Shall I couple hell?

“Smith: How can you argue that there is no greater meaning behind life? To deny the existence of something else beyond the veil of death? Magic is a world of endless possibilities, one which we are lucky enough to be able to glimpse at full scale, an ever growing and expanding one. A thousand years ago we didn’t have half the knowledge and spells we do nowadays. Is your mind so rotten with pride and arrogance that there is no room in it for the small possibility that you might be wrong? That in a thousand years in the future, wizards will be able to traverse through life and death simply by opening a door?

Marquez: I am not denying the existence of another world that is simply invisible to us, that we don’t have the means yet to travel to. Rather, I am simply being pragmatic. The world that you envision beyond death is not the one you will find. Death isn’t an old woman shrouded in a black cloak; death is messy and cruel and bloody. So why tempt fate with such a risky business? Why is it so hard for you to consider the possibility that there might be nothing more to death? That it is not an enemy to be conquered, or a doorway to another world, but rather just a cold hard fact that we will all have to accept at some point.

Smith: Then shouldn’t we look for those answers?! Isn’t it our sacred duty as wizards to aspire to discover the meaning hidden behind death?

Marquez: The problem is that in a thousand years all that will be left of both of us is going to be a pair of skeletons for historians to discover. Our clothes, our bodies and even our wands won’t survive the test of time. There’s nothing grand to it, no magnificent event nor fairytale ending, just two dead bodies, rotting in the ground. Perhaps it’s for the better, since no one will have to stand your horrendous unibrow anymore.

-At this point the debate was interrupted, as both wizards had to be dragged offstage before they came to blows.-”

                 (From the third debate between F. Smith and L. Marquez, regarding death and its implications, 1679)

Sebastian really, really hated playing Clue. One of the muggleborn students had smuggled one into Hogwarts the previous year, and after a couple of hours there were already several magical copies being passed around school. It had been fun at first, but soon enough the game got repetitive and before anyone realized it there was a small bonfire on the courtyard. Rumors said that it had been Imelda Reyes who had organized it after a particularly devasting and humiliating defeat, but they were never really confirmed.

He had tried playing it once, only to keep losing to the ever-growing delight of Ominis and Leander Prewett, the later whom had fled the classroom they were playing at after Sebastian had threatened to turn him into a cockroach. He would never do it of course, but it was always useful to know the spell. You never know when it might come in handy.

The game, he soon discovered, was based on the failed logic of how the clues were discovered, rather than the actual logic of how a murder might be solved in real life. The only positive aspect of the whole ordeal was that you could also lie to the other players, and while it wasn’t very useful in the long-term goal of discovering the killer, it was very amusing to watch the other players go mad amongst themselves. 

Now, as he stared into the lifeless eyes of Zenobia Noke, colorful and vibrant and mockingly still full of life, he could only thing of how ridiculous the game truly was. The game never mentioned how much blood there was, nor how a broken ribcage really looked.

At some point during the night, a seventh-year student had sneaked back into the Slytherin common room only to return to his dorm screaming bloody murder. Once everybody got hold of the idea that there was a dead body lying less than 50 meters away from them, the teachers had been unable to keep the masses contained anymore and the students had flooded into their common like a great tidal wave. The screams began shortly after, and most of the older students did their best attempts to prevent the younger ones from looking too closely at the body.

An age line had been set by the headmaster himself around the crime scene, and those that were stuck on the other side could do nothing but watch as the teachers did their best attempt to gain some semblance of control over the situation. Professor Black, still dressed in his ridiculous night gown and looking like he had just woken up from sleep, couldn’t even bring himself to look at the body and behind him he could make out the shape of Professor Shah as she emptied her stomach on one of the plant pots near the chimney.

Taking full advantage of his size and strength, he pushed his way to the front of the crowd until he was standing just behind the glowing golden line on the floor, getting for the first time in the night a good look at the horror scene before him.

She was hanging from the wall – no, not hanging – impaled on something he could vaguely make out. He thought of a Shrike, a small little bird that impales its victims – prey – on the branches of trees to eat them.

Zenobia Noke didn’t look peaceful. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth forever frozen in a silent scream of terror. There was blood splattered on the wall behind her, and most of it had dripped down to the floor in perfect straight lines. Her left shoe was missing, and her fingers were stained with an oily black substance that might have been ink. Her chest was missing.

Well, not exactly missing, Sebastian corrected himself, but it had burst out from the inside out. Like casting the bombardacharm from inside a human being, her entire ribcage was split open, some of her intestines hanging like ropes from her stomach. Her liver had been partially reduced to carbon and her stomach had been cut open by the force of whatever had done this, exposing the half-digested contents of yesterday’s dinner, chicken stew, his mind provided.

Her heart and lungs were missing.

There was a chance that they had simply been blown away or disintegrated or burned or whatever else, literally anything else rather than taken. Because he recognized those two organs from the bloody passages of the book, and suddenly he knew that whatever had happen to her had been because of him.

A chill went through him at the thought, and he stood frozen on his spot as possibilities rushed through his head, fear rooting him in place. Had he missed something? In the cave, when he grabbed the book and whatever had been kept inside finally got free, had he unknowingly released something else as well?

He thought of the trojan horse and how the soldiers hid inside and devastated the city once they made it past the walls. If the book had had some sort of hidden defense mechanism, and he had accidentally triggered it without realizing, then what did it mean? And far more importantly, could it be traced back to him?

