Work Text:
Saying no to drugs has never been something Yuri Igorevich Karkaroff has been good at doing. Bad example, bad parenting, bad experiences - all these contribute - but whatever the cause, the fact remains, and he shows up under the weather to a meet up with his daughter's mother and her husband.
Under the weather - such a good term for it. Yes, he's under a storm cloud, both of his making and of other's.
"Oh, God. Yura's off his rocker again."
"Shush, Vitya! You don't know that."
"Yes I do, Lina. He only wears those sunglasses when his eyes are messed up, otherwise show me the sun he needs to shade them from?"
Viktor and his wife look up at the sky, which is overcast and oppressive, as befits the far north of Europe. In the time it takes them to contemplate the gunmetal grey clouds, their mutual friend has shuffled over, looking like every other drug addict and scummy cop ever, but cooler, because he can do magic.
"Hey." he grunts.
"Uncle Yuri!" His eight year old daughter, who is unaware of that fact and will continue in such blissful ignorance until the mirror plays Who's the Fairest of Them All with her in her late teenage years, launches herself at him, wrapping her arms round his leg before he snatches her up into a hug. His friends watch with a trepidation which has been increasing year by year, side by side with Yuri's erratic behaviour, behaviour which has shown him the inside of a prison cell more than once. They have already decided that one day he'll be prevented from seeing her until he cleans himself up.
Greetings concluded, the damaged family amble through the leafy park they're visiting, a park burning orange and yellow and red. There's a carousel standing in an open space backed by a half moon of trees, all lit up and ornate like something out of the Belle Epoque, and Viktor and Alina's children, girls and boys, run at it, delighted by all the bright and pretty animals. Those fake beasts float slowly through the chilling air, round and round, bouncing and leaping in slow motion when the golden poles impaling them decide to make them do so.
Yuri, walking at the back of the group with his head down and his hands in his pockets, as he typically does these days, looks up last, coming to a skidding stop and a dead standstill, a scream battering down the fleshy walls of his lips.
His friends look over their shoulders, hands hovering over their pocket or purse, wherever each one keeps their wand. Irritation duels with genuine alarm in their eyes.
"Why did you scream like that?" Viktor barks.
Yuri runs a hand through his hair. "What do you mean? I didn't scream."
"Yeah you did. I know your voice, Yura."
"Ahh. I thought I saw something."
"What? Your own reflection?"
"Viktor!" Alina slaps her husband, but the pair of men share a laugh before returning to what they were doing, namely, watching the children play on the carousel and around it, throwing up leaves and laughing and giggling.
Sure he just experienced some sort of drug induced hallucination, of which he has considerable experience, the auror shakes his head and fixes his eyes on his daughter. Her adopted father helps her onto the prettiest, whitest, most fairytale horse, the both of them all smiles. That could have been him, if things had turned out differently. Better. If thing had turned out better. The little girl goes round and round on the horsey, squealing her happiness, the animal's face fixed in a horrified scream.
A horrified scream which becomes a bloodthirsty roar, it's square wooden teeth changing to razor sharp fangs, it's round blue eyes filling with scarlet, it's hooves growing long and pointed.
Shocked dumb this time, Yuri can do nothing but fight against the freeze response overcoming his body. The couple do nothing, even after a tall, black, grinning man sits down on a horse behind their youngest girl, who Viktor is keeping on her ride with a strong hand. Not an African man, but a European with pitch black skin.
"Maria." Yuri rasps, giving up staring at his old friends and their incomprehensible incomprehension in order to focus on his child.
"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
That cry, the sort which rattles the bones hidden beneath the flesh of living men, jolts the man out of his paralysis, dropping him simultaneously into his gigantic wolf form and a mad gallop for the carousel, long scarlet tongue lolling from long frothing jaws.
"Stay down!" Cries a man, a bolt of energy flying over the monster canine's head, and then another, before the third hits the creature, knocking it off it's taloned paws.
"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
A woman rushes past the wolf as it climbs to its feet, grabbing most of her children up and disapparating. Viktor picks up Maria, and follows his wife into thin air, the crack of torn molecules lingering long.
Left alone in the park, the wolf leaps and spins away from the globular monstrosities pouring off the side of the carousel, their calls and the hollow, booming laughter of the black man loud in its ears as it runs for its life.
"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
No one ever hears from him again.