Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (challenges & assignments)
A3 Muggle Art - Task 10 - Write about a minor male character (less than 500 fics) - Antonin Dolohov
Auction - Day 5, Auction 3 - Must include murder - (setting) Summer Camp
W/C: 2,839
Summary: Lord Voldemort thinks his followers need to have a little group break away to a summer camp. Whether they like it or not. It's not Antonin's fault that he doesn't do well with people creeping up on him... Crack!Fic
Warnings: Murder, blood mentioned, mild violence, couple of swears
That Time Voldemort Made the Death Eaters Go To Camp
Antonin Dolohov was a loner and it was times like this he wondered why he was still a Death Eater. Just because one enjoyed a bit of torture and killing didn't mean one had to do it as part of a group. Yet here he was; a long-serving, card-holding member of the Dark Lord's followers. He wasn't even sure how he got drawn into this oddball little family.
And it was times like this Antonin really wished he could quietly leave the room and never come back. He knew it had been a mistake to show anyone his speciality curse. It had also been a mistake to use said curse on one Hermione Granger. It was her fault this was happening. Maybe if he had words with her, she might be able to talk some sense into the Dark Lord.
"After the little debacle at the start of the summer, I thought it was best we took a trip away. A little one to a summer camp, get back to nature and come back refreshed and ready for Harry's new school year," Voldemort addressed the gathering of Death Eater's in Malfoy Manor's drawing room. "And it will be good for morale as well as bonding us."
"Can we torture the other campers?" Bellatrix asked hopefully from Voldemort's side.
"No!" he replied firmly. It sent up a wave of loud protests from the majority of the Death Eaters. "I said, no, and that's the the end of it! Understood? I promised the owners we would be on our best behaviour in exchange for a discount."
There was a grumbling of sulky agreements to behave from the group.
"Excuse me, my Lord," Severus spoke up from the back of the room. "Might I be excused? I'm allergic to fresh air."
Voldemort smiled warmly at him, even showing a little teeth. Antonin rolled his eyes at the sight. "Of course, Severus."
"Well if he doesn't have to go, then I'm not going, I have hay fever," Rodolphus piped up as he pulled at his wife from practically clinging on to Voldemort.
"When you start pulling your weight like Severus, then you can withdraw from group activities," Voldemort said firmly, danger in his tone. "Until then, you're going. Pack your antihistamines."
The Death Eaters started arguing their case for not going. Antonin remained silent, watching them all go red in the face. He didn't miss Severus smirking as he left the room either.
Voldemort pulled his wand out from his sleeve. "Anyone else want to pick an argument with me?" The room immediately went silent. "Thought not. Now pack your bags. There's a lot to do."
XXXXXX
Antonin sighed heavily when he entered the small cabin. It was a tiny square of a room with two single beds and a bedside table each with a lamp. It smelt of damp wood and dirt. The beds, with their bedding rolled up at the bottom of the bed, looked like they'd seen better days.
Fenrir shoved him into the room, grinning at him as he went to the bed by the only window in the room. "At least you're sharing with me. I'll be outside for most of the night – no snoring to keep you up."
"You make an excellent point," Antonin agreed, dropping his bag on the other bed.
"Hi, guys!" a perky female voice said from the door. Antonin and Fenrir turned to see a petit brunette in khaki shorts and a bright orange t-shirt. "I'm Daisy, I'll be around if you need anything! Dinner will be in an hour at the campfire! We're having a barbecue to welcome you all!"
And then she was gone with a manic wave and a wide smile that never left her face while she spoke.
"I miss Granger," Fenrir muttered, shaking his head as he started to make his bed.
"I bet you five Galleons she'll be maimed by the morning," Antonin challenged with a smirk.
"Make it ten that she'll be dead and I'll shake on it!"
"But it can't be either of us who do it."
"Agreed." Fenrir shook his hand, practically crushing his fingers, his eyes flashing from amber to tawny in the excitement.
Leaving his bed unmade and his bag unpacked, Antonin went out to explore the surroundings. It was made up of fifteen cabins, each with a porch at the front, that formed a semi-circle by a lake, with a large space of grass in the middle that held a place for a campfire in the centre. Woods surrounded the cabins with a path by the lake that lead to the Welcome Cabin and entrance to the place.
There was arguing coming from a number of the cabins, Antonin immediately turned to the lake instead. He always got drawn in as the mediator of arguments and after the long journey there, he was in no mood to help anyone without using a Cruciatus curse or two, and those had been forbidden for the trip. Lucius Malfoy was already there, sitting on a chair at the end of the dock, with a fishing pole set up.
"Bit late to be fishing, isn't it?" Antonin whispered once he'd reached Lucius. His father had made sure he knew the etiquette of being quiet when fishing, by way of a punch to the temple when he'd once coughed too loudly.
