Fic: Folie à Deux for brighty18
Title: Folie à Deux
Author: hipokras
Recipient: brighty18
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings: *Potentially unsettling imagery*
Word count: 6k~
Summary: Scooby Doo AU. A wizard dies in a mysteriously opulent house, five heirs trapped by greed, Dark legacies that make your toes curl, and a vicious curse that's killing them one by one. When Sirius is reluctantly summoned to the reading of his Uncle Alphard's will, he finds that he only has until sunrise to survive.
Notes: Michelle, oh my god. I have no idea what to say except that SCOOBY DOO and pop culture references. Dream wish to fulfil. I hope you have amazing holidays and a great year ahead, and a blast with this. And incredible, enormous, endless ♥♥♥ and gratitude to Min, Maggie and Sam for being the most amazing and patient mods in the universe.
Title from an episode of the X-Files; watch the episode this fic is based on here. (Fantastic scene of Scooby in a bathtub was unfortunately not adapted to avoid scandalising the Giggling Green Ghost).
***
1977
Chama, New Mexico
The Portkey-a putrefied lucky rabbit’s foot dangling from a length of elder-brought them as far as the creek. The water was a black spill, weighed down by rocks that winked and glittered strangely, like eyes opening and closing at the sky. On the other bank, the house sprawled gluttonously across the desert. Two storeys tall, it had more windows than square footage, all aglow with lights. A small, indistinct shape was hunched on the roof. When Sirius tried to look too closely, it launched itself into the air in the form of a bird. It wheeled away, and soon it was lost against the silhouette of the mountains.
A single untethered boat waited in the creek. There were fresh footsteps everywhere. The misgivings were etched plainly on Remus’s face, crisscrossed between his scars.
“Have we taken a wrong turn?” he asked, none too hopelessly. “Rabbits don’t have much of a sense of direction. Except for finding carrots. For Merlin’s sake-!”
In Sirius’s opinion, leaning into someone’s personal space to bite a kiss along the line of his neck was perfectly regular night-time behaviour.
“Get in the damn boat,” he growled into Remus’s ear, “or I’ll do that again.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t have the desired result, because all Remus did was inch closer to the boat and nudge it dubiously with his foot. The water rippled but the boat stayed still.
“It doesn’t eat people,” said Sirius impatiently. He stepped into it first, holding out a hand in invitation. “Take a chunk out of your leg, maybe.” Remus ignored him and carefully followed. “But it’s got a very small stomach.”
“I’ll try not to give it cramps.”
“Best not to. It’s got a mean temper.”
A tap on the stern with Sirius’s wand, and they were gliding in an unerringly straight line towards the house. They had to sit with knees interlocked to avoid having one buttock dangling overboard, but at least all limbs were intact.
“Do you know what I really like about this boat?” said Sirius, watching Remus’s frown get darker and tauter. Their exposed skin glowed a strange ivory in the half-moon, but there was no reflection of it in the water. “It does jumping jacks every time you say terrible things about the tosser who owned the place up-”
THUMP!
“Sirius!”
The boat bucked. THUMP, it went again as something slammed into the hull. Sirius was automatically steadying himself one-handedly against Remus, grinning, his fingers splayed high across Remus’s thigh.
“Sirius, you do that again and I’ll-”
“Hex my fingernails off?”
“-Say ‘Alphard Black short-changes the women he sleeps with’!”
The boat jerked even more violently, thrashing sea monsters batting it from side to side with fleshy, heavy tentacles. Sirius was thwacked into the side of the boat, a grunt of pain escaping him. The uncharacteristically mutinous look on Remus’s face as they were thrown against each other made Sirius hastily yell, “But he also ruined them for other men.”
In a blink and a small burst of speed, the boat had recovered its balance and was demurely moving forward. Sirius aimed a bad-tempered look at Remus. “That was completely unnecessary. You’re not a very nice person.”
Soon, the boat was butting against the other shore, but neither of them made any move to clamber out. The house shone yellow, silhouettes and curtains fluttering against the windows. Long, high notes of from a flute whirled through the firmly closed doors. Even from the distance, it looked so alive, so normal, so yesterday that Sirius froze.
Damp earth and algae mixed with the week-old memory of the smell of ink on the letters. Uncle Alphard’s solicitor was informing him of the reading of the will. Another parchment had been folded underneath: “If you get simpering and maudlin over this, I’ll bequeath everything to Claw Bone Hobsworth, see if I don’t.” The last words his uncle would say to him sank through him like a jagged rock.
Remus’s hand lay warm and heavy over Sirius’s own, a promise that not everyone left. That some people waited for him to catch up.
Uncle Alphard’s drawing room blazed like midday. Not only was the house was big enough to hold a star captive, the only parts of it that wouldn’t burn down were the picture windows and the lamps patterned with red suns. Sirius flicked at the sides of one, and something beat back against the lamp wall with tiny, angry fists.
Remus surreptitiously slapped at his hand under the pretext of running a hand through his own hair. Sirius raised his eyebrows, nonchalant.
A wizard in a top hat with a pipe stuck in the brim brushed past them. “Is this going to take much longer?” he demanded a deep, rasping voice. Flinging off his travelling cloak, he didn’t notice when it draped smoothly over the lamp. Sirius was just as much a part of the adobe wall to him. “Being stuffed in here with the rabble isn’t good for my lungs.”
Even as Remus was already pushing Sirius towards the armchairs, he couldn’t stop Sirius from adding, “Maybe you should smoke less of the crushed Gillyweed, Uncle Ignatius.”
The man in the fireside chair mimed an odd gesture by pinching his index finger and thumb before his lips. He chuckled, and Uncle Ignatius shot him a filthy look. “Do try not to advertise yourself, Uncle Marius.”
Great-Uncle Marius cocked his head in confusion, having been rendered deaf by the hair coming out of his ears in hoary tufts.
Although Remus kept his head ducked, face straight, and hands clamped firmly around Sirius’s shoulders, the questions practically reverberated from him. He unapologetically dropped into the only wicker chair in the room, abandoning Sirius to the place beside a witch in a spectacular ostrich feather hat. Aunt Lucretia was stroking her chair appreciatively; the armrest, polished white, gleamed like human bone.
Sirius suppressed the groan and slid into a seat made from the preserved carcass of a nudu. When he tried to shift fractionally closer to Remus, it screeched against the floor. Automatically, heads turned with ostentatious interest at the knobbly little bastard who would be overseeing the proceedings. Sirius grimly budged sideways some more, pretending not to see the matching tics jumping under his aunt and uncle’s eyes.
“If Master Black is finished, Munster is liking to begin,” quavered a high, irritable voice from below knee-level. It came from near a heavy mahogany table with elaborately carved legs: the table looked like little goblins were climbing up towards the surface, and being caught and cut down by wizards brandishing swords.
Sirius leaned forward, baring a grin. Munster glowered back as he dipped into a bow.
Munster had been a constant fixture in Uncle Alphard’s house throughout Sirius’s childhood. He had spent several years in loyal service, never complaining about his master’s thoroughly piss-poor decision to leave Britain and hide from his family in the San Juan mountains. That was the usual gist of his mutterings, which Sirius promptly told Remus in a low whisper.
“You understood all that from a mutter?”
“Ah, Moony, I keep forgetting you’ve never been to my house. Believe me when I say I’m quite the expert.”
Munster hitched his oven mitt closer to himself and regarded the five witches and wizards beadily. One of his Snitch-sized eyes twitched visibly when it landed on Great-Uncle Marius. “Master was a good man-oh, too good for the likes of the some of the abominations that are crawling into Master’s house, Master was full of pity for the weak-”
Aunt Lucretia’s expression turned pinched and sour, and Uncle Ignatius soothingly patted her knee, not that it did much good.
“If we can move on, Munster.” The deep, honeyed voice had come from the spindly woman draped in turquoise. Sirius couldn’t recall ever seeing her before, unless she had descended from some obscure branch of the Blacks and was too tasteful to attend family gatherings. “Some of us would like to go home before sunrise turns everyone here to ashes.”
Munster snapped his twig-like fingers at once and a Pensieve cracked into existence on the table. “Master’s final words to his little friends,” he said, gesturing with a flourish. “Listen.”
