I am, at heart, a lover of the darker concepts. Times when there is no way out, or violence is humorous, or there are no heroes. And so, in this especially dark and gloomy month, I am proud to announce a little challenge for myself to wind down from NaNoWriMo: Darkcember
I’m always too busy prepping for NaNo to truly write anything in the October season when dark concepts come out to play for Halloween, and thus am writing a little menagerie of prompts, concepts or ideas that aren’t romance-centered over the course of the month. I only have about two weeks of prompts lined up so feel free to request something of me!
This year it’ll likely mostly be FB-centered and Newt Scamander related at least! I’ll do my best to tag but be warned- I likely will be going into nastier things that aren’t traditionally NSFW. Be on your guard.
Happy Darkcember!
Day 1: Remember, the forest is waiting. And it is hungry.
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
-W.B. Yeats, The Land Of Heart’s Desire
The issue, of course, is little Newt’s love of beasts. It almost always is, thinks little Theseus, newly returned from second year and feeling the worldly ennui that almost all boarding school children feel when coming home. Newt always runs after beats or cries when they need to be killed or hide them away in the attic. It was adorable, and on good days it still is, but Newt is reaching the age it is less acceptable and on some that were more monster than beast.
Theseus sleeps in the nursery still, not yet a man although his toes bang the edge of his headboard. Newt sleeps in his old crib as still as a rock, buried under piles of blankets, silent as the dead. Theseus, in those first few nights, hears a poltergeist. Certain that’s what it is and flushed from his top marks in DADA, he asks his parents but, no matter how hard they search, no ghost is found. They put it off to a gnome Newt snuck in breaking out under cover of darkness. Theseus looks after newt during the afternoon in the gardens, reading his books and imagining great battles which he singlehandedly wins. (Theseus is, in all the ways that counts, still a child). Newt never goes to far and talks to the air, pretending there are beasts there when there were clearly none.
A week goes by and Newt complains about the silverware, claiming it hurts his hands. Theseus mourns his dignity once again and cuts up his brothers food for him into finger food, remembering cute Newt making a mess only a few years ago before he went to Hogwarts. Newt is less cute now he can talk and think now, and Theseus has homework to do. Newt has pewter cutlery the next day courtesy of the house elves. Newt doesn’t remember the name of the elf who did it, which is odd, Newt knows all the elves names. Perhaps he’s ill. Theseus scrapes his toes against his bedframe and sees flowers the elves have left in the night around newts crib. They are gone by the time either parent looks into the nursery. Newt dances barefoot around him as he chooses his options. Where have Newt’s shoes gone, anyways?
(Questions are rude)
Theseus has a playdate, and his parents are in the house while he watches Newt in the back gardens that open onto the forest- and he hears the doorbell ring and the calling out of Prewett- and Newts curls are just in sight as he dances into the forest so it is only a fleeting thought that Theseus bestows upon him as he scrambles into the house to meet his friend at the door, past discarded iron and silver, past Newt’s shoes, every single sole worn through, past the threshold to hug his friend as if the world has ended since they have met although it has been thirteen days at most. He forgets that moment Newt was out of sight, forgets that he had sworn to never leave Newt alone outside since he was small and his parents watched the forest with something like fear as they soothed newt in his crib.
They go to sleep and Theseus stubs his toes on his headboard until he gives up and sleeps on the couch. There were no flower offerings around Newt’s crib this night and his eyelids flutter. Theseus almost wakes when he sees a large broad shadow and strange music, which Newt almost seems to be dancing to, but the shadow leans over and pushes his eyelids closed and so Theseus sleeps so he can get up early and have the crispiest slice of bacon.
Theseus is not quite a man but still a child, until the boychild within him dies at the sight of the bloodstreaked lillies in Newt’s crib, the child nowhere to be found. Theseus moves into his own room and his parents burn the nursery and the lillies with Fiendfyre.
At the edge of the forest, a patch of lilies blooms. Sometimes, the Scamanders say, you can see a man dancing among them. But don’t look into his eyes or dance with him. The forest is hungry, and so is he.
The letter doesn’t say much. Only informs her to look out for the wellbeing of her friends. Newt falls suddenly ill with no cause or cure that afternoon. An owl brings her a letter as she sits vigil by his bedside.
Here is your first and only warning of the perils of disobedience. Go to this address. Leave no one alive. No one can know it was you. Do not fail, or your friend will die in agony.
What else can third-year Leta, so used to cruelty and mistrust from all around her, do but obey?
According to the file, the flat should contain only a portly man, self absorbed and forgetful. Leta floos out with the powder given and walks to the flat. She is unable to use magic, but being locked out enough makes her able to quietly scale the walls and jimmy open a window to small for anyone but a child. Leta lands in the bathroom and curls up quiet and still just like her nanny taught her when her father truly raged, snug as a bug in a rug and just as sneaky. Eventually she uncurls. He will be back from his job, soon enough. And she must be ready. Her eyes skitter over his straight razor but- no. She cannot do that. She will not slit throat like some common Muggle killer. She may not be liked, but she is from two long and respected lines of pureblood nobility, and no one, her father, the letter-writer, or even herself will take anything away from that.
The razor is left behind as Leta walks into the man’s flat proper. It is proper and stingy, the only frivolity a white baby grand piano fit into a corner with extension charms. The sleek piano stands out against the mundanity of the apartment, but even being near the piano makes fingers ache bone deep as the memory of another scale, another arpeggio reverberate through them. From impulse, Leta cuts a string out of the piano, a coil of wire that looks sharp and deadly. She practices on the fruit and flowers in the centerpiece until she knows the pressure that will make the wire bite through cleanly and without hesitation. She chews on a slice of apple until she hears the pop of Apparition and then she slides into a corner on cat-quick feet, breathes and is not seen not heard good quiet demure obedient small-
(Leta’s wandless Disillusionment had been perfect from the age of four. The consequences would have been too dire, otherwise.)
The man (there was no name in the file) eats dinner and brews himself tea, which he takes over to the piano as he starts to play, scales and arpeggios, as Leta breathes and thinks of Newt feverish and dying up in Scotland. What is this man to her? Nothing. She would never meet him or care for him. She would rather kill him than have to meet Newt’s family and go through five joyless years of Hogwarts alone and hated. This man was not worth Newt’s death.
It is the work of a few blissful moments, then, when a note is not played, to step forward as the man leans over to check the strings and just- pull firmly and cleanly. Just like slicing an apple. Easier perhaps, being still heard and not seen, cutting through and to the side until the man’s eyes were meeting hers. She leaves the wire, ends still sticky with apple juice, inside the gaping neck wound for the letter-writer or the Aurors to find first as she glides out of the room. She floos back to Hogsmeade and sneaks into Hogwarts, blood simply new freckles on her face, lace gloves discarded in the Great Lake.
The Prophet notes the murder as Newt recovers over the weekend. Leta sits with the the paper in her lap, reading about the professionally cleaned scene- no evidence. Under the paper rests a note from the letter-writer, now a benefactor of sorts, who spirited away any evidence and congratulated her on her creativity. There was a book list, with titles that no law abiding witch or wizard should read. She planned to start with How to Aggravate Aurors: The Criminal’s Guide to Staying Out of Azkaban. After all, thinks Leta, flicking her newly acquired straight razor in and out of its handle almost without thought, I’ll be called upon soon.
“-and of course, dear associate, now that you have proven yourself obedient and reliable, I will contact you again soon with more mutually profitable business. I hope you have only the best of luck until then.
