At night I hear it creeping, at night I feel it move

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*The nightowls of Rothbury, population 1694, are the small village's sentinels - evidence of their insomnia detectable only in scattered and steadily dwindling squares of light. It is these furtive and sleepless few who are the first to sense something is amiss, putting it off, in true muggle fashion, to their own neurosis. Yet, the choking sense of dread winding through the streets and slipping coldly through door gaps and windows is no figment of the mind.

Tall hooded figures skirt through the pines surrounding the town, their oblong, concentric march growing tighter and smaller until finally they spill into an open alleyway and fan out, seeming more liquid than army.

It did not take much for the Dark Lord to sway them, although it did take long. A slow coaxing away from their comfortable Ministry agreement with the promise of chaotic and widespread consumption far more tantalizing than the tired and impure souls of criminals. Voldemort has insured their first rebellion will be nothing short of spectacular, the promised banquet unarmed, unseeing and unsuspecting.

Naturally, a small group of Death Eaters flank the rear, giving their ghastly peers a wide, safe berth. They wait for the moment they can follow and make short work of any survivors.*

Comments

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Dead, hungry faces and dead, hungry hands cloud his vision and close around his limbs, emaciated yet unthinkably strong.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*It seems as though it's all happening again, the memory is so strong it's worse than all the nights it's kept him from sleeping and all the days it's kept him from thinking of much anything else. It physically feels as though it's reoccurring all over again, amplified somehow in his mind by the wraithlike creatures to make it take over his senses. Poisoned and regretful and breathing in water, Regulus dry-wretches inside his cabinet, with the locket and the dead searing in his memory.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Kreacher isn't there - the moment when tiny, disobedient elf hands should have pulled him up passes without incident - there's only water and leering Inferi, continuing on forever, the pain of asphyxiation unending.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*A single night of experiencing one's dying thoughts is enough for a lifetime, Regulus' mind can't stand to have two, not so soon. He feels violently hollowed out inside, on the verge of stress-induced loss of consciousness, but he can't let himself get dragged away - by the figments of his memory or by his current monsters. He refuses to let go of anything he can grasp on to, both physically and in his head. He can't handle thinking of the few people in his life he trusts, but the idea of their souls comes to mind, them far away from all this mess he's created. And he feels completely alone.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*An icy, fleshless hand grips his arm - in both worlds.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*In Regulus' memory he can't speak through the water, so in reality he doesn't speak, just tries to pull away while his mind yells for this to stop.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*The Inferi around him pause curiously, the horde as a whole tilting their heads in unison with the Dementor.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Regulus quite honestly believes he hasn't much soul to take. In fact after the night in the cave and after the effects of the potion had been staved off, for weeks he had been unable to think of anything else besides his own mistaken continuance and the irony of being in possession of this piece of a soul after going though a process of feeling as though he'd lost bits of his own. He had tried to stop thinking of it for the sake of his NEWTs and for the sake of not letting on to Barty that anything had happened, but it all comes back to him now.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Regulus has no idea that he is doing much more than despairing - he's communicating. Suddenly, his memory flickers like a film running out of reel - then, a momentous shift. The hungry dead and the water and the rocks evaporate and everything rebuilds itself anew. It's quiet, an evening long ago on a spiral staircase of a Hogwarts tower, Barty sits a few steps above him, grinning, "Don't be stupid, Reg, everyone's-" he's cut off as Regulus is wrenched away falling into a different memory, the middle of a rant between his mother and another well-dressed woman, he's small, very small, looking up at them from a doorway, "-in possession of a soul."*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Startled and emotionally dizzied by these seemingly out of the blue recollections, Regulus feels a bit mad and doesn't realise yet that they possibly could have come from anywhere but his own mind, their puzzling wordplay seeming more accidental and odd than meaningful.

Madness is usually too subjective and dangerous a topic to think over, so now he remembers the only other time he asked if he had lost his mind once before. He had been twelve, and Sirius had told him yes. Perhaps he was right after all.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Another sudden tug like that of a portkey - there's an angry red face, a muggle-born girl retorting to something upsetting once said, "-YOU'RE-" She never finishes, because suddenly her face becomes Barty's, fourteen years old, his lip trembling uncharacteristically, eyes wide and frightened, "-not mad! I'm-" Professor Grubbly-Plank sets down a container of flobber worms on her desk tersely "-simply trying to speak with you, Mr. Black."*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*It feels like being rewound and fast-forwarded though your own life, so jarring and out of his control he isn't sure if the images connect, the emotions, or the words. He repeats the sequence himself trying to grasp what they could possibly mean to him in a time like this.

