Avery, one of Lord Voldemort's original death eaters walked alongside Bellatrix's crazy husband, Rodolphus. The man kept barking like a dog, but he could cast the killing curse, so the dark lord found use for him. On the other side of the barrier, Corban Yaxley walked with them. Not willingly, of course, he had been imperioed by Avery.
They trudged down the perimeter of the force field toward Ravenclaw tower, Yaxley moving on the inside. Their mission was to retrieve the corpse of the Ravenclaw and bring it to the more scientifically minded of the dark lord's men. Now that they figured out that the bubble-head charm staved off The Curse, Bellatrix was more willing to send in the important people.
"BARK BARK!" Rodolphus shouted, pointing at a silvery glint in the grass a hundred feet away.
"Ah," Avery sighed. "That must be it. Go get it, Yaxley."
He flicked his wand and Yaxley jerked forward, quickening his pace. They followed him to make sure nothing was left behind. He could be scatterbrained sometimes.
"Hurry up, Yaxley," Avery ordered. "I don't have all night."
Yaxley reached the body and looked around in confusion.
"What's wrong?" Avery asked. "Just pick it up."
Yaxley picked up what looked like a burlap sack and Avery noticed with a grimace that it had a face.
"Is that the Ravenclaw we were supposed to find?" He asked with disgust. "Where's the rest of it? The skeleton and flesh?"
Yaxley began to look around for the other remains when Rodolphus began barking frantically at a bush nearby.
"Shut your mouth, Lestrange!" Avery demanded, privately wishing he had the nerve to say that to the other Lestrange.
As he berated the crazy death eater, a sharp cracking sound stole his attention. He twisted his head to see what was the cause and gasped in horror as a lumpy, green arm as thick around as his waist and tipped with sickle-like claws of jagged bone clenched Yaxley's leg, breaking it in a powerful grip. The man tumbled to the grass and the rest of the monstrosity came into view.
Its head was a chunk of cancerous grey flesh with a large, disturbingly human mouth. Its eyes were large and pitch black. The creature was only the upper left shoulder, arm, and head. The rest of it simply did not exist.
It let out a spine-tingling moaning warble sound as it positioned itself by Yaxley's head.
The poor man screamed as he reached for his leg.
The abomination bit down on his shoulder forcing out another scream from Corban's lips. The cracking came again as his collarbone snapped like a twig under its bite force.
Then, it curled its claws under his chin and pulled away from his shoulder, ripping his head off with a sickeningly wet tearing sound.
Avery stared on in horror as it threw the severed head at him. He flinched as it bounced off the inside of the barrier and rolled into the grass.
Rodolphus sent a killing curse at it, only for the spell to rebound off the red shield and strike him in the face, leaving him to drop like a rock onto his back. His lifeless eyes stared up at the starry sky.
Avery took a step back as the creature leveled one of its unfeeling eyes at him. It continued to stare at him as it latched its cracked lips around the stump of what once was Yaxley's neck. He watched its throat swell as something passed through it from within the recesses of whatever passed for its stomach. Avery gagged when he realized that it was disgorging something into Yaxley's corpse. It repeated the process two more times before detaching itself from the cadaver and grinning at him with teeth stained with green and yellow.
That was too much for the stricken man, and he found himself running away from the monster. Terror controlled him, nothing was more important than getting as far away from that thing as possible!
Behind him, the creature clung to the corpse with its teeth as it dragged itself to its next destination.
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The final stages of the Horcrux ritual were the most delicate. Tom Marvolo Riddle took his cracked soul and pulled alongside the tear until he had a minuscule portion of his very spirit in his hands. It looked like a slightly shriveled, blackened bit of ghost flesh. It quivered as though it did not want to be outside of his body.
Tom Riddle transferred the piece to the Elder Wand and paused for the connection to form. As he waited, a flicker of movement caught his eye.
On the wall across from him, his shadow danced, lit by the ritualistic candles he had conjured. On one hand, the wand was starkly visible, with his soul looking like a wisp of smoke instead of a proper shadow.
All of a sudden, a monstrously tall shadow rose from the ground, its eyes and mouth were unshaded as though the light passed right through them. Voldemort threw a wandless curse at it but only succeeded in creating a scorch mark on the stone. The shadowy monster moved towards the shadow of his wand and he pulled it away, disrupting the ritual.
"NO!" Voldemort shouted. "How DARE YOU INTERRUPT LORD VOLDEMORT?!"
He prepared to obliterate it, a plethora of anti-spirit curses on his tongue. It snatched the floating piece of his soul that was left flickering pitifully in the air after he pulled away the intended vessel.
Voldemort screamed as a burning, rending sensation tore through his body. He collapsed onto the cold ground as the creature opened its mouth and consumed the shard of his soul.
His screaming grew into a piercing shriek as he felt his very soul become digested and enter oblivion.
Its meal finished, the shadow vanished.
Outside of the walls of Hogwarts, within the barrier, something grew another arm.
Voldemort stumbled down the corridors back to the library. It was a difficult journey, his limbs were weak and he felt the sickness growing worse by the minute.
With his rebelling legs slowing him down, Voldemort resorted to flight to move through the castle halls. At top speed, it took him a few minutes to reach the library, but when he searched it, Hermione Granger was nowhere to be found. He streaked through the castle on the prowl for the girl. It seemed that she and Flitwick did their jobs well, for he saw no other corpses remaining aside from the Charms teacher and the five hovering around his Horcrux in the headmaster's tower.
