"Attacked?" Tom asks in a calm voice. "Who could possibly attack here?" The Death Eater shrugs his shoulders nervously. "They aren't inside yet?"
"No, My Lord." He answers. "They are on the grounds trying to enter. Our people are holding them off for the time being."
"How many are there?" asks Tom, his eyes slowly turning red.
The Death Eater looks at him in the eyes then. "There are more of them then there are us."
He'll have to summon his army here; he's going to have to fight a battle at his own home. Things will be ruined and he won't be able to live comfortably here again. The traitors had better hope they are all killed during this fight because Lord Voldemort is pissed.
"Give me your arm." He hisses to his follower. When it's within reach Tom pulls back his sleeve and touches his Dark Mark. His dark army will be apparating on the grounds in a matter of moments.
The young Death Eater cries in pain as Tom closes the door in his face. He walks back into the room and puts on a shirt, buttoning it at am alarming speed. He sits on one of the chairs and puts on a pair of black leather boots. Anger is coursing through him right now and it's taking all of his control not to shake from his fury. There is only one way rebels could have made it to his castle… There is a traitor among his followers.
His red eyes flick to the girl on the bed. What to do with her? There's a loud booming noise coming from outside and she jumps awake. She pulls the blanket around her body to cover her nakedness and pushes some hair out of her eyes.
"What was that noise?" she asks in voice thick with sleep. It happens again and she jumps, looking at him fearfully. "What is that?"
He's tucking his shirt in and reaching for his cloak as he answers. "Get dressed and under no circumstances are you to leave this room."
"Why, what's going on?"
He smirks at her then in total confidence. The thrill of using his wand against weaker enemies is starting to over ride his anger. "Nothing I can't handle, I assure you."
Her fear is written on her face and there's worry in her eyes. Unlike him she wears every emotion she has for all the world to see. "What's happening?" she asks softly as she stands up.
He takes his wand from the side table and points it at the door, muttering a spell. "This spell won't admit any one in from the outside, even with their wands. The door can only be opened from the inside now." He then turns to her. "Lock it and let no one in but me… Do you understand?"
She nods her head. "I understand." she says shakily, even though she doesn't.
He kisses her then, a surprisingly sweet kiss, and places his hand on her stomach. It lingers there for few moments before he pulls back and leaves. She stands for a few moments, looking at the door where he just left and then with a worried face she gets dressed and locks the door. Waiting for him to come back.
X
"They're untrained and sloppy. It won't take very long." He says as he storms down the stairs.
Octavian looks at his Lord with shining respect. "What did they think to accomplish by doing this?" he asks as he takes his wand from his pocket, preparing to fight. "It's a suicide mission."
It must be something…. He doesn't voice his thoughts out loud as he bangs open the front doors and looks out into the grounds. The rebels are all wearing deep robes of blue that are hard to distinguish in the night from the black robes of the Death Eaters. Scorching yellow phoenix badges on their chest are the only things that set them apart. Tom scowls at them. The Order of the Phoenix should be dead by now, Albus Dumbdlore was an annoying man and he created an annoying club.
Tom's dark head turns to Octavian. "Don't die; I'll need you to help me weed out who betrayed me tonight."
Octavian gives a respectable nod of his head and throws a killing curse at the back of a rebel who was dueling with a plump woman Death Eater near by and smirks when the body falls stiffly to the ground… No one said that Voldemort's followers fought nobly. Tom descends into the crowd; there are few people left standing once he raises his wand.
X
She has to fight the urge to hide in the closet when she hears footsteps by her door. They're light and quiet so she knows it isn't Tom. The door handle moves and she almost screams. It's the middle of the night, she was woken up by loud banging and Tom stormed out of here with the 'I'm going to kill people' look in his eyes. It's an understatement to say she's a bit afraid. She's pregnant, hormonal, and bloody terrified.
She hears a soft voice whisper and unlocking spell and the door rattles again. She walks backwards watching it closely with her hand to her beating heart. Who is trying to get in? Who's here? Now she understands what Tom was saying before. It can't be good.
