Running out of time and craving weed
None of the now-involved found another sigil in the next hour.
Rodolphus found himself too exhausted to explain further, so Rabastan kind of took over. He elaborated about how this kind of thing took time and whatnot.
"I need a quick break." He said absentmindedly and excused himself.
To where he wasn't sure.
Everything felt off.
Why was he at Hogwarts again?
"Aaand there he goes. Anyway, don't go anywhere alone, not even you, McGonagall. I'm gonna follow my brother real quick, till later. How about here in an hour? Great!" And Rabastan dashed to follow Rodolphus without waiting for an answer, leaving the four in the haunted corridor.
Rodolphus held his pounding head. He felt like he was about to burst into a mangled mash of meat, blood, and organs. He growled, his hands balling to fists in his hair.
It was getting worse and worse, the pounding louder than anything around him.
When he entered a random classroom, he had fallen into a feverish haze, in which he somehow managed to ignore even Carrow.
The man stood in the otherwise empty room with a student, and was apparentlyabout to raise his wand against the kid.
The Ravenclaw looked wide-eyed from Carrow to Rodolphus, not sure which one was worse.
"Hey, Lestrange, did the demon get you yet?" Amycus snickered.
"Or has it killed McGonagall and the three little shits?"
Rodolphus had stopped the mechanical walking he had fallen into but hadn't looked up. He was still staring straight ahead, eyes empty.
What was that dimwitted imbecile talking about?
Rabastan came rushing in behind him, his expression changing from worried to realization to disgust so quickly when he saw Carrow that the lone student would have been amused, if not for the fact that he was trapped with now three deatheaters.
"Carrow." Rabastan sneered, years of deep hatred and loathing woven into his words.
His eyes snapped from the man to the scared kid beside him, who looked paler than Rodolphus.
Had he always been this pale?
"Ah, the other Lestrange. How about you keep your weird brother in check? He's scaring the little bastard." And not just him, by the slightly quivery sound of Carrow's voice.
He liked that.
Carrow was a bastard.
But something was wrong.
He was still stiff as a board and staring.
The pounding in his head got so much worse that he felt like puking.
Rabastan opened his mouth to argue back, but he did not get the chance.
Suddenly, all control he had over his body was taken away.
His neck snapped towards Carrow; he felt his eyes roll back into his skull, and his lips moved on their own accord. Words left his mouth that he hadn't thought up first, a darker, gravelier voice under his own, poisoning it.
"I will strip you of your veins and flesh, you filthy mortal. I will drink your blood and wear your skin; the three houses of hell will bury your sacrifice within-"
'Stop!' He thought.
'Stop! Get out of my body; it's not yet yours!' He choked, his eyes returned to normal, and a nasty cough was forced out of his chest, as the sound of a demon leaving a living person echoed off the walls, fleshy creaking.
Carrow's eyes had widened in terror, and he had stumbled back.
"W-what the fuck! Get away from me!"
Rodolphus cleared his still sore throat, grimacing. Rabastan positioned himself protectively before him and pulled the student towards him too, who looked completely terrified of him but was too frozen in terror to do anything.
"Weird how not even demons like you, Carrow. It's funny actually; me and that thing have a lot of agreeing thoughts about you." He smirked in superiority, and Carrow's expression twisted further.
"You dirty wretch, you don't get to threaten me like this! I'm going to have you killed by the Lord by the end of the week!" He screamed and stepped close to Rabastan.
"You're not his favorite anymore, Lestranges. You fucked up too often." The smeary smile was countered by one of Rabastan's angry ones as he leaned in further.
"If it weren't you saying it, I would say that it's almost cute how you think the Lord gives a single shit about anyone. He definitely doesn't care about you."
"How dare you-"
Their stare battle of seething hatred was interrupted by Rodolphus producing the most exhausted sound anyone in the halls of Hogwarts had ever heard.
"Could you two shut up? I have a migraine." He mumbled and sunk onto one of the benches. "This will have consequences." Carrow carried on without a spark of sympathy for the dead-looking man.
Rodolphus turned with a snap, so fast Carrow startled and jumped back with a yelp.
"Do you see this face?" He asked and gestured to himself.
His expression was the epitome of 'just leave me the fuck alone,' with his massive eyebags and the slight craze that had settled over him.
"This always means it's time to shut up!" He hissed.
"But-"
Rodolphus snapped his fingers to interrupt the other deatheater and gestured to his face again.
"I-"
He did it again, his expression morphing deeper and deeper into one of exasperated anger.
