Right...y'all better freaking enjoy this 'cuz you probably ain't getting anything 'til Thursday, the 23rd (my birthday, btw). It's the Christmas season so you're gonna be getting Christmas fics, and you'll damn well like 'em! Lol. Plus, I have finals.
Check out my livejournal for news and fanart and more. If you need anything leave a message there, or e-mail me.
Enjoy, ya little buggers...
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October 1
Death was pressed into the far corner when the first group arrived. The smallest ones ran straight to the bars, cherubic faces pushing farther to try and see past the gloomy shadows. The older ones stuck to the middle with the cameras and the bulb lights, inconspicuously glancing over the heads of the shorter ones.
Death was shivering. She clutched the tatters of her clothes around her and did her best to regain the warmth that fluxed in and out since Harry had left her. It came with scorching, symphonic delight then left her just as suddenly, taking more warmth than it had given.
Her face was beaded with cold sweat and the cell was filled with the echoing rasps of her halting breaths. She felt sick.
"Get away from there!" A woman in acid green robes was yanking the small children away from the bars.
An unintelligible roar was followed by a shriek and the kids all stumbled back against the bars of her cage. Death didn't move from her corner.
"I'm gonna eat you!"
She could tell Colonel was the one bellowing. He liked to terrify anyone who came too near his cell. An all too familiar zap! filled the hall with the smell of smoking flesh and burning hair.
After the two some weeks she'd resided there, Death had learned to block out the writhing moans of agony as the brutal shocks subsided from the bodies of her prison companions. She would have just curled back up into the corner if it weren't for the chubby face staring at her somberly through the bars.
"Get...them out," she rasped loudly. She'd been practicing. Heads turned in the bright lights filling up the normally dim hall and stared at her in surprised interest.
"Do you have something to say, monster?" The acid-robed woman inquired, snootily.
Painfully, slowly, Death unfolded herself from the knot she'd made of her limbs and held up a callused hand to block the faint ribbons of light leaking into her corner. "Children shouldn't...be here."
"We're conditioning them to never become like the likes of you," another woman hissed, carefully maintaining her distance.
Death scowled and her cell was suddenly filled with light.
"Robert get away from there!"
She howled in pain, falling hard to the stone floor as she pressed her shaking, grimy fingers to her eyes to block out the retina-searing light. Her temples throbbed with the sudden onset of a headache and the reflexive tears leaked down the line of her face.
Shielding herself with the tattered remains of her robes, Death squinted at the women and children gathered around her cell. They were staring behind her. Horror making the cold sweat slither down her brow and the knots in her stomach tighten, Death looked up at the slime-strewn walls.
"Merlin's beard..."
The light flooded to every corner of the small room and the writing on the wall glowed stark white.
Death screamed.
"DON'T!" She shrieked and threw her body against the wall.
Pitifully she flung out her hands trying to block her painstaking work from sight, but there were too many walls. Eyes squeezed shut against the torturous flood light the chalk smeared beneath her desperate hands as her eyes watered.
"STOP!"
Flames erupted inside of her, screaming all the way from the floor to the very roots of her hair. Her sickness melted beneath the lava flow of pleasure flooding every nerve until her very sight burned through the light.
Glass shattered and everything went dark to the terrified screams of little children. Colonel roared, Blabber howled, and Death fell boneless to the merciful dark floor.
"We've lost the lights!" A man shouted.
"Children! Hurry – back to the entrance!" The voice of the acid-green robed woman echoed shrilly.
Death lay in a heap on the floor, content to just lie there basking in the rolling warmth. Like a drug, she'd become addicted to the escape and she craved it every moment it was gone. She was still lying in that same position when the shouts finally died away and one by one the torches flickered back to life down the long dark corridor.
An hour must have passed, but the rush never abated and Death never moved.
The heat completely took her over making things low in her body clench and the beating of her heart to accelerate its rhythm. She was panting, always panting, but the fire was burning her up inside and in some moments – when the euphoria of it was too great – she'd forget to breathe entirely. And only when darkness began to freeze the flames did she remember and large gasping breaths would echo into the hall.
