Hogwarts (Challenges and Assignments), Assignment 5.
Muggle History: Terrible Muggles In History — task 3 — Lavinia Fisher — write about a couple who are both cruel and/or murderous.
She is broken.
She has witnessed too many deaths, too soon, too young. Murder and torture and pain.
The world is not what she used to see; it is an evil place full of misery and hopelessness.
Her heart has been torn from her chest too many times to count — all she knows is that she cannot — will not — stand for this anymore.
Her friends are dead. Her family is dead. Everyone she knows is either dead or lost without their loved ones. Her brothers in all but blood are dead.
And she has been captured.
She can't remember her name. Perhaps that is the first thing that tips her off to the fact that she is losing her mind.
Endless torture sessions can do that to you.
She has lost count of how many days she has been down here in this dark, dank, damp dungeon. To keep her mind busy, she counts silently. Steps, blood stains on her clothes, wounds. Anything to distract herself. She names colors — though she can't tell many more colors than black and red. She had seen those aplenty. She recites the alphabet in her hoarse voice; her throat is dry and sore from screaming, and her lips are cracked in many places from wetting them frequently.
She hears footsteps descending the stairs. Now comes the routine: the crazy, curly black-haired woman will aim the feared wooden stick at her and ask whether she has changed her mind. She will shake her head, and the woman will curse her, calling her 'Mudblood.' She does not know what the word means. She finds that she doesn't care. Then the pain begins.
She begins to count the seconds, though she thinks that the seconds are becoming longer. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. She pauses for a minute, mind surprisingly blank. What comes after six?
The pain subsides. What is happening? The torture has never stopped in the middle of a session before.
She hears more footsteps. Heavier ones. Quiet conversing. One high female voice and one low male voice. Evil laughter, mad and angry and happy, all rolled into one.
And then the pain doubles. Triples. Her back arches off the cold stone floor and her entire body quivers from the sensation. She shuts her eyes and gives in.
The routine has changed. The next day, the other person — the man — is there again. He and the woman laugh at her as she writhes in the ground under their spells.
They are insane.
But what did that make her?
This continued for days. She wears her tiny nub of salvaged chalk down to powder after twenty-three days of white lines. She gazes at them, thinking how they look like self-harm cuts.
She has learned that the woman and man who are her regular torturers are husband and wife. She admits that they seem perfect for one another.
Cruel, unforgiving, unfeeling, and murderous.
She doesn't think she can last much longer in this world. There is too much pain.
Black spots dance at the edge of her vision, and her head thrashes from side to side as the 'power couple,' as she's come to call them, pour themselves into maintaining the spell. It's worse than usual and she can feel her life force weakening.
She finds herself wanting, wishing, hoping, to be free of this life. Perhaps her next reincarnation will be kinder.
She releases her tense muscles and her body finally goes limp.
Free from the torture. Free from the pain and the misery and the followers and the leaders.
Death is but a small price to pay for this relief.