Carrow blinked in confusion. He had to digest that he was just scolded by his colleague like a kindergarten child.He sneered, but instead of words, only angry mumbling left his mouth as he stomped out of the hall.
"You should find your friends. It's not really safe here." Rabastan said and carefully ushered the boy out of the classroom. When the child finally seemed to snap awake, he bolted away as fast as he could.
Rodolphus let his pounding head fall back onto the table without slowing the fall.He figured that it couldn't make this headache any worse, because that was impossible. And maybe it would kill the last remaining brain cells that kept him conscious.
He was wrong; it did worsen the headache.
He groaned and held his head miserably.
"Why did I do that?"
Rabastan snorted and sat beside him.
"You look really miserable right now."
"Fuck you."
"Nah, no thanks."
"Eugh." He made, not bothering to look up.
"Lestrange." Rodolphus still didn't bother, even though the new voice definitely belonged to fucking Snape of all people. Snape could fuck himself and die for all he cared. What would he even want from him?
"No."
"You are behaving like a child."
"I'm being possessed; give me a break."
"No rest for the wicked." Rabastan chimed happily, and Rodolphus' thoughts circled back to torturing his brother to death.
He sluggishly lifted his head from the table to give Snape one of the good old deathstares.
"What?" He drawled.
"Shouldn't you be exorcising the demon you brought into these halls instead of sitting around?" The headmaster's strict eyes narrowed on him.
He was so tired of explaining shit to everyone.
So instead he took out his letting strip again and raised his eyebrows in surprise when it actually smoldered.
"What are you doing?" The other demanded to know and took a step back. Good to know even his serious colleagues were easy to scare when it came to the demonic.
"Doing what you said." He stretched his arm in hopes of not having to get up. Lucky for him, the Strip burned up over the stable, but there was no rune on its surface.
"I hate the ones I have to search for." He grumbled and leaned down to look on the underside. Yep, there it was.
"It's Hardship."
"I still can't read runes, no matter how often you say their funny names."
"The 'h' with the point over it."
"Great, Azel, Uzkaret, and Fermok left. No one from Immoluation today."
"Good, I hate these bastards." He sneered.
"So I assume you're making progress?" Snape asked, and another wave of exhaustion washed over him with the words.
"Sure." He mumbled. Rabastan was still looking at the book.
"Can't we do the ash test with the body? Then we could eliminate one or get the name right away, depending on the house."
Rodolphus glared at his brother from the side.
"Do you just assume I carry around human ashes everywhere I go?"
"...you don't?"
"... well, not today, okay?"
The bewilderment on Snape's face was like balsamic to his soul. Ah, what a treat.
"Lestrange!"
Aaaand moment ruined.
The students came rushing in.
"Why is everyone so keen on screaming our name today?" He mumbled to himself, but Rabastan must have heard it, because he shrugged.
Hufflepuff and Weasley came rushing in, the latter almost stumbling, because she definitely hadn't expected Snape.
"The body's gone!" She blurted, after having recovered from the shock.
Relatable, he had to recover as well after seeing Snape.
"What do you mean, gone?" Asked the headmaster in that condescending tone of his.
"W-w-we don't know; i-it's just gone."
"Did you see it stand up and walk away?" Rodolphus asked while massaging his temples.
Both shook their heads.
"We went to check on it, and it's not there." Weasley emphasized, obviously agitated because he wasn't as hysterical as she was.
"Oh, it'll turn up eventually." He just said, but got up nonetheless.
Snape looked at him as if he had just announced he would join the Order.
"What is the meaning of all this?"
Rodolphus just held a hand up to stop him.
"Just let me work. It's bad enough that these three pests and McGonagall are involved. I don't want another one questioning every move I make. Unless you coincidentally have human ashes with you right now."
"Wha- No, I don't." Snape sighed.
"I trust you to do good work, but I hope you understand that no one is to get hurt." He emphasized.
"I do." He groaned, "Tell this guy." and pointed into one of the darker corners of the room.
Everyone turned their heads to find a dark, shadowy figure with glowing red eyes looming in the corner. The moment they saw it, it quickly melted into the shadows.
Hufflepuff yelped, and to his delight he even saw Snape flinch. This was why it was worth it in the end, seeing his colleagues suffer.
"Ohhh, that's the first actual spirit we had, is it?" Rabastan asked, and he nodded slowly.
"Yeah, this one doesn't have that many friends." He joked.
The room seemed to shake.
Well, someone didn't like that.
The stones around them flew out of their position in the walls, the wooden floorboards were violently ripped away, and the ceiling with them, until all that was left was a black void.
