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ninesparrowsoftroy · 5 months ago

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To Snakes and Stone | Ominis Gaunt | 3.4k | Part I | Part II

Summary: In which Ominis is persuaded to open the Scriptorium for his closest friend and in doing so is faced with the horrors of his childhood.

Things to note prior to proceeding: As said in the first part, this is meant to be a short series, and is an x reader fanfic, however that is more a subplot. This part deals with Ominis’ family, so there are darker elements to it. Read the tags and enjoy the piece!

If he had thought each previous room had felt stifling or laced with an unknown threat of unknown discomfort, then this corridor was death. It did not choke nor weigh itself upon him as the others had, instead it felt as if he had stepped into an abysmal emptiness. There was no presence of discomfort or any touch of cold against his skin. He was surrounded by nothing, a barren and apathetic space with no atmosphere to determine what it was that stood either meter or a kilometer before him. There was a torpid and pungent stench that drifted in the still air, scorching his sense and rendering it nearly impossible to discern where the source of its grotesque cause was located.

‘Lumos.’

The three split apart, Sebastian surging unabashed and impudent forward towards the end of the corridor, his wand outstretched. The girl moved swiftly behind him, although Ominis noted the slight drag of her boot on the stone floor. That left only him to linger behind, absent in the way he shifted from one foot to the other, listening half-heartedly to the mutterings of Sebastian and the girls commentary.

He tried to place the smell, not knowing if its identification could possibly aid them in uncovering an answer for some other unknown obstacle or if it would warn them of a threat best left undisturbed. It was too forceful to be any potion he had encountered in Sharp’s class, the decaying bite of it in the air told him it couldn’t have been any creature from his textbook either. There were no plants he was aware of that Professor Garlick had taught that mirrored such a bitter scent as the one that stained the corridor air.

‘Great, another dark, ominous corridor to walk through.’

There was a pause before he heard the girl huff, no doubt rolling her eyes at the freckled boys antics.

‘You never give up, do you?’

‘Come on! That was a good one.’

‘It felt a little desperate.’

He could hear the smile in her voice.

‘You just don’t understand the art of humor like I do.’

‘Oh, it’s an art is it?’

‘Do either of you smell that?’ Ominis’ brows scrunched together, the conversation halting as both eyes fell back to him.

‘I assumed it came with the scenery.’

At this Ominis gave an unamused glare, garnering a defensive ‘what?’ from Sebastian. He only shook his head, turning in what he presumed to be the direction the girl had descended towards, hoping she at the very least would provide some assurance it was not just him being bothered by the rancid stench. But her assurance never came, instead she took in a sharp breath, something that immediately caught Ominis’ attention, her footsteps dragging to a stop. Before he was able to question anything she spoke.

‘Oh god, is that—’

The final words of her sentence were crushed beneath the ripple of noise, the floor trembling as it had before. By the time any of them had turned their attention to the source or made any hurried motion to draw their wands and throw any charm or spell at it in a fruitless desperation, the open doorway had vanished, leaving only the flat, granite wall behind in its wake. The corridor grew suffocatingly small.

A string of curses slipped beneath Ominis’ breath, the words all falling flat in the still air. Any previous thought of the stench or of the reasoning behind opening the scriptorium all but vanished in the face of their waning escape. ‘We should’ve expected that.’ He muttered, running a bitter hand through his hair, his voice echoing alone in the room. He paced before the wall, making a sound between a sigh and a hiss, ‘Fuck! I knew we shouldn’t have come here. I never should have let you convince me to open the door, now we’re all going to die in here.’

‘We won’t be the first.’ It had been a quiet response, half-muttered and half-spoken by Sebastian but it had caught the blond’s ear regardless. Ominis would have remarked with something critical and disproving of the freckled boys ability to jest even in the worst of circumstances, but there was nothing factitious about Sebastian’s voice. Instead, the familiar edge of impishness was all but absent, replaced by an uncharacteristic severity.

‘What are talking about?’

‘There are bones in here,’ Her voice carried a morbidness he hadn’t heard from her before, her footsteps drifting farther to the right until they stopped again. A tremor tugging at the edges of her words, ‘human bones.’

