giant snakes? in my magical boarding school? it's more likely than you think
Next Post »
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 853
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

The snake twists, and the sink and both on either side of it slide away from her before clicking and moving down. Tiles slide in place over the gap they left, revealing a dark corridor.

Anathema steps up beside Ellie, wand in hand.

Permalink

Ellie pulls out Discovery, casts a Lumos.

Down the corridor.

Permalink

Anathema keeps pace.

The corridor ends at a large trap door, currently wedged firmly shut. Anathema gets it open, revealing a wide cylinder descending into the dark, a ladder on one side. It's impossible to tell from here how far down it goes.

Permalink

Whatever hurt Professor Reynolds is down there. They're going.

Permalink

Anathema wants to go first.

Permalink

All right. Ellie will follow after.

Permalink

The tunnel is very, very long. Anathema's arms are shaking by the end, and she staggers when she finally drops into the thin layer of water and mud at the base. The cylinder opens into a large domed room, a metal door on the other side decorated with seven snakes holding it to the wall.

Permalink

"Open up," Ellie hisses again.

Permalink

The snakes slither aside, two staying still to act as hinges, allowing the gate to swing open.

Anathema leads the way, her wand in front of her. The tunnels here are labyrinthine, and the floor's wet. Still... There's signs the muck's been disturbed - a path through the general settling of dirt and detritus, leading consistently through the warren. There's skeletons of small animals lying in the side paths, dark grime layered over them. The entire place smells like rot, and must, and still air.

The path takes them down stairs, further into the depths, and the last line of stairs let out into a cavernous room with a layer of water up to their calves - frigid, murky, though so far the ground's been even under their feet. Ellie's Lumos doesn't go very far down here - there's a faint outline of a statue at the far side, more a suggestion in the deep shadows -

Permalink

And there's platforms before the statue, rising out of the muck.

And on one of those, curled in on herself, is -

Serpens Malfoy, hair dirty and spread around her, collapsed. There's a dark book a few feet away from her, tumbled open like she threw it before falling back -

Permalink

And standing above the book is the wavering outline - a ghostly suggestion, but in living color - of a teenage boy wearing an old-fashioned Hogwarts robe, a Slytherin patch on his breast.

He claps around the wand he's holding.

"You've made it at last, I see."

Permalink

"Expelliarmus!"

Permalink

Anathema screams her own incantation, moving in perfect sync with Ellie.

Permalink

He laughs as the beams pass harmlessly through him. "I'd save my breath, if I were you. I'm not quite here yet, you see."

Permalink

"Tom Riddle, then?"

Permalink

"The one and only - Tom Marvolo Riddle, at your service." He bows, grandly, and then twitches his wand - it's hard to tell in the dim, but it looks like Serpens'.

Glowing letters of green fire spell out his name - TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE.

"Although I do believe my preferred name rather took off."

The letters rearrange themselves, until they spell:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

Permalink


"Really stretched that anagram until it broke. What did you do to Malfoy?"

Permalink

Anathema's shaking, fists clenched.

Permalink

"She poured her heart out to me," he says, "And I only took what she gave. Though I believe she rather came to regret that - she's been increasingly obnoxious, this last week. Nothing like her grandfather. She even saved that mudblood professor's pathetic life - though I doubt she'll survive being restored, at least. Basilisk venom is rather delightfully potent."

Permalink

Anathema, somehow, looks perfectly calm. Her wand's still pointed at Riddle.

"Avada Kedavra," she says, voice even and flat, and the world between her and the smirking boy lights up in a sickly green (almost hauntingly, nightmarishly familiar - )

Permalink

He flinches back, wand twitching, a flash of fear over his face -

The beam passes through his chest.

Permalink

He forces himself to steady. "Impressive, for a kid. Though you didn't listen to me, did you?"

Permalink

Ellie-

twitches her wand at the book. "Wingardium Leviosa." She floats it over to herself.

Permalink

He scowls, and, before she can get the book even properly into the air -

"Kill them."

There's a soft grinding noise from the statue. A sound almost like cloth dragged over stone. "Kill..." a voice mutters (a familiar one, from the night Scarlet was petrified).

Permalink

That fucking- snake-

"Don't kill anyone!" Ellie shouts in Parseltongue.

Total: 853
Posts Per Page: