#hpfearfest

Hi,hello... Yes I am aware of how late this is, but to my defense, October is my bussiest month. I hope my colour choices make up for the tardiness? And also the lil writing I added at the top :b I’m not an excellent writer (especially for horror, even though it’s my favourite genre), but I tried to spice up my artwork :b Also, I know it’s not as spoopy a theme, but I wanted to do something lovely as well because I love these two so much xD

I also played and loved the look of the pink shadows and blood on the hands bits when I messed with the contrast so I’m adding them below. Enjoy!

That’s one thing he loves about fire, out of many—the way it consumes and consumes, eating and swallowing until there’s nothing left. It purifies and cleanses, burning away imperfections and mistakes and reducing everything in its path down to its most elemental form.

He knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that magic is fire. Why else would spells erupt from a wizard’s wand in swirls of heat and light? Why else would his magical core burn inside of him, hot and roiling? Why else is Fiendfyre one of the most feared and respected curses in the magical world?

Magic is fire, and fire is magic. Pure, unadulterated magic.

He’s seen that magic at work so many times. He knows from his own experiments: to be kissed by fire is to be marked as sacred. To be consumed by flames is to be saved, wholly and completely.

He’s known it since before he could properly cast. His first burst of accidental magic set his mother’s prized roses on fire. They were dying, there was some disease they’d caught from another plant in their garden, and he only wanted to help. What could be more alive than fire? What could save each perfect, delicate petal more quickly than flames? He would burn out the disease and his mother would be so proud.

He had been wrong. She wasn’t proud, she was furious. He didn’t understand. But, then, the rosebush came back the next spring and it had three times as many blossoms and he knew. It was because of him, because of his fiery magic.

His theory had been tested and proven time and again, since.

First, leaves and twigs that popped and danced in the blue-white inner cone of a flame. Then, already-alive things that twitched and rejoiced, crying their gratitude for the chance to be so tenderly devoured. Each conflagration was a confirmation.

His explosive pyrotechnics even saved his friends during the Battle—sheltering them behind the smouldering ruins of stone and wood and metal, keeping them safe from the cold evil of Voldemort’s followers.

And then he’d witnessed Voldemort himself reduced to ashes by Harry Potter, the brightest and most blazing person he had ever met, whose magic warmed every single person around him.

Yes. He knows for sure that fire is a gift, to burn is to be loved.

In the long moment it took Draco to notice Harry’s presence, Harry watched him lift a large, struggling cranefly into a shaft of moonlight by its wings, tenderly pluck one wriggling appendage, and slide it into his mouth.

When Draco did finally wheel around—the unfortunate insect darting out of his grasp to knock frantically against the glass of the window—he didn’t even look startled or guilty. He just said, “Can’t sleep, love?” in that soft, vulnerable way he said anything when it was just him and Harry, alone in the dark.

The whole scene was so bizarre, Harry’s brain resolutely refused to process any of it. He blinked stupidly, and shook away what was surely the weirdest hallucination he’d ever had—and he’d had plenty. But then there it was: the fly limb, waving weakly like an electrified pubic hair, caught in the gap between Draco’s two front teeth.

He just grabbed Draco’s lovely hand, dragged him heavily back up the stairs to their lovely bedroom, pushed him down onto their lovely bed, and settled his weight nearly on top of him before falling right back to sleep. As if he was subconsciously trying to ensure Draco couldn’t scuttle off for a cockroach complement to his late-night leg.

—

In fact, it would have been like nothing had ever happened had Harry not, several weeks later, found him out a second time.

Draco was working on a particularly challenging child welfare case that had kept him at the office, pulling all-nighters with his partners at the firm and their coterie of interns and clerks regularly for weeks. After one particularly challenging day in court, he thundered in through the front door shouting something that sounded like I will burn the whole Merlin-fucking system down, I swear on Salazar Slytherin’s scaly balls, shoved his briefcase into Harry’s chest with a hissed sorryloveyoudon’tyoudareopenyourmouth, and slammed into his office at the end of the hall.