A knock come to the door then. "Isabel?" It's a woman's voice that she doesn't recognize so she doesn't answer. "Isabel Prewett are you in there?" the voice asks with persistent knocks.
A second male voice is added to the fold. "We won't hurt you. We can to help, we were told about you by Ginny Weasley."
Her interest is perked but her heart rate has not slowed, she takes shy steps towards the door. "Who are you?"
"My name's Remus Lupin," says the soft male voice. "I was at the Burrow the night they brought you from the cemetery. Do you remember? The night they woke you up?"
She brings her hand up to her face and starts chewing on her nails, calming her nerves. "The werewolf?"
There's a moments pause on the other side of the door. "Yes…Listen, we can help you get away from this place. You'll never have to do what he wants again, but you have to open the door. "
Should she open the door? She doesn't want to leave Tom. At least she thinks she doesn't. He's the only link she has to anything she remembers from the past. Plus, he's really not so bad, at least, not all the time. More dominate footsteps are heard down the hallway.
"Isabel," the woman's voice is urgent. "Open the door so we can help you… The Death Eaters are coming." Isabel stares at the door as she hears curses being thrown and the heavy footsteps sound like they're running towards them. She can see the red light flash underneath the door. "Damn!" the woman cries angrily, she must have been hit. "There has to be ten of them coming, Remus."
The man curses and focuses on the door again. "Please, open the door."
Hearing the painful breathing of the woman strikes something in her so she reaches to the door and unlocks it. The door swings open and a tall woman with a heart shaped face and wild purple hair runs in clutching her arm, followed by a middle aged man with graying brown hair. He slams the door quickly behind him and locks it.
"They can't get in here, right?" Remus asks as he turns to Isabel who is standing fearfully against the wall. His eyes flick quickly down to her pregnant stomach in surprise and then up to her face.
"It will only open from the inside." She says breathlessly.
The purple haired woman falls against the bed and nurses her burnt arm. "That was painful, " she says and winces as she takes her wand out to heal it. "How do you think we're fairing outside?"
Remus walks to the window and pulls back the curtain. He winces. "Not well… He's summoned more fighters."
"Why did you come?" she asks in the shocked voice from deep in her throat.
They both turn to her then and watch her carefully. "We can talk about that later. We have to leave now before he realizes where we are." The man says urgently. The door starts to shake violently as Death Eaters pound on the door, they all jump. "Come on, we're apparating."
"Remus, can't you see she's pregnant?" asks the purpled haired woman as she stands from the bed. The pounding of the door has stopped and it's deathly quiet. "She won't be able to apparate."
Remus eyes Isabel up and down. "We'll just have to risk it."
He takes a step towards her and Isabel shakes out of her daze and narrows her eyes angrily. "What do you mean we'll just have to risk it? This is my baby!"
"He's the father, isn't he?" he asks referring to the Dark Lord. He's now eyeing her stomach with distaste so she covers it protectively with her hand. "It wouldn't be a loss."
"Remus!" now it's the purple haired woman getting angry. "How could you say such a thing? What if someone said that about our son when I was carrying him?"
"I'm not the Dark Lord, Nymphadora."
"It doesn't matter."
"We have to leave, and apparating is the only way." He states harshly. He turns to Isabel who's slowly backing away from them. His eyes soften. "I apologize, but it's the only way."
"What if I splinch my daughter?" she demands fiercely. "I can't apparate, it's unsafe."
"Just hold on to me and focus on keeping your body intact." Is all he says he goes to take her hand but she moves away. "We have to leave."
"It's alright," says the woman Nymphadora softly. "It will be ok…. We'll do it as safely as possible and then we can get you away from this evil place and you'll never have to look at Lord Voldemort again."
"Isabel, don't listen to them." The smooth, deep voice of Tom filters in through the door and she looks at it in surprise. "Open the door for me, sweetheart." He's cool and collected and she realizes that he must have been listening to most of the conversation.
