When I came to, groggy and my sight blurry, I felt a sort of schizoid separation from my own body, as if I was an intruder, a mere guest, inhabiting it against some higher Will. I tried to move my limbs, but they did not obey my commands; I tried to move my mouth to express my distress, but no sounds came out. Soon I did speak, but the voice was booming and somehow alien, coming from a source that was not quite inside me.
"Well, I guess that means we better start setting up the tables”, the voice said, the voice of Bill-Weasley-who-was-not. I recoiled, even though the movement was impossible, my presence frozen within my own flesh and blood. The eyes-that-were-not-mine turned, and I saw something that made my heart-that-was-not-my-heart seize, and I was mortified as I had no clear idea whether this was because I was so terrified of the creature before me, or if the Bill-Weasley-who-was-not was so deeply amoured by it, the creature twisting the not-me to its command.
The creature was squeamous, dangly, in the rough shape of a human, with long messy hair and ears that seemed to elongate at the tips, turning into sharp edges like butcher’s knives. She grinned at the me-who-was-not, with her teeth bared, yellow grimy fangs that looked poised to tear into my throat. She produced a sound that was more like a shriek, yet even as I tried, my hands would not lift to my ears to keep it at bay. I felt my mental faculties melting away into nothingness, like water swirling down a drain.
Not-my eyes turned and saw my own brother Charles, and I was filled with simultaneous elation and worry: that my brother was here, and perhaps might aid me and see that I was not who I was, but yet also that he was exposed to this horrible beast that seemed to have me under its thrall. But I looked at Charles’s eyes with my own, and the spark I had known in them for so long was gone, and I understood then with coldness in my soul, that whatever the she-beast had done to me, it had done to Charles as well.
I watched with a mixture of curiosity and terror as my brother and I used our magickal abilities to lay out some tables in the garden, which I faintly recognized as our family’s own. I prayed that my family would not be here, and instead somewhere far away. We, so to say, continued this menial task, and the she-beast summoned some tablelinen and arrayed them on the tables we had set out. I began to wonder if this was a ritual, and the dinner that would be had on those tables would be the living flesh of I and Charles. I was beginning to see this as a mercy instead of an atrocity.
My thoughts were suddenly pierced by the distant shout of dear Percy, apparently he was here too, but I could not pick out the words or their meaning. Had he come to rescue us, perhaps? I tried to will the Bill-that-was-not-me to look around, but to no avail. Instead I was captivated by the beast, which used some of its own arcane magicks to grow entire plants, darkened weeds and twisted scraggly trees, to fill the garden my father and mother had so carefully cultivated. The three of us sat down, the creature positioning itself between us, when people started streaming into the garden and joining the table; and I quickly surmised that my entire dear family had joined us on this banquet; and I wished the end for them would be swift and painless.
[Next genre: steampunk.]