Up and Down

Siblings and Twins

His hands are shaking.

There is nothing he can do about it. The phantom pain is shooting down the tendrils of scars he bears on his body. He can feel them approaching. The closer they get, the more of the old agony he experiences.

It burns. It's in his mind... but the pain is real enough.

Beside him, Sebastian rolls his shoulders, his neck cracking as he flexes and stretches. Despite it all - his exhaustion, his pain, his battered and bruised body - he prepares to fight.

Ominis has to do the same, but old terror grips him by the scruff of the neck and doesn't let go.

Coward. You must protect Anna. She is ours. They cannot have her.

He can hear the steps approaching now.

"Ah, and there he is..."

Beside him, Sebastian tenses. Parseltongue is rather grating on the senses of those who do not understand it, or so he heard.

"Little brother," a second voice joins the first. Despite not hearing them in nearly seven years, he recognises both instantly, "you've been very naughty..."

Marvolo and Orceus. Just as he thought.

But he is no longer a frightened eleven-year-old. Their voices no longer loom threateningly over him. To his surprise, he finds the sounds coming from below him. Had he outgrown both of his older brothers?

"What do you want?" He demands, refusing to speak the vile language. He only ever would do it for Anna or Vance, and for the latter only to assist in his academic pursuits.

"Tsk. You would have us speak the lesser tongue? Have it your way."

Marvolo's voice is just as condescending as he remembers it. Ominis tries to control his breathing, his throat threatening to seize on him.

But he refuses to cower.

Anna.

His love depends on him, on them, to stand up for her.

"Where is the girl, Ominis?"

"Somewhere you won't find her," he snaps, his wand tugging on his hand. It despises his brothers just as much as he does.

"Ha! We know these halls, little brother... we will find wherever you've hidden her," Orceus's tone is mocking. The middle sibling had always been following Marvolo's lead in everything... whilst adding his own horrific twists on the suffering their oldest brother has been inflicting.

"Perhaps your friend here would be more amenable to a polite conversation," Marvolo's tone becomes even more insufferable somehow, "I do hope that's the Sallow kid we've been hearing about."

"Piss off," he recognizes Sebastian's growl, the one that makes his lips pull back in a snarl, baring his teeth.

"Hah!"

His brothers' cruel laughter echoes in the empty halls. The bells have rang, and most students are in class.

"Well, then, we'll just have to wring it out of you. All you had to do was tell us where your half-blood wench is-"

His hand shoots up, his wand tugging on him in unison. Marvolo flies back, knocked clean off his feet with a non-verbal Banishing Charm.

"Do not speak of the woman I love in that manner, you-"

"Serpensortia!"

Hissing, hissing all around. His stomach drops. They are laughing. The snakes surround him and Sebastian, and they are laughing just like his brothers do.