Scarecrow was mumbling...it might have been to her – she couldn't tell. Something was happening outside. Something...
Through the heat something was nagging at her, crawling through the fire on its belly and becoming deeper and deeper engrained. Death focused in on that tiny feeling and the passionate waves rolled back, not enough to startle her, but enough that she was able to hold her eyes open.
She was facing the wall. That didn't help.
She might have whimpered at the sudden cold, but the more she focused on that little thought the more the heat settled into the background. She lifted her head off the cooling floor and her vision reeled for a moment at the sudden movement.
A tiny face was pressed to the bars of his cage.
Scarecrow was indeed talking, but it wasn't to her. She caught something that sounded like "dark magick" and "useful", but the roar of the fire was too strong in her ears. Despite the nausea it brought she shook her head fiercely to shake the noise from it and managed to pull herself to her knees.
Panting with the effort it took to fight the burning urge to lay back down, she nearly toppled over. Fingers digging into any purchase they could find on the slick stone, she swallowed her bile and looked up.
The child was staring at her. It was the same boy from the tour group.
"Who is she?" The voice of the young boy was hollow and even. Death shivered, hunched over and staring at the floor.
"POTTER'S SPY!" Blabber shrieked and it sounded like she was pounding on the wall that separated them.
The boy shot a contemptuous look to his left. "Shut up, Lestrange."
Death's eyes widened beneath the fringe of her bangs. Lestrange. She knew that name...
"This is Hermione Granger?" The child looked unimpressed.
Gryffindor pride surging, Hermione scowled up at him, feral honey eyes peering out at him from beneath the torrent of her mahogany curls. Something he most have seen made him lean closer to the bars, dark eyes narrowing. After a moment he shook his head, disregarding his vision as a trick of the light.
"She's been all over the papers," he told Scarecrow. "They actually think she is one of our Master's lieutenants."
Death's breath caught and she noticed a small detail hovering just outside the torch's light. Where the sleeves of his too-large robes had slipped down to the crooks of his elbows, just beneath the small fists gripping the bars of her cage, a snake infested skull glittered black.
Skull. She blinked. Skull...means...Death Eater. She stared at the kid. Impossible.
"Got dark magicks she has!" Scarecrow insisted in a hushed whisper. "She made some kid appear out of thin air – and Potter come out of the bloomin' wall!"
"From the wall?" The child looked down on her with distaste as she slowly, slowly, put one hand in front of the other and crawled into the light. "I think you're a fucking idiot."
The boy turned away from her and backhanded Scarecrow through the bars. "Now get ready," the kid barked. "The Dark Lord wants this breakout to be remembered."
Death's fingers curled around the cool metal bars and she leaned her flushed forehead against them. Grunting with the effort, she screamed inside for the flames to die out and, hand-over-hand, hauled herself to shaking feet.
"Hmph," The boy snorted, and sharp fingernails pierced the skin of her hands. "So the Gryffindor bitch can stand."
The hair fell out of Death's eyes and she bared her teeth at him. His black eyes widened under her red-hot scowl and he took a step back. "What the he—"
"WHORE!" Blabber had been spurred on again. "TRAMP! CONCUBINE!"
The boy shoved off Death's bars with a growl of annoyance and actually stalked over to Blabber's cell. A loud crack! resounded into Death's cell as the boy's knuckles met with the flesh of Blabber's cheek.
"Shut...the fuck up, Lestrange. I don't care if you're His favorite or not, I'll leave your ass."
Lestrange...
The memory was there, she could feel it. Every thing she'd loved had been sucked from her, but this...this memory held no happiness. She bit her lip 'til it bled. The congealing blood splattering against the stone was what brought the memory back to the surface.
The Department of Mysteries...
..The Veil...
SIRIUS!
"BELLATRIX!" Death yelled. The scuffling in the cell beside her ceased, and the only sound was of Death's heavy breaths.
