All in the Family

Chapter 104: The Woes of Mrs. Weasley

This chapter has absolutely nothing to do with leprechauns, or the color green. Feel free to hunt me down and pinch me for the oversight. Enjoy.

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There was a ghastly smell filling her nose, but Lily quickly found she had trouble moving in any direction, let alone away from it. There was movement all around her, her companions all coughing away a fair bit of dust as well as that foul odor mingling with it, but then her skin began to crawl and real panic lit in her core as she saw an eighth person. There were only eight of them, there shouldn't be an extra person moving when she was stuck!

It was vaguely human-shaped, and the smell was reeking right from it as it passed along between them all. Not attacking, at least nobody was screaming, but not helping either. Just gliding along with an odd rattling noise and befouling their senses.

Lily finally managed to wrench a hand free, and found it came out of a pants leg. A quick lumos spell had her eyes dazzling in the tiny space, and the illumination wasn't much better than it smelled.

She was in a large trunk filled to the brim with clothes no decent person would ever consider wearing with as much lace it contained. Potter was a few feet to her side, his glasses askew and at a very awkward angle as he found himself tangled up in old bed sheets. Alice and Frank were helping each other to their feet while picking glass out of their hands, they seemed to have landed in an ancient old display of cups and plates and broken the majority of them. Lupin and Sirius Black were in the farthest back corner where old pipes were visible and trying their best to get free without breaking one loose, while Pettigrew and Regulus Black had knocked over an old dresser, scattering the entire room in photographs, the bright fluorescent Weasley hair in all ages the brightest thing here. It was the ghoul that still held all attention though.

The skin seemed to be dripping right off of it, leaving foul puddles of the stuff over everything, including them now. There was one half of a dead rat clenched in one hand, and a chunk of the poor rodent in the gap in its teeth. The eyes were unintelligent though, and Lily easily recalled her lessons on ghouls at once. Harmless, household pests.

"Someone kill me now," the attic, it must be where they were, was too small for Lupin's voice not to carry. "I can't live with this stench while waiting for the next catastrophe in that book." He'd finally gotten his ankle twisted painfully enough he could extract his torso out of the pipes and crawl free.

"Cheer up Moony," Sirius Black returned cheerfully, as he had to very awkwardly and carefully dance on his toes to avoid the pipe between his legs while following him out. "Sure the place smells, but we're not back at Grimmauld! That's more of an improvement than we've yet had with this bloody book of Harry's."

"I'll take your bedroom over this place," his voice came out a bit muffled now as he spoke while plugging up his nose, eyes racking longingly over every surface for a chance at fresh air.

"Blasphemy," his friend scolded, while now scouring every inch of the place himself to find said book it seemed.

Everyone was now doing so in earnest, it wasn't just the werewolf who wanted away from this puke-inducing area. It seemed to have hidden itself away well this time though, and in exasperation Lily took another rank breath first to say the accio spell.

At first Lily just saw movement, the book being darker than the shadows shooting right up from behind the chest she'd been in nearly made her scream in fright before it landed in her hand. She frowned down at the ruddy thing, it just had to be black didn't it? You could barely see the violet five flickering by her wand light.

"Like a hand Evans?" Potter was at her shoulder and drawing his wand even as he spoke.

She frowned at him, but chose not to answer, he'd do as he would with or without her approval, as she cracked it open and flipped through the blank pages until she came across where the new chapter began. "The Woes of Mrs. Weasley."