Life's A Beach
Written for the Death Eater of the Month challenge
Prompt: Avery
A/N: Apparently this has become a miniseries. The first two chapters are Nobody Likes A Show Off followed by Macnair Vs. The Tongue. This is part three. There may be more.
After the great tidal wave washed everyone out to sea, Avery managed to escape imprisonment by clinging to Mulciber as the seal swam towards an island.
What he didn't know was that this particular island belonged to Lucius Malfoy, who had used his massive amounts of wealth to purchase the land and build a home on the island. His relative, Maisie Malfoy, had also purchased a smaller island close by that she used as an offshore cereal wipe storage area.
The Death Eaters, and a handful of very dark individuals who served Lord Voldemort, often used this island as a vacation spot. This soon became apparent as Mulciber dragged Avery's waterlogged form onto the beach, where Draco Malfoy was sunning himself alongside a pink flamingo.
Avery choked and gasped, rolling over onto his side and expelling far too much fluid from his lungs. Draco, completely unconcerned with the situation, gave the flamingo a cereal wipe and told her to go fan the drowning wretch until he caught his breath.
The flamingo took the cereal wipe in her beak, trotted over to Avery, squatted down and started swinging her head back and forth in an effort to fan the Death Eater.
Half choked with salt water, Avery burped up a strand of sea weed. Mulciber leaned forward and gazed intently at this soggy piece of vegetation, then he snatched it up and flopped towards a sand castle in the distance.
"What is this place?" Avery groaned, the flapping cereal wipe waving in the breeze just inches in front of his face.
Delphini looked up from the sand castle she was building out of sanding sugar. "You don't know?" she said, grabbing the sea weed as Mulciber darted past.
The unfortunate seal, with his jaws clamped shut on the flowing sea weed, was jerked off his feet and sent sprawling on his back in the sand. Delphini then plucked the sea weed from his mouth, rolled it up and proceeded to smoke it.
Avery stared at her, not knowing what to make of this bizarre situation. Maybe he had drowned and this was some strange corner of purgatory. Maybe he was still in the Department of Mysteries, trapped in some alternate dimension where Draco had adopted a pet flamingo.
In a daze, he watched the cereal wipe swaying hypnotically, back and forth, until a hand emerged from beneath the dancing fabric.
"Avery," said the voice of Sirius Black. "Avery, you despicable little fart! Are you listening to me?"
The Death Eater groaned, his sight swimming in the vicious glare of the sun. Everything was far too bright and colorful, the seal rolling in piles of purple and green sanding sugar while the flamingo tap danced to the rhythm of the bongo beat.
He didn't even know where the music was coming from, and long about now he didn't even care. He was sick from the blazing heat and the salt water he had swallowed, so he lurched forward and proceeded to nausea all over the flamingo's feet.
"Merlin's beard!" Draco exclaimed, sitting up straight and lowering his sunglasses.
With a sudden earsplitting shriek the flamingo transformed into Dolores Umbridge, her pretty pink shoes dripping with vomit. "How dare you?!" she hollered, slapping him with a beach towel.
Maybe in the future this would all make sense, after he recovered from nearly drowning in the ocean. But for now there was no making heads or tails of it, and with a gurgling groan Avery staggered upright, took fourteen steps to the left, and passed out in a mound of multicolored sanding sugar.