I Am Not Afraid
Floella was kneading the dough rhythmically while Molly whisked the contents of a large bowl and Marie Finnegan flicked her wand at three different counter tops where pastry was being rolled, eggs were being beaten and chocolate was magically being melted magically.
"I wish I could do that," Julie Painter said from the doorway.
Floella saw Molly beaming at the Muggle woman.
"Well it's nearly noon and there's no point in forcing everyone to eat when they're as tense as this so we thought we'd make a few pastries, cakes and sausage rolls for people to snack on later on."
"And I'm making bread the Muggle way anyway so you don't have to feel left out my girl," Floella grinned.
Her dark skin was dotted with specks of white flour all the way up to her elbows and there was a smear across her cheek as well. She couldn't be bothered to clean herself up though. There was no point the way she baked; she'd be messy again within minutes.
"Why are you doing it that way?" Julie said as she crossed the kitchen floor to watch the slow firm kneading.
"It's therapeutic," Floella smiled, "Good for stress, anxiety and out-and-out fury!"
Julie laughed at this.
"I should try that next time our Kathleen makes me want to shove her head into a fire without using any floo powder," Marie chortled, "pounding on dough rather then her face would probably get me into less trouble!"
"Well," Julie said as she rolled up her sleeves, "Maybe I'll make some scones then. It'll be nice to kill...some time."
Julie's face fell and her eyes widened as she stared at all the faces looking back at her.
"I really shouldn't have said that," she said, as she seemed to clench her entire body and stand before them like a statue.
There was a snorting sound beside Floella and she turned to see Marie putting her hand to her face and trying to stifle a laugh. Floella broke into a smile at the two women and saw that Molly was taking a deep breath and looking back to her whisk.
"Well never mind dear" the flustered red haired woman sighed, "I accidentally told the Creevey's that if I didn't feed my lot soon they'd be screaming bloody murder. That's why I came in here in the first place!"
Marie threw back her head and brayed with raucous laughter while Floella thumped at the kitchen counter and sent up a cloud of flour. Molly cleared a space beside her and grinned at Julie.
"Here you go dear, get started on those scones and see if you can beat us to the oven."
"I told you lot I'm having that oven first!" Marie declared as she wiped her eyes."
"Bread takes longest so bread takes priority!" Floella declared.
"But bread has to sit fer an hour before it even goes in, mine'll be in and out by then!" Marie protested.
"Not the way I raise it," Floella said as she twirled her wand.
"Oh you don't magically raise the dough do you Flo?" Molly tutted disapprovingly, "It's never nearly as fluffy that way."
"My bread is perfect!" Floella protested adamantly.
Julie chuckled to herself as she reached for a bowl and began to weigh out some flour.
The door to the cellblock banged open and Ron shuddered.
"It is almost noon my friends," the Puppet Master said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Davies snapped before there was a flash of light and, what sounded like, Fergus cursing under his breath and straining with a heavy weight in his arms.
"Now, I will keep this discipline up until you all learn to behave yourselves," the Puppet Master paced up the corridor between the cells haughtily, "You are becoming the most tiresome of guests I must confess."
"Guests?" Prang was scoffing before a Death Eater who had remained back in the doorway sent a curse into his cell and there was a moan and a thump.
"Gedraag je," the Puppet Master said warningly, "I will be leaving you in the hands of the brotherhood until I get bored and decide..." the Puppet Master had paced back down a little and paused beside Ron's cell, peering down at him and smiling sickeningly, "...to play once more."
Lee was on his feet before Ron had even registered that he was moving and had thrust his bound arms through the opening in the door to grab at the Puppet Master while bellowing his outrage.
"No more games you spiteful fucker! You want to play you play against me next time!"
Ron got up and yanked Lee back from the door, throwing him into the far wall and looking at him in disbelief from the same position Lee had just been forcibly vacated from. He was about to hiss at his cellmate to shut up and calm down when a hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back hard into the cell door.
"Ron!" Lee gasped as Ron felt a wand pressing into his throat again.
"I said behave!" the Puppet Master roared while tugging so fiercely on the fistful of hair he had hold of that Ron felt some come clean away from his scalp and let out a yelp, "Because every time you cause me to notice you Jordan I will take it out on him."