He took a deep breath, forcing his mind to stop panicking. Even if the aurors - because a student had been murdered on school ground, he was willing to bet they were already on their way – somehow found a way to connect the two factors, he could easily plead innocence. All he had done was pick up a book in his mission to look for a cure for his poor sister, he hadn’t known the consequences, he had no intention to cause harm and so on.

His mind wandered to the dark book that was still hidden in his room, safely secured beneath a floorboard only he could open. It would be very wise to cast some protection charms around it. It would be easier to defend himself in face of accusations against a small protection system in his own bedroom than it would be against the contents in the book. He could argue that he kept his diary hidden there and didn’t want anyone reading it. Not likely, but still a plausible excuse.

Steel in his veins, he took another look around the room. The shock from earlier had worn off, and he could feel his mind returning to its usual rhythm. He focused on the place Zenobia had been placed, high above the wall, her feet dangling nearly two meters from the floor. It looked staged. There was a heavy puddle of blood near the entrance, and for the first time he noticed a small trail that went up the stairs at the end of the room, heading towards the door that led to the dungeons. She hadn’t been killed in the Slytherin common room, but rather she was dragged here and purposely placed on the wall.

He found his gaze focusing on the opposite direction, and paled slightly at the realization that opposite to the body was the staircase that led to the boy’s dormitories. The common room was huge, and there were easier places to leave a body that high up in the wall.

He registered quickly enough what it meant. Whoever had planted the body there had wanted the Slytherin boys to be the first ones to lay eyes upon her, a signal, or perhaps a warning.

As if that particular thought had been some sort of secret signal, he suddenly felt that crawling sensation all over his body once again. It was different this time, more aggressive in the way it traveled up and down his spine before finally settling in his nape. It didn’t stop this time, and his magic itself seemed to recoil from the feeling. He turned towards the body once again, and nearly fell back when he noticed that Zenobia’s chest wasn’t empty anymore.

There was something moving deep within her ribcage, twisting and bending with a body made of a dark, shapeless mass that made his eyes hurt when tried to look at it too closely. He turned towards the teachers, alarm clear on his face, and discovered that no one else seemed to be reacting to the thing that was now crawling, tearing and biting its way out of the girl’s body. 

Its head got caught between ribs and muscle, pieces of fat and tendon falling on its face before it teared itself free with a deafening screech. It was a mechanic sound, inorganic in a way he’d never heard anything else be. Like pulling air though a deep pipe made of muscle, he could tell that it meant something, but whatever meaning had been behind it was lost somewhere in its cry.

No one moved. Looking around him, he could see a group of students crying in the far corner of the room, looking devastated by the events happening around them, while some others had huddled closer together by the couch. Several students had retreated to their dorms, curious as to what would happen next but still far too disturbed by the scene before them to be able to withstand another moment in the room with the corpse. The room felt less crowded, and the teachers had huddled together in a mockery of a team-back to discuss their next course of action. No one looked at the creature, and he devastatingly realized that he was the only one who could see it just as the thing final emerged from the wrecked body.

It had too many legs, far too many, and the realization hit him like a freight train.

It was the stone centipede from the cave. Not just similar, but exactly identical, down to the last minuscule details, such as dents in some of its front legs and cracks along its head. This version was bigger than the one he’d activated at the cave, it’s snapping fangs looker sharper, and he turned towards its face with terror as it locked eyes with him.

A bucket of cold water splashed over him, and he thought of a stone carving at the floor of a deep, dark cave, that had opened the doorway to a book that shouldn’t have been found. He thought of the boy who’d gone in there and had simply left once he had what he was looking after, never, not once, bothering to look behind him and check if something had followed him. That maybe, just maybe, the stone carving in the floor hadn’t just been there to open the door but waiting for someone to come along and activate it, unfreeze it, release it. And once the boy was out of the cave, that little smart creature wouldn’t have stayed there, but rather left the cave and followed the boy here.

There had been a security countermeasure at the cave. But he hadn’t tripped on it by mistake or unknowingly activated it. He had looked at it right in the face and willed it to move with a spell. For whatever reason, the centipede had decided to let him inside. He’d just been too stupid and forgot to turn it off.

The creature just stood there, wrapped tightly around Zenobia’s body, possessively moving its body up and down her mangled torso. It kept looking at him, and the longer Sebastian held its gaze the more convinced he became that it was waiting for him to do something.

Despite the implications that the event entailed, it didn’t look menacingly, just curious, like it was judging Sebastian’s reactions and waiting for some sort of command.

From behind him came Ominis’s panicked voice, demanding something he didn’t quite hear, and he broke eye contact with the stone fiend in favor of looking at Ominis instead. When he gazed back at the body, the creature was gone.

“Sebastian.” He said as he finally made it past the sea of students.

“Are you okay?” Omins looked ruffled, and he was slightly out of breath, but overall, he seemed fine.

“I couldn’t find you.”

“I’m right here.” He reassured him, stepping closer to him and placing a reassuring hand on his back. Ominis seemed to relax into his touch, and it was a couple of moments before he regained control of his bearings.

“Its Zenobia Noke, isn’t it?” It was a statement more than a question, but there was a desperation to it. No one wanted to be in this situation, although for completely varied reasons.

“Yes.” He told him, voice somber.

“Merlin’s beard…” He walked up to one of the plant pots near where he was, and Sebastian silently panicked at the thought that Ominis was about to throw up. “Please give me a moment.”

His best friend was rarely shaken, and Sebastian realized that although he had a lot of experience with the dark arts, Ominis hadn’t really had any head on encounters with the bloodier side of the magic. Sebastian was fine, but years of searching for a cure in the dark hidden corners of the world had forged ice in his veins. He was shaken up by the implications the body represented, but not by how gruesome the scene was.

