WHO: Barnaby Snell. WHAT: A very bad week. WHEN: This week. Today. WHERE: The WWN / St Mungo's. WARNINGS: Violence!
Last Friday, it all seemed like a prank.
But a jelly-fingers curse led to a silencing spell on Tuesday. He was ready to write it all off as another joke, even as panic gripped him while he was on the air. Jeremy’s words bounced around his head for the rest of the day: it's got a symbolic quality to it though, taking someone's voice. But he could pour himself a few fingers of firewhiskey and move past it. Someone was just having a bit of fun.
On Wednesday, there was a boggart in the recording booth.
The sight of Nora’s corpse took some seconds to process, none of the blanks filling themselves in with how this had happened and why it had happened and why here? He was alone in a recording booth and his sister’s dead body was on the floor. Again, panic seized him, painfully lancing through his chest. It’s not real, he told himself, and he raised his wand, mumbling the counter-curse. It’s not real, but then Nora was his mother, his mother became his father, and the counter-curse only worked after he saw a pale and deathly still Jeremy staring emptily at him from a pool of blood.
He decided not to tell anyone about it. He didn’t want to worry anyone. He would do something useful, like practice how to say I love you in the mirror.
Thursday, one minute into the show, his chair strangled him.
The show cut to commercial, sparing him the indignity of an audience — an audience beyond Angelus and his producers, at least. But, later on, he listened to a recording of it, and every little choking noise, every gasp-filled plea was thick with fear. Hours later, his bruised neck protested with every slight shift. Still, he didn’t want to worry anyone.
On Friday, the recording booth exploded. Five minutes into the show, white-hot busts of color surrounded him — even in the moment, he noticed that it was inexplicably contained to him — and the pressure and the heat and the smoke were overwhelming. The fireworks seared through his clothes, through his skin, and his chest was tight as he gasped for air that felt just beyond reach. At some point, it all became overwhelming and the last thing he saw before darkness sucked him under was the concern on Angelus' face.
When he woke up in St Mungo’s, the truth sunk in. None of this was a joke — some Death Eater wanted him dead.