"Frank! This way!" said Alice impatiently. Mrs Longbottom's usually happy, bouncy face was uncharacteristically serious and frowny. She wanted to get this over with, and she wanted to get back to her infant son, Neville. They had been running for and hour, and she was tired.
Her husband had been taking a wrong turning, brilliant fighter though he was, he was also a klutz.
It was drizzling slightly and they could barely see for a horrible fog that had descended on them. This would, of course be an easy job. They were the best Aurors around, and Bellatrix had been running for a while, surely she was tired and easy to take down.
She grabbed his elbow and pulled him the right way.
They were running behind some old abandoned warehouses in Liverpool, some old wizard nearby had sighted Bellatrix. He had Disapperated before she could dispose of him and his evidence, and he had immediately alerted the Ministry. So far they had not seen any sign of her.
Both had their wands out and were circling round, protecting each other's backs.
As they turned another corner and came to face another boring warehouse, they heard something they would never forget, and that would later haunt them in their dreams. A shrill, piercing, terrifying laugh that seemed to come from nowhere cut through the foggy air like a knife.
Immediately the Longbottoms ran instinctively to where they both thought the noise had come from, separating them.
The murky mist closed over them and they could no longer see anything.
"Frank!" she screamed.
"Alice!" her husband bellowed, his voice saturated with fear, "Alice, where are you?"
"I'm over-", Alice was cut short, feeling an tap on her shoulder that sent icy chills down her spine. She spun around on her heel. There was nothing there, and even if there were, she wouldn't have seen it.
"Alice?"
"This fog isn't natural, Frank. Its full of the Dark Arts!"
"I know, how are we going to get out of it?"
"Oh. But you aren't." The voice that had replied Frank wasn't his wife's. It was the voice of the person he hated most in the world at that point. The person who was stopping him from returning to his son and mother right at that minute. Bellatrix.
"Disapperate! Now!" As soon as the words had passed out of Frank's mouth, a sudden coldness fell gently upon them, as if covering them with a thin blanket. It was an Anti-Apparation jinx. The only thing left for them to do was fight.
A sudden stroke of luck caused the couple to bump into each other. They clung to anything they could, and although it was inappropriate, they shared a quick kiss, not wanting to believe what could surely be the only thing left for them, although in the end it was not the thing they had expected.
Bellatrix had won, with something so blindingly simple; fog.
" I love you, Alice," whispered Frank, in a defeated tone.
"Don't say that like it's the end! I'm not giving up. If I go down, I'll go down fighting." Alice spoke in a strong voice, despite the torrents of tears that were cascading down her round cheeks.
In a last surge of desperation, Alice sent curses in random directions, hoping one of them, just one of them, would find its target. Extraordinarily, one of them did. Even blind, Alice had an amazing Auror instinct. There was a yelp from somewhere behind them, followed by a vicious, animalistic snarl.
The fog immediately cleared, and the last thing Frank and Alice Longbottom saw while in their right minds was the gaunt, smiling, insane face of Bellatrix, surrounded by a mane of wild, tangled black hair.
"Crucio!" As the jet of red light sped towards her like a bullet from a gun, Alice thought, 'Love you Neville.'