An acrid taste formed on his tongue, the hollow shuffle of bones moving over the stone floor telling him she had moved closer, tapping the decayed cartilage with the toe of her boot. It was the stench of death that had been the smell permeating the still and damp air of the room; not any potion, plant, or creature from his books or classes as he let his naivety incline him to believe. The lingering odor of decayed, rotting flesh peeling off its bone, the muscle deteriorating, mold breathing to life between the floor and blackened body. How long had it sat there, the tissue of the body long since dried, putrescent and festering in a pile of its own decomposition? Was this their fate? Trapped in the doorless corridor of the scriptorium, withering away beneath the floors of their school and forced to become an omen of death to the next unfortunate and arrogant soul who would wander into the room as they had.

Ominis took a step forward, intending to cross the small distance dividing him from the other two, when a crack splintered beneath his foot. The hollowed sound shattered his resolve, and for a horrifying second he had imagined it had been the rotted bone of an arm or leg beneath his shoe, but the noise had been too sharp to be something that large. Instead, it had been more like a twig, frail and thin. Possessed by something he could not describe or name, he craned down, bending his knees towards his chest and reaching for what now lie in two pieces on the floor.

The moment the pad of his pointer and middle finger found the wooden twist of what had broken, all thought of his own death perishing. He had felt the wood before, its intricate curve as the two limbs melded and danced in a thinning spiral. He knew it without seeing it; honey colored cypress like when sunlight seeps through the leaves and warm specks of the bare skin of his face or neck, firm in but not rigid, a single unicorn hair woven into the wood. It had been a wand that snapped in two beneath his foot.

It was his Aunt; her wand, her bones, her death, her failed efforts. The corridor suddenly felt too tight, the stench of the dead tripling in strength, pouring itself into his throat and filling his lungs. He wanted to stop breathing, to escape the air of the room, to stop taking fragments of her death into him with every inhale and exhale from his nose or lips.

He pressed his thumb into the side of the wand, tracing the curve. Perhaps he had always known, somewhere deep within his consciousness where the shame and guilt of his own actions eroded at his hopefulness, like waves colliding against the cliffside and stripping parts of it from its home with each draw and crash of the salt water against the land. The rational part of him that knew no amount of hope could resurrect the past or resolve the aching cavity of feeling abandoned, forsaken when he scarcely even knew what the words meant. She had chosen to prove their family wrong and even as a child, even now in the depths of his mind and body, he had known that she would sooner be dead than be any closer to achieving such an impossible feat.

‘Ominis, what is it? Did you find something?’

He drew back at her questions, her softened tone, her proximity that he could feel shrinking with each fall echo of her voice. His knuckles turned white around the fragments of the broken wand.

‘It’s nothing.’ He pushed himself to his feet, tucking the pieces of the broken wand into his pocket beneath the fabric of his school robe. His hand lingered, but he was quick to force himself to straighten, glaring into the dark space ahead of him where he imagined her to be.

The girl retreated, forcing out a sigh at the brusqueness of his response, ‘I know this isn’t what we imagined would happen but—‘

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘—but, we’ll figure a way out.’

There was a bite to her tone that he couldn’t ignore if he tried.

‘And what do you propose to do then if you’re so optimistic about our circumstances? Blast each wall and see which one crumbles?’

‘No.’

Both heads turned to Sebastian. The one whom, in the time from when the wall restored itself shut and during the discovery of the bones, had taken it upon himself to be the first to cross the full length of the corridor to its opposing end. It was there, in the flickering light of his wand, that he found their only means of escape.

Situated within the far wall of the corridor was a mirror, its arching frame sculpted to resembled what appeared to be witches and wizards holding one another up. The lower Sebastian looked the more crumpled and agonized the carvings became, their arms and legs bent at obscure and unnatural angles, their bodies crushed and caving into their chests beneath the weight of all those held above them. Each chiseled face, however, was marked with a look of contrasting pain; some, Sebastian saw, had squeezed their eyes shut whilst others had their stone teeth bared in a scream he swore he could hear faintly in the air. His reflection, he discovered quickly, was entirely perverted and distorted in a haze of black, his own features he failed to make out beyond the rippled silhouette staring back at him.

