(OotP) CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: The Breakout

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Neville shouted an hour later from his position on the back of Liam's broomstick.

After studying the available blueprints of Azkaban in the library and realizing that it was incredibly high and surrounded by water, they had agreed that their surest bet was to take broomsticks. Unfortunately, neither Neville nor Luna was an avid flyer, which had put Neville on Liam's broom and Luna on Katie's.

It wasn't just the doubling up that was concerning Neville, though. It was the raging storm that had cropped up around them.

"I'm not turning back!" Ellie shouted back at Neville. "If you want to, go ahead!"

Before he could answer her, a flurry of new broomsticks approached them. Ellie lifted her wand instinctively, fearing the worst, but lowered it when she saw the familiar faces of Lupin, Moody, Diggle and…

She froze when she spotted the two unmistakably similar figures flying up behind them—figures with bright, red hair.

He was here? Now?

If anything would get her killed tonight, it would surely be the epic distraction that was Fred Weasley flying back into her life.

She averted his gaze and tried her hardest to remember to breathe.

"You need to turn back!" shouted Lupin to the B.A. "All of you!"

"We aren't going anywhere!" she shouted back at him. "We have a right to be here, same as you!"

"El." It was a softer voice—one that made her heart ache with the kind of longing she had fought so hard to stop feeling those past few months. "Please go back."

At that, she did look at him. She looked at him with all the hatred she could muster.

How dare he ask anything of her? How dare he call her by the nickname that had once sent her heart floating up to the clouds? How dare he even be here?

How dare he look so… so… so perfectly Fred?

God, she missed him.

Before she could come up with a single word to utter back to him, a loud, resounding boom sounded from somewhere above them, and all of them flew upwards towards it.

It was an explosion. Ellie didn't know what had caused it, but she did know that the Dementors swarming around it were making no effort to stop the person emerging from it.

"She's got a wand!" Luna shouted, pointing her own wand at the black-haired, wild-eyed woman who was emerging from the hole the explosion had left behind.

"Expelliarmus!" shouted Ellie, Liam, and Neville, all pointing their wands at the woman. But the storm and the distance rendered their aim too poor, and before any of them could accomplish what they sought to, Bellatrix had stepped off the ledge and into the sky, traveling down to the cell below hers.

"She's going to set more of them free!" shouted Moody, zooming over to her and cursing profanities at her. He hit her square in the chest with a Stunning spell, but not before she had managed the second explosion.

The Dementors had started to swarm them by then. Ellie hadn't seen a single Ministry official or reporter, but she prayed that they were somewhere nearby, seeing all of this—namely, the Dementors that were ignoring the actively escaping prisoners and ambushing those who had come to stop them.

"You guys work on the Dementors!" she shouted at the rest of the B.A. "I'll work on the Death Eaters!"

Her command, of course, had much more to do with her complete lack of joy and inability to produce a Patronus than her wanting to face the female Death Eater she could only assume was Bellatrix Lestrange.

Then again, she had come here for vengeance, hadn't she?

"Incarcerous!" she shouted as she jabbed her wand at the woman, who had successfully freed a man she proceeded to kiss in a rather not-suitable-for-children manner.

Bellatrix shielded herself from Ellie's spell with a simple wave of her wand, tearing herself away from the man Ellie assumed was her husband Rodolphus to look Ellie right in the eyes. When she saw her, she cackled. "You're the Black girl, aren't you? The one Sirius had with that Snape wench?"

"She's a Prince," Ellie growled.

"She's a Prince," Bellatrix repeated, wrinkling her nose. "What gives you such arrogance, girl, to correct your elders? We may be family, but you're clearly a blood traitor."

Without waiting for Ellie to answer her, Bellatrix aimed a jet of green light straight at her—which, of course, ricocheted off her shield.

"She's the one Aleks warned us about," said Rodolphus. "We need to get to Antonin—he'll know what to do."

Ellie's heartbeat began to quicken at that. Antonin was Aleks' father. If they released him, the world would be met with a whole new layer of evil.

"You're not going anywhere," growled Neville from Liam's broom. He pointed his wand at Rodolphus, waved it, and, without a single word, replaced the wall that Bellatrix had exploded—thus, reimprisoning him.

"And who might you be, boy?" cackled Bellatrix as she stepped out onto thin air to scan Neville's face. "Another kid at the grown-ups' table?"

"I'm Neville Longbottom," Neville told her proudly. "You tortured my parents."

This was who had tortured Neville's parents? Bellatrix and her husband?

Had Ellie made a mistake in bringing Neville here? Would he be able to fight with his head and not his heart?

Would she?

"That's right!" exclaimed Bellatrix gleefully as she blasted the both of them with a spell intended to knock them off their brooms—a spell which, again, Ellie's shield took the brunt of. "It was so much fun, too."