“Are you okay?” He asked his best friend.

“Yes” Was his first answer, but then he seemed to reconsider. “No, I think going to be sick.”

“Let me help.”

Slowly, he guided Ominis away from the plant pot and towards the bathrooms, which were expectedly packed with students. The toilets were all occupied, so he waited by next to Ominis while the other leaned against the sink. He didn’t throw up at the end, but his face had taken a sickly green hue. When the bathrooms started to feel too cramped for both of them, they quickly made their way back outside. Ominis wasn’t good with closed spaces and lots of people, and while Sebastian never really minded, the smell of vomit and tears soon got overpowering.

Apart from the ensemble students in the bathrooms, most of Slytherin seemed to be holding up remarkably well for the situation. A big part of students had stopped shaking at the sight of the body and proceeded to analyze it from a distance just like he had. The prefects had begun organizing the students into teams to help calm each other down, and he heard some sixth years talking about ways to increase the security for the younger students, predictably by the use of the buddy system. Looking around his house, spotting and admiring the way they quickly recovered made him feel a strong sense of pride for Slytherin. It was going to take a lot more than a dead body to knock them off their feet.

“Who told you it was her?” He asked him as soon as they were standing next to the age line again.

“Imelda. I believe the news have already spread to the rest of the castle. There is a group of Gryffindors outside the entrance demanding to be let inside.”

“Bloody bastards… can’t they mind their own business for once?”

Ominis still looked sick, but color was returning to his face, and he chuckled at the last comment. “Apparently not.”

Taking advantage of the fact that no one seemed to be paying close attention to them, he leaned in to whisper into Ominis’s ear. “We need to talk, but not here.”

“Wait, is she wearing her tie?”

His confusion must have shown in his silence, because it took him a moment to answer. “What?”

“Zenobia, is she wearing her tie?” Ominis repeated.

“Why?”

“Just check.” Was his brief answer.

Looking back towards the body, he noticed that indeed Ominis was right. The girl’s soft blue tie was missing from her neck, and he noticed a few scratches at the base of her throat. He’d missed them earlier, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he could also see them on her arms and wrists.

“No, she’s not” He told him at last. “How’d you know?”

“I will explain later, and then I want to take a look at the book.”

Panic coursed through him faster than he would have liked. Had Ominis also linked Zenobia’s death to the book?

“What about it?” He forced himself to keep his voice steady and calm, mentally despising himself at the thought of having to keep secrets from his best friend again, especially after the events of the previous evening.

“We talked about it last night?” He asked him, confusion tainting his voice.

“Right, of course. It must have slipped to the back of my mind.”

Ominis narrowed his eyes at him, but if he could tell something was wrong, then he didn’t tell. Probably adjudging it up to the discovery of the murder.

Relief and worry had flowed through him at the apparent dismissal of the subject, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth, and the two of them walked towards one of the couches on the living room just as the aurors barreled through the door.

…

He went back to the cave. Of course he did.

He didn’t want to risk apparating, didn’t want any trace of magic in his wand, nothing that could be traced back to him. The trip there was just as hard as the first time, and he transformed into his human form as soon as he slithered out of the crack in the wall.

The room was just as he remembered, with the useless pile of books he had discarded laying aimlessly on the floor, and the door to that dark, damp, secret room open in front of him. Just like suspected, the stone centipede was missing from the door. Where the entrance had once looked smooth, it was now made of jagged and uneven rock.

That thing had crawled out of here after him and walked all the way back to the castle.

The place where the creature had been mocked him in its emptiness, answering a question to which he’d known the answer for all along.

He stood there in that cold room, staring at the place where a stone monster had once been and no longer was, anger bubbling inside of him. It was a long trip back to Hogwarts.

…

News of Zenobia’s death had spread around the school like wildfire, and panic had followed closely behind.

The girl had never really been well liked by most of her peers, but almost the whole school was present for the vigil that was organized two days later. Small gifts were left outside her door at the Ravenclaw dormitories, and her room had been flooded by brand new packages of Gobstones, her favorite game.

Sebastian honestly thought it was somewhat hypocrite. The entire Ravenclaw student body had despised her before her death, but now she was being hailed as a saint around school. He guessed it just spoke very loudly to how remorse and regret were stronger than kindness. Still, he picked up a couple of flowers from the fields near Hogwarts to drop at her altar near the Ravenclaw common room. He may not have liked the girl, but everything indicated she had died because of him, and he was determined to right that wrong.

Changes had begun happening around school too. A mandatory assembled had been called, announcing to all students the new set of security measures that were honestly more ridiculous than effective. Nobody actually paid any attention to them, but Sebastian had to give the teachers credit for trying.

A school wide curfew had also been established, demanding all students to be inside their dorms by 10 o’clock sharp every night. Hogwarts was to go on full lockdown after the clock struck the established hour, and all midnight activities, as well as all astronomy lessons were cancelled until further notice. Amit Thakkar was particularly devastated by that one.

The curfew didn’t really represent any problem to him. He knew his way around almost all of the secret passages in and out of the castle, and so could continue with his nightly adventures. The teachers did increase security around the hallways during the night, with most ghosts volunteering to help keep the students safe. That did prove more of a challenge, and he put his Animagus form to good use by sneaking around the foundations and walls of Hogwarts. He also discovered a significant number of mice hiding around the school grounds, and once he’d even discovered a nest full of them. Letting his newfound instincts take over, he’d devoured every single one, only to wake up the next day in his bed with blood smeared all over his mouth. He threw up mouthfuls of fur and bones for the next couple of hours, and he did not repeat the mistake.