Swirls of mist rose from the stone basin and gathered into a small column. Sirius, who had survived all manner of Dark objects from flesh-eating snuff boxes to mirrors that showed your death, had never seen a Pensieve before. By all accounts, they were as rare as Evans admitting James had a point. A wreath-like miniature of Uncle Alphard was now squinting back at the people staring at him.
“Wonderful, you’re all here.” His voice was scratchier than Sirius remembered. It tried to boom across the room even as the dying Uncle Alphard had preserved this bit of himself. “I’m only presuming you’ve come, of course. But it’s a good guess, knowing just how much I’m worth. Munster not giving you too much grief, I hope. Poor thing, just going to be devastated without me. You can have a lottery amongst yourselves, who gets the elf…”
Muster emitted a strangled sound from under the table. The memory of his master remained oblivious to his look of the utmost reproach.
“Just know that I wouldn’t have called you here if you weren’t the dearest and closest to my heart. And if not that, the only ones in my family I don’t want to spite. Yet, at least.” Uncle Alphard was picking lint off the front of his embroidered silk robes. He held up something between his spidery long fingers, examining it meticulously as he continued, “Uncle Marius, Nephew Sirius, Sweet Cousin Lucretia, Cousin Ignatius, and my old friend María Teresa… you know what’s in my coffers, and it’s to be equally divided among you all. Provided, of course, you the night in my house. You can use all the magic you like-if you think that’ll help you survive.” He proffered them a huff of a smile, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
Sirius could swear the nudu was still breathing, hot and rancid and hungry, down his neck.
*
“I’m beginning to see why you always hid us from your folks,” said Remus, pausing in the very distracting, very fantastic thing he was doing with two fingers and the bare expanse of Sirius’s chest.
Sirius’s protest rolled deep in his throat. He kicked at the antique récamier as he shifted, grinding his hips against Remus when he did. “Figured it out, have you? Always-” Although his arm was starting to go numb trapped around Remus’s shoulders, his hand raked upwards, fingers burying in Remus’s hair. “-Had to be the smart one.”
“Of course.” Even laden with sarcasm, the word melted into a sigh when Sirius turned his head and tugged Remus closer into a kiss. “You didn’t want your relatives to have a heart attack at the sight of us. You like them too much.”
“They did let us have the best room, after all.”
Chaos had exploded in the drawing room once Uncle Alphard’s last words sank in. Great-Uncle Marius was calling discrimination on that parting shot, Aunt Lucretia had seized Munster by the neck for answers, María Teresa threw back her head and let loose a long, curling laugh, and Uncle Ignatius lit up his pipe and took a grateful drag.
Remus has only one question: “How important is your inheritance to you, Sirius?” The answer had been “not very,” but a marauder never gave up the chance to stoke more mischief.
“Do we have to? It’s not like there isn’t enough at school-”
“Yes, Moony. We have to. You’re sounding as much of a wet rag as Wormtail now.”
“If by that you mean I’m exhibiting Peter-esque amounts of sense, then I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Munster, who had been slinking past and gingerly rubbing his neck, stopped short in front of them. His face twisted a leer as he watched Sirius for a long minute. “Is Master Black to be the first to leave? Munster has always known what little mettle Master Black has. Even as a child, he was the first to-”
Well, the matter had been irrevocably settled after that. Staying put was the only way to prevent Remus’s foot from catapulting Munster into the sun.
Seven-course dinner followed, including pork tamales, peppers stuffed with quinoas and black beans, cilantro lime shrimp and mushroom enchiladas. Even Sirius had to admit that Munster hadn’t served “complete gas.” Afterwards, María Teresa had ominously announced that she was retiring for the night, and Uncle Ignatius asked after the library with ghoulish interest. Great-Uncle Marius pottered into the kitchen, and Aunt Lucretia had spared Sirius a venomous look before sweeping out to the garden.
Remus had suggested a tour of the house-after all, Sirius had mentioned the heated pools in the private patio several times on the way from Hogwarts to Chama-but he now changed his mind hastily. Sirius had always thought that parallel lines collided into one another to avoid witches like Aunt Lucretia.
Since no headless horsemen had come flinging fence-posts through the windows and primeval oceanic beasts hadn’t dragged themselves out of a chasm below the creek, the night remained a little light on the prophesied death and doom. Instead, they were put upon the top floor, sandwiched between a writing room and a dead end. It came with an expansive view of the mountains and was thankfully far removed from the rest of the house. It was a good place for bedding down (complete with an ‘If you get what I mean’ smirk) until sunrise. Sirius started to hope that he’d been Uncle Alphard’s favourite, after all. He could already picture not leaving the récamier for hours, languidly stripping layer after useless layer of clothing off Remus and kissing every inch of what he bared.
Or he would have if Remus stopped looking so pensive and mystifyingly sympathetic.
“Are you going to be done with that look anytime soon? It’d be nice if you were done sometime soon.”
Remus laughed awkwardly and moved until the two of them were lying side-by-side. “Your uncle passed away, Padfoot.” The hollows of Sirius’s hipbones felt cold without the warm sensation of Remus pressing down on him. “It’s nice to know that we’re not going to pretend to care.”
Sirius said nothing, as he seldom did. He thought he couldn’t be clearer that Andromeda was the only one worth anything. Regulus had let himself get thick in the head, and compared to that, Uncle Alphard not putting on his best clothes to go Muggle hunting meant very little.
“-Or that it’s going to dampen your libido.”
“That’s very definitely a no, is it?”
“More like ‘I don’t want to pay for this in the afterlife’.” Remus glanced sideways, finally acknowledging the put-out expression on Sirius’s face. “Padfoot,” he began, looking so torn that Sirius felt something like unhappy triumph. “Padfoot, I only-”
Sirius didn’t wait for him. He flung open the window, and in the smoothness of a single bound, boy morphed into dog. He disappeared into the night.
Alone. Quiet. Not silent. Quiet. The dog roamed. Free. Colour was gone. But he felt the world keenly. The bushes were snarling. The blood of garden gnomes was fresh on them. He stayed away. The leaves eyed him ravenously.
Blood everywhere. It was as brown as dirt. It was in the soil. Mixed with the mortar. Floating off the lake. Crude, but menacing. It protected the house. Everything. Even in death, it protected.
The dog laid his ears flat. He ducked close to the kitchen. Flavour exploded in a thousand spices in his nose. Munster was loud. The ladle kept hitting the sides of the pot. Munster was a stream of curses. Wishes were not magic. Squibs would not be the filling of that coconut flan.
María Teresa was in the next room. Magnolia everywhere. A flute was still playing. It was chilling and fey. The dog’s fur rose like the ridges of his spine. Unicorn hair was woven in the bedclothes. It stank of the sweat of the dying. Basilisk fang, wiped clean with acid, mingled with gold. Jewellery boxes. Thestral hide was upstairs. Downstairs. Everywhere. Thestral leather and clothes. So many foul thoughts stitched into those clothes.
But the dog did not smell María Teresa. Only magnolia.
Her window was open. The earth was soft. His claws dug deep. The curtains whistled in the breeze. The music never stopped. Riveting and unreal. The dog reared up on two legs. The curtain was like a man’s caress on his nose.
Only magnolia. The room, ransacked.
A dresser face-down. The mirror smashed. The pillowcases were shreds. Clothes kicked everywhere. The dog hurled himself into the room, a boy tumbling upright to his feet. Wand clenched in hand, he demanded at once, “Homenum Revelio!”
Something blurred red to his left: the last vestige of María Teresa had been near the walk-in closet. “Anybody here?” he called out, heart in his throat.
The door was faintly ajar. It was clear she was gone. He knew better. But something-he knew as surely as the breath rattling in his mouth-wasn’t right.
A dark crack lay between the doors of the closet, perfume permeating the room. Sirius flicked his wrist and the doors flew open wider. Rows on rows of clothes lay beyond, and that was when he heard it: a laugh that was a mad cackle, ringing and beastly. He whipped around, only in time to see something flee.
The cold air razed the nape of his neck as he lunged after it.
It was a ghost, but like no ghost he had ever seen. Rushing out of María Teresa’s room, it towered eight feet tall. It moved without feet, an amorphous shape and a sickly green, swarming up the stairs. Chains dangled from its formless arms, and just once, it glanced back at Sirius. Its mouth was a black pit and wide open in a gloat.
Laughter poured out of it as it vanished on the spot.
