Title: Shackles
Author: Nacata
Summary: They were trapped there: all of them. In the halls they used to run down, the classrooms they used to sleep in, the dormitories they used to gossip in. They were shackled to the sole place that had ever provided them safety. They weren't kidding when they said school was a prison. AU
Chapter 3: Breath (Angelina Johnson)
Rating: T for heavy language, mildly descriptive gore, frequent sexual situations and heavy violence. (Rating subject to change?)
Shipping: A heavy Angelina/Fred fic, with some sprinkling of Ron/Hermione, Harry/Ginny, and possibly a little Dean/Luna.
Disclaimer: Nope. Still not mine. I did get a wand and a timer-turner for Christmas, though!
Author's Note: No, I didn't spend months writing this chapter. I spent months being lazy and preoccupied. Hehe. But, lo and behold, here it is. Enjoy.
In, out.
In, out.
In, out.
Their hips were dancing, were fighting, were crashing and burning and yet she had never felt so frigid in her life. An imperceptible frost coated her body, cosseting her from any warmth she might've sipped from this experience. To the naked eye, it appeared to be sweat, this light sheen covering her, filming her beautiful bronze skin from head to toe, but she knew better. It was her cocoon; it was her coat of armor to keep her safe from her lover's heavy breath, his heavy body, her heavy heart.
In, out.
In, out.
In. In. In. In.
She bit down on her tongue and turned her head away. He was breaking the rhythm. He was out of sync. Off his hinge. This wasn't right. It had never been right to begin with but it had been smart and thus bearable when it had begun. Now he was dancing off-beat and she had no pattern to weave herself into, no routine to wrap around her sweat-frost-cocoon body. She had stopped breathing, only able to suck in, in, in, in as he drove his hips against hers. She felt dizzy. Lightheaded. His face swam out of focus and just barely, just briefly, she was able to grasp a solitary euphoric moment. He froze and she froze and the world was still and quiet and utterly lovely.
And then she felt his warmth flooding her and she realized that he had found the chink in her protective shield and penetrated it, attacked it, ravaged it, butchered it. He had spilled heat into her. Had warmed her, though only for an instance.
For allowing and accepting his heat, she could've curled up in herself and died of shame. She did not want his warmth. She did not want his soft, pliable flesh or his taught, sturdy sinews. She wanted to fall into a field of ginger hair and a sea of freckles. Not this horrid, inky grave that Alexander Montague was digging for her.
He rolled off of her and she turned onto her side, staring straight ahead at the wall and clutching the sheets tighter around herself. A lump rose in her throat and she stomped on it, forcing it back to the depths from which it fled. Focus, she reminded herself, and lacerated the rhythm of his breathing as it resumed its normal pace, crawling inside of it and zipping herself up to ride out another painful night.
In, out.
In, out.
In, out.
When she was certain that he slept, she picked herself up gingerly from the bed—gingerly, hah—and she placed one slender copper foot on the floor, then the other, gliding to the closet with impressive stealth and slipping into a pair of black silken pants and an emerald green robe. She tied it tightly at her waist and glanced backward over her shoulder at her sleeping husband. When again she had convinced herself that he would not awaken, she stood on her tiptoes and retrieved a pretty jewelry box from the top shelf. She felt beneath the wooden plank holding it up until she had located a small silver key which she inserted into the lock and turned carefully clockwise. The lid sprang open and she reached inside, her arm able to extend far past where physics would permit thanks to a little charm Oliver had performed for her. Down her fingers tunneled, beneath mountains of tampons and feminine napkins and other such estrogen-inspired products that she knew her spouse to be too squeamish to so much as look at. And then her slender digits wrapped around a thin satin shoulder strap and she extracted a palm-sized drawstring pouch.
Swiftly and soundlessly, she returned everything to its rightful place, save the drawstring pouch, and exited the room. She pulled from the bag a tiny coin, looked it over once, twice, and then set off. Her bare feet barely touched the floor as she picked her way down the steps of the Slytherin dormitory, through the Common Room, and in and out, in and out, in and out of Hogwarts' corridors to the stairs leading upward to the Entrance hall. She stopped only shortly when she recognized the sound of Hermione Granger's pitiful sobbing. And then, without so much as flinching, she glided up to the main level of Hogwarts, then another flight of stairs and down two more passages. At last she spotted the statuette of her friend, standing like stone against the wall beside the old Muggle Studies classroom.
