anything to do with Stolas' good mood, and he considered briefly whether he had disclosed anything to Blitzo, but from the looks of it, he hadn't. "He gets even kinkier.
Has a whole… mood. Fuck, I don't know. Gotta hand him my ass anyway since he's got the only thing keeping us in business, and now I owe him for saving us from those fucking wizards. Anyway, the important thing right now is that after our disastrous absence, we have a customer."
A glint appeared in Millie's eye. "Ooh, who are they?" She asked excitedly. It was good to get back to normal. That was, killing people. "Did you get her from the commercial?" "I can't imagine the commercial did us any favors while we were gone, Moxxie said, rolling his eyes. "You know what, you can't appreciate fine art, Moxxie. The commercial was a goddamn goldmine!" "So, did you get her from the commercial, sir?" Moxxie asked, his eyes slit but his tone still not escalating to confrontational. Blitzo hesitated. "No. Whatever. Shut the fuck up, Moxxie.
She's some… Demon. Cuckolded. I guess," Blitzo said, rubbing at his head. "She's gonna come in this morning to talk to me properly, though," he told them. They passed much of the morning debating whether the commercial had actually been effective or not and then tried to come up with a way to rouse Loona without getting themselves killed.
The discussions weren't all that effective, but by the end, Loona had woken up all by herself, stumbled over to the fridge, and chugged a beer that was there to cure her hangover. As if that would help. She was incredibly cranky, but at least she was awake to greet their customer at the front desk. Blitzo promptly took her from Loona's hands, and the others barely got a look at her.
The three milled about the main room as Blitzo talked to the woman, lounging about, Loona silencing her phone because every slight sound gave her a migraine. "I'm so excited to be back in business!" Millie exclaimed, clapping her hands. "Yeah, I guess," Moxxie said, rubbing at the back of his neck.
He was grateful for the familiarity that works implied, but he wasn't too keen to get back to actually killing people. "Geez, you sound excited," was Loona's sardonic comment, laying back on the couch. "It should be easier now. Just burn them to death with your weird magic trick." "It doesn't work like that, Loona," Moxxie said, rubbing at his temples. Loona shot him a look. "I knew you were soft, but did you get even softer?" She asked with a scoff. "Hey! Moxx ain't soft, he's just thoughtful," Millie cut in. "Thank you, Millie," Moxxie said. "Riiight,"
Loona rolled her eyes at them. "So how does the power work? "I… don't know," Moxxie admitted. "C'mon, now, baby, don't you think you might be able to channel it?" She asked, batting her eyelashes. "I'm not sure. I mean, maybe. I haven't tried." "So let's give it a shot!" Millie said with enthusiasm. It seemed that life back to assassination had revived her considerably after the weirdness of the previous evening.
She set Moxxie behind the main desk and then began rummaging through the drawers until she produced a picture of a beaming family. "Here!" She said, jogging over to Loona. "Why do we even have that?" Moxxie asked nervously. He hadn't told her everything he had been thinking about family, so why would she think twice before choosing that picture? Still, it unsettled him. "Loona, hold this up, and Moxxie, you try to shoot it," Millie indicated, ignoring his question. Loona unthinkingly held it up, still looking at her phone. "Right, now, shoot that family!" Millie cheered, returning to his side.
"Why would we shoot a family?" Moxxie asked nervously. He really didn't want to do something like that, not with the mindset he had right now - and even if he weren't having some sort of familiar crisis, he had always had a problem killing innocent people. It was probably the fact that he had been one of those people at some point that so affected him. "Well, if that's what the client wants… just, stick your hand out, or something, and have at it," she told him.
Moxxie took a deep breath and held his hand out. They were all expectant, but when a few seconds passed, and it was clear he wasn't going to do anything, Millie spoke out again. "Moxxie, what's the problem? Just try and get a little beam. A fire, or something." "I just- in what circumstances would we have to kill an innocent human family?" "It isn't about the family, even!" Loona cut in, "and you don't know that they're innocent. This kid probably likes to set dogs on fire," she said, pointing to a grinning little boy, "this girl probably gets off on bullying Australian kids online, and this guy…" she said, looking at the father as if he had personally offended her, "this guy is definitely a watcher." "Exactly!" Millie backed up, "and right now, you should focus on your power, not the hidden nasties of these humans." Due to the pressure, Moxxie sighed and closed his eyes, stretching out his hand again. They were all so entranced they failed to notice Blitzo's repetitive cry for help because of the deranged client in his office.
Moxxie tried to remember what state he had been in when he had been able to incinerate the Firebird. He remembered his connection to himself, his dissonance becoming concordant, the different parts that battled between him seeming to meld into one another.
