Chapter Six – Darkness Supreme
A/N: Bah. I really need criticism on this chapter... I have no idea where this is going. After I'm done, I should be able to get back on track, but this will need some editing. So anyway... Chapter Six!
Katie Bell: No, I don't mean "Katie". I am talking about the same person, but 'Katie' sounds more like a nickname for Katherine or Kate. I like the name fine, but I was just trying to show that the characters have grown up. So I call "Katie Bell" "Kate Bell" instead.
~~~
"Stop being dramatic," Angelina ordered, glaring at Kate crossly. Kate arched an eyebrow, but then obeyed the order and stepped into the Pens, wand at the ready. The others followed her closely, Oliver the closest. The corridor was lined with low metal doors that were huddled close together, with small barred windows. Small, indistinct noises could he heard from within the cells, and none of them were happy sounds. Kate sauntered up to the closest door and inspected it closely, biting her lip, newly gray eyes narrowed in concentration. She finally tapped the door with her wand, and an intricate network of green lines appeared all along the corridor, with certain places that glowed gold and red. It appeared as though they were hovering just underneath the glaze over the stone floor... inside the stones, but not.
"This reminds me of a computer chip!" Arabella exclaimed, looking around at the lines in wonder. The others looked at her, confused. "Ah... never mind. It's a muggle thing." The other shrugged, and resumed examining the lines. They did indeed resemble the lines inside a computer chip, except these lines were glowing a bright neon green and snaked over the entire corridor, ceiling and walls included. Kate was looking at the silver door in front of her. A small red glow was blinking steadily from a place where a green line ended. She carefully followed the line until she found a small gold glow where it ended. She poked the spot with her wand. The line immediately blinked out, and the silver door swung open. A dirty figure slumped through the door to collapse on the floor.
"Aha!" Kate yelled. "That's it! Follow the line from the door, and put a small disabler charm on the gold part!" She ran over to the collapsed figure, and the others hurried to the doors, and were soon following the thin green lines all along the corridor.
Kate knelt down by the figure and touched it's shoulder gently. "Hello?" she said softly and kindly. "It's alright, we're friends. What do you need?" the figure trembled a bit, and looked up from the floor slowly, crouching and curling into a tiny ball. She – Kate could see now that it was a woman – looked around suspiciously, her body shaking. "It's okay," Kate soothed. "We're friends. We're here to help. What's wrong?" The woman looked at Kate with dead eyes, and slowly held out her hands, palm up. Kate reached out and gently took her hand, and the girl trembled. She started to cry.
"It... it's really over?" came the hoarse whisper.
"It's over," Kate whispered back. She gently pulled the woman into a hug.
Oliver watched the exchange out of the corner of his eye as he traced a green line with his wand. He observed the tender way Kate helped the woman to her feet and brushed off the other's robes, and gently cleaned her cuts with her wand. He watched as Kate helped the woman to sit down near the door, outside the pens, then come back with a fiery look in her eyes. She tapped a red glow, then began to follow the attached green line with determination in her eyes. She's wonderful, he reflected, then remembered he was still supposed to be angry at her – or was he? Oliver couldn't remember whether he was supposed to be ignoring her or glaring at her... so he settled for following his little green line. When he found the attached red glow, he quickly poked it with a disabling spell and there was a small pop. A door slid open, and a wild looking girl ran out.
"Try and catch me now, bastards!" she yelled, and ran for the door. Luckily Angelina intercepted her.
"Whoa! We're here to help!" she said, hands out. Without breaking stride, the girl tackled Angelina, grabbed her wand, did a somersault that made her flip back onto her feet, and continued running. Arabella yelled something, and the door leading outside slammed shut. The girl slammed into it, and stumbled back.
"Ow," she said, rubbing her forehead. She then brandished Angelina's wand at the others, glaring. "Stay back! I know how to use this!"
"Calm down," Arabella said. "We're the good guys. Here to free you." The girl didn't respond. "Oh, come on. You do know about the Resistance, don't you?" Still no response. "About Harry Potter, and the rebels that fight against You-Know-Who?" The girl raised an eyebrow, and Arabella threw up her hands. "Hopeless! She's been living under a rock!" The petite witch then proceeded to continue following the tiny green line, then poking the red glow. Another door swung open, and a figure slumped out of it, dragging itself towards the door slowly.
"I'll believe you're the good guys when You-Know-Who's overthrown," the girl said, ignoring the bloody mass that was clawing it's way across the floor.
"You-Know-Who... but we don't know, you can't know, we're all just in the dark... isn't there a song about that? But there are songs about everything, but they're all inside my head, and they're all jumbled and mixed with the words..." a small, scratchy voice came from the bloody mass on the floor. Everyone looked down as the bloody figure rolled over, scratching at the air. There was a collective gasp from everyone in the corridor.
