QLFC Round 8 - Dystopian Future
Beater One: What would life be like a week after Voldemort rises to power?
Prompts;
1. (word) allegiance
5. (dialogue) "Who cares? We could be dead in a couple of hours."
12. (word) cruel
AN: Thank you Queenie, Annie and Mags for betaing! You're all stars.
The room was in chaos. Everywhere Hermione looked, the bright lights of spells being cast flashed and people were falling one after another. Most of those bodies were Death Eaters, and Hermione found herself feeling a slight glimmer of hope that they would win.
Then Voldemort entered the room.
Almost immediately, the chaos faded and the room went quiet. The only noise came from those in duels that neither side wanted to give up on. She could see Ginny duelling Bellatrix Lestrange, and a couple of other students duelling Death Eaters, but they still had their masks on, so Hermione had no idea who they were.
Other than those in duels, all eyes were on the centre of the room where Voldemort stood, only he was no longer alone—Harry was now stood opposite him. Hermione stepped out from the post she had been hiding behind while she healed some of the worst cuts and bruises she had received that night. She started to move towards Harry, determined to help him in any way she could, and she could see others doing the same.
With a wave of his hand, Harry stopped all of them in their tracks.
"I don't want any help," he said, his voice magically amplified so that it would carry around the room. "It just needs to be the two of us, Voldemort and me. You have all done more than enough to help, so let me do my part."
Even those duels between her friends and the masked Death Eaters had stopped now. The only one still going was the one between Ginny and Bellatrix Lestrange. Then there was a bright flash and Hermione's attention was once again brought to the centre of the room.
Harry and Voldemort had both struck, and their spells were meeting in the middle. All of a sudden, Hermione heard Ginny scream. Spinning her head, she noticed that Molly Weasley had jumped between her daughter and Bellatrix and was now crumpling to the floor, very obviously dead.
She started to head towards Ginny, ready to rush to her aid should she need it, but before she had taken her second step, Hermione heard a loud, sharp, and surprisingly high-pitched laugh. Voldemort.
Facing the noise, it took Hermione a minute to take in the scene in front of her. But when she did, the world started to go black. The battle in the centre of the room had stopped. Harry was lying unmoving on the floor, facing Ginny and Bellatrix. It didn't take a genius to work out what had happened.
Voldemort had won.
Hermione felt herself sink to the floor, a loud scream escaping her lips and the Death Eaters surged forwards with a new lease of life. The one saving grace, if there was one, was that Ginny was so furious that her mother had been killed, she had shot a well timed killing curse straight at Bellatrix's heart before Hermione had even registered that she was crying.
"Someone wake her the fuck up!" a gruff voice shouted, and not seconds later, Hermione felt a sharp pain in her cheek as she was slapped into full consciousness.
She bit her tongue, determined not to scream. It hadn't taken her long to realise that screaming only made things worse. So did struggling, but that didn't stop her from trying to kick, hit and scratch whenever one of the Death Eaters had a hold of her.
Rodolphus was the worst. It was his basement that she was being kept in since it was his house that Voldemort was using as a base, the Malfoys having fled before Voldemort declared his victory. If the Malfoys were ever found, Hermione guessed their treatment would be much worse than hers was, if they were allowed to live.
Hermione had been allowed to live, even after refusing to pledge her allegiance to Voldemort, and after her second day of being in the basement, she had found out why—she was going to be used as bait to draw out the Order.
The Order had been very quiet since the battle. Hermione wasn't surprised by this. It had only been a week, and there had been a lot of people lost, so she figured that they would still be in mourning. She was probably going to be one of the people they were mourning. Nobody knew she'd been taken. They probably assumed that Hermione had been killed—it wasn't like they could recover any of the bodies, not after Voldemort took control over what was left of Hogwarts.
Hermione heard someone say her name. Well, she heard someone say "Mudblood bitch" which was as close as the older Death Eaters got to saying her name. Some of the younger Death Eaters, the ones she'd been in school with, still called her Granger, but she hardly ever saw any of them.
She shook her head, trying to focus on the conversation that was going on just outside of her line of vision.
"For how long?" Rodolphus roared, and Hermione shuddered. Nothing good ever came of Rodolphus being angry.
"A month, maybe two." It took a moment, but Hermione eventually recognised it as the voice of Mulciber. "We need them to really think she's dead."
"And that Mudblood bitch has to stay in my basement until then?"
