Chapter 25: The Dying of the Light

Tobias had never taken much to exercise. He had little interest in or talent for Quidditch, and the wizarding world cared far less than the Muggle for fitness. Magic bypassed all sorts of physical boundaries, and magical medicine overcame most problems of an unhealthy lifestyle. It might have led to a culture of indulgence and magical reliance, but he usually cared little for such a fact.

Until tonight. Tonight, where the cold winter air froze his lungs as he drew gasping breath after gasping breath, and his feet pounded on the road as he hurtled down the empty street. Not fast enough. Not by far.

But he couldn't trust that the Aurors had not already lowered a Displacement Field on the area, so he'd apparated a safe distance and was going in on foot. Though he had studied a map in the past to plan apparitions, he didn't need to know the area to find his destination. Not with the grim, ominous glow of the Dark Mark in the sky, perhaps two streets over.

He knew what it meant. Had seen it at the World Cup, in the recording of his father's death, had read about it in books. But never before had it instilled in him such a sense of dread which meant, for just a moment, he had to fight his legs to stop them from carrying him in the opposite direction.

You're not a Gryffindor, but you're not a coward. She needs you.

He cast from his mind what he might find when he got to Annie's house, even as he rounded the corner onto the right street. So far there had been silence in the village, the area asleep or ignorant. But here... here, he could hear the screams.

Light came from more than lampposts and the glow of the skull in the sky. If the disturbance had once been limited to one house, it was not the case any more. A car had been flipped and now blazed with fire as two men were ushered others away from it. One house looked as if it had been at the receiving end of a particularly vicious blasting curse; rubble littered the street, and he had to leap over a few fallen forms of Muggles. They were all dressed as if they had been warm indoors in a winter night, and had either been blasted out with the house or driven to the street and struck by debris.

Carnage reigned supreme, with Muggles running away, or bundling into cars, or seeing to the injured. Most notable was how the disaster had stayed on this street, and how there were no Muggle authorities present.

And the tall, masked, dark-cloaked figure hovering some ten feet in the air, occasionally, languidly waving a wand at the scurrying shapes beneath him.

Death Eater's mask. Tobias gripped his wand - then hesitated. He could try to engage a fully-trained Death Eater, or he could wait until the Aurors and Hit Wizards arrived. And there was still no sign of Annie. Surely she wouldn't have stood by during this rampage? But he scanned the fallen bodies of Muggles, and there was no sign of her either in the injured or those trying to help. His gaze flickered to her house. Her family. Something must have happened.

He bolted for the house, ignoring that the Dark Mark hung directly above. Dodging past a family huddled by a hedge away from the Death Eater, he vaulted the garden gate with an agility surprising even himself, and stormed to the front door.

Had he been paying more attention to the details, he'd have seen the door was ajar, and not put his shoulder to it while running full tilt. It flew open and sent him sprawling in the hallway, but even as he hit the floor his wand was in his hand. 'Annie!'

All was silent for a heartbeat, and his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark as his shoulder ached from the impacts. Then he saw the two figures in the living room, silhouettes just visible through the archway.

'Run.' It was Annie's voice, ringing with quiet, firm desperation. But before he could stand, before he could choose to heed her warning or fight, one of the silhouettes flicked a wand at him.

'Locomotor Mortis.' This voice was unfamiliar, but the sensation of every limb locking up, his whole body tingling in an almost painful manner, was far better known to him. From a distant woodland in Derbyshire, and then came the familiar, coppery taste in his mouth as he bit his tongue in sheer frustration and anger. The Death Eater who had frozen him twitched his wand, and he was jerked upright and forwards by the invisible force.

There were more than two people in the room. Just only two were standing. On the sofa slumped two motionless forms he recognised as Annie's parents, expressions shocked, eyes wide and sightless. Had he been more ignorant, he might have thought them alive, but he knew better. The Killing Curse left no mark. By the fireplace was a prone and twisted shape of a teenaged boy, this body much more broken by the end, who had to be Annie's brother. He'd only met him once.

And over the boy, as if she'd run to him in his final moments, crouched Annie. Tear-stains streaked her cheeks, but it looked as if she was all out of crying, her expression set and devoid of any emotion as she stared between Tobias and the two Death Eaters.

They did not wear masks. And though Tobias had not recognised the voice or manner of the one who bound him, he did recognise the face as he drew nearer. Idaeus Robb.