"If I'm seen setting it up now, they'll know I intend to be up early and his Dark Lord won't make me stay too long at that godforsaken barbecue," Lucius muttered, staring moodily back at the cabins.
"Did you meet Daisy?" Antonin asked with a smirk.
"Christ, there's more than one? I met Rose." Lucius got up, gently placing his fishing rod on the decking. "How am I meant to get through this week without killing someone?"
"Breathe," Antonin said simply.
XXXXXX
At the barbecue, as the sun started to set, the camp workers stuck out like a sore thumb with their orange t-shirts against a sea of black clothing. Antonin felt a little sorry for them, with their perky attitudes, trying to engage a bunch of sullen mass murderers into playing campfire games. But they didn't give up.
The problem was, Voldemort decided he liked their can-do attitude, which meant he started picking at anyone not getting involved in the spirit of the situation. That then lead to Death Eaters getting moodier by the minute as the camp workers tried to draw them into playing Charades.
Antonin remained at the edge of the group, letting his food digest nicely as he moved silently around everyone, so as not to be drawn into anything himself, such as silly conversations like the one being had by Peter and Rabastan.
"What colour would you say the sunset is, Rab?" Peter asked lazily, still picking at the remains of a burger. "Is it just sunset? Like when you say sunset you know immediately that it's those colours you mean?"
Rabastan stared at the sky for a moment, filled with oranges and reds, and everything in between as the sun dropped down past the lake, the calm water reflecting the same colours. "Maybe sunset orange," Rabastan said after a moment.
"But it's not just orange, though," Peter pointed out.
"Yes, but when you say sunset orange, you know exactly what shade of orange that person would mean," he countered back.
"And what about the other colours?" Peter asked.
Antonin picked up his pace, feeling his brain turn to mush at the conversation. He passed Rodolphus, who seemed to be having a sneezing fit. Bellatrix kept punching him the arm and telling him to stop doing it on purpose.
"I swear I will break the rules, Bella!" he warned through a blocked nose.
Finally, blessedly, Voldemort stopped trying to make them stay any longer, and told them all to get an early night as he expected them up bright and early, ready to take on the day's activities planned for them all. Somehow the group managed not to groan before disappearing to their cabins.
Antonin breathed out heavily when he closed the door to his cabin behind him, leaning against it for a moment. He looked at Fenrir, sitting on his bed, against the metal frame, frantically knitting. He watched Fenrir read the pattern over a pair of small glasses sitting on his nose, the needles clacking rapidly.
"How did you escape the barbecue early and what exactly are you doing?" He took a seat at the end of Fenrir's bed to look at the pattern; a cardigan.
Fenrir broke off a piece of chocolate, popping it into his mouth while he waited for Antonin to put the pattern sheet back. "Remus needs a cardigan. He's gotten a bit thin lately."
"Where did you learn something like that?" Antonin asked, putting the sheet back for him.
"My grandmother. It soothes me before a transformation." He carried on with the clicking of needles, the chocolate crunching against his teeth.
"Been spending a lot of time with Remus, have you?" Antonin looked at the chocolate with a smirk.
Fenrir looked over the glasses at Antonin, no expression to give him away. "Yeah, but don't tell anybody."
"As long as you don't tell Granger I'm only just reading the book she gave me last year," Antonin said with a snigger, moving to his own bed.
Fenrir let out a snort, putting his knitting down on the bed and covered up his chocolate. "Best get on with it. The Dark Lord said nothing about scaring the workers."
"Good luck and don't fuck it up," Antonin called after him, sinking back on the bed to read.
XXXXXX
The door slammed open and Antonin was awake, out of bed, and ready to curse whomever had caused the racket as such an ungodly hour of the early morning. He found Fenrir leaning heavily against the door, his ear jammed against the wood and breathing raggedly.
"What the – why are you naked?" Antonin pocketed his wand in the jogging bottoms he was wearing for bed.
"I need you to check outside, see if his Dark Lord spotted me," Fenrir instructed. He opened the door, careful to remain firmly behind it.
Antonin sighed, rubbing at his dry eyes and peeked out. Except for Lucius out on the dock, the sun barely in the sky, there was no one in sight.
"Is he out there?" he asked in a hissing whisper through the wood of the door.
"Paranoid much?" Antonin shoved him away from the door so he could close it.
"Paranoia is a skill; it is the secret to longevity," Fenrir muttered, moving like a man possessed around the room to get some clothes on.
"What happened to last night's clothes?" Antonin got back into bed, picking up his book from the bedside table.
"Er." Fenrir glanced down at his naked form. "I couldn't find them. I think someone took them."
"Okay… and the blood in your teeth? A squirrel?" Antonin smiled placidly at him.
"Squirrel, right. Yes. Couldn't stop the wolf getting a squirrel," Fenrir said, clearly distracted as he roughly rubbed at his teeth with a dirty thumb. "But if he asks…"
"I was with you all night," Antonin answered, opening his book with a laugh.