Sirius realised, breathless and cold, that the flute was still playing. And of course, no one was there.
“REMUS!”
Sirius threw himself up the staircase, head pounding with the one realisation that Remus had been upstairs. He knocked past fairy dusters on a table and sent painting frames spinning in his haste. Something thudded, loud metallic, behind him and a woman’s voice rose in a protesting squawk.
“Hooligan!” sneered a charro on the first floor as Sirius raced past, but he ignored them all. He banged through the door of their room, nearly shouting Remus’s name.
The trunks were half-shoved under the bed, the récamier empty, a book folded down in a forgotten bid for a distraction. Even the damn window was still open. Sirius wanted to claw the whole place apart. But it was empty.
Backing out in the corridor, he raised his voice. “Remus? Remus, where the hell are you?”
Nothing answered.
He went like a madman, kicking in doors and running downstairs. Something sharp and bony jabbed at him. Tripping back against the steps, he gagged under the sudden onslaught of fungsy, old smoke. He was suddenly staring down the length of a wand.
Uncle Ignatius’s eyes were empty as pits. His monogrammed terrycloth shroud hung over his knobbly shoulders. “What,” he hissed, “do you think you’re playing-”
“Where’s-”
“Sirius!”
That voice. Remus was below the stairs. Stopped short by a broken vase, his shoulders were trembling. Sirius wanted to throw his arms around Remus and shake him until the relief and terror bled out of them both.
“Sirius,” repeated Remus, whey-faced. “Ignatius. There’s something you need to-”
And that was when Sirius really saw it. Remus had his palms turned up, and they were poisoned green.
“You again,” snapped a farmer, making a rude gesture that his artist certainly hadn’t intended. Barely registering the anatomically impossible implications of the suggestion, Sirius hauled himself after Remus.
Creaks see-sawed across the floorboards as they tramped up the hallway to Uncle Ignatius’s room. The wizard himself followed like a vulture. When no one spoke, the silence was throttling.
They had already seen the kitchen: overturned pots and floury paste everywhere. Long scrapemarks cut through the mess, the kind left by fingers scrabbling for purchase while something dragged a body away by the legs.
Great-Uncle Marius’s radio had lain in pieces on his floor, the speaker rolling gently with its own inertia and spitting out garbled inhuman bits of a human voice.
“Lucy,” Uncle Ignatius had kept moaning under his breath, and Sirius lengthened his stride now, fitting himself against Remus.
The Prewetts had been given the biggest bedroom after Uncle Alphard’s. Sirius suspected Munster had boarded that one up and barricaded it with a ring of fire. This door dangled from one hinge, falling away at Remus’s touch.
Aunt Lucretia was only a tangle of dark brown hair, discarded from a brush. It rolled past underfoot. A thin, wavering noise whined out of Uncle Ignatius’s throat.
Sirius moved to examine the carcass of the bed. The mattress had been gutted straight through the covers. He felt Remus next to him as acutely as his own hammering pulse. “Did you-” he began.
“I found the place like this,” said Remus. He swallowed audibly. “I was looking for you and I heard laughing. Right after that, the shouting began.”
Uncle Ignatius let out a keening sob from behind them. There was the fleshy thump of a fist hitting something solid.
The ghost had left a mirror intact for the first time. The reason was written across the surface.
“Is that blood?” Sirius asked the ruined bed.
Remus rubbed his thumb against his fingers uneasily. “No. It’s her lipstick.”
Uncle Ignatius had certainly recognised that shade, like it was ripped straight from the wearer’s mouth.
SOME ARE GONE
THE REST WILL GO
UNLESS YOU LEAVE
THIS PLACE AND
ROW! ROW! ROW!
*
“Preposterous! Preposterous is what this is,” Uncle Igantius snarled. His outstretched wand kept spitting red sparks. Although he sounded a bit funny, like his throat was stuffed full of cotton, all his bad humour had been restored. He paced outside the room, wand at the ready. Uncle Ignatius’s aim occasionally wavered and Sirius could swear it was trained at his back whenever he wasn’t looking.
“This is Munster’s work. My Lucy-oh, my Lucy-that useless little snotbucket should only be so lucky as to die for a Black.” Uncle Ignatius let out a gargled sound of disgust. “Any Black worthy of the blood.”
Remus wrapped a restraining hand around Sirius’s wrist, squeezing a warning. “I don’t think you did the pillow quite right…”
Now that the green ghost was snatching away Uncle Alphard’s heirs one fell lot at a time, Remus and Sirius had devised a lure for it. Admittedly, they had wasted time in trying to discover the whereabouts of the missing people (and Munster, as Remus had to remind them with more uncharacteristic loudness), but not even Uncle Ignatius’s storehouse of nasty spells had yielded results.
His efforts may or may not have been hampered by the fact that he kept breaking down into noisy sobs and throwing his nephew out of the room.
Sirius had gladly obliged, pulling Remus away into an empty corridor. There, he had to jab Remus in the ribs with a tracing spell and bruise his lips with a kiss to be satisfied. (“Can I reciprocate?” Remus had asked, and Sirius’s first verbal response had been, “Ouch!”)
Once the ghastly wailing had died down and been replaced with creative cursing, Sirius stuck his head past the broken door and brought up the ghost. Even then, Uncle Ignatius had downright laughed, preferring to believe his nephew had finally “grown even bigger tits” and murdered the other heirs for fun and profit. Sirius would have decked him Remus’s Shield Charm hadn’t hastily intervened. That was when Uncle Ignatius considered that maybe there was something to the whole pea-coloured undead menace to all things good that everyone kept nattering about.
Plan A, of course, was Apparating out of the house without a second thought. Being spectacularly outvoted, Remus was forced to accept Plan B: transforming Uncle Ignatius’s pillow into the wizard’s likeness, and lie in wait for the ghost’s arrival. Sirius preferred to think that his uncle’s sticky-out ears and pallid complexion were perfectly recreated on the grey turnip-sized head with two wings attached crookedly on the sides.
“Magic is not a perfect art,” he muttered loftily, while Pillognatius’s (‘Pillock’ for short) nose grew three inches and a wart.
They charmed the eiderdown to mimic the mound of a sleeping human body tucked underneath, and dimmed the lights.
“Any chance you’ll consider the Disapparation solution?” asked Remus hopefully.
Uncle Ignatius flinched at being spoken to-apparently, news of Remus’s wonderful latke-baking chocolate-sending thoroughly Muggle mother had preceded Remus himself-and cracked a cursory Disillusionment Charm over himself. “And let him abscond with the entirety of that fool Alphard’s money?”
A magically concealed Sirius muttered a devastating witticism about Uncle Ignatius’s wiliness being the reason he had outlived his wife.
Remus’s hand dug into his wrist hard enough to squeeze bone.
A shimmering patch of air was already striding away in the opposite direction. What was probably a wand stabbed a section of wall with unnecessary force, sending it collapsing inwards. The wand swished and slashed, sending paint chips and adobe flying while a hole began to form. When it was big enough to fit a shrivelled old man, the hole disappeared before their eyes. Intact paint and solid wall had smoothed over it. Not only was the illusion very good, it explained far too much about Sirius’s childhood.
Shuddering, he turned to Remus. “Fancy hiding behind the curtain? Can’t promise our shoes won’t stick out.”
“If I suggest a better option, will you promise not to vote for the stupid one?”
Remus pushed open the sash of the window, and gestured at what lay under it. A foot-wide ledge ran around the house, carved with curling symbols of constellations. Heavy flowerpots sat on it already, full of strange bell-headed violet plants. These bobbed to a rhythm of their own even in the dead of night. Some of them were smeared with bits of crusty brown gunk. It shifted places on the petal every time Sirius looked away.
“I see. Hiding behind the curtains is the stupid choice here.”
Nonetheless, he obligingly crawled out after Remus, balancing precariously on the ledge outside. “If the time comes for Cushioning Charms,” he warned, “I’m the priority.” Remus buried a long-suffering groan in Sirius’s shoulder.
Time draggled like molasses during the wait that followed. It was uncomfortable and precarious on the ledge. The longer they stood, the more it felt like goosefeathers underfoot.
A steady humming kept coming from the plants, somehow harsh and droning, sawing at their skulls.
The clanking of chains grew steadily louder.
CRASH!
The door to the bedroom flew open and eerie laughter exploded.
“REMUS, WATCH OUT!”
