"What are you drinking?"
Milenko's eyes peered over the spine of his ancient tone to where, much to his amusement, Luna was peering up at him; his position being lounged on a cushion of air six feet off the topmost surface of the tables in the middle of the Great Hall. While many were more than happy to leave him be, Luna was not and he knew specifically why. During his guided, not to mention protected, tour of the Dark Carnival she'd been too happy to answer any and all questions he asked her. Being a True afforded him a seemingly instant trusted status, something he thought foolish but something he could use to his advantage. "Blood. Human blood. Female. Virgin. Fifteen years old, murdered in the last riot that broke out in Louisiana prior to the Carnivals abrupt departure."
Horrified gasps rose around the hall, none more so than the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables.
"Shame too, a few more years and her blood would have matured like a fine wine. Alas, it's barely sweeter than a cherry cream filled candy" Milenko lamented with a sigh. "Why do you ask Moon Child?"
Luna tilted her head slightly, not unlike a curious animal, as if considering the question. "Curiosity I suppose. Very few liquids have the red hue. Not to mention the iron rich smell" she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders. "Why call me Moon Child? I am not blessed by the Praetor or his mate and neither am I one of the Morrigan's Chosen."
Milenko smiled a thin lipped smirk as he readjusted his text. "The Praetor is a joke, his mate not so much, and if you were blessed by the Morrigan you would have been executed by your sham Ministry the moment they found out." His answer came in a snarky toned scoff. "Your attitude and nature lends itself to the Changelings and the Fair Folk. Reclusive kin of the night who dance by the light of the moon. Of course, there are other reasons related to our conversation while I led you around the Carnival grounds. Surely you remember that enlightening little talk?" he asked rhetorically.
Rosalind's eyebrows furrowed while the students around her, being the Ravenclaws that they were, cast subtle charms to let them listen in. For the life of her she couldn't understand why Luna of all people was so seemingly unfazed by the obvious wrongness of Milenko. A moment later she had to amend her thought as next to nothing seemed to ever faze Luna. Ever.
"Of course I remember. Do you think me a cretin?" Luna asked, genuinely offended now. "It's not like there's anything wrong me. By comparison standards anyways."
Rosalind couldn't help herself and had to add her nosy two cents in. "Compared to who Luna?" she asked.
Luna looked at Rosalind with a blank expression and weighing the scales, metaphorically speaking of course, of telling the redhead the truth versus what she probably expected to hear. She opted to go with the former. "Like your narrow minded, short sighted parents for starters" she said bluntly.
Milenko snorted in amusement as the emerald eyed redhead sputtered indignantly. "Let the poisoned think as they do Moon Child. If they suckle at the teat of their poisoners for too long it's only wasted breath attempting to try explaining anything to them" he said before cancelling the spell that let him hover over the table on thin air and fall.
Several kids scrambled to get out of the way of the inevitable scattered foodstuffs and broken plates but gasped as the body seemed to melt into nothingness like a shadow in light as it touched the very tip of a standing carving knife stuck into a turkey.
"Where'd he go?!"
"Dark Magic!"
The bleating of the ignorant made Luna's mood darken instantly. "Shut up! Just because Dumbledore and the Ministry calls anything that doesn't fit their definition of light magic does not make anything Dark Magic!" she snapped, her tone shutting up everyone around her as their jaws went slack. Her patience was legendarily high, one might say near limitless, but that patience was severely tested as of late with the way the Headmaster and the Potters- sans Rosalind for reasons Luna had yet to ascertain- had been trying to entrap Milenko. It wasn't that she assumed the sorcerer incapable of getting himself out of any sticky situation, he was a centuries old sorcerer with more arcane knowledge than the Headmaster and the Potter Lord & Lady combined, but a part of her was rubbed the wrong way at the mere idea the sorcerer might meet an unfavorable fate. "The magic he used is called Phasing and it's a widely used elemental travel-magic by the main magical countries the globe over from the Americas and Europe proper all the way to the Asiatics. It's the same as Apparition without the Ministry of Magic or its equivalent being able to extort money from you for a license to use travel magic." Stabbing her knife into the table, a rather violent stabbing motion that was another shock to those around her, she left the hall in a huff.
