Regulus ran as fast as his legs could carry him. His lungs protested, not used to the exercise—flying on a broom was much simpler in this sense. But he knew that the woods could be deceptive at night and that flying may be more hazardous than tripping over tree roots. So he ran and ran until he reached the edge of the forest, where mist already began to cloud his vision. Rain began to drizzle softly on his shoulders.
"Oi!" he shouted. "You lot! Are you there?" But the only sound he could hear was the panting of his breath. He swore.
Aside from the Groundkeeper's hut at least fifteen minutes away, there was no source of light nearby that he could call for help. The light from his wand only ensured his vision up to a point. Regulus shook his head. There was no time—Merlin knew what those first-years were thinking. And the more time he spent looking for them was time that Alex had to get herself into danger. He berated himself already for leaving her in the castle alone.
Suddenly he heard a rustling of leaves from the forest, far-off, and a bit of distant laughter.
There was no time to wonder why there would even be laughter. Regulus took a step into the dark woods, and then another.
It was easier for Alex to find the source of the crying, although the reason for this made the ease unbearably painful. Every once in a while came that terrible scream, and Alex felt her breath burn her throat as she climbed up the stairs as fast as she could. When she reached the sixth floor the screaming grew louder. Even more horrifying than the scream itself, Alex found herself grow accustomed to the sound, to the feel of her skin prickling in terror and anticipation, to the sudden alertness of mind that normally would have had her hyperventilating. She gripped her wand tightly. Possibly it was Peeves just playing an inappropriate joke. Or maybe someone had their foot caught between two stones. She had no idea how anyone would get into that position, but possibilities were limitless at this point.
The sound was coming from the classroom. Alex tried the door. It was locked.
"Alohomora," she tried, but the door still refused to budge. She heard something on the other side of the door—a snippet of voices, quiet sobbing, a bit of laughter followed by another blood-curling scream.
"Oi!" she shouted through the portal. "Open this door!" Someone inside swore loudly.
"HELP!" a high voice cried desperately. A girl, Alex realized with dread. There was a girl inside. "Help, PLEASE!" The cry was met with a dull thud and no one screamed anymore.
"That's it," Alex planted her feet in the ground. "Bombarda!"
There was darkness, only darkness, and he wasn't running anymore. Couldn't, to be more precise, because the sound of running blocked every other sound in his vicinity. He stopped to listen.
An owl hooting softly. Drops of rain falling occasionally onto the ground, splashing into a small puddle. Sound of the cloud moving in a fast oncoming storm. Any indication of life—he turned around and around, trying to find any source of sound that indicated that someone was alive.
He couldn't even remember the way back to the castle.
"Rabastan," her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears. Strangled. Breathless. Something twisted in her stomach. "What is this?"
"Alex." There was none of the playfulness that she had once seen in his eyes. "Thought it might be one of the other prefects." He looked relieved. Alex swallowed. There was nothing to feel relieved about this.
The small classroom was dimly lit and occupied by several sixth and seventh year Slytherins—and two younger students. They couldn't be past second year, by Alex's estimation. The boy was lying at one of the corners in the classroom. Full Body Bind curse, Alex judged. The girl was in the center of the classroom, her back shaking uncontrollably. There was a pool of blood on the floor that she was sitting on and Alex didn't know how it got there. The boys loomed over her menacingly, their wands out. Some of them were looking at Alex lazily, as though they were wondering what they should do to her. She could name every single one of them. Rookwood, Flint, Macnair, Nott—the older one—and Yaxley. Lestrange. He wasn't Rabastan anymore.
"What's going on," she asked flatly. The stocky seventh-year—Rookwood—came forward.
"Wilson," he said quietly, but his eyes had a hard glint. "We can make this easy for both of us, or this can be a lot more difficult."
"Is that a threat, Rookwood?" Her voice was impossibly calm.
"Depends," he answered. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm not going to do anything," she said. "You're going to explain to me what's happening here, and they're both going to the Hospital wing." At her mentioning them the girl whimpered, and Lestrange promptly kicked her in the stomach—no, lower than the stomach. The girl sobbed into her robes.
"Shut up, Mudblood," Lestrange spat. Alex felt a new emotion that she hadn't felt that entire night. An emotion more terrifying than terror. Red, hot anger began to simmer in her heart at the sight of the girl lying helpless on the floor as several bigger boys laughed appreciatively at the pain.
"On the second thought," Alex said quietly, "you reverse whatever spell it is that you put on them and let them go. Then we'll have a talk."