Once he stops looking and strings together the words instead, Regulus hits his head on the inside of the cabinet. The impossible has occurred to him and it makes him feel crazier than ever before. Memories are meant to run in sequence, not create new meaning cut up like newspaper clipping ransom notes.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Voldemort, sweeping around him like a predator made of smoke, hisses in Reg's ear, "-you cannot deny-" Before what he cannot deny is made clear, the darkness is eaten away by a throng of students, a loud Hufflepuff talking jubilantly to her friend as they bump into him on accident "-us our-" Kreacher sets the plate on his desk with a bow, "-feast, young Master."*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*It's difficult to keep track of the words running through his head, he's not used to thinking in choppy code and pay attention only to words. Even if it's possible that this is what he thinks it is, if they aren't random memories but ones arranged for him and fed into his brain in thoughtful order, he doesn't know what to do about it.

His voice sounds tinny, spoken into the concave dip of a saucepan.*

Get out.

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*The memories come at a more rapid pace now, to the point where it is impossible to note who is saying what and where it is taking place, as if the Dementor is growing impatient with Reg's inability to keep up, as if talking faster is the Dementor's answer to speaking slower and very deliberately, as if Regulus is an imbecile. "What use-" "-do you have for-" "-the soul." "WHEN?" "-you claim-" "to have none." "Left."*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Nothing comes back at first, nothing except the repetition of what the Dementor has just 'said', like a child first learning to speak.

Slowly, a slightly gibberish reply returns, Regulus' intended test message getting jumbled with his thought process of how to do this at all. "Concentrate on the-" "-no mistakes." "I don't want it-" "just bin it already, Reg." "To be safe."*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*Suddenly all that fills Reg's mind is Barty's manic, hyena-like laughter, it's repeated over and over, an unnatural loop as the Dementor mocks Reg's poor attempt at their language.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*"STOP-" "laughing at th-" "me? I'm only-" "-frighted." "Go away, get out of here!"

A poorly aimed pan comes out of the cupboard, thrown by Regulus as best he can with his arm bent oddly so he fits inside.*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*The Dementor's companion, infuriated by the insult of a thrown pan, reaches in, its skeletal arm unnaturally swift, now gripping Reg's chin in a cold grasp, attempting to drag him out. "FOOL." "-boy.-" "-human-" "-wretch!" The fast cycle of memories seems to slow, and a third year Slytherin boy sitting beside Reg in the Great Hall remarks in relief to everyone at large, "You have no idea how hungry I am,"*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Regulus finally has the awareness to scream. It's completely pointless and sounds strange even to himself, not to mention no one can hear him anyway. He stops after a single yell, instead using his panicked energy to try and worm his way deeper into the cupboard, ending up knocking the wind out of himself as his stomach lands on something cast iron and spilling more onto the floor at the Dementor's feet.

"I'll help you." "-brought here today to-" "-take however much you want-" "-fast asleep in their beds."*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*"Our-" "-BROTHER-" "" "-maybe-" "-satisfied by-" "-muggle filth-" "-but a wizard is unmatched-" "-in flavour."*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*"I have-" "-a piece?" "- the most powerful wizard-" "-this nation has seen." "Trade?" "No one has to know."*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*There is a moment of rattling, it's no longer clear if it's happening internally or the Dementors are breathing aloud to each other - in any case, they are clearly exchanging their own words, perhaps in the same memory-speak, perhaps in a different, older language entirely. Finally the first Dementor trawls through Reg's mind yet again. "TRAITOR!" "-to your-" "-kind." "Is that really-" "-what you wish for-" "-WE WON'T-" "-protect you!"*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*"I don't want-" "-protect-" "-I want-" "-let me go!" "You don't want-" "me."*

[batshitscary.livejournal.com]

*McGonagall raises her eyebrows as Barty squirms beside him in detention, "-I think you'll find I do."*