‘To get out Ominis has to cast the Cruciatus Curse.’

‘What?’

‘Have you gone mad?’

‘A mirror with anguished faces carved into the wall, the last door being opened by blood,’ The freckled boy stepped back from the mirror, his features set in place. ‘It makes sense that the next way through would be something more difficult.’

‘So you took difficult to mean casting an unforgivable?’ Ominis accused, the pieces of his Aunt’s wand growing heavier in his pocket the longer Sebastian spoke.

‘It makes sense.’

‘No, Sebastian, it really doesn’t.’

‘I think he might be right.’

Ominis was starting to think they had gone mad.

‘What?’ It came out as a hiss. ‘You’re agreeing with him?’

The girl’s feet moved to the right of him, her voice in a solemn agreement to Sebastian’s, the hollow echo of bones being brushed aside following her movement. ‘Whoever was here before us scratched the curse into the floor.’

‘See. They just have died because they had no one to cast it on.’

He shook his head, ‘No.’

‘Ominis I know this will be difficult but you cannot think being trapped here is any better than casting the curse again just this once—‘

‘There has to be another way!’

‘You and I both know there’s not.’ And even if he knew it was true, Ominis refused to accept that Sebastian may have been right. The brunette gripped his wand, ‘You’re the only one here who has experience casting it.’

Betrayal would be too easy a word to describe the sudden nausea and anger that sparked within Ominis at the words. The guilt ridden memory thrown back at him so easily, what was spoken in confidence now fractured by Sebastian’s quick exploitation. ‘I vowed to never use dark magic again. You, of all people, should know that.’

‘I do! But this one time would be different, you would be casting it on someone willing, there would be no victim.’

‘That’s not how it works!’ A spark he had long since choked back flashed in his mind, the weight of the curse on his tongue, how broken and strained the syllabus had been, each scraping from the depths of his scorched and torn throat. What it had been like to listen, the screams of someone he could not see nor know begging for him to kill them, to take away what he had done in place of something far worse. The guilt that burrowed in his heart, his pulse breaking into an untamed staccato, the fogged over weightlessness that came from feeling so nauseous that he had taunted the line between consciousness and oblivion. ‘To cast it you have to mean it. You have to want to cause pain and for that there will always be a victim.’

‘It’s either that or we die in here.’ Sebastian matched Ominis’ conviction, if only for the entirely opposing reasons. ‘I know there is something in that Scriptorium that can help Anne and I’m not above casting a spell or two to make sure we get it.’

The silence that filled the space between them stretched as neither were willing to surrender their position.

Ominis understood the desperation behind the words, wanting nothing more than to cure Anne of whatever had latched itself upon her, but it was reckless of Sebastian to place his tenacity over his morals. The rabbit hole of corruption that dark magic would bleed into his veins and the way it would erode at any sense of ethics that he may have had should he stepped too deep into its grasp, would consume him.

‘If you cast that curse,’ Ominis warned, enunciating the words sharper than he knew he needed. He knew that even if he took Sebastian’s wand from his hand and ran, any further argument he made to try and sway his mind would be utterly pointless. Sebastian had made his choice. ‘I will have no part in it.’

‘If that’s what you choose, fine.’ Sebastian turned, his voice now directed to the girl, a newfound staunchness wrapped within it. ‘It’s your choice then, either we cast it or we die.’

She was quiet, her breathing the only sound that revealed any sort of inclination she may have had. It was slow, steady in the way it often was when one was caught between their thoughts. He had hoped, even if it was wishful and arrogant, that perhaps she would have found reason in his argument and that, in consequence, she might be the one to sink reason into Sebastian.

‘We cast it.’ But hope was rarely ever realistic anyways. ‘I think you’re right, it might be our only way out.’

‘I’m glad we agree.’ Sebastian paused, ‘Do you want me to cast it or should you?’

‘You.’ Her answer came quicker than he’d expected.

‘Are you sure?’

‘You’ve studied the dark arts more than I have, even if it’s only ever been in theory. Out of the two of us you’re more likely to be able to perform the curse successfully on the first try.’

