Please let me know if I have a grammatical oops. Or several.
Disclaimer: You all know the drill. I don't own it. Any of it.
Her Last Fight
Time stood still, though logically Bellatrix knew that was impossible. That wasn't quite the right way of describing it, either. Time was moving quickly. Almost too fast for Bellatrix to keep up, as a matter of fact. She shot a Killing Curse at the Weasely girl, missing her by such a small margin that the girl must have felt the rush of Death as it flew by.
An inhuman scream of rage interrupted the spell that would have ended the Mudblood's life, and Bellatrix turned, giggling like a school girl at the sight she beheld. Molly Weasely was rushing toward her like a very red, very angry teapot. One of the pretty ones, with a floral design on the side. Bellatrix fancied, just for a moment, that there was steam coming out of the other woman's ears. Her instincts kicked in before her mind could come up with some other crazy delusion. The roar of the battle around them faded. All that existed was the Weasely matriarch and the three brats she had placed herself in front of. They faded out too as Molly Weasely muscled them away.
"Get back, get back," someone was shouting.
Was it the Weasely woman? Bellatrix didn't care. Did spells normally move this quickly? Somehow she doubted it. It must be a trick, she decided, but any further musings were pushed to the back of her mind, even as bursts of spell fire stretched into impossibly long streaks of light. The grin she normally wore, so frightening to most, became a grimace as her opponent didn't fall after the first barrage of spells sent her way, stretched though they were. She shouldn't have known how to counter that last one, Bellatrix thought distractedly.
The light looked different, though there wasn't a change in the smoky, hot Great Hall as far as she could tell. The edges of Bellatrix's vision blurred. What was happening? Focus, she told herself, and don't let that Weasely bitch get her guard up. "Molly and Freddie under a tree, they're dead as can be!" she shrieked, pressed for time and lacking anything more clever to say.
Molly Weasely's face purpled with rage. "Don't you dare talk like that," and Bellatrix was reminded of her own mother. Maybe a woman was taught that specific tone of voice when they became a mother?
This brought Bellatrix up short, and not just because that was the first time she'd thought of her mother in years. The deadly calm in the other woman's voice was unnerving. Bellatrix decided she didn't like unnerved. "Tell me," she tapped her wand on her cheek, "What will happen to your other brats when you're dead?"
Several people in the crowd, for they had gathered quite an audience, hissed their displeasure at the comment. Bellatrix laughed, high and reckless. She liked this part. Raising her wand, she was ready to end Molly Weasely's life. The world stopped spinning, Bellatrix was sure of it. Feeling as if she were moving through honey, she didn't block Molly Weasely's curse in time.
A freezing numbness crept into her chest where the spell hit, and suddenly Bellatrix knew what was happening. She twisted as she fell, meeting the Dark Lord's eyes one last time. Red as blood, just like always. He would triumph in the end, she was sure of it. The world started to move again, twice as fast as was normal, fickle thing that it was, and Bellatrix hit the ground. Veins made of ice, the last thing she heard was the roar of the crowd and her master's screams.
She didn't feel her head bounce once, twice against the cold stone floor. The most feared witch of the century was already dead. Perhaps it was a kindness that she hadn't lived to watch her beloved master suffer the same fate.
Thank you for suffering through this with me. I do appreciate the time you've spent reading it.