No more singing, no more laughing, no more sunny days

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*It’s a churning sort of night; an upset stomach split open and peeled back, visceral acid-carved lining congealed and blackened toward ruffled hills. Everything is half-digested grass and half-digested air and half-digested details. Fuzzy, unfocused breaks in the uniform pattern which seem to waver and disappear. They play on peripherals and press against skulls - a tightening headache, an incubating cold, blotches of something not-quite solid against the skin. The ward is self-assured like that. It isn’t terribly heavy; it doesn’t expect to be found.

But it does leave plenty of warning. A parameter of low humming and naked birds nesting in their own feathers - of the distinct and deeply unpleasant feeling of disinfectants scrubbed raw against pores, of being pressed through a sterile, plastic vein and squirted into existence on the other end.

Most of all, there’s the house, rising up like a stooped vagrant, unsteady, indigestible and perpetually alive, alive with meaning and history and, more recently, light. It bounces across windows, causing rooms to come alive and die in scheduled, choreographed bursts. There are walls in between of course, constricts of time and space and drywall that are going ignored, but the house and the family that built it have only rarely followed the rules.*

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[fleasaremurder.livejournal.com]

*Sirus' tense shoulder relaxes, and his wand drops to his side. He has never enjoyed the feeling of being led along a path without being consulted or informed of its purpose or terminus, and he likes it even less with his misbegotten brother and said brother's bizarre best friend in the balance. All patience gone, he turns, looking for the Hyena again, ready to hex the damn thing.*

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*It's rejection. It's hurtful. It's rude. Sirius isn't following the rules, those unspoken gameboard instructions, the invisible trail of breadcrumbs. It's a moment of consequence, simultaneous action leading to absence. A child's temper rattling the entire framework of the house. A muggle lightswitch flipped to off. Sound both ceases and begins and mostly there's an encompassing darkness. The tambourine monkey freezes, the patronus disappears through a wall and every door in the hallway slams shut.*

[fleasaremurder.livejournal.com]

*A more prudent wizard would say, lumos or even lumos maxima and tried to proceed back. A more prudent wizard wouldn't ever find himself here. But Sirius Black has even prided himself in his lack of prudence.

He does light his wand for a moment, finding the silk dress. It leaps into the air at his gesture, wadding itself into a haphazard ball and then--with a flick--bursting into flame.

The whole house is dry tinder. One misstep--one moment of lapsed concentration--and the whole place could go up, enchantments or no. A pearl drops, and then another, wreathed in flame that is extinguished by the fall.*

Stop fucking with me.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Nothing moves in shades of orange and yellow. The fire stifles Barty's tricks, wards him off like ancient magic holding back the malevolent spirits of some dark, long-past age. For a moment it seems as if he's finally been cowed, sent scurrying off to hide and re-think and re-plot. For a moment it seems like nothing will happen at all. And then there's the upwards pull, an all consuming suckling. It isn't clear at first what it is, but then the fire flinches. Some wounded warrior submitting to a low hum - a sound like a distant vacuum, ominous and rumbling and hungry. It's oxygen, oxygen being torn from the hallway, molecule by molecule disintegrating and dispersing. It suffocates the fire, suffocates everything.

But spells have never needed air. Barty's wordless expelliarmus comes from nowhere, is heard by no one but is transferred into existence, energy and force nonetheless.*

[fleasaremurder.livejournal.com]

*As the wand flies from his hand, and the fire flickers out, leaving him to gasp raggedly at nothing in the darkness, Sirius has time to reflect how completely idiotic it was to come here, to follow that damn hyena. He's going to die here for no damn reason besides his own bull-headed stupidity, and Regulus is going to be left to the tender mercies of Bellatrix, and that's the end of it. He grits his teeth and fumbles at the door at his left, then the next, in the futile hope that something will open--a window, hole in the wall, anything.*

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*It's distinctly diagonal - the angled, fleshy sound of someone veering and buckling into a wall. It's companionship. Companionship in lack of foresight and lack of air and desperate, hurried fumbling. The doors burst inwards, an implosion of sound and a rush of relief and mostly an end to the game. The wheezing comes before Barty's wand, its tip buried into the back of Sirius' neck, his planned one liner lost in his own strained gulping.*

[fleasaremurder.livejournal.com]

*It's the wheezing that warns him, and when the wandpoint presses, he's ready. Sirius reaches up to grab it, finding the middle of the thin wooden thing and closing his fist around hit. He wrenches it forward over his shoulder with all the strength lent by panic, desperation, and fury.*