Pip thought she knew what it was to be afraid.
But as she ripped through the party, ice running down her spine, fire burning in her muscles, she understood she'd only tasted a shadow of the world's horrors till this point.
This was fear.
It was pooling in her stomach, constricting her chest, scrambling her brain, leaving only the pounding aftermath of Sirius's voice in her head. She didn't hear the insults hurled after her as she mowed down a gaggle of witches, she didn't see people's baffled stares.
Cuffe was still greeting stragglers by the fireplace. Pip viciously pushed through them, tore off her gloves and snatched a fistful of floo power.
'Bones, where are you off to?' Cuffe asked in bewilderment. She answered him by dashing the powder into the grate. Green flames erupted with a crackle. 'You can't go now!' he objected. 'We're about to have the toast!'
'I don't care,' Pip hissed, jumping into the fireplace.
Cuff rocked back and forth on his heels. 'Well, er, Bones...if you leave now I'll take it that you're not serious about being part of the Prophet family.'
The Cuffe estate began distorting. Pip caught only a flash of Cuffe's gobsmacked expression through the inferno. 'You know, Barnabus, I really couldn't give a fuck.'
Although the floo tornado whipped around at its usual rapid speed, it seemed to drag. After a few seconds that seemed like years, Pip was spat out onto the floor of the Ministry atrium.
She lurched up, looking around wildly for the battle, but the main chamber was eerily silent. The golden fountain gushing in the centre was the only sign of movement. Pip didn't have time to admire the haunted atmosphere.
She passed under a rippling banner marred with the likeness of Cornelius Fudge and stumbled in her heels. Tearing them off, Pip projected them like undirected missiles over her shoulder and, with bare feet slapping against the ground, flung herself into an elevator at the far side of the hall.
The lift inched deeper into the Ministry, going at such a leisurely pace it almost felt mocking. Pip grabbed the brass bars and rattled them impatiently. 'Hurry up! Hurry up!'
She reached for her wand to speed it along and froze. Hands flying frantically over her person, she realised with hysterical dismay that it was still in her clutch. Still with her aunt, still at the party.
'FUCK!'
There was no time to go back. Pip would have to improvise. She wished now she hadn't had abandoned her heels; stilettos could've been the only weapon she had. Through a rush of jumbled, chaotic thoughts a murderously pleasant image of stabbing one through Dolohov's eye socket flickered by.
Pip was still trying to formulate a plan as the lift creaked open and an infuriatingly calm recording announced Level Nine, the Department of Mysteries.
The train of her dress snagged on an elevator bar as she darted forward and Pip tore it free with a merciless rip. Racing down the same path she had spent so many nights patrolling, Pip's lungs ballooned, feeling as though they were lined with blood rather than oxygen. She whipped her head around, hair flying loose. Still no signs of a skirmish.
Where the fuck was everyone!
At the corridor's dead-end, Pip scampered into a round room lit with blue torches that cast the black, handleless doors encircling it in ghostly light. An aggravated cry caught in her throat at the sound of stirring behind one of the doors. Fists clenched ready to swing, she burst through it.
She was facing a towering tank which must've contained the pools of green liquid and squirming masses on the floor before it. It was cracked down the middle, marking out the jagged shape of lightning. There was a pile of bodies beside it.
Hermione and Ginny lay unmoving, the latter's ankle bent at a nauseating angle. Another girl with hair so blonde it was white was crumbled under a desk. Ron was kneeling beside them, conscious but barely. A trickle of blood was dried to the corner of his mumbling mouth. He giggled as though he belonged in a padded St Mungo's cell at Pip's approach.
'Pip! Look, it's Pip!'
Pip rushed to girls, checking each one for a pulse. Only a sliver of relief reached her at finding them. Wheeling around, she grabbed Ron by the shoulders. 'Ron! Ron, where is everybody!'
'Don't talk to the brains, Pip. They're mean.'
Pip shook him roughly, panicking as his cloudy pupils slid in and out of focus. 'Ron! Tell me where the others are!' He raised an unsteady, trembling hand at a nearby door. 'Stay here!' Pip commanded, already taking off in the direction he'd motioned towards. With a groan, she doubled back, falling before Ron once more. 'I need to borrow your wand.'
He surrendered it with another dopey giggle and Pip charged at the door, heartbeat thundering. She rammed through and almost tumbled down the steep stone steps awaiting her on the other side.
She was standing atop some sort of amphitheatre. In its sunken centre was a ragged dais, itself holding up an ancient, crumbling archway. The space crackled with raw magic, spells flying around, creating craters in the primeval stone.
It was here that the war had been unleashed.
Remus was battling a Death Eater veiled in dark, dirtied robes. He threw up a shield charm a second before a vivid red curse would've hit him square in the chest. Nearby, Kingsley had taken on two assailants at once. Both Augustus Rookwood and Rodolphus Lestrange's gilded, ghoulish masks had come loose, exposing their bared teeth as they attacked Kingsley from two fronts.
On the stairs across, Tonks was fighting off Bellatrix Lestrange's feral assault. At their feet lay a motionless figure in Death Eater robes, but not too far away Moody was also down. Even from this distance, the blood matting his unkempt hair was visible.
Sirius was battling Dolohov at the foot of the dais. He shot forward, aiming a blue beam that sent Dolohov stumbling backwards with the sheer power of it. Sirius fought with the ferocity of a seasoned warrior; guarding Harry and another unknown boy at the same time, he unleashed a second curse at the reeling Death Eater.