But the warning came to nothing. A blur of green flew at them, a black maw wide enough to swallow them whole. Sirius had Remus’s hand gripped in his and he aimed his wand-
It shoved Remus, and the ledge was yanked away. The ground snatched Sirius faster than he could break their fall. Remus’s limp body slammed into him, and the earth, too, splintered under them. In a shower of rocks and dirt, they kept falling.
Uncle Igantius howls followed them all the way down.
THUMP.
Heather-Sirius had the vaguest sense that it comprised some of their surroundings. He was amazed burning coals and pitchforks hadn’t cushioned his landing. Something elbow-like and pointy poked his stomach, and he lay back to let Remus scramble off him.
“Are we alive?” he asked dubiously.
“I think I am. I mean, thanks. Really broke my fall.”
Sirius grunted as he unfolded himself to his feet. “The song promised it would be much more painless.”
They seemed to be in a subterranean chamber that deepened the further they walked. Endlessly wide, it seemed as natural as the creek above. They couldn’t have fallen more than ten feet through, but the hole had simply vanished.
Sirius’s head was still ringing with the sound of Uncle Ignatius pleading with something to let him go. He tried not to meet Remus’s eye.
“What do you think your uncle used this place for?” asked Remus, rubbing his arms through the material of his sweater. Walking even though there was no exit in sight tended to bring out the worst in the natural draftiness of the place.
“Experimental magic,” said Sirius carelessly. “He needed someplace where the neighbours couldn’t hear the screams.” His ghoulish grin glimmered in the dark.
“You’re having me on.”
“Why do you think he lived in the desert?”
“Something about María Teresa comes to mind,” muttered Remus dryly.
“Get your mind out of the gutter. She could be his sister. They look very alike.”
“Is that why he called her his-”
“Sister,” repeated Sirius all too firmly. “Though Merlin knows why he died a bachelor.” He gave Remus a nudge, urging him to walk past a tall frosted glass cabinet-like thing. Shapes were forming constantly in those walls, morphing in and out of grimacing faces. “Fan of Doctor Who, Uncle Alphard was. This is the closest he got to that police box.”
“Sirius,” said Remus a little urgently, a little too firmly, “who’s in the-”
“Wine cellar. I was joking, Moony. My uncle stomped on grapes and brewed bad liquor down here.”
Remus’s gaze continued to linger on the box, which now resembled a coffin for a man with broken shoulders-or none at all-and Sirius had to push him past it.
“It leads up to the house,” he said doggedly. “I remember there used to be a lift somewhere. Used to trap Regulus in it and magically seal the winch…” He trailed off at the sight of Remus’s face, and cleared his throat hard. “Past the costumes, actually. He had racks of them just strewn about. Hatboxes. Shoeboxes. Treated the whole place like an attic. Come to think of it… Maybe he and María Teresa needed a clean change of clothes. Maybe those were their leftover clothes…”
“Weren’t you going on about sisters?”
“So were my grandparents, I’m sure. Definitely some set of grandparents of mine.”
The tunnel was gradually tapering to an end. A long passage climbed upwards, punching through the roof of the cavern. A lift chute stood ahead: a rickety old cage hung suspended by old, yellowed rope. It was barred by a gilded grille twisted in the interlocked shape of a thousand little hands clawing at one another.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” murmured Remus, “let down your golden hair.”
Sirius boggled at this bit of Gobbledegook. “Is that,” he wondered, jerking his thumb at the lift, “where that’s from?”
The grille rattled and tried to resist Sirius, and the moment they stepped past, the cage wobbled and began to rise. Remus’s face was getting steadily paler as the cage jerked from side to side, screeching each time it touched against the sides of the chute.
“Padfoot-Sirius-” said Remus thickly, “look! Look. Now!”
As the lift climbed higher, a grey stretch of cave wall fell away, revealing something long and oddly-shaped was propped against it. Side by side stood four coffins, nails buried in the wood. As the lift crawled them away, Sirius couldn’t tear his gaze away from the fifth, smallest one.
BANG!
The cage crashed into the chute, and there was a snap as the rope slipped and tore. Wands flashed, spells flew, the cage plummeted earthward and landed with a juddering thunk. Sirius’s fingers were coiled white around the grille to steady himself, his eyes narrowed to furious slits
“Do you think that was-?”
“The green ghost?” said Remus grimly. “Oh, undoubtedly.”
For a second, they peered through the golden grille at the dark cave beyond. No flicker of movement anywhere. Even what lay in the coffins no longer breathed.
“All ready to hunt down this thing, Moony?”
Remus gave him a small look expressing his acute incredulity, but he jangled open the cage anyway.
“You know, a kiss for luck is traditional,” drawled Sirius. “Wouldn’t want to-” The words tangled up in a yell as something shoved into the cage and slammed him back against the wall.
The ghost had come out of nowhere, all gaping mouth and teeth-rattling laughter. Sirius’s name was everywhere, bouncing off the walls, Remus’s face a blur of horror. The ghost crammed against Sirius, weightless and smothering like a gag. Scabby hands closed around his throat and started to squeeze.
His last coherent thought was that it was ironic for the pet of a Dark wizard to bypass the werewolf for the family heir.
BANG!
Sirius’s Blasting Hex hit the thing at the same time as Remus’s Stunner. The spells bounced off the ghost and the broken pieces of the grille flew like shrapnel. The ghost laughed maddeningly harder, seizing Sirius until he shook like a ragdoll in its grip.
The world was blackening at the edges, his fingers thick and useless around his wand. Remus’s voice was a dull roar of spell after spell. Sirius could barely reach up anymore, magic materialising in choking wisps.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “Uncle-don’t-”
For a fleeting imaginary second, the pressure vanished and the air burnt his throat when he heaved. The next second the air was being crushed out of him and the ghost was howling.
“SIRIUS! Tell him to let go. ORDER HIM TO LET GO.”
The ghost shook Sirius so hard his head might have snapped from his neck.
“I-”
A flashbang exploded, whiting out Sirius’s world. He couldn’t tell if the ghost had dropped him or his own knees had dissolved away.
“Let-let-” He was barely thinking. Pain exploded everywhere.
“Diffindo! DIFFINDO!”
“Go-”
Sirius hit the ground with a thump, stone jarring his bones. He scrabbled at his throat, fingers opening and closing in surprise to feel nothing. Everything was too blurry, too far away. Someone was repeating his name. Someone was touching him. Something lay heavy and warm over him.
“Go,” said Sirius again, unthinking. “Stop-all-stop all of it.”
And their surroundings winked out of existence.
*
When Sirius came to, an unhelpful mother hen had tried to smother him with bedcovers and an abnormally heavy pillow. Being a contrary bastard, Sirius had naturally survived the murder attempt. Not that he could feel too bad about it, not when the perpetrator had sunk, loose-limbed and exhausted onto the ground next to the bed.
The bed.
When had they-
Not that he was complaining, of course.
The memory rushed into him like bile. The coffins. One for each of Uncle Alphard’s relatives, except the last. The smallest hadn’t been human: it had been shaped like a dog. A curse rose up inside Sirius, but it was too painful. Everything from the back of his nose to the whole of his throat felt like it was on fire. He could feel the ugly welts forming already, like a rash induced by contact with maniacal evil.
He wished Remus would wake up. Remus could check the time. How much longer till sunrise?
“Go to sleep, Padfoot,” mumbled an irate voice from ten thousand leagues below. “I can hear you think.”
Sirius nearly laughed, but that made everything hurt even worse. He fumbled past the side of the bed, palm accidentally batting the side of Remus’s face. More mumbling ensued, and then a hand groping at the bedcovers, and then Remus hauling himself up and toppling into the bed.
It was an effort to move, and too secure to feel Remus trapping him down.
Munster was gone. That was all that mattered. They were safe from the abnormal, limitless magic of house-elves. If only he hadn’t gone prowling through the garden; maybe Munster wouldn’t have seen him then. Maybe if he hadn’t seen Sirius, Munster wouldn’t have made that mistake with the coffin. The chance to make a jab at the ingrate Master Black had been too much.
Didn’t matter. Sunrise, hours away. And the only way to get his inheritance was to stay like this, wrapped in Remus’s spread-eagled arms until the end.
*
Neither of them had noticed the writing that had appeared, eked out stroke by stroke on the surface of the mirror:
To my nephew-
Good doggy.
