AUTHOR'S NOTE Sorry it's been a while since I posted! I had to let my beta look over this chapter and it's a good thing she did, since it went through a couple changes. Cho and Lana might still be a little melodramatic, but I've toned them down.

Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER I don't own anyone, except I made up the idea of Liza Lang.

A heavy silence had fallen in the Kent kitchen. Lana was crying again on Cho's shoulder. Harry, Ron, and Bill had left and were whispering amongst themselves in the living room. Hermione and Gabrielle stood awkwardly against the stove, keeping a nervous eye on Lex, who was sitting silently at the kitchen table.

Finally, Lana wiped her eyes and asked, "What do we do now?"

"We need to figure out where Bellatrix and the others took him," Bill said as he, Harry and Ron rejoined the group. "Assemble a team and rescue Clark before she can get what she wants."

Martha frowned. "Assemble a team? I – I don't understand."

Harry nodded to Ron, who suddenly disappeared with a loud crack. Martha shrieked. "Don't worry!" Harry said. "He's on his way to get help." He turned to the others. "He's gone to meet with Remus. In the meantime, it's up to us to find where Bellatrix has taken Clark and keep her from hurting him until Remus and the others arrive."

"How long?" Hermione asked.

Harry glanced at Jonathan, Martha, Lana, and Lex before replying, "Hopefully soon."

"Where do we look for Clark?" Gabrielle asked.

With a heavy sigh, Harry said, "I don't know."

Jonathan and Martha shared a look. "We might," Jonathan admitted.

Hermione and Harry looked at them eagerly. "How?"

"If she wants his blood, she'll need to be able to cut him open," Martha said.

"Yes," Cho said, one arm still around Lana.

Martha sighed. "Clark's skin can't be broken by anything." She looked at the floor to avoid the questioning and skeptical stares of the others. "At least, not anything on earth."

Lana broke away from her sister and crossed to Clark's mother. "Mrs. Kent, what are you talking about?"

She was crying now. "We found him – "

Jonathan put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. Then he turned to the others. "The only way to break Clark's skin is to expose him to the rocks left behind by the meteor shower."

"The meteor rocks?" Lex repeated. "What do they have to do with anything?"

"Clark is allergic to them," Martha said. "They make him weak. Weak enough for a knife to cut him."

Harry and Bill looked at each other and nodded. "So where are there a lot of these meteor rocks?"

Jonathan opened his mouth to answer, but Lana jumped on him. "Why does Clark need to be exposed to meteor rocks?" she demanded. "Why won't a knife cut his skin?"

The Kents said nothing. Cho took Lana gently by the arm. "Right now, let's just get Clark back," she said quietly. Lana continued to glare at Clark's parents, but finally nodded.

"Okay."

Harry waited until the two sisters were quiet, then approached the Kents. "Where do you think Bellatrix would take Clark?"

"Carlton Gorge," Jonathan said.

Bill nodded. "Harry, take the others and go ahead. I'll bring word to Ron and meet you there as soon as possible."

"Okay." Harry, Hermione, Gabrielle, and Cho started heading for the door as Bill Disapparated. Lana looked at Mrs. Kent before heading after them.

Cho spun around. "No way!" she said. "You are staying right here with Clark's parents and Lex."

"What?" Lana cried.

"I am not risking your life!" Cho said. "Bellatrix is too powerful."

Lana's lip trembled and she threw her arms around Cho. She didn't let go for a minute. "We have to go," Cho said quietly as she stroked Lana's hair.

Martha took Lana gently and pulled her toward her. She nodded at Cho, who let her tears stream silently down her cheeks as she followed the others outside. Harry and the three witches shared a grave look before Disapparating from the porch.

…

Clark was bound to a tree. His wrists were held together by a powerful charm from Bellatrix that he wasn't sure he could break even if he had been at his full power. As it was, the meteor rocks in the area left him weak, dizzy, and in pain.

Bellatrix had made a game of torturing him, pulling off his clothes piece by piece and testing her various curses and hexes on him. He was left in nothing but his underwear, bruised and burned and wrapped around a tree. He suddenly was reminded of a time not so long ago when Whitney had tied him to a post in a cornfield, nearly naked with Lana's meteor rock necklace on. Now Whitney was dead and Lex wouldn't be coming to save him this time.

No one would come to save him. Even if the others had survived the attack, there was no way they would know he was still alive.