However, no one could hide from Voldemort for long. Eventually, he found her.
He stood in the center of the hall, several feet away from the girl. Granger was lying on the floor, propped up against the wall, her eyes staring forward lifelessly. One arm was splayed to the side as if she tried to catch herself before her muscles failed. The other hand was stretched as if reaching across an invisible line along the stone tiles. His eyes followed where her fingers pointed and fell upon an unfinished circle of cramped runes drawn on the floor with blood, likely the only substance she could find that would be suitable for whatever purposes she had.
The circle encompassed two smaller rings of completed runes. Lord Voldemort's sneer was pronounced as he tried reading the runes. Most of them were unfamiliar, but it seemed that the ritual was some sort of Fiendfyre curse with vanishing and containment magic recklessly slapped on.
A choked cough startled Voldemort from the runes, and he turned his attention to what he had thought was a dead Granger.
"There's the face I was waiting for. Panic, and fear. You try to hide it behind your anger, but you're not doing a good job of it," Hermione said. She took a shuddering breath. "So, you killed Flitwick. I should have planned for that."
Voldemort looked down at her. "I'm not the one on the ground, taking my final breaths. I am surprised you even have the strength to speak."
Her face contorted into a bloody grin. "I like that face you make. It keeps me going."
"What is the purpose of this magic circle you were trying to complete?" He asked.
"I figured out how to get rid of the rot," she said, head slightly drooping. "The containment runes on the chest gave me the idea. Oh, did you know that the chest had a name for this sickness? I found it carved on the lid. It's called, the Grendel Rot. Fascinating, isn't it?"
"Enough of your blathering!" Voldemort interrupted. "I can see the runic symbols necessary for Fiendfyre in the circle! What is your plan?"
Hermione let out a wheezing sigh before continuing. "The circle summons Fiendfyre to completely encase all of Hogwarts and the grounds around it. The barrier will hold it just long enough for the next stage of the spell, which will smother the flames and vanish everything smaller than a fly in the same parameters. The spell will destroy the barrier in the process, so when it is complete, a rush of air will fill in the new void and destroy everything around it. No more bodies, no more ashes, no more Grendel Rot."
"No more Horcruxes, no more Lord Voldemort!" He snapped, then calming, he said slyly. "No more survivors. Including the other students."
"They will be safe where they are," she countered.
"Well, how do you expect to finish it when you can barely breathe?" He mocked.
Voldemort knew that if her lips could move, she would be frowning, but she settled for a glare similar to many that he had seen before from his victims.
"Ah," Hermione breathed. "That's the thing. I need you to finish it for me."
Voldemort's eyes flashed dangerously, but she cut in before he could say anything.
"You are the only person who could possibly know how to finish it without my instruction."
"And this is reason enough for me to ensure my demise?" Voldemort asked rhetorically.
"If anyone can survive this spell, it's you, Voldemort. And not only that, if you did die, at least you would have accomplished one final good deed," she explained.
Voldemort was silent for a time, his face gave no implication of his inner thoughts. Finally, he spoke.
"There is a creature in the castle. A living shadow. It eats souls. I discovered the remains of one of Hogwart's ghosts in one of the halls," he said slowly. "what is this creature? I cannot rest knowing nothing of it."
Hermione went quiet. Finally, with a reluctant cough, she explained.
"The runes of the chest were containment runes. What do you think they were containing? They didn't need magic to hold a bunch of ashes," she told him. "The runes were binding the Grendel's soul. I imagine a centuries-old wraith abomination of dark magic and unspeakable things might have picked up a few tricks."
Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment and nodded.
"I see," he intoned. "There are ways to trap it then. Enjoy your fate, Granger, I can imagine no greater revenge than to leave you mere feet from your friend's salvation as you die in the loneliest, most painful way you can."
Hermione glared at the dark lord hatefully. So, he never intended to finish the circle in the first place. That was no surprise. At least she would not give him the satisfaction of a response.
"I have a Horcrux to make," he said, a slight tone of disappointment evident in his voice. Voldemort inhaled to cackle when a wracking cough tore through his body. His face, for the briefest moment, contained nothing but sheer terror.
Hermione would have laughed if she had the strength to, but instead, she spat a stream of blood. Voldemort left quickly, spitefully scuffing the innermost blood circle with his custom-made, baby red panda, furry leather boots, wrenching an anguished whimper from Hermione's lips.
Once he was gone, the despairing witch turned her eyes toward the circle of runes.
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Authors' Notes:
Forsooth: pardon Conquest, he's distracted right now. But let me tell you, we are nearing the end of our journey here.
Sirius Black: since Conquest is in the bathroom, can I say something?
Forsooth: what? How did you get here?
Sirius Black: story for another time. Back to the story. Wow! That was really messed up!
Forsooth: yeah, that one was mostly me…HEY, it was REALLY cool though! At least the first parts were…
SB: that ending was very dark. The story has a happy ending though, right?
Forsooth: ….yes?
Conquest: No.
SB: …
Conquest: Well…for some people. I won't spoil too much, but your line dies here.
Forsooth: Except for the in-laws.
SB: way to spoil the entire thing.
Forsooth: Read, Review, and tell us what you think!
SB: I can't review...