I do not own Victoire, nor the rest of the Harry Potter Characters.
I hope to continue this story to encompass Victoire's last Year at Hogwarts. If you've read her first year journal, the style is entirely different and quite a bit darker. I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think if it isn't too much bother.
"Vik?"
Her breath came harder now. She gritted her teeth against the sound; amplified a thousand fold by the terror that had made her start running a good mile earlier. She tried to breathe through her nose but her windpipe rebelled, seemed to twist and struggle against the restraints, seemed to scream.
Her breath came harder now.
"Vik. Please. They're not going to hurt you."
She wasn't sure how the New Death Eaters had managed to imitate Dominique's still childish voice. She wasn't sure why they should go through the effort to capture her. Certainly there was an easier way.
"Vik. They're hurting me! Vik please. It hurts..."
Victoire felt a sob choking her. Her fingers groped the ground blindly for anything to keep her from running out from her place of refuge. She needed something to ground her. The last thing she needed was to fall for the Death Eater's tricks.
She had felt someone following her in Hogsmeade. That's how this mess had started. Her friend Sasha was feverish to the point of hallucination and Victoire has wanted to pick up something to cheer her up. To have any excuse to get some fresh air. It was stupid. Everyone at Hogwarts knew that there had been attacks at Hogsmeade; attacks that had gotten worse and worse as the New Death Eaters gained more and more followers. Attacks that any reasonable person would have felt in danger of facing. Yet the need to escape had been so strong, a siren's song. She had had several protective spells on her. She had been prepared.
Until a mile earlier someone, the same someone who had been following her as she made her way back to Hogwart made to grab her arm. The left arm that had been holding her purchases. The one that hadn't been tucked into her sweater's pocket holding a wand with a spell primed at the end of it. The moment that person touched her Victoire dropped her packet and swung around, blasting off a hex before she could even see who had attempted to grab her.
There was a squeal of pain from the person, who disappeared and reappeared as their invisibility spell no longer took up their concentration.
Victoire ran. She stumbled in the twilight, trying to ignore the pain of a twisted ankle and a bloody palm when one led to the other. She ran the mile, all too aware of the fatigue that came after the first ten minutes. The way her lungs caught fire and raged against her ribs. She had to make a decision. Try to lose them in the Forbidden Forest, or attempt to make her way safely to Hogwarts?
She chose the Forest. She had gotten detention often enough to know most of the routes intimately. The thought of having someone follow her into Hogwarts, of putting anyone in Hogwarts in danger of being attacked by an invisible thing... it wasn't helping her breathing.
"Vik? Vik? Victoire! HELP! HELP! HELP ME!" What came next was a sound that Victoire would never forget. The sound of her sister, pretty little Dominique who loved little birds and her older sister more than anything in the whole world, little DomDom who loved chocolate truffles and ate them for breakfast whenever she could, little Dom screaming as she was tortured.
Victoire knew, she knew the New Death Eaters were good. Good in the way that a lion is good at taking down its prey. Good in that they had damn near perfected their ability to attack and most often kill their targets. Up until now she had never understood why no one had escaped. Why, even when evidence was found that a witch or wizard had managed to hide or fight, why they were always caught.
Now she understood.
There was silence now. Ominous. It seemed to press against her ears and eyes and nose. The silence was almost touchable. It was the silence that said "She's not dead. But you certainly don't know what we're doing."
Victoire tried not to let her mind go to the multitudes of things men without morals would do to a young girl with no protection. She clutched her wand so hard it nearly broke. She bit her lip so hard it did break. She scratched over and over at her forearms, until the scratches bled. She sobbed as quietly as she possibly could. And she crouched there. In a tiny ball. She crouched in the dark forest for ages.
She heard a whimper. Like a tiny cat but unmistakably human. Then another one.
How could she call herself a Weasley if she wasn't even brave enough to fight for her sister? How could she call herself a sister? How could she live if her sister died here, today, now?
She needed a plan.
She started by taking the dirt and mud around her by handfuls and smearing it everywhere. Her face and hair were priority, bright as they were. Her neck and shoulders received the same treatment. Then she went for her legs. She gingerly spread the concoction over her bruised ankle and then reached for another clump of dirt. The moonlight caught, briefly, a faint shimmer on her forearm, it was thick, like a salve and the blood avoided it, like oil and water. She hadn't applied anything that glittered since first year. None of Sasha's medicines looked like this.
She brought the arm closer, sniffed the substance. Even over the metallic tang of her blood she could smell mandrake and a hint of belladonna. Powerful hallucinogens. Victoire set her jaw and kept spreading the mud everywhere. She avoided covering her mutilated arm though. If she could keep a sample of the potion intact, an antidote could be found. Future attacks could be avoided.
She could still hear Dominique. Her whimpers had turned to quiet desperate sobs. Sometimes she would whisper things to herself. Occasionally she would cry out. This was followed by harsh laughter.