Neville Longbottom lay on the floor, his eyes wide, vacant and staring. There was a crazy grin plastered to his face, and several of his teeth were missing. Long angry scratches ran down his face, and his fingers were cut and bleeding, as though he had tried to claw his way through stone. Ron quickly knelt down beside him.
"Neville?" he called softly. The other man's eyes showed no recognition, but his head turned and he stared at Ron with a crazy look in his eyes.
"Ne-who?" he said, and began to giggle crazily. "I know a knee, but it's not your knee, it's my knee..." More giggling and incoherent babbling. Ron stood up quickly, his expression a mixture of horror, anger and deep sorrow.
"Poor Neville," he said softly, his voice breaking as he moved away from the crazed man lying on the floor. Angelina covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide and filled with horror. Arabella knelt down next to the giggling figure.
"Neville? Can you hear me?" she asked softly, placing a hand on his forehead gently. There was an immediate change in the boy's behavior.
"Getoffme! Gerroff getoff getoff getoff..." Neville shot to his feet and ran into a corner, cowering in it, hiding his eyes. "Don't touch me! You can't know! You can't!" Neville ran backwards a few steps, then with a crazed look in his eyes ran towards the stone, his head down, like a bull charging.
"NO!" screamed Angelina... as Neville's head met with the stone wall. There was a cracking noise, and Neville slumped to the ground, blood pooling from his head, a maniacal smile back on his face. Kate walked over to the body, slipping off her black robes as she walked, and draping them over Neville's body. Underneath her robes, Kate was wearing Muggle jeans and a black long sleeved shirt. She knelt by Neville's body and bowed her head silently, the others in the room following suit.
"Okay, I believe you're not evil," announced the ex-prisoner with Angelina's wand. Everyone looked up at her as she relaxed her stance, no longer standing in a fighting position. She tossed the wand back to Angelina, who made a belated effort to catch it. The wand bounced off her hands and landed on the floor, setting off some sparks as it clattered on the stones. Angelina swooped down to pick it up quickly.
"My name is Rowan," she said.
"We'd introduce ourselves, but we really have to free these prisoners," Arabella said, obviously still annoyed with the other woman for not believing the Resistance was good. Rowan nodded, understanding, and sat down on the floor next to Neville's body. She gently took his hand and began to whisper to him.
Sirius was trying to trace the lines, but he found their glow hard on his eyes, and he often got the lines mixed. The snatches of whispers he heard from Rowan weren't helping his concentration either, and in the end he gave up and went to go see how the freed prisoners were doing.
Kate and Oliver kept "accidentally" brushing up against each other.
Arabella was fuming about Rowan's ignorance and her own inability to make her sleeves stay up above her elbows.
Ron was trying to contact Hermione.
Angelina was trying to contact Harry.
"Hermione? Are you there?"
"Ron?"
"Hermione! Thank God you're alright!"
"Why wouldn't I be? I'm just crawling up these steps, you know. There really isn't anything to worry about, except maybe falling down the stairs, which I'm not very likely to do, so you needn't worry, Ron."
"That was a long sentence. Forgive me for being concerned about your well-being. Are you anywhere near the top?"
"I think so. God, I hope so. I'm getting tired again, I have to stop. I'll contact you later."
"Alright. Bye."
"Bye."
Ron cracked his neck, began chewing on a knuckle, and continued tracing the lines.
Angelina wasn't having as much luck. No matter how hard she looked, Harry was nowhere within range. Which was, of course, impossible. It also didn't help that Sirius was leaning down, very close to that girl sitting by Neville, and whispering with her. Angelina shook that off, wondering where the thought had come from, then sat down in a quiet corner with a silencing spell around her to help her concentrate.
The freed prisoners were mostly crazies, who were quickly put under a deep slumber spell to keep them from making noise.
After the last cell door was opened, twenty people lay on the floor asleep, seven were dead, and three were... fairly sane. One of those three was Rowan, who was still holding Neville's hand and whispering to him.
"What are you doing?" Sirius asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Soothing his spirit," Rowan responded. "He's scared and doesn't know what's going on. I'm trying to calm him down."
"How do you know that?" Sirius asked skeptically. Rowan reached out and took Sirius' hand, then pressed it to Neville's. Sirius was immediately awash with emotions that he didn't understand, and he jerked his hand away from Rowan and Neville's hands. "What was that!?" he asked, eyes wide.
"You just felt what he was feeling," Rowan said quietly.
"How?" he asked, amazed, staring at his hands.
"I've always been able to do that. I feel people's emotions when I touch them, and if I touch two people at the same time, they can feel each other's emotions."
"Could you just feel mine?" Sirius asked. Rowan nodded, raised an eyebrow and gave him a small smirk. Sirius growled at her.
"What did you feel?" he asked. Rowan gave him a small smile.
"Lots of things," she said vaguely, obviously dismissing the subject.
