Yes. Yes. Yes. I am aware that it has been FOREVER since I wrote anything. And that's my fault. But, here it is, a chapter and in what hopes, since I don't have to follow the book for a little, will be a restart to the story.
I will also be doing some editing on earlier chapters.
Lets just get right into it.
When The Final Beat Does Strike
It's a terrible thing, I think, in like to wait until your're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as read. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is a good a time as any.
Everything happened so fast and somewhere within his mind, he felt something break.
He found his being in Lucius's office, dressed in black, his silver mask in hand and feet pacing. From there, after telling Lucius of Albus's departure, Severus left back to the castle leaving Lucius to pass the message of Dumbledore and Potters departure for the Horcrux to the rat and the snake.
The entire event from the Headmaster's leave to the ears of Tom Riddle, took promptly fifteen minutes.. Ten minutes of that seeming completely dreamlike and fake to Severus, so much to where he had to stop and ground himself against the rising panic of his private situation..
This was it.
This was everything.
And he found himself not able to feel a thing.
Something had numbed over him, a feeling of death that he forced himself to ignore as he searched for Draco, quickly finding him the common room and pulling him into privacy. He repeated the message of action that Lucius had given to him and sent the young man off with a one arm embrace when the young man began to crack. In a way, the motion made the event all that more terrifying but, without another word, Draco had run off to gear the black maiden.
And then, his mind turned to her..
It was a feeling he couldn't explain, but a feeling he remembered well, and as it bubbled on in his stomach he traveled the stone walkways of the transfiguration yard searching for her. For Kayne, he had come out of nowhere and he called her from a group of students without missing a fluid stride.
"What's going on?" She asked only twice before falling into a obedient silence, her hand waving over the head of her whining hound as storm clouds gathered above.
He wouldn't answer as walked, his eyes would only scan the halls ahead of him as he pulled her into the dungeons. She followed him into the darkness and down the blackened halls and flicked a light upon her wand only when he did first as this distance they traveled into the darkness warranted little light from very sparse, wall mounted candles. She followed him through a random, wooden door and into a blacked out room where he cast low lighting in the form of orbs that floated around the dusty, barren room. As she steps ahead she turns around to watch the sullen man securing the door behind him once Vex had slipped in.
"It's time.. Isn't it.?" She asked, the paleness in her face that only making him that more sick.
"It is."
His only words, soft and blanketed by the surrounding shadows..
What he couldn't say that he completely controlled, as he passed her his arm had lift, his hand landing on her shoulder, his fingers sliding upwards and grazing her throat as he moved by her and into the center of the room. An old, dusty rug that lay frayed and dull was his target and pulling back the cover he exposed a scared sigil burnt into the wood floor, candle wax staining outer edge of each point and proper place. From his black robe he pulled a handful of black candles, his eyes locked on their wicks before he raised his attention to her.
"You have the book?" He asked, voice dead as his eyes shone voided of anything.
"Yes."
"What are you going to do with it?" He quizzed.
"I will preserve the Headmasters soul in purgatory to be found by Potter in case of the boy's death."
"Yes. And that will..." Severus lead as a snap of his fingers brought the candles to float into place and burst alive.
"That will give Albus the ability to insure the return of Potter's soul if he is to die." Kayne answered.
The shock that had beat in her heart now faded as realization kicked in. She made her way over to Severus who knelt on the floor, blood running from his hand he pulled alone, christening over the burnt lines.
"Yes."
He stood and kissed her then. With no warning or request, his lit wand was switched to his bloodied hand as his free hand gripped around the back of her neck, his thumb holding her jaw up to him. He pulled her close, but when she accepted him he broke from her and before she was ready he stepped away putting her out of his arms that she longed to feel for only a minute longer before their final moment of the ends of their world.
"You know what to do, then?" He asked as he backed away towards the door, wrapping his palm with a bandage he had taken from his robes.
"Yes." She said quietly, the space of the room seeming larger and larger, the darkness swallowing her small form.
"I will see you at the end?" His hand was on the handle, his fingers around the latch, his voice almost an echo in her ears..
"I will." She promised.
And then he was gone. Much like the day at Grimmauld Place when he had opened the door and slid out, he left her alone again.
From the loneliness and racking fear, there came a snap of attention to the task ahead and Kayne turned back to the floor burned sigil. Setting into motion, she took a crate from under a broken desk and finished setting the magic properly. From the box she pulls two skulls, that of a crow which goes at the top point, and that of a fox that goes in the top right blank space. She pulls out and places other things. She lights a bundle of sage and uses hawk feathers to push smoke throughout the room as she repeats words of ancient languages from old, torn pages. Setting a brass bowl of clean pristine water, a chunk of charcoal, a rock of crystal, and a silver bowl of salt water onto a silver plate she lays a vial that contains a small grouping of long white hairs against the edge. Sitting on her knees in the middle of the sigil, the tray in front of her and besides the open book, with a sigh she begins to read the first of many pages..
Burning the hairs with uttered words, she sprinkles salt on the outer edge around her, creating a sacred, protected space within the magic. Pulling a very old knife from her pocket, she slits her hand deeply enough to draw a constant line of connecting blood over the salt of her circle.
Vex would remain silent and watchful from his near by shadows, laying with his eyes on her as she as she raised a mirror above her head. She screamed the words so that the gods could hear her cries and bled for her sins and her trespasses. She asks then for what she wants…..
