DISCLAIMER TO END ALL DISCLAIMERS!!!!!!~ I will not be making further disclaimers unless I think of an absolutely fantastic one. So, know now that I do not own or claim rights to any Harry Potter character or place. I own only my plot, my characters, and sometimes, my mind.
A/n~ Sorry it's been so long. Finally my lacrosse season is over so I have lots of time to work on this. Hey! You people need to review, cuz I live off of them. Thank you to those who do, I really do appreciate them all. Please, once again, critique me, make some suggestions if you have any, ask questions!!! This is in Hermione's pov, and still in that weird past/present tense. Also, the name Hermione gave everyone in chapters one and three is supposed to be spelled 'Aguila', not Aquila.
Chapter 5
**********
"…From the eyes of a child. Slowly those feelings were clouded by what I know now."
Those days that I told you about, those first two days at Carceris Crudelis, soon passed into obscurity. All of us prisoners soon fell into our usual routines of eat, work, eat, and sleep. Those times when any of us would talk to each other, the conversation was soon cut short. Not because of the guards hushing us, but because of the lack of subjects to talk about. No one wanted to talk about their pasts, or their families, because it brought back to many painful memories. No one really wanted to remember that their loved ones were far away or even dead.
It had been thirteen months since I first came to this hellhole. And it had been at least eleven months since the incident, in which I had slowly healed. Eleven months since that horrible night when, literally the floodgates of Hell broke open for me. In those eleven months, I slowly became stronger, not only physically, but also in willpower and in mind. You might say that becoming stronger in mind, for me, would be impossible, but it wasn't. I willed myself to keep going, to hold on to what innocence I had left, though there was barely a sliver. I became what you would call the model prisoner, doing everything I was told without causing too much distraction. I had this reputation among the overbearing guards as being catty, and very rebellious. But the point is, they couldn't touch me, without their wands, that is.
I also became devoted to helping out the rest of my fellow comrades. The overseers, even though they knew that I couldn't escape with the bracelet still on me, they also knew that wouldn't stop me from outwitting and harming them in some way. I had already made an example out of two guards, who both were on extended leave for several weeks because of the damage I had done to them. It was all, of course, done in self-defense. What else would you do if you had two slimy, chunky, troll-like creatures breathing down your neck and forcing themselves upon you. I mean, all I did was grab one of their wands and hex them a few advanced curses before the others came and cursed me. So now, whenever they began to bully around with one of the prisoners, where else would I be but in their faces cursing the life out of their lungs? The best part of all, though, was that the guards were usually the same two I had hexed before. You'd think that the twits would have learned the first time, but no, they kept trying to see how far they could go before pissing me off. The other guards stayed away and didn't usually pick on the prisoners, at least that I knew of. They were either too scared to mess with me, or too stupid to even know their danger.
Somehow, I involuntarily became in charge of my cabin. Sean had been found impaled on one of the pitchforks from the barn one morning, and they concluded that he had killed himself during the night. His death shocked us all. We had all heard of or seen people being taken into one of the mysterious buildings at the end of that rocky, grey avenue, never to be seen again, but never had any of us had actually seen one of our number dead in plain sight. Apparently he had thrust the oversized fork into his middle, and bled to death. That day, I stayed away form the rest of my friends, sick to my stomach from thinking about Sean. I didn't know him all that well, and, even though I thought he was rather depressed all the time, I couldn't imagine what he suffered so much that made him do it. If I could survive what I did, surely he could survive other things, couldn't he? I was beginning to tire of losing people, whether I knew them or not.
In any case, The guards immediately appointed me the head of my unit. I took on all of his duties, making sure everyone was up at the crack of dawn, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to do, at the time they were supposed to do it. But somehow, I felt that I began doing more than Sean did. He shut himself off from the rest of us, never letting us know anything about him. I, on the other hand, began opening up and talking with my cabin mates. There were so many times I would sit up and talk to the different people in my cabin, each of us getting to know so much about each other. Besides the memories most people tended to keep to themselves, we talked about our likes and dislikes, our loves and our fears.
