Title: Back to the Future
Chapter Three: The Beginning of the Escape
Author: Kitty Malfoy
Everyone wants me to write moreI feel all fluffy inside. Hehehe. On with the story!
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She had snapped.
She knew it somewhere deep inside of herself, but just couldn't admit it. She struggled to convince herself that her love of Sirius and her fear of the darkness would never push her to insanity, but it had.
She stared blankly at her reflection in the mirror. Her long golden hair had lost its zeal and shine, and hung limply around her face. Her face was chalk-white, and tightly drawn across her features from lack of sleep. She reached up a hand and caressed her cheek. It was no longer soft as rose petals, but dry and rough, like sandpaper.
But what scared her most were her eyes. They had turned as black as the darkness that threatened to envelop her. Cold and lifeless, they sunk back into her head giving her a haunted, deranged look. A mad fire raged in them, spreading it's feverish heat throughout her body.
And yet, she could not admit that her mind was broken! And she refused to acknowledge the face in the glass as her own.
She reached forward with slender fingers and caressed the reflection's face. Her hollow eyes darting all over the glass, searching for a sign that this ghostly face was not her own.
She barely heard the knock on her door, and didn't bother to acknowledge it. He would come anyway. Instead she continued to scrutinize the face in the glass.
Her fingers trailed down the cold, clearness, of the mirror to rest on cracked coral lips that were constantly moving, constantly chanting the words that kept the darkness from consuming her.
She could feel his presence emanating from behind her, but found that she didn't care. He would do with her as he wished and she could nothing to prevent it.
"I know you can hear me, girl" Lucius growled.
He had changed his approach entirely after the Veritaserum incident. He no longer spoke in a sickeningly fake, sweet voice. Now he never acknowledged her as his daughter, or even by her name content to call her 'girl' or just 'you'.
He hoped to intimidate her with his demeaning words, but nothing affected her now. She only half heard his ranting and plots. It did not concern her. Nothing did. She only wished to escape the darkness. It would never leave her, not even in sleep, which is why she slept little, and when she did, her mind was filled with nightmares that brought her awake, screaming into the night.
Most were of the night her father had placed the Torture Curse upon her, and then left her there for hours, before leaving her to fall into a fevered and delusional sleep where she had dreamt of her wedding to Sirius and the ever-constant darkness.
"Look at me when I speak to you!" He hissed and struck her with the back of his hand. Her head snapped to the side, but she did not cry out. Instead she turned back to the mirror, and outlined the violent patch of red on her reflection's cheek.
Just like my own she thought to herself.
She looked back into the eyes of the wraith-like face and shuddered. No, those could not be her eyes. Her eyes were a brilliant blue that sparkled like the ocean. She was not a dead a husk of a girl, she WAS NOT crazy!
The eyes threatened to suck her in again, and she could feel the cold darkness wrapping around her face, clouding her vision, and she brought her fist down violently at the mirror, cracking the glass.
The cracks fanned out like the threads of a spider web, reflecting the light in odd ways, and casting strange shadows on her face. The deathly face that had haunted her and pulled her towards the darkness was broken and faceted, only bits and pieces of it's haunting portrait remained, as shards of glass fell from the frame that had held the mirror.
Lucius' spider-like eyes widened a fraction of an inch in surprise at his daughter's wild and unprovoked ferocity. He grabbed her chair firmly, and swung her around. "Your meeting with our Lord is drawing near, and you must look your best. You are a Malfoy."
Lately Lucius' had taken to forcing her to write down her responses on a pad of paper that she carried with her always, as she would not speak them aloud. And she pulled it out of a drawer now.
*I am a Malfoy, in name only* She wrote, in her tight, precise cursive.
Lucius snarled, and ripped the paper from underneath her hands and through it into the fireplace.
"You may think that all you like, but you will become the Master's servant as your forefathers have before you.like all the Malfoys!"
*All the Malfoys except my brother, right?*
Lucius snarled again. "Your brother was a fool! And I no longer acknowledge him as a son."
Serenity's quill flew quickly over the parchment. *Am I a fool as well? For you do not acknowledge me as your daughter.*
"That is because you need to be taught obedience."
*.but if I am not your daughter, isn't it reasonable to assume that you are not my father, and that I do not need to listen to anything you say?*
She had a smirk on her face. Lucius did not respond to her written words, though she knew that he had read them. "Tomorrow, Cassandra will help you find a suitable gown for your meeting with Lord Voldemort. A Malfoy must always look her best."
He turned on his heel and whirled out of her room, his cloak floating out menacingly behind him. Serenity's smirk fell and she stared at his retreating from with depthless, black eyes.
