A/N: I've been busy and haven't updated for a few days, so I apologize. Prayers to UCSB. Gratitude to feminists everywhere. (For those of you who don't know, there was a shooting in which seven died in Santa Barbara, CA.)
Chapter 35-Enfer
George

Angelina and I run out of the building as fast as humanly possible. She is slower than I am, no doubt because her entrapment took some of her physical strength. I push through the door and out into the street. The sunlight is almost blinding. I gasp.

"Oliver's in there!" Angelina sobs. "Oliver's in there, George!"

The full reality of everything that just happened hits me in a wave of nausea. I stumble and sit down on the steps. I just killed a woman. I just watched my best man's murder. My wife could be dead. Angelina is hysterical. She has just been tortured. Oliver saved our lives. We are living. He is not. Fulvia Sanderson has no more chance to repent.

"He's dead," I say hoarsely.

"No shit!" she cries. The words are slurred. She tries to move. She tries to go back in the building, but I reach out and grab her wrist. She tries to fight back, but she is no physical specimen anymore. She must have lost twenty pounds, at least, in that warehouse.

"Let go of me!" she sobs.

"Angelina-"

"We have to get him out!"

"Angelina, listen-"

She kicks my shins, tries to pull her wrist free. The blows do not compare to the way I feel inside. "He's dead!" she screams. "He's dead and you don't give a damn!"

"Angie!" I shout. "Listen to me! He's dead! There might be people still alive!"

"You don't care! You don't care!"

"Send a Patronus to the Ministry, Angie, tell them there's a dead Death Eater here and that there's more around here and they have a hostage."

She abides this time. I see the silver shoot out of her wand and she lowers her shaking hand. "I want to find him," she says, sniffling. "I want to see Oliver."

"Angie, stay here," I say. "I'm going to go, and you need to stay here."

"Don't go," she says. Tears are streaming down her face. "Don't go, George."

I wipe the blood off her face with my thumb. "It'll be okay, Angie. Promise me you'll stay here until the Ministry gets here. I've got to go now."

"Where?"

"I have to find them."

I walk down Knocturn Alley and ask people I pass if they know where any shady warehouses are. Most ignore me. One points down from where I came. I go into a bar and ask a drunk guy if he knows who Aries is. He nods jovially. Laughs.

"Where's he at? We've got business dealing, see, and he sells me my tarantacula venom," I lie easily. Most people know tarantacula venom is illegal and used in potions that usually make people very drunk. It's probably what the man is drinking now.

"You use tarantacula?"

"Oh, yeah."

"It's great," he says sleepily.

"Can you tell me where Aries is? He relocated, and I can't get ahold of him for the venom."

"Sure, as long as you sell me some cheap."

"You've got my word. I'm Danny Tate." I scribble down the alias on a napkin and hand it to him. "Now, where's Aries at?"

He's very wasted and gives me directions. I doubt how reliable they are, but I've got no other hope. I follow his directions down an alley, double back, down another street, into the deepest parts of Knockturn Alley. I end up standing in front of a brick building.

January is in there.

Oliver Wood died for this.

Fulvia Sanderson murdered my brother.

Oliver Wood is dead.

Jesus. My eyes shut for a moment, tears searing my cheeks.

Angelina is never going to be the same.

Katie is a widow.

Angelina-God knows if she's even sane now.

Katie will raise her baby by herself.

I killed someone just now.

I watched my best man die.

I watched Oliver Wood die.

Oh Jesus.

I feel bile rise in the back of my throat, and I do my best to ignore it. I find a door in the side of the building and try to open. It's locked. I brace myself and run into it with my shoulder. The hinges creak. I do it again. It busts open.

The entire ground floor consists of an empty singular room. There is a staircase upwards. I do not remember moving my feet. I am on the staircase, gripping the railing. She is upstairs. She has to be upstairs.

There is another door at the top of the stairs and I kick it in. As soon as I step into the room, a voice yells, "PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!"

The room is big. The floor-to-ceiling windows are completely shattered,not he jagged edges of glass foreboding and threatening. And in the room stood a tall black man who looked very much like Kingsley Shacklebolt and a chair. And tied to the chair was a woman whose hair had once been blonde but was now red from her bleeding scalp. She was my wife.

She was January.

"You need to know what it's like to lose someone, Weasley."

I have, my mind thinks. I have, it echoes. I have lost Oliver and Fred and Angelina. "I have."

"You haven't. You don't know what it's like to watch the one person who means the world to you to die."

I just watched Oliver Wood die. "I have, dammit."

January cannot talk. She is gagged. I cannot help her. I am rooted where I stand.

"You haven't. Why don't you ask me what it was like to see your brother kill mine? Why don't you ask me what real pain feels like, Weasley?"

I shut my eyes. "I already know what it feels like."

"You don't. Your brother was not a very wise person. He should've known we would come after his family."

"Leave me alone!"

"I will after this," Aries says. "First-this."

"You're a madman."

"Perhaps." He waves his wand and a rope tightens around my throat. My face. A gag. A gag so I cannot scream. I hope Angelina got through to the Ministry.

He points the wand at January. "Imperio." And I know, I know what is going to happen. I know hell is going to break loose. He causes her to shrug off the ropes. He causes her to walk to the edge of the room, near the windows, perhaps fifty feet off the ground.

I scream, I let out a bloodcurdler, an earsplitter, I bite down so hard blood I feel my cheek tear and blood fills my mouth.

"Imperio."

January's eyes are glazed over. She steps out of the window.

The door busts open again just as she plummets. Aurors upon Aurors filter inside. Someone Stuns Aries. I scream. I scream but the gag is muting it. Someone reverses the Petrifying Curse and I run. I run to the window and look down and see her broken body, twisted and lifeless, on the pavement below, a pool of blood around her head.

She is dead.

Aurors are securing Aries, Aurors are asking who I am, if I am okay. Aurors are wrestling with the sight in the street. Aurors are telling me Angelina came through. Aurors are telling me I am a hero. Aurors are telling me Oliver will be buried with an Order of Merlin, First Class.

I scream. I cannot. I cannot. I turn around, raise my wand, and aim it straight at Aries Shacklebolt's chest. Never have I wanted anyone to die as much as I do now. "Avada Kedavra!"