Soon, not only did the mages in my unit come to me, but others throughout the camp began to talk to me when they could. My friends from that first day in the cafeteria soon also became in charge of their units, and people also started coming to them about their problems. We unknowingly became the inmate leaders of the prisoners. Because of all of the reading I had once done, I knew quite a lot of healing incantations that could be done without wands, so, whenever one of the prisoners got hurt, they would come to me or Niamh, who also was skilled in healing. If anyone had problems with another prisoner, they would come to one of us five, and we would settle it to the best of our knowledge. These people soon became the reason I lived, the reason I didn't just give up in the mornings. These people depended on me, and I couldn't just up and die on them. I devoted every spare moment to helping the other inmates, so as not to be forced to think about the incident. It was only at night that I had to cry myself to sleep in the little room I had inherited from Sean. But during the day, I had to be strong; I had to put on a brave face so that the others would not be as scared as I was.
Liam, Connor, Ceara, Niamh, and I were soon the closest friends. We still held back things from each other, we each knew it, but we were able to make the best of a horrible situation. About Seven months after we arrived, we began developing a plan. You'd think we would have tried to escape earlier than seven months, but the truth was that we were to tired to think beyond our next meal, or our next hour of sleep. In any case we had devised this plan after several weeks of noticing things. They weren't significant things, just little things like, a trunk that one of the inmates had been transporting for the Master had mysteriously split open and out spilled hundreds of wands. It didn't take long for the prisoner to recognize his own in the giant pile of seemingly wooden sticks. Thankfully, that inmate informed Ceara about the wands. That was when we first began to plan. We realized that trunk had every prisoners' wand in it, even the ones who disappeared into the main building. The inmate told us that he quickly cleaned up the mess before anyone saw and put the trunk in one of the storage cellars, where his overseer had told him to put it. We found out that only the Master had keys to those cellars, and that to get to those wands, we would have to steal the keys without his knowing.
I knew that if several of us were able to get a hold of our wands, we would be able to overpower the guards and escape. Each night after dinner, the five of us would sit together at a table and quietly discuss ways to escape. We would come up with these outrageous plans, only to discard them once we considered all of the risks involved. But then, one night, Liam came up with a brilliant idea, one that not even I could have come up with. One of the prisoners, a younger teenage girl was the Master's wife's house servant. She often cleaned the study where the Master usually retired to at night. She had found several bottles of poisons, one of them identified as Hianoa. Hianoa was a natural deadly poison, one that ate away at the insides within a matter of hours, slowly killing each organ of the body. It was odorless, tasteless, and colorless; an easy way to take out an enemy.
Our plan formed into one that included the girl taking some of the poison and putting it in a small phial the next time she cleaned that room. She would give it to me, so that I could hide the small phial in the kitchen area where no one could find it. When the time came, we would poison the Maaster's wine, as well as his nasty wife's, and whoever else was in their manor at the time. One they were drugged, Liam and Connor would take the keys from the Master, who would by that time be feeling quite cold, and go to the cellar where the wands were, and bring out the trunk. We would arm as many prisoners as we could, disarm the bracelets, and then make a run for it. If any of the remaining guards tried to attack, we would hex them into the next century and keep running. It was a great plan, we just had to get everything in order. Everyone would have to be in the right place at the right time. Everything had to go smoothly.
Soon enough, we were able to pick the day to do it. One of the prisoners, an elderly female mage, had found a planner on the Master's desk that showed his calendar. Apparently, three months from when she found it, the Master's brother was to come and celebrate the Master's birthday. There was to be a feast for the Master and his family and his employees. Most of the guards would be inside eating, leaving only a few to watch the prisoners. Perfect! We could kill an entire flock of birds with one stone. We began to plan out who would be where that night. We secretly spread around to the other prisoners where they had to be, without telling them why. We couldn't let the entire plan get out.