Harry went to set Draco’s bag by the front door where he usually left it when something fell from the open front pocket. He bent down and lifted a transparent, resealable sandwich bag full of chocolate covered raisins. He sighed. He was trying to get Draco off sweets; apparently, robust dental hygiene education was just as lacking in Pureblood Wizarding families as sex education. Maybe he just needed to get Draco off of his “we’re doing it the Muggle way at least once, just to see,” kick instead—he didn’t think Draco could survive a root canal.

He laughed at the prospect of Draco, mouth half numb and drool dribbling unnoticed over his chin, trying to insult him without the full force of his perfect enunciation, as he slid his hand absently into the bag of candy. He had a piece nearly to his lips when the pillbug uncurled between his fingers and its microscopic legs began rippling.

He yelped embarrassingly and dropped the bug and the bag onto the floor, then watched in frozen shock as a tsunami of tiny, black arthropods rolled out across the hardwood floor and disappeared beneath the baseboards.

“What was that?” Draco said, popping his head out of his office door and looking murderously harassed.

“Erm—” Harry replied, stepping onto the now-empty bag to cover it with his foot “—stubbed my toe?”

“Clumsy arsehole,” Draco muttered darkly, and disappeared back into the office. Harry thought he heard loveyousorry illrubyourfeetlater float out from under the door.

—

That undeniable event was followed swiftly by several more, similar ones that left Harry no longer able to deny what was becoming sickeningly obvious: Draco Malfoy, Harry’s own husband…eats insects.

There was, for example, the time Harry watched in horror as Draco licked the tip of his bony pointer finger—a usually pleasing sight for Harry—and pat it onto a parade of ants snaking across the park bench they were sat on, before swiping them onto his tongue, like spilled sugar. He did it all while never breaking his rant about the Wizarding World’s archaic Child Custody laws. He just kept on waving his hands about for emphasis, as if he wasn’t at that very moment digesting a handful of live bugs. Harry wondered deliriously if he was able to feel them crawling about in his stomach.

Once, while at the beach with Andromeda and Teddy, Harry saw Draco slap a mosquito so unfortunate as to land on his forearm, then lick its bloody remains from both his arm and his palm.

Another time, Harry watched through the window as Draco—placidly drinking a steaming cup of tea on the back patio before bed—reached up, as casual as anything, and plucked a fat, fluttering moth right out of the air beside the lantern. Harry didn’t hang around to watch the end of that one, lest he be sick all over the patio door and incapable of ever looking his husband in the face again.

It was this final incident that drove Harry to seek help. Or, specifically, it was the fact that he nearly vomited in his husband’s face when he leaned in for a goodnight kiss later that evening.

—

“He...oh god, Hermione, I don’t even think I can tell you.”

“Harry, whatever it is, you know I love you both and am always here to help, however I can.”

“I don’t know. This might be the lone exception to that fact.” Harry knew he must look like shit. He hadn’t been sleeping well for days, sure that every creak and groan of their old house was really Draco on a nocturnal prowl for slimy snacks. He rolled over every time to double check Draco hadn’t actually gotten out of bed. He’d also been avoiding Draco. It wasn’t difficult, since he was so busy with work, but during the few moments they did have together he made excuses left and right. He watched Draco trying desperately to puzzle out what he could have done to make Harry withdraw, and the guilt was eating away at him.

“Oh, Harry. Now you’re starting to scare me. Please…”

“Fine. I’m just. Going to say it, and then it will have been said, and it cannot be unsaid. Draco...eats bugs.”

Hermione blinked at him slowly. Her face remained blank for several terrible, long moments, before she broke into loud laughter.

“Sorry, I just...is that what you meant to say? Is that all?” she said, still laughing, as Harry’s already stricken face crumpled even further. She sobered when it was clear that Harry had no intention of laughing along with her.

“Oh. Oh, Harry. Loads of people eat bugs. As in, many cultures around the world incorporate insects into their cuisine in all sorts of interesting, and often delicious, ways. Didn’t you know that?”

“Well, er—no, actually. Um. But, this isn’t exactly a case of adventurous cooking. I mean. Merlin, ‘Mione, I walked in on him slurping down a live worm from the garden like a piece of cooked spaghetti the other evening. He does it in secret. I mean, I’m not meant to know, I think. That he just picks up the occasional arachnid and pops it into his mouth like a cashew. Oh god, I think he might be fattening up our airing cupboard spider, I just thought she was pregnant but bloody hell…”

“Harry,” Hermione says firmly, interrupting his little spiral. “Listen. There are actually scientifically-studied reasons why people might develop a habit of eating… non-traditional foods...”