Which means...

There, stood over Annie and the broken body of her brother, tall and burly, was the man whose face was seared into his dreams: Thanatos Brynmor.

'You,' Tobias spat. Or tried to. With his jaw clenched down on his tongue it came out as a gurgled growl, but it got the man's attention.

Brynmor turned, and gave a short bark of laughter. Behind him Annie flinched, but her expression deadened almost immediately. Tobias could not see a hint of fear or pain, or even hope or courage in her face or in her eyes.

'And the golden boy's arrived!' Brynmor clapped his hands together. 'A lucky surprise.'

Robb looked between them, an eyebrow arching. 'You did say he was a target,' he drawled.

'I thought he'd have more removed suffering. I didn't for a moment think he'd be here.' Brynmor looked at Annie and chuckled. 'You sly creature, you called for help while we weren't looking!' Then his gaze hardened, all humour dying. 'A mistake to just summon a boy to die.'

Annie stood, slow and steady, and her voice was flat when she spoke. 'I didn't call him. Let him go, please.'

'Oh, the self-sacrifice route. A classic.' Brynmor nodded thoughtfully. 'Robb, let the boy talk, let's get his view.'

Robb rolled his eyes. 'Are these theatrics - oh, fine.' He plucked Tobias' wand from his grip, then waved his own and sent him sprawling to the floor.

Tobias sucked in a deep, shaking breath as his body obeyed and he rolled onto his hands and knees. 'You bastards,' he hissed. 'If you hurt her…'

'You'll do absolutely nothing, just as you did nothing as we killed her family and waged devastation in the streets of the unclean.' There was no boast or mockery in Robb's words, but the coldest statement of unamused fact, and he looked at Brynmor. 'Aurors will be here soon. We cannot dawdle.'

Brynmor bristled. 'We agreed I'd see to my business, Idaeus.'

'Your business did not include interruptions. Just kill them both and be done with it. Or I will.'

Brynmor lifted a hand as Robb's wand twitched back towards Tobias. 'Not him first. Him I want to punish. Him I want to teach a lesson.'

'Lessons don't last after death, Thanatos.' But Robb rolled his eyes and stepped back.

'No. This will just be one he'll remember for the rest of his life.' Brynmor's smile glinted against the flickering flames from outside, and in it Tobias saw a twisted mockery of his son's pleased grin.

'A lesson.' Tobias spat a mouthful of blood as he struggled to his knees. 'For daring to stand up to you?'

'Oh, please. It's a lesson for you and the world. A message for those who'd put a half-breed in power, celebrate such a corruption of purity as you, and your rutting with a filthy Muggle.'

Robb clicked his tongue. 'We don't have time for speeches.'

Brynmor ignored him, advancing on Tobias. 'War is won in hearts and minds, so we make that the battleground. And the hearts and minds of all your fellows will be scarred with the knowledge that any celebration of impurity ends like this.'

Robb stepped forward. 'Thanatos! Get on with it.'

Brynmor rounded on him. 'All will cower, Idaeus. None shall dare spread their filth, lest the Dark Lord's wrath fall down upon them. And I am that wrath. Let them know this.'

'Spare the grand speeches for those who'll live to remember them,' Robb chided, lips pinched. But Brynmor didn't turn away, and for a long moment the two men glared at each other, and in the silence all Tobias could hear was the pounding of his own heartbeat and Annie's ragged gasping for breath.

'I tire of this,' Robb said at last, and when he pushed past Brynmor towards Annie, the big man didn't stop him. 'Enough is enough.'

He must have said the words. His wand rose and the green light flared. One moment Annie had been hunched over her brother; the next she fell like a lifeless doll, a puppet whose strings had been cut, and Tobias heard nothing but the ringing in his ears.

He collapsed to his hands and knees, seeing nothing but her glassy eyes staring through him, and as the ringing subsided he could hear someone screaming. Only when he felt the pain in his throat did he realise it was him.

Brynmor backhanded him across the face, knocking him onto his back, and turned again on Robb. 'I wasn't done!'

'We don't have time,' Robb snapped, but he sounded more like a man irritated at the prospect of missing a train than a murderer with blood fresh on his hands. 'Finish the boy and let's go.'

