Chapter Thirteen: Brighter Hell
They were behind a hedge. A cruel, unnatural wind was raging, whipping Ginny's hair about her face. It was bright but overcast, the sun hidden by complete cloud cover. Galleons were littered in the packed snow at their feet. The sight made Ginny's heart palpitate wildly. This was it. "Draco?" she whispered.
The scenery rippled and she felt a hand on her shoulder. "I'm here."
"Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be. Ginny, be careful. I mean it."
"Let's go."
Together, they crept around the hedge. Four cloaked figures were wandering absently across the snow-covered meadow in their general direction, wands out, looking for something.
"Bleeding idiots," Draco breathed. "On your call, Ginny."
Ginny nodded and sprang forward. "Reducto!" she cried, blasting one of them off their feet. The largest of the four sent a bright orange spell at her and she made to spring away but Draco held her fast and the spell bounced harmlessly away; he'd cast a Shield Charm.
"Expelliarmus, you great ponce!" Draco's voice drawled, but she wasn't watching what he was doing; she sent a Pinprick Hex after a third Death Eater and a Full-Body Bind on the one she'd blasted. The Pinpricked foe missed his next spell, and she finished him off with a Sleeping Charm. She whirled to Draco's side but the other two figures were prone. "Never learned how to counter that one, did you Crabbe?" he sneered.
"Those were your mates?" Ginny asked, horrified.
The wind broke oddly at her back. "Eight o'clock."
Ginny whirled, casting a reflexive Bat-Bogey Hex. Another black figure was speeding towards them, and he hurled a ball of blue light at Ginny. She threw up a shield but it wasn't enough and she fell to her knees as she felt the cerulean energy crash spectacularly around her. Her opponent flicked his wand at her before she recovered from the impact and sent her sprawling. To this point, she had been unaffected by the skirmishes, treating them like any other DA meeting, but when she fell and hit hard ground instead of pillows, as her ulnar nerve sang and paralyzed her hand, she remembered what she was fighting for and what the stakes were. All the hatred she was using so much effort to suppress – hatred of Percy's sacrifice, of the betrayals of Tom Riddle and Hermione and Harry and Draco, of all of the pain Voldemort and his ilk had heaped into her life – sprung free. Righteous fury coursed through her and she aimed a Glacius Curse from the ground, hitting the man in the knee. He roared as his leg froze to the ground and cast a curse at her. She rolled and fired back, and the man sagged grotesquely, still held upright by his frozen leg.
She was pulled roughly to her feet before she could thoroughly savour the victory. "That," Draco growled in her ear, "was brilliant. What did you do?"
"We're too far away!" she cried in frustration, not satisfied by taking down a lone man. "Come on!" She sprinted off towards the flying bursts of colour just past a thatch of trees, filled with bloodlust. I'm coming, Harry. She entered the fracas with a warrior's cry, bringing her wrath down on any Death Eater she saw. Her actions were not longer deliberate; she was surging forward on instinct, dodging and rolling, her cloak torn off. Sometimes she felt Draco pressed against her back and sometimes she could only hear him muttering under his breath, but he was constantly at her side, protecting and guiding her, and the part of her consciousness that hung suspended above the danse macabre she was engaged in knew that she probably would've already fallen without him there.
"Five o'clock," he said now and she leapt backwards from a shower of silver sparkles, turning in midair to see Luna and Angelina Johnson losing ground to two Death Eaters. She charged forward, an avenging valkyrie, and hurled an Immolation Curse at the smaller one, whose long brown hair was flapping wildly in the wind. The curse went wide, but her companion noticed immediately and sent a spell straight at Ginny. She was knocked off her feet from behind and the spell went overhead as she tumbled over the snow. "Sectumsempra!" she heard Draco hiss and she staggered to her feet and ran towards Angelina and Luna, who had vanquished their attackers.
"Thanks, Ginny!" Angelina cried.
Luna motioned to them urgently. "This way!" she shouted.
Ginny darted after Luna and collided with an invisible barrier that clamped around her like a vise. "Crucio!" Draco bellowed directly into her ear.
Her eyes watered as her head vibrated. "They're getting away!" she shrieked.
"Come on," he said, pushing past her so forcefully that she nearly fell over and then pulling her with him.
"We're going the wrong way," she said between clenched teeth, but Draco paid her no heed. She fired random hexes into the melee battle they were skirting, but it didn't give her near the high that direct combat had and a whine was rising in her throat. "Let's kill them!"