"Talk?" Macnair laughed amusedly. "You obviously don't understand. Leave us alone. This is our business." He said the words authoritatively. A command. This only made her blood boil.
She strode to where the boy was and quickly muttered the counter-curse for the Body-Bind curse. He immediately tried to stand up and run toward his friend, but his legs failed him. The other boys sniggered.
"Listen to me," Alex said quietly, crouching low that the others would't hear. "Don't worry about her. I won't let anything happen to her, okay? Listen to me," she forced the boy, who had turned away with obvious suspicion and distrust, to look at her in the face. "I'm trying to help you. You're a Gryffindor, aren't you? Run to McGonagall and tell her what's going on. I'll help your friend get to the Hospital Wing. Go!" Without waiting for him to react, she picked him up by the collar and dragged him to the door before throwing him into the empty dark corridor. The subsequent footsteps running away in panic told her that he was at least doing what he was told. The boys were watching her, dumbstruck.
"What are you doing?" Flint asked, outraged.
"Following procedure," Alex said cooly.
"Procedure? What procedure?" Flint's face began to grow purple like an aubergine. "That half-blood dared to touch our bats and charm it slippery. He was going to pay."
Despite the situation Alex frowned in confusion. "Bat? What bat—"
"My Beater's bat!" Flint shouted. Even his ears were purple now. "That half-blood sneaked into the Slytherin Quidditch closet and made our bats slippery! Do you even know what Rabastan and I—"
"No, he didn't, he really didn't!" the girl suddenly said from the floor, pleading. She tried to sit up and face Alex, but her legs were broken. Alex felt bile rise from her stomach. "He didn't do anything, we were just watching the practice, I swear—"
"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Lestrange said irritably. "Crucio."
Alex realized why that scream had been so terrifying.
The girl writhed on the floor. Screaming. Just screaming. She had never seen a sight more repulsive or heart-wrenching. Beaten and vulnerable. She didn't know what to do. She didn't have an idea of what she should do. Stop it. Stop them from doing something. But she couldn't move a muscle.
"Stop it," she tried to say, but the croak was barely a whisper. The girl was sobbing again. Somehow Macnair heard her.
"Don't think so, Wilson," he said briskly. "Be a good girl and don't bother us further, hmm?" Then he winked at her, as if they were just two friends sharing a good secret joke. Then his face contorted immediately into violent hatred as he raised his arms to deliver the blow again.
"Crucio!"
"Expulso!"
She couldn't remember raising her wand. She couldn't remember choosing that spell. All she could remember was the sound leaving her throat, her mouth forming the shape of the word. The noise as Macnair was thrown in the air into the wall, smashing violently against the classroom board. Something cracked.
All eyes turned toward her.
"Wilson," Lestrange said quietly. "What do you think you're doing?"
He couldn't breath anymore. His legs were burning. He lost his sense of direction completely. Regulus stopped, bending over at his waist to catch his breath. In his head he ran several different scenarios in which this whole thing could pan out. Even if he did find the first-years, and the prospect seemed less and less likely, there was slim chance that they would find a safe passage back to the castle. Nearby something cackled, and he knew that it wasn't an owl. Sending a distress signal with his wand seemed to be an option, but not when he had yet to find the first-years.
Then he heard a distress signal of his own. A stressed, scared shriek.
"HELP!"
"Stop being stupid and leave us alone, Wilson," Flint said angrily, but his eyes flickered uneasily every few seconds toward the door, uncertain of their probability of being found. Others voiced their agreement, but they, too, seemed to be aware of the fact that they couldn't trust Wilson as far as Slytherin loyalties went. Macnair, whose back had met the wall with an alarmingly loud crash, sat lopsided on the floor. He wasn't moving.
"Take off whatever curse it is that you have on her," Alex said. "Then I'll leave you alone."
"Fuck this," Rookwood snarled. He raised his arm and pointed his wand straight at Alex. "Impe—"
"What do you think you're doing?" Nott whispered furiously for the first time. "Her? Do you think he would leave you alone if he found out?"
Rookwood smiled nastily, showing two rows of his straight, stony teeth. "Black doesn't have to find out," he said. A look passed between him and Nott. Nott let go of his arm. Alex stood facing them helplessly. A fat lot of good the DADA classes did for her. They never taught their students if they could evade an Imperius charm. Only that they had to fight it with will and determination. She didn't know if she could. The only way that she could think of to stop him was to jinx him herself first, but no spell came to mind. With Macnair she'd reacted impulsively, but now…
"Now," Rookwood said, "Imperi—"
But before he could finish the incantation, a jet of purple light shot from behind her ear and hit Rookwood clean in the chest. He fell to the floor with a dull thud.