The boy was suddenly in front of her again, moving as silently as the shadows that filled the prison. Tiny, cold fingers gripped her chin roughly and bent it painfully to expose her face to the light. Blood filled her mouth with the coppery taste of pennies, and the red trickling down her chin was what must have made him draw his hand back.
"Maybe your Boy Wonder will come and save you," he sneered.
The boy gave an enraged snarl as he wiped the blood and spit from his face. Death couldn't have moved if she wanted to, but just as he lifted a hand to strike her there was a nose from down the hall. Death watched the sadistic smile curve his baby lips and strained to hear.
It was the sound of children's voices.
"You're going...to kill them," Death wheezed.
Gripping the bars tightly, he got up on the tiptoes of his shined shoes and breathed foully right into her sweating face. "All. Hail. Voldemort."
Death shook with rage as the spittle dripped down her cheek and the heat rose in her clenched fists as the boy put on an eager face and skipped merrily down the hall to meet up with his group again.
A door opened from the opposite end of the hall and loud, crashing noises echoed down it. Death turned frantically to Scarecrow. He was hanging through the bars a maniacal look of eagerness on his face. The raid was here.
The Death Eaters were getting closer, she could hear their footsteps echoing on stone. As more racing feet were added to it, the rapidity increased until she was sure an entire swarm of Voldemort's forces was surging down the corridor to where the unsuspecting reporters were having the children pose for shots.
With all the strength she possessed, Death shook at the bars. Crying out in frustration she could not break free. "Please," she cried. "Give me strength!"
Thousands of miles away, where he'd been dozing on the common room couch, Sirius' eyes snapped open in surprise.
Fire exploded inside her and the roaring crackle of flames met the thunder of dozens of footsteps pounding in her head. Children were screaming.
The swarm was upon her and her hand snaked out with inhumane agility. She seized a man by the throat and lifted him straight off the ground. His comrades ran into his dangling legs and were knocked against the walls. Those that weren't freeing the nearby prisons stared in awe. Others continued their run down the hall.
"What the fu-"
Death tightened her grip and the man's eyes bulged.
"You must...stop this!" She insisted in a panic. The fire could no longer be contained to her body and the floor of her cell began to shake, the bars rattled, and dust rained down from the ceiling.
Somewhere down the hall, a little girl screamed.
She couldn't control the power. With a desperate scream the bars ripped right off their hinges and were blasted straight across the hall, and straight across the man she'd gripped between them. All four limbs were pinned against Scarecrow's empty cell and when gravity pulled the metallic wall down to the floor, the stumps fell on top of it with a thick, meaty sound.
While the Death Eater screamed, very much alive, Death retched against the wall. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she stepped over him and staggered down the hall on unsteady feet. He'd survive if he didn't bleed to death.
Each cell she stumbled past was empty, doors hanging wide open. Her bare feet slapped against the stones as she ran, picking up her pace off the burning floor. She skirted around a corner and careened headlong into black-robed bodies. Covering her head, she gave a cowering scream.
It was echoed by a half dozen shouts and when she opened her eyes the men were crumpled against the floor. More masked figures turned at the sudden disturbance, and Death's arm began to burn. She flung it outwards and a visible force rocked out against them, knocking the Death Eaters aside as if they were mere playthings.
"HELP!"
The children were being levitated into the air, crying as they were cruelly spun around and around. The reporters were being knocked about into one another and against the walls. They're wands had been taken by some of the escaped prisoners.
Sagging against the wall, Death looked up and met the frightened blue eyes of a tiny girl clutching to her blonde pigtails as she was almost dropped by the spell caster.
Death lost control.
With a snarl of pure rage she leapt into the fray with a fervor and a heat that she hadn't been capable of moments before. Her arms trailed behind her as she ran and with sickening cracks, the metallic cell doors ripped off their hinges. Fists swinging, she launched the weighty bars into the swarm of Death Eaters, beating a path through to the innocents.
Before they could get back onto their feet Death slid through and placed herself between Voldemort's forces and the levitating wizards and witches. "STOP THIS!" She yelled.