‘I’d take that as a compliment under any other circumstances.’

‘Then don’t take it as one.’

Their footsteps shifted.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘Crucio!’

Suddenly he was twelve again, frozen. His mother’s nails puncturing the skin beneath his cotton shirt as she grasped at his bicep, forcing his trembling hand to still and his wand to direct itself to the body at his feet. Even if he could not see the red streaks in their eyes, or the line of crimson connecting their nose and mouth to the puddle growing beneath their cheek on the floor, or the unnatural angle at which its legs were now bent and the bone protruding beneath raw flesh from where they had thrashed too hard against tile, he could hear it. He could hear them twitch in the darkness, their breath nothing more than a choked rasp.

From somewhere behind him his father seethed, a wretched impatience morphing into something malicious, unwilling to sit idle in Ominis’ reluctance. His mother hissing another command into his ear, her grip tightening with each admonishment she threw at him, creating a constellation of bruised reds beneath his sleeve. He no longer remembered each of her castigates, each guiltless threat and unfeeling reproach that she had tried before his father pulled her away. He had thought, if only for an ignorant moment, that their disappointment in his inability to cast the curse would have meant they would turn to his brother. To their prized son who was all but eager to watch the red light crack in the air, moving from his wand to the unwilling body on the floor.

But when the curse spilled from the lips of his father it was Ominis at the end of the light.

When it hit him, it had drowned him, swallowing his every sense until there was nothing but noise clawing through his throat. It coursed through him, scorching the blood inside his veins, the cells in his body tearing and ripping themselves apart over and over and over again in a continuous and broken cycle. In his calves the bones shattered, breaking beneath a weight that failed to lift off him, his knees buckling, the cap covering the joint, shifting out of place as he hit the tile floor. The nerves in his body revealed themselves with every sensation, heightening whatever pain groped and impaled itself into him.

His nails which had been buried in his arms from where he had clutched to himself, were ripped from their beds, yanked from his skin. He felt his fingers dislocate one by one, his knuckles being thrust from their place in his hand leaving them aching and sore. Frost burned at his skin, the prickling of an incessant cold seeping into his flesh with a searing persistence, no part of him being left untouched. The drums within his ears ruptured, every sound, every bone popping in and out of place, every breath coming from his constricting lungs, every scream from his drying lips piercing his hearing with a newfound anguish. His ribs pressed into his caving lungs, squeezing the air from him until he was rasping, suffocating on oxygen that was no longer there. The tears that fell from his eyes were hot, boiling water poured onto his skin.

He had begged, pleaded to his father and to his mother that he would do anything, anything, if only they would make the pain stop. He couldn’t hear them when his father told him he had needed to know what it was like to be the body on the floor if he was so willing to let it live. That he was no better than it if he was going to give it the mercy of his hesitation. Nor did he hear the way his mother scorned him, watching on with a malignant obstinance at her youngest son weeping, crying for a grace that had never existed in his family.

A scream ripped its way through her throat, the thud of her knees striking the stone floor submerged somewhere deep beneath the echo of her scream and the sparks of the curse still burning in the air. He’d lost count of how long the curse had lasted, each of his sense overwhelmed with the harrowing flood of her screams, each one dancing off the four, cold walls.

‘That’s enough!’ He shouted, his wand pulling at his wrist with a sharper urgency than before. ‘Sebastian you’ve enough, stop!’

The crackling in the air faltered. The echo of the screams replaced with Ominis’ hurried steps forward and Sebastian’s unsteady breathing.

No words were spared when the mirror stirred, its blackened fog vanishing amidst the splintering of the glass, the surface transforming into a mosaic of colorless shards. The rippled reflection now a shattered replay of the curse spilling from Sebastian’s wand, sparks of red dancing between each broken shard. Her screams echoing from somewhere deep inside the mirror, playing over and over again with each octave shifting. Then, piece by piece they began to fall, descending towards the floor before evaporating into dust, revealing glimpses of the room that lay abandoned behind it.

No one moved.

I have given no permission for my writing to be uploaded anywhere beyond where I upload it, please do not copy or plagiarize this work. <3

Tag: @islayhawkin

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