They came to an abrupt halt. "So," Draco snarled. Ginny looked down at her feet and was surprised to see a black-robed man lying prostrate before them. His mask was gone, revealing his high cheekbones and prominent chin. Ginny had never seen him before, and he gaped up at her in confusion. "You really think we wouldn't find out?" Draco's near-disembodied voice continued. "That we wouldn't demand vengeance?" A ring on the man's wand hand winked supernaturally and he gasped, confusion replaced with terror. "That's right," Draco's voice snapped. "This is for my father." There was a blur above the Death Eater and suddenly the man's face exploded. Ginny giggled as bloody gristle went flying, glorying in the enemy's destruction. The man went completely rigid and Ginny felt now-familiar warmth against her arm. "Let's go."
"We've lost Luna," Ginny said, but she didn't care overmuch. Her wand hand itched and with a cry she charged back into battle, throwing herself into a skirmish and feeling power surge through her once again.
There was a low hill with a tor less than a hundred yards away that the clouds seemed to swirl around, and she just knew that Harry and Voldemort were there among the stones. She pressed on relentlessly, once managing to bounce a hex off of Peter Pettigrew's silver hand before he slipped away towards more impressive quarry. Ginny saw the great blond Death Eater who had taunted her last year closing in on the Creevys and she bared her teeth, but before she could do anything, she heard a grunt and felt Draco slump heavily to the ground behind her.
"Did I miss you, baby?" It was Bellatrix Lestrange.
Ginny prepared to hurl an Immolation Curse, but Lestrange was faster and Ginny was forced to a Shield Charm, which absorbed the brunt of Lestrange's spell. She felt a burning sting as the flesh on her shoulder opened. There was no time to counter and Lestrange came at her again and again, forcing her backwards. Ginny was acutely aware of her own laboured breathing and her mortality as Lestrange's Slashing Hexes made it through her shields again and again, and a deep slice just below her knee forced her to the ground.
"Are you going to scream for me, pretty baby?" Lestrange crooned, blocking the Immolation Curse that Ginny finally managed to get off. "Expelliarmus! Now, what should we-"
A jet of green light hit Lestrange and the Death Eater landed beside Ginny, glassy-eyed. A hand reached down for Ginny and she looked up at Neville Longbottom. His expression was hard and defiant, a look she'd only seen once before at the Department of Mysteries. "Come on," he said and she snatched up the dead woman's wand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
Strange beams of light were emanating from the tor, which was now less than fifty yards away. Neville was surprisingly ruthless, his curses well-chosen and precise. Ginny looked reckless and ineffective by comparison. She fought on beside him, but she didn't feel jubilant at the notion of combat anymore. Her body hurt all over and she was panting with exertion. That, and she was noticing things she hadn't back when she felt invincible. Bodies. She was sidestepping them, hearing them groan, trying her best to ignore figures she knew had to be comrades.
A curse hit Neville in the shoulder and he went down on one knee. Ginny cast an Impediment Jinx at his attacker and then a great shockwave ripped through the frozen meadow. Battle ceased immediately and all eyes went to the tor.
Two figures were silhouetted against the sky. The taller figure fell, and the air filled with sounds of Disapparition. Then an errant bolt of purple light hit the shorter figure and he, too, collapsed.
Ginny ran forward mindlessly, Neville at her heels. She saw Moody rush forward and lift Harry's limp body; he nodded to McGonagall and Disapparated with the Boy Who Lived in his arms. Hermione emerged from behind a boulder, tears coursing down her cheeks as she dragged Ron behind her. She motioned for Neville to help her, and before they disappeared Ginny could see that Ron's wand arm was gone. Her stomach lurched dangerously. "…students back to Hogwarts," McGonagall was saying.
It was over. The Death Eaters had fled and there was nothing to do but tend the wounded and bury the dead. All she wanted to do was sleep. A wizard was beckoning to her, offering to Apparate her back to Hogwarts, but she shook her head, suddenly remembering. Draco.
Her body felt at the verge of giving up on her, but she sprinted off, scrutinizing the bodies now, hoping that he wasn't too far from where Bellatrix Lestrange had fallen, hoping that her body remained…. Where had they been? Finally, she spotted Lestrange's long black hair and collapsed beside the corpse, crawling on her hands and knees through the snow, looking for anything that would give her a clue.
McGonagall was nearly upon her when she hit something that wasn't snow and lifted the Disillusionment Charm. Draco was there, cold and inert, and blood, so much black blood, pooled out like dark wings around him.
Ginny turned and vomited into the snow.
A/N – So, I've never been good at action scenes of any sort. I had intended to spend extra time on this but I want it out before DH gets released and I'm sort of forcing my own hand to release this rough version. My apologies to readers who were expecting decent prose.