Chapter 251: Chapter 251: Regulus: I'm Tainted
Regulus touched down at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid's hut sat dark. In the pumpkin patch, the big dog was curled in her kennel, one ear flicking upright before drooping back down.
He Apparated directly. The next instant, his feet sank into the sticky, fibrous matting that carpeted the floor of the hollow's central nest.
He'd barely lifted his head, his magical perception spreading outward on instinct, when he saw something he shouldn't have.
In the clearing at the center of the nest, Aragog and Mosag were tangled together, sixteen legs interlocked.
They were mating. ( ;-; )
Aragog's body dwarfed Mosag's, his dark-black carapace pressing down against her grey abdomen. His two thickest forelegs clamped her torso in a vise grip, the barbed tips of his feet puncturing the soft membrane along the edge of her ventral plates, sunk deep and locked in place.
Mosag let out a long, drawn-out shriek, the tail end of it pitching upward, as if something inside her were being forced apart.
The sound traveled along the silk lines and spread across the entire hollow. Every small spider in the surrounding shadows froze, flattening itself against the ground, chelicerae tucked beneath their cephalothorax, all eight legs curled inward, prostrate, as if in worship.
Aragog moved faster.