"Yer late." His voice barely carried, the volume lost to the vastness of the castle or the thick stones of the walls, or perhaps simply to his own fear of discovery. Angelina didn't have to so much as utter a word. She merely approached him, her face flushed, her lips swollen, several strands of hair falling out of the sole braid down her back, and he knew what had kept her.
"Who have you got for me tonight?" She asked instead.
At this, her marble structure finally turned human, sweeping his head to look down at her pityingly. "Flint gashed up Bell's leg pretty bad. Y' ought t' take a gander at that. She looks like she's got a fever off it, too." The slight lilt of his accent and his towering figure were familiarities to her and Angelina burrowed into them. Only Oliver Wood could continue to call his players by their last names half a decade after they had ceased to be a team.
Angelina nodded and went to move past him but he put a burly arm out to stop her. "—Johnson, there's someone y' won't want t' see in there."
Though dread hit her cold and fast, she stood her ground. "What makes you think she's got a fever?
Oliver's face slackened and he turned fully to face her, his fingers curling at his side. "She's bloody delirious, Angelina. Flint and Percy and Goyle were placin' bets on 'ow long it'd take 'er t' hack. They figure they'll be burnin' 'er body by the end of the week." He glanced over his shoulder though both knew that nobody was there. Lowering his voice another notch, he murmured, "Put a marker on 'er if y' think she'll live. Otherwise just put 'er out of 'er misery."
The words, brutal as they were, compelled the former Gryffindor (she was certain her housemates had informally excommunicated her) to push past the guard to the door. "You know the drill. Knock twice if you hear trouble coming. Three times if it's getting late. And I'll knock twice when I'm ready to leave. Hopefully this'll be quick and I'll be in and out." Oliver pointed his wand at the lock, muttered an incantation beneath his breath and acknowledged the soft click of release. She yanked the door open, and then shut behind her. A split-second later she found the only source of light in the room and her heart dropped through her stomach, down three stories and impaled itself upon the post of her and Montague's bed.
Pretty, petite Katie Bell was huddled in the right corner of the room, blood and what looked possibly like pus oozing from a long gash on her leg, dirt and bruises and half-healed scars decorating her expanse of porcelain skin. Her breathing was irregular and now and then her voice rose softly in the chamber, drifting over the other sleeping inhabitants scattering the floor between her and Angelina. Her head lolled to the side where it rested on the very tense shoulder of Frederick Weasley. An enchanted candle in his hand provided the luminosity allowing Angelina to see them, though judging by the panic etched into his features, the light did not extend far enough for him to see her.
"Who's there?" He murmured darkly. His voice was as rich as it ever had been. If sound had color, his words would be amber and she imagined they would taste sweet and feel warm. She did not answer him right away, standing back to marvel at him, granting herself this one reprieve after so many months of ignoring the incessant urges to find him, to check up on him, to sit beside him and stroke the back of his hand and tuck herself under his chin and cry. "I know you're in here. I saw you open the door." He shifted, pulling Katie in closer to his chest, ready to defend her should the need arise. Angelina watched the ripple in the muscle of his arm, the strain of his neck as he leaned forward to identify her, the way his clothes clung to the dirt and blood crusting on his freckled form.
"Johnson goes in for the kill," Katie announced softly, her voice picking up the old rhythmic pattern of Lee Jordan when he had reigned over the Quidditch commentary booth. Her eyes were glazed and slightly unfocused but she seemed to be staring right at Angelina with a clarity most often inspired by madness. Slowly, weighted down by sharp, metallic panic, the Chaser-turned-mediwitch picked her way through the sleeping bodies of her once-schoolmates.
In, out. In, out. In, out. She braided her steps through their tiny hands and legs and torsos until she stood just outside of the light of Fred's measly candle. "She shoots," She announced tentatively, toeing into the circle of visibility. "And she scores." She stood, painted in candlelight and shadows as the two prisoners looked up at her. Katie drifted in and out of consciousness, recognition kindling in her gaze and then dying before she could speak on it. Fred simply stared, his face still sharp and angry.
"Finally decided to pay your old mates a visit, then?" He was all hostility and horror now; she could read it in the lines around his mouth.
Discouraged but not yet disabled, Angelina accepted the mockery gracefully. In his mind, she deserved it. "Yes. A lovely little place you've got here. How much is rent?" She barely recognized the softened state of her voice, the submission and exhaustion riding up and down her words.
"About an ounce of blood a day."
"An arm and a leg literally, then?" She tried to smile but he found no humor in her meek attempts at jokes. He had always been the funny one between them.
"Why are you here?"