Parents had also begun pulling students from the school. As soon as the news made it outside that aurors were investigating the death of a student, concerned parents had arrived at the front gate of the school, demanding to see the headmaster. Since the two weeks of the murder, almost 30 students had transferred to Durmstrang, with at least other 12 dropping out completely.

Professor black was handling the whole affair with an outstanding level of incompetence, one that would be hilarious if there wasn’t a murderer running around.

That was the main factor that worried him. He knew he had triggered the killing of Zenobia, but he still hadn’t discovered how it had been carried out. The centipede itself couldn’t have done it; the creature was barely as large as his arm. The murder of Zenobia Noke had required a physical body to carry out the affair, and that was what kept him up at night. Had the thing possessed another student? Was it manipulating someone in the castle to act out on its behalf? Or was the person willingly cooperating with the creature?

There were too many questions and no answers, and he was quickly becoming irritated at the lack of them.

So far, he’d seen no indication that any of his fellow students was responsible, nor had anyone tried to approach him to ask him about the murder.

The aurors had brought him in for questioning, just as they had the entire Slytherin house. The small task force had set up a small classroom near the third floor as a base of operations, and there was a constant group of students that always seemed to linger around the area.

He had mentally prepared himself for the eventual questioning, but still found his nerves creeping up on him. However, just as he sat down in a table across two aurors, he felt that crawling sensation over his entire body. It was different from last time, just as aggressive as it had been the night the body was discovered, but still different. Last time, it had been angry at him, trying to tell him something he didn’t quite understand, but now it was angry at the aurors. A deep, cold sensation began spreading though his body, inky blackness that felt like tar being pushed in his veins. His magic had recoiled at first, and he had dug his fingernails into his palm to avoid showing emotions, but then a cool sensation had washed over him. His magic seemed to settle down and embrace the invading darkness, welcoming it into his very core.

He could feel the crawling sensation in his nape now, could sense the presence of something else in his body, but it wasn’t trying to hurt him, rather it was encouraging him. Whispering sweet words into his ear, pouring ice into his veins and malice into his pulse. He found his heart beating at a completely normal rate when he answered their questions. His tongue moving sweetly as if sleeked with poison itself.

Yes I did know her, I was in my room all night, all three of my roommates were there you can ask them, Ominis Gaunt accompanied me to the common room that night, no I did not see anything unusual, no I can’t think of anyone who would want to harm her, I didn’t know her that well, played gobstones with her once, poor girl, what a tragedy, no problem, it is my pleasure to help.

That was another thing he didn’t like. How easily he was reacting to it all. Almost everybody seemed to be on edge, or some version of it. Grief was running high among the school, and the entire mood of the school felt somber. Instead, he found himself feeling none of the emotions he was supposed to. Once the initial shock of the murder had gone down, his mind had focused on the sole task of discovering what was going on at the school. But he didn’t feel sad, there was no regret, no righteous sense of justice, no desire to avenge the girl because her death had been wrong. He felt guilty, but he still slept soundly at night, still crawled into Ominis’s bed so the two of them could talk well into the night. He hadn’t cried for the girl’s death, though he had been on edge for a couple of days in fear of someone confronting him.

He had considered the possibility that he might have been in shock or suffering from some semblance of it. That maybe this was some sort of suppression method and that any moment the true weight of the situation would smash on him and shatter his mind. But it wasn’t that. He simply accepted that he had caused the death of a person and carried on. He didn’t like it, didn’t want to think of the implications it carried. Because he cared about people, he loved his sister and Ominis and he cared about his uncle a great deal. He liked his school friends and felt happy when they were happy and sad when they were hurt and so on. Perhaps his indifference was simply due to the fact that he hadn’t meant for this to happen, had never consider that this would be the outcome of his actions. It had been a mistake, an accident, but one he hadn’t done with the intention of someone getting hurt along the way. The simple knowledge of a killer worried him far more than the one of the actual murder. 

But if he had the chance to do it all again, knowing what he did now, knowing the consequences of his actions, would he still pick up the book? Would he still take that dive into the darkness with the full knowledge that the cost would be a human life, the one of a child?

He knew the answer, and he did not dwell on what it meant.  

…   

He began his murder investigation by grabbing a piece of parchment and drawing three columns. Atop the first one he wrote ‘means’, then ‘motive’ on the next one, and finally ‘opportunity’ on the very last one. After some consideration, he added another column and drew a small centipede right atop it.      

The image of the creature crawling out kept playing in his head like a broken record, and he remembered the scream he heard the night of the murder. As far as he could tell, just like with the vision of the centipede, he was the only one who had heard it.

Had Zenobia been the one to let out that blood-curling sound? Or had something else taken place that night? It had sounded feminine, but there was no way to confirm his theory, not without admitting to the world far more than what he was willing to.

Ominis had volunteered to help him as soon as he found out about what he was doing, and Sebastian had confessed his newest discoveries to him under the protection of a candlelight that shielded them against outside intruders. The magical object had apparently belonged to some ancestor of his, and Ominis had borrowed it, stolen it from his good for nothing family, a couple of months ago. It was enchanted to make sure that any passersby simply heard boring murmur and carried on, not realizing that an important conversation was being held next to them. It was a very useful trick, and Sebastian’s mind was already racing with the newfound possibilities that the object entailed.

They had met in the library a couple of days after Zenobia’s body was discovered, and Sebastian told him everything. The crawling sensation was there again, as strong as it had been the previous night, and it once again seemed angry at him for revealing something he shouldn’t have.

