School: Ilvermorny
Year: 3
Theme: Write about the lengths someone would go to to achieve their goals.
Mandatory Prompt: [animal] moth
Additional Prompt(s): [physical appearance] A jagged scar
Special Rule: A single room/area
WordCount: 1100
AU tag/explanation: A little bit of torture and violence, mentions of past self-harm
Moths dancing in the light
The room is filled with moths, most a ghostly white, and he closes his eyes as if begging the heavens that he could be anywhere but here.
He doesn't know how she does it. He never wants to know. He has tortured, he has killed, but never has he intentionally stepped into the supposed sanctuary of someone's dreams.
She has changed the landscape of his dreams. He sees the same room every time he allows himself to slumber. The soft yellow walls of a nursery with a toddler bed in the corner and a box of toys spilling onto the floor.
However, it isn't the wide-eyed toddler in the playpen that haunts his dreams but rather the woman, with jagged scars covering her wrists, who sits on the rocking chair.
She conjures moths, large fuzzy things that leave trails of dust. He closes his eyes and tries so hard to change the landscape of the dream, to repaint the walls or at the very least, have her mouth taped. She tuts at the gesture and instead flicks her scarred wrists in the vague direction of the wireless.
The sound of music, eleven years out of date fills the nursery. It's a Muggle station that he didn't know still existed before these dreams had started to haunt him.
"Can you clean up?" he asks, pointing to the dead moths on the floor. He is terrified of them, unnaturally so, and she takes great pleasure in that discomfort.
"No magic word?" she taunts, conjuring another moth. This one has dark wings and green markings; he can see the woman's face soften as it flutters towards the child who, for a minute, is enraptured by its movement. The child stretches out to grab it and crushes it between its fingertips, giggling with joy as the soft flesh explodes within their fingers.
"I'm begging, let me go! Have you not tortured me enough?"
They do this song and dance, every time he closes his eyes.
"Of course not, you killed me and James and sent my baby to a loveless home. This is atonement, my dear." She is too young to be calling him hers, but they have been together, playing this duet for eleven years; he doesn't have the energy to fight against her anymore.
She scares him, surrounded by all the things one would assume useful for a young mother. At first, it was the fact that she held on so tightly to that image of motherhood, that made him underestimate her. Now he knows better, for as long as he is alive (in whatever shape that takes) and there are moths in the world, Lily has vowed to torture him.
She clears her throat, startling him from his thoughts. She is annoying like that, flaunting her crude self-inflicted scars. They cover her wrists and the top of her thighs. Most people Voldemort had known from his time at the orphanage had made their cuts neatly with thin razor blades, hiding them with long clothes to cover their shame.
Lily doesn't though; she stands up to reach for her baby. She kisses the top of his head, and he sees the veins under her scars flex and the strain.
"I wonder what he is like now, my Harry."
Voldemort bites his tongue. He does not tell her that Harry shows all the classic signs of being abused. He refuses to let her know that he has put a magical child through that. As if sensing that he is keeping something away from her, she turns to look at him.
"Come here!"
The moths that had gently been resting on any spare surface grow agitated as if they know he is lying to her.
She shifts, contemplating for a moment. Voldemort gulps, for that is never a good sign. She hates him, but she hates it, even more, when he withholds information from her.
She puts Harry down and turns on a mobile filled with fluttering moths. Harry makes a noise of discontent. This version of the child is a far cry from what Voldemort has seen. But he cannot let this demon who is privy to his dreamland know this.
She scratches her scars, and the moths rise. With a tilt of her head, they swarm towards him and he screams. He runs towards the door, pounding his hands against it. The door doesn't open. It never does, but he still tries to anyway. There is an open window in the dreamscape today. Through the flutter and dust of moths, he sees it.
He tries to reach for the window, but there are moths everywhere. Their little feet are under his shirt, flooding his mouth and ears. None of the frantic moving and pacing hides Lily's laughter. The sound is a high cackle more fit for a jackal than a human.
"Will you talk?" She sits on the edge of her rocking chair, gently swaying back and forth. "I know you have a body now." She sounds a little wistful at that.
"You are dead," he chokes out, spitting out moth wings and shuddering as globs of spit mixed with dead moths leave his mouth.
"True, but you did this. You owe me, and who knows, I might even let you go for one night if you tell me."
Voldemort closed his eyes at the offer. It sounded too good to be true. One night of sleep, glorious sleep with no moths finding its way into his robe pockets or watching her flaunt her scars to remind him that she is his living nightmare.
He clears his throat. "Do you promise?" he begs.
"I am only but a figment of your imagination."
He scoffs at that. When he was young and hopeful about magic, he had never believed in monsters underneath the bed. Then Lily came, and she was worse than any monster he could have ever imagined.
She wore her scars as a badge of honour. As if to scream at him that she had survived being her own worst nightmare and that there is nothing he could do that would hurt her more than how she had already hurt herself. She had cursed him to be tied to her, had exploited his fear of moths and brought the room that had made him mortal into every one of his dreams for eleven years.
He took a deep breath, looking at her as he leans on the only spot against the wall that is free of moths. "He looks like his father, but his eyes, they are all yours," he begins.