Neville let out a cry of fury at that, and suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. From their end of the equation, jets of red light shot out of a half-dozen different wands, all pointed directly at Bellatrix; from hers, the cell wall blasted apart again, and, in another flash, she had traveled to the cell below it to blast that one, too.

Ellie didn't have to ask Luna or any of the others who the next prisoner was to emerge. He looked every inch his son's father—down to the bright, wicked eyes.

It was Antonin Dolohov.

In a single instant, without even meaning to, Ellie had Apparated into the cell with him, knocked Bellatrix off the ledge, and pinned Antonin to the ground, wand pressed against his throat.

"Ellie!" she heard Fred shout from the air. He was trying to get to her, she could tell, but Bellatrix and Rodolphus were in his way.

She didn't care. Fred didn't get a say in this. Fred didn't get a say in anything.

"Your son," Ellie said, pressing the tip of her wand deep into the skin of Antonin's throat. "Aleks. You've been speaking to him?"

"We've been speaking to all of them," hissed Antonin as his fingers clambered at her wand, trying to force it away. "These walls can't keep our minds from traveling—only our bodies."

"Then you know what he did to me?" she hissed at him, pressing the wand deeper still. She could hear it starting to hinder his breathing, but she didn't care. "What he did to Cedric?"

"To the pretty boy in the graveyard?" he cackled. "Good riddance."

"Avada Kedavra!"

Those two words that escaped her lips seemed to have come from someone else entirely—someone fierce, angry, and vengeful, who had taken over Ellie's body the moment they heard the words that escaped this foul man's lips.

They hadn't, though. They had come from her lips—Ellie's—the girl who had been forced to watch the life leave Cedric's eyes forever.

And now she got to watch the life leave Antonin's.

She would have liked to say it felt good. She had expected it to, in a way. That was what she had come there for, wasn't it—vengeance?

It didn't feel good, though. It felt like darkness—like it had infected her with a plague she'd never be able to shake.

Like she was one of them.

"El." She felt arms around her—holding her. She knew that smell—knew the feel of them—knew it could only be one person. But she remained frozen, refusing to yield to the temptation of that person's comfort. "It's okay. You did what you had to do. It's okay."

She was crying, she realized then—not sobbing, exactly, as her body wasn't moving a muscle, but there were silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

"They're getting away!" someone shouted in the distance. "Go after them!"

"We've got to repair this hole! Neville—over here!"

She couldn't quite make out what was going on. She couldn't make out much of anything other than the corpse of the man she had just killed.

It wasn't vengeance—not really. It wasn't Aleks.

"You've got to get out of here!" Lupin was shouting. "That's the Ministry squad flying up now! Let us stay and handle this!"

"We're the ones who called them!" Katie shouted back at him. "We aren't running!"

The Ministry was coming now? Where the bloody hell had they been for the fight?

"El." It was Fred's voice again. She couldn't see him, but she was still enveloped in his embrace. It felt too good—good enough that it made her feel bad. "I want to—"

"Get away from her."

Ellie stiffened at the sound of the new voice, then pulled away from Fred, rising shakily to her feet and stepping away from him.

It was Liam.

"You've done enough to her," Liam growled at Fred in a voice so dark and hateful, she barley recognized it. He stepped into the cell, past Fred and next to Ellie. "Get out of here. Now."

For several seconds, Fred didn't say anything at all. He stared at Liam, then, with heavy, pained eyes, turned his gaze onto Ellie.

Every inch of her ached with pain as she stared into the eyes that she had once, and still did, love.

With that pain came the ringing, resounding, horrible echo of Oliver's words in her head: It's never over with you and Fred! I'm sorry that he hurt you, Ellie. I'm sorry that he keeps hurting you. If I could, I'd beat the guy to a pulp. He's a bloody fool. But eventually he's going to come crawling back, and you're going to forgive him.

Was this it? Was this Fred crawling back?

Or was it a moment of weakness, only for him to leave again?

It didn't matter, she decided as she took Liam's hand and looked away from Fred. Either way, she was guaranteed to get her heart broken again, sooner or later. And if she did, it might just break her completely.

"Ellie Black," said a new voice—a voice from behind all of them.

It was Cornelius Fudge—the minister of magic. And behind him, a series of Ministry officials and reporters.

"You are under arrest for murder, sedition, and obstruction of justice," Fudge informed Ellie as he stepped off the floating platform he'd arrived on and beckoned for the officials behind him to do the same. "Looks like we're going to have that hearing, after all."

We finally got Fred back, guys! And it almost seemed like he was going to try and win her back, if not for that stinking Liam... (Just kidding, he really isn't stinky, is he?) Might not matter much if Ellie doesn't find a way out of prison... Stay tuned to find out what happens next, and don't forget to review and follow! Oh, and P.S... battle scenes aren't really my strong suit, so sorry if the geography/action was confusing. There will be a summary of what went down in tomorrow's chapter!