Author: hipokras
Recipient: brighty18
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings: *Potentially unsettling imagery*
Word count: 6k~
Summary: Scooby Doo AU. A wizard dies in a mysteriously opulent house, five heirs trapped by greed, Dark legacies that make your toes curl, and a vicious curse that's killing them one by one. When Sirius is reluctantly summoned to the reading of his Uncle Alphard's will, he finds that he only has until sunrise to survive.
Notes: Michelle, oh my god. I have no idea what to say except that SCOOBY DOO and pop culture references. Dream wish to fulfil. I hope you have amazing holidays and a great year ahead, and a blast with this. And incredible, enormous, endless ♥♥♥ and gratitude to Min, Maggie and Sam for being the most amazing and patient mods in the universe.
Title from an episode of the X-Files; watch the episode this fic is based on here. (Fantastic scene of Scooby in a bathtub was unfortunately not adapted to avoid scandalising the Giggling Green Ghost).
***
1977
Chama, New Mexico
The Portkey-a putrefied lucky rabbit’s foot dangling from a length of elder-brought them as far as the creek. The water was a black spill, weighed down by rocks that winked and glittered strangely, like eyes opening and closing at the sky. On the other bank, the house sprawled gluttonously across the desert. Two storeys tall, it had more windows than square footage, all aglow with lights. A small, indistinct shape was hunched on the roof. When Sirius tried to look too closely, it launched itself into the air in the form of a bird. It wheeled away, and soon it was lost against the silhouette of the mountains.
A single untethered boat waited in the creek. There were fresh footsteps everywhere. The misgivings were etched plainly on Remus’s face, crisscrossed between his scars.
“Have we taken a wrong turn?” he asked, none too hopelessly. “Rabbits don’t have much of a sense of direction. Except for finding carrots. For Merlin’s sake-!”
In Sirius’s opinion, leaning into someone’s personal space to bite a kiss along the line of his neck was perfectly regular night-time behaviour.
“Get in the damn boat,” he growled into Remus’s ear, “or I’ll do that again.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t have the desired result, because all Remus did was inch closer to the boat and nudge it dubiously with his foot. The water rippled but the boat stayed still.
“It doesn’t eat people,” said Sirius impatiently. He stepped into it first, holding out a hand in invitation. “Take a chunk out of your leg, maybe.” Remus ignored him and carefully followed. “But it’s got a very small stomach.”
“I’ll try not to give it cramps.”
“Best not to. It’s got a mean temper.”
A tap on the stern with Sirius’s wand, and they were gliding in an unerringly straight line towards the house. They had to sit with knees interlocked to avoid having one buttock dangling overboard, but at least all limbs were intact.
“Do you know what I really like about this boat?” said Sirius, watching Remus’s frown get darker and tauter. Their exposed skin glowed a strange ivory in the half-moon, but there was no reflection of it in the water. “It does jumping jacks every time you say terrible things about the tosser who owned the place up-”
THUMP!
“Sirius!”
The boat bucked. THUMP, it went again as something slammed into the hull. Sirius was automatically steadying himself one-handedly against Remus, grinning, his fingers splayed high across Remus’s thigh.
“Sirius, you do that again and I’ll-”
“Hex my fingernails off?”
“-Say ‘Alphard Black short-changes the women he sleeps with’!”
The boat jerked even more violently, thrashing sea monsters batting it from side to side with fleshy, heavy tentacles. Sirius was thwacked into the side of the boat, a grunt of pain escaping him. The uncharacteristically mutinous look on Remus’s face as they were thrown against each other made Sirius hastily yell, “But he also ruined them for other men.”
In a blink and a small burst of speed, the boat had recovered its balance and was demurely moving forward. Sirius aimed a bad-tempered look at Remus. “That was completely unnecessary. You’re not a very nice person.”
Soon, the boat was butting against the other shore, but neither of them made any move to clamber out. The house shone yellow, silhouettes and curtains fluttering against the windows. Long, high notes of from a flute whirled through the firmly closed doors. Even from the distance, it looked so alive, so normal, so yesterday that Sirius froze.
Damp earth and algae mixed with the week-old memory of the smell of ink on the letters. Uncle Alphard’s solicitor was informing him of the reading of the will. Another parchment had been folded underneath: “If you get simpering and maudlin over this, I’ll bequeath everything to Claw Bone Hobsworth, see if I don’t.” The last words his uncle would say to him sank through him like a jagged rock.
Remus’s hand lay warm and heavy over Sirius’s own, a promise that not everyone left. That some people waited for him to catch up.
Uncle Alphard’s drawing room blazed like midday. Not only was the house was big enough to hold a star captive, the only parts of it that wouldn’t burn down were the picture windows and the lamps patterned with red suns. Sirius flicked at the sides of one, and something beat back against the lamp wall with tiny, angry fists.
Remus surreptitiously slapped at his hand under the pretext of running a hand through his own hair. Sirius raised his eyebrows, nonchalant.
A wizard in a top hat with a pipe stuck in the brim brushed past them. “Is this going to take much longer?” he demanded a deep, rasping voice. Flinging off his travelling cloak, he didn’t notice when it draped smoothly over the lamp. Sirius was just as much a part of the adobe wall to him. “Being stuffed in here with the rabble isn’t good for my lungs.”
Even as Remus was already pushing Sirius towards the armchairs, he couldn’t stop Sirius from adding, “Maybe you should smoke less of the crushed Gillyweed, Uncle Ignatius.”
The man in the fireside chair mimed an odd gesture by pinching his index finger and thumb before his lips. He chuckled, and Uncle Ignatius shot him a filthy look. “Do try not to advertise yourself, Uncle Marius.”
Great-Uncle Marius cocked his head in confusion, having been rendered deaf by the hair coming out of his ears in hoary tufts.
Although Remus kept his head ducked, face straight, and hands clamped firmly around Sirius’s shoulders, the questions practically reverberated from him. He unapologetically dropped into the only wicker chair in the room, abandoning Sirius to the place beside a witch in a spectacular ostrich feather hat. Aunt Lucretia was stroking her chair appreciatively; the armrest, polished white, gleamed like human bone.
Sirius suppressed the groan and slid into a seat made from the preserved carcass of a nudu. When he tried to shift fractionally closer to Remus, it screeched against the floor. Automatically, heads turned with ostentatious interest at the knobbly little bastard who would be overseeing the proceedings. Sirius grimly budged sideways some more, pretending not to see the matching tics jumping under his aunt and uncle’s eyes.
“If Master Black is finished, Munster is liking to begin,” quavered a high, irritable voice from below knee-level. It came from near a heavy mahogany table with elaborately carved legs: the table looked like little goblins were climbing up towards the surface, and being caught and cut down by wizards brandishing swords.
Sirius leaned forward, baring a grin. Munster glowered back as he dipped into a bow.
Munster had been a constant fixture in Uncle Alphard’s house throughout Sirius’s childhood. He had spent several years in loyal service, never complaining about his master’s thoroughly piss-poor decision to leave Britain and hide from his family in the San Juan mountains. That was the usual gist of his mutterings, which Sirius promptly told Remus in a low whisper.
“You understood all that from a mutter?”
“Ah, Moony, I keep forgetting you’ve never been to my house. Believe me when I say I’m quite the expert.”
Munster hitched his oven mitt closer to himself and regarded the five witches and wizards beadily. One of his Snitch-sized eyes twitched visibly when it landed on Great-Uncle Marius. “Master was a good man-oh, too good for the likes of the some of the abominations that are crawling into Master’s house, Master was full of pity for the weak-”
Aunt Lucretia’s expression turned pinched and sour, and Uncle Ignatius soothingly patted her knee, not that it did much good.
“If we can move on, Munster.” The deep, honeyed voice had come from the spindly woman draped in turquoise. Sirius couldn’t recall ever seeing her before, unless she had descended from some obscure branch of the Blacks and was too tasteful to attend family gatherings. “Some of us would like to go home before sunrise turns everyone here to ashes.”
Munster snapped his twig-like fingers at once and a Pensieve cracked into existence on the table. “Master’s final words to his little friends,” he said, gesturing with a flourish. “Listen.”
