Sorry for the delay in updating. please read, and if you can please leave a review afterwards, that would be very much appreciated.
Mrs Scrivenshaft remembered little of what happened next. A mixture of emotions combined with the speed yet care that was needed took up all of her thoughts as she and her fellows moved swiftly through the deserted Pub and out of the front door.
With Hagrid in the lead, they dashed silently (which was an immensely difficult task for Hagrid) across the street and into the shadows of the dark doorway of Honeydukes Sweet shop. The fire had gone out already. Some low-level Death Eaters had been told to extinguish it by Snape before he left with the others. It had most probably been early enough to save the lives of the people within.
Looking up the High Street toward Hogwarts, they could see the last few members of a vast Army – both living and dead – rounding a corner and disappearing behind a hill. Mrs Scrivenshaft knew that her Husband was with them, and vowed to save him, no matter what.
As they entered, they could hear movement upstairs. Madam Rosmerta moved over to the door that led upstairs, but Abeforth stopped her.
"That's not a good idea! They might attack us if we make ourselves known to them! It is best that we are not noticed".
Instead they walked through another doorway and crept down some wooden steps into the Cellar. It was dusty, smelled strongly of treacle, yet it was definitely in better shape than the shop-level had been, which was totally gutted by the fire.
Some of the ceiling looked close to falling in. "Burnt floor upstairs", noted Hagrid, who had to bend down to walk around in the confined space.
They all noticed a thick line through the dust on the floor where something had obviously been dragged along. It was accompanied on either side by footprints. It led them into the centre of the room, where it suddenly stopped. Abeforth moved forward and creaked open a trapdoor in the floor.
"I was right" he whispered, possibly to himself. "They put out the fire because they needed to use this Trapdoor."
He lowered himself down. Hagrid followed, though not before widening the Hatch a bit with his Magical Umbrella. When it had returned to normal size, Rosmerta and Mrs Scrivenshaft followed.
"Right, you all know your part of the plan don't you?" he asked the three people gathered around him in the gloom. They all nodded.
"Well then," he said as he lit his wand, "Let us go".
It was now Narsissa's turn to be angry. While her husband was out at the head of an Army and her Son was working his way ever closer to success for the Dark Lord, she was stuck with Dolohov looking after the Prisoners.
It wasn't as though her part wasn't an important one – quite the contrary, it was very important – but while she had never been the courageous, dedicated woman that her sister was, she still felt a powerful longing to prove herself to her Master (as well as her husband) on the battlefield. Sneaking around was what Wormtail usually did, and she didn't much care for it!
She reached the end of the tunnel which she was walking down and turned to face Dolohov. She had come to the base of a stone slide, which rose up into the shadows. So far she had had to control the prisoners without magic. The Dark Lord wanted no harmful curses – including the Imperius Curse – to be used on them, in case it affected their minds, which was the only part of them that was of any use.
"I'll go up first and you can come up after them" she told Dolohov. She then spoke to the three prisoners that they were looking after. "If you try anything while we are going up here, I will kill you!"
Belatrix was prouder than she had ever been in her life. Not only did she have the great honour of standing next to him at the final battle against the Order of the Phoenix, but she had also been given the rank of General of the Death Eater Army, with Lucius in second command. Snape controlled the Inferi though, which did make her slightly jealous.
The bodies of the Giants were littered across the lawns. Belatrix knew that they were all dead, as it was almost impossible to stun a Giant. Many had been brought down by the Centaurs, while others bore the marks of deadly curses which must have been performed by members of the Order. One of them had deep gashes all over its body, and the grass around it gleamed black in the light of many wands. She had never seen a curse that could do that before. Interesting.
She heard Snape and her Master shout two different spells. She knew one of them as a physical barrier spell. It stopped all physical beings and objects from getting close to them, but did not stop spells and curses. The other she did not know, and she knew better than to ask.
Whatever it did, it certainly didn't protect them from what came next. She felt with dread the familiar feeling of cold, clammy air around her and within her, and she could hear the screams of those in the Cells on either side of her cell at Azkaban. She looked over at the Forest and an unnatural fog was gathering between the trees.
She heard a howl from the castle and jumped back to Earth. There was no time to think about that now, not when there was so much fun to be had.
As the four friends arrived at the base of a steep, stone slide, they saw the marks of a struggle all around them. There was a fresh stain of blood on the lowest part of the slide.
Mrs Scrivenshaft was surprised, as even she knew that blood and guts was not the Death Eater way. This was crude and desperate – a sign that it had been done by somebody without a wand.
"Oh my God" whispered Rosmerta, who was looking into a shadowy corner of the tunnel. Abeforth lifted his wand higher and they all saw what was unmistakably a corpse. It had blood down the front of its robes. The blood was not its own though, as when further examined, it had no marks on its skin, save a graze on the left elbow. Everyone knew who it was, and everyone knew that he had been killed by Avada Kedavra.
Thank you, and please review if you like my writing. Let me know what you think of the story and take a look at my other stories if they interest you.