"What the hell is going-" Snape's voice melted into the sound of dripping, ah, the demon showed mercy and muted the man for him. Maybe they could become buddies after all.
But considering that Rodolphus could make out a faint light in the distance now, probably not.
This was a lot.
It meant that this was going to be a full-on hallucination, which was never good.
And he did not know this one either. So they did come up with something new once in a while.
He turned to find all the others still there, the looks on their faces terrified.
He smiled at Snape, who looked back at him as if the world was ending.
He would get over it.
Hufflepuff was crying, though Ginny was trying to comfort him, but she couldn't move from her place.
Rabastan looked worried and tried to tell him something, but no sound left his lips.
He could see them but couldn't hear anything other than that obnoxious dripping noise. He turned away and tried to walk towards it. It worked.
His boots stepped into something liquid, and his stomach churned immediately.
Of course blood.
Of course he had to walk through a whole damn sea of blood.
He swallowed the nausea, and the memories slowly creeping up in his head with it.
Cold, dead walls, a rat, blood everywhere, and the soulless freezing a dementor brought with it.
No, no, he wasn't there; he wasn't there.
"So, you little mortal, think you are superior? Let's put you back in your place." The voice echoed off the walls that weren't there, so loud that he thought his ears must be bleeding.
A chill ran down his spine, and cold sweat formed at his brow.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
He was supposed to stay calm.
It wasn't real.
'Deep breaths; don't react to it. You have to stay calm.' He repeated again and again in his head as he walked on.
But every step he took made a sickening squelching sound, and every breath he took tasted like copper and iron.
Suddenly, something illuminated.
The source of the dripping was a massive stone hand, with its wrist slit. Fresh blood was pooling out of it, and Rodolphus's hand went to his own wrist on its own accord.
It was still whole; it wasn't cut.
He swallowed, but the heavy smell in the air left the taste in his mouth as well.
His gaze followed the direction the hand was pointing.
The light, which had illuminated it, vanished as quickly as it appeared and made him jump. He hoped none of the others had seen that.
The others...He turned to them. They were still there but had seemingly accepted their fate as bystanders and were tensely watching him now.
Witnesses to his weakness.
He turned away; he couldn't help them in any other way than to do what that creature wanted him to do and end the illusion.
Every step through the sea felt like he was walking through concrete.
Liquid, thick, red concrete that smelled and tasted of iron.
His breaths were going faster, pumping even more of that copper taste into his mouth and intensifying the nausea.
No, he needed to stay calm; he had to!
It seemed he reached the point in the void where the demon wanted him, because another sudden light revealed a door.
A door like the one on his cell.
He could see that it was locked.
His body started involuntarily shivering.
It was getting out of control.
No! No!
He shook his head and looked around.
Bodies stood, surrounding him in different stiff poses.He trudged over to the first.
She had dark, tangled hair, her eyes were black and empty, and her body looked more like one of a cracking porcelain doll than a decaying corpse.
But it got the smell right.
The only good thing about that was that the smell of death covered the heavy stench of blood.
"What... do you want me to do?" He whispered to himself.
The body's had to be the key somehow; there was nothing else. He saw a keyhole when he eyed the door, so there had to be an actual key to it.
Where on a body could that be hidden?
He decided to check all their mouths first; if he couldn't find it, he'd have to rethink.
He leaned forward and carefully took the woman's chin and opened her mouth.
There was nothing but rotting tissue.
Her skin felt cold to the touch as he let go. He moved on to the next and froze for a second.
When he looked at the man long enough, he resembled someone.
Someone from long ago.
"Longbottom." He said slowly.
What a petty twist.
When he thought about it now, the woman resembled Alice.
Or what he thought Alice had looked like... his time before Azkaban was pretty hazy.
He shook his head to shake the thoughts off and opened Frank's mouth.
Nothing.
He moved around the room, opening the mouths of people he had tortured or killed, so they looked like they all were screaming when he came to the last one.
This one was a blank slate.
No hair, no defining facial features, nothing. But its mouth held an old, rusty key.
"Great." He muttered sarcastically and started to trudge over to the door.
The smell of rot left quicker than expected, and blood took over again.
Behind the door was another void.
When he looked back, he found the others suddenly right behind him, looking like different variations of scared and confused.
Great, don't let them miss any of his misery.
They saw everything.
His breaths quickened again.
No. No!
Another sudden light made him snap his attention back to the now illuminated scene before him.
There were bastardized versions of him and Bellatrix.
He was kneeling before her; she was slicing his wrists open; more blood streamed into the ocean.