He thought of his inner conflict and thought that maybe his greater state of mind came not from trying to piece all the pieces as if they were their own separate thing but rather as a single form with many aspects. He felt the same energy surge boiling inside him, but it stayed in his depths. He thought harder. He had been able to conjure it up because Millie had been in danger.
He tried to trick his brain into feeling that same adrenaline: he conjured the feeling of being observed, of failing, of yesterday's dinner setting his flesh crawling. He didn't need a massive beam right now, just a small ray of it, and with all these things in mind, like all the different factors one would consider while playing an instrument, he curled his fingers. Just then, Blitzo and the client burst through his office door. "Guys, I want you to meet-" but Moxxie couldn't stop himself, the beam had already formed itself in his palm, and there was nothing to do with it but let it out. He was so shocked and out of focus that the beam ended up showing as a burst of light and fire crawled from the threadbare carpets to the walls.
The office went up in flames. Needless to say, Blitzo was already in a bad mood, and he called Moxxie every name in the book. "I don't know how in the hell you're gonna pay me back for this one, Moxxie," Blitzo grumbled as Loona opened up the portal that would send them to their target. They were in a rush since Blitzo had promised prompt murder after Moxxie's little light show. "I'm sorry, sir," Moxxie said of the coins in the purse we brought back is probably enough.
Hell, probably enough to renovate the whole office or get a new one, Moxxie thought and felt a horrid, guilty pang for it, but he kept his mouth shut as they went through the portal that would take them to their target. Millie hopped in cheerily, eager to be working, and Moxxie and Blitzo filed after.
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They arrived at a homey country house, not too humble, but not rich either, which was telling of what kind of person their target would be. Millie went around to the either side to check if she could scope something out, being the more agile of the three, and Blitzo and Moxxie went around the side of the house, a rifle swinging from Blitzo's hand. They grew quieter and approached slower as they arrived to a window and peeped through it. There, Moxxie beheld a sight that made his stomach clench.
A seemingly perfect family, not unlike the one from the picture that Millie had put as a target, was sitting down to have dinner. With her bouncing blonde hair, the wife was pecking her husband on the cheek, the kids' eyes gleaming as they prepared their food. This was a sight that Moxxie was unfamiliar with. Sure, he had had his family, but they were as chaotic as one would expect an Imp family would be. He couldn't remember many occasions when they had just sat down to dinner. They certainly had never been in a situation in which they had all been tranquil, looking at one another fondly as they waited for their lovely meal that probably didn't contain plastic. His heart gave a pang. "Well, you can take this one, Moxx.
It's a piece of cake, just a simple mother who got out of the hospital recently," Blitzo commented breezily as he set up the rifle. Moxxie looked at the woman, and he thought he could see that her movements were a little stiff. What Hell had this family already gone through? It made it all the worse. "We- we're killing a family?" Moxxie asked, indignant. "What? No, Moxxie, and don't be a wuss. We're killing a mother. We're ruining a family," he said casually, handing Moxxie the gun.
Moxxie looked at it and felt that he was a monster, and there was no way he could do this with everything that was happening in his head. "B-but-" "You know what? I give you a chance, and you blow it. Why don't you blow me? I'll take this one," he said, irritated as he took the rifle and pointed it at the woman. "You know, you're lucky if I don't cut your paycheck," he said as he took aim. Moxxie watched as he set his sights on the mother and suddenly felt a pang come from his inner coat pocket. He kept the two wands there.
He didn't know why he couldn't seem to rid himself of them even though they made him feel so out of place. Still, to a certain point, they served as a reminder - they kept him in touch with what he would go back to, and he felt they were too valuable to just leave them in their apartment where, unfortunately, they could get robbed at any time. As he watched the woman's last moments, one of the wands seemed to pull at his heartstrings, and suddenly the woman's hair turned from bouncy blonde to straight ginger, and her eyes… they were his own, the ones that he rarely saw in the reflection when he was in his human form.
It was Lily Potter, in the flesh, he knew. He saw Blitzo's finger go to the trigger, curl up… "No!" Moxxie exclaimed as Blitzo was about to shoot his mother. The rifle went off, but it hit the wall behind the family, and when it failed to shoot the woman, her figure changed back, and she was the same blonde, voluptuous woman she had been before. The family exclaimed. "What was that, Ralphie?" The woman said, seeming utterly shocked.
Her accent was thickly southern, unlike what his mother's would've been. "I don't know, Martha, but whatever it is, they're gonna be tomorrow night's dinner," he said as he suddenly pulled out a shotgun. Suddenly, the woman's face morphed entirely and turned demonic. This was definitely not his mother. She chugged the wine glass that sat on the table, smashed it on the ground, and pulled out her own shotgun, seemingly out of nowhere. Moxxie couldn't believe his eyes. "Alright, kids, guns out!" She called out, looking ravenous. The kids' faces, too, morphed into ones of sadism and malice, and they, too, had their own guns out in a pinch. This was certainly not the family that he had seen before.
