Black Resurrection
Written for The Daily Weird Prompt - Halloween Special
Prompt - a funeral
A/N: I know this story is more dark than it is humorous. But Halloween will be here in a few weeks, and I'm in the mood for something twisted and sinister. So let's put a bit more darkness into this chapter, shall we? The humor will return next chapter.
There comes a time in every child's life when a beloved pet passes away. Unfortunately, moments like these happened a lot in the house of Black.
First it was Druella's aquarium full of tropical fish. All the fish in her aquarium mysteriously died overnight with no explanation whatsoever. They were perfectly healthy the last time Druella went to feed them. And then the next morning they were dead.
Next was Narcissa's pet hamster. She awoke from her nap one afternoon to find it dead in its cage. After that it was Andromeda's rabbit. Any animal that was brought in the Black house inevitably wound up dead in less than a week after it was brought home.
Bellatrix watched, a disgusted frown on her face, as her two siblings held a makeshift funeral for Andromeda's pet rabbit. She didn't even want to be here, watching as Narcissa cried and Andromeda placed the baby bunny in a shoebox, then lowered it into a hole they dug in the back yard.
She didn't understand why her sisters were so upset, or why they had to hold a funeral every time one of their pets died. They couldn't even let their mother's fish be flushed down the toilet. They had to bury those too. And although her siblings didn't know it, Bellatrix was the one responsible for their pet's deaths.
It began when she put salt in their mother's aquarium and killed off the fish. The hamster died when Bellatrix discovered that hamsters squeak when you squeeze them. She liked hearing the hamster squeak, and so she kept squeezing it until the poor creature died of internal injuries. As for the baby bunny, she didn't see it sitting on the couch when she took a flying leap and sat on the rabbit by accident. Or at least that's the story she told to her sisters and parents.
If anyone were to ask Bellatrix why she did it, she would simply say that she didn't like animals. Or rather she didn't like the kind of animals her mother brought home. She wanted a pet hell hound, while most girls her age wanted a pony or a unicorn. But not Bellatrix. She wanted something fearsome and hideous, something she could train to kill on command, not these fish and rabbits her mother kept bringing home. And so she decided that until she got the pet she wanted, no one in the house would have any pets at all.
.oOo.
Years have passed. Bellatrix was now an adult, and she was still determined to have a pet hell hound of her very own. She was old enough now that she didn't need her mother's approval if she wanted an unusual pet. But then an idea came to her. The Dark Lord was in the process of building an army of Inferi, and over time a large number of animals wound up dead in the back yard while she was growing up. She knew her sisters were upset when their beloved pets passed away. Maybe she could bring them back and have her hell hound all at the same time.
Narcissa knew that something was wrong the moment she set foot inside her sister's house. The horrible smell coming from down the hall made her want to vomit, and she gagged and covered her mouth with her hand as she fought not to get sick.
What on earth had Bellatrix called her here for? And where was that horrific stench coming from? It smelled like something died and had been left to rot in the sun for a week. Narcissa soon discovered the answer to her question when she entered the main sitting room and found her sister surrounded by almost every pet that had ever died during their childhood. And there at her feet was an enormous black dog with red, glowing eyes.
"Do you like him, Cissy?" Bellatrix cooed, stroking the black dog's matted fur. "He's beautiful, isn't he?"
The dog was thin, its skeletal frame showing through its fur, with places where the flesh had decayed, revealing stark white bones beneath ragged shreds of skin and fur. Half its face had rotted away, the pale light shining from its empty eye socket casting a faint glow on its new master as it looked up at Bellatrix. There was no flesh on its right foreleg, and it smelled like a long dead corpse that had recently been pulled out the earth.
The other animals were also in varying stages of decay, some with missing limbs and ears, their fangs and claws longer and sharper than when Narcissa last saw her dear pets. Only these weren't her pets anymore. They'd been transformed into something else, into something unnatural, an abomination not fit to walk this earth.
Narcissa was horrified at what she saw. "Bella, what have you done? And that dog...where did he come from? I don't recall having a dog while we were growing up."
Bellatrix laughed. "You mean to tell me you don't recognize our dear cousin Sirius? Although I don't think that name suits him anymore. I think Cujo would be more appropriate."