XXXXXX
After breakfast, Antonin promptly left the campfire area when Bellatrix started applying suncream to Voldemort's back. No one needed to see his scrawny body. Nor did they need to see Bellatrix with that smile on her face as she did, insisting it was taking as long as it was too apply because she wanted to make sure she'd rubbed it in properly.
Taking his coffee with him, Antonin went for a walk in the woods around the back of the cabins. He realised as he passed the camp workers there seemed to be an air of worry and one less orange shirt in the group. Looks like his bet with Fenrir was probably off…
He came across a little clearing not far from the Welcome Cabin, with a pile of logs neatly stacked, ready for the campfire, and a silver axe with a smooth wooden handle stuck in an old tree stump. Finishing off his coffee, Antonin felt like making himself useful, maybe remind himself how good it was to wield an axe; he hadn't done it in a very long time once he'd started coming up with his own curses.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been there chopping the wood, or how much of it he'd actually chopped. He'd gotten himself into a quiet rhythm of chop, split, throw. His muscles has a blissful ache he missed from his early days as a Death Eater and he relished in the pain of the blisters forming on his hands. Ah, yes. Maybe he should turn his hand back to good ol' fashioned torture once in a while.
"Hi," said a perky voice from behind him.
Without missing a beat, his head still filled with glorious memories of torture, Antonin spun round and flung the axe. It landed perfectly in the chest of an orange t-shirt clad camper with blonde hair. She looked at the axe for a moment before looking at Antonin with surprise in her eyes.
"Oh," she said before coughing blood and falling backwards, dead by the time she hit the ground.
"Fuck," Antonin muttered with a heavy sigh. "He's going to kill me."
He sank down on the tree stump, wiped the sweat off his brow with the front of his t-shirt, and thought for a moment about how to hide her disappearance from everyone. The camp workers were one thing, but Voldemort was another.
"Hey, Ant!" Rabastan's voice called from somewhere behind him in the woods.
Antonin turned on the stump, squinting as he tried to find Rabastan. "What?"
"You haven't been littering the woods, have you? There's plastic everywhere!"
"No," he called back, letting out a long breath. "I don't even drink from plastic bottles anymore. You made sure of that."
"Must've been the— Oh for fuck's sake!" It was followed by a lot of rustling of leaves and twigs snapping. "Shit!"
Antonin stood up quickly. He still couldn't see his fellow Death Eater. "What is it?"
"Antonin! What've I told you about leaving bodies lying around! How is this helping the environment!" Rabastan said so loudly his voice echoed around them for a second or two.
Antonin dropped his chin to his chest in defeat. There was no way the others didn't hear that. And what body? His victim was still behind him, bleeding out on the clearing floor.
"Oh Antonin!" Narcissa's voice called from behind him. "Did you have to do that?"
Antonin spun round to see Narcissa and Lucius stood by the girl's body, disappointment in their faces. What was going on with this forest that people could creep up on him like this? He was usually flawless at detecting people creeping up on him.
"She surprised me. It was an accident," he told them earnestly.
A rustling behind him made them all look into the trees to see Rabastan coming out with a very mauled camp worker.
"And that's not mine," Antonin snapped, pointing to the unrecognisable body, the shredded orange t-shirt giving away who it might be.
Rabastan walked over to the Malfoys and dropped the body by the axe victim. "What now?"
"We'll have to disguise the bodies," Lucius said calmly, "he'll kill us if he finds out about this."
"We can't hide this," Rabastan said, panic in his voice, "we all know I'm a terrible blabbermouth when we have secrets from him."
"Shhh." Narcissa put a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, Rab. We understand. You can't take the pressure. Do you want us to modify your memory once we're finished?" He nodded sadly. "Okay. That's what we'll do."
"Thanks, Cissy," he said glumly.
"Hey, everyone!" a cheerful voice said as a tall man with an orange t-shirt stepped into the clearing. He paused, the smile frozen on his face at the way the small group had turned to him. Then what felt like an eternity, his eyes slowly but surely went to the two bodies at their feet.
Lucius let out a heavy breath. He moved quickly, pointing his wand and whispered, "Avada Kedavra."
At least his death wouldn't have been as painful as the other two, the group seemed to collectively think.
"I want to go home," Rabastan muttered, walking over to the body.
"Don't we all, Rab. Don't we all," Antonin agreed
"Oi! You lot!" Rodolphus hissed from the direction Rabastan had come from with the body. His head looked like it was floating with the way he was hid behind a tree. "We need to pack up and go. His Dark Lord just accidentally cut off the arm of the owner of the camp and then killed his wife because they started singing. We need to go. Now."
Rabastan dropped the body of the man he was picking up. "Sounds good to me."