Hey! I know I promised this chapter sooner...but I got really busy really quickly. and another apology about the length; an ill-placed Rottweilier bite caused me to shorter things up considerably. In any case, I'll do my best to make up for it soon!

I'm fairly happy with it's turnout anyway! Read and review! Thanks in advance!

Q

Angelina knelt, panting on the drab stone floor. She was vaguely aware of people yelling…everything around her seemed slow and detached. Deaf to anything but the sound of her own thoughts, she blinked slowly and tried to pull herself from the mental fog and orient herself.

Every muscle in her body felt taxed and tired, and she felt her clothes sticking to her body with either sweat or blood…she wasn't certain. Her pulse quickened…she knew she was in some sort of danger.

Forms and colors struggled to materialize just beyond her range of vision. She saw fluid darkness, and she knew it well. Stuck entirely within her own mind, she panicked and begged to feel the cold stone beneath her knees or hear the commotion around her. She wanted to know why she was here...again. The repetition was maddening.

She turned her head with practiced expectancy, waiting for the same jolt that always came. She felt an odd tugging in her heart. Pity. She felt the need to reach out to the creature that she could feel but not see beside her. But then, the connection was gone, and all that was left was a dull point of blue light and a low, menacing laugh, some of the only sounds she could hear. "Pity, this feels like such a waste."

And then, she felt her stomach clench in dreadful anticipation as the light was commanded to flash and completely overtake her. Even though she would slam her eyes shut each time, she could see the brightness through her lids, and a single word would echo through her head in that same terrible voice. A voice she knew all too well. "OBLIVIATE!"

Angelina sat bolt upright, gasping into the newly-broken stillness around her. Her fingers tightly clutched the sheets around her as she allowed the dark to pour into her consciousness and sooth her. Her skin was lightly coated in the same nervous sweat that accompanied this particular nightmare, and she blinked rapidly to loose lingering tears from the corners of her eyes.

The dream was becoming more frequent now, and unlike before, she was starting to remember longer fragments of it instead of just that ache of the feelings left behind. Something had happened to her…she'd been wronged. And as long as she was Angelina Johnson, she would figure out what happened and avenge herself.

Still agitated, but significantly calmer, the General slipped silently from her sheets and began running herself a cool shower. Forty feet above her, perched in stoic sentry on the fortress's battlements, a lone Death Eater sighed into the icy winds.

He chuckled darkly at himself. It was funny, really. He was stuck here, playing "security guard" for a lair no one would ever be foolish enough to storm. At any given time, this place was crawling with over a hundred Death Eaters, not to mention the Dark Lord and his Triad. They were almost as ruthless as he was. Sometimes they were.

Right Hand, in his opinion, was almost certainly insane. Too much time in Azkaban and a raging masochistic streak saw to that. The Messenger was nothing different than you would expect from any Malfoy. Supercilious and eager to remain in Voldemort's favor; Lucius was as vicious as possible, as loud as possible.

The General, on the other hand, was most likely responsible for more deaths than the other two combined, but never relished in the fact of it. She always preferred to let the Lucius and Bellatrix run their mouths…giving them more than enough slack to hang themselves with. Clever girl. That's why she always remained Voldemort's most trusted servant. Laughing softly behind his mask, David Montague silently mused. That's my girl.

Night guard duty gave much too much time to think to the already introspective David. His mind wandered back to the night he took the dark mark, about half-way through his seventh year.

"Are you fully aware of what you are pledging to do? Now and forever, you will become an unwavering servant to our Dark Lord. To your own death."


David fought off a smirk. "Well, of course I do. And it's pretty late to try and change my mind now, isn't it?"

He knew he deserved the swift blow that split his cheek for saying that.

He took the mark, and it burned. It hurt more than he'd anticipated, but he never showed it. He was so proud of the fact, especially when Draco took his a year later, nearly fainting from the pain.

He wasn't sure if he regretted going through with it or not. He had been young and rash. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time…he could protect her from the inside. But the moment Voldemort obliviated Angelina, it had all been negated.

"Pity, this feels like such a waste…" Voldemort raised his wand, which gave off a faint blue glow.


Montague clenched his wand so hard it almost snapped as it took all he had within him to stay in line with the rest of the Death Eaters. When he understood Voldemort wasn't planning on killing Angelina, he relaxed slightly. Until she looked up at him. Those eyes, so sad and defeated, locked onto to his, but how did she know?


But those eyes would never look at him the same way again…so full of their past together, good and bad. It would all be gone forever…


He'd hesitated just a moment too long.


The strength of the spell knocked her unconscious, and David broke formation, running to her side and catching her before her head hit the floor. His blood boiled when he heard Voldemort laugh. "Watch yourself, Montague. You are loyal to me, and me alone. Perhaps you should be reminded of just that."

His punishment left long, trailing scars across his back and shoulders, but it taught him an important lesson about the Dark Lord's nature: he feared betrayal more than anything else.

David snorted into the night. The Dark Lord is insecure.

He stepped away from the ledge at the approach of footsteps behind him, signaling the arrival of his relief. He nodded shortly before striding away, too quickly for Millicent Bulstrode to begin whatever conversation she'd had in mind.

He moved quickly down the cavernous stone stairwell to his barracks on one of the lower floors. As he passed the level reserved exclusively for the Triad, he gave a cursory little glance at the door. Some hopeful corner of his heart hoped that she'd be standing there, waiting for him.

Just as he turned his head to peer back into the darkness of the stairwell, the door opened. David's heart began to beat wildly before his head could remind him to calm down. Angelina pulled her long black dressing robe a little tighter around her and stiffened up as she noticed the Death Eater. David just smiled behind his mask. Her hair was unbraided, long and damp across her shoulders. Until spotting him, it was the most relaxed he'd seen her since school.

His silent reverie and remembrance of prior trysts was snapped by the General's harsh voice. "Who are you, and what are you doing?"

Impulse once again beating out his greater sensibilities, he snapped back, "Last I checked, the Dark Lord hadn't implemented a curfew."

Angelina was taken aback, but only for a moment. "Pardon me? I believe your General asked for your name."

David wondered if she could see him smirking. "My apologies, General. The name is Malfoy."

He turned and continued down the steps as Angelina's demeanor broke and she began to laugh. "You're not. Draco wouldn't dream of mouthing off to me. Too scared I'd run and tell on him to the Dark Lord. So you're really not going to tell me your name? Do you have something to hide?"

Without missing a beat, he continued down the steps, his voice echoing through the dank stone halls. "Oh Angelina, you have no idea."

She was more than relieved he was far out of view. The stunned and blanched look on her face at the sound of her name, a name she was so rarely called she didn't know the lesser Death Eaters even knew it would have been most unbecoming of a leader such as herself. She dropped her wand and fought her instinct to chase down the unknown man that had used her name so casually.

She peered around the stairwell and found only unbroken darkness. Shaken for the second time that night, Angelina headed back towards her quarters, whatever reason she'd had for coming to the stairway long forgotten.