“Non-traditional…” Harry breathes, going a bit wobbly.

“Yes, as in—oh, well, I can send you home with some information for later,” she said at the sight of Harry’s increasingly ashen face. “The bottom line is this: most insects are actually highly nutritious—they’re full of vitamins and incredibly protein-rich. Of all the things for Draco to develop a secret taste for, insects are one of the most harmless. Have you talked to him about it?”

“What?! No. Of course not.”

“Well, why, Harry?”

“I don’t want to...I don’t know, embarrass him. What if he doesn’t want me to know, ever, and I just barrel in and ruin his private thing and he can never trust me again? I honestly wouldn’t even know where to start? Morning, lamb, eaten any good locusts recently?”

“Good lord. It’s a wonder you two have stayed married at all, the way you both seem to thrive on miscommunication. Harry, what if he keeps it a secret because he’s worried you’ll be disgusted or ashamed? Are you? Disgusted and ashamed?”

“Well, I do think it’s pretty gross, but if I hadn’t caught him that first time I may never have found out. So, it isn’t like it impacts our daily lives all that much. And of course I’m not ashamed of him. Not for this, anyway…” he trailed off, a fond smirk overtaking his frowning lips. “I just don’t know what to do with this knowledge now that I have it. Seems wrong to just ignore it.”

“Yes. I think you’re right. I think you need to just ask him about it. Be kind and open to what he has to say, don’t make any moral or value judgments, and definitely don’t use words like ‘gross’, or ‘disgusting’. Make sure he knows you’re asking from a place of love and concern, and not derision.”

Harry sighed heavily, “Ugh. Okay. I’ll take those articles, or whatever.”

What Hermione sent him home with, however, were several travel books, two issues of two different scientific journals, and a couple of thick cookbooks.

—

Harry decided he couldn’t just barrel into a conversation with Draco about his ‘non-traditional’ eating habits completely blind. So, while Draco spent hours locked up in his office working thorough appeal after appeal, Harry set himself a course of study on entomophagy. Hermione had been right, there was virtually nothing ‘wrong’ or worrisome about Draco’s eating bugs. With his most pressing concerns put to rest, he turned his mind to his conversational strategy.

Draco’s head appeared suddenly around the door frame of the sitting room. “Love, last day in court tomorrow, I’ll be home much earlier than I have been. Just wanted to remind you before you went up to bed.”

“Going out to the pub with the team, after?”

“No. No way. I’ll be set if I never have to look at any of their ugly old faces ever again, after tomorrow.”

“Be hard once they name you partner, don’t you think?”

“Don’t jinx it you bloody, reckless, stupid Gryffindor,” he groaned as he retreated down the hall, his voice trailing off so Harry barely caught, “...my bloody, reckless…”

Harry thumbed the glossy page of the cookbook he’d spelled to look like a Quidditch supply catalogue, and had an idea.

—

“Harry, what’s all this?” Draco said tiredly as he slumped into the kitchen just before dinner-time the next evening.

“I know you didn’t want to go out, but I thought we should celebrate your win, anyway,” Harry said as he ushered Draco to a chair and passed him a glass of red wine.

“You cooked. And you think that’s an appropriate way to celebrate anything?”

“Shut your cranky mouth,” Harry said, capturing said mouth in a lingering kiss. “I think you’ll be particularly pleased with my efforts tonight.

It was now or never.

Without another moment’s hesitation, he levitated a polished, silver tureen from the hob to the kitchen table. He flicked his wand theatrically, as if he were a stage magician revealing that he had, in fact, stitched a bisected woman back together, and the lid of the tureen slid back.

Draco’s eyes went wide.

“Are those... Harry, what is…”

“Mealworm Arrancini,” Harry said, a bit proudly. “And,” he continued, flourishing his wand again, “summer salad with caramelized grasshoppers, and fresh french bread, made with cricket flour.”

All the color had drained from Draco’s face. He didn’t lift his gaze to meet Harry’s. Suddenly, he shot up from his chair and turned as if to flee the room.