"What—" Alex said, puzzled more than anything, and turned around.
"You?" Her puzzlement grew. "What are you doing here?"
Henryk sighed. "Wilson, didn't anyone ever teach you never to turn your back to the opponent during a fight?"
"Wha—" she began again, but sensed in the periphery of her vision a jet of blue light approaching her. "Protego!" she shouted. The spell bounced off the protective shield and hit a nearby chair, which began to enlarge at an alarming rate.
"Oi!" she shouted. "Stop this nonsense!" But a hoard of spells came directly her way and as she cast another shield charm Alex realized that eventually one of those spells was going to hit the girl and hurt her. Henryk meanwhile managed to find a position next to her and deflect several curses easily. A part of her brain began to make calculations despite the current predicament. Why did he know how to deflect spells like that—why was he even here? For his part Henryk looked unnaturally calm.
"What's it going to be, Wilson?" he asked. "Are you going to fight, or not?"
"Help!" Kasia Parkinson shouted. "Help!"
"Be quiet, something will hear you!" Pen Mellier whispered. Next to him Gregory Yaxley whimpered, remembering the rustle of the leaves and an unsettling sound of someone hissing that had left them all shivering to the bones.
"What other choice do you think we have, Pen?" Kasia snapped back.
"Fighting's not going to get us anywhere," Jean Fourier said, sounding uncommonly reasonable for a first-year. "Let's just go over things one more time."
"Not that again, Jean," Augustus Gibbon said, exasperated. "We've been through this. The fifth-year prefects led us here."
"No, they didn't," Kasia Parkinson said crossly. "The girl—Alex—she hangs out with my sister a lot. I'm telling you, she doesn't walk like that."
"And Regulus—Regulus wouldn't leave us here. He wouldn't do that to us," Fanny Rowle said in a small voice. No one said anything to this, but their silent assent made the situation feel even worse. If the prefects hadn't led them, then who did?
"I think I just heard something again," Pen said, his voice quivering. Everyone swallowed.
"Oi!" They suddenly heard someone's voice from a distance. "Who's there?"
"We're here!" Kasia shouted. "We're here!"
"You don't know who that is!" Fanny protested.
"And what, being left here is a better alternative?" she shot back, trying to mask her own fright.
"Light your wands, I can't see you!" The voice was closer, but not enough.
"We don't know how!" Jean apparently agreed with Kasia on her diagnosis.
"Lumos!" The voice said. It was male. Not very old. The first-years looked around uncertainly before raising their wands.
"Lumos," they whispered together, and the tips of their wands glowed faintly.
"We did it," Gibbon said disbelievingly. They looked around, feeling an abnormal amount of relief at a source of light that allowed them to actually see each other's faces. The rustling of leaves grew stronger and they all turned toward the direction of the sound, raising their wands wearily. A figure emerged from the woods, stumbling rather ungracefully on a tree root before righting himself by leaning against a nearby vine.
"There you are," the boy said, relief evident in his tone. Astounded, the first-years stared at the newcomer.
"Regulus?" Pen whispered.
"Me," Regulus Black, the fifth-year prefect and the Slytherin Quidditch star, was panting. They could see several cuts on his smooth, pale cheeks. "We have to get out of here."
"But you led us here!" Fanny cried hysterically. "You and that girl Wilson led us here!"
Regulus scrunched his brows together in confusion. "What?" he said, looking around the group for confirmation. The looks that he got back all shared Fanny's look of accusation and mistrust.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Regulus said, trying to sound as assuring and calming as he could despite the panic he felt. They were in the Forbidden Forest. No clear way back. And Alex was in the castle, dealing with a possible torturer. The night simply couldn't get any worse. "But it's not safe here. We can all agree on that, can't we? We have to get out of here as fast as we can."
As to prove his point, a hiss came again from the darkness above. The first years automatically cowered near him and Regulus felt his back tense. Something was breathing. Making signals. He held out his arm up to the sky to better see what was up there. The sight made his breath catch in his throat. He looked down at his hands, which had steadied him when he stumbled. The thing he suspected was already there.
Cobwebs.
"You, whoever you are—back off. This isn't your business," Lestrange said irritably.
"Come on, Rab. He's the Hufflepuff Beater," Flint said, sounding almost jovial. "The duffers. We don't need to worry about him. Or her, for that matter. Let's just get it over with."
