It's Always The Quiet Ones

***It's Always The Quiet Ones*** is a oneshot story by PixelWriter1 crossing over into the Cthulhu Mythos; it is available on Fanfiction.net, contains 8400 words, is rated **Teen** and was published in 2015.

## Plot Summary

Luna is a descendant, on her mother's side, of Obed Marsh from Innsmouth, Massachusetts; her branch of the family moved back to Britain in 1847, at which time her great-great-grandfather either brought with him or sent with the departing family members a golden pendant. (This seems to imply that he was either one of Obed's two sons, who must have been born at about that time, and are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances, or Obed himself. Whether there is a connection to the Statute of Secrecy, and the son in question was a muggle-born, is unclear, but Obed himself can hardly have been a wizard.)

Luna was given this pendant by her mother when she was five, and when in June 1995 she finds it has been stolen, she confronts Marietta Edgecombe and Brockehurst (possibly intended to be Mandy Brocklehurst, but presented as being in the same year as Marietta) during dinner in the Great Hall and demands they return it. They deny any involvement and, when Luna mentions Wrackspurts, question whether the pendant even exists. Snape intervenes, asking if Luna has any proof to back up her accusations, and when she doesn't dismisses the whole matter; however, in doing so he makes a side remark about her mother, claiming that she too had "her head in the clouds" and that this "may have led to her unfortunate demise". Luna, growing angry, demands an apology for his rude words about her mother, and the exchange quickly escalates.

After Snape makes repeated references to her "imaginary", "invented" or "made up" creatures, Luna lets slip that she knows an old family spell that will make wrackspurts and similar things visible to those who normally can't see them; it is dangerous, she explains, because it will also let the creatures see *them*, and she promised her mother not to use it, but if the Professor insists she is willing to make an exception. She leaves her wand with Professor Flitwick, remarking that she won't need it for this type of magic, and that holding a wand can in fact be dangerous since it acts as a lure.

As Luna starts an incantation in "a language far older than humanity itself", the normal illusion on the ceiling of the Great Hall is slowly replaced by a view of an alien sky, and the walls by one of a "glutinous sea" in which unknown *things* are moving, lit by a dying star low on the horizon. The ghosts in the castle immediately leave, as do the house-elves, the merfolk and the giant squid in Black Lake and every intelligent magical creature in the Forbidden Forest. Dripping noises as from leaking water echo faintly over the distant sound of sluggish waves, smells of swamp and fish grow stronger and as she finishes with a cry of *"Dagon!"* a single toll of a huge but distant bell rolls through the castle, making the very stones tremble. Above about a quarter of the students can now be seen pulsating globular bodies, somewhat reminiscent of jelly fish, with tentacles reaching into their ears; some are the size of an apple, some of a large pumpkin, and the one above Snape is nearly three feet in diameter.

As he snaps and attacks Luna – first with a stunner that somehow swerves around her, then physically – his wrackspurt gets agitated, wraps its tentacles around his throat and starts strangling him. The spells he throws at it have little effect, except for the Avada Kedavra which makes it twitch and release him – but also draws the attention of something much larger, which picks him up and after some curious prodding eats him, then exchanges a few words with Luna in that inhuman language and leaves. Luna explains that the being had found the Dark Mark especially delicious and had decided to forego the rest of them who didn't wear one – but it might be able to backtrack the spell and find other bearers...

As the spell finally wears off, Marietta meekly hands over the pendant and Luna sits down at the Ravenclaw table, delighted to find some cherry tart for dessert and not at all noticing the very wide berth she is given by her housemates. Over the next month, some three hundred and seventy-five people – mostly male, from wealthy pure-blood families and in critical positions within the government or other important parts of wizarding society – disappear, in many cases from locked rooms, leaving only faint but highly nightmare-inducing scents of some dark sea.

## Characters

### Non-canonical character(s) mentioned

* Brockehurst
* Obed Marsh

## Crossover elements

* Deep Ones
* Innsmouth
* Marsh family

## External links

* Marsh family at the H. P. Lovecraft wiki
* An Innsmouth timeline