“Draco!” Harry said, commandingly, making Draco pause in the doorway. “Please,” he said, more softly. “I love you. You don’t have to explain it, although I would love to learn more. Please. It..I don’t understand it, but I don’t know that I need to. It doesn’t bother me. Well. I’d rather do it like this, for you, than leave you to your own meagre devices, honestly. Plus, I tried a caramelized grasshopper earlier, and I think Wizard-kind has intentionally manufactured so-called sweets that are loads more disgusting. Sit back down?”

Harry watched, ready to argue his case again at any moment, as Draco rejoined him at the table. The look of bliss that crossed Draco’s face as he slid a forkful of cheesy, mealworm arrancini into his mouth bled the anxiety right out of Harry’s body. That—that was all he really needed. In the end he became quite certain that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to put that expression on the face he loves so dearly.

—

They didn’t intend to announce Draco’s newfound insectivore identity to their friends in such a spectacular way, but Harry figured Draco never did anything halfway and without drama.

Hermione, conscientious as always, hadn’t told a soul what she’d learned, and had even promised to borrow a few more insect-based cookbooks from an environmentalist friend of her mother’s for him. So far, they’d all been very subtle about it, he’d even charmed a whole section of their pantry to disguise the shelves of dried larva, ground grub meat, and butterfly wing crisps Draco liked to snack on.

That was, until Harry made the mistake of inviting all their friends over for a barbecue.

He was fishing a cold beer out of the back of the fridge when a scream—so high pitched and ear-splitting, Harry thought they might be under attack from a particularly angry banshee—tore into the kitchen from the backyard. He rushed out to find Ron doubled over, hands on his knees, trying to suppress a gag. Draco stood nearby, waving a pair of grill tongs about, and rolling his eyes.

“That one’s mine, obviously, Weasley. Honestly, I knew you were uncultured and uncouth, but this is extreme, don’t you think?”

Harry finally drew close enough to see over Ron’s heaving shoulders to the fuzzy, black tarantula that Draco had speared through the center of a large pineapple round, sizzling away happily.

He only stifled his laugh until his eyes met Draco’s, shining with mirth.

You’re a bastard, he mouthed, grinning.

*

“You promised you weren’t going to pressure me, Harry,” Draco snaps as he drops their dinner plates into Harry’s sink with a clatter.

“I know, I know, and I don’t mean to. But we’ve been together for nearly three years, Draco, and you still refuse to even stay the night half the time you’re over here. Is it… Do you not love me anymore? Has something changed, have I—”

He watches the shutters fall behind Draco’s eyes, like they always do when they have this conversation. He’s tried so hard to respect Draco’s request for time and space, but lately it’s like a chasm has opened between them, and Harry doesn’t know how to bridge it. His gut reaction to the feeling of impending loss has always been to hold tighter, to grasp and pull. He knows how suffocating that can be for some people, but he can’t help it.

Draco sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Harry, no, of course not. I love you more every day, you know that. It’s just... not that easy. My parents—”

“Oh, sod your bloody parents!” Harry bites back, sharper than he intended. “I mean—I’m sorry—but I feel like you’re sacrificing your own happiness for them. Again! I know you love them, but after everything they’ve put you through. Everything they asked of you. You deserve the chance to make your own choices and live your own life, Draco.”

“I… I know that. I do. I just feel so guilty, sometimes…”

“Look. We can look into some care homes, maybe. Neville says his Nan loves her community. Or—” Harry raises a hand to cut off Draco’s interjection, “—we can interview some live-in Healers. I can help you, you won’t have to do it alone.”

Draco’s face twists into an ugly frown. “No. How dare you—I’m not dumping my parents into some disgusting care home to be ignored and overlooked by overworked nurses. And I’m certainly not allowing a stranger into my home, Harry! Haven’t you heard of elder abuse? How could I do something like that to them?”

“Your home…”

“What?”

“You just called the Manor your home. I thought… I’d hoped you considered this your home.”

“Oh...well I—”

“Forget it. Look, I just need some space. I don’t want to say something in anger that I’ll regret later. Your feelings are valid, I just...feel a little hurt right now, to be honest. I’m going to Ron and Hermione’s for the night. Feel free to stay. Or not. Merlin knows you never do.”

“Harry—” Draco pleads as Harry turns toward the Floo.