She takes a step towards the door. "You won't have to be locked up when you're with us." The woman says pleadingly. "Ginny told us about how good you were to her and her mother… None of us will harm you the way he did… we won't force you."
"Don't go with them." Tom's voice is starting to take a harsh edge and she can picture his scarlet eyes glaring at her. "Your place is here, with me."
Remus is looking out the window again. "They're putting up the wards again." He says panicking. "We have to leave right now."
"Will you come with us?" asks the purple haired woman. "Do you want to be free?"
Tom kicks the door, his temper getting away with him. "Open the fucking door, Isabel."
"Come with us." Pleads the older man.
She doesn't say anything, she doesn't move. She feels as though she's being torn into two parts. Would she really have any freedom if she went with these people? Tom would always find her. She starts playing with her wedding ring, he'll track her down and these two people will be killed… without mercy. She can't go with them, she won't leave her husband.
She opens her mouth to tell them to leave with out her but Remus grabs her arm and apparates her away without waiting for her answer. Decisions about her life always seem to be made with out her consent.
X
She falls down when they reach solid ground. "I was going to say no!" she cries loudly as she looks down to her stomach to make sure there's no damage. There doesn't seem to be so she glares up at the man named Remus Lupin with hatred in her eyes. Tom is going to be so mad and he's probably going to think that she went willing because she opened the door for them. "He's going to find me and he's going to kill you all. I was going to tell you to leave with out me!" She states fiercely, batting away the hand that's trying to help her up.
She stands up in a huff and looks around. They appear to be on an abandoned muggle street. "Here." Says the woman, placing a piece of paper into Isabel hands.
She looks down at it and reads the tight script on the front. "fiddle sticks?" she questions.
"Fiddle sticks."
"Fiddle sticks."
After they all say it a creaking noise is heard and she looks up to see an old oak tree growing and expanding, turning into something that resembles a house. The branches stretch as the trunk becomes fat and a door pops into few, along with round glass windows. She raises an eyebrow at it, it's almost comical.
"This is our new hideout." Remus says as he leads her to the bright red door. He taps three times.
"9, 7, 2 ,5." Whispers the voice on the other side of the door.
"22, 32, 1." Remus answers and the door opens.
What was that? Isabel slowly walks into the literal "tree house" and can't help but scowl at the inside of it. Who made this place and why? It looks like a story book character would live here, a squirrel story book character. She stands by the closed door as her two "rescuers" walk further into the house. They're in a small living room with narrow blue couches that surround a small round table. Everything seems to be circular in this place, the windows, and the pillows on the couches, every table, and even the seats of the chairs have a rounded edge to it. It's so different from the timeless elegance of Slytherin's castle that it almost hurts her eyes to see it. Again Isabel is left to wonder what lunatic lives here.
To the right side of the room is a small, iron, spiral stair case. She watches it shake as feet appear and walk down it. Ginny and a few others come into view and start making their way over to her. She looks happier, Isabel notes, her red hair is cut short to her ears and there's a lingering smile on her face. She stops dead in her tracts a few feet in front of her.
"Sweet Merlin you're pregnant." She states flatly as she looks at Isabel's rounded belly. She never told Ginny when she found out, she was too embarrassed, too scared.
"It was only a matter of time." She scoffs. Not really sure why she feels the need to be nasty to her. Maybe the fact that she doesn't want to be in this silly looking place… or away from Tom.
"Yes, of course." She answers with a frown. "You must be exhausted."
"It's four in the morning, of course I am." Again with the nastiness but she can't help herself. Tom must be rubbing off on her.
Ginny nods her head and vaguely introduces the four people that are with her. Isabel doesn't care who they are and she doesn't listen to their names. She feels the ring on her finger burn and she looks down at it. Tom is looking for her. He will find her and burn this stupid looking house down… probably with everyone of these people in side of it.
"Ginny," she says a little more softly, interrupting the story she was currently telling to one of her friends. "I have to go back to him."
