She wakes, slowly, groggily. The room is warm and she is upside-down, her hair falling into her eyes.
Below her is a long and ornate table, and people sit around it. She knows some of them, and she is suddenly terrified, but she cannot move, cannot speak-
and she revolves slowly in mid-air, against her will, around and around.
The others speak below her in voices, some of them familiar. The fire throws shadows everywhere and yet she still recognises Severus, who speaks with conviction, and young Draco, who keeps glancing up at her with something akin to pity in his eyes.
There's a snake too; a great murderous looking serpent and Charity Burbage finds it easier to concentrate on the snake than think about the man who it belongs to. The snake is more real, somehow, something more tangible to fear than the tall man that speaks in a voice like death, a man that she refuses to think about, to contemplate what his presence means for her immediate fate.
The man flicks a borrowed wand, looking almost bored, and suddenly the smothering, all-encompassing tightness that bound her and silenced her loosens a notch, and yet she still revolves against her will.
She struggles, though she knows it is in vain, and her rotation completes and brings Severus back into her line of vision.
"Do you recognize our guest, Severus?" asks the man.
Severus raises his eyes to look at her. Their eyes meet for an instant. "Se- verus! Help me!" she begs, her voice raw and coarse.
"Ah, yes," Severus says, oddly calm. He does not seem unduly worried about her welfare, and that scares her more. Charity Burbage continues to revolve in the air, and her colleague is wrenched for her line of sight again, but now the fear has truly set in and she struggles more.
"And you, Draco?" asks the man, and she cannot see the boy but he remains silent. Although it is she that is suspended, and he is safe below with his family, pity washes through her for him nonetheless, because he is not safe with his own family, not truly, and he should not have been forced to watch this.
"But you would not have taken her classes," the man continues, almost triumphant. "For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage, who until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Until recently, she had been safe. No teacher was entirely free from the Death Eaters, and of course Muggle Studies in particular would be a target for hate, but she had never once considered it like that when Albus was alive. Why would she? Who would have dared attack a teacher and bring Dumbldore's wrath upon them? Even they, the feared Death Eaters, had waited, she realises. They were no more than cowards, waiting until Albus' death before striking, too afraid of an old man to act. The fact gives her courage as she revolves and revolves in those sickeningly slow spins, and she struggles again.
"Yes," the man drawls in his wretched voice. "Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles, how they are not so different from us."
They follow his every word, she realises, and whatever he tells them to hate they do, and that hatred fuels them.
One of the Death Eaters spits on the floor, a woman. Even now, Charity Burbage thinks that that is one of the most degrading things they have done to her, having her profession be spat on. She revolves to face Snape again.
"Severus ... please ... please ..." she says, her voice no more than a whisper, a plea.
"Silence," says the man, and he flicks the borrowed wand again, and she is gagged.
Her throat is constricted, though by magic or by her own fear she does not know, but her breathing is shallow and quick now, and she is deathly afraid.
"Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mud-bloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept those thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance. She would have use all mate with Muggles, or no doubt, werewolves."
Even as he scorns her and twists her words, Charity Burbage sees the man's weakness, the causal way he says 'mate with'. Not fall in love regardless of someone's blood line or their lack of magical abilities, not marry and have children and grow old with them, but 'mate with'. The term is brutal, animalistic, but then so is he, the man below her who is so close to his snake.
The room is utterly silent. She turns to see Severus again, and she wants to scream, to beg, to look at him and ask him why he has refused to help her, why he looks at her now with contempt, as if she is already dead. She has been magically silenced but the tears come anyway and they roll down her face as she revolves away from him one last time.
The words come, a gentle "Avada Kedavra," and then she sees green, everything is green, and then, nothing.