*

“What do you want, Potter? I’m terribly busy.”

“Pansy, you don’t have a job.”

“And?”

“Nevermind, look. It’s about Draco…”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Please, Pansy. You know I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t serious. I...need your help.”

Pansy sighs, settling herself and her glass of scotch on the chaise in front of her fireplace, which Harry had just tumbled out of unannounced several minutes earlier.

“Fine. Make it quick.”

“Right. Well. Draco won’t move in with me.”

“Mm,” she hums, taking a drag on the cigarette in her other hand. “Sounds normal to me. I don’t see why anyone would want to live with you.”

“Fuck’s sake—” Harry hisses, beginning to pace across the hearthrug. “I know you don’t like me, you wish Draco were with someone else, whatever—can you please just take this seriously for like, one second. Please.”

Pansy exhales an exasperated cloud of spicy smoke into Harry’s face and sits up straight.

“Potter. Draco’s relationship with his parents is… complicated.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

Pansy eyes him sharply over the rim of her rocks glass for a long moment. “No, I don’t think you do, really. Not the whole of it, at least.”

Harry throws his hands up, frustrated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

A series of emotions passes over Pansy’s face as she eyes him. Amusement, then scorn, then sadness, and finally pity.

“Pansy,” Harry says, slumping down onto the chaise next to her and letting his head fall into his hands. “I love him so much. I…want to marry him. But, I can’t if he won’t be honest with me about why he won’t live with me. I’ve done the best I can so far, but I can’t envision a future where my husband won’t even stay the night with me, let alone share a house with me. And I definitely can’t envision a future where we move into the Manor together.” He shivers involuntarily.

“No, I don’t think that would do anybody any good. Harry… I can’t say any more. I know, I’m sorry, but I just can’t. If you really need to know why Draco won’t move in with you, and he won’t explain it himself, you need to go see them. Lucius and Narcissa. I think you’ll find your answers there. I just hope you’re prepared for them.”

“He’s never asked me to go home with him. I haven’t… I haven’t been to the Manor since the War.”

“Mmhm,” Pansy hums, lips pursed condescendingly.

Harry stands and takes a palm full of Floo powder, gut twisting and thoughts racing.

“Harry—” Pansy says, stopping him as the flames flare green. “If you really love him—”

“Pans—”

“—You’ll let this go. You won’t go to the Manor.”

“I don’t… I don’t think I can do that, Pansy.”

Pansy draws her worried eyebrows down between her liquor-glassy eyes. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

*

Harry never received a reply to his owl to Lucius and Narcissa asking if it’d be alright to visit that afternoon. He isn’t surprised; he knows there’s no love lost between them even now, even after he’s been with their son for years.

He’d considered sending owl after owl until one of them responded—even if it was just to serve him with a restraining order. In the end, he knew he would never be at peace if he didn’t talk to them face to face. He needs to settle this once and for all, so he can move on. So he and Draco can move on, and move in, together.

After deciding that he’s given them enough warning, he apparates to Wiltshire.

When he lands outside the Manor, he’s confused. For a minute he thinks he’s apparated to the wrong location. The once-gleaming gates are rusted and bent, hanging from their hinges. Ivy creeps across the damp stone pillars and flagstones, eating into every fracture and crevice. The footpath beyond the gates is thickly overgrown with weeds and brambles, as though no one has walked it in years.

He pushes past the gates and begins fighting his way through the underbrush. His breath catches in his throat when he comes around the final bend in the path. There’s no way Draco has been living here for the last six years. There’s no way anyone has been living here in a long time.

The entire house seems to sag. The stone walls are covered in a thick layer of black muck. The same ivy that threads through the front gates has all-but consumed the lower half of the building, making it look as though the Manor is scrabbling up from the depths of the earth. All the windows Harry can see are coated in a thick layer of dusty grime; some are broken and grimace at him like mouths full of jagged, glass teeth. The once-resplendent gardens are now buried under thick snarls of thorns and wild, venomous tentacula that wave menacingly at Harry, welcoming him. To what, he doesn’t know.

Dread settles into the pit of his stomach like a heavy stone. His breathing becomes sharp and ragged, and he knows—beyond the shadow of a doubt—that something is very wrong.