Up at the staff table James Potter watched the blonde Ravenclaw storm out of the hall. While the young girl was correct about the magics name and it being a widely used- outside of Britain that is- form travel-magic, she was wrong about one thing. The roots of Phasing were based in combat orientated elemental magic. If one were so inclined to dig through tomes upon tomes, they'd find the history of the elemental magic was steeped in blood and death during times of war. "We should keep an eye on her. For Rose's sake" he said with a sideward glance to his wife Lily, the newly elected Muggle Studies Professor.
"I was thinking the same thing" Lily said while scribbling something down on scrap of parchment at a furious pace. Between the formulae and runic symbols being scribbled at breakneck speed her mind was working a mile a second trying to devise a ritual or spell that would purify her eldest child's body of the malefic presence inhabiting it. There was no way her baby boy's soul was devoured by a monster and gone forever! She refused to believe that!
Situated within his tent Milenko stroked his chin with silent thought. He'd thought the attempts to entrap him were rather weak considering all he'd done so far. The biggest thing was his murdering the half-breed without so much as blinking. Murder was something he had perfected over the near millenia he'd been alive but the half-breed had been important to the white haired Merlin wannabe. Or so he thought at least. The moronic waste of flesh was dull but his size and muscle mass would have leant the man as a physical asset in confrontation. "Then there are the failures" he muttered to himself as a flick of his fingers summoned a bottle of 1926 single malt scotch whiskey to his himself.
Oh the Potter patriarch and matriarch, they were quick becoming pains in his side. He had anticipated they'd become thorns to his movements from the moment Luna had filled him in on just what the pair had been up to. First there was the reward offer circulated amongst the Gryffindors, 'red wearing imbeciles' had been Luna's succinct description of the headstrong young people, that had almost the entirety of their quidditch team try to stun him. They failed tremendously though the fact that the three girls he heard referred to as The Flying Foxes didn't attempt it. Perhaps there was a microscopic semblance of intelligence in the castle beyond Luna.
A snort left him as he dismissed the foolish notion and took back a tumbler full of the scotch down in one go. "Inferior wastes of magics don't have any sort of intelligence." Pouring another tumbler he opened one of his many portals, thank all Black Magic Sources he had the foresight to unload all the tomes in his possession to his tent before killing his last host and taking over the brat that was Harry Potter & resealing them in the pocket dimension spell he learned from the Shangri-La masters, to extract the Parseltongue Grimoire of Salazar Slytherin. It'd been a pain in the ass to acquire given his numerous attempts to murder the bastard when the witch hunts were commonplace but so worth it end when he stood over the mans corpse with possession of his treasured Grimoire. Much more so when he discovered that his new body host was a parselmouth therefore making him able to utilize the magics trapped inside. "How to best torture male muggles... How torture muggle children without breaking their minds completely... Boring! Lucifer's tiny amoeba sized dick, this is what Salazar Slytherin was so keen to protect? I've seen better magics out of a beginning Voodoo Priest than this shit!"
Outside of the tent where the mage was lamenting idiotic excuses for sorcerers and burning their lives work, Riddle prowled the grounds with a fierce scowl. There was absolutely no business at all and it was making her bored to he- "Hello boys." Her scowl turned into a seductive kind of smirk as he noticed a pair of boy, two redheads who looked to be brothers if not twins, lingering at the entrance to the place the carnival planted itself. "Have you come all this way to see what lies in the real realms of magic?" she asked with a coquettish flutter of eyelashes.
The first of the redheads consulted with the other in hushed tones while wearily eyeing the seductive monster. While she had technically murdered their brother, their youngest male sibling was no big loss. His fears were utterly stupid, who really gets scared of spiders that bad over a prank of all things, and his aptitude for magic was in the toilets. "Not for that..Milenko guy but we were curious" he said choosing his words carefully. The oppressive aura of this place wasn't quite heavy but something told him that saying the wrong thing could be a death sentence.
"Milenko is a fuddy duddy anyway. Always so serious and blah blah bla-"
A sound akin to a gunshot echoed through the grounds before a massive hole opened up in one side of her neck, extended through her throat and spine before opening though the other.