After saying that she receives many sympathetic smiles and then she realizes with annoyance that most of these people pity her. "He won't be able to get to us here."
"Yes, he will." She says solidly.
Ginny puts her hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry." She says lightly. "We'll take care of you. Tom Riddle won't bother you anymore. "
"Ginny… He'll kill you." She looks to the others. "He'll kill all of you and I won't be able to stop him."
Another onslaught of pitiful looks and sympathetic gazes meet her and she almost yells at them. "We can talk tomorrow." Insists Ginny. "Now, you should rest."
She reluctantly follows her up the little spiral stair case and is ushered into a small room with a round doorway. The room is painted sea foam green with shining white bead board along the bottom half of the walls. A small wooden bed with a cover of white lace rests along the far wall and above it is a painting of a hoping little bunny, it's nauseating. Obviously fake daisies are in pale pink vases all over the place, like the bedside table, the shelves, the vanity. Ginny leaves to let her sleep off her fatigue so Isabel plops down on the bed and looks around the room suspiciously, hating everything she sees. It's too bright and cheerful in here and she finds her self missing the dark twisted hallways of Tom's castle.
The baby kicks against her stomach and she looks down at it lovingly. "Don't worry little one." She says softly. "Daddy will be here soon."
X
Lord Voldemort and his follower's apparate themselves to an abandoned dead end street in Ireland. The smooth paved roads and the tall street lamp make them see they're in a muggle neighborhood. He rolls his eyes at that and sneers. His gaze then focus on the exact point where his wife should be.
What he sees does not make sense to him at all but being a wizard he knows that many things can not be taken at face value. So he walks cautiously up to the old tree while his followers look at him curiously.
"My Lord?" one of them asks.
"She's in here." He answers as he circles the thick trunk.
"In the tree, My Lord?" asks a younger Death Eater that obviously doesn't know that you are to never take such a tone with him.
He glares heatedly at the youth until he lowers his eyes. "Does it surprise you? You are a wizard, are you not?"
The Death Eater wisely keeps his mouth shut. Tom stands away from the tree and glares at its bark. "Burn it." He says lightly.
"My Lord," This time it's Lucius Malfoy, stepping out of line. "What if it kills her?"
Tom smirks then and takes out his wand. "It won't." he answers knowing she can't die and thinking that she'll get out before the flames can cause her pain and even if it did… she would deserve it for leaving. No, he's sure someone with a wand will help her out before any real damage is done. "Now do as I say and kill anyone that comes out."
They raise their wands and shoot balls of fire at the tree that instantly goes up in flames.
X
She starts coughing. Something is compressing down on her lungs and it hurts. It's also hot, why's it so hot? She stands up and opens the stupid round door to look in the hallway. Other heads are poking out of the small rooms and looking questionably at the dark smoke that's billowing up from the stair case. It wafts it way towards her and obscures her vision and makes her head hurt. She almost passes out.
She starts coughing again and can hear painful screams as people run frantically around trying to get out. Has Tom come, and if he has is, this really the way he's handling the situation? She has one thought and one thought only, that she has to protect her child. She goes into her room and shuts the door, pulling the cover down to the floor to muffle the smoke coming in from below the crack of the door. Her eyes have started to water and her head is feeling light. She runs to the window and tries to pry it open, it won't budge. She doesn't have her wand. She doesn't have anything to protect her from the flames. She is going to kill him when she gets out of here.
She starts banging on the window furiously as the screams and yells start to escalate. The fire must be getting closer. She grabs a small chair from the corner and crashes into the glass, shattering it and leaving sharp edges around the white, circular frame. Once the window is broken she takes a deep breath of the cool night time air, relieving her lungs of some of its strain and composing her mind back into focus. She looks over her shoulder at the door and she can see flames licking the edges. She can't die; she'd just burn… and stay alive the whole time while it happened. Why does she have to feel pain?
