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"Sorry, I've somewhat forgotten the details of our last meeting," Anthony said. "You seemed to leave in a bit of a hurry." He gave his wand a light flick, intending to cast a Shield Charm on Sirius, but that same cursed, unlucky magic still clung to him.
Voldemort let out a cold, contemptuous laugh. His crimson, icy eyes gazed down at Anthony. A mass of serpents coiled around Voldemort, slowly lifting him higher.
"I must confess, I am somewhat disappointed, Professor Anthony," Voldemort hissed softly. "You should have been a natural ally… I — Lord Voldemort — and my faithful Death Eaters, you should have been our natural partner."
"Don't talk nonsense, Voldemort," Sirius rasped, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Dark Lord. "Having a rough time in all those years of hiding, were you? Looks like when you were making yourself into that… unsavory… thing, you managed to damage your brain as well."
Voldemort's ugly face, the raw, unhealed red of freshly flayed skin, turned slightly toward Sirius.
"And who are you?" he asked, his voice indifferent.
"Sirius Black." Sirius lowered his head slightly, teeth gritted like a hound spotting a hare.
"Ah, of course, of course. Bella's cousin. Regulus Black's brother," Voldemort's tone gained a cruel amusement. "James Potter's friend — Crucio!"
His wand, held in weak fingers, dipped slightly. Anthony didn't even have time to process what happened before he saw Sirius throw himself into a roll, the curse missing him —
"Stupefy!" Sirius shouted, aiming his wand at Voldemort the moment he regained his footing. "Expelliarmus!"
But before his spells could reach the serpent mass, trees on either side suddenly groaned and bent forward. Their thick canopies easily absorbed the curses, then snapped back.
"Crucio—" Another curse shot from between the branches. Sirius leaped nimbly, ducking behind a large boulder. Anthony pressed his hand to the ground. The snake corpses around them surged like a tide, tangling with the serpents guarding Voldemort.
Voldemort tilted his head slightly, a cold hiss escaping his lips. Anthony immediately felt the corpses animated by his Necromancy falter as never before. They were like chess pieces receiving conflicting orders, turning in chaotic confusion on the board.
Suddenly, he heard Sirius emit half a choked groan. He whirled around. Sirius had been hit. He was curled on the ground, body convulsing, teeth clenched. Voldemort narrowed his eyes, almost savoring the sight as he pushed his wand forward. Sirius's eyes were squeezed shut, a pained gurgle escaping his throat. His right hand still gripped his wand tightly.
Anthony spread his Necromancy wide. Soil churned. Bones rose. Long-dead foxes and wolves from the forest joined the fray, rushing the snakes, biting indiscriminately with teeth caked in roots and rot. The Wraith Chicken tried to follow. Anthony grabbed its wing and threw it toward the convulsing Sirius.
Voldemort glanced aside, annoyed. Quirrell lay unconscious. The cat guarded its prey, back arched, hissing and spitting at Voldemort.
Voldemort raised his wand and pointed into the serpent mass. The fox and wolf skeletons exploded violently. The cat startled, jumping warily onto a tree to observe. Anthony waved a hand. The bone fragments clattered, trying to reassemble mid-air — BANG! BANG! Voldemort twitched his wand, triggering one continuous explosion after another, pulverizing all the fragments into dust.
"You are resilient, Sirius Black," Voldemort said lazily. "I hear you spent twelve years in Azkaban, and left that place with your sanity intact…"
Sirius gasped for breath, his eyes cracking open slightly.
"Protego, Rennervate — Are you alright?" Anthony whispered.
He tried yanking hard on Voldemort's soul. It was still stuck to the world, just as he remembered. Like a piece of discolored, ancient chewing gum fused with rotten fruit and meat, nearly one with the rubbish bin itself. Voldemort gave him a mocking look, then turned his cold gaze back to Sirius.
"But those years of torment clearly weren't easy for you. Your soul trembles… I wonder if you've noticed that whenever you are near our dear Professor Anthony, you feel agitated, distressed, depressed, uneasy?" Voldemort whispered. "Oh, you don't believe me. A hateful, distrustful glare. Don't worry, Black. I am thinking, perhaps I should thank you. Thank you for convincing the Potters to switch their Secret Keeper to Wormtail…"
A roar of pure hatred and fury erupted from Sirius's throat. He propped himself up on his trembling left arm, raising his right. "Avada —"
Voldemort smirked and slashed his wand. Sirius's right arm dropped at a sickening angle, the bone clearly broken. His fingers twitched weakly, then snapped with a crack like dry kindling. The wand slipped from limp fingers, clattering uselessly to the ground. Sirius twisted, pinning it under his left elbow, glaring up at Voldemort.
"Sirius! Reparo! No—" Anthony scrambled for the right spell. "Episkey—"
"Ah, so valiant, so loyal…" Voldemort murmured. "You are so faithful to your friend… Loyalty deserves respect and preferential treatment…"
Sirius's face was deathly pale, sweat beading on his forehead. He hissed, "He — you call him Wormtail? He lets you call him Wormtail?"
Voldemort acted as if he hadn't heard. "But, alas, you clearly lack intelligence… The Killing Curse? You wished to use the Killing Curse on the Dark Lord?" He extended his thin, limp arm from the wrappings. "To show my appreciation for loyalty, you shall have the honor of seeing a demonstration — Avada Kedavra!"
Violent green light exploded among the trees. Every hair on Anthony's body stood on end. He didn't think. He lunged, slamming Sirius out of the way. Sirius groaned in pain. The curse grazed Anthony's leg — a strange, burning cold — and slammed into the earth with a dull thud that shook the ground.
