Waiting And Wanting

waiting and wanting

im not sure whether I should be proud of this or horrified but thank you to @regulusprompts for this

if anyone wants me to write any of the other chaotic regulus things from over there lemme know

and now may i present the story of regulus and the inferius, a 666 word story

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The life of an inferius was boring, that much he knew. Long ago, he had been alive, been– well, he couldn’t really remember. He remembered walking through the streets, feeling the warm sun on his skin, smiling at a pretty girl as he passed by. 

He could hardly remember how the clouds looked, how the warm summer breeze through his hair felt, what it was like to feel alive. All he had known for the past fifteen years was icy water, floating in the bottom of some lake. There were other inferi around, but inferi generally weren’t the best conversation partners, and so his social life was lacking. Majorly.

So because there weren’t cute guys or pretty girls to spend his time with, he spent most of it daydreaming. 

(Sometimes he wondered what his name was. Gregor perhaps? He felt like a Gregor. Gregor it was.)

Sometimes he tried to think if he had had a family, friends, a significant other perhaps while he was alive. He always came up blank. 

Gregor didn’t know if most inferi had goals or not. The dead bodies floating around him didn’t seem to overflow with ambition, but who knew? He had never actually talked to them. And so Gregor decided that for year 16 of being an inferi, something would change. He would find someone, either to date or to attack, whichever he felt like. The months of 1979 went by slowly, not a person entering the cold and dreary cave that had become his home, and Gregor slowly began to lose hope.

But then, October 20th came around and everything changed. The Dark Lord entered the cave, accompanied by a small and shriveled up creature. He racked his brains trying to think of what it was, but couldn’t think of anything. He had been dead long enough that thinking had become hard. He vaguely heard the Dark Lord talking, calling it a house elf– what a strange name, honestly– and then realized the creature was being forced to drink the potion. 

He could feel the inferi around him stirring eagerly, sensing that another was about to meet their doom in the watery depths, and Gregor joined them, lurking just under the surface of the water and waiting. The moment the creature’s hands broke the surface, he reached out and grabbed the house elf’s wrist, pulling him under. He had been the first to grab him, though he was soon surrounded by other inferi, all eagerly pulling the elf down towards into the murky depths. 

Gregor could see the creature struggling to breathe, and relished that there would be another soon joining them in the lake, though this one wasn’t exactly his type. And then the small creature twisted and vanished.

He had lost his chance. Even if the creature wasn’t really the sort of person he was looking for, Gregor would’ve taken it. But now, he was alone again.

The days crept by until November 2nd. A day that had started out as uninteresting as the others became the best day of his undead inferius life. The creature returned, accompanied not by the Dark Lord, but by a boy, looking perhaps a few months younger than Gregor was when he died. 

And if the house elf wasn’t Gregor’s type, this boy definitely was. Silky black hair curling softly at his shoulders, a dark black ensemble trimmed with emerald green, strong dragonhide boots. Silver grey eyes. 

This was the one that he wanted. 

Gregor waited, his anticipation building as the strange boy drank the potion. As he crawled to the shore. His hand had barely touched the water when Gregor moved, holding the boy’s wrist tightly as he fought.

His efforts were in vain.

Gregor felt more than he had in years. Perhaps he wasn’t a proper inferius, being able to feel at all, but as he held onto the strange boy and pulled him down deeper into the water, all he could feel was exultation. 

The boy was his.