Sebastian trusted Ominis with his life, with the deepest and darkest corners of himself, but whatever was moving inside him clearly didn’t.

Despite the apprehension brewing inside him, he also handed Ominis the book.

The boy had casted a wandless spell at the pages, one that allowed him to read the words, but he had recoiled the first time his hand made contact with the book’s spine. Sitting in front of him, Sebastian could make out the worry lines that spread across the boy’s face, as well as how hesitant he was to pass the book’s pages.

It took a while for them to reach the bloody pages near the end, but Sebastian helped Ominis when the other struggled to read through them. He himself hadn’t finished reading them all, and by the time they were done a deep silence seemed to stretch over them.

“There are eight of them. Eight deaths.” Ominis said at last.

“Which means seven others will die.”

“There has to be a way of stopping this. Permanently this time.” He said with a pointed look in Sebastian’s direction. Even though he hadn’t said anything to him about the events circulating Zenobia’s death, it was abundantly clear that Ominis did blame him for a small part. He could practically taste the disappointment radiating of his best friend in waves, and did his best attempt at ignoring it.

“Close your eyes.” Ominis eventually told him.

“What? No.”

“Just do it, think back to that day.”

“Are you serious?” And this time Sebastian could not keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“There might have been something you missed, something you don’t remember.”

“And what good is that going to be towards stopping this thing?”

He couldn’t help it; he was annoyed at the intrusion. He had gone over the memories of that nearly a dozen times in his head already, and while he could see the logic behind Ominis’s argument, it still felt pointless.

“If the centipede left the…” Ominis hesitated for a moment. “The body there for you to see, then it might be expecting you to do something about it. Maybe we could try speaking with Professor Fitzgerald again.”

“No.” He told him bluntly. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, and I can’t exactly promise I won’t burn down her portrait if I see her again. Annoying old hag.” He added at last, then smiled at the irony of his choice of words.

“Sebastian.” Ominis chastised him.

“Sorry.”

“Do you have a better idea, other than just waiting for the next body to appear?” He questioned him, moving his chair so that they were sitting closer together. “We have no suspects, nothing that ties together this whole mess other than this.” Ominis told him as he held the book in his hand.

“I need you to promise me something Sebastian.” He said while dropping the book back in the table. He dragged it with his hand until the hardcover was sitting between them.

“What is it?” Sebastian asked as Ominis pointed a finger towards the dark cover of the tome.

“Once we stop this thing and everything calms down, I need you to promise me you’ll burn the book.”

“Anne-.” He began, panic flowing through him, a part of thrashing in revolt and protest against the destruction of the precious object.

“We will find another way.” Ominis reassured him. “If anything, this thing proves that there is always going to be another option.” He seemed to consider something in his head for a few moments before he turned towards Sebastian. There was a new resolve on his eyes, a determination that hadn’t been there before. “Once this is over, I will tell you about the scriptorium.”

“Really? But, I thought…” He couldn’t help the surprise that must have shown in his features, not when his entire being leapt up with joy, sorrow forgotten.

“It doesn’t matter. I want to help Anne just as much as you, but right now we have far more pressing matters at hand.”

Sebastian watched with curiosity as Ominis removed his tie from his neck, taking an extra moment to appreciate the way his fingers wrapped around his throat, and had the vague impulse to reach over and undo the knot himself. He laid out the green and silver piece of fabric on the table before continuing.

“Did you know that the school, well-professor black, offers a small course on decorum and social etiquette all Wednesdays at 6 in the afternoon?”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He could picture professor black clearly in his mind, and he snickered at the mental image provided by his imagination.

“I actually went there once to check it out.” Ominis must have realized how ridiculous it looked to be saying that out loud, because he gave no indication of pride. “Dreadfully boring, but Zenobia Noke was there that day.”

“Was she that desperate to make friends?”

Ominis pointedly ignored him and carried on.

“That day, the lesson was about uniforms, and the first thing the headmaster told us in no uncertain terms was that a proper lady or gentleman never removes his tie in public. “

“And Zenobia was missing hers. That’s why you asked about it the night of the murder.”

Ominis smiled at this. “I believe that whatever happened before her death is the key to unraveling the disaster that you got us, and the entire school, into.” He poured emphasis on the last couple of words.

“Thanks.” He answered, half sarcasm and half honesty.

“I’m helping, aren’t I?”

Yes, he was, because that what Ominis did. He cared and he looked after his friends. Most of the school gave them both a wide berth, although for different reasons. Most of Sebastian’s own reputation held a fragment of truth, and while the students liked to exaggerate and gossip, there were only so many horror stories about him that he could claim were made up. But the reputation that followed Ominis around school was different. Most people heard the name Gaunt and avoided him like the plague, never knowing how false most of the accusations against him were. Neither did nothing about it, and Sebastian likes the prestige that came from being the school criminal. Ominis, for his part, simply didn’t care what others thought of him.

“Yes, you are, but you forgot one key point genius. How do we find the tie?”

Ominis smiled at this.

“I have that covered.”

…

As it turns out, he did not have it covered.

As brilliant as he may have been at most aspects of academia, Ominis Gaunt was painfully ignorant in the subtle art of blackmail.

They had set up a small board on their room that held all the information they knew about the murder. At Sebastian’s insistence, they protected the thing with several charms that allowed only for them to be able to see it. Apparently, to the naked eye, it just showed a bunch of posters from famous quidditch teams.

