Heaven Tastes Sweeter
Chapter Nine
After what had seemed an eternity to Pansy, Terry came to a halt.
"We…need…to…breathe…" Terry said between desperate gasps for air.
Pansy just nodded in full agreement. Very obviously her lung capacity was nowhere near as big as that of the Ravenclaw so she couldn't afford herself the luxury of speech.
The Slytherin looked around herself to see that the trail they were following had led them to some sort of beach with dark, coarse sand that ended with a rocky wall that stood about ten to fifteen meters of height.
Suddenly, both students heard someone shouting:
"They're there!!!"
Looking up the natural wall, Terry and Pansy saw something that horrified them: a group of five Death Eaters were staring at them from above.
'What on earth have I ever done to deserve this?' Pansy thought hysterically, then a little voice inside her head replied: 'Many nasty things…'.
It was a really small consolation to see that the Ravenclaw, was as mad as she was with sheer fear only that, somehow, he still managed to force his brain to reason properly.
"RUN!!" Pansy heard him shout.
Her legs had become totally independent from her brain and she found herself running Merlin knew where. The only thing that mattered was to put as much distance between themselves and the chasing Death Eaters as possible.
Pansy felt her lungs burn because of the lack of properly oxygenated air but she didn't care.
Then, a different burning sensation made her stop. She turned around and, as she did, she felt some of her long black hair fall into the ground.
"What the…" she started asking and then she felt something sting on her back.
"Oh Merlin!! Pansy they're throwing cutting curses!! They got you on the back!!" Terry screamed.
This made them run even faster but, unfortunately, three of the Death Eaters were closing up on them far too fast and the two students got some more cuts.
Pansy saw Terry dodging a Bonding charm and then, it happened, just like that, someone threw a Freezing charm that blocked Pansy right where she was.
Unlike with the Petrificus charm, the Freezing charm didn't get her unconscious so Pansy could still see that Terry had kept running ahead of her and, more importantly, had not noticed what had happened to her.
Pansy silently begged he would not notice and that he would keep running but, since tonight wasn't Pansy's lucky night, the Ravenclaw, not hearing her steps next to him, decided to turn round to see the reason of her sudden halt.
"Pansy!! Come on, you can't stop now!!" Terry shouted while jumping out of yet another immobilising curse's way.
With a titanic effort, Pansy forced her mouth to open and shout something that was meant to say:
"I can't."
Pansy's eyes filled with tears knowing that, that was it for her and hoping that Terry would have the sense to leave her and escape but, this was definitely not Pansy's luckiest nights and Terry, for some stupid reason beyond her comprehension, stopped, turned round and re-started running towards her.
"What are you doing!?!" Pansy tried to shout but it came out as some unintelligible mumble.
"I'll carry you!!" Terry said once he had reached her, finally understanding what had happened to the girl.
"Nnnoo!" Pansy managed to mutter.
"What? I can't leave you here!!!" Terry shouted frantically seeing that the Death Eaters would reach them in a matter of seconds.
"I'll carry you!" the Ravenclaw repeated trying to lift her immobilised body off the ground.
"Go" Pansy muttered. Terry dropped her onto the ground while trying to evade another curse, this time a Cruciatus one.
This finally managed to convince Terry that she was right, he had to leave at once.
"I'm sorry…" Terry said feeling a knot in his throat.
"Go" Pansy repeated her vision now blurred by the stream of tears coming out her eyes.
Terry ran as fast as he could and soon he disappeared from her sight.
Pansy then closed her eyes and got determined to not open them again.
"You! Take her back to the castle…you two, go after Potter!!" she heard a male voice shouting next to her. Pansy wanted to laugh out loud: they still believed poor Terry was Harry Potter.
"Is she dead?" Pansy heard another male voice ask.
"I hope not…we need the Malfoy brat to come after her…" Pansy heard the first voice reply making her shut her eyes even more tightly.
Then she felt her body being lifted from the ground, she didn't feel any hands on her so she imagined they were using a Hover Charm to transport her back to the castle.
"There she is!!" Pansy heard a third voice, this time female, shout. Pansy seemed to recognise the voice and this made her open her eyes very slightly.
She saw Bellatrix Lestrange pull her wand out of her robes and shout:
"Avada Kedavra!"
Pansy saw the rest in slow motion. A jet of green light erupted from the tip of Bellatrix's wand, then the Death Eater that was carrying her with the Hover Charm managed to move her body out of the killing curse's way so it missed Pansy by just a handful of centimetres.
"What the hell are you doing? We need her alive!!" one of the Death Eaters shouted.
"No we don't! Let me kill her!" Bellatrix shouted sounding bloodthirsty.
"No! Our Lord is angry enough we let them escape…how do you think he'll take it if we let his biggest enemy escape and we kill the bait that will get us Malfoy's kid?" the male Death Eater replied.
Pansy saw Bellatrix look at her with hatred. Then, the woman shouted:
"Get her out of my sight!!"
To be continued…
A/N: Next chapter should be up within the next 24 hours…I just need to edit it. I should have uploaded both chapters yesterday but with all that has been happening in the world in the past few days I didn't feel like doing something as banal as posting my fic. I was far too distressed by all the images CNN keep showing…I still have a very hard job trying to come to terms with what has happened…I can only try to imagine what these people there are going through.
My deepest condolences go to all the affected for all their irreplaceable losses.
I would like to ask to everyone that reads this fic to please say a prayer for the people affected by the tsunami and to help in any way you can.