Sirius forced his eyes open, shouting, "Watch out, Henry!"
Anthony turned. Voldemort was raising his wand again —
Just then, a grey, four-legged beast charged from the forest, crashing into the serpent mass. To Anthony's Necromantic senses, it blazed like a streaking, burning meteor.
Voldemort twitched his wand. A deafening explosion echoed through the woods. But the curse that had just shattered the skeletal fox and wolf bounced off the creature. The rebounded magic tore through the intertwined snakes instead, blasting them apart.
"What?" Sirius muttered, awkwardly groping for his wand with his left hand.
The dead unicorn rampaged through the snakes, rearing and crushing coil after coil. Its head instinctively lowered, trying to gore Voldemort with the horn that was no longer there. The bundle containing Voldemort pitched like a small boat in a storm. Sirius hunched over, leaning on Anthony to stand. He tried waving his wand with his left hand, but failed to produce a single spell. He ended up slumped against a tree, panting.
Voldemort lowered his wand, tracing patterns in the air. The ground around them suddenly turned to swamp. With slick, malevolent hisses, several particularly thick snakes slithered up nearby branches, gently lifting Voldemort and settling him among the boughs.
Mud leaped and splattered like lava. The unicorn's movements grew slow and clumsy. Snakes swam freely through the muck, coiling around the unicorn's now-dull coat. They mixed with the sticky mud, wrestling its strong, rigid bones, sinking sharp fangs into its cold flesh — The unicorn thrashed its head, struggling to leap free — The mud itself writhed like a living thing, creeping up the unicorn's hind legs, then its forelegs…
Thud. The unicorn knelt. It stretched its neck, body covered in snakes of all sizes. The sight was heartbreaking… Sirius's body still trembled slightly — from pain, or from rage and hatred… Voldemort laughed coldly. Another flash of green light shot forth. The Wraith Chicken flapped its wings, taking flight. The cat leaped onto Sirius's face, knocking him sideways. Everything was noise and chaos and —
The green light hit Anthony.
Wow.
Deep in Anthony's mind, within the spaces of his Necromancy, something glowed faintly. The Killing Curse held something very familiar. A very familiar sensation. Anthony could almost hear its sibilant whisper: Soul, soul, soul, soul.
There's nothing here for you, Anthony answered it. It's empty here. Only similar hungers wandering the halls.
Soul, the Killing Curse repeated indifferently. Soul, fear, pain, sorrow, soul, torment, torment, torment, soul. It circled within Anthony, growing violent, impatient. Finally, it slammed into a lifeless wall. A flash of blinding green light… Explosion.
Anthony's body — shell — vessel — call it what you will — cracked. He flowed out, feeling a faint annoyance. The kind of annoyance you feel returning to the shore to find your sandcastle collapsed into a ruin of mud, grit, and water, collected in a few deep, chaotic footprints. Like stepping out in the morning to find the snowman's nose missing, its head rolled by the mailbox.
His head rolled to Sirius's feet. Sirius looked down at him, expression blank, as if he couldn't comprehend what had just happened.
He poured out, flowing around all the inedible things, heading for that stinking mess. The thing that blew up his vessel. He washed over it, trying to soften it. He tried to pry it loose. How could something so vile exist? It smelled repulsive, polluted its surroundings, created unpalatable things. Like that salad over there, trembling—
"Crucio!" The oozing thing was stuck fast to the world — he wrapped around it, pulling hard — "Crucio! Crucio!"
The salad trembled more violently. Maybe he should take a bite first, but he'd eaten too many snakes already, and this screaming thing really killed his appetite. He wished he had a shovel. He could scrape this thing off… Like prying barnacles off a rock…
"Crucio!"
"Cough… cough…" The salad made a sound. "M-Master! Spare me, spare me!" The salad's foot bumped into Anthony's hand. The hand flipped over in displeasure and crawled away. The salad fell into a bewildered silence for a moment, then erupted with a wave of choking, sharp-smelling fear.
"Come here, fool!"
The salad stumbled closer. A shame. All his attention was on cleaning now. He really wasn't in the mood to figure out why he couldn't eat salad. Salad is food, right?
"No!" A furious bark came from the thing that smelled quite good. "Stupefy! Reducto! Impedimenta! Expelliarmus! Petrificus Totalus! Diffindo!"
Crack. The salad disappeared with the rubbish. But he could still smell the stench. Its stain remained on that rotten soul. Like newspaper soaked by rain, he thought with Anthony's head. Just moving it under the eaves isn't enough to dry it. It needs time. Or sun.
He tried to chase it. His head rolled. His eyes saw trees, then sky, then grass, then ground. Trees, sky, grass, ground. Trees, sky, grass, ground…
Too slow, he thought. He flowed out, touching the unicorn's corpse. Something slept inside it — a burning magic, exhausted, brilliant. He withdrew respectfully.
In his clothes pocket, he felt a barely usable corpse. He slipped inside.
A headless giant snake, or a body-less snake head. No time to hesitate. Those two souls were getting away. He squeezed in, fitted the two parts together, and slithered out of the pocket.
A bear-sized black dog, sniffing the ground intently, turned its head. Its eyes glinted with menace. It bared its teeth and charged — The cat leaped, blocking the dog.
Sirius watched, helpless, as the ginger cat turned into a skeleton before him. The giant serpent, moving stiffly but swiftly, slithered into the woods and vanished.
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