I'm gonna rescue you.
So you can rescue me too.
Make it a rendezvous.
Spurred to action Arthur's dragging all of the resistance out of their beds. Limbs are being dragged down the stairs faces ragged with lack of sleep. Who are they to sleep when so much falls to shit around them?
One by one I see their previously zombified faces morph into horror at the sight of the now charred kitchen. Personally, I think of it as improvement.
Cissy and Andy scramble down the steps and each of them bring a spread hand to heaving chests. The whites of their eyes reflect back in the dim light as they survey the damage.
"She was here!" Andy cries and Cissy's porcelain face nods violently like a bobble head in an earthquake. "All of this…this entropy!"
"The markings of a Bellatrix tantrum. Reminds me of when she reduced our Manor's wine cellar to a crater upon discovering I didn't have her favorite merlot."
Arthur gapes at your sisters. "Lestrange. In here! Stealth doesn't seem her style!"
On the inside, I'm grinning like an utter idiot. Arthur is right, if you did this, you'd be gloating about your work. You'd shove their faces into it.
"SACRE BLEU!" Comes a scream from above.
That can mean only one thing; Fleur found Cormac. What's left of him at least.
Footsteps are thundering down the stairwell toward Arthur and I, and Fleur appears, her face a disheveled mess. Her pregnant belly quivers under her nightgown. Even the fetus is uncomfortable with all of this.
"Arthur! 'Eet's Cormac! 'Is face 'eez covered 'een 'orrible scars! And 'e 'eez unconscious 'een 'zee bathroom!" Her pretty face contorts as she retches loudly. "And 'zee smell…oh 'ow 'orrible 'zee smell!" Of course she means Cormac's burning flesh. A smell I'm all too familiar with; you've let me cook you with acid.
It's a smell so thick it's palpable. I'm salivating. A hunger is writhing in my gut, and each precious second that dribbles by is time apart from you. It can't be abated. I'll find you. They will lead me to you. You'll satisfy my hunger.
"The Death Eaters must've attacked him!" Arthur says and I nod. "He must've startled them!"
I couldn't stop them, I say, and neither could Cormac.
"Whas happened?" Now a bleary Neville has joined us, his ridiculous mouth hanging open at the hinges.
"We're storming the ministry. Tonight. Rouse everyone in the resistance Neville! Send owls!" Neville nods and rushes upstairs. I want to tell him to add your name to the addressees.
Arthur's hands cup each of my shoulders and he commands my attention. "Hermione, are you alright? Who was here? Was it Lestrange? What did they want?" He vomits his parental concern all over me, and I stay mute. There's nothing I can say. "Did they…did they hurt you?"
I think of Cormac and nod. Arthur's face contorts into a scowl. "The bastards. The miserable bloody good for nothing bastards! Haven't they put you through enough? Look Hermione, you've been through so much, why don't you stay here, be safe? Perhaps with Andy and Cissy."
That wouldn't work. How could I find you from this dingy pub? I shake my head; I say I'd like to avenge the one I love. Arthur smiles broadly at this.
"Ahh Ron…rest his soul. We fight for Ron! For Harry!"
For Bellatrix Lestrange.
We arrive at the ministry building minutes later, and the place is swathed in darkness.
Fitting ambiance for a final act of desperation against the Overlord.
We wade through a sea of trash and debris to approach the building, and I find myself disappointed that despite the misery that surrounds them, the people of London should still have the decency to pick up after themselves. Even the freaks down in the psych ward of Azkaban are courteous.
Many people I don't recognize have joined up outside of the doors to the Ministry, all standing with wands at the ready. I am feeling a strange déjà vu.
The melee, the fracas, it begins right away; as Arthur decides to forgo the art of subtlety and barrels through the front doors, make-shift militia in tow.
Death Eaters abound and multi-hued lightning bolts of death are beginning to streak across the grand entryway to the ministry.
How cruelly ironic; that it should all look so…beautiful.