"Huh." A few feet away, Kate was frowning and muttering to herself.
"What's wrong?" Oliver asked quickly... a little too quickly for someone who was supposed to be not paying attention to her. Kate didn't notice this.
"I was just wondering... nothing. What time is it?" Kate said, changing the subject. Oliver checked his watch.
"A little after seven," he responded. "Is that enough time?"
"It depends," Arabella answered. She was in the process of ripping her sleeves off. "If we don't run into anything too large, we should be fine. If we run into something big, it might not be enough time."
"We should probably get going, then," Ron remarked at the moment Angelina let out a small scream and toppled over from her position in the corner of the room. Immediately everyone rushed to her aid. Rowan, who was closest, got there first and grabbed Angelina to stop her from falling onto the stone floor. The moment her hands touched skin, however, she jerked them away, leaving Sirius to catch the other girl.
"Angelina? What's wrong?" Arabella asked quickly, kneeling down by Angelina's head.
"Dragon..." Angelina whispered. "We have to go!" She lurched upwards and towards the door, everyone staring after her. "NOW!" she screamed, panic in her voice. "Get out! RUN!" Everyone bolted for the door. After the last person was out, Rowan slammed the door, but Ron started to go back.
"The sleeping people..."
"We don't have time!" Angelina screamed, frantic. "Run!" She grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the door, down a random corridor, the others following.
The Pens exploded in a rush of white hot flames that shot down the labyrinth of corridors towards the small group. Angelina, Kate and Sirius all simultaneously aimed their wands over their shoulders and yelled something incomprehensible due to the roaring flames. Strong blue light flashed out from their wands, blocking the corridor behind them. The flames slammed against the blue 'wall' and stopped, but the blue light began to sizzle, as though extreme heat was melting it away.
As Ron ran down the corridor, he heard a tiny voice inside his head...
"Ron...." Then it was gone. It sounded tired and pained, and yet somehow familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. He shrugged inwardly. He had more important things to worry about.
Angelina was tiring quickly. She still was fairly weak from the after affects of the spell which would have allowed her to contact Harry... and was weak from the mental assault on her mind. As she'd been scanning for Harry, her mind had hit something much more powerful.
A dragon. It had sensed her tiny spark of power and attacked, it's loyalty being to Lord Voldemort. Angelina quite honestly hadn't done anything to provoke it, but she had sensed it's intent and has warned her friends before it had attacked. When her mind had collided with the dragon's, it had somehow managed to leech her of energy. Now, she was stumbling and breathing hard when a run like this should have been no sweat. Someone seemed to notice this, and an arm wrapped itself around her waist and supported part of her weight. Angelina looked up into a pair of the strangest eyes she had ever seen.
They were intensely blue... shockingly blue. Icy, and beautiful. There was a ring of frosted white directly around the pupil, and there was a deeper blue layer around the outside of the iris. Angelina blinked, and saw that it was Sirius. She let him know with a sigh of relief that the gesture was appreciated. A warmth began to spread through her body, and Angelina realized she was blushing. Startled at this realization, she looked away from Sirius' face.
Arabella's face was twisted in a snarl. The fact that about twenty seven people were now scorched to a crisp had not escaped her notice, and she was hurling insults at Lord Volemort in her mind.
You no-good sonofabitch asshole, what is your PROBLEM, why must you simply kill innocent people and drive others mad, when I get to you you'll wish you'd never even been BORN, you stupid self-centered PRICK, you've ruined my LIFE and lives of my FRIENDS and my FAMILY and how DARE you do this!? Her thoughts continued to run along those lines for the rest of the sprint.
As the rag-tag group reached a fork in the corridor, a loud pop let them know that the barrier holding the flames back had broken, and an immediate roaring informed them of the fiery death headed towards them.
"Which way?!" screamed Kate at Sirius. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two passages.
"Left!" he yelled, and dragged Angelina into the smaller tunnel. Angelina approved inside her head: This looked vaguely like the passage up from Potions to the Great Hall back when she had gone to Hogwarts. The others followed, hastily setting up another barrier so that the flames would go down the other corridor. It worked, the white hot flames shot down the other tunnel, leaving the small group panting for breath in the darkness.
"Lumos," Oliver muttered, and his wand began to give off a weak light. "All right?"
"Fine," Kate gasped. "Just... peachy... keen... thanks..."
Sirius gently lowered Angelina to the ground and in a rare moment of gentleness swept her hair out of her eyes.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly, picking up her hands and placing his fingers on her wrists, feeling for her pulse. Angelina nodded weakly, breathing hard.
"Just... used up too much energy," she said softly, sounding drained. "I've got a monster headache coming on..." Sirius reached out and lightly touched her temples with his want. A faint green glow touched her, and Angelina's head lolled onto her shoulder in sleep. It was a simple spell, she would awake in about fifteen minutes feeling refreshed and new. Her body would pay the price for it later, but the spell would help her keep going now.