So many things didn't make sense. This crazy woman knew more about him and his past than he did. Only when he was hit by the green curse was he sure of anything about his past. As far as he could tell, the curse was supposed to kill him. It had killed Whitney. It had hurt more than meteor rocks did. It had made him want to die.

And then there were those horrible black shadows in the cornfield. Everything that was good about his life had melted away and left him in a bottomless joyless pit. He remembered a huge red star and an explosion. He remembered crying out names as he lay in the cornfield, but not what the names were.

Suddenly, Bellatrix was kneeling in front of him, false concern in her eyes. "How are you doing, Kal-El?" she asked. "You holding up alright?"

"Perfect," Clark said.

"Good!" Bellatrix bounced to her feet and motioned to her followers behind her. "This is your finest moment! Wouldn't want you all tired out."

Clark warily watched the silver-haired man, Draco, approach him with a knife. He raised an eyebrow. "All tired out for what?"

"For your sacrifice, of course," Bellatrix replied. "You should feel honored, Kal-El. You are helping to make the great Lord Voldemort's vision a reality!"

Clark squirmed as Draco got closer and Bellatrix rambled. "With your blood, I will live forever to carry on the Heir of Slytherin's noble cause! I will live to see his dream realized! Then we will purify the Wizarding World, cleansing it of Mudbloods forever!"

Clark felt the cold blade of the knife against the side of his neck. "You sound an awful lot like Hitler," he said. "And look what happened to him!'

He flinched when he saw the cold hatred in the woman's eyes. She nodded to Draco, Clark cried out as the knife pierced his skin in a long line around the side of his neck. "Don't waste the blood!" Bellatrix cried.

There was a series of cracks. Bellatrix and her followers looked up, distracted. "Potter!" Draco sneered. He pulled out his wand and started to climb to his feet, but Bellatrix's voice stopped him.

"Not this time, Draco! Collect the creature's blood!"

Harry smirked when he saw Draco sneer but return to Clark's side. "Hermione, you and Cho take Draco!" he said. "Get Clark out of here!" He turned toward Bellatrix and grinned. "Hello again Bellatrix."

She threw back her head and laughed. "I'm not afraid of you and your little girlfriend, Potter."

"Maybe you should be!" Gabrielle said.

"Somehow I don't think so," Bellatrix replied. "Since there are two of you and a whole crowd of us."

Harry raised his eyebrows, crinkling the skin around his scar. "It only took one of me to kill your beloved Voldemort."

"Never speak his name, you filthy little halfblood!" Bellatrix screamed. She pulled out her wand and charged.

"Stupefy!" Harry cried. The hex went wide, missing Bellatrix but hitting one of her Death Eaters. From the grunt, Harry thought it was Marcus Flint.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The bolt of green light just narrowly missed Gabrielle and sizzled harmlessly on the ground. By the tree that Clark was tied to, Hermione and Cho had gotten close enough to fight Draco hand-to-hand, but even with two of them they were having trouble holding their own. Clark sagged weakly against the tree trunk.

Harry and Gabrielle dodged curses from all sides, taking refuge behind a large cluster of trees. "Harry, how long can we keep this up?" Gabrielle asked. Harry shrugged and sent a disarming spell at Goyle.

A barrage of cracks drew everyone's attention. Harry's face lit up when he saw Bill and Ron leading Remus, Tonks, the Weasley twins, and a handful of other Order members toward the fighting. "Thank Merlin!" Harry said.

"Need help, mate?" Ron said with a grin.

Harry turned his eyes back to Bellatrix. "I could use a hand."

Ron, Bill, Fred and George shared a patented Weasley grin. Suddenly the odds had fallen much more evenly.

Hermione finally managed to hit Draco hard enough in the face to knock him unconscious. They left him sprawled on the ground and huddled near Clark. Hermione pointed her wand at Clark's wrists and said, "Finite incantatem!" They glowed dimly for a minute, then Clark groaned as his arms fell to his sides. He curled into a ball on the ground.

"We have to get him out of here," Cho said.

"I can't lift him," Hermione said. "And floating him out of here would just make him a target for Bellatrix."

With a gasp, Clark grabbed at Hermione's robes. "The blood!" he said. "Don't let her get my blood!"

