Bleeding Crimson
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and accept no credit towards it. I am not the wonderful J.K. Rowling nor am I in any way affiliated with her.
Warnings for language and mild descriptions of torture/blood - hence the title!
Prompts below!
Word Count (without A/N): 3, 442
Written in honour of the 31st October which is known by Jily fans everywhere as the day we cry into our pillows.
Hope you enjoy!
"And who do we have here?"
Lily felt a cold hand grip her chin and tried as hard as she could not to shudder as her face was forced upwards and she made eye contact with the being in front of her.
Lord Voldemort gazed back at her, a humourless smile playing on his thin lips and his bright red eyes, the colour of poisoned blood, boring into Lily's own.
"Lily Evans, my Lord," Lucius Malfoy drawled in his steady voice and Lily wished her hands weren't tied so that she could hit him again. "The mudblood you requested. And a rather vicious one at that."
From behind her, Lily could almost see Malfoy rubbing his jaw and, if she hadn't been so terrified, she would have felt pleased that her hex had done some damage.
"I see," Voldemort said, releasing Lily and allowing the redhead to sink to her knees. "Well done, Lucius. It seems perhaps that you are not as incompetent as you look."
Lucius coughed and for a moment Lily was forgotten, until Voldemort snapped his stare back to face her.
"What striking eyes you have, Miss Evans," he said softly, circling her like a predator would prey. Lily's heart was pounding so fast that she thought it might burst out of her ribcage. "Such a vivid green; one might even go as far to say the same colour as the Avada Kedavra curse."
Lily flinched automatically as he said the dreaded killing curse which haunted her dreams every night but Voldemort merely chuckled and continued surveying her.
"You're quieter than I anticipated," he continued, tilting his head to one side. Lily blinked, trying to breathe through her nose; sure that she was about to black out. "Severus has told me much about you; his mind does not lie."
Lily felt sick to her very stomach.
"Cat got your tongue, Miss Evans?" Voldemort enquired silkily and Lucius laughed too loudly behind her.
Lily may have been bound and on her knees in front of the most feared Dark Lord since the rise of Grindelwald but she was a fighter and, if she was going to die, she wasn't going to do it cowering on the floor.
"I must say," she managed, licking her lips in order to try and spit out her words, "for all your bravado, you're awfully weak, kidnapping a defenceless teenager whilst she slept."
Lily was well aware that her words could get her killed but she was a member of the Order, she'd studied Voldemort for two years and he didn't toy with his victims unless he wanted something out of them first.
"Careful, Miss Evans," Voldemort said, a lipless smile on his skeletal face. "I do not underestimate you and neither should yourself. You are a talented witch."
"Is that what you want, then?" Lily spat, trying to figure out wether she could support herself if she tried to stand up. "For me to join you?"
"Do not think too highly of yourself," Voldemort replied. "I lost interest in your plight to my cause the moment you joined up with that pathetic fool Dumbledore." A sneer curled his thin lips and Lily looked away, wondering how quickly she could reach the door before being stunned, or worse.
"Then what do you want?" Lily growled through gritted teeth and then immediately wished she hadn't asked because there was a strange glint in Voldemort's eyes that made her uncomfortable.
"You know, of course, how much I despise betrayal, Miss Evans," he began, taking his seat opposite her and twirling his wand between his fingers. "How much I long to kill those who oppose me,"
Lily felt a horrible, cold chill creep up her spine.
"And do you know how humiliating it is to be almost constantly thwarted by the joke that is your precious Order?" The cold humour had vanished entirely off of Voldemort's face and instead, anger seemed to be creeping into his expression.
"Do you know how much I want to see you drowned by your own filthy blood?"
Lily flinched.
"Tell me, Miss Evans, in Muggle books and entertainment, how does the villain lure those he wants to kill to his hideout?"
All the colour drained from Lily's face as the realisation hit her like a punch to the stomach.
"You use someone as bait," she whispered.
"And I presume you can guess who this person is, can't you, Miss Evans?"
Lily nodded slowly, her hands balling into fists and her knuckles turning white.
"Your friends should be here soon," Voldemort continued, leaning back in his chair with a horrible look on his face. "I hear the blood traitor Black will be amongst them, Bellatrix will certainly have fun with him."
Lily bit her lip and burned holes in the ground with her eyes. She wouldn't give Voldemort the satisfaction of seeing the pain in her eyes.
"And a certain Mr Potter, I believe," Voldemort said, his voice soft and saccharine. "I have it from reliable sources that the two of you are involved. You love him, do you not? Oh, it'll be fun making you watch him scream."