There isn't much I can do to fight back from this vantage, seeing as the resistance conveniently forgot to arm me with a wand. But that's all right. Magic makes us weak, and I've got a satchel of anarchy; a far better weapon. I take a steak knife in each hand.
I submerge myself into the darkness along the walls and begin to make my way toward the floo.
You're not here. You wouldn't stoop this low to simply hold the line.
Poorly aimed hexes whiz by my face cracking the wall, and one of the Death Eaters has stumbled in front of me. I can't quite see who it is, but they're not moving from that spot, choosing to anchor down and return fire from the wall. I creep closer and instantly they recognize me.
"It's the mudblood—HRCK!" Pity he won't be able to finish with a knife jammed into his voice box. I press on easing my way through the fights.
They recognize me. Every one of them; friend and foe. Like a celebrity in a crowd, but none of the Death Eaters decide to take a chance on me, after they watch as I bludgeon a man's skull with a meat tenderizer from Molly's kitchen. The handle is so slick with blood it slips from my hand, falling to the floor.
Everyone is so caught up in the good vs. evil ambience of the evening I am pushing through this fight with ease. More and more plainclothes members of the resistance are pouring in through the floo and the doors.
Right about now would be the perfect time to…CRACK!
Materializing in the center of the enormous entry foyer stands the Overlord himself, sparing nothing in making a Hollywood entrance. His disgusting translucent face, a road map of capillaries and veins beneath disease like skin, warps into a pseudo scowl. Immediately he immerses himself in the fight, killing people within immediate proximity, regardless of alignment.
CRACK! CRACK! Two more figures materialize behind the Overlord, one of which is extremely fat and the other much smaller, and suddenly my eyes are locking on you. You're wearing a beautifully crooked mouth with edges turned skyward in a smile filled with childlike glee. Enthralled by all that's occurring around you.
Death and violence invigorate you to the point of arousal. I brandish the meat cleaver and press through the throngs of fighters, cutting through a jungle of limbs.
It is astonishing that I have not been struck by a curse. Marksmanship wasn't on the list of academic priorities at Hogwarts apparently.
You laughter haunts the air, you're here. I can feel you, you permeating into my skin. Omnipresent.
I press on through the pulsating melee spilling out all around the ministry floor. Curses and hexes are flying in every direction, like a confused mass of birds that had suddenly been blinded. One curse grazes the exposed skin of my forearm, torching it like meat on a frying pan, and the wound sizzles. It causes me to stumble a moment but not before sending a knife flying toward the source of the curse, striking an unsuspecting Yaxley directly in his temple. A kill.
It's hilarious the way he flops back plank like onto the floor, his wand rolling across the floor suddenly free of his dead fingers.
Your melodious cackling fills my ears as I draw closer toward you. You don't see me just yet; you're busy cutting people down, firing crucio after crucio with the flourish of a muggle lawn sprinkler. Strands and curls run wild on top of your frazzled head as you send a large stone barreling into Seamus Finnegan, crunching his ribcage like a bundle of twigs.
"FOR GINNY! AVADA KEDAVRA" The killing curse is rocketing toward you and you match it with your own crimson beam, pressing it back toward Molly.
Not my Bellatrix you bitch! My legs scramble forward of their own accord and at full speed and with an arm outstretched, I clothesline Molly in the neck.
"MUDDY PUPPY!" You squeal in delight and start to dash toward me, but Rodolphus eclipses you with his girth, his meaty hands resting disapprovingly on his hips.
Out of the way I shout at him.
"You bloody slut." He warbles through his hotdog lips. "This is all your fault. Just how long have you been amassing this blasted militia from your ruddy jail cell huh?" His wand is outstretched and aimed at my head; I can't help but go cross-eyed looking down at his bloated fist gripping its hilt, looking like a pudgy infant swallowing the wand whole. "I'll be damned if you think you're going to succeed in killing the Overlord tonight blighted little bitch."
Behind him I see your face contort with rage, and slowly you raise your own wand at the back of his head.
"BELLA!"
