Dark Livestream

Chapter 5: Four

True to form, Dumbledore did emerge from the Floo about nine in the morning to stare disapprovingly at the taxidermied werewolf head and "express his concerns" to Sirius and Remus, the latter of whom had charmed in an entire album of Celestina Warbeck only minutes ahead of his arrival. The two wizards seemed appropriately chastised by the Headmaster's visible disappointment in their life choices -- and it would have all gone just fine, really, if Sirius hadn't decided to be spiteful. Why couldn't he have just taken one for the team? But no, he just had to snap, "I don't see why you're complaining to us when Harry's the one with Wormtail's arm in the trophy room!"

Ron and Hermione were passing by the sitting room at just the right time to hear this, of course, and so his friend had chimed in, the snitch, "He also has Umbridge's lines framed on his bedroom wall."

As the Headmaster's blue gaze panned to Harry where he sat in an armchair in the corner with a mug of cocoa, Harry felt an intense, creeping dread encroaching on his senses that had nothing to do with his connection to Voldemort -- it was all his own. Internally panicking, he did the one thing he could think of for a sure escape -- he seized his phone from the end table and scanned the screen, eyebrows raising in feigned alarm.

He stood suddenly from the chair, leaving his empty cup behind, and fled the room with his eyes glued to the screen, not once looking back.

That was when his phone (on silent) got a new notification, the same time Sirius' buzzed loudly from the sitting room Surprise stream in 5 minutes, read the subject line.

Harry had never run so fast up the stairs in his life.

Igor Karkaroff, it seemed, was a wizard against whom a lot of Eastern Europe held a grudge. This really showed in the number of usernames in chat using Cyrillic alphabets. With the names listed on Voldemort's to-do so far, Harry had largely forgotten his following had such an international reach, but now, he remembered. It showed in the way the Dark Lord began today's stream with a greeting in -- Harry thought -- Russian; he turned on English captions, just in case.

"This afternoon is just full of surprises, isn't it?" asked Voldemort over Karkaroff's muffled -- with a gag, not a spell -- screams. "Dear Igor was not expected to fall into my grasp until Sunday, the wily old thing." He spoke almost fondly, but Harry recognized the cruelly gleeful gleam in his eyes.

"That said, he's far too much of a flight risk to hold for long -- whichever day he was captured, I decided, would be 'the' day. I will take especial relish in using Igor's death to demonstrate some of the true dark magic I will be discussing in my video series, of which a new video will be airing soon after this is finished. I think my dear viewers will find both the demonstration and the video most informative."

Rising from his chair, the Dark Lord crouched low over Karkaroff's rope-bound, struggling body and took hold of his left arm, using a knee in his back to pin him. Harry noticed Voldemort was wearing pristine white gloves, just before the muscles in his shoulders visibly tensed and -- with a scream from Karkaroff so loud the gag was pointless, and a sick squelch and snap -- he tore the wizard's arm from its socket, strings of flesh and a growing pool of blood spreading from the wound.

Karkaroff's screams reduced quickly to sobs, and the chat was moving faster than ever. What few English-language messages Harry could see were baying for blood; a new custom emoji, "bloodspatter", was seeing a lot of use.

Voldemort chuckled, standing up with the torn limb in one hand. His gloves were still white. "While I would like to say this is merely the expected punishment for leaving my ranks," he held up the arm to the camera, and rivulets of blood ran down to soak into the palm of the glove, "in this instance, not so.