The Reneial Excreo Curse
Natalie sat on the floor of the hidden library within the Malfoy Manor, a stack of tickets to the Quidditch World Cup beside her and what felt like hundreds of tiny pieces of parchment spread out in front of her. The Department of Magical Sports and Games had given her a number of World Cup tickets to give to people. Deciding who ought to get one had turned into a daunting, all-day task, so she had called in back-up. But she hadn’t expected more or less all of her backup to actually show up.
Dolohov sat on the other side of the lineup before her, moving tickets around, burning pieces of parchment, and tucking tickets into envelopes upon her request. The rest of her “help” wasn't too helpful. Nott and Rosier took one look at the mess and decided to begin a game of Wizard’s Chess instead. Now they were on their third game, but felt the need to comment upon her every decision. Lestrange and Dawson were across the room, flipping through books and rating the bloodthirstiness of curses they stumbled upon. And she could tell Dolohov wanted to join them.
“Slughorn’s an obvious one,” she muttered, “Merrythought too, I miss her. . . I have to send one to Dumbledore because I told him I would one time. . . . Think Dippet would come?”
“Dippet’s ready to drop dead,” said Nott, his queen dragging Rosier’s knight off the board. “Evan, are you even trying?”
“No,” said Rosier, “I stopped trying two games ago.”
“That. . . that was the very first game we played!”
“Yeah, and?”
Ignoring their banter, she waved a hand at Dolohov. “Put Dippet down as tentative.”
“Yes, princess,” he said sarcastically and flicked his wand, moving a piece of parchment to the “maybe” pile.
“Don’t forget our tickets!” called Lestrange.
“You already have tickets!” she snapped.
“Not true, I told my dad to not get tickets for those two,” Dawson pointed over at Nott and Rosier, a leer on his face.
“Seamus already told us he got us tickets to a private box,” Rosier rolled his eyes and Nott’s queen took out his other knight.
“Yeah, besides, my grandfather could just get me tickets if I owled him enough times,” said Nott.
“Ian Rowle, that old coot,” Dolohov laughed under his breath. “Yeah, to get you to shut up.”
“None of you are helping,” Natalie pointed out. “I brought you here to help.”
“I’m helping!” protested Dolohov.
“And being bloody sarcastic about it too,” she shot at him. Dolohov gave her a wink, making her shake her head.
“Oi, has anyone heard of the Reneial Excreo Curse?” asked Lestrange, staring at something in a book with a fascinated expression on his face.
Natalie looked at the tattered leather spine of the book he was holding. “Is that Notorious Curses of the Dark Ages?”
“Yeah,” he grinned at her, “it’s wicked.”
She smirked. “You’ll like chapter seventeen.”
“It’s not as wicked as Lost Spells of the Aleutian Islands,” bragged Dawson. “There’s a curse in here that will slowly turn your blood to ice until you die an awful, tragically painful death.”
“I’ve heard of the Reneial Excreo Curse,” said Dolohov, looking over at the two with interest. “It does something to the kidneys, right?”
“Yeah, it blocks kidney functioning so they can’t process anything at all so you’re poisoned from being unable to excrete your own toxins,” Lestrange eagerly explained.
“So. . . you can’t piss,” Rosier summarized with a snicker.
Lestrange stared at him blankly for a moment and then scowled as Dawson doubled over with laughter. “Well, yeah, I guess so, but it sounds better in the book.”
“Does it say anything about the Coralis Interra Curse in there?” Dolohov jumped up and ambled over towards Lestrange and Dawson.
“Unbelievable,” Natalie muttered under her breath, glaring at Dolohov’s back as he abandoned the task of organizing tickets. So much for helping her out.
Lestrange and Dawson looked thrilled at having him join their merry little search for gruesome curses, so Natalie returned to her task alone. At this rate, it would probably be accomplished much sooner if she just did it herself anyway. Her eyes landed on an envelope addressed to “Dumblesdoor” and realized Dolohov had deliberately spelled almost all of the names wrong on the envelopes. The bloody bastard. She sighed and went about correcting all the names.
“Okay, Rabastan gave the Averys tickets,” she said to herself, ignoring the conversation happening on the other side of the room about medieval curses. “I’ve got ones for Morrison and Shaw. . . Neil should be all set between his father and uncle. . . .”
“What about Cato Greengrass?” asked Rosier. He barely reacted when Nott beat him at Wizard’s Chess for the third time.