Cissy and Andy are weaving through the battle and your concentration is broken at the sound of their shrill voices repeating your name in rhythm. My hand is snaking into the satchel, searching for the perfect weapon. Rodolphus' organs are sheathed in a veritable shell of fat, and unfortunately the knives at my disposal are grossly undersized to take on such a slaughter.
Wait. I feel something by my ankles. It's cold, and somewhat…slippery…and it's moving!
Nagini, the phallic creature, is starting to constrict my legs. She rises to full height between myself and Rodolphus, and her beady eyes regard me with a stoic vitriol. Nagini is rearing back, ready to strike.
I lunge at Rodolphus and the snake at the same time, lashing out with the meat cleaver, embedding it deeply into his gut. Yellow adipose spills out from the wound like a pustule that's just been lanced. A fitting metaphor. The resulting scream is like music. This is art.
Sadly though, it is not a kill, and you're voicing your disdain. But you are unable to do anything at the moment. Your sisters are trying, and failing, to subdue you.
"Petrificus totalus!" You sing to your siblings, and daintily you step over their bodies. We lock stares.
You're boring into me. Our cosmology is nearly completed. No longer am I driven for a want of belonging; it's pure carnality. Passion has turned to ravenous hunger, and Rodolphus stands between me and the meal. You are almost mine.
You once read to me from "The Story of the Eye", a grossly erotic muggle philosopher's tale to which you ascribe. A tale you say that's all our own; blasphemous, disgusting, and profane...and yet so enthralling. We both are driven by desires we cannot hope to ever comprehend; both desecrating what little tenets we once held sacred. Debauchery in its purest form is a collision of desires, sexuality and death.
And eggs.
And, of course, an eye.
I feel a shiver roll down my spine when I think of the night we had spent after the Overlord gifted you with Alastor Moody's glass eye. Were the thing alive, I doubt it would've been able to unsee where it was placed.
The glass eye, slick and wet, tumbles across your bedroom floor. Luckily you manage to capture it before it gets too far away. You place it on my torso, rolling it up and down my ribs with your fingertips. I am still trying to catch my breath.
"The prude has no eye for art. They cannot understand…that there is beauty…in the obscene." You hiss in my ear, tongue darting out to trace the lobe. I look down at the eye held in your palm and balk at how, just moments ago, we've just turned such a mundane thing into something so…horrible.
You join me in watching your soon-to-be-ex-husband's pitiful struggles; your wanton hands caressing me. You kiss my neck, and suckle on my jugular.
Every breath Rodolphus fails to take is a joke with an unending punchline. He doubles (quadruples) over, hands grasping at his chest, the wound becoming puckered and wrinkled. Nagini still writhes in my grasp and I drag the great snake toward Rodolphus, the beached whale. You've sauntered over, wrapping an arm about my waist and you place a kiss on my death-camp cheeks before smothering my mouth without your wanton lips. Rodolphus' stupid face gapes back at you.
"Bella…you? The mudblood?"
The panicked snake constricts around Rodolphus neck, and his face is now turning red, eyes bulging. I pull the snake even tighter, blocking your husband's jugular and arteries. His face is cherry tomato red. Your name slips from his bulging lips as a croaking sound, and you can only laugh against my mouth. The tip of your tongue grazes my pallet. In my fist the brittle bones of the snake's skull are snapping, reducing its brain to putty. Nagini no longer struggles in my grip.
A final breath comes in a gurgle, and the corpulent corpse, freshly dead, rolls forward. A gelatinous blob of flesh and organs complete with a reptilian necktie, also dead.
"You realize what you've just done muddy one…" You coo, and I can't help but smile.
I'm taking back what's mine I say.
Off in the distance, across the battlefield, someone has just discovered that their life insurance has come to an end.
A/N: Lyrics from "The Rescue Song" by Mr. Little Jeans.
A/N 1: Delay much? Yes, it's racing season. Got some huge races coming up, and the nice weather does a number on my creativity.
A/N 2: "The Story of the Eye" is written by Georges Bataille and is NOT for the faint of heart.