Swirls of mist rose from the stone basin and gathered into a small column. Sirius, who had survived all manner of Dark objects from flesh-eating snuff boxes to mirrors that showed your death, had never seen a Pensieve before. By all accounts, they were as rare as Evans admitting James had a point. A wreath-like miniature of Uncle Alphard was now squinting back at the people staring at him.
“Wonderful, you’re all here.” His voice was scratchier than Sirius remembered. It tried to boom across the room even as the dying Uncle Alphard had preserved this bit of himself. “I’m only presuming you’ve come, of course. But it’s a good guess, knowing just how much I’m worth. Munster not giving you too much grief, I hope. Poor thing, just going to be devastated without me. You can have a lottery amongst yourselves, who gets the elf…”
Muster emitted a strangled sound from under the table. The memory of his master remained oblivious to his look of the utmost reproach.
“Just know that I wouldn’t have called you here if you weren’t the dearest and closest to my heart. And if not that, the only ones in my family I don’t want to spite. Yet, at least.” Uncle Alphard was picking lint off the front of his embroidered silk robes. He held up something between his spidery long fingers, examining it meticulously as he continued, “Uncle Marius, Nephew Sirius, Sweet Cousin Lucretia, Cousin Ignatius, and my old friend María Teresa… you know what’s in my coffers, and it’s to be equally divided among you all. Provided, of course, you the night in my house. You can use all the magic you like-if you think that’ll help you survive.” He proffered them a huff of a smile, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
Sirius could swear the nudu was still breathing, hot and rancid and hungry, down his neck.
*
“I’m beginning to see why you always hid us from your folks,” said Remus, pausing in the very distracting, very fantastic thing he was doing with two fingers and the bare expanse of Sirius’s chest.
Sirius’s protest rolled deep in his throat. He kicked at the antique récamier as he shifted, grinding his hips against Remus when he did. “Figured it out, have you? Always-” Although his arm was starting to go numb trapped around Remus’s shoulders, his hand raked upwards, fingers burying in Remus’s hair. “-Had to be the smart one.”
“Of course.” Even laden with sarcasm, the word melted into a sigh when Sirius turned his head and tugged Remus closer into a kiss. “You didn’t want your relatives to have a heart attack at the sight of us. You like them too much.”
“They did let us have the best room, after all.”
Chaos had exploded in the drawing room once Uncle Alphard’s last words sank in. Great-Uncle Marius was calling discrimination on that parting shot, Aunt Lucretia had seized Munster by the neck for answers, María Teresa threw back her head and let loose a long, curling laugh, and Uncle Ignatius lit up his pipe and took a grateful drag.
Remus has only one question: “How important is your inheritance to you, Sirius?” The answer had been “not very,” but a marauder never gave up the chance to stoke more mischief.
“Do we have to? It’s not like there isn’t enough at school-”
“Yes, Moony. We have to. You’re sounding as much of a wet rag as Wormtail now.”
“If by that you mean I’m exhibiting Peter-esque amounts of sense, then I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Munster, who had been slinking past and gingerly rubbing his neck, stopped short in front of them. His face twisted a leer as he watched Sirius for a long minute. “Is Master Black to be the first to leave? Munster has always known what little mettle Master Black has. Even as a child, he was the first to-”
Well, the matter had been irrevocably settled after that. Staying put was the only way to prevent Remus’s foot from catapulting Munster into the sun.
Seven-course dinner followed, including pork tamales, peppers stuffed with quinoas and black beans, cilantro lime shrimp and mushroom enchiladas. Even Sirius had to admit that Munster hadn’t served “complete gas.” Afterwards, María Teresa had ominously announced that she was retiring for the night, and Uncle Ignatius asked after the library with ghoulish interest. Great-Uncle Marius pottered into the kitchen, and Aunt Lucretia had spared Sirius a venomous look before sweeping out to the garden.
Remus had suggested a tour of the house-after all, Sirius had mentioned the heated pools in the private patio several times on the way from Hogwarts to Chama-but he now changed his mind hastily. Sirius had always thought that parallel lines collided into one another to avoid witches like Aunt Lucretia.
Since no headless horsemen had come flinging fence-posts through the windows and primeval oceanic beasts hadn’t dragged themselves out of a chasm below the creek, the night remained a little light on the prophesied death and doom. Instead, they were put upon the top floor, sandwiched between a writing room and a dead end. It came with an expansive view of the mountains and was thankfully far removed from the rest of the house. It was a good place for bedding down (complete with an ‘If you get what I mean’ smirk) until sunrise. Sirius started to hope that he’d been Uncle Alphard’s favourite, after all. He could already picture not leaving the récamier for hours, languidly stripping layer after useless layer of clothing off Remus and kissing every inch of what he bared.
Or he would have if Remus stopped looking so pensive and mystifyingly sympathetic.
“Are you going to be done with that look anytime soon? It’d be nice if you were done sometime soon.”
Remus laughed awkwardly and moved until the two of them were lying side-by-side. “Your uncle passed away, Padfoot.” The hollows of Sirius’s hipbones felt cold without the warm sensation of Remus pressing down on him. “It’s nice to know that we’re not going to pretend to care.”
Sirius said nothing, as he seldom did. He thought he couldn’t be clearer that Andromeda was the only one worth anything. Regulus had let himself get thick in the head, and compared to that, Uncle Alphard not putting on his best clothes to go Muggle hunting meant very little.
“-Or that it’s going to dampen your libido.”
“That’s very definitely a no, is it?”
“More like ‘I don’t want to pay for this in the afterlife’.” Remus glanced sideways, finally acknowledging the put-out expression on Sirius’s face. “Padfoot,” he began, looking so torn that Sirius felt something like unhappy triumph. “Padfoot, I only-”
Sirius didn’t wait for him. He flung open the window, and in the smoothness of a single bound, boy morphed into dog. He disappeared into the night.
Alone. Quiet. Not silent. Quiet. The dog roamed. Free. Colour was gone. But he felt the world keenly. The bushes were snarling. The blood of garden gnomes was fresh on them. He stayed away. The leaves eyed him ravenously.
Blood everywhere. It was as brown as dirt. It was in the soil. Mixed with the mortar. Floating off the lake. Crude, but menacing. It protected the house. Everything. Even in death, it protected.
The dog laid his ears flat. He ducked close to the kitchen. Flavour exploded in a thousand spices in his nose. Munster was loud. The ladle kept hitting the sides of the pot. Munster was a stream of curses. Wishes were not magic. Squibs would not be the filling of that coconut flan.
María Teresa was in the next room. Magnolia everywhere. A flute was still playing. It was chilling and fey. The dog’s fur rose like the ridges of his spine. Unicorn hair was woven in the bedclothes. It stank of the sweat of the dying. Basilisk fang, wiped clean with acid, mingled with gold. Jewellery boxes. Thestral hide was upstairs. Downstairs. Everywhere. Thestral leather and clothes. So many foul thoughts stitched into those clothes.
But the dog did not smell María Teresa. Only magnolia.
Her window was open. The earth was soft. His claws dug deep. The curtains whistled in the breeze. The music never stopped. Riveting and unreal. The dog reared up on two legs. The curtain was like a man’s caress on his nose.
Only magnolia. The room, ransacked.
A dresser face-down. The mirror smashed. The pillowcases were shreds. Clothes kicked everywhere. The dog hurled himself into the room, a boy tumbling upright to his feet. Wand clenched in hand, he demanded at once, “Homenum Revelio!”
Something blurred red to his left: the last vestige of María Teresa had been near the walk-in closet. “Anybody here?” he called out, heart in his throat.
The door was faintly ajar. It was clear she was gone. He knew better. But something-he knew as surely as the breath rattling in his mouth-wasn’t right.
A dark crack lay between the doors of the closet, perfume permeating the room. Sirius flicked his wrist and the doors flew open wider. Rows on rows of clothes lay beyond, and that was when he heard it: a laugh that was a mad cackle, ringing and beastly. He whipped around, only in time to see something flee.
The cold air razed the nape of his neck as he lunged after it.
It was a ghost, but like no ghost he had ever seen. Rushing out of María Teresa’s room, it towered eight feet tall. It moved without feet, an amorphous shape and a sickly green, swarming up the stairs. Chains dangled from its formless arms, and just once, it glanced back at Sirius. Its mouth was a black pit and wide open in a gloat.
Laughter poured out of it as it vanished on the spot.
Sirius realised, breathless and cold, that the flute was still playing. And of course, no one was there.