Ominis had tried to convince a seventh year Ravenclaw to grant them access to Zenobia’s room so that they could retrieve a book that the girl had borrowed from them. When confronted about the title of the book, Ominis had said that it was about the care of kneazles, only to discover that day that apparently, the girl had been highly allergic to them.

When he tried to pull rank and use his family’s connection to the headmaster to get them through, the boy had slammed the door to the Ravenclaw common room in his face, not before shouting at Ominis about being a ‘dark wizard’ and ‘pureblood supremacist’.

As they later found out, the other student had been a muggleborn, and had apparently suffered quite a bit under professor black and his prejudices. Everybody knew that the professor favored students from pureblooded families, but ever since he became headmaster, things had only gotten worse at school for those that did not have wizarding parents.  

While his family’s economic standing might not have always been the best, both of his parents came from a long line of wizards, one that went back nearly 6 generations. While Sebastian himself had never really given it much thought, it had spared him from some of the harshest bullying efforts in the school.

They still needed to make their way inside, but instead of trying to convince another student to let them in, Sebastian had simply snuck in using his serpent form. It was easy to move through the walls of the castle in his new form, and if he didn’t know better, he would claim that even the metal pipes themselves were designed to allow a snake to slither though.

Once inside, he grabbed what he was sure had been Zenobia’s spare tie and left the room without anyone being the wiser.

Back in the Slytherin dungeons, Sebastian held his wands towards the spare piece of clothing and loudly announced the tracking spell.

“Appare Vestigium”

He watched in wonder as a golden dust blew all around him, before gently lifting the tie off the floor in a cloud of yellow and bronze particles. The tie twisted and lifted in the air before it was caught by an invisible current that dragged it in twists and loops before being pulled by another force. The blue and silver piece of clothing turned towards their right and began to float in a direction away from the common room. Heading deeper and deeper in the castle and dungeons, Sebastian and Ominis climbed down staircases and went through the narrow corridors.

Eventually, the tie stopped right in front of a wall identical to the others, the golden mist that had been pulling it disappearing as it dropped to the ground. Looking around, Sebastian could see they were in a part of the castle he had never been in before. There was an iron gate to their left that led to some unknow hallway, but he could see no lock or any other way to force the thing open. A small staircase rose just farther behind, twisting to someplace he couldn’t see from his current vantage point. Behind them, there was another iron door that guarded a couple of stone frogs, and he could make out a set of similar shapes in a room above them, visible only through the windows. The place was eerily quiet and held that damp smell that came only came from a place that hasn’t seen human touch in a long time.

They both stood in silence for a few moments staring at the blank wall in front of them. Sebastian hadn’t really known what he’d be expecting, but there had been an underlying feeling of hope at the prospect of finding another clue that might help link this whole disaster together, but the tracking spell had proved just as migraine inducing as everything else.

“Well, that’s maddingly unhelpful.” He stated at last.

“There has to be something else here.” Ominis sounded frustrated and Sebastian got the vague idea that perhaps this had also been Ominis’s great attempt at uncovering the truth. “Revelio.”

The pale blue light spread throughout the room, but nothing shone behind the wall, no hidden passage waiting for them to uncover it.

“Lets think this through. This was the last place we assume Zenobia was at, so what was she doing here?” If the girl had truly been murdered were they were standing, then there must have been something, anything, to show for it. But the place there were standing in was barren of all things, no blood stains on the floor, no last wishes written in the wall. As far as he could tell, they were probably the first ones to make their way down here in a very long time.

“Where are we?” Ominis eventually said. His brows were pressed together in concentration and Sebastian could practically hear the ideas and theories being formulated in there.

“Somewhere below the slithering dungeons. I think we are close to that birthday room the ghosts have.” He couldn’t shake the feeling of Déjà vu that came with place. It was a ridiculous thought, he had never been in this part of the castle before, but something in him knew this place, even if he didn’t. Like an image from a forgotten dream, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was supposed to know this place.

He didn’t like it.

“The daydeath party hall?”

“That’s what it’s called?” Sebastian responded.

“Focus Sebastian. What was Zenobia doing here?”

“Exploring?” It was poor assumption, but he could think of no other reason for it. Still, it was difficult for him to picture the girl finding her way down here without something else guiding her.

“Unlikely, she never strayed far from her common room. Most third years don’t.” Ominis seemed to share his theory, but they were still missing a piece of the picture. Hell, they were missing nearly all of the picture.

“What if she was looking for something?” He eventually proposed.

“Like her gobbstones?” Ominis turned as he asked this, lightly waving his wand in different directions, as if that uncanny sixth sense of his could pick up something their eyes couldn’t.

“Exactly.”

“I still find it hard to believe someone would go to this length just to make sure she wouldn’t be able to find them.”

“I don’t, she wasn’t well liked, and most of the older students actively avoided her.” He hadn’t liked the third year Ravenclaw, thought her bothersome. In his mind, Zenobia had represented an annoyance more than a potential asset. She was a pawn, not a rook or a bishop.

“Don’t talk like that.” Ominis chastised him.

“Why not? Better horrible truths than kind lies.” He didn’t meant for the words to come out as harsh as they did, and he mentally recoiled when he saw Ominis flinch at his words, but the damage was done. He would have to make it up to him later.

They spent the better part of an hour exploring the underground, all with various degrees of success. They found a small nest of rats hidden behind a lose brick, and someone had written their initials next to someone else’s in a heart near the back wall. Apart of that, there was nothing else to be found in that part of the dungeons, and they both returned to their room that night tired and angry about the lack of evidence.