When he finally picks his way up the crumbling front steps, he finds that the stately front door is cracked open. From the look of it, the lock fell from the moist, rotting old wood at some point.

He pushes the door open more fully and is hit with a wave of the thick, sickly-sweet scent of decay. His shocked brain finally jumpstarts into action. He jogs into the foyer, the clacking of his dress shoes muffled in the thick layer of dust on the floor. Despite the blood rushing in his ears and his short, wheezing breaths, he can hear the sounds of voices coming from a door down the hallway to his left. He recognizes one as Draco’s.

He moves quickly but cautiously toward the sound, pausing just outside the open door.

“Mother, I’ve told you a hundred times, you can’t have milk in your tea anymore. It upsets your stomach for days. Here, let me—”

“Oh, stop fussing, Draco. I’m an old lady I can do what I like,” comes Narcissa’s high-pitched, croaky voice.

Draco chuckles warmly, and Harry can hear the clink of teacup on saucer.

“So, Draco, my boy. How is your Mister Potter?” Lucius asks. Harry had forgotten how alike he and Draco sound, though Lucius’s voice is a touch deeper.

“Oh, well. Don’t tell him I told you, but I think he’s going to propose soon!” Draco replies, sounding genuinely pleased.

Harry’s stomach flips, despite his overwhelming unease.

“Oh, my love, that’s wonderful. I know you love him very much. Perhaps now you can invite him to come live with us? We’ve got more than enough room, you know,” Narcissa’s reedy voice cracks a little, and Draco clears his throat.

“Mother. No,” he responds sternly, almost shouting, “We’ve talked about this many times. You know I can’t bring him here. As much as I would love—” Draco sniffs wetly, as though he’s crying, “—to have all of my family together, he would never want that. He could never understand. He’s not...not like us.”

Draco sobs, then, and there’s a clatter of china as though he’s shoved his teacup away from himself.

Harry can’t take it anymore. He takes a deep breath, sets his shoulders, and moves around the doorframe to face them.

Draco glances up from the opposite side of the small table, startled. He looks like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a hungry dog--hunched and shivering, eyes wide and darting erratically. But then a smile cuts across his pale face. His pink lips curve up at the edges, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Oh, Harry. We were just talking about you. You’ve come just in time for tea. Sit.”

It’s then that Harry looks to Lucius and Narcissa, seated in chairs on either side of Draco.

Neither of them move, and it takes Harry longer than he’d like to realize that’s because they can’t.

Their bodies are stiff and cold-looking. Their skin is waxy and grey, and both of their skulls are swathed in wisps of white-blonde hair that looks to have been tacked on with a hasty sticking charm. Harry shifts one step to the right, enough to see that Lucius’s eyelids are gone and his eyes have been replaced with shiny, black marbles.

He cuts his eyes frantically over to Narcissa, whose ivory teeth look too huge in her face. Harry realizes on a wave of nausea that her lips have rotted, exposing fleshless gums.

“Yes, Harry dear, Draco has told us so much about you, please sit. There’s so much we need to talk about. To clear the air.”

A manic laugh rips from Harry’s throat as what he thought was Narcissa’s voice drips out of Draco’s mouth like the chime of discordant bells. He takes several stilted steps backward toward the door.

Draco shoots to his feet, a soft, pleading look on his beautiful face. He moves toward Harry carefully, extending pleading hands until he can grasp Harry’s shoulders.

Harry wants to scream. He wants to run away from that place and never look back. But here’s Draco, his Draco, jarringly pretty among all this rot. Draco places a soft kiss on Harry's trembling lips.

“Harry. Please. Join us.”

As if on cue, a loud grinding sound shatters the quiet around him. He hears a thunk and then the room—wherever he is—floods with bright, white light. It pierces his still-closed eyelids, making him wince. When he finally blinks his eyes open he realizes his head is tilted all the way back, and all he can see is a broad expanse of dirty, white ceiling.

His awareness of his body returns even more slowly than his other senses, it’s like he’s been stunned or drugged; it feels like his thoughts are bubbling up from some great depth of his mind and his limbs are too heavy to move.

No—his limbs don’t just feel heavy, they’re pinned to his sides with magic. His body feels weightless because he is levitating, hovering over the ground and revolving in slow circles. He watches as a brown stain on the ceiling, just above his head, shifts as he turns and his breathing accelerates as he tries not to vomit and choke.