“REMUS!”
Sirius threw himself up the staircase, head pounding with the one realisation that Remus had been upstairs. He knocked past fairy dusters on a table and sent painting frames spinning in his haste. Something thudded, loud metallic, behind him and a woman’s voice rose in a protesting squawk.
“Hooligan!” sneered a charro on the first floor as Sirius raced past, but he ignored them all. He banged through the door of their room, nearly shouting Remus’s name.
The trunks were half-shoved under the bed, the récamier empty, a book folded down in a forgotten bid for a distraction. Even the damn window was still open. Sirius wanted to claw the whole place apart. But it was empty.
Backing out in the corridor, he raised his voice. “Remus? Remus, where the hell are you?”
Nothing answered.
He went like a madman, kicking in doors and running downstairs. Something sharp and bony jabbed at him. Tripping back against the steps, he gagged under the sudden onslaught of fungsy, old smoke. He was suddenly staring down the length of a wand.
Uncle Ignatius’s eyes were empty as pits. His monogrammed terrycloth shroud hung over his knobbly shoulders. “What,” he hissed, “do you think you’re playing-”
“Where’s-”
“Sirius!”
That voice. Remus was below the stairs. Stopped short by a broken vase, his shoulders were trembling. Sirius wanted to throw his arms around Remus and shake him until the relief and terror bled out of them both.
“Sirius,” repeated Remus, whey-faced. “Ignatius. There’s something you need to-”
And that was when Sirius really saw it. Remus had his palms turned up, and they were poisoned green.
“You again,” snapped a farmer, making a rude gesture that his artist certainly hadn’t intended. Barely registering the anatomically impossible implications of the suggestion, Sirius hauled himself after Remus.
Creaks see-sawed across the floorboards as they tramped up the hallway to Uncle Ignatius’s room. The wizard himself followed like a vulture. When no one spoke, the silence was throttling.
They had already seen the kitchen: overturned pots and floury paste everywhere. Long scrapemarks cut through the mess, the kind left by fingers scrabbling for purchase while something dragged a body away by the legs.
Great-Uncle Marius’s radio had lain in pieces on his floor, the speaker rolling gently with its own inertia and spitting out garbled inhuman bits of a human voice.
“Lucy,” Uncle Ignatius had kept moaning under his breath, and Sirius lengthened his stride now, fitting himself against Remus.
The Prewetts had been given the biggest bedroom after Uncle Alphard’s. Sirius suspected Munster had boarded that one up and barricaded it with a ring of fire. This door dangled from one hinge, falling away at Remus’s touch.
Aunt Lucretia was only a tangle of dark brown hair, discarded from a brush. It rolled past underfoot. A thin, wavering noise whined out of Uncle Ignatius’s throat.
Sirius moved to examine the carcass of the bed. The mattress had been gutted straight through the covers. He felt Remus next to him as acutely as his own hammering pulse. “Did you-” he began.
“I found the place like this,” said Remus. He swallowed audibly. “I was looking for you and I heard laughing. Right after that, the shouting began.”
Uncle Ignatius let out a keening sob from behind them. There was the fleshy thump of a fist hitting something solid.
The ghost had left a mirror intact for the first time. The reason was written across the surface.
“Is that blood?” Sirius asked the ruined bed.
Remus rubbed his thumb against his fingers uneasily. “No. It’s her lipstick.”
Uncle Ignatius had certainly recognised that shade, like it was ripped straight from the wearer’s mouth.
SOME ARE GONE
THE REST WILL GO
UNLESS YOU LEAVE
THIS PLACE AND
ROW! ROW! ROW!
*
“Preposterous! Preposterous is what this is,” Uncle Igantius snarled. His outstretched wand kept spitting red sparks. Although he sounded a bit funny, like his throat was stuffed full of cotton, all his bad humour had been restored. He paced outside the room, wand at the ready. Uncle Ignatius’s aim occasionally wavered and Sirius could swear it was trained at his back whenever he wasn’t looking.
“This is Munster’s work. My Lucy-oh, my Lucy-that useless little snotbucket should only be so lucky as to die for a Black.” Uncle Ignatius let out a gargled sound of disgust. “Any Black worthy of the blood.”
Remus wrapped a restraining hand around Sirius’s wrist, squeezing a warning. “I don’t think you did the pillow quite right…”
Now that the green ghost was snatching away Uncle Alphard’s heirs one fell lot at a time, Remus and Sirius had devised a lure for it. Admittedly, they had wasted time in trying to discover the whereabouts of the missing people (and Munster, as Remus had to remind them with more uncharacteristic loudness), but not even Uncle Ignatius’s storehouse of nasty spells had yielded results.
His efforts may or may not have been hampered by the fact that he kept breaking down into noisy sobs and throwing his nephew out of the room.
Sirius had gladly obliged, pulling Remus away into an empty corridor. There, he had to jab Remus in the ribs with a tracing spell and bruise his lips with a kiss to be satisfied. (“Can I reciprocate?” Remus had asked, and Sirius’s first verbal response had been, “Ouch!”)
Once the ghastly wailing had died down and been replaced with creative cursing, Sirius stuck his head past the broken door and brought up the ghost. Even then, Uncle Ignatius had downright laughed, preferring to believe his nephew had finally “grown even bigger tits” and murdered the other heirs for fun and profit. Sirius would have decked him Remus’s Shield Charm hadn’t hastily intervened. That was when Uncle Ignatius considered that maybe there was something to the whole pea-coloured undead menace to all things good that everyone kept nattering about.
Plan A, of course, was Apparating out of the house without a second thought. Being spectacularly outvoted, Remus was forced to accept Plan B: transforming Uncle Ignatius’s pillow into the wizard’s likeness, and lie in wait for the ghost’s arrival. Sirius preferred to think that his uncle’s sticky-out ears and pallid complexion were perfectly recreated on the grey turnip-sized head with two wings attached crookedly on the sides.
“Magic is not a perfect art,” he muttered loftily, while Pillognatius’s (‘Pillock’ for short) nose grew three inches and a wart.
They charmed the eiderdown to mimic the mound of a sleeping human body tucked underneath, and dimmed the lights.
“Any chance you’ll consider the Disapparation solution?” asked Remus hopefully.
Uncle Ignatius flinched at being spoken to-apparently, news of Remus’s wonderful latke-baking chocolate-sending thoroughly Muggle mother had preceded Remus himself-and cracked a cursory Disillusionment Charm over himself. “And let him abscond with the entirety of that fool Alphard’s money?”
A magically concealed Sirius muttered a devastating witticism about Uncle Ignatius’s wiliness being the reason he had outlived his wife.
Remus’s hand dug into his wrist hard enough to squeeze bone.
A shimmering patch of air was already striding away in the opposite direction. What was probably a wand stabbed a section of wall with unnecessary force, sending it collapsing inwards. The wand swished and slashed, sending paint chips and adobe flying while a hole began to form. When it was big enough to fit a shrivelled old man, the hole disappeared before their eyes. Intact paint and solid wall had smoothed over it. Not only was the illusion very good, it explained far too much about Sirius’s childhood.
Shuddering, he turned to Remus. “Fancy hiding behind the curtain? Can’t promise our shoes won’t stick out.”
“If I suggest a better option, will you promise not to vote for the stupid one?”
Remus pushed open the sash of the window, and gestured at what lay under it. A foot-wide ledge ran around the house, carved with curling symbols of constellations. Heavy flowerpots sat on it already, full of strange bell-headed violet plants. These bobbed to a rhythm of their own even in the dead of night. Some of them were smeared with bits of crusty brown gunk. It shifted places on the petal every time Sirius looked away.
“I see. Hiding behind the curtains is the stupid choice here.”
Nonetheless, he obligingly crawled out after Remus, balancing precariously on the ledge outside. “If the time comes for Cushioning Charms,” he warned, “I’m the priority.” Remus buried a long-suffering groan in Sirius’s shoulder.
Time draggled like molasses during the wait that followed. It was uncomfortable and precarious on the ledge. The longer they stood, the more it felt like goosefeathers underfoot.
A steady humming kept coming from the plants, somehow harsh and droning, sawing at their skulls.
The clanking of chains grew steadily louder.
CRASH!
The door to the bedroom flew open and eerie laughter exploded.
“REMUS, WATCH OUT!”