"Well?" Henryk, who seemed to have heard almost none of what the two were saying in front of them, asked Alex almost challengingly. But before Alex could say anything—to be honest, she wasn't sure what she wanted to say, having never participated in anything akin to a duel—Flint sent a hex her way that she barely managed to dodge.
"That's it," she snapped angrily. She was done with everyone being sadistic arseholes, and it didn't look like the girl's condition was getting any better by stalling. Next to her she felt rather than saw Henryk grin. At some point during the conversation he had managed to draw out his wand as well.
Dueling was a completely foreign experience, and Alex was certain that she was quite bad at it, although it wasn't as if she had time to contemplate her skills in dueling. Most of her focus was on Flint and Yaxley, who were staring her with hungry intensity that should have surprised her. When they sent a curse her way, she dodged—the shield charm was too risky because she didn't know how the curse would bounce off. She tried to aim for their torso—the biggest part—with a Stunning charm (to be entirely honest she wasn't that well-versed in curses in general, and the Stunning charm was recommended by the Ministry of Magic in dire situations where dueling was absolutely necessary—or so the Daily Prophet reported), but aiming was difficult when she had to dodge spells from two people. Next to her Henryk solidly held his ground, and an uncertain glance at his direction gave Alex an impression that he was almost bored. Bored. And he was dueling Nott and Lestrange and an injured Rookwood simultaneously. He looked contemplatively at his opponents as if they were a particularly bland set of gargoyles and he was trying to decide where he should place them in his garden.
"How do you do that?" she asked loudly. A particularly nasty hex from Yaxley shattered the window behind her.
"Do what," Henryk said.
"I don't know!" Alex shouted back. The older boys thankfully seemed too preoccupied with hexes to listen to their conversation. "Hold down the fort?"
Henryk didn't say anything for a while. "Are we maiming, or just—"
"Of course we're not maiming!" Alex shouted, outraged.
"I'm pretty sure that they are," Henryk said skeptically. With a flick of the wand Rookwood suddenly fell to his knees and began crawling on the floor. His body grew smaller until an infant stared at both of them from the ground. His robes, now too large for the infantile body, hung about the fat torso like a scarecrow's pajamas. From his small, puckered mouth he began to bawl.
Despite the situation Alex had to grin. "Reverse Aging charm," she said. "That is a good one." Unfortunately, Flint used that moment of distraction to send a purplish flame her way that she failed to dodge in time. It only grazed her forearm, but it was more than enough to disarm her. She clutched her arm in pain.
"What are you going to do, Wilson?" Flint taunted her from across the room. "You're defenseless now." He raised his wand to deliver the final blow. Yaxley flicked his wand, and her wand flew toward his outstretched hand. Instead of panic and fear, Alex felt a maniac excitement spread across her body, making her limbs feel much lighter than they ever were. She grinned caustically.
"What I should have done long ago, Flint," she said. She dodged Flint's next hex and ran towards him heads on. Flint, who had been expecting many reactions, did not anticipate this particular move and watched open-mouth as she pulled him closer by the collar of his robes before punching his face. Something cracked, but Alex didn't feel it in her knuckles. Flint staggered back a few steps, and his wand fell from his hand.
Yaxley abandoned his laissez-faire position and took his aim, but her reflexes were faster for once. Her body knew what it was doing even when her mind told her to run away from the wandpoint as fast as possible; she grabbed the upheld arm and twisted it at a vicious angle in front of him. When he bent over in pain, she jabbed at his side with her free elbow, making him cough and kneel on the floor. She then proceeded to tackle his leg and twist it before pushing him hard onto the floor. His leg sprained as his torso hit the hard surface and Yaxley let out a pained cry.
But Flint wasn't done; one hand holding his bloody nose, he advanced on her with a glowering look. Alex ran toward him and delivered a quick punch on the uninjured side of his face before he could do anything to her. She proceeded to kick him hard in the groin, making him double over with a groan. Quickly locating the wand that Yaxley had dropped, she pointed it at both of them and cried, "stupefy!" A red jet of light hit them straight in their chest and both of them fell to the floor, unconscious. She stood over their bodies, panting for breath. Adrenaline still coursed to every end of her limbs.
"I thought we weren't maiming," Henryk said from behind her.
Alex spun around. Rookwood was still brawling on the floor, and the girl had cowered away from him as far as she could as if he were a diseased rat. Lestrange's tongue was stuck to the ceiling with the rest of his body, and Nott pirouetted around the classroom while humming a foreign tune.
She nodded toward Nott. "What's up with him?"