He cries out when he finally sees it: a long, silvery hook—no thicker than a sewing needle—dangles from the ceiling and pierces right through the tip of his tongue. His tongue, which has been stretched grotesquely from his mouth. His breathing grows ragged and he tries to cry out again for help.

“Ah. You’re awake,” a voice says softly from somewhere below him. The tone of it modulates, high and light one moment, deep and grating the next.

He grunts and cries more loudly, wiggling to turn his body so he can glimpse the stranger from the corner of his eye, but the hook just yanks his tongue.

“So, Rookwood,” the voice continues calmly, “it seems your traitorous tongue has landed you in a sticky situation once again. Though, you’re used to that now, surely.”

Tears stream from his eyes, blurring his vision, as the hook turns and creaks slowly above him.

“I know that some may believe you’ve done your time, that fifteen years in Azkaban is more than enough of an atonement for your crimes. You may believe that yourself.”

The voice moves, as though the speaker is slowly circling Rookwood where he hangs. There’s a hiss and an airy roar, and Rookwood tries to curl his body away as a flame licks the bare sole of his foot.

“You may believe that you deserve to go back to your home, to live a quiet life without harassment. You may very well believe that you have earned the right to choose for yourself what you will do from one day to the next.”

He sobs again, trying his best to beg and plead around his captured tongue. Every shift, every movement sends a sharp wave of pain rolling down his throat.

“But, you see, we aren’t in agreement about this, Rookwood. You may believe that you are owed the right to choose, while I believe you forfeited that right the moment—the instant—you denied it to others.”

He feels like a rabbit caught in a trap—all wide, roving eyes and panicked breaths—his body completely still in an effort to minimize the pain.

“So, what to do with you, then?” The voice continues from right beside him, closer than it's been before. The person reaches out and taps him gently, sending him swaying where he floats and drawing a cracked moan from deep inside his chest. The fluorescent lights setting the room ablaze flicker, casting the room in a sickly, yellow glow.

“A compromise. You will have your choice, and I will see that you finally have the punishment you deserve.”

His breathing goes hard and ragged again and he tries again in vain to lay his eyes on his tormentor. He chokes and swallows against the pool of saliva gathering in the back of this throat, his scream coming out more as a gurgle.

“As soon as I leave and close the door behind me, a timer will start. You will have one minute to make your choice. You need only to end the incantation in order to move freely, but if you do, your lying tongue will be ripped from your head and you will fall into the flames at your feet. If...if...you pull yourself from them alive, you will find the door unlocked and your freedom on the other side. However, if you cannot bring yourself to do so, your soul will be sucked from your deceitful mouth by our friend here—”

Rookwood hears the voice whisper finite, and the room suddenly floods with icy cold despair as the Patronus shield falls. The sensation is so familiar to him by now that he shudders in perverse relief. The unmistakable hollow roar of the dementor’s sucking breath echoes in his mind and a desperate, manic laugh escapes him. He hears the clanking of a heavy chain and the flap of the creature’s rotting cloak. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice before, the smell of decay fills the room and settles on his skin.

“Choose quickly, Rookwood. The Dementor may be restrained, but its chain will grow longer every ten seconds until finally, it will reach you, and it will suck you dry.”

For a long moment, everything in the room is still, and Rookwood thinks wildly that the person has changed their mind. Perhaps, it’s all a trick and he’ll wake up from this vivid nightmare on the floor of his cell in Azkaban. Maybe his mind has finally shattered. He doesn’t know if that would be better or worse.

Then he hears the sound of footsteps and the slow grind of the door as it slides shut. He thrashes again, pain be damned, and tries his best to scream for help.

“Scream all you want. No one knows you’re here. No one can hear you. No one would help you even if they could.”

“Wh-Why,” he manages to sob around his desiccated tongue.

“Why?” the person echoes, almost laughing, “This is for my son, you bastard.”

The door finally thuds closed, and he knows—this is no trick. There will be no relief. He will die here.

*

“Oh, Moll, Charlie owled this morning, said he’s going to be round for dinner.” Arthur calls as he pops his head up from under the hood of his latest Muggle vehicle experiment.