"The Dark Lord commands it so. He does not wish her to fall into the wrong hands, and he is aware of how loyal you are. There is talk of unease among the lower downs. Some of them aren't too pleased with how the Dark Lord deals with mistakes and they're considering spilling all of our secrets."
"It's a good job they don't know about this one then," Rodolphus said with a laugh.
Hermione heard a set of footsteps ascend the stairs followed by the opening and closing of the door at the top. Seconds later, Rodolphus stepped into her line of sight.
"Well, Mudblood, now that we're alone, let's have some fun." He stepped forward, and Hermione screwed her eyes up to try and block out whatever was coming. She couldn't, however, block out his words. "Somebody needs to fulfil my needs, and who better than the bitch whose friends killed my wife?"
Rodolphus let out a sickening laugh before opening the cage door. Hermione opened her eyes, determined to slip past him and out of the cage door, but Rodolphus was too fast and caught her, forcing her against the wall, one rough hand on her arm, the other on the waistband of her jeans.
"We need to find Hermione!" Neville's voice rang out. It was loud, magically amplified, and cut across the chaotic chatter that was engulfing the room.
"She's dead, mate. Let it go," George said without even a hint of humour in his voice.
George had taken it the hardest out of everybody. While the rest of the Weasleys may have lost a brother and their mother, George had lost his twin. He was determined to do his part and get back at the Death Eaters for causing such a rift in his family; he had been incredibly vocal about this since the battle, but to Neville, George's increasing shows of pessimism were beginning to grate on him.
"George, stop it. We don't know that, and unless we find a body, I refuse to believe it."
"We have people scouting the castle and the forest. If she was alive we'd have found her."
"And if she was dead, don't you think we'd know? The Death Eaters wouldn't be able to shut up about it. Merlin knows they haven't stopped going on about Harry."
"Maybe they want us to think she's alive so we'll be more careless as we look for her."
"Stop it! Just stop it, okay?"
Neville had opened his mouth to speak, but when Ginny spoke up, he shut it in shock. Ginny had been incredibly withdrawn since the battle, and nobody expected anything more from her, so when she did speak, everyone listened.
"This is Hermione we're talking about. She's not stupid enough to get herself killed. The only reason we haven't been able to find her is because the Death Eaters will have her."
"But—"
"No buts, George. Neville's right. We need to find Hermione because we have no chance of winning this war without her—not now we've lost Harry, Hogwarts, and the Ministry. We have a handful of safe houses and that's all. We're a rebellion, we're the resistance, and we have nothing to back us up."
Neville stood up a little bit taller as Ginny spoke. Even though he had led Dumbledore's Army in his seventh year, Neville wasn't used to being told he was right, especially by those who had been closest to Harry, Hermione and Ron.
"Okay, so say Hermione's alive," George said, his voice making it quite obvious that he still wasn't convinced. "What do we do, Neville?"
"I… What?"
Ginny let out a tiny laugh, the first one any of them had heard escape her lips since the battle. "You're our leader now, Neville. It's up to you to come up with the plans."
"Well," he started, a newfound confidence surging up inside him. "I guess we start with finding out where they're keeping her."
"You did what?" Pansy shrieked, and Theo had to bite down on a finger to stop himself from laughing.
"We set fire to Malfoy Manor," Daphne said nonchalantly, making Theo bite down on his finger even harder.
"Why the fuck would you do that?"
"Because we're going to break Granger out," Theo told her, all humour lost as he thought about the situation they were faced with.
"You're… What do you mean you're 'going to break Granger out'? Why the fuck would you do that?"
Theo chuckled slightly as Pansy repeated herself, but stopped when Daphne hit him on the arm.
"Because it's shit that we get no say, you know? That our parents have decided our whole future." Daphne's voice was hard, telling both Theo and Pansy just how much the situation bothered her.
"A future," Theo added, "that we've had no say in, a future where we're completely expendable."
"It's just cruel to make us follow the Dark Lord's every word because our parents chose to be loyal to him. To them, it's either his way or die. You're either on his side or Potter's. Why can't we have a middle ground?"
"Why now? Why so soon?" Pansy asked, her voice a mixture of confusion and fear.
"Because they won't be expecting it," Theo told her. "Well, that and they plan to use her soon, don't they? The sooner we get her out, the better, really."
Pansy let out a sigh. "Okay, what's the plan?"