“You’re right,” she nodded to herself and scrawled their old Slytherin teammate’s name on a piece of parchment. “Glad to see someone’s helping me out here.”
“His older sister is really into Quidditch,” said Rosier, “and their parents would want to go, too, obviously.”
“Right, right,” she hummed, adding the names down. “Oh, I should probably send Burke one. . . maybe Borgin too, if I’m feeling nice. . . and oh, Reynard Shafiq. . . .”
Running through names in her head, she looked around the room. Rosier had agreed to play Nott in a fourth game of Wizard’s Chess, though was sending longing looks over at the group of Lestrange, Dawson, and Dolohov, who were all laughing uproariously at something they found in a book.
Fortunately, most of those she knew had another route to get tickets that guaranteed quality seating at the Cup Final (usually through Ministry connections). Everyone in the room with her already had theirs, as did Abraxas, Melania, and Domitia. And Tiberius had pulled some strings to get top box tickets for Abraxas’s in-laws as well.
“Oh, shit,” she said as realization struck for who she was missing. “The Blacks.”
“My sister wants to go,” said Rosier, watching one of his pawns get dragged off the board. Nott glared at him, annoyed by his lack of reaction to getting his ass kicked.
“Right,” she said, recalling what her grandmother had reminded her of before she started divvying up the tickets. The pureblood world had a lot of expectations and etiquette over things like this, and her not following these expectations would be seen as offensive and reflect poorly upon the Malfoy family. Sending Druella a ticket would mean giving her husband, Cygnus, a ticket too, which would mean giving all his siblings — Alphard, Walburga, Cassiopeia, and Callidora tickets, and then mean their parents ought to get tickets, and then that would mean their cousins ought to get tickets too. . . .
“Bloody hell,” she sighed, glaring around at the tickets. She shifted through them, half a mind to simply send everyone she could think of a ticket and demand the Department give her more if she ran out.
“Where’s mine?” asked a smug voice. She looked up to find Tom Riddle staring down at her with a smirk on his face.
She grinned. “Look who finally showed up.”
“I was on business for Burke,” he said, glancing around the room. “I’m not sure what these idiots do all day.”
“Neither am I,” she grumbled.
“So where’s mine?” he asked, “or did you think I didn’t plan on coming to the Quidditch World Cup?”
She pointed at the singular ticket off to the side. It rose up in the air so he could slip it into his pocket.
“Well, I never know, with your bad feelings and all,” she remarked.
“Yes, you do find those exceptionally bothersome, don’t you,” he dropped to the floor beside her and looked at the vast array of parchment and tickets. Then he looked back at her. “Why are you making this such a problem?”
She groaned, “because if I miss someone it’s a huge insult and makes the Malfoy family look like a load of tossers.”
He studied the names scrawled onto pieces of parchment. “No, you’re just making it more difficult than it needs to be because you’re bored. Just send one to everyone.”
“I was thinking that but I’ve only been given a limited amount.”
“Ask for more. What are they going to do? Tell you no?”
“I was also thinking that. . . .”
“Just do that then,” he said with a snort. “Problem solved.”
She smacked him on the shoulder which made him grab her wrist and pull her towards him to wrap an arm around her waist. She sent him a playful glare but the muttering of what sounded like an incantation drew her attention towards the group of boys across the room. She watched Lestrange twirl his wand and a jet of dark yellow light shot towards Rosier, knocking him off the couch with a yelp.
“What. . . what did you just do to me?” he wheezed, curling up on the floor and clutching at his stomach.
Lestrange sent a devilish grin around the room. “Reneial Excreo Curse. Wanted to test it out.”
“So you picked Evan to test it out on?” Nott leaned over to look at Rosier. “He had just started actually trying in Wizard’s Chess, you git.”
“I’d prefer it if he didn’t die,” Natalie pointed out.
“He’ll be fine,” Lestrange assured her as Dolohov stalked towards Rosier, studying him like he was an interesting newspaper article and not the victim of a Dark curse.
“What’s it feel like, Evan?” asked Dolohov. Nott spun the Wizard’s Chess board around and moved Rosier’s pieces for him.
“Like. . . death,” Rosier gasped out, wiggling towards where he had been sitting on the couch across from Nott. Natalie followed his gaze and her eyes fell on his wand. She raised her own to prevent him from snatching it up and doing something stupid. But Lord Voldemort pushed her hand down, taking her wand and tucking it into his pocket.