Victoire stood motionless. She sorted desperately through what she knew to be facts and what she could assume was the drugs worming into her mind. These "facts" were becoming less clear, the assumptions becoming more plausible even as they took more and more liberties with the reality.
How many men had attacked her?
One?
He had an invisibility spell though. There could have been more. She thought she remembered one grabbing her on either side. Had she fought them? She should assume there were several. That seemed safest.
Where was she?
She estimated she had run about a mile from the very entrance of Hogsmeade. This should put her about a quarter of a mile into the Forbidden forest. But after she had entered the forest, how deeply had she gone? Had she passed the abandoned centaur paths? She thought, for a moment, that she could see a centaur out of the corner of her eye.
She shook her head violently. No. She had to stay focused.
They had Dominique.
No.
They didn't.
They couldn't.
There was no way they could have gotten Dominique, in her second year of Hogwarts and within its protection. Not in the ten minutes Victoire had been running.
Victoire knew she was simply an easy target. She had gone to Hogsmeade alone and without protection, practically asking to be attacked.
But suppose she had been a target. She had important family. If this had been planned it would have been relatively simple to kidnap Dominique.
Victoire stumbled over to a tree and supported herself on it. She pinched herself repeatedly to maintain some clarity.
Dominique screamed.
Victoire prepared her wand. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings and confusion. She peered briefly at the stars and determined that if she followed the one that shone the brightest she would find her way. The thought that this might not be accurate did not seem to occur to her.
Victoire ran. She ran for what seemed to her to be days then weeks and then eons, though these were minutes, no more. She shifted direction often and whenever she heard her sister she would follow the sounds until she would get distracted and head in another direction. In this way she lost herself so completely in the Forbidden Forest that she could scarcely see the sky, the ground convulsed around her and she thought she could hear the foliage singing, softly, softly.
It was the attacker who found her first, having followed her noisy, clumsy progress in the Forest. His face was badly burned from her attack and he seemed unable to maintain any spell for too long.
"You bitch." He snarled with his wand extended. "Crucio!"
"Protego Horribilis," Uncle George had taught her what made a good shield charm; he had drilled it into her until she could perform it in her sleep. She knew the basic one and the three variations. She had practiced them until she could do a passable shield against highly dark magic. Despite this she could feel a wave of pain sweep through her. It was tolerable, though barely. "Where's my s-s-si-"
"-I'm going to kill you." It was a straightforward statement, though one made equal parts more frightening from the horribly burns on his face and body and improbable by the pain the he could barely seem to contain, could barely seem to focus long enough to speak through.
"P-please." Victoire could feel the air around her hugging her. Tighter and tighter. She winced, thinking she could hear her ribs crack.
The Death Eater took this as a sign he was winning, he lunged forward with his wand extended in his badly shaking hand, "Avada Kedavra!"
Victoire was blinded briefly by the bright green light, watched it miss entirely and dissipate weakly as her attacker dropped his wand and fell to his knees. She smiled softly to herself, wondering why the Northern Lights has seen fit to leave their place in the sky and come to join her in the Forbidden Forest. She felt her legs give out as she hit the ground hard. She panicked though did not understand why her stomach was clenched so tightly in fear. She remembered needing to save someone but figured the green light could possibly do it for her. It seemed friendly enough. Dominique would have loved to see this.
This thought roused her; she struggled to push herself back up just long enough to point her wand at her attacker. Now so harmless in his shuddering, in his suffering she found a bit of clarity.
"Dormacorpus" the same spell her mother had once tried to use against a dragon. Sleep, sleep. Sleep.
It seemed like a perfect idea. She wanted to sleep so badly. She briefly considered performing the spell on herself but stopped that train of thought with another, more important one.
She needed to find Hogwarts and tell everyone about the beautiful green lights she had seen. She had to show them how lovely they had been. She cast a compass spell on her wand. A simple one even first years were known to perfect on their second try. She could feel her senses returning to normal, slowly, ever so slowly as she stumbled through the Forbidden Forest.
She had snuck out from Hogwarts, what seemed like days ago, but now she boldly knocked on the front gates, to be escorted in by a worried Professor Longbottom and greeted with dozens of curious eyes. She kept extending the arm with the potion towards her professor, repeating "Take it. Take it. Important..." and becoming increasingly frustrated when he did not seem to comprehend what she meant.
She was escorted to the medical wing, part walking but mostly carried by James who kept nervously licking his lips and glancing at her arms and torn up legs. They were trailed by their army of cousins and friends. Anyone not of blood relation was shooed away by irate professors. For reasons none of them could understand, Victoire began to sob when Dominique came into view. She implored the horrified young girl to take her wand and run before finally giving into the sleeping potions she was administered and drifting into a dreamless sleep.