Irritation tugged at the corner of her abdomen, seeping into her muscles, crawling upward through the jungle of her innards to sink into her voice. She choked it back for now. "Wood called for me. Said Katie was looking pretty bad. Thought I ought to take a look at her."
A smirk crossed Fred's lips but it was cruel and unforgiving. "Come to finish her off then? The men in black sent you to tie up their dirty work? Will you be cleaning up her remains too, or is Filch still running the janitorial duties of this fine institution?"
Angelina felt the little bug of agitation scrambling upward again and she narrowed her eyes at him. Her lips parted, the feelers of the bug's legs pushing her mouth open and struggling to burst free. But before the insect could fulfill its duties, Katie's voice danced through the silence again.
"Ange," She chimed softly, her head angled upward, a deeper concentration penetrating her facial features. "Fred, it's Ange." She shook his arm weakly. "I knew she'd come for us. I told you. Didn't I tell you? And you thought I was being naïve." She giggled softly, a low sound beneath her breath and then winced, shifting.
"Sit still," Angelina commanded gently, stooping to her knees and untying her pouch. She saw Fred stiffen again but she ignored him, putting all of her attention on finding the right tools. Her arm was elbow-deep in the bag (again, thanks to Oliver's talent with charms) before she found what she was looking for and tugged out a pair of scissors, a needle, some medical thread, some cotton swabs, gauze, rubbing alcohol and a little flask of translucent liquid. She set them down, put a hand to Katie's head and frowned. "Merlin, Kates. You're burning up."
"Figures that I'd look best when Lee isn't around to see it," Katie pouted.
Shifting her attention, cool and business-like now, Angelina addressed Fred brusquely. "How often is she coherent?"
Fred pursed his lips tightly initially, but at last gave in. "About ten minutes every hour. Gin n' I take turns watching her in the night."
"Aw hell, I'm sitting right here. Don't talk about me like I'm not in the room. As much as you lot liked to baby me in Hogwarts, I'm not a child anymore." Katie crossed her arms over her chest, though her limbs slackened a moment later. "Is this going to hurt, Angie?"
"Yes." Angelina didn't skip a beat. "But not at first. I'll clean it before I patch it up." She swabbed a cotton ball with the alcohol and placed it against the cut, cleaning along the perimeters before slowly inching inward. Throughout it all, she was silent and Fred was terse, leaving Katie to smile feebly and weather the stiff awkwardness hanging between the two. Angelina glanced at her friend's near-babyish face and turned to lace the thread through the needle. When she looked back, Katie had zoned again.
"Hold her hand," Angelina instructed.
Fred ignored her orders. "You quite enjoy causing us all misery, don't you? Is this some sadistic little mind game you're playing at? Is that it? Are you trying to pull one over on us?" This time he permitted himself a short bark of a laugh, but it was merciless. "You're messing with the king of pranks, Johnson. You're in over your head here."
Leveling her eyes with him, she repeated through gritted teeth, "Hold. Her. Hand." He stared at her stubbornly and she blew out an exasperated breath, muttering, "Fine. Be an arse." Her movements succinct with frustration, she knotted the end of the thread, sterilized the tip of the needle once more as a precaution, and jerked the tip through the end of Katie's scar. The girl arched her spine, threw back her head and gasped in pain, but for her part, she made no verbal sound. Fred's eyes widened and he snatched her tiny hand in his, using his free fingers to stroke her hair from her face, murmuring indeterminably to her.
In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out.
The needle punctured the flesh, she pulled the thread through. The needle punctured the flesh, she pulled the thread through. The needle punctured the flesh, she—oh, Merlin's left ball, Katie's skin was so soft. Angelina stopped, putting a hand to her mouth as a dry heave threatened to rack her body. Fred looked up at her, startled, and she closed her eyes and willed the tastes, the sounds, the smells away. Forcing her lids open, she immersed herself again in her work, in the steady rhythm of her mending.
In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out until the wound was stitched together from bottom to top.
Katie, she surmised, had gone into shock and then passed out, as her body was limp and she hung on Fred's shoulder. Silence ensued as copper fingers unraveled a strip of gauze and the former Quidditch Captain tore it neatly with her teeth. She wrapped her friend's leg with the fabric and thought she saw Fred's jaw drop from the corner of her eye. When the gauze touched Katie's skin, it immediately channeled the color of her flesh and camouflaged itself so that when at last the wound was draped entirely, no bandage was visible. Reaching into her makeshift medical bag one last time, she pulled out a tiny vile of red liquid and a scalpel. She made a shallow incision on the uppermost layer of fabric and then dripped the fake blood down from its container, redecorating the dressed wound so that it looked almost as severe as it had when she'd entered.
