#x. alecto

[amxcuscarrow]

@sweetpoiscn​

The night of the fire.

St Mungo’s Hospital, Alecto’s office, 

Amycus made it precisely half a step through the door to his sister’s office, the smell of fire and blood and smoke wreathed in his hair and his skin and embedded in the wild panic of his eyes, before he collapsed back against the door. The night was dark, her office dim save from the light from her desk, and amidst the dull and soothing greys of the walls and the furniture and the carpet, he felt like a riot of flame and smoke.

“Alecto—”

His breathing, loud and rattling and refusing to slow, to settle, even far from the smoke and the searing heat (and deeper, instead, in his own sterile and white-washed hell) and all he could think, all he could hear, was the internal panic of his own inner voice telling him how foolish he’d been, how careless and reckless and how they would lock him up for this. How Potter could have said something already. 

His jaw was swelling, aching where it had been hit, there was blood in his mouth and on his teeth and smeared across his chin, the char of burnt flesh thick in the air as he stumbled forward on an adrenaline crash, his limbs and his head heavy like a weight and the frantic racing of his heart slamming in his hears. “Help me. Please. Potter — I need to get to — I need to stop him before he tells.”

[amxcuscarrow]

@sweetpoiscn Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour Diagon Alley Two Days After. 10:45am. 

If it weren’t for the heavy blanket of gloom that had settled over Diagon Alley, fuelled by the headlines currently crumpled in bins and fires all over England, Amycus suspected that Fortescue’s might have been busier. Outside the large bay windows shoppers rushed from store to store, never lingering despite the last of the season’s good weather, spooked sufficiently by the events in Puddletown to find precisely no joy from their errands for the day.

Amycus, perched at his sunny table by the window with an enormous plate of icecream, was remarkably unbothered by all of it. 

And oddly, notably, out of place.

A few stray welts of shiny red burns that he had missed with dittany and a stubbornly lingering scent of woodsmoke followed him, telling the tale of his presence in Puddletown, but as he absently offered a spoonful of half-melted ice cream to the tiny twitching nose that had emerged from his satchel he seemed the very picture of .. well, not serenity. Nor peace. But perhaps blissful apathy.

The bells above the door chimed again and Amycus paused in his offerings to turn his head towards the counter where Florean himself lingered nervously, polishing sundae dishes, to watch his face as he realised he’d acquired yet another Carrow for the day. 

It was well worth it. 

He turned his head back to his plate, digging his spoon vigorously into the melting cacophany of different flavours as his mood tilted towards something better, and waited for Alecto to find him.

[amxcuscarrow]

@sweetpoiscn The Carrow Estate

“Amycus? Oh, do come inside, my little darling, I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

The door to her room was open.

There had been a time when his mother’s voice was like honey, entrancing and golden and sweet, it made her lies so believable that even he, sometimes, felt inclined to believe them. She could bat her eyes and the world would fall about themselves to help her, to pity her for the misfortunes visited upon her in this dreary old estate. She was ever the damsel in distress or tragic heroine, dewy eyed and in need. An aptitude for casting herself in the perfect light was one of many talents that Amycus had not inherited. 

He hesitated, floorboards creaking beneath the soles of his shoes, fingers twitching aimlessly in the direction of that cracked open door before pressing, featherlight to the cracks in the painted surface. The woman behind it was not who she once was, Alecto had seen to that. And yet..

“Amycus?”

She always knew. He’d been twisted around her little finger so many times Amycus sometimes wondered how he was able to stand. Two steps and he stood upon the verge, nose wrinkled against the sour smell of her sick bed, the dim light swallowed by drawn curtains and his eyes fixed to the bony fingers stretched out to greet him. Another two and he could see the spiderwebs of red tracing the whites of her eyes and the chapped skin of her lips. Test subjects were difficult to come upon, sometimes his sister’s ingenuity astounded him. “Mother,” he greeted, just as wary of the caged beast as he had been of the woman in her prime.

He watched dispassionately as fingers clawed at his sleeve before snagging a hold on his wrist and tugged it towards her, pinching, scratching. From this close he could see the disdain behind the sweetness, a well of it that was just as old as he was. “Amycus,” desperation cut through the patience, the sweetness, the coaxing and left only demands in their place and tired lines at the corners of her eyes and her mouth. “My sweet boy, you need to help your mother.”

Such a waste, she’d used to say, his chin pinched between her fingers, such a waste of a pretty face. 

Amycus was not sweet. 

His free hand drifted to settle gently over the fingers coiled around his wrist, a placating nod to follow before he called out, loudly, for his sister.

“Alecto.”

He knew better than to play with his sister’s toys.