Oliver and Kate had both sunk into weary puddles on the ground, leaning against the wall and sitting next to each other. Neither spoke a word, either to each other or anyone else. And if they noticed that their hands were lying on the floor, twined together, neither one mentioned it.
Arabella was furiously exhausted. Her long silky black hair was sticking to the back of her neck and kept getting tangled. Almost as annoying as those stupid sleeves, she thought to herself while angrily pushing strands of hair out of her eyes. As she thought of the annoying sleeves, her face lit up with a brilliant idea. Arabella began searching her robes for something.
Ron watched Arabella's antics through half-closed eyelids. He was breathing heavily, and trying to place the voice he'd heard in his head moments ago.
Rowan had collapsed onto the ground, weary from soothing the confused Neville's spirit. Next to her was a girl that looked Greek, and on her other side was a deadly looking Japanese girl. The Grecian girl had short hair that came to about the middle of her neck, and was cut jaggedly. She wore the suit that all the Pen prisoners wore- a gray jumpsuit that was extremely baggy, due to the skinniness of the prisoner. Her eyes were steely gray, and she had a drained, exhausted look to her. The other girl had black hair, cut boyishly short, and vacant pearly eyes. There was a thin silver ring around her iris, and a slightly blue tint where the iris should be, but otherwise there was just a pupil. She looked Japanese. Her skin was practically transparent.
"Hullo," Rowan said between deep breaths. The Grecian girl nodded a hello, clutching her side and gasping for breath. The Japanese girl gave a small bow.
"Hey," she replied, not sounding winded at all. She quickly knelt down besides the Grecian girl and began murmuring to her in a foreign tongue. The Grecian girl nodded, still sounding winded, and a small silver glow appeared around her chest. The Japanese girl sighed with apparent relief. Rowan regained enough of her breath to gasp out a question.
"You know each other?" The two looked up at Rowan, and nodded simultaneously.
"We're..." the Grecian girl started to say something, but was silenced by the other girl with a quick jab. "...Related," she finished lamely. "We're related."
"What're your names?" Rowan asked, starting to catch her breath.
"My name is Emi," said the Grecian girl, smiling slightly. "This is Jen." Jen smiled, and Rowan shivered slightly. A deadly girl, she thought to herself.
"Are you okay?" Rowan asked them, shaking off the shivers that Jen's smile gave her.
"I'm fine," Jen said, her breath already back.
"Same," Emi said in a small voice. "Just a little tired." Jen stood up, moving with grace. Rowan shivered again, feeling death roll off the other girl in waves.
"Hey," came a gasped voice that sounded like Sirius, "Newbies, are you all okay?"
"We're fine," Rowan answered.
"I'm Jen, this is Emi," Jen said as the moved down the corridor, her eyes narrowing in thought. She put up a hand and touched the magical barrier that had saved them from the flames. "Don't you think we'd better get moving? This isn't strong enough to hold up under Dragon's Fire. It doesn't act the way normal fire does."
"A valid point, Jen, but we're not really in any condition to move," Ron replied, wincing as he tried to stand on a leg that had fallen asleep. As though Lord Voldemort had read Ron's thoughts, there was a sudden rumbling noise... and the stones beneath their feet began to crack.
"Time to go!" Kate announced, leaping to her feet, closely followed by Oliver. They were no longer holding hands. Jen scooped Emi up in her arms and shot off down the corridor, following Kate and Oliver. Sirius scooped up the still sleeping Angelina and grabbed Arabella's arm, and between the two of them they managed a kind of stumbling run while supporting the sleeping girl. Rowan and Ron brought up the rear, both still slightly winded from their previous running. However, this sprint didn't last long: As the group rounded a corner, they ran straight through a large silver... pool, for lack of a better word. It was silver, liquid, but was somehow vertical and covering the entire tunnel's height. Just as people turned the corner, they ran straight into it, without time to stop. The group of rebels was no exception. Kate, then Oliver, ran through first, and did not reappear on the other side. Jen, carrying Emi, then Sirius, Angelina and Arabella all managed to stumble into it, then Rowan and Ron, respectively.
After Ron stumbled through it, the pool closed in on itself and vanished.
High pitched, cold laughter filled the empty corridor...
A/N: I apologize for both the suckiness and shortness of that chapter... but I'd written the characters into a situation I didn't really have the attention span or the inspiration to write them out of, so I had to wait until I actually could write something that didn't completely suck. I'm still not satisfied with this... someone give me constructive criticism? Anyway, the next chapter should come up fairly soon, because I know where I'm going with this storyline... finally...
--Lilith
"You're just in time for my daily count to infinity."
"Fantastic. What number are you on?"
"Two." –David Mack's Kabuki