#sunkencrown

Lily & Regulus in the Caravan

A verse in which Lily Potter and Regulus Black are unlikely roommates in a house on wheels as they live in an outlawed community, painting all kinds of eldritch horrors on their door and trying to deal with the deadly violets that is the remains of Lord Voldemort, which Regulus keeps in the corner of his bed. 

Scorpius knew he was staring -- knew he was being rude -- but he couldn’t help himself any more than he could have stopped himself from blurting that inane observation out in lieu of an explanation. He’d never seen a dead man before -- not one who was alive, at least, although this wasn’t his first corpse; that had been three years ago at the funeral of his mother’s great-uncle. That...had been nothing like this.

That had been well-dressed people standing around sharing stories that Scorpius had never heard while the dead wizard was still living. That had been half-heard mutters and sidelong looks directed at the scraggy, gray-haired wizard weeping in the corner who would have been the deceased’s husband if his blood-status had been better and the Greengrasses had cared for prestige a little less and love a little more. That had been his father’s hand going tighter and tighter on Scorpius’s shoulder at every not-so-oblique reference to mud. That had been mother’s hands shaking as she did not draw her wand on every even less-oblique reference to marks and eating. That had been Scorpius squirming under everyone’s eyes but refusing to step away from his father’s side to escape the staring. That had been...uncomfortable, but only a few steps outside of ordinary life. The presence of the corpse had not had much of an impact; he had not looked like he was sleeping, as the adults all said, but more like he was a stiff-carved statue who had never been a man at all.

There was no mistaking either the life or the death of this dripping boy barely two years older than Scorpius and the friends who had helped him perform the impossible twist of magic that had dredged this body from the cold lake and breathed life -- or at least air -- back into its brackish lungs. There was no mistaking his identity either, although part of Scorpius dearly wanted to; wanted them to have erred, to have gotten some other hapless dead man, one whom they could send back and forget that any of this had ever happened...

But that nose, that chin -- there was no denying their provenance. Scorpius saw the same nose, the same chin, on his father’s face and his grandmother’s. Saw them on his own face every time he looked in a mirror, although the black water at his knees gave back no reflection now. Scorpius tried not to look at it, or at the vague sense of motion in the distance as other things moved in the depths.

Looking at Regulus Black was no better but Scorpius forced himself to do that, even though it made his knees quake and his fingers shake and his breath catch in his throat (was the breath catching in Regulus’s again? Or was it all illusion?). “Y-your mother...” Scorpius began, then decided that was a conversation to have farther away from the water. “Never mind for now. Look, the important thing is, can you walk? We really oughtn’t to linger here. I’m not sure how long the spells on the oth...on the inferi will last.”

@sunkencrown

“REGULUS!” Lily screamed.

Probably she should have used the other name, if she was going to be shrieking it loudly enough to startle the idiot peacocks outside -- should have been trying to stay in the habit, at least -- but Lucius Malfoy was safely Imperiused and wihle the two boys were too little to understand what was going on, they were also safely ensconced in the nursery. And if anyone else had found their way into the manor unannounced, she and Regulus were dead anyway.

None of that impeccable reasoning had had anything to do with her choice of shout; she hadn’t thought at all, just screamed, because she’d been too startled by the sudden feeling of dry paper moving like liquid to encase her arms up to the elbows. Lily had never seen a book do that before, not even in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library -- but they were in Hogwarts now and the whole reason for their current charade was because the books the Malfoys kept were full of darker secrets than those at the school could offer, so perhaps Lily shouldn’t have been so surprised to find rather more intensity in the level of protections they sported...

But once again, she wasn’t feeling reasonable. She had been captured by a book. Whatever spell had animated its pages strengthened them too because she couldn’t pull free, not even be tearing the delicate pages. And with her hands both trapped within its paper prison, she couldn’t even get to her wand to hex herself out either. Just now, Lily wasn’t concerned with preserving the contents of this doubtless rare and possibly vital tome; she just wanted out.

I told you to throw out that fucking plant. 

“I’m fine, Dromeda.” 

Only he wasn’t. Beyond the blood smeared across him, drying in crusty flakes, staining the beds of his fingernails and matting his hair, he was far from okay. He was better than he could be, sure —the vast majority of the blood wasn’t his. Yet sitting in the tub, the water a sickly pink as it swirled around the drain, his shoulders slumped and eyes unfocused as he tried not to flinch away from her touch with the flannel, it was clear he was struggling to hold it together in even the simplest ways, let alone be fine.

make all the verses

my thoughts: virus that ultimately doesn’t take but attempts to burrow into the core of someones magic but wait theirs more i just thought of the concept that if it IS like an infection what if it continues into the core of the person. /hands off while I eat all of the jalapanos

OK BUT the big question is: what does it do? Does it ultimately force the person to do everything Voldemort wants them to do? Kind of like the Imperius curse, except it’s literally inside you and you can’t get it out?