"If the guards ask, you cleaned away some of the dirt with your spit." She despised the formality of her own tone as she gathered her things and returned them to her little bag, all save for the flask of clear liquid she'd pulled out before she'd began stitching. She turned the flask over, revealing a clock which looked to be painted on except that it was keeping real time. Wetting her finger with saliva, she wound the clock up until it read forty-eight hours from the present moment, a small ticker in the right hand corner of the glass keeping track of the date. "This will buzz at exactly that time. Give it to her then."
Fred accepted the drink, but frowned up at her. "How do I know that you're not trying to poison her?"
Angelina's shoulders hunched and she closed her eyes to compose herself. The little bug had been waiting in the back of her throat ever since Katie had interrupted its escape, and it was swimming forward again. She cleared her throat and parted her lips again to calmly answer him when he arched a skeptical eyebrow at her and lifted his lips in a superior, taunting smirk.
"You are such an arse sometimes."
"Well pardon me for not giving the wife of a fucking Death Eater an open armed welcome."
"Oh bloody hell, suck it up. I'm trying to help you here. Do you know how much trouble I could get in? I'm not even supposed to be doing this. This isn't the way—"
"No." Fred's voice remained a harsh whisper but the edges of his consonants, the cold divots of his vowels broke Angelina's own speech. "No. You're not supposed to be doing this." His face had gone ashen and empty and Angelina's pride dissipated in wake of something close to fear. "You're supposed to be down here. With us. With me. You're a bloody coward, Johnson. And a traitor. You've left us to die while you prance about on the arm of your fairy Montague and dine on fine wine and warm food and lounge about in the Slytherin dormitories and fuck him when night closes in, and—"
In, out. In, out. In, out. She was already on her way towards the door, never glancing over her shoulder, throwing herself into the rhythm of her feet rather than allowing his words to pull at her as he meant for them to. As she reached the entrance, she broke her concentration for a sole second, just long enough to hear: "Well, well, well. Isn't that something new? You turning your back on me. What a terrible, awful surprise. Really, I'm just shattered." The venom in his voice tied tight around her foot and she stumbled, tripping over a slim feminine body placed closest to the door. Angelina turned for a moment, melded in her place by the raw hatred present in his gaze.
"Fred, what the hell is going on?" Ginny's voice jolted her back into reality and she knocked twice quickly, feeling a deep swelling in her stomach, consuming the bug in its tidal rage as it pushed upward and made to flee the dams of her lips. Oliver pushed the door open and she flung herself through the opening, tugging the wooden frame shut behind her.
"Ange—Ange, what happened?" When she turned to face him, there were angry tear tracks rolling down her cheeks.
She hit him hard in the arm and he winced as she drew a stifled breath. "Oliver Wood, don't you ever, ever put me through that. I will not be talked down to by Fred fucking Weasley. Someone needs tending in there next time and you send Parvati." Her voice was shrill, even in its hushed state and she turned to flee before he could attempt to console her…though, granted, Oliver had never been very good at comforting.
The journey back down to the Slytherin Common Room was a blur of rage and regret and justification all rolled together in the heaviness of her steps. When at last she reached the stone wall embedded in her mind, she paused, placed her forehead to the stone beside the undetectable door, and whispered, barely loud enough for herself to hear, "Long live Lord Voldemort." The stone slid open with the password and she returned to her dormitory, her home now, with as much composure as she could muster. Replacing her supplies, she evaded crawling back into bed by locking herself in the bathroom.
She crossed straight to the sink, her mouth still foul with the taste of her last sentence, and cupped her hand beneath the stone snake's head beside the sink. It spat a puddle of green soap into her hand and she raised it to her mouth, licking her palm clean. She sunk to the bathroom floor and sat there for a while, the fresh taste of liquid soap staining her mouth. At last she rose to her feet and spat it out, out, out, breathing in, in, in and never once looking her reflection in the eye.
Author's Note: Ta-da! Chapter three. Yeah, yeah, I suck at updates. Apologies. I'm on break now so I'm trying to crank out a good amount of this story. I promised I would finish it, and I do mean to. Eventually. Hehe. Yes, I realize Ron and Hermione believe Ginny's still free. That will all be explained in due time. Reviews, as always, are much-appreciated. Hope everyone's having a lovely holiday season.
Up next: Ginerva Weasley.