A glittering of light caught her eye, and she turned her head slowly around to face the object of her searching eyes. It was a shard of glass that had broken off of the mirror. It caught a beam of light streaming in from her window and sent prisms of rainbow light all around her room. It's surface reflected such a bright light, that Serenity couldn't look directly at it.
Such a bright light She thought. Much brighter then the darkness
With tentative fingers she reached down and grabbed the glowing piece of glass and held it tightly in her hand. She held her clenched fist to her chest and rocked back and forth. Wishing to see the brilliant glittering of light she opened her hand, to discover the glass had cut into her skin, and she bled freely. The glass, out of the sunlight, was dull, and dim.
The darkness has reached it as well She wept, completely oblivious to the blood that spilled over her cupped palm and dripped steadily onto her note pad.
Angrily she closed her fingers around it tightly into a fist, and the glass shard cut deeply into her. With an insane rage she punched the mirror repeatedly, until both her hands were scratched raw, and blood caked her clothes.
Feeling dizzy she stumbled out of her bed in an attempt to reach her bed, but lost her footing, and crumpled into a heap in the broad band of sunlight that poured through her open window.
That was how Cassandra found her, over an hour later. A trail of blood leading toward her crumpled frame, from the broken mirror, Her drained face towards the window, and her own blood pooled around her.
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Of course a little spell had stopped the bleeding, and another one easily cleaned the stains off the carpet. But there wasn't a spell that could replenish lost blood, and Serenity lay in her bed recuperating.
.::Please you must sleep!::. Cassandra urged.
Serenity did not reply as she stared blindly at the wall across from her bed.
Cassandra, ever faithful and caring, wrung out a cold rag and dabbed Serenity's feverish face, gently.
Cassandra stayed by Serenity's bedside well into the night, when she began to drift off around three in the morning. Serenity abruptly reached out and grabbed the little house-elf's arm, and held her shocked form still as she slowly turned her head to look at Cassandra.
.::I have to get out of here::. Serenity pleaded.
Cassandra was silent, staring at the chanting girl in shock.
.::Please!::.
.::There's a stop for the Knight Bus on the other side of the forest, but you'll never make it. You have to get through the back door, and surely the other elves will alert Mr. Malfoy!::. Cassandra reasoned.
.::I can handle that. How far is it to the stop?::. Serenity asked swinging her legs over the bed.
.::Almost two miles! You won't make it before you collapse!::. Cassandra exclaimed.
.::It's better than staying here::. Serenity pointed out quietly.
Cassandra opened her mouth as if to protest, but closed it and nodded in solemn agreement.
.::Hurry! And God's speed::. Cassandra mentally whispered.
Serenity nodded and swung a light, black cape over her shoulder and drew up the hood. Serenity leaned down quickly and hugged Cassandra.
"Thank you." Serenity whispered, quickly, and stood again. Her chanting beginning again, as if it had never stopped.
Cassandra gasped in surprise, "You talked!" she stuttered, but Serenity was gone.
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Serenity slipped down the grand staircase, with patience, but the need to hurry nagged at the back of her mind. The longer she took, the sooner he'd find her. And without her wand she couldn't chant the Quietus Charm, and without her chanting the darkness would consume her.
Then she was at the bottom of the staircase, her entire mind focused on keeping herself invisible. Some of the house elves were already up and lighting fires throughout the house, which meant her father would be awake soon.
She had to pass through the kitchens to reach the back door, and halfway through the large corridor that branched off to the kitchens, a wave of dizziness swept over her.
.::My Spider Sense is tingling::. She thought to herself, just before her father's voice was heard.
"Make my eggs right this time, you stupid creature!" He snarled at a little house elf. He was in the dining room, but his voice carried over the empty house.
Serenity abandoned all patience and caution and fled down the hall. It took all her will power not to fling open the door. Sliding it open she ran out into the night.
She had been running for about five minutes, when she stopped dead in her tracks. Had she closed the back door? In her mind she saw the light ash door swinging wide open in the cool night.
.::Shit!::. She gathered more speed and ran off into the night.
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"Where's my coffee, you-" Lucius stopped in mid-snarl as a cool draft stirred the hem of his robes. "Did you leave a window open you imbecile!?"
He didn't wait for the elf's pathetic excuses as he stalked through the kitchen corridor, and towards the source of the draft.
The back door was hanging wide open into the night. A single set of prints ran off into the gray-dawn of the forest. Lucius cursed and summoned a cloak, and ran off following the zigzagged path of footprints.
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R & R!
Kitty Malfoy
(^ ^)
Flames will be used to set my cat on fire.
