Far warning: I do not own Harry Potter. I'm just borrowing the characters for a bit of craziness and then returning them to their rightful place.
Keeping a secret when the man before you can literally read your mind is a very difficult thing to do. Airiala had to focus on anything else to keep him from being able to tell what she knew about the Ultimate Truth.
She had just gone through another verse of the song that never ends when Voldemort's face twisted into anger and she was tossed to the ground.
The impact caused all sorts of pain to run through her body and the rock she had landed on didn't help matters either.
She turned her head and glared up at him, but he didn't seem to care. He pointed his wand at her, malice and anger filled in his gaze.
"Crucio!"
Raina and Pyro were looking out across Hogwarts grounds in the direction Airiala had been taken. Although they knew that Airiala had been taken through the Forbidden Forest, neither one knew what they could do to retrieve her back.
Lando had wanted to send a team out to search for her and destroy the Deatheaters wherever they were, but the plan was very quickly rejected as a suicide mission that no one was going to go on. Lando was currently pouting in the corner of the Great Hall.
"Do you think that she will be okay?" Raina said softly.
Pyro pulled Raina into his arms, keeping his eyes on the treeline. "Airiala has been on her own for a very long time. I think that she can handle whatever it is that the Deatheaters throw at her."
Raina lifted her head and looked into Pyro's eyes, her own filled with tears. "But her powers are acting up. Surely you noticed just how much it took out of her to do what she did to give us more time. It almost killed her."
"Voldemort won't kill her."
The two elementals turned to Dumbledore who had joined them. "He needs all of the elementals alive to activate the Ultimate Truth properly, although they do not all have to be in the same place."
"Do you think that Airiala knows what the Ultimate Truth is?" Pyro said to the older man. Dumbledore shrugged, his eyes on the trees searching with a worried glance.
"I do not know, but if she does she needs to keep it to herself until she can return here to us."
Airiala had heard of the Crucio curse before. It was nothing new, but experiencing it and hearing about the experience then trying to imagine what it was like are two very different things.
Pain flowed out from the point of impact and caused her entire body to convulse. She held in her screams of pain, not wanting to give Voldemort the satisfaction of hearing it. She wanted to scream, to do anything to make the pain seem to lessen, but she wouldn't do it.
She rolled about on the ground as the pain increased. It seemed her lack of response was making him angrier and so he was trying to get a sound out of her now.
She wasn't sure how she was able to do it, but she found her way to her feet. The pain was unbearable, but she wanted to defy him, wanted him to know that no matter what he did he would never break her.
She lifted her eyes him, defiance in her gaze. His own eyes narrowed and he turned to Lucius, who lifted his own wand and sent another Crucio curse at her. Draco followed soon after.
Three Crucio curses caused the sound Voldemort wanted to hear. The pain was too much and Airiala fell to the ground, her scream carrying on the wind blowing around her.
Severus and Lando both looked up as the sound of a woman's scream hit Hogwarts. Suddenly Severus was filled with hope, because that was Airiala's scream. He hated the thought of her in pain, but knowing that she was meant that she was still alive and that gave him hope that he would see her again.
Despite the night he confronted her about it, he felt the need to actually speak with her again. He wanted to talk to her, to let her know that while it may have been loneliness for her, it meant something to him.
He wanted to try and make something work with her, even if only for a short time. Having her for a day was better than never having her at all.
Lando was filled with panic at the sound of Airala's scream. If she was screaming that meant that she was in pain, and if she was in pain that meant that they were hurting her, and if they were hurting her than that could mean that they would do worse things to her.
No one touched what belongs to Lando and, as far as he was concerned, that included Airiala.
Airiala was lying on the ground, her arms wrapped around her middle as the pain continued. After that first scream, she hadn't made another noise.
The wind was whirling around her, a symptom of her pain only and not something that she was controlling.
The fact that she had the wind moving at all was a good sign. It meant that her power was returning to her, but it would still never be as strong as it was before being indifferent to Severus.
Tears flowed form her eyes and still she didn't scream. She had given one scream to this pain and that was all she was willing to let go.
Then the pain stopped and Airiala felt the wind stop with it as she gulped in breath of much needed fresh air.
"Now," Voldemort said moving closer, "What is the Ultimate Truth?"
Airiala didn't respond and continued to take deep breaths into her lungs. Her skin was covered in sweat, dirt, and grass. In a moment of clarity she did the only thing she could think of to get a message to her friends.
She got up on her hands and knees, Voldemort still hovering above her, she glanced and noticed that all eyes were on their master, none were on her other that Voldemort's.
She drew a map and a wrote help before Voldemort hit her on the back of her shoulders sending her back to the ground.
"To Lando," she whispered, her hand flat on the map. She felt the grooved disappear and was thankful that this part of her plan worked when she felt someone grab her hair and used it to lift her to her knees.
She looked up at the Dark Lord, a children's nursery rhyme repeating in her head. If Voldemort tried to take what he wanted from her by force, she was going to at least try and make it difficult for him.
Severus, Lando, and the rest of the staff were standing in the front corridor of the school. Many of them planning and some hoping for the best result in this battle.
Raina and Pyro were sitting by the front doors watching a pacing Severus and foot-tapping Lando.
"I feel like this could have been avoided had we never gotten involved with the relationship," Raina said finally. "She may have fallen for Lando on her own."
"Do you seriously believe that?" Pyro said, his eyes focused on Severus. "I don't think it would have mattered either way. Lando doesn't love her, he just wants her because she is a fellow Elemental and, to him, it makes sense. Severus has no ulterior motive to care for her at all, and yet he does."
"Is that why you wanted to be with me Pyro? Because I was another Elemental?"
Pyro moved his eyes from Severus to Raina, whose blue eyes were looking up at him with concern for her friend and sadness at what they were witnessing.
"Honestly, I feared the Water Elemental," he said softly. Raina's eyes turned to confusion and Pyro almost laughed, but his worry for Airiala was too great. "I am the Fire Elemental, and what is used to put out fires? Water.
"I feared that the Water Elemental would want to put me out or we would be enemies. Then, when I met you, I knew that there was nothing I needed to fear. I feared Lando more than you because I feared he would fall for you and take you from me."
"Then why...?" It didn't need to be said what she was referring too. He remembered the pain in her eyes all too well.
Pyro looked over at Lando and then back at Severus before returning his eyes to Raina. "I was scared you would break my heart. Scared that you would hurt me with your powers, or that I would hurt you with mine. I'm fire and you are water and in my mind they couldn't mix. I was too blind to see that without fire and heat, water could not become vapor and make clouds and rain, could not help create life.
"I knew then that I needed you to be with me more than anything else." He looked up at Severus. "Like that man, I know that I was wrong to push you away and wrong to hurt you. I just hope that you could come to forgive me one day."
Raina gently touched Pyro's chest, right above his heart. He turned his eyes back to her and she looked up at him with all the emotion that she was feeling for him but could not say at this moment.
"You're already forgiven."
Pyro smiled at her before turning to look at Lando, who had just stopped his foot tapping and was now leaning down towards the ground.
Lando stood and looked back at Pyro and Raina before waving them over.
"Lando is calling us."
The two Elementals walked over to Lando, who was once again kneeling down towards the ground. "Lando?"
"Airiala is alive," Lando said with a smile, "and she is calling for my help."