Lily shifted her weight, preparing to stand. Beside her, her fists clenched.
"Imagine it," Voldemort continued, his eyes lighting up with a hideous insanity. "By the end of today, most of the Order's best fighters will be dead. I think I'll leave you till last; it'd be fitting, don't you think? Mudbloods have always intrigued me so; magic somehow running through their unworthy veins. It'll be fascinating; making you watch as the life drains from Potter's eyes-"
"Shut up!" Lily cried, springing up on to her feet and lunging forward, hardly even thinking about what she was doing. "You despicable, despicable bastard - "
Barely batting an eyelid, Voldemort flicked his wand and Lily hit the wall with a sickening crack. Her vision distorted and shapes started blurring and Lily wondered vaguely if she'd broken her neck. As she tried to pick herself up, she determined not but there was a sharp pain pounding at the back of her head and, reaching her fingers up to her hair, they came away sticky and covered in blood.
"Mudbloods like you need to learn quickly, Miss Evans," Voldemort called, looking on at her predicament with almost amused eyes. Across the room, Malfoy was leering at her and Lily wanted nothing more than to slap his stupid, smug face. "There's no place in my world for dirty blood such as yours. It's a shame I can't kill you yet; I'd bleed you dry for your insolence; although there's nothing saying I can't make you feel pain. Crucio!"
When Lily was six, she'd fallen out of a treehouse and fractured her spine. The pain she'd felt in that moment as a child was multiplied by a thousand as the curse hit her, sharp stabbing pains all over her body; it felt like her very flesh was being torn apart, like she was dying over and over again and her heart just wouldn't give up.
She was sure she was screaming, sure that her cries were echoing around the room, but the waves of pain were crashing over her like they would to a ship during a storm and Lily couldn't think of anything but that she would rather die than have her friends go through this kind of torture.
And then, suddenly, quick as it had come, the pain disappeared and Lily found herself flat on her back, her hair matted together by blood and hysterical breaths escaping her mouth.
"How was that, Miss Evans?" Voldemort asked, and Lily noted with true horror that the sick maniac seemed excited. "More? More pain?"
In response, Lily pushed herself into a sitting position and managed to spit a mouthful of blood and saliva at the monster's feet.
A cold gaze hardened Voldemort's face and his pupils contracted to their normal size.
"Much as I've enjoyed our little meeting, Miss Evans; I have more important matters to attend to now. If I'm feeling merciful, perhaps I'll allow you and your friends a last reunion before I kill you all. Lucius, take her away."
Lily felt hands pulling her up and chains tighten around her wrists and ankles.
"Move," she heard Malfoy's drawling voice in her ear and, not having much choice in the matter, Lily obeyed, her heart pounding and full of fear for her friends.
It'd been two hours and still silence had been the only thing greeting Lily's ears.
She was in a cell, that much she'd expected, chains weighing her down so that she stumbled when she tried to walk, with a damp floor and cold walls that reminded Lily too much of the descriptions she'd heard of Azkaban.
Still, Lily thought that even Azkaban would be preferable to this prison she now found herself in because at least that was far away from Voldemort's clutches.
Lily had been taught what to do in case she'd ever be captured; they all had. Keep eye contact, keep quiet, and don't let them get to you. Lily had broken all three of those rules in a matter of minutes so she supposed that it was a good thing Voldemort hadn't wanted information; she'd always been useless at keeping her mind closed.
Sighing in despair, Lily whacked her head back against the wall before swearing loudly when the forgotten cut on the back her head cried out in protest.
How much she wished she'd taken James' offer and slept round at his tonight instead of being stubborn and insisting she was independent and going back to her own flat. She should've known something was up when she heard noises behind her. But she'd been giddy and drunk off of adventure and danger so she'd practically skipped home without a second thought and that's how she'd ended up here.
Selfish, selfish, selfish, Lily's mind hissed, now all her friends were going to be murdered because she'd been reckless and hadn't had the good sense to follow Dumbledore's orders and always stay in pairs.
There was the sound of scrabbling in the corner and Lily grimaced, pulling her knees closer to her chest. Mice. She had nothing against them but, all the same, she preferred them to be at a distance.
Something creaked outside her cell and Lily peered through the bars hopefully but to no avail. Nothing and nobody was there.
Perhaps they weren't coming. Surely that would be the best outcome, the only one which would result in the least casualties and the only one that would let James live to see the morning.
