AUTHOR'S NOTE Hi again! Only a couple notes here – Bill's and Gabrielle's patronuses are never mentioned anywhere in canon, so I had to make them up. Same for Bellatrix (and yes, that means there will be dementors). Also, I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but I jumped Gabrielle's age three or four years so that if Harry's twenty-two, she would be nineteen or twenty, not sixteen. Because that would be creepy.
Thanks as always to Lauren, my patient and faithful beta.
DISCLAIMER Don't own anyone. Merely borrowing them.
The wide grin that split Bellatrix's face was more frightening than anything Clark had seen before. Lana and Lex stood silent, too shocked to scream. "Well, well, well," Bellatrix purred. She looked Clark up and down. "You're not what I expected."
Clark glared at her, holding his ground in front of the others defiantly. "And what did you expect?"
She shrugged and raised an eyebrow. "It certainly will be fun to get to know exactly what you're made of."
He felt Lana stiffen behind him and he blushed. "You'll have to take me first."
"I don't think that will be a problem."
Then Harry was standing between Clark and the Death Eaters. "You don't really think we're going to let you take him, do you?" he asked. Before Clark could stop them, Ron, Hermione, Bill, Gabrielle, Cho, Lex, and Lana had all joined Harry.
Bellatrix smirked. "Strangely enough, little Potter, I do." Then without another word, she and her Death Eater followers Disapparated with a loud crack.
Suddenly the bright Kansas sun seemed to fade away into nothingness. Lana began to shiver first, but soon the entire group was shaking uncontrollably from the bone-chilling cold. Blackness closed in around them. "Harry?" Cho called weakly.
He meant it as a scream, but it came out only a whisper. "Dementors."
Lana, Lex, and Clark, unprepared for the attack, were the first to fall to the ground as the black-hooded creatures glided silently out of the cornstalks. The others circled around them as best they could, but there were dementors everywhere.
Images danced in Lex's eyes. He blinked, but the dark, shadowy vision wouldn't fade. He was in the mansion; the walls were cold stone. He was young and afraid to look in the crib, but he did it anyway. There was the baby, his tiny face blue, his skin cold. "No!" Lex cried out, writhing on the ground. "Julian!"
Lana too fell into a blackened memory – of being a little girl in a fairy princess costume waving to her parents. She heard the whine of the meteor, saw the black smoke and flame. Only here the flame was as black as the smoke. Everything was black and her parents' screams echoed endlessly in her head.
Cho cringed as she heard Lana scream over and over again for her mom and dad. Bill was the first to raise his wand. With every last ounce of energy he had, he thought of Fleur and how much he loved her. "Expecto Patronum!" he cried.
A brilliant silver eagle burst from the end of his wand and swooped toward the dementors. Around him, other shimmering creatures joined the giant bird – a dolphin from Gabrielle, a small but ferocious Jack Russell Terrier from Ron, an otter from Hermione, a swan from Cho, and a stag from Harry.
It did not take long for the Patronuses to flicker and dissolve in thin mist. There were far too many dementors for the small band.
Cho couldn't tell whether the horrible memory that came to her was another from the broken charm or from the dementor steadily advancing on her. She was a little girl, waking to see a dark, shadowy man in her bedroom. He pointed a stick at her and said, "Imperio." When he told her to get out of bed and follow him out the window, she didn't argue or even question. She just went willingly.
The image of Fleur faded from Bill's mind as blackness set in. It was replaced by a man with pure vicious ferocity in his eyes coming toward him with a sadistic grin. Bill clawed at his face, feeling Greyback's teeth and fingernails as clearly as the night he had been attacked.
Gabrielle, Ron, and Hermione fell in a heap, twitching and crying out the names of their friends and family who had died fighting Voldemort. Harry fought the tug of the darkness longer than the others. The stag was the last to fade away, but then Harry fell to the ground like the others. A flash of green light came from deep in the blackness, followed by the voice of a woman begging and high, cruel laughter.
The black-robed creatures circled around the bodies lying on the ground. They all seemed drawn to Clark, who was screaming the words, "Krypton," "Lara," and "Jor-El" endlessly as he stared blindly at the sky.
Bellatrix reappeared, a wispy silver snake coiling around her. She stopped the dementors when they moved in for the kiss. "Leave him intact." The creatures seemed to nod and suddenly melted back into the rows of corn. She surveyed the scene.
Lex and Lana lay still, unconscious from the emotional assault. Harry and his company were twitching and shaking, Bill and Cho still clinging to shreds of consciousness. Clark had ceased screaming and lay still, his eyes open but unseeing.
She gestured to Draco and Millicent Bullstrode, who had returned with the others once the dementors had left. "Take him."
"To where?" Millicent asked. "We can't Apparate with him."
"We won't be taking Kal-El with us," Bellatrix replied. "The only thing I'm after doesn't require him for very long." She grinned and Draco and Millicent took out their wands and together raised the body from the ground. "We will take him to where the green rocks scatter the ground. They will make him weak so that we can open his veins."
Cho narrowed her eyes blearily as Clark's body began to float away. Bellatrix grinned and murmured softly to Draco. The blonde man nodded and looked back over his shoulder with a smirk. "Stupefy!" he said and the wandless curse threw Cho into blackness.
After Draco and Millicent had Clark at the edge of the clearing, Bellatrix turned to the other Death Eaters. "Make sure they don't follow."
Slow smiles spread across their faces and wands were leveled. A rainbow of lightning bolts flashed through the field at the heap of bodies. When Hermione's body was the last to still, the Death Eaters followed their Lady away from the cornstalks and Harry and the others were left lying alone.