The two redheads blanched whiter than white as a geyser of blood shot and drenched the front of their robes red. One fainted almost immediately after leaving the other to flee dragging the other as best as they could.
Riddle gurgled steadying her body against the nearest solid object, a tree in this case, before her body began to regenerate. Her spine between the base of her skull and shoulder formed first before muscles & sinew followed soon followed with her voice box. Not moments later windpipe was good as new and her skin was flawless like she'd never been injured to begin with. A sightless middle finger was thrown at the direction of Milenko's tent since she knew he was the source of the magical projectile to turn her throat and neck into bloody pulp therefore scaring off customers. He was far too sensitive to her comments if she said so herself.
"Not even if you were that human birth compatible cunt in the universe" was the reply from Milenko's tent.
"What about me?"
Riddle turned on the spot and saw a blonde girl half in the entrance to Milenko's tent. Blonde hair, blue-silver eyes- oh, it was that girl Milenko showed around before. The oddball that reminded her of a mean-spirited fae under facade of being kind... Wait, how in the hell did she get there?!
"I'm many things, chief amongst those being a Necromancer, but I am not a pedophile. I have some standards and morals, very few that some would say they are near nonexistent, but I do have some" Milenko could be heard as Luna entered into his tent.
Then there was nothing for almost ten minutes. Complete silence. Riddle, being one of the duller and slower members of the Dark Carnival, decided to peek in to see if Milenko killed the girl. That was a mistake. As soon as the flap to the tent was opened three knives impact her body sending her flying back-center one in her newly regenerated throat, one into her left eye sock and the last piercing her chest where her heart was located.
"Nice shot for a beginner" Milenko commented popping his head out and looking to the twitching form of Riddle.
"I was aiming for between her eyes to be perfectly frank. Being nice to the idiot, narrow minded masses and not being able to act on the violent impulses to hurt them has put my aim off" Luna said candidly popping her own out. "Good thing she's immortal right?" she asked rhetorically.
"I haven't found a way to kill her. Yet" Milenko said pulling Luna's head back into the tent. "I've burned her at the stake with religious talismans binding her powers. I've put her through an exorcism with the Pope as the exorcist, not my favorite week of my life mind you. I've conducted satanic rituals and force fed her soul to demons in Hell. Nothing has worked so far. My next step is to invoke the Primal Gods and see if one of them might find her appetizing. Or at least worthy of a chew toy."
"Have you tried to summon the likes of Cthulu and his kin? I heard they had more than a few messed up god-like deities and demons who used the soul as a snack and things to mess with for their personal amusement."
"If only you were older."
Over the course of the next three weeks leading up to the week before the First Task it was near impossible for anyone from Hogwarts to locate one Luna Lovegood. Not for a lack of trying though, especially from the Potter Lord and Lady. Rosalind's concern for her friend skyrocketed as Luna's calm and airy personality became more edgy over time. Just the memory of her tiny slip of a friend viciously backhand their House team Seeker for a slight insult made her shudder. Her mother had always said it was the quiet ones you had to keep an eye on...
"You fuckers are pathetic you know that?"
Which led them to this point in time, Milenko tied to a rune inscribed chair with iron chains spelled to be unbreakable. "It's going to be fine son, you'll be rid of the parasite as soon as your mother powers up the ritual" James Potter said pacing outside the rim of the complex ritual circle. "We'll be a family again soon enough."
Milenko turned his head a near complete three hundred and sixty degrees to give a blank unreadable expression to the 'elder' wizard. "I thought I made it clear your sons soul no longer exists on this plane of existence" he said blandly. "Or are you so fucking inbred that you have no connection between your sense of hearing and what little grey matter exists in the neandertha-"
Without breaking her concentration in charging the ritual circle she struck Milenko across the face.
Instead of recoiling or making a pained sound Milenko chuckled darkly as he spit out some blood as he turned his head back to the proper position. "That hurt mother" he said in a mockingly 'hurt' tone. "Why, I just might report this abuse to the authorities."
Instead of rising to the bluff Lily finished charging the last rune before the room was flooded with near blinding amount of white light.
