"They're gone, Leone," Emilian told her. "Gone. You - you cant h-help them now." His voice broke and he turned his face from her.
"No," Isabella whispered. "No. They're there. They've fallen... they aren't dead." But even if they had fallen, it was a several story drop. "No..."
"Isabella!" Mariano screamed as she turned and threw herself through the wooden door and down the staircase. "Isabella, come back!" But Isabella could not go back. No, Alex and Morgan were alive... they were lying at the foot of the castle... they might be hurt but they weren't dead... they needed her help... they needed her...
She ran down a staircase and found herself in a corridor full of duelers. The portraits on either side of the fighters were crammed with figures, screaming advice and encouragement, while Death Eaters both masked and unmasked dueled students and teachers.
Isabella raised her wand and threw herself among them in a desperate bid to get to the end of the hallway, where another staircase would take her down...
But a tall, dark woman with heavily lidded eyes blocked her way.
"Bellatrix," Isabella hissed. She had encountered the deranged, fanatic Death Eater once before in the Department of Mysteries. The similarity in their names had been the only thing to save her then.
Bellatrix's eyes widened to see Isabella, and she smiled a maniacal grin. With a slash of her wand, she began to duel. Isabella, who seconds ago had wanted nothing more than to pass through the duels without engaging in one, plunged herself into the fight with a vengeance. In her mind, the suffering of Alex and Morgan were inexplicably linked with this fight.
The duels around the two woman stopped as the heat of their spells filled the corridor and the force of their combat literally pushed others aside. Bellatrix's dark eyes, at first laughing with mockery, turned hard as she focused all her energy on the duel. The Death Eater used both hands to raise her wand and bringing it down sharply. Jumping aside just in time, Isabella felt something like a sword graze past her, ripping her robes.
Isabella lashed out with her wand in a moment when her opponent recovered from the force of her last spell. Bellatrix snarled and placed a hand to her cheek as a welt appeared there, almost as though she had been whipped.
"We aren't so different, you and I," Isabella told Bellatrix, circling her. She felt more like a lion than she ever had in her human form. "Are we, Bella?"
"Don't you dare call me that!" Bellatrix hissed and shot a curse at Isabella, who deflected it with a flick of her wand.
Isabella pointed her wand at Bellatrix and made a punching motion with her other hand as though to follow through the spell. The Death Eater was launched backwards where she hit a wall and slid out of sight. Not waiting to see if she would get up, Isabella ran past her and started down the staircase.
The other Death Eaters must have been stunned, for no one made a move to stop her. Isabella pushed past Dean Thomas and Parvati Patil, and did not falter until she heard an achingly familiar voice: "Bella?" Isabella looked back over her shoulder, one foot already on the step down. Terry stared back at her, his face white and sooty with a long scratch down his cheek. Isabella shook her head, and ran down the staircase.
Terry called after her again, but there was a bang and the fighting started back up on the corridor above.
A huge, hairy man was running down the stairs just in front of her. Hagrid was brandishing his flowery pink umbrella and shouting.
"Don't hurt 'em, don't hurt 'em!" he yelled. Isabella wondered who on earth Hagrid could be shouting to or about, believing for one wild moment he was simply shouting at the Death Eaters, but then she leapt down the last few stairs and saw them: Acromantulas. The giant spiders had forced their way into the Entrance Hall, scattering the fighters who fired jets of red and green light into the oncoming monsters.
"HAGRID, NO!" someone shouted, their voice just audible to Isabella over the screams of the fighters and the squeals of the spiders. "HAGRID, COME BACK!" And Harry appeared out of nowhere right in front of Isabella, sprinting towards the half-giant. But Hagrid vanished amid the spiders and the monsters retreated with half-giant buried in their midst. "HAGRID!" Harry bellowed yet again, following.
"Harry!" Isabella screamed, taking off after him. She sprinted down the front steps after him into the dark grounds, and the spiders were swarming away.
A giant loomed out of the darkness, his monumental foot swung down right next to Harry. With one brutal, fluid movement, it smashed a massive fist through an upper window and glass rained down upon Harry and Isabella. Harry retreated back under the shelter of the doorway, but Isabella ran, hands over her head, past the giant's foot and along the base of the castle walls. Someone screamed behind her, but the sight of the giant had reminded Isabella of why she had come down here, who she was trying to find.
A smaller giant, one Isabella recognized from Dumbledore's funeral, lurched around the corner of the castle. "HAGGER?" he asked, looking around on the ground. The other giant looked around and let out a roar. The ground trembled as he stomped towards his smaller kin, and the giant near Isabella charged towards his larger counterpart. Isabella managed to flatten herself to the wall to avoid their vicious squall.
She was almost to the Northern battlements when she came across another group of duelers. A woman danced before Isabella and, with a guilty lurch of her stomach, Isabella recognized Nymphadora Tonks. But the woman Tonks was dueling... "Bellatrix?" Isabella asked, her voice cracking slightly. How had the woman gotten down here before Isabella?
The answer came as another Death Eater joined the fight. They were leaping out the second story window and using a cushioning charm to slow their fall. Isabella was torn between joining the fight and continuing on. She thought of Morgan's body, broken and pale and her mind was made up. She ran by the duelers, hoping to run so fast that they would not notice her.