What the Hell had he been thinking? That woman was certainly not his mother, and now debatably, the creepiest family ever had their guns out and a thirst for blood. Moxxie and Blitzo cowered below the window. "What the fuck was that, Moxxie?!" Blitzo half-bellowed, half-whispered. "I'm so sorry, I- I thought that that was- I thought that they were innocent and the woman-" "Get a grip, Moxxie!" Blitzo yelled, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him, "no one is innocent! You're already a parasite leeching off of your mother's tits from the moment you're born.
Now get a grip, you baby-dick prick!" At that moment, a shot went right through the wall they had been huddling against, a tear forming in Blitzo's coat. "Shit, a new hole!" He exclaimed. "Maybe Stolas will like it," Moxxie said meekly as they scattered. "Shut the fuck up, Moxxie!" He bellowed as gunshots went off around them, and they all leaped out of the way.
Moxxie was the first to be grabbed in the chaos, and then there was darkness. Moxxie awoke not two minutes later, completely strapped to a chair in what appeared to be a torture dungeon, the quality of which he hadn't even seen in Hell. As he came to before he noticed all the particularly unsavory decoration, he saw the kids standing before him, murder in their eyes. "Well, hello, little ones," he said, "aren't you… cute?" But he didn't really mean it. The two children, though small and, by first appearance, unmeaning, had the sort of evil in their eyes that was unmistakable. The boy, squat and chubby, reminded him a little too much of Dudley.
They spoke, and their weird, cultish voices and terrible appearance made him piece it all together. "It's nice to have a new toy to play with," they chanted, and the worst part of it was that though there was perverse happiness in their tone, it seemed like something almost… habitual. Moxxie looked around him and draped on the walls; there were pelts hanging. There were ominous writings etched onto them, and blood splatters covered the walls so completely that there was barely any bare wall left.
If he had any doubt left that these people were murderers, the faces of men and women displayed and dried like those of hunted animals mounted on a wall only confirmed it a second later. He then looked right before him, just in front of the children, to the table where he was sitting. There was propped a creature, an apple in its mouth. The flesh was cooked to a golden crisp, and Moxxie had no doubt that this was the meat the mother had been so lovingly serving at dinner. Moxxie looked back at the horror-movie children. "Oh, crumbs," he uttered, beginning to struggle wildly against his restraints.
They didn't give. He tried to summon his power, but he was so groggy from the knock on the head that had slept him out before that he couldn't focus or even remember what kind of state he had to reach to summon the beam. He still struggled wildly as the children crept up behind him, tools like those of a surgeon in their small hands. It was proportionate and yet a horrible image.
A light went on beyond one of the windows. "Millie!" Moxxie exclaimed, realizing that Millie had had to face their parents if he had been landed and consequently subdued by the children. The girl raised the scalpel ever so slightly, but the thought of Millie sent a jolt of wakefulness and panic through him that cleared his mind. He remembered the pseudo-enlightened state he had to reach, but now he didn't have the time to accomplish it. Still, the sense of alertness that came from Millie's imminent danger was enough, apparently, and he was able to tap into his power far quicker than he ever had.
It was enough to burn away his restraints and blind the children as he set the power loose all around him. He leaped on them, knocked the small girl out - without even the slightest hesitation, now - and chucked the boy out of the window, grabbing the rifle that the kids had left strewn on the floor before sprinting out of the window himself, feeling more like Moxxie than he ever had, despite having used his 'Harry' power. He felt vibrant and prepared, and he wondered whether that buzz didn't also come from his power, but there was no time to dwell on it, and he could only hope that he wasn't too late to help Millie.
He ran to where he heard the sounds of maniacal cackling, deep into the woods where the house was situated, the moonlight on his back and the sounds of the woods crackling all around him, as if the world was made up of electricity, and he was, too. Thankfully, the distance was not a big one to cover, and he soon came upon a clearing where Blitzo and Millie were tied up against a tree, a fire burning around him. Had the two other idiots thought that they could kill them with fire? They might have been murderous, but they were certainly dumbasses.
He trotted up just as Blitzo kindly helped the mother discover that fire wouldn't hurt them, but gunshots would. The woman took aim, but Moxxie was quicker. Now, there was no hesitation. No pang came from either of the wands, and the person he had to kill was just some crazy southern belle and not his mother.
He squatted in a second and put a bullet through her head before she could pull the trigger. "Moxxie!" Millie squealed as he ran up to her and began untying the two of them. "You're definitely not getting your paycheck for this one, Moxxie," Blitzo grumbled as he fell to the ground, untied. Moxxie was unbothered, not only because Millie had leaped into his arms and put her face against his, thankfully, but also because the money would never be an issue again. He felt an uncommon elatedness - the display of his power and saving Millie had him in the clouds. Moxxie went over to help Blitzo get up. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what came over me.