…

Sebastian hadn’t made another attempt at spell creation ever since the fateful accident. The feeling of legs crawling through his arm was still too powerful in his mind, and he wasn’t eager for another taste. However, another part of him couldn’t help but feeling like a coward. That thought was enough to harden his resolve, and he made his way back to the undercroft just like last time.

Ominis had heard about what he was planning to do and had decided to accompany him despite Sebastian’s protests.

Now, sitting cross-legged in the clod hard floor of their little safe heaven, Sebastian began to regret the idea. Ominis kept offering suggestions and opinions about how to best approach the subject, and while some of them did prove to be rather useful, he was quickly becoming a distraction.

His voice wasn’t the problem, Ominis was a quiet person, and that aspect carried on to the rest of his personality, but rather his presence. The knowledge that he was perched up on a wooden box behind him made a strange sensation spread through his body. Even though he knew his best friend couldn’t see him, he still had the desire to get the spell right as soon as possible. For some reason, the thought of screwing up in front of him was an incredibly unpleasant one, and he was determined to avoid it at all costs.

Summoning his magic just like last time, he repeated the mental steps one by one, until he once again felt his magic take a more solid form. Willing the snake to move, the creature slithered up his torso before settling in his arm, poised and ready to strike. He pictured what he wanted the spell to make, how he wanted his magic to transform. With his magic ready to strike and the word he’d chosen for the spell ready on his tongue, he willed the snake to strike. Before the creature could even move a little bit forward, it transformed, shifting and twisting into the now painfully familiar shape.

He recoiled, pulling his magic in on itself quickly and feeling his chest burn painfully because of it. He bent over in pain and he was vaguely aware of Ominis’s hands on him and his tone of alarm, but he didn’t care. The feeling lingered far longer this time, and he could still feel the creature moving through his body, even if he wasn’t the one controlling it this time. Like a parasite, it seemed to be drawn towards his magic, and he slammed a mental barrier between his magic core and the invader.

Slowly, the world came back into focus, and he realized with a startle that Ominis had his arms around him. His grip was firm but gentle, and he kept muttering a series of ‘it’s alright’ and ‘I’m here’ to his ear. He was tempted to stay there for far longer than what should be considered healthy, and he unconsciously leaned towards Ominis, burring his face in his neck until he rested in the crook of his shoulder.

“Thank you.” He said at last, and silently laughed at the mental image of how they must look sprawled on the floor.

It took them a long while to untangle from each other, and Sebastian was left yearning for the feeling of their bodies pressing together. Alas, there was work to be done, and he refused to abandon his idea for the new spell just because something didn’t want him to.

“Let’s try again.”

He repeated the process again another two times, and while he never got past the initial stage, the magic recoil that came along was never as harsh as the first time. By the end, he was left staggering in his feet, the edges of the undercroft blurring slightly in his vison.

Resolve tightening his grip, he was preparing for another attempt when Ominis interrupted him.

“Perhaps you have been approaching this the wrong way.” He mused.

“Have a better idea?” Sebastian asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

“I do actually.” He rearranged himself in the floor next to him, and Sebastian was once again overwhelmed by the desire to move closer to him. “You say the feeling arrives as soon as you are ready to cast, right?”

“Yes.”

Once, back when they were first years, they had laid in similar positions on the floor of their shared room. Sebastian had been fascinated by the unique way Ominis had to traversing and exploring the world.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what if you don’t repel it?”

He had allowed the boy to run his soft fingers over his face, to form a mental map of himself in a way his eyes would never allow him to.

“Care to elaborate?”

Ominis’s hands had been soft, so soft, and warm to the touch. A certain care had accompanied his movements as his finger pads traveled over his eyes, his brows, the curve of his nose.

“If I am correct, then whatever is inside you is directly linked to the book? What if it is attempting to show you something? To guide you?”

He wondered if the blind boy knew how much he had changed, how Sebastian had grown in the last couple of years.

“I… I had never thought about that.”

He would like to do it again. Allow Ominis to run his fingers over his face and linger there for as long as the other one deemed it okay.

“All I know is that this is getting us nowhere, and if you try that one more time, I’m taking you to the infirmary.” This snapped him out of his thoughts, and he left his spot down memory lane in favor of refocusing on the issue at hand.

“But…” He wanted to protest but was cut short once again.

“Sebastian, you are on attempt away from passing out. No ‘buts’.” Ominis concluded, and Sebastian turned all his attention towards his target ahead.

He repeated the process for the last time, a new idea on his mind. The snake appeared, rose, and curled itself on his arm.

He was expecting it this time, imaginary net placed firmly around his mind, so he wasn’t that surprised when he felt the creature transform into a nightmare. It was just as aggressive as the previous times, rebelling against the use of magic without its permission, its will. But Sebastian was the one in control, so instead of fighting the creature, he forced his own magic into it. He tried to ensnare it, capture it, absorb it, change it to his own will. He felt the animal trash against his hold, his entire arm and parts of his back and neck bursting with pain. Lightning rushing through him, he felt his magic alive as he finally got hold of the creature. To his eternal surprise, he felt his magic dissolve, like ink on water. He was aware of the presence and location of the creature, of the enemy inside his own body, but there was something else too. Another source of magic.

He was reminded of the moment he had picked up the book, how some part of whatever was hidden there had stuck to him, but now he could see the power for the first time. One of his teachers had once told him that a wizard’s magic was like a well and their wand was a bucket to draw the water out. He knew the limit to his power, had reached it a couple of times while dueling other students, but as the dark magic trickled down his body, he could see something else, a false bottom at the end of his magic well. Like someone had taken a hammer to the stones underneath, there was something beyond, and when he knelt down to yank the false bottom, that crawling sensation was all over his body, inside him, around him, becoming him.