Suddenly panicked she puts the chair down and climbs up to the window. It's barely big enough for her to get through but she sure as hell is going to try. She grabs the ledge and screams when shards of broken glass pierce through her skin. Again she chances a look over her shoulder, the fire is here. It's hot and she's sweating. She can barely breathe… She looks down at her stomach and with renewed sense of purpose she lifts her self up, ignoring the glass that is embedding its way into her hands. She steadies herself on her knees when she reaches the ledge and can barely feel the pain of the glass cutting into her knees. She's in survival mode now.
She cusses out loud when she realizes she's on the second floor so she shakily makes her way out on one of the branches and screams out loud again when she feels something scorch the bottom of her foot. With glass still in her skin, she crawls on her hands and knees across the heavy branch. Trying to get as far away from the fire as possible. She realizes now that she's in an even worse position then before because when she looks down she can see how high up she really is. Magic works in a crazy way because the tree is a tree once more and when she looks back she can't see the window she just crawled out of she can only see flames climb up towards her. The bark tears up more of her skin and a stray twig cuts her cheek.
She loses her balance from surprise and begins falling. The one thought in her mind is that she failed and just killed her daughter. She clenches her eyes shut, anticipating the hard impact of the ground and all of the horrid new pains that will go along with it but when she lands on something soft her eyes snap open. The ground must have had a cushioning charm on it. Her hair is plastered to her skin from sweat and tears, her clothes are tinted black as well as areas of her skin from the smoke and ash. She sits up, still coughing from the smoke that's still residing in her lungs and looks around her. People are just appearing from the tree now and Death Eaters are picking them off easily with killing curses.
"There you are."
She looks up at Tom who's standing over her with a smile on his face. What the hell is he smiling about? She glares at him in total hatred and his smile falters a little bit. No matter how mad she's been she has never looked at him like that.
"Why did you do that?" she hisses out and then coughs. She feels like she may start coughing up blood if she keeps going.
"I had to get them to come out somehow." He says and holds out his hand to try to help her up. She totally ignores it. "The place needed a password that I knew I wouldn't be able to get. This worked."
"Worked?" she says in a deadly whisper. She stands up then and it's now that Tom can see the jagged pieces of glass sticking out of her knees and hands. Blood is dripping from her wounds and pouring down her white skin like a waterfall. There are tiny scratches covering her shins and forearms from crawling across the bark and there's a long red scratch on her face. She is completely torn up. "I can't die, but our daughter can. You could have killed our daughter, Tom!"
"Why didn't one of your resistance friends help you get out with their wand?" he asks fiercely. He really thought they would but by the looks of it they didn't. It hurts him to see her like this… and he feels almost guilty. But guilt is an unwanted emotion and it turns into anger.
"They were too busy running for their lives!" She coughs again and leans to one side to place her weight on the foot that hadn't been burned. She places a hand on her stomach.
"Who knows what all this smoke inhalation is going to do to her. She's probably going to have all sorts of problems now!" she yells spitefully. "And it's all your fault!"
The rebels are gone, most of them dead and his followers have started to crowd around him, waiting for their next orders. "Don't speak to me like that." He hisses. He won't have her disrespect him in front of everyone.
"I will speak to you how ever I want!"
He decides to turn the tables on her. "You were the one who went with them, you brought this on yourself."
Something flashes in her eyes as she steps up to him. She smacks him hard across the face. All of the Death Eaters that saw it gasp and then fall silent; you could hear a needle drop. Tom slowly faces her with a red cheek, bloody with scratches because of the glass still lodged in her hands. His eyes are flaming red and he sets his jaw menacingly.
"You will regret that." He says through clenched teeth.
"There are a lot of things I regret. Like wanting to stay with you when they came for me." She says hatefully. "But this is not one of them."
He grabs her arm then and she doesn't even wince because she has too many other painful things on her body right now to cancel it out. "I will make you regret it." He sneers in a promise of pain.
Blinded by anger and pain that's all because of him she smirks. She wants to hurt him, she wants to embarrass him, and right now she doesn't give a damn about the consequences. She stands a little taller and says it loud enough so all can hear.
"Get your hands off of me, you filthy Mudblood."