"Oh, nothing terrible. He just thinks he's dancing with the most beautiful woman on earth." Henryk considered. "Which may sound like a reward, but the delusion's going to get stronger until he does something—well, highly regrettable." True to the prediction, Nott approached the broken window and stuck his torso out into the night air before trying to balance his body on the windowsill. His body swayed dangerously and Alex pulled him from his back.
"Stupefy," she said, holding her wand to his throat, and Nott fell to the floor like a dead heap. From nearby the girl whimpered and Alex realized what she had forgetten.
"Shit. Shit. Sorry," she said, crouching near the girl. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" The girl shook her head but didn't say anything. Her face was covered in tears.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Alex said soothingly. "What's your name? House?"
The girl sniffled. "Elena… Rondby," she said with difficulty. "I'm in Hufflepuff."
"I know her," Henryk said. "Second-year. Do you mind if I take a look at what happened to your ribs, Elena?" He said kindly, but Elena looked back at him distrustfully. Remembering how she had felt about males in general after her encounter on Halloween when she was eleven, Alex couldn't blame her. She put a reassuring arm around her and rubbed her shoulders. Elena didn't seem to mind this much.
"Alright, then," she said bracingly. "We'll take you to Hospital wing, and then we can talk to Professor Sprout about what happened—"
"Miss Wilson, could you please explain what on Merlin's name happened here?" A sharp voice rang through the classroom and they all looked up from their position to find the imposing face of McGonagall staring down at them disapprovingly. Behind her the Gryffindor boy from before peeked out timidly before his face brightened from seeing his friend alive. Even after everything that had happened, Alex felt a wave of dread and guilt. She'd just hurt several students. On purpose. Granted, the reason for her actions seemed sufficient back then, but under McGonagall's stern gaze, she wasn't so sure. From above Lestrange began to let out a violent stream of sounds.
"Mr. Lestrange, kindly do rejoin us on the floor," McGonagall said, her voice acidic.
"That's my fault, Professor. He doesn't have his wand. Blabinsky," Henryk said brightly and waved his wand at Lestrange, who unceremoniously fell to the floor. He was unconscious. Alex was certain that a simple counter-spell wouldn't knock out Lestrange, a burly Beater, but she chose not to say anything—and neither did McGonagall, who continued to look at them disapprovingly.
"What happened here?" she asked again. Alex hesitated, and the Gryffindor boy stepped up.
"Professor, these Slytherin boys made us follow them after dinner to this classroom. They were—they used the Body-Bind curse on me, and then they—they—" His eyes widened in terror at the memory and Elena drew instinctively close to herself, curling up into a ball. Alex tried to pat her back soothingly, but she didn't think that anything could help her at this point.
"Professor," Alex said. "We can discuss the details later. When I found them here, Elena was hurt. I tried to make my housemates listen, but they weren't willing, so I sent your student to you. And—"
"And then I found all of them here," Henryk said, his voice still bright and blameless. "I tried to help Alex stop her housemates, but they wouldn't listen, and I got a bit carried away." He scratched his neck in the most classically abashed way possible and Alex looked at him, uncomprehending. "I got disarmed at one point and things got a bit more physical. I thought it was the best thing to do at the time. I'm sorry." MacGonagall looked at him with cool eyes, and Alex couldn't figure out whether she believed him or not. To her surprise, Elena spoke up from the floor.
"It's true," she said, and her voice was clear despite her sobs. "But he was really just trying to protect me, Professor. And Alex. They were—they were—" The memory was a bit too much for her and she began to cry in earnest again. MacGonagall's gaze softened, but Alex could see something much steelier and angrier building beneath the surface. She was angry—as angry as Alex had been when she first found Elena.
"Mr. Higgins, please escort Miss Rondby to the Hospital Wing," she said curtly, and Higgins nodded before carefully approaching his friend. Elena didn't seem to find him scary, however, and with some difficulty she pulled herself up and began to limp to the Hospital Wing, leaning on her friend.
"Professor," Alex said, "I'm afraid that some of her ribs might be broken. We should probably—"
"Madam Pomfrey would take care of Miss Rondby's injuries, Alex, better than any of us could," MacGonagall said crispy, but Alex noticed that she was calling her by her first name. "What you should do is to explain what you were doing out of beds past curfew."
"Erm," Alex said. "I don't know about Lee here, but I was doing—" she stopped mid-sentence as she realized to her horror why she had to come to this floor on the first place.
"Alex?" MacGonagall prompted her.
"Regulus," Alex whispered softly. "I have to help him."