And then he was alive.

Power, pure and raw and all-consuming and all-encompassing washed over him like a tidal wave. He felt the centipede shriek with victory and glee, but it didn’t matter, not anymore, not as a sweet and beautiful darkness clouded him, poisoned his mind with electricity and richness and it was just like wine but not quite. He tasted blood on his mouth, not his, because he would never bleed again, he couldn’t, but rather the blood of his enemies, his prey, little, tiny morsels of magic to be hunted and consumed and savored. He was alive like he had never been before, and he could see sounds and hear the taste of the air. He was high in a drug made of madness and sorrow and joy and blood and bone and muscle and tendon and he never wanted to let go.

He looked across the room towards his target, the edges blurring with colors and senses and a dozen, a hundred, a thousand little tiny legs that scuttled all over him, guiding him towards his goal. He trusted the creature, why shouldn’t he? It was kind and fire-made and wanted what was best for him, for him to gain more power, to grab it, to become it, toconsume it. There was no reason for doubt, not as he was promised a crown made of skulls and a kingdom full of demons and pain and misery and all the bad emotions people kept bottle up. They were his to drink, their fears and worries and their lives, and the centipede was there, standing atop a fallen snake and there was poison flowing from its neck. His subjects knelt and trembled at his feet and he laughed at the taste of their misery, the power it granted him.

“Venenarum.”

The pumpkin in front of him turned an ashy gray color before splashes of purples and black started appearing along its body. The contents inside of it spilled out in a disgusting, bubbling brew, the seeds rotten and the body collapsing on itself as they poison took hold of it. Flies buzzed overheard and things crawled in and out and for a moment they were crawling out of his mouth as well, his ears, his nose, his eyes. But he didn’t care, not as he saw the new spell – his spell – force the pitiful target before him to rot from the inside out and collapse on itself.

He was smiling and then cold.

A bucket full of cold freezing water splashed on him, drawing him out of whatever state he had been trapped in. His body felt sluggish, drained, and looking around the room he could see Ominis standing in front, looking terrified.

It took him a heartbreaking moment to understand that Ominis was scared of him, and that shook him far more than the water had. It was wrong. They were a team, perhaps something else. They weren’t made to fear each other. Ominis’s breathing was coming in quick gasps, sweat dripping from his forehead. His wand was held in front of him like a shield against the dark. A ray of light protecting him against the monster in front of him.

“Are you okay?” He finally asked, brows furrowing when he saw Ominis flinch at the sound of his voice. He did, however, seem to calm down slightly. “What happened?”

“I could ask you the same.” Ominsi fired back accusingly.

“I… I caught the centipede and, I think I somehow tapped into the source of its magic.” He explained. The high he had experienced moments go was unlike anything he had ever felt before. He hadn’t just tapped into the creature’s magic, but he had fed off of it. He had been alive because of the magic.

“You weren’t yourself Sebastian. You didn’t sound like yourself.” Ominis insisted, and Sebastian wondered just what he had said while under the poisonous influence of the drug-like magic.

“I’m sorry.” He said at last. There were a million more things he wanted to say: I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry Ominis I never wanted to hurt you. But he said none of them. He had been using those same excuses during most of his life that they came so easily to his mouth. He knew what he needed to say to make things right, to gain his best friend’s trust again, to convince him that nothing was wrong. He knew the right way to twist his words, how to poison his tongue so they struck true against his target.

The idea of lying to Ominis was a tempting one, so close and so quick and so easy. He knew he could have him with the right choice of words, could have him caught in a pretty little web like he had done to so many before him. It would be so easy.

Instead, he made no move. Whatever small, good part of him still remained managed to shout louder and stronger that the wickedness inside him, mostly because he knew that while Ominis could excuse most of his actions, there was no denying the joy he had felt at the new source of dark magic. He wanted more, and that was not something he could discuss with the boy in front of him. He wordlessly stepped aside to allow the Ominis to get to the door.

“I need some time.” He told him as he passed next to him.

“The spell…” Sebastian began.

“You can see the results for yourself.”

Confused, he turned around and nearly dropped his wand at the sight before him.

In his mind, he had casted the spell at the pumpkin and watched it dissolve. He had assumed the same would happen to its real-life counterpart, but as he took in the utter devastation of the room around him, he realized how wrong he had been.

A large chunk of the room had rotten, with a black, viscous substance spilling from the gaps between the stones in the floor. A grand section of the wall had crumbled and behind it he could see the earth was black and scarred, heavy dark purple lines running along the wall. Venomous looking plants sprouted from the packed earth, their leaves vibrant shades of green and red, so out of contrast with the rest of the room they almost looked fake. The stones that made up the columns had cracked and looked one moment away from toppling. Angry gray lines ran through the floor, poison in the room’s vein, like his spell had tainted the very nature of this place, of the castle. The pumpkin had been decimated.

Logically, he knew that it was a result of the unexpected magic boost, that there was no way for him to be able to accomplish something like this without help from another source.

All he could think about, in contrast, was that he had made that. He had wielded enough power to inflict that amount of damage, and some small voice in his brain wondered what a spell like that could against a human being. He had gotten a taste of the power hidden behind his nightmares, and his eyes widened at the prospect of the might, the power that the source probably held. He needed it, needed more. He had licked a small candle flame of power and had easily brought destruction and havoc without even realizing it.

 He idly wondered what he would be able to do if he were to drink straight from the sun.