Prologue
Chaos. Panic. Bedlam. Lights flash. Screams echo. People fall. Not dead – not for the most part – but stunned. Immobilised. Unconscious. The narrow alleyway is shattering. Bricks crumbling. Dust rising. Time has lost its relevance.
Two sides. Barely distinguishable in the debris. Two gangs. Two families at war. It has happened before and it will happen again. But who will they lose tonight? Who will pay the price for their endless malice? Who will suffer in their place? How many bodies will they have to gather? How many souls must they mourn?
The conflict illuminates the darkness of the night, pushing back the shadows, lighting up the struggle. The pain. The terror. Screams fill the unhealthy air as an entire section of the wall comes tumbling to their feet. On their feet.
"Move! Move!" someone bellows hopelessly into the frenzy. But move where? Everywhere is filled with lights. With cries. With danger. Where can they go when forward leads to the enemy and backwards leads to nothing? Where can they go? Two gangs at war. Two enemies seeking vengeance. Two families trying to protect their kin.
In the midst, desperately attempting not to stumble over the rubble, a man waves his arm frantically. His greying hair is peppered with fragments of the street; his weak left arm is flaying for balance; his eyes are stony and set. He is watching as his kin are attacked. Not blood kin. Not for the most part. But kin none the less.
"Jake! Look out!" a woman's voice pierces the pandemonium as more bricks tumble to the ground. Cries follow. Broken only by the relentless flash of lights. Destructive lights. Where can he look to? All around him is destruction. All around him is mayhem. There is no looking, there is only instinct. Move or fall.
Then more come. More shouts. More light. Orders.
Orders in the chaos. Unwelcome. Intruders on the public brawl. The only mutual enemy.
Panic flares. People flee. Turning their backs. Risking death. Death over the fate that lies with capture. The fate that lies with the Brown Robes. Rivals clamber over one another. Desperate to escape. Terror seeps into their very bones. Fear knocking chaos from her thrown.
Their battle left in shatters at the arrival of this mutual foe. None have ever been caught. None have ever been touched. Tonight will be no different. So they believe. So they tell themselves to believe. Just flee. Their final instinct.
Faltering over the debris, a boy with terror alight in his eyes gasps and calls out. The Brown Robes approach. Hesitantly. Never careless. Always wary. The boy scrambles to his feet. They were closing in. "Help!" he screams into the sudden quiet of the night. An arm is raised, clad in brown, pointed at the boy.
Swifter than the light that shoots from the outstretched arm, a black shadow springs before the boy. Taking the hit. "Go! Go!" the shadow bellows. The boy finally regains his footing. "Get out of here!" The boy launches himself over the wreckage. There is no need to tell him twice. He disappears into the safety of the darkness as cold bindings snake around the wrists of his saviour.
At last, they have a prisoner.
Author's Note
So I should probably not be starting a new story but I couldn't get this one out of my head. It helped me get over my writer's block though. I hope you enjoy it, it will revolve around several people but mainly Carmen Parker and Fred Weasley. Thanks for reading, Irish Mythe.