Only then did the two witches notice that Clark was keeping one hand clamped over a bloody wound on his neck. Cho gently pulled his hand away and muttered a healing spell. The cut closed itself and the bleeding stopped. Clark breathed a sigh of relief, but then looked around wildly. "The blonde man – he was collecting it from my neck! You need to destroy it!"

"I'll put up a protection spell while you look for the blood," Hermione said.

Cho nodded. The bowl was lying half-spilled near where Draco was still passed out. She cried, "Incende!" and the blood in the bowl and soaking into the earth burst into flames.

A rippling light formed a bubble around the three and Clark smiled weakly. "Is it destroyed?"

Cho nodded. "All gone."

"Thanks." Clark looked at the colorful curses flying through the air. "What do we do now?"

Hermione sighed. "We wait."

Fred and George were back-to-back, fighting off Goyle from one side and Montague from the other. Their expressions bore identical strain as their opponents did not relent.

Suddenly Montague fell flat on his face, stunned. Fred grinned at Bill. "Thanks, big brother!"

"Anytime!"

Fred spun around so that he was standing at his twin's shoulder. They both grinned as Goyle suddenly took a frightened step back. "Not so tough now," Fred said.

"Fred! Or George! Or, whichever!"

The twins looked to their left to see Lee Jordan dueling Flint. He waved with his free hand desperately. "Help!" he called. "Help would be good!"

They started toward him, but his plea to them had given Flint the moment he needed. With a grin, he aimed his wand at Lee and shouted the Killing Curse. The twins watched in horror as their friend fell dead on the forest floor.

Lee was not the only Order member who had fallen. Remus gathered the survivors in a group while defending against Bellatrix and the others' continued attacks.

"How are we supposed to win this?" Gabrielle asked. Harry and Bill looked at each other and shrugged desperately.

"Harry, mate, any Boy-Who-Lived miracles you've got stored up would be good right about now," Fred muttered, his eyes shiny with tears.

"Sorry. Fresh out."

Bellatrix grinned coldly. "A lot of people could have used your miracles, little Potter. That brainless boy in the graveyard, my dear cousin Sirius, even that old fool Dumbledore."

Clark's eyebrows rose higher and higher as he watched Harry's emerald eyes blaze hotly with rage. "Uh-oh," he said.

"Uh-oh is right," Cho said.

"Just occupy the others," Harry growled.

Remus stared at Harry for a moment, then simply nodded. "Okay."

The hexes began flying faster as each Order member chose a Death Eater and drew them away from where Bellatrix stood cackling madly. Fred and George took on Flint together, rage and grief burning in their eyes.

With crazy, dancing eyes, Bellatrix said, "Now it's you and me, baby Potty!"

"I've been waiting for this since the day you killed Sirius in the Department of Mysteries," he shot back.

Bellatrix's grin grew wider. "Since the day you got Sirius killed."

His emotions slipped from his control and Harry blindly charged. He dodged everything Bellatrix threw at him, the words Avada Kedavra on the tip of his tongue. Dozens of damaging curses raced through his head, but none but the Killing Curse seemed good enough for Bellatrix Lestrange. He summoned his anger into the core of his magic, feeling the hate fueling his power.

But then he saw the evil glowing in the eyes of the insane woman before him. Suddenly he remembered how Voldemort's eyes had looked during the last battle and he wondered if his own looked like that now. He dropped his wand.

Bellatrix frowned. "You aren't going to fight back?" She pouted. "You're no fun."

The sharp splintering of wood echoed through the gorge seconds before a thick tree came thundering down on top of Bellatrix. She had no time to scream.

Everyone in the clearing had frozen. They turned to see Cho standing next to a shattered stump, her wand in hand. Tears were streaming down her face. "She made me remember," she whispered. Her voice was choked. "She made me remember everything!"

The Death Eaters began panicked Apparations and with a handful of cracks, they were gone. Hermione dropped the protective barrier. Then she and Gabrielle took Cho in their arms and gently led her to sit on the ground.

Bill spoke softly to Remus. "You can take the others back. We'll be home soon."

Remus nodded, casting a sad glance at the handful of bodies behind him. Fred and George were stoically wrapping Lee's body in a cloak, while Parvati Patil cried over her dead twin. Then, one by one, they began to disappear with loud pops that echoed through the woods.

Bill and Ron approached Harry slowly. "Come on, Harry," Bill said. "We have to get Clark out of here."