Pain wracked Milenko's body as he thrashed against the iron chains trying to escape. Crack-like veins erupted along the flesh of his arms before the first and only howl of rage erupted from his lips. White Magic was like poison to entities like him but unlike others he had more than a handful of tricks to nullify it. Out of the palm of his left hand a pitch black emerged. Crushing it with a spasm of his muscles the ritual magic became tainted and turned pitch black as the ground of the room cracked open under the Potter's and closed around their necks to keep them from being swallowed whole by the earth.
Rosalind was sweating profusely thinking this was where she was going to die.
The shattering of metal and wood signaled Milenko's freedom as he fell to one knee panting with rage and short spasms of receding pain. "I should kill you three where you lay trapped" he growled rising to his feet slowly. A snap of his fingers had the tainted magic condense into a black orb the size of a marble before he swallowed it and let the magic flow through him. "Or at the very least rape your daughter in front you so her anguish is burned into your retinas."
Rosalind blanched with fear as James and Lily went whiter than white. She hadn't wanted to be part of this to begin with! She told them how foolish it was to try anything against Milenko!
"But I am not going to do that. Not because my host body shares blood and rape is wrong.. Blah blah blah, petty morals of the mindless slave who needs a master to beat them so they follow orders like good chattel" Milenko continued as he gave Lily a solid punt to jaw and knocked out several of her teeth. "Mainly because I'm pressed for time and I have something far more interesting in mind. Interesting for me at least." A sinister cheshire smile spread across his lips as he produced a wicked looking serrated knife from his coats inner pocket.
Rosalind Potter's scream of agony would be heard throughout the entirety of Hogwarts followed by Milkenko's demented laughter overshadowing the death threats being screamed by the Potter parents.
"So, did I miss anything?"
Dumbledore and the other residents of the classroom, those being gnome of a man, the other champions and their school representatives, jumped in surprise. "I was about to send someone to find you Mr. Pot-"
"Names Milenko faggot. Just because I inhabit the body does not mean I don't know things about everyone. Like you and your sexual escapades with Grindelwald in your youth before the last British Wizarding War before the reign of Voldemort." The shark like smirk on Milenko's could make a great White envious as almost everyone's eyes shot to Dumbledore's rigidly stiff form, wand clenched tight in his hands. "Ah but on the subject of Potter's, I was held up by them. Idiot slaves never think for themselves. So this tournament thing, what is it? I have things to do" he said leaning against the nearest wall by the blonde French witch.
The gnome of a man cleared his throat tearing all attention to himself. "Ahem, I was about to get to that. I am Garrick Ollivander, the foremost expert wand crafter and wand-historian of this current age. Before the first obstacle of the tournament takes place your wands must be examined and-"
Milenko tried to cover his snicker behind a hand but failed horribly. "Wand? You're fucking with me right? You fuck nuts still need a fucking wooden dildo to do magic?!" The snicker evolved into full on hysterical laughter. "Lucifer's left fucking nut, you fuckers are pathetic if you need that shit. Demons and abominations below, you just made my day." Wiping a single full on laughter tear he melted into the masonry as he said one thing to make Ollivander go rigid as a beam. "Who needs a pissant second-rate wand when you inhabit the body of the last surviving blood worthy deemed Peverell? It's only a matter of time before The Death Stick comes back to its rightful owner."
Cedric, Fleur and Krum exchanged glances that were equal parts confused and weary. "Mr. Ollivander, if we can move on" the brown haired Hufflepuff said trying to nudge the older man from whatever had scared him so.
Ollivander shook his head, almost violently so, before nodding and rushed through the examinations and declared them fit for use in the tournament. As soon as he was done he made a beeline for the closest door. He needed to get out before that... that demon did something! 'I don't know what you did Albus but that thing is no longer human!' he thought frantically making his way towards the edge of the Hogwarts. Too bad he wouldn't make it that far.
"Now now Ollivander, you have a debt to pay!" The metallic sching of metal cutting through air lasted only a moment before a knife impacted the back of the mans skull. The sickening squelch of brain matter and blood splattering the ground as the tip of the blade pierced through his preys forehead had Milenko smirk as he watched corpse fall lifelessly at the base of a tree. With a grisly mockery of an upbeat whistle he grabbed a leg and dragged the corpse, in its final death spasm, toward the carnival area.
He had a puppet to make.