A flash of green light and a scream stopped Isabella in her tracks. She looked back and saw Tonks fall to the ground, limp, like a puppet with cut strings.
"TONKS!" a man bellowed. But it was not Remus who jumped out of the darkness, it was Isabella's father.
"Papi?" she asked, unbelieving. Yet there he stood, golden curls plastered down with sweat and hazel eyes caught between grief and fury. He turned on Bellatrix and they began to duel fiercely, exchanging spells skillfully and silently. Now that Isabella looked closer at the fighters, she recognized her mother among them as well, dueling Dolohov. She looked like a panther as she fought, dark and with such a deadly beauty that her movements almost hypnotic.
"Bella!" Isabella turned around, wand still raised, and saw Terry limping after her. One of the bundles on the ground, which Isabella had taken to be injured or fallen fighters, stirred and began to stand.
"Terry, watch out!" Isabella screamed, aiming her wand at the rising Death Eater. There was a bang and a flash of light as the Death Eater screamed and fell back, clutching his face.
"What are you doing?" Isabella shouted, turning on Terry. "Why are you following me?"
"I don't know!" he yelled back at her. "I just... I need to be with you. To make sure you were - " He was cut off as a horde of ghosts mounted on skeletal mounts poured directly out of the wall next to them and charged the Death Eaters, the heads the held under their arms giving blood-curdling screams. Isabella grabbed Terry's arm and pulled him after her.
They ran straight into a pair of masked Death Eaters who were running to the aid of their colleagues.
"Imepdimenta!" Terry yelled, and one of the Death Eaters was blasted off his feet. Isabella shot a stunning spell past the second Death Eater's head, but it missed him by inches.
"Avada - " he said, brandishing his wand, but Terry bowled into him and tackled him to the ground. The first Death Eater was recovering and pointed his wand carefully at Terry's back. Isabella's scream turned into a roar as she launched herself towards him, her lion claws extending. When she landed on him, she was in her lion form and her powerful claws held him down as he screamed and kicked.
Isabella snatched up his wand and snapped it between her powerful teeth. Suddenly, a searing pain lashed across her back, and Isabella fell away with a howl. The Death Eater seized his chance and leapt to his feet, running full pelt towards the Forest. Isabella growled after him half heartedly.
Something touched Isabella's shoulder and she jumped with a snarl.
"It's me, Bella," Terry said soothingly. "I've got your wand, here." She transformed and took her wand from him. They stood silently for a moment and Isabella suddenly realized, with a terrible pain in her heart, that Morgan and Alex were not waiting for her. Because they were dead. And she had been fooling herself thinking otherwise.
"Do you think - " Isabella asked Terry, looking towards the Forest. "That there's any hope left?"
"I don't know, Bella, I just don't know," he said quietly. Quite suddenly, a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Isabella jumped and clutched Terry's arm.
Voldemort's voice reverberated around them and it seemed as though he was breathing down their necks, a death blow away.
"You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat, immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."
"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall kill every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."
The voice was gone then, leaving an empty, cold, unforgiving silence. Isabella saw several of the Death Eaters vanish and the giants stomped after them into the darkness of the forest. Here, where she and Terry stood together at the base of the wall, they could see and were not seen.
Small bundles seemed to litter the lawn at the front of the castle. It could only be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch black.
Isabella saw figures in the group of fighters her parents had been a part of bend down and look at these bundles. They helped some to their feet and supported them as they limped to the Great Hall. Isabella drew closer and saw her father kneeling at Tonk's side. She was pale and still and peaceful-looking, almost as though she slept.
Patrick O'Reagan's body quaked with grief as he held his best friend's limp hand. Antonia Petrroci hovered near him, a hand upon his shoulder.
"Mami? Papi?" They looked up and their expressions were a cross between surprise and relief.
"Bella? What are you doing here?" her father asked, wiping his face on his charred and tattered sleeve.
"I could ask you the same," she said wearily. "Neville called all members of the DA."
"Well," her father said, licking his lips and standing unsteadily. "I never told you this, but I joined the Order a few months ago."
"I knew," Isabella said. "Or rather, guessed."
"You came straight from school?" her mother asked, looking at Isabella's robes. Isabella nodded and swayed slightly.
"I have to go check on the others," she said. "Mariano broke his arm."
"Wait, you brought people from your school?" her father asked, blinking short-sightedly.
"I didn't so much bring them as they insisted they come," Isabella shrugged.
Terry followed her up the front steps without saying a word. Instead, he quietly slipped his hand into hers. The flagstones of the Entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds from the Slytherin hourglass were scattered all over the floor along with pieces of marble and splintered wood.
The door to the Great Hall was opened and people were wearily making their way through the doors. The first of the dead were being laid out on the floor. The wounded were limping or being carried to the raised platform at the other end of the room.
Then Isabella heard a terrible cry that pulled at her heart, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause. It seemed an echo of her own pain when she had finally realized that Alex and Morgan were dead.
Someone was laying out a body on the floor. The boy's face was pale and merry even in death. His red hair seemed bright against his white, bloodless face.
"No. NO! FRED!"
And before she knew it, Isabella was curled in Terry's arms, her body wracked with sobs. And he was comforting her, not with words, for how could words possibly heal the tear in her heart? No, he was simply there, alive and breathing, something to hold onto while the world crashed around her.