Behind them was the massive silhouette of a throne, with a man on it.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make out any of his features, except the dimly red glowing eyes.
The symbol of the house of Desolation was burning behind him, but no light reached him, as if his form was swallowing it.
Deep breaths, he told himself; it was not real.
The figures, even the man on the throne, had sat stiff and unmoving, like a picture.
So when they all suddenly pointed to the right, he flinched back.
Their hands all pointed to what could only be a prison cell, small, isolated, and dirty.
Another shiver ran down his spine, and he slowly shook his head.
"You can't make me." He whispered, knowing full well that it could.
The more time he wasted in this illusion, the more time it had to possess him; he had to move; he had to do as it goddamn told him.
He refused to look back at the others, too ashamed of the way his legs quivered as he moved through the sea of blood towards the cell.
The demon's eyes never left him, its head turning slowly.
Rodolphus took another, last gulp of copper air, feeling sick to his stomach, as he entered the cell.
And the door was thrown closed.
He screamed.
He screamed and threw himself against it to break it open, break it open. Damn Merlin, he didn't want to be locked away and forgotten again! He didn't want to! He would rather die than be locked away again.
When the metal didn't budge, his manic eyes slowly found his wrists.
"-out of it! Snap out of it!" Rabastan yelled. His hands were on his shoulders; he was shaking him.
"Are you back?" He asked, and Rodolphus only nodded slowly.
Everything fell back into place; the walls of the cell vanished, the freezing feeling of a dementor's presence was replaced by the warmth of the castle, and the sickening smell of blood turned into dust and old books.
He looked down, and his stuttering heart started to calm when he found solid ground.
Only the taste on his tongue still held that coppery feeling.
"That was sick." Weasley muttered and looked as ready to hurl as he felt.
Hufflepuff seemed straight up traumatized, and Snape was speechless.
Until he wasn't, damn Merlin.
"What- what does this mean?"
"We're running out of time." Rodolphus whispered. He didn't feel strong enough to talk normally.
He didn't feel strong enough to stand up at all.
"You can do this; come on." Rabastan offered his hand, and he took it. His brother pulled him from the floor and steadied him.
He blinked a few more times, his senses returning to him fully.
With them came searing pain in his hands.
He hadn't beaten against a prison door, but the wall. His knuckles were bloody, and his right thumb and wrist looked broken.
He hissed in pain, sensing as the feeling returned to him.
"You should let that be treated." Snape said, looking like he was still trapped in the void.
"No time!" he hissed.
"We still need one sigil; if we get bad luck, we still need two. It had the house of Desolation displayed, which means only Fermok and Uzkaret are left." He said, and Rabastan nodded along.
He straightened his cloak as best as he could to try and keep up the bit of pride he still had. The bones in his hands revolted and sent bolts of pain up his arm, which he tried his best to ignore.
"You said the body was missing?" He asked the two students.
Hufflepuff didn't say a word. The boy was still staring at him like he was the devil himself. Poor guy just wanted to look into a normal job, oh man.
"Yeah... yeah, it's- it's gone. How can you brush this off so easily?" She was still totally out of it. Oh Lord.
"Experience and a broken wrist, come on." He led the way, Rabastan followed, and Weasley pulled poor Hufflepuff with her.
"Oh, and Snape, don't follow us. You really don't want to get deeper into this." He called back to the completely baffled headmaster.
_____
"You're back. We found another rune." Ravenclaw hummed, lost in another dream.
Honestly, Rodolphus was jealous.
If that girl had weed, she should share. Sharing was caring.
"Lestrange! Is your hand broken? What happened to Mr. Taylor?"
"He's probably a bit traumatized." Rodolphus made a dismissive gesture; the boy would be fine eventually.
He had been traumatized plenty of times, and look how he turned out. Or not; maybe he wasn't the best example.
"What!" The old hag shrieked, the sound piercing his skull, and stormed past the brothers to the students.
Rodolphus left them in the hall to open the door to the cursed classroom.
"How long has she been back?" He asked, making McGonagall look over, still in shock.
"She's back?"
"Great, since now. Stay!" He yelled over at the body, fully knowing she probably wouldn't.
He turned to Weedgirl.
"You have another rune?"
"Which one?" Rabastan asked excitedly, as if this was about a crossword puzzle and not about finding the name of an ancient demonic force.
"Spear." Luna said happily, and Rabastan did not hold back that eyeroll.
"In English?"
"That was English."
Upside down and mirrored seven with a dot." Rodolphus filled in.
The grin spreading on his brother's face loosened a bit of the weight he felt strapped to his shoulder.
"We got him. It's Fermok."