Ron sucked air in through his clenched teeth and tried to pry the hand open before that sickening moist breath was on the side of his face again. It was like a warm slug creeping across the back of his neck and sliding over his earlobe before disappearing down into his ear canal.
"Lower your hands boy otherwise I will make him put the sick one out of his misery with Imperius."
Ron's arms fell limp at his sides immediately. The grip on his hair only increased however. He felt the tip of the wand stroking upwards from his throat, along his jaw line and then settling against his temple, while the putrid breath kept caressing the back of his neck.
"Tell your friend I'll make you suffer the next time I hear his voice," the Puppet Master growled.
Ron swallowed and looked at Lee, who seemed to want to do nothing more then pound the Puppet Master into a fine paste.
"If he hears you talk again he's gonna," Ron began before the fist at his scalp twisted and Ron's voice rose an octave in pain, "make me suffer!"
Lee was suddenly nodding fearfully.
Again the breath was creeping wetly around to Ron's ear.
"You are my plaything Weasley," he said in a disturbingly low whisper, "say it back to me."
"Fuck you!" Ron hissed.
"Do you want them to eat as well as drink?" the sadistic wizard roared before his voice fell back into that sickening low purr, "What are you Firebrand?"
"I am your plaything," Ron said with disgust at himself.
He didn't have to see it to know the man had broken into a wide grin.
"You only exist for me to break," the Puppet Master sighed onto Ron's crawling skin, "say it.
"I exist for you to break."
"Now look Mr Jordan in the eye and tell him that whatever happens to you is all his fault."
"No," Ron said he gritted his teeth for the inevitable pain.
"Tell him this is all his fault otherwise I will slit the enfeebled boy's throat."
Ron closed his eyes and kicked backwards at the door in frustration.
"You have the count of three," Ron felt his hair released and the wand moving away from his temple and down towards the floor, "One...Two..."
Ron looked Lee in the eye and shook his head with apology.
"Lee this is all your fault."
Ron saw his cellmate's lips part and his jaw move before clamping shut firmly and nodding. A hand shoved Ron in the back and he staggered away from the door. Lee caught him and tried to whisper but Ron widened his eyes and shook his head.
"There's a good little plaything," the Puppet Master said with amusement before turning to face the cell opposite theirs and open it with a flick of his wand, "Auror Maccario, uw dood wordt uitgevoerd in naam van de Dooddoeners."
The Death Eater at the door moved forward to grab Maccario from his cell and bind his hands behind his back while another lifted an eggcup sized glass to the Italian Auror's lips and tipped it down his throat.
"Kom vreedzaam of lijd in de dood," the Puppet Master said before shoving Maccario in the back and towards the exit while closing and locking the door to his cell with a flick of his wand.
"Sir?" Prang was calling out, sounding like a lost little boy.
"Tell my Chiara I loved her until the end," Maccario said, an eerily calm tone in his voice, "and tell her I was not afraid to die."
"Yes sir," Prang said with a whimper.
"I am not afraid!" Maccario bellowed out at the top of his lungs just before he reached the door to the cellblock, "And Ronald Weasley is nobody's plaything, he is your master and he will own this game you make him play. He will own you!"
Ron felt himself shaking as he looked at Lee and felt his knees give out beneath him just as the door slammed. Lee caught him and lowered him down to the floor gently.
"It's okay Ron," Lee was saying as he rubbed up and down both his arms vigorously, "It's okay don't worry about it. You're too strong for him and he knows it. It's him that's pulling us all into it, it's his fault what they do to us okay? None of this is on you, d'you hear me Ron?"
Lee shook him and Ron forced himself to nod.
"Say it!" Lee demanded, "Repeat after me, none of this is your fault!"
Ron looked Lee hard in the eyes and took in a deep breath.
"None of this is your fault."
Just as Lee was about to give Ron another hard shake of frustration the sound of Auror Maccario's voice roared out through the window from the courtyard below.
"I am not afraid of you!"
There was a hissing crackling sound and then a dull thump.
"He's dead," Davies said from the cell next door.
"They're taking something from him too," Colin said from the cell on the other side.
Lee took in a deep breath and shook his head to rearrange his thoughts once more.
"Tell me what I want to hear Ron," he said with determination.
Ron looked across the floor to Tommy, who smiled at him and sat up with some considerable effort, before turning back to stare right into Lee with determination.
"I am not afraid."