An ache passed through Lily's chest and she really regretted not kissing James' earlier when they'd had the chance.
"Calm down, Potter," she'd laughed earlier as they'd emerged from The Three Broomsticks, slapping his hand away. "Wouldn't want to seem too eager."
Now, Lily couldn't help wondering if that would be the last time she'd ever feel James lips on hers.
There was more scrabbling from the corner and, as Lily shifted away, a voice in the darkness spoke.
"Lily?"
"Fuck- Peter?" Lily whispered incredulously as she tried to calm down her pounding heart. "You almost gave me a heart attack!"
"Thank Merlin you're okay," Peter said, rushing over to her side and using his wand to free her from his chains. "James is going mental, you know. He wanted to charge straight in here but Remus told him it'd be suicide to do that. So they sent me instead because, you know, I can turn into a rat."
Lily could hear the note of pride in her friend's voice as he'd found himself trusted with such a precarious mission.
"Is James here?" She asked, standing up and immediately collapsing against the wall.
"Well, not here here, as in, in this dungeon but he's with Sirius and the others trying to cause a diversion upstairs. You alright?" The last part was directed as Lily fell on to her knees again.
"Fine," she groaned. "My legs have just gone to sleep," stumbling to her feet, she leant on Peter for a moment. "God, it's bloody useful you being a rat, you know that?"
Peter smiled knowingly.
"Glad to know I have some uses."
"Come off it, Peter, you know you're a good wizard," Lily said and patted his arm. "Thank you for coming to rescue me," she paused for a second. "Shit. Oh, shit! I think someone's coming!"
Sure enough, footsteps were clacking on the hard stonework floor outside Lily's cell.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Peter said, rummaging around in his pockets and coming up with a wand which he threw at Lily. "Here. It's not yours obviously but it's better than nothing."
"Thanks," Lily said, immediately feeling a tiny bit better now she had something to defend herself with. "Quick! If we get behind the door, we can surprise them!"
Sure enough, when Lucius Malfoy flung open the door to the cell a few moments later, he barely had time to realise the prisoner was missing before Lily had given him a well aimed stunner to the chest.
"You're not going to kill him?" Peter asked curiously as they stepped over the body and into the corridor. "You're just going to leave him?"
"I'm not a murderer, Peter," Lily replied coolly, glancing back at Malfoy's unconscious form. "Not like Him."
Peter nodded.
"Come on," he said, pulling at her arm. "It's this way. At least, I think it is. Everything looks different when you're suddenly fully grown again!"
Peter and Lily managed to work their way up to the main floor with the help of some well timed hexes from Lily and jinxes from Peter.
"That's a great Impediment jinx," Lily said as they hurtled up another staircase. "Where'd you learn that?"
Peter blushed.
"Dunno," he mumbled, "guess I've always had a knack for it."
The pair of them bolted along a corridor, both of them running faster than perhaps they ever had before.
"Where exactly are we going?" Lily panted as they ran, wands raised just in case.
"Not entirely sure?" Peter tried and then backtracked when he saw Lily's face. "I mean, Sirius said to find you first and we didn't really have time to - oof!"
"Wow, you like to blame everything on me, don't you, Wormy?" came a dry voice and suddenly Lily found herself attacked by all manner of hands and arms.
"Lily!"
"Oh thank Merlin you found us!"
"Are you okay?"
"Evans?"
And instantaneously, Lily found herself swept up in a mess of tousled black hair and wire framed glasses as James pulled her tight into his chest and Lily found herself relaxing for the first time that evening because James was here, he wasn't dead or lying in a pool of his own blood, he was breathing, he was right here beside her.
"Oh my God, you're not dead," she whispered into his ear and leaned in and kissed him again and again and again.
"Calm down, Evans," James managed to say as they finally pulled apart from each other. "Wouldn't want to seem too eager." There was a mischievous glint in his eyes and, if he was able to make jokes, Lily knew that they were all okay.
"Seriously though, Lily, are you alright?" James' face clouded over for a second. "Did that bastard touch you?"
"Yes, but I'm fine," she replied quickly, trying to lift her sticky hair off her neck. "I might need to shave all my hair off when we get out of here, though."
"It's only blood, Merlin knows we've washed waterfalls of it out of our hair before," James said easily and then seemed to freeze as he realised what he'd just said.
"Let's not make premature jokes, shall we?" Remus interrupted, his face pinched and concerned. "You-Know-Who must know we're inside by now; we'll be trapped like rats if he finds us."