'He needed to understand - I wanted to make him watch -'

'We killed the parents in front of the children,' said Robb in a slow, aggravated voice. 'You killed the brother, slowly I might add. It's over. Finish it.' His gaze flickered to the broken window. Most of the carnage beyond was hidden by a high hedge, but the firelight still flickered and the wails from the Muggles still drifted through. 'But we'll have to find Sneddon if he's gone Muggle-hunting.'

Tobias dragged himself upright again, voice barely obeying him as he warbled, 'Why? Why her?

Brynmor gave that perverse grin of his. 'We had word. The half-breed Head Boy, his Mudblood mate. Popular, lauded. Hogwarts students forgot the world they lived in.'

'Word?' Tobias echoed. 'Who told - who cared - we never went near your crusade…'

He'd thought he'd gone completely numb until Brynmor laughed, and the shiver up his spine brought all his pain crashing back into his body. 'You get that one for free. Look to your own house. My son knows where his loyalties lie.' Another laugh as Tobias gawped, and he stepped forward to shove him lazily onto his back. 'You didn't know? Your best friend and you didn't know he wasn't your man?' He turned away and to the window, chuckling to himself. 'Alright. There, for the look on his face, that's worth it. Now you can kill him, Idaeus.'

'This was all unnecessary,' Robb chided, but it didn't sound as if he was talking about the bloodshed as he turned on Tobias with wand outstretched.

They thought him beaten. And with Brynmor looking away and Robb distracted by irritation, it was his only chance to act. The tension in his limbs that had paralysed him coiled into strength, and Tobias threw himself forwards at Robb, grasping at his wand.

Wands are tools. Wands are weapons. Wands are a wizard's life.

Wands are also notoriously fragile.

He might have won with his opponent's wand broken, as he drove his shoulder into Robb's mid-riff with little ceremony or skill but the blunt force of sheer bloody-mindedness and desperation. As Robb staggered back, he might have had a chance to run, to get away, the Death Eater unarmed and powerless to stop him.

If it had just been the two of them. If Thanatos Brynmor hadn't stepped forwards and dropped him with just one, powerful blow to the temple.

Tobias went flying, smashing his chin on the floor as he landed in front of the fireplace and almost bit his tongue in half. The world spun before him, bringing nausea through the numbness in his guts, and the strength he had borrowed ebbed away.

Robb staggered, tossing the snapped wand aside. 'You little bastard!' All superior indifference was gone. 'I was going to kill you quickly!'

'Oh, but we now have time for this?' But Brynmor chuckled, and made no move to intervene again.

Wild-eyed, Robb snatched Tobias' own wand from his pocket and took a deep, calming breath. 'The wand of another wizard is less effective than one's own. Except for a theory I have heard of, saying a spell turned on the wand's owner is more potent.' His gaze latched onto Tobias', gone from furious to calm in the blink of an insane eye. 'Shall we find out?'

The Cruciatus was often considered the least of the Unforgivables. Wizards feared death, and most would prefer their bodies suffer than their minds be taken over. But all of this underestimated the curse designed for one simple purpose: to cause perfect agony.

The scream Tobias had let out upon Annie's death was nothing to the sound he made now. Everything faded from him - the room, the bodies, as he writhed on the floor, and it took barely seconds before the knowledge of his pending death became a merciful bright light on the horizon, because it meant this would stop. His hand smashed on the mantelpiece as he writhed, but he barely noticed and cared less that he broke fingers.

He hardly realised when it stopped. The pain had sunk into his bones, every inch of him filled with a throbbing ache that thumped through him with every heartbeat, every muscle spasm. But when he looked up to see the two shapes over him, Brynmor's hand on Robb's arm, he realised this was an interruption, not a merciful respite.

'I can't see Sneddon. They've got to be close. We should go.'

Robb's expression had gone cold again. No more was he the vicious man who acted while Brynmor laughed, but instead the mask of control had descended once more. 'Very well. I'll finish this.'

Tobias half-lifted his broken hand and, barely aware of what he was doing, struggled to stand. 'I'll at least die on my feet,' he managed to say through a shredded throat.

The two men exchanged glances. 'It doesn't make a difference, you know,' Robb told Tobias, and if his voice held any emotion it was whatever passed for pity in this man.

Then Robb lifted his wand, opening his mouth to speak. All Tobias knew next was a high-pitched ringing noise, a solid impact on his chest, a flash of green light...

...then nothing.