“Let them,” he said, watching the scene with curiosity. He raised his own wand and gave it a slight flick, so that Rosier’s wand rolled onto the floor in front of him. He immediately seized it with another groan of pain.
“I didn’t know it would have an immediate effect like this,” said Dolohov, now walking around Rosier. “I suppose once all the toxins start building up it’ll get worse.”
“Fuck — you,” hissed Rosier, squeezing his eyes shut and grasping at his abdomen. He jabbed his wand at Dolohov, sending red light shooting up at him. Dolohov jumped out of the way and the spell hit the ceiling, leaving a black scorch mark.
“Alright, alright,” Dolohov said hastily, pulling out his wand and muttering the countercurse. “There. You should be fine.”
“Able to piss, you mean,” said Lestrange, heading over to see Rosier for himself, Dawson beside him, laughing at the whole situation.
Rosier heaved on the floor for a few moments before slowly picking himself up, a furious look in his eyes as his gaze fell upon Lestrange. Immediately, Natalie and Tom scooted backwards until they hit the bricks of the empty fireplace behind them.
Lestrange froze for a second and muttered, “oh shit-” before Rosier flung his wand towards him and snarled, “crucio!”
Dawson ducked out of the way as the curse hit Lestrange and he fell to the floor, screaming bloody murder.
“That’s how badly it hurt you bloody wanker!” yelled Rosier, finally removing the curse from Lestrange.
Wheezing, Lestrange staggered to his feet, eyes dark as he clutched his wand. He flung a curse towards Rosier but missed and hit the chessboard Nott was still playing on. The board went up in flames, sending Nott scrambling away.
“That’s the second chessboard that got lit on fire,” sighed Nott.
“Oh, shit,” Natalie whacked a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “The tickets!” All the Quidditch tickets and parchment with names lay between Rosier and Lestrange, who were on the brink of bursting into a full blown duel.
Voldemort flicked his wand and all the tickets and parchment gathered themselves into a pile and flew into her open hand, just as Lestrange flung another curse back at Rosier that opened a cut across his cheek. She tucked the pile into her robes and patted it several times to make sure it was secure.
Evidently still infuriated, Rosier shot the Cruciatus Curse at Lestrange again, who ducked out of the way just in time. Dolohov, Dawson, and Nott hung around, hesitant to jump between the two. Natalie leaned her head on Tom’s shoulder and he returned his arm to her waist as they watched Lestrange and Rosier bark curses at each other across the room.
“How long are we gonna let them go at it?” she asked after a few minutes. Both Lestrange and Rosier had accumulated quite a few cuts and bruises from the duel; Rosier’s front teeth were completely missing and Lestrange no longer had eyebrows.
“They’re getting tired,” he replied as Rosier jumped over the couch to avoid a Bat-Bogey hex from Lestrange. The hex hit the cushions and they exploded, sending stuffing everywhere.
Natalie let out a scoff that turned into a groan when his hand traveled up from her waist to dig into the sore muscles near her shoulder. “Adolphus. . . can do better than the Bat-Bogey hex.”
She fell into Tom as he started kneading at the weak spot below her neck, immediately making her grow limp. He laughed softly. “If you’re bored, feel free to stop them.”
“I. . . you. . . I — you have. . . my wand,” she mumbled, feeling completely helpless as his hand worked at her neck.
“Or you can try doing something without your wand,” he suggested.
“I. . . can’t think,” she purred into his chest and closed her eyes, feeling her whole body relax.
He pulled her back and stopped kneading at her neck, instead draping an arm over her shoulders so she could see the duel still happening.
“Try something,” he said. “Stop the duel.”
“Without killing anyone,” she said to herself.
“Yes,” he agreed, “ideally.”
“Hm,” slowly raising a hand towards where Lestrange stood, she imagined the tiniest spark flowing out of her fingers and zapping him — but only just. She closed her eyes and winced, expecting catastrophe.
There was a yelp and a thump and her eyes flew open to spot Lestrange sprawled on the floor. Before she could comprehend it, Tom was pushing her hand towards Rosier.
“Do it again,” he urged, so she repeated the exact same motion, thinking the exact same thoughts.
A shout of surprise, another thump and Rosier dropped to the floor, groaning.
“Are they okay?” she asked, looking between the two. Their duel abandoned, Dawson and Nott moved to help them up while Dolohov stared at her.
“Yes,” breathed Tom, grabbing her cheek and turning her to face him. “They’re fine — brilliant, even.”
He looked so excited, she couldn’t help but burst into a smile before he leaned in to kiss her.