"I think you'll find that rats are actually very good at getting out of sticky situations." Peter muttered but nobody paid him any attention with the exception of Lily who grinned and mimed 'thank you again,' as the five teenagers began to start sprinting again.
It was only as they reached the gates and started preparing to apparate, that Lily got a terrible, awful feeling that everything had been way way too easy.
And, then, there was a high, cold laugh and a swish of a wand slicing through the air and suddenly James was spluttering on the floor and Voldemort was facing them with a group of Death Eaters, his red eyes eerily bright in the dark sky.
"Leaving so soon?" He asked and James retched blood on to the floor, wheezing and coughing, his breath coming in short, sharp spurts. Lily fell to the ground beside her boyfriend and ripped open James' shirt with scrabbling fingers.
Warm, crimson blood slipped through Lily's fingers as the grisly stuff seeped through from a long cut trailing down James' torso.
"Severing charm," she whispered and her heart went cold as she desperately waved the wand in her hand - the wrong wand - and tried to staunch the flow of blood.
"You know, we're flattered that we actually exist on your radar but I think we're going to have to give the whole, 'torture and scream and die' thing a miss. Pete has a dentist appointment tomorrow and that's almost the same thing, so..."
Sirius' voice echoed above Lily but he sounded distant and foreign to her ears, like he was speaking miles away instead of mere centimetres. Peter and Remus seemed frozen in place; as Lily turned to look, she saw every Death Eaters' wand in the vicinity trained on them.
"Lily?" James was trying to stand up.
"No, sit!" She said desperately, trying and failing to keep the panic out of her voice because the blood just kept coming and the cut wouldn't scab over, no matter how many charms Lily kept muttering under her breath. "Just stay still for me, okay? Don't move; we're going to be out of here in a minute, okay?"
"Gotcha," James said but his voice seemed fainter and he winced, letting out a slight groan. "Fuck, it hurts, Evans."
"I know," she whispered, finding his hand and squeezing it tight because she didn't know what else she could do. "I know."
"You don't want us, not really! I mean, it's a bit sad, to be honest! You claim to be all evil and powerful and yet you spend your days chasing teenagers who can only just legally drink in Muggle pubs!" Sirius was yelling now and yet his voice still remained steady and unwavering and so Lily lifted her wand again, muttering a string of healing spells under her breath but the wound on James' stomach refused to heal and he was getting paler by the second.
"Evans," he mumbled, barely conscious at this point. "Stop wasting your magic on me and use it on something that really matters."
"What? James- what?" Lily scrabbled frantically, her eyes darting around what could soon become a bloody battlefield if Sirius didn't keep talking.
If Sirius didn't keep talking!
Something clicked inside Lily's brain and she suddenly understood, raising her wand at the Death Eaters while they were distracted glaring at Sirius, and with the right combination of words, a huge cloud of black fog enveloped them, Voldemort included and, through the shrieks and cried and horrible curses, Lily saw Sirius shoot her a grateful glance.
"Everybody, hold hands!" Remus yelled and Lily did as she was told, clutching palms with Peter and James as the world seemed to press in upon them until everything went black.
The next thing Lily remembered was waking up in St Mungos.
Remus was dozing in the chair beside her, a cup of coffee sloshing mournfully back and forth in his lap.
Reaching a hand up to her head, Lily found a curtain of soft, glossy hair, free from blood and dirt, and her head no longer gushing blood.
Across the ward, lying completely still in a bed on the opposite side of the room, Lily saw a familiar gangly body with messy dark hair and, not wishing to disturb Remus, she slipped out of bed and padded across the room to James'.
"Hi," she whispered, climbing in beside him and wrapping her arms around his now smooth torso. "How are you feeling?"
"Calm down, Evans," James yawned sleepily, his voice teasing, tucking his arm around her waist. "You wouldn't want to seem too eager, now, would you?"
Written for Hogwarts Assignment 7: Magical & Mundane Literature, Task 3: write about someone being held hostage.
/
Yea, so Halloween is literally in two days and my poor Jily heart can't take it so I wrote a whole lot of angst to make myself feel worse apparently.
Anyway, I hope to have a fluffy piece published by tomorrow (or at least by the 31st to make up for making everyone sad now!)
I pretty much just finished this piece five minutes ago and am rushing so I can post it before I go to sleep so I apologise for any glaring errors. I'll do my best to edit this tomorrow.
Reviews make my day (wink wink, nudge nudge!)
As always, thank you all so much for reading! Xx