An alien emotion clutched Pip's heart; a frenzied hybrid of terror, rage and pride.
She only wrenched her eyes away when a stray spell whistled by, exploding in a booming blast of rubble a centimetre from her back. Pip dove out of harm's way, eyes snapping to a wickedly grinning Rookwood on the dais. So maybe not a stray spell after all...
Pip ran into the fray.
Nobody seemed to notice her intrusion bar Kingsley - who shouted her name as she claimed one of his opponents - and Rookwood, who was now circling her like a cat would a mouse. Pip tensed, Ron's wand clutched between white knuckles.
Rookwood's pock-marked face was captured in a hideous sneer. 'Did you dress up for me, beautiful?'
Pip fired a disarming spell at him that he effortlessly deflected. In response, he sent a black hex soaring at her torso. The translucent shield she conjured between them puckered as each curse struck it, it's magic straining in Pip's fingers.
Rookwood's shower of spells gradually forced her backwards. The shield faltered and Pip only managed to deflect each curse by the skin of her teeth.
It was painfully obvious who the better dueller was. Rookwood might've spent a decade in Azkaban but his reflexes were sharp and deadly. Pip was inexperienced, not in the business of duelling. To make matters worse, she was fighting in a tattered ball gown with a borrowed wand. The odds were stacked against her.
Pip was surviving purely on instinct.
The same instincts that were keeping her alive, however, caused her to automatically seek out Sirius's voice when it sounded somewhere nearby. Pip dodged another curse that sliced past her arm, leaving a searing flesh wound. She grit her teeth and struggled to see what'd happened.
Dolohov was on the ground in a fully body bind, Harry standing over him. Pip was engulfed by a vicious surge of satisfaction. But at the same time, Tonks crumbled. Her body tumbled limply down the amphitheatre steps while Bellatrix cackled on the topmost ledge. Pip fought the urge to run to Tonks, instead shooting a freezing spell at Rookwood, while Sirius engaged with his insane cousin.
'Stupefy!' Pip bellowed, sending a red jet careening at Rookwood.
But he was faster.
Pip flew backwards, landing with a brutal smack on the dais. The curse had hit her jaw, which throbbed as though it'd been blown a bare-knuckled punch. The metallic taste of blood welled in her mouth and mixed with the aftertaste of champagne. Pip rolled onto her stomach and spat it out, pushing hair from her eyes as she did.
From the ground, she saw Sirius and Bellatrix's dancing duel. Hatred, it was clear, fuelled them both. Bellatrix swiped at him with her wand, and he ducked it while throwing his own spell firing back. Sirius moved fluidly, with incredible skill. Pip couldn't help but be a little in awe of him.
It was no fucking wonder he was so frustrated playing babysitter to Kreacher when he could duel like that.
As though he could hear her thoughts, Sirius suddenly noticed Pip. His eyes bulged, his mouth agape. He mouthed her name, not having realised she'd long-since joined the battle. Pip cried at him to look out, and Sirius narrowly deflected his opponents hex.
With newfound resolve, Pip coiled and sprang from the ground. Rookwood was waiting, still the cat toying with its food. His taunts were interrupted, however, when Pip hacked at the air with Ron's wand. His cockiness cost him and his footing slipped with the rush of the spell. Rookwood's face twisted in outrage and he roared another hex at Pip.
But she had moved on from merely incapacitating magic to meet Rookwood's deadly intent.
'Confrigo!'
She was picking up speed, contorting her whole body into each blast.
'Expulso!'
Deafening explosions surrounded Rookwood. Judging from his haphazard attacks, he was struggling to see through the rubble and smoke. He was on the defensive, and now Pip was driving him closer to the empty archway where Sirius and Bellatrix duelled.
'Reducto!'
Two things happened simultaneously.
Rookwood fired the cruciatus curse. Pip swerved out of range, shaking with blood-boiling fury. At the same time, someone cried out a name: Dumbledore. Pip's head snapped around, catching sight of her former Headmaster in all his righteous anger storming down the steps, wrangling Death Eaters as though they were unruly toddlers.
Rookwood immediately abandoned the duel but was wrestled to the ground by Dumbledore's glowing rope. Pip doubled over, clutching her stomach and panting.
Dumbledore was here. Their saviour had arrived. The battle was won. Or so Pip thought.
At the foot of the arch, a duel was still waging. The hiss of spells filled the silence, coupled with Sirius's barking laughter. 'Come on, you can do better than that!'
He and Bellatrix were still locked in their lethal dance. With the others safe, Sirius was relishing in his taunts, so much so that he didn't realise he was a beat behind.
Pip stood there, so close to them, watching in horror. She somehow already knew what was going to happen. It was like nightmare; one in which she was being chased by a monster. In those dreams, Pip's limbs were leaden, not moving any faster no matter how much she pushed. She could run, but the monster would steadily gain.
In this case, Pip wasn't running from a monster, but towards one. She wasn't aware of starting.
Time stopped. Sirius's laughter froze, as did Bellatrix's sinister smile. The witch's wand was still suspended in the air, waiting to slash down and deliver the killing blow. The incantation was already halfway from her lips. Pip wouldn't be fast enough.
As she collided with Bellatrix, time abruptly restarted.
The world moved in a blur, the chamber spinning so wildly Pip didn't know which way was up. The air was knocked from her lungs, and the only senses she had were of flying through space and Bellatrix slipping from her grasp.
She could hear distant screams, but they were cut off as she glimpsed the edge of the dais. Pip's head connected with stone. There was sickening crunch and the world went black.