But the warning came to nothing. A blur of green flew at them, a black maw wide enough to swallow them whole. Sirius had Remus’s hand gripped in his and he aimed his wand-
It shoved Remus, and the ledge was yanked away. The ground snatched Sirius faster than he could break their fall. Remus’s limp body slammed into him, and the earth, too, splintered under them. In a shower of rocks and dirt, they kept falling.
Uncle Igantius howls followed them all the way down.
THUMP.
Heather-Sirius had the vaguest sense that it comprised some of their surroundings. He was amazed burning coals and pitchforks hadn’t cushioned his landing. Something elbow-like and pointy poked his stomach, and he lay back to let Remus scramble off him.
“Are we alive?” he asked dubiously.
“I think I am. I mean, thanks. Really broke my fall.”
Sirius grunted as he unfolded himself to his feet. “The song promised it would be much more painless.”
They seemed to be in a subterranean chamber that deepened the further they walked. Endlessly wide, it seemed as natural as the creek above. They couldn’t have fallen more than ten feet through, but the hole had simply vanished.
Sirius’s head was still ringing with the sound of Uncle Ignatius pleading with something to let him go. He tried not to meet Remus’s eye.
“What do you think your uncle used this place for?” asked Remus, rubbing his arms through the material of his sweater. Walking even though there was no exit in sight tended to bring out the worst in the natural draftiness of the place.
“Experimental magic,” said Sirius carelessly. “He needed someplace where the neighbours couldn’t hear the screams.” His ghoulish grin glimmered in the dark.
“You’re having me on.”
“Why do you think he lived in the desert?”
“Something about María Teresa comes to mind,” muttered Remus dryly.
“Get your mind out of the gutter. She could be his sister. They look very alike.”
“Is that why he called her his-”
“Sister,” repeated Sirius all too firmly. “Though Merlin knows why he died a bachelor.” He gave Remus a nudge, urging him to walk past a tall frosted glass cabinet-like thing. Shapes were forming constantly in those walls, morphing in and out of grimacing faces. “Fan of Doctor Who, Uncle Alphard was. This is the closest he got to that police box.”
“Sirius,” said Remus a little urgently, a little too firmly, “who’s in the-”
“Wine cellar. I was joking, Moony. My uncle stomped on grapes and brewed bad liquor down here.”
Remus’s gaze continued to linger on the box, which now resembled a coffin for a man with broken shoulders-or none at all-and Sirius had to push him past it.
“It leads up to the house,” he said doggedly. “I remember there used to be a lift somewhere. Used to trap Regulus in it and magically seal the winch…” He trailed off at the sight of Remus’s face, and cleared his throat hard. “Past the costumes, actually. He had racks of them just strewn about. Hatboxes. Shoeboxes. Treated the whole place like an attic. Come to think of it… Maybe he and María Teresa needed a clean change of clothes. Maybe those were their leftover clothes…”
“Weren’t you going on about sisters?”
“So were my grandparents, I’m sure. Definitely some set of grandparents of mine.”
The tunnel was gradually tapering to an end. A long passage climbed upwards, punching through the roof of the cavern. A lift chute stood ahead: a rickety old cage hung suspended by old, yellowed rope. It was barred by a gilded grille twisted in the interlocked shape of a thousand little hands clawing at one another.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” murmured Remus, “let down your golden hair.”
Sirius boggled at this bit of Gobbledegook. “Is that,” he wondered, jerking his thumb at the lift, “where that’s from?”
The grille rattled and tried to resist Sirius, and the moment they stepped past, the cage wobbled and began to rise. Remus’s face was getting steadily paler as the cage jerked from side to side, screeching each time it touched against the sides of the chute.
“Padfoot-Sirius-” said Remus thickly, “look! Look. Now!”
As the lift climbed higher, a grey stretch of cave wall fell away, revealing something long and oddly-shaped was propped against it. Side by side stood four coffins, nails buried in the wood. As the lift crawled them away, Sirius couldn’t tear his gaze away from the fifth, smallest one.
BANG!
The cage crashed into the chute, and there was a snap as the rope slipped and tore. Wands flashed, spells flew, the cage plummeted earthward and landed with a juddering thunk. Sirius’s fingers were coiled white around the grille to steady himself, his eyes narrowed to furious slits
“Do you think that was-?”
“The green ghost?” said Remus grimly. “Oh, undoubtedly.”
For a second, they peered through the golden grille at the dark cave beyond. No flicker of movement anywhere. Even what lay in the coffins no longer breathed.
“All ready to hunt down this thing, Moony?”
Remus gave him a small look expressing his acute incredulity, but he jangled open the cage anyway.
“You know, a kiss for luck is traditional,” drawled Sirius. “Wouldn’t want to-” The words tangled up in a yell as something shoved into the cage and slammed him back against the wall.
The ghost had come out of nowhere, all gaping mouth and teeth-rattling laughter. Sirius’s name was everywhere, bouncing off the walls, Remus’s face a blur of horror. The ghost crammed against Sirius, weightless and smothering like a gag. Scabby hands closed around his throat and started to squeeze.
His last coherent thought was that it was ironic for the pet of a Dark wizard to bypass the werewolf for the family heir.
BANG!
Sirius’s Blasting Hex hit the thing at the same time as Remus’s Stunner. The spells bounced off the ghost and the broken pieces of the grille flew like shrapnel. The ghost laughed maddeningly harder, seizing Sirius until he shook like a ragdoll in its grip.
The world was blackening at the edges, his fingers thick and useless around his wand. Remus’s voice was a dull roar of spell after spell. Sirius could barely reach up anymore, magic materialising in choking wisps.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “Uncle-don’t-”
For a fleeting imaginary second, the pressure vanished and the air burnt his throat when he heaved. The next second the air was being crushed out of him and the ghost was howling.
“SIRIUS! Tell him to let go. ORDER HIM TO LET GO.”
The ghost shook Sirius so hard his head might have snapped from his neck.
“I-”
A flashbang exploded, whiting out Sirius’s world. He couldn’t tell if the ghost had dropped him or his own knees had dissolved away.
“Let-let-” He was barely thinking. Pain exploded everywhere.
“Diffindo! DIFFINDO!”
“Go-”
Sirius hit the ground with a thump, stone jarring his bones. He scrabbled at his throat, fingers opening and closing in surprise to feel nothing. Everything was too blurry, too far away. Someone was repeating his name. Someone was touching him. Something lay heavy and warm over him.
“Go,” said Sirius again, unthinking. “Stop-all-stop all of it.”
And their surroundings winked out of existence.
*
When Sirius came to, an unhelpful mother hen had tried to smother him with bedcovers and an abnormally heavy pillow. Being a contrary bastard, Sirius had naturally survived the murder attempt. Not that he could feel too bad about it, not when the perpetrator had sunk, loose-limbed and exhausted onto the ground next to the bed.
The bed.
When had they-
Not that he was complaining, of course.
The memory rushed into him like bile. The coffins. One for each of Uncle Alphard’s relatives, except the last. The smallest hadn’t been human: it had been shaped like a dog. A curse rose up inside Sirius, but it was too painful. Everything from the back of his nose to the whole of his throat felt like it was on fire. He could feel the ugly welts forming already, like a rash induced by contact with maniacal evil.
He wished Remus would wake up. Remus could check the time. How much longer till sunrise?
“Go to sleep, Padfoot,” mumbled an irate voice from ten thousand leagues below. “I can hear you think.”
Sirius nearly laughed, but that made everything hurt even worse. He fumbled past the side of the bed, palm accidentally batting the side of Remus’s face. More mumbling ensued, and then a hand groping at the bedcovers, and then Remus hauling himself up and toppling into the bed.
It was an effort to move, and too secure to feel Remus trapping him down.
Munster was gone. That was all that mattered. They were safe from the abnormal, limitless magic of house-elves. If only he hadn’t gone prowling through the garden; maybe Munster wouldn’t have seen him then. Maybe if he hadn’t seen Sirius, Munster wouldn’t have made that mistake with the coffin. The chance to make a jab at the ingrate Master Black had been too much.
Didn’t matter. Sunrise, hours away. And the only way to get his inheritance was to stay like this, wrapped in Remus’s spread-eagled arms until the end.
*
Neither of them had noticed the writing that had appeared, eked out stroke by stroke on the surface of the mirror:
To my nephew-
Good doggy.