Fleur had come in time for noon.
While Bill had insisted on staying at the Embassy, he had also insisted that Fleur, Ginny, Hermione and the twins go back home and wait at the Burrow so the place wasn't quite so overcrowded with Weasleys. He counted Hermione as a Weasley, as he did with Harry, but he knew that she would be just as immoveable as her best friend was when it came to waiting and planning and searching for some way to help the hostages.
Anything to help Ron.
The twins wouldn't be sent away, the twins could never be sent anywhere they didn't want to be, and had declared that they wanted to be there for Mrs Jordan just as much as for their own family. Bill had no rebuttal to that argument. Once he had caved on the twins then there was no telling Ginny she shouldn't stay. Everybody was staying, everybody but Percy who seemed unable to let the situation interfere with his work for the Ministry, and now Fleur would floo back and forth to bring clean clothes and make sure everything was running smoothly at the Burrow while it sat, strangely empty.
She had arrived and hugged Bill tightly before looking into his eyes sadly and telling him that the family clock showed Ron to be in 'mortal peril'. Bill knew what that meant. Since Ron had been taken his hand was swinging between 'prison' and 'lost', the clock not having a hand for 'hostage' after all, and sometimes it would shoot around to quiver on 'mortal peril' as if in some kind of pain itself.
Ron was being tortured wherever he was, tortured, tormented, beaten and who knew what else. Bill didn't want to imagine. He didn't want to but he did all the same.
With every chime of the clock that Charlie had magically repaired, the families had grown more sombre. Moody had had no information letting him know that the location had been found. There were no arrests, no clues, and no hope of stopping the second execution in time. It was now three minutes past twelve.
It was too late.
Bill felt his wife jump beside him as the crack of an apparition sounded outside the Embassy and Lupin, Tonks and Shacklebolt took up positions ready to arrest another of the Death Eater messengers and send him to Azkaban. Soon enough there was a figure, hooded in long black robes, ascending the stairs to the Embassy and stepping through the door.
The figure moved soundlessly across the reception area before pausing and withdrawing something from their robes. It looked like a photograph. The Death Eater looked around the Embassy at all the anxious faces that stared back. Geoffrey Belby suddenly lunged forward towards the Death Eater but Moody caught him and wrestled him into submission.
"Don't lower yourself Belby," Moody said gruffly, "the swine will get what's coming to him."
Tonks and Shacklebolt were moving forward cautiously, wands drawn, while Lupin hung back and covered them both.
The Death Eater seemed to have spotted who he was looking for and began to move forward with long slow strides that made his robe billow behind him as if he was gliding on air. He was heading right for the waif-like Italian girl and her friend, the Healer's son who Bill thought was called Patrick, and the two of them seemed to pale and cling to each other before freezing completely.
They weren't blinking. They weren't breathing. There were just shaking and holding each other.
"Wij hebben hem gedood," the Death Eater said triumphantly before holding out the photograph.
Patrick Callahan shook his head and whispered a breathy 'no' before the small moving image was thrust into the girl's hand.
"No!" she screamed as she fell to the floor and Patrick dropped down beside her to hold on to her body as she began to convulse with anguished sobs, "Alessandro, no, no, no..."
The Death Eater was hit with three stunning spells at once before Shacklebolt tore the man's hood away from his face and punched him for good measure. Lupin cast him a reproachful glance before helping to lift the limp body off the floor and drag him away to the fireplace to transport him to a cell in Azkaban.
The young Italian witch was still wailing and weeping into Patrick's shoulder. Bill could see the conflict in the young man's eyes. He was relieved that this hadn't been news of his father's execution and guilty at having that feeling while he rocked the mortified young woman, who had come to become his very close friend during their time at the Embassy together, while she hurt for her lost love.
"I'm sorry Chiara, I'm so so sorry," he was whispering as he held her and rubbed her back.
"Charlie dear," Bill heard his mother saying quietly, "I saw a bottle of brandy in the kitchen. Be an angel and go and fetch it will you?"
Charlie was gone without a word.
Fleur hugged Bill and kissed him on the cheek.
'Ee will be all right Beel," she said before planting a kiss on his cheek, "We weel get 'im back safe, I know eet."
"Yeah," Bill said with a nod, his voice nothing but a broken whisper, "We'll find him."
They had to.
