Thick Walls, Thicker Bonds

Chapter Six

Hope you all enjoy this next chapter!

-James

It's amazing what one tiny drop of basilisk venom can do. Venom from the King of Serpents changes as the Great Snake ages. At birth, a drop of its poison can cause paralysis. At ten years, it can cause extreme hallucinations. At thirty, it causes instant insanity. At fifty or so, it becomes like the strongest acid, and so on and so forth. By the time a basilisk is a thousand years old, a single drop is enough to kill a full grown dragon.

Of course, Besnik is no where near a thousand years old. In fact, he was barely thirteen. But this was old enough to suit Sammael's purposes. As Augusta muttered and murmured to herself angrily, the snake crawled up a table leg and opened its fanged mouth over Lady Longbottom's tea cup. It took all of half a second for a drip of venom to splat in the cup, and for Besnik to drop back to the floor before the old woman saw him.

She was going to die for what she put Neville through. But first, she was going to suffer. Oh, how she was going to suffer. Dumbledore was the one to witness her first hallucination. Dumbledore was demanding to know who Sammael was, and Augusta was screeching that it was that "long haired ponce" who killed the Dursleys, when her face suddenly turned white.

There, in the corner, was Frank. Anger and loathing poured off of him in tangible waves. Augusta trembled. She'd never seen her gorgeous, talented, loving son this way. It's all your fault, he told her. His mouth was moving, he was practically spitting out the words, but no sound fell from his lips. He raised his wand to her, his eyes going red, his whole being trembling with rage. I'm no son of yours.

Augusta let out a wail and dropped to her knees, her breath coming out in wrenching gasps. Her gnarled, claw-like fingers tore at her fake hair, her eyes were wide and bulging as she stared at the corner of the room.

The corner of the room… that was empty.

Dumbledore was confused as to what was wrong with the old witch. One moment, she was her perfectly despicable self, the next she was clutching her old chest like she was having a heart attack. "Augusta," Dumbledore said hesitantly. "Let me call a healer for you; I'll deal with your grandson."

Augusta was about to refuse, when she caught sight of her long dead husband swinging from the rafters, a rope around his neck, his feet twitching, his face blue and bloodless. She fainted dead away.

***1047***

Neville was feeling rather conflicted.

He'd always been taught, by Dumbledore, that Muggles weren't evil. Muggles simply didn't understand the ways of magic. Muggles never meant any harm. He'd always been told that some magic was good, some magic was evil. He'd also always been told that he was no good at magic, that he was a disgrace to wizarding kind. Barely better than squibs like Filch.

That afternoon with Mae changed everything. He'd found that some Muggles were evil. And that nearly all Muggles didn't just 'not understand' magic, but loathed it. And Muggle who met with wizards usually did mean harm. And also, he discovered that 'dark' magic was no more evil than the colour green. Fiendfyre for example, was well known to be a dark spell. But Sammael cast it, to Neville's initial horror, in the library as they sat together on the couch. Neville had jumped up, ready to run away, but Sammael's amused bark of laughter had stopped him.