There was a spark behind her and the children began to fall. The flames inside her spiked and a large pink bubble engulfed everyone behind her, trapping them inside.
"Who the hell is she?!" A man demanded over the clamor.
Scarecrow was standing at the fore, a stolen wand gripped in his grimy fingers. His eyes were wide under the choppy fringe of his dishwater blonde hair. "That's Death."
"What can one girl do?" The boy hissed, standing between the blonde and a woman.
"Should've listened," Scarecrow hissed. "She ain't even got a wand."
The boy crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her, looking like a petulant child that was being annoyed by some broken toy. "Kill her."
A dozen green sparking killing curses came straight for her, and Death's knees bent, her fists by her head. The ground rumbled underfoot, and with an inarticulate scream she straightened, throwing her head back. The stone exploded upward in a spray of concrete and dirt, a wall of rock rocketing all the way up to the ceiling.
"Break it down!" She could hear the boy shouting, and she looked back over her shoulder at the people she was protecting. In the middle of the bubble, Rita Skeeter in her acid green robes stared back in disbelief.
"I won't...let them hurt you..." She promised, blood trickling down her cheek. The center of the wall exploded.
Death was knocked to the ground by the flying shrapnel, but the chunks of rock rebounded harmlessly off the great pink bubble keeping those inside safe. A pile shifted and stone clattered to the floor as Death surfaced. Her rage was peaking as the first masked attackers crawled through the hole, and with a ferocious snapping of her jaws she narrowed her eyes and they were thrown back.
Pushing off with a spike of adrenaline, she crossed her arms over her face and ran straight through the small hole, breaking a man-high tunnel through the middle of it. Whoever it was she came barreling into in a plume of dirt and dust met with her fists.
She'd been right after all...wizards weren't prepared to take a fist in the gut...
She punched upward with such an unbelievable strength that she lifted the Death Eater straight off the ground. Her left hand met the side of his face and he was slapped into the far wall. She caught a rushing man behind her in the face with her elbow and as the stream of blood arced through the air she fell into a crouch and kicked upwards at his kneecap sending his leg bending the complete opposite way.
The wall of rock behind her began patching itself together, blocking the fight from the sight of the children, and Death let the flames carry her through. She flipped onto her hands to avoid a curse and kicked at a woman before springing back onto her feet. Running at the wall she ran halfway up it to the ceiling before she somersaulted and landed with a furious roundhouse in the center of the pack.
She landed with such force that the stone dented beneath her bare feet. With a fierce cry she gripped at nothing and the muscles in her arms strained. The cell doors on either side of her were flung open. Like swatting a fly she swung one hand out and the nearest Death Eaters were sucked into the cell. She flicked out her other hand and the opposite side was thrown into their own cell. Each cage was filled to the brim with Death Eaters, but no matter how they pushed they could not get out of the tauntingly open doorway.
Hardly able to breath, Death called to the doors to shut and they did...locking the raiders and the prisoners inside.
The fire was dying, her arms up to the elbow were already numb. But with a wheeze the scent of burning leaves filled the enclosed space and the Death Eaters cried out as their wands dissolved to ash.
Her magic was dissolving as well – the wall behind her crumbling like the Tower of Babel.
She couldn't feel her arms at all now, and they hung lifelessly at her sides. Stumbling every step it was a wonder she made it back at all, but she did. There was the splatter of blood, and there was the unconscious torso and head – all that remained of the Death Eater.
Tripping over the bars on the floor she collapsed to the floor of her cell and was unable to get up. Her legs were useless now and the icy chill that came with every abandonment of the fire was spreading through her veins faster than the blood they carried.
Eyes rolling upwards she strained to look into the corner. "See..." she whispered. "I can still...help..."
Voices were shouting from the entrance; she hadn't really expected the battle to go unnoticed. Her eyes were only for Harry and Ron.
"Don't forget..."
The voices and footsteps stopped outside her cell, but Death's lashes had closed over the honey fire that was already fading from her eyes. She never saw them...the breath dying on her lips.