I compromised the mission and put us all in danger, and it won't happen again," he vowed. Surprisingly, Blitzo pulled him into a hug. "Apology accepted!" He exclaimed, letting Millie hear, but when he was close, he whispered into his ear. "But if you ever pull a stunt like this again, I don't care whether you're Harry Potter, Gandhi, or Britney Spears herself, I will fuck you and your dead mother - Alrighty!" He said, pulling apart and knocking Moxxie down a bit from his elevated state. "Job well done!" Blitzo said, pulling out his phone to call Loona. "Time to get back." "Uh, yeah, sir, I just need to get something I left back at the house," Moxxie said nervously. "Yeah, whatever, just hurry back," Blitzo told him.
Moxxie ran back to the house, and since entering through the front door felt a little weird, so he jumped through the broken window to find the father and two devilish kids huddling together over shattered pieces of glass. And yet the image didn't move him - he was in a strange, exalted state, and all he could think of was badly he hated this family, this family that had seemed so loving and definitely could be, with all the benefits that they had undoubtedly had in life.
They could've been a normal, happy family. He felt that they had wronged him, somehow, and it wasn't just because they had put him and Millie in terrible danger, but because he felt that they had something beautiful just in their reach and had decided to become terrible people instead.
It drove him crazy that they would always have something he didn't, yet they had carelessly thrown it away. They deserved worse than they had gotten, and death was also too good for them. Moxxie felt the pang of a wand, and now he was sure it was that of Voldemort's, but it wasn't giving him images or making him weak, it was making him feel powerful. He cocked his gun at the craving figures. "Don't move," he commanded, feeling a surge of immense pleasure.
He couldn't even stop to think whether what he was doing was right or not, he was just acting like he wanted to act. Like he could act. These people didn't know what he was. The father chuckled at him, further pitching him into his black state of rage. "And what are you gonna do, little guy? Kill us?"
He asked, and it was as if he had said what Moxxie had thought. Murder was too good for them, too redemptive. "I should. You people are monsters - you had everything. You could be good, instead, you choose to be complete assholes, and… this happened!" Moxxie screamed at them, but as he did, he saw in their beady, lifeless eyes that they would never understand. "Murder is too good for you," he hissed, and with one hand still pointing at them with a gun, he fished in his coat pocket for the wands. Despite the pull of the sleek one that Ollivander had given him, he still had enough sense not to touch it and instead pulled out the stolen one. He wasn't sure that what he wanted to do would work - after all, he had never even practiced that spell, and the wand didn't belong to him. But he would make it work.
He could summon all the power that he had not only as a wizard but as an Imp and do what he wanted to do, and he felt that he could. Before the three horrid people could laugh at him, he said a single word, pointing at the father. "Imperio." Immediately, the man's angry and loathsome look glazed over, and he took on the appearance of a blank slate. Moxxie was suddenly hit by the realization that this was a forbidden curse and that that was certainly for a reason.
He felt the wrongness of it, so unlike any other spell, he had ever done. But it was too late now. "You will call the authorities and turn you and your children in. You will confess to every single crime you have ever committed and make sure that you're locked away for life," he commanded, his wand still pointed at the man. He was unsure whether he would actually do it, but with that same doll-like look, he stood up and went to the phone in the kitchen.
When he heard the man talking to the police, he waited until he fully incriminated himself, then leaped out the window. Surely the Imperius curse wouldn't last long enough for the man to do everything that Moxxie had told him to do, but he thought it would be enough. Without lingering or looking back at the children, now unable to, he leaped back out of the window and went to go find Millie.
Now, the night air didn't seem so ecstatic but had taken on a dead quality, and Moxxie could feel a sort of dread building up within him. Something terrible had taken place, he was sure, but he didn't know exactly what, and he didn't know whether it had to do with how he had jinxed the man, despite the fact that it had been for a good reason.
He returned with his shoulders hunched, the portal open and waiting for him. "There he is - have a good wank-off session, Moxxie?" Blitzo teased, though he was undoubtedly in a good mood. Millie was looking at him as if he were a hero. He almost felt sickened by it. When Moxxie didn't reply, dejected as he was, Blitzo poked him. "Look, I don't care where you come in the living world, as long as you come to your job on time. Alright, see you at the office," he said, leaping into the portal.
Millie moved towards Moxxie, concern tinting her loving gaze. "You doing alright, Moxxie?" She asked, though she still didn't have reasons enough to suspect the emotional turmoil that was taking place inside him. "Yeah, just tired, I guess," he responded, and that wasn't a lie. Millie smiled. "You have a good heart, Moxx," she told him, and Moxxie couldn't help but doubt her.