The Broken Children
-Lucy-
"Lucy."
She whirls on her feet, scarlet hair whipping around her freckled cheeks, but that's where the warmth ends. For her eyes are cold, chips of pale-blue ice, lost in a yellowish sea. Lips twisting into a snarl, she draws her wand, focusing the tip upon the weary woman standing against her.
A crackling hiss emits from her leg as she steps forward, her movement fluid, even though by all accounts she should be limping. The decay is growing, faster now than ever before, blackening flesh, congealing her blood, and calcifying her bone. The Grey Fever, they call it, a wasting sickness, so rare that even the most skilled of Healers had forgotten its nature.
She bites her lips and advances, the first shrieks of warfare caressing her body, wafting through her clothing and finding the patches of brittle, tar-like skin beneath. Memories bite at her as she advances upon her adversary, a woman so intricately familiar that she knows her better than the back of her hand.
Remove the stains of time and disaster from her foe, and the marring hands of disease from her, and they could have been twins, save for their hair. Hers was a raging fire, deeper and more wild than her father's had ever been . . . the other woman's was soft and matronly, a soothing brunette.
She should have known that this woman would come to the Ministry's defence, with the rest of the foolish flock. Like all wars though, the lines had been drawn and the players had taken their places, to finish what they once began.
Rebellion.
Her sleeve grows sticky, a thick, amber pus oozing from her stony skin, and she gasps, stifling a shriek of pain. It has been too long since her last treatment, and the sickness is clawing at her once more. She loses all semblance of pity for the frail woman standing before her.
Now she is the predator, and this foolish woman, sweet bird that she is, is about to become her prey.
"Don't do this," pleads the woman, reaching out to her, unarmed and gentle.
"Siphonem Vitae," she replies, merciless until the end. Once, long ago, she cared, and she loved . . . but now, years later, she will simply do anything to live another day.
The woman gags, clutching at her throat as her life-energy is torn from her, fluttering embers of electric-green light ripped from her every orifice. She soaks in it, whimpering in the bliss of revitalisation, feeling swollen with its purity as she's healed. Her blood thins, losing its greenish tinge, just as her body loses its canker.
"I truly am sorry," she says with a tone of finality, "but it is better that you die than I."
Her mother's next words are shredded and raspy, but she's pleading, not for her life but for her daughter's soul.
(She fights the urge to laugh, as her soul was the first part of her that had rotted away.)
"Lucy."
Word Count: 500 (Woah, I just made it)
Written for The Deja Vu Competition of the Daily Prophet for the Third Season of the Quidditch League. I chose Season 2, Round 4, Position: Chaser 1 – Write a story beginning and ending with the same Proper Noun.
Prompts: Swollen, Disaster, Bird