This brings us to the day I had previously mentioned, the one that changed my life. The other two days did change my life, but not as significantly as this one. It was about two weeks before the day our plan would come together, somewhere around the middle of June. We were all getting tense and short with each other. People were getting excited, at least those who knew about the plan. I myself was getting very anxious to get out of there. Of course the gods must have hated me because they had to send a new shipment of prisoners. As if my life wasn't getting stressful enough. I was on my way with my cabin to breakfast early that morning, and the sun was already warming to a sweltering ninety- some degrees. Once we got into the mess hall, and got our food, I headed straight for the usual table where the others were. I noticed as I sat down that Connor was looking very agitated.
"What's the matter, Connor?" I asked him as I picked up my fork to eat the disgustingly bland "food" on my plate.
"Danny, the Polish boy in my cabin found out that we're getting a new shipment in." Dead silence all around the table. That wasn't good. We hadn't gotten new prisoners in several months, and we had hoped that that meant we were winning the war. Apparently not.
"When?" asked Niamh quietly.
"Today, in the mid afternoon. They're already in that first building, probably getting branded as we speak. The guards'll be calling the camp into formation to distribute them among us. We will have the rest of the day off to get them situated," answered Connor. He was obviously not happy. Neither was I. this meant a whole boat load of people we were going to have to organize in less than two weeks without stirring up suspicion. We ate our breakfast in silence, thinking about the new task ahead.
We all went out to our work that morning, and worked as usual, until the guards began to pull us back to camp by our bracelets. We got into the usual formation in front of the mess hall, in long rows of sweating, smelly, dirty people. The head guard, the most unbearable of them all then announced the arrival of a "new batch of cookies," as he put it. I hated this man. He was so arrogantly despicable, I found it hard to look at him for longer than a moment. It was all I could do not to shiver in disgust.
Soon, one by one, the new inmates were slowly led out into the courtyard where we stood. They were quickly sorted into the different units, and we were dismissed. I had nine new charges under my wing, although only half of them looked younger than me. Without looking at them, I asked them to get in line behind the others, and to follow me. I made sure to check the other newcomers to see if I recognized anyone, and I didn't. As we walked back to the cabin, I noticed the silence that surrounded the newbies. No doubt they were all afraid, and trying to take in everything at once. I pitied them as I pitied myself. They were walking into the worst place they could be.
We arrived at the cabin, and I opened the half-decaying door. As everyone came in, I asked them all to sit down. My nine old charges, the ones who had been here a while, quickly obeyed, followed by the other nine. I then went into the same speech every other cabin leader would be saying then; the same speech that Sean had gone through with us. I then introduced myself to them with the usual Aguila. Then, I had the first nine introduce themselves before I had the newcomers do the same. I took that time to look at each one of them, so that I could memorize their names and faces. After a girl from southern France introduced herself as Nicole, another voice spoke up. It was a baritone, and belonged to a fair-haired teen of around the same age as me, or maybe a year older, I couldn't tell. It was then that I realized that he looked so familiar. I knew that I had seen him before, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
"My name is Bran, I am from London," he said with the familiar British lilt, as he glanced around at the others. If it weren't for the fact that his hair was a darker, sandy-blonde, and his skin tone was a bit tan, I would say he was… No, it couldn't be, not in here. But at that moment, he turned his head towards my direction, and looked at me straight in the eyes. My jaw dropped to the floor in shock. I knew those eyes. They were the same frosty shade of silver, and yet they weren't as cold as I remembered them.
*********
a/n~ AAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I am so proud of myself!! I have hated getting cliffhangered, and finally it is my turn!!! I'm sorry, folks, but I must say that it feels good to do this to people. I think it shall be happening quite often. *evil cackle, as she ducks from the ominous piles of fruit being hurled in her direction.* Teehee. Anyway, the next chapter should be up soon. I'm feelin' some major anger problems coming. Well, anyways, as usual, click that button and tell me what you think!!!