"That's it? No fight? I'm ashamed, Pansy, I thought you'd at least protest about saving Granger; I remember how much you loathed her in school," Theo said with a laugh.
"Who cares? We could be dead in a couple of hours. We will be dead in a couple of hours if they find out it was you. You've brought me into it now, and I don't want to die, so you better have a damn good plan."
"Actually." This time, it was Daphne who was laughing. "We do."
They didn't have long, so Theo just told her the basic plan—they know the Dark Lord would be out that evening since he'd recently acquired Paris, so they were going to lure the Death Eaters staying in the Lestrange estate to their own homes by starting a series of fires.
"And that's where you come in," Daphne cut in. "We need you to distract Rodolphus. Get him away from the basement long enough for Theo and me to go in and rescue her."
"You've been living here, so you know his routine much better than we do, and it'll seem less strange for someone who lives here to speak to him."
"What time is it, and how long do we have?"
"We're hoping they'll have noticed the fires and rushed home to stop them by eight." Theo looked at his watch. "So, in about an hour."
"Perfect." Pansy was smiling now, and she had a sparkle in her eye that told Theo she had a plan. "Wait until about quarter past. Rodolphus usually has his way with Granger as soon as he's alone. It won't take him very long, it never does, and then he'll shower to, and I quote, 'get those filthy Mudblood germs off me'." Pansy shook her head. "It's not a nice thing to think about, but it should give you twenty minutes. If you need any longer, I'll distract him afterwards."
"Okay, but be out of here by nine. They'll probably have figured out it was an inside job by then, and you'll never make it out if they know you're in on it."
"Got it. Just one question," Pansy asked, "if you two are getting Granger out of here, who's setting the fires?"
"That, Pansy, is something we can't tell you, I'm afraid," Theo said. He was genuinely upset that he couldn't tell Pansy that it was Draco who was helping, but he had sworn Theo to secrecy. Even Daphne hadn't known until it was pivotal.
Theo shuddered as he heard Hermione's screams floating through the house from the basement. When Pansy had mentioned Rodolphus' little hobby, Theo hadn't realised it would be so horrible and wished he'd been able to help sooner.
"Oh, Merlin, it's awful," Daphne whispered, echoing Theo's thoughts, tears in her eyes.
"I know, I know." Theo put his arm around Daphne in reassurance and looked at his watch. "If what Pansy says is true, it'll be over soon."
As Theo spoke, he heard a gruff moan of pleasure that he could only assume meant that Rodolphus had finished and would be on his way to the shower soon. Theo pulled Daphne back and they slipped into a vacant bedroom until they heard Rodolphus pass and his shower start.
"Let's go," he whispered, and Theo slipped out of the bedroom door and down the stairs with Daphne close behind.
As he wiggled the basement door open, Daphne turned to him and asked, "Have you got your wand ready? You know, just in case she starts screaming."
Theo dug his wand from his pocket and made his way down the stairs with it in his hand.
"Granger?" Daphne called softly. Her voice was soothing, almost as if she was trying to comfort Hermione.
Theo heard a whimpering sob coming from the corner.
"Lumos."
In the corner of the room was a large cage, and in the middle was Hermione Granger, half naked and curled into the fetal position.
"Granger?" Theo called, just as softly as Daphne had done. Hermione opened her mouth to scream, but he shot a nonverbal silencing charm at her. "Granger, we're here to help, I promise."
She looked wary of him, but when Daphne threw a travelling cloak into the cage, Hermione relaxed just a little.
"Put it on, we don't have much time," Theo urged, casting spell after spell at the cage trying to open it.
Hermione slipped on the cloak, and Theo finally gave up trying to unlock the cage, and instead, he aimed a Diffindo at the lock which burst open, freeing Hermione who followed them as they ran up the stairs and out of the house to what the three of them could only hope would be the beginning of something better.
Word Count: 2,589.
This is for:
The Valentine-Making Station;
Sun Sticker – Write about a leader.
Greek Mythology Category Competition;
Ares – Write about either of the wizarding wars.
Gringotts Prompt Bank;
Words instead of said – Roared, Shrieked, Urged.
Word Prompts: Household Vocabulary – Watch
Feelings and Emotions – Determined, Fearful, Hopeful, Mournful, Nonchalant, Pessimistic, Relaxed, Upset, Wary.
A-Z of AU Prompts – Voldemort Wins!AU