WHO: Ignatius Travers & Richenza Selwyn feat. Xenophilius Lovegood WHAT: Right after the Trio visits Xenophilius, memory charms him, and blows up his house... WHEN: December 28, afternoon WHERE: The Lovegoods', Ottery St Catchpole WARNINGS: Cruciatus
Old man Lovegood groaned pitifully as Richenza emerged from the wreckage of his stupid, poorly constructed house, an impatient swish of her wand sending one of the support beams away from her and into a cluster of bushes bearing what looked like brilliant orange turnips. They had a name, but she was having trouble remembering it. There was an awful ringing in her ears and somethings felt broken and she’d seen Harry Potter’s face somewhere between the ceiling disintegrating and the entire house giving up right after.
“Are you still there?” she called out hoarsely, to Ignatius. Lovegood groaned pitifully again. “Not you, Lovegood. I hate you.”
It took Ignatius a moment to decide whether or not he was still there, but once he’d moved a broken piece of chair off one of his legs he decided that he was. When he’d observed that the house might come down at any given moment, he hadn’t actually expected the house to give out at any moment, especially not on top of them.
Perhaps Harry bloody Potter had been there after all.
Limping, he approached Richenza and Lovegood. “Is he alive?” he asked but didn’t wait for an answer before aiming a short cruciatus curse at the man with little concern. “If that was your plan to kill us, Lovegood, you should’ve made sure to succeed.”
Lovegood was crying now, great gasping, gulping sobs as he recovered from the cruciatus curse. “K-kill you? I —”
“You what? You’re sorry?” Richenza demanded, hauling herself to her feet. Her legs quaked beneath her a bit, but she struggled to keep them in check. She wanted to Lovegood to be intimidated by her. Trembling wasn’t intimidating. ”You should be. That hurt! And you have offensive taste in furniture.” She kicked at the leg of what might have been a table when it was alive.
Ignatius was tempted to give the snivelling man a good kick to the head, but he wasn’t convinced his own legs wouldn’t give out on him. Instead he left his wand pointed at him as he scowled, ignoring what he thought might be a trickle of blood running down the side of his face.
“This was not an effective way to get your daughter back, Lovegood,” he said, pausing at an anguished wail at the mention of Luna. “If you don’t want her returned to you in pieces then explain what the hell happened to Potter. And stop looking so confused.”
“I think that might just be his face,” Richenza said, as an aside, just for something to say.
“I don’t — I don’t understand,” Lovegood said, managing to give both Death Eaters a look that was both blank and deeply distressed. He wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his dingy robes, casting his eyes about what used to be the room. “Why are you here? What happened?”
Richenza looked over at Ignatius and then back at Lovegood, bringing one of her hands to the side of her head. Did she have brain damage? Shrilly, she said, “You sent for us!”
“I swear, I swear, Potter’s upstairs!” Ignatius mimicked in a poor imitation. “You went to grab him and your whole house collapsed. Or do you not remember that, either?”
“I didn’t —” Lovegood started, but he recoiled as Ignatius pointed his wand in his face, a face that still very clearly read confusion and distress. He was starting to wonder if Lovegood had hit his head in the fall.
Looking at Richenza, irritation seeped heavily into his voice as he said, “Can you tell if something’s wrong with him?”
With a beleaguered sigh, Richenza picked her way around the rubble. “There’s certainly something wrong with him,” she said archly, but she pointed her wand at him anyway.
Lovegood recoiled again and, before she could cast a spell, scrambled away from them. “Wait, wait, I was doing what you asked!” He pawed at the remains of his house, glancing over at them as he searched. After a hurried moment, he emerged with what looked like it might’ve been the corner of an issue of the Quibbler. It said ‘THE QUIB UND’ in lurid letters. “You see? You see?”
“What I see,” Ignatius said, a flick of his wand setting the remaining bit of Quibbler on fire, “is an idiot father who isn’t ever going to see his daughter again.”
A moment later he sent a stunning spell at the man, too impatient to listen to him anymore. “Perhaps he’ll remember something when he comes to.”