And that is when her world went black.
She dreamed of nothing that she remembered and when her eyes opened she pulled herself up in the same place where she had landed. She was still in the center of the sigil and she touched the warm salt and blood that lined on her back, neck and cheek as she looks to her dog who still lays with open eyes. Taking in the more of the slightly defined room, her only sense of time is the candles that had dipped really no less than what she remembered before passing out.
Rubbing her head she stands and takes two very disorientating steps ahead of her before hearing Vex whine.
'Shush now, boy." She says rubbing her aching head and turning to her dog.
But, there her body was laying where she thought she had risen, and Kayne jumped away from her unconscious self. With backing steps she made her way away until the cold wall should have greeted her, instead she seeped through and ended up in hallway which only jumped her again. The first of her questions was answered in that moment. She was lucid and walking in a world that couldn't see her. A world of floating colored lines that showed presence, Severus's being a glowing white that lead from the office to down the hall.
She followed his trail with knowledge that she was to travel to the Clock Tower and as she traveled the entrance hall, she had seen what she felt was Narcissa, who had her wand out but was not killing, but instead was throwing those in her way out and unconscious onto the floor. The world ran by her in chaos that she held no part in, and as she would travel after the white linking trail, frightened students ran through her as she ran through them. Along the way she met eyes with ghosts who looked either surprised or saddened at her before she eventually, landed behind him.
Of course she couldn't see it was him, but she knew. He was another black cloaked Deatheater in a silver mask mixed in with four other faces that looked the same. But Kayne knew, and Kayne followed the group up as Severus ordered what she felt was Bellatrix and her half to go up another path, telling them he would meet them at the clock tower in time.
As she followed his loan form traveling further up the stairs, disorientation beginning to strike her as too many individuals moved through her and her feet that traveled under her felt weightless and weak. But she continued on through it all, just kept following him up and up each step. She stalled with him on the seventh floor platform, she followed him through a winding hall before a false bookcase was pushed out of his way, a door at the end a empty corridor now open and their path leading them into a hidden passageway with a staircase that lead only up.
As if he knew that she was there he had pushed open the door so hard it hit against the wall, creating a loud bang and forcing the door to stick for only a moment before flying back. A movement that he watched her control, only seeing the sliding door suddenly stop in it's caught place. Slipping through the threshold, Kayne would travel through the darkness and up the final set of stairs when he stopped frozen, his eyes on the wooden paneled floor of the clock tower above him.
There was a wooden door that sat before them only inches from Severus's shoulder, a door that lead to the landing just under that of the clock tower. It was then that Kayne came from hiding and swiped her arm through the closest object leaving behind a tethering connection that clattered the bucket to the ground. In a trauma stricken jolt, Severus whipped around with his wand pointing right at where she stood.
But he couldn't see her, he made that obvious by how he looked right through her so, she knocked a candle off that closest ledge and Severus pulled himself up.
"Barnett." His voice whispered and she slammed her fist upon the wall, only traveling through the realm with enough strength to be heard as a small tapping.
But still he understood, and he turned to the wooden door where a muffle of low conversation on the other side could be heard.
She was ready, and with a nod to the empty space and to himself, he pushed open the door and stepped onto the shadow cast landing. Kayne slipped in, staying close to his back, she followed him as he followed the wall, removing his mask and keeping his wand pointed directly at the lone standing, Harry Potter.
It was Draco who was speaking from above. She could hear the words and now she realized much to quickly and turned her attention upwards, looking through the panels of wood that showed the boys frightened face and the Headmasters weak, blank expression. She wanted to run up there right then and wrap her arms around her Dragon. She wanted to tell him he had a choice and that he couldn't go through with this, but the scene would continue on in silence as her eyes lowered to see Severus raising his finger to his lips when met with Harry's startled attention.
Together, with wands lowered, the men waited with eyes held on above.
Harry looked away when a crash broke from above and the three below stood witness to the inhuman cackling entrance of Bellatrix as she stepped into view through the cracks. She came from behind Draco and lowered her calm voice to his ear, her tone quickly turning rough as she coo'd Draco in ways the churned Kaynes stomach. The women's once soft push turned to angry demands at Draco, aiding him with words of hate and disgust.
It was then, when Kayne glanced back down, did she see that Severus was gone. The next moment bringing her heart to turn numb as she heard his voice come from above.
He was there above her, she could see him through the panels standing among the Deatheaters, Draco's expression turning weak while his eyes held a sort of pain. Looking at Harry, she held everything that she could inside. She wanted to run up to him and tell him that bad things were about to happen but she needed him to trust her. She wanted to knock the boy aside so that it wasn't his eyes to see Severus's next move. She wanted to do so many things but there was nothing she could for in that moment, the air turned green and a flash of light chilled the air.
The Headmaster was dead, and Kayne ran straight through the boy who would live and jumped out the far window.
Finding herself in the air, weight she couldn't feel dropped her downwards, allowing her to turn on her back to watch the body of Albus Dumbledore bend backwards over the railing and drop. She watched the limp mans body spiral towards her and at their moment of impact she wrapped her arms around the dead man's form and closed her eyes tightly as she held him close. She could hear the wind whipping by them, she counted the seconds to the ground, and with nothing felt, the earth met their bodies in what for her, was a cold, empty breath.
