NOTE

WARNING for graphic violent rape, sexual torture, suicidal thoughts, gore, and violent death. This chapter is brutal and the warnings apply to the fullest extent. I felt nauseous writing this. Please don't take the warning lightly.

If this will upset you, just skip the entire chapter. There is a summary (not explicit) in the notes at the end. There is a comforting scene in the middle (between the two scene separators) if you are interested in reading that.

This is the darkest chapter of the story, but also the last chapter with explicit violence or sexual assault of any kind. And if it is any comfort, Wilma gets through this. She is going to survive and heal. I give you my word.

94. Destruction

The bindings cut into my ankles, knees and wrists, and my jaw ached from the tight gag, a piece of rough fabric pressing into my tongue and already drenched with my saliva. My hands were tied behind my back and I was on my side, leaving my shoulder to twist and burn against the floor. Movement was impossible. When I did struggle–weakly, as I came to–the restraints only tightened around my joints.

I was lying on a tattered, dirty rug, and the sensitivity of my skin to the fibres and the cold air told me I had been undressed, and was naked except for my undergarments.

My wand was gone. I knew in my bones it wasn't broken, but it wasn't fighting either. Too weak to answer the silent stirring of awareness and mounting panic in my magic. The connection severed by grief.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw a foot standing in front of me. It was dirty, the toenails long and yellow and dark with grime, black hair standing out against the pale, almost blue skin. The sight filled my body with ice cold nausea. I shivered.

"She's awake," a gruff voice growled.

The heel came off the floor and a knee appeared, unclothed, covered in thick black hair. Then a hand appeared, and a face, dipping down into my vision at a nightmarish angle.

A man with a ragged shave, eyes of indeterminate colour, pale like snake eyes, like dirty water. When he smiled his teeth were yellow.

My head was pounding, each throb sending pain shooting down what felt like fracture lines inside my brain. I couldn't remember how I'd got here. I didn't recognise his face.

"Settle something for us," he said, his rank breath triggering the memory of the woods. "You're Rookwood's girl, aren't you?"

He caressed my cheek, his finger tracing along the sore skin pulled back by the gag. I whimpered and turned my head, and there was a stab of answering pain in my shoulder.

"That was quite a memory, sweetheart. Kept me going, if you know what I mean. Thanks for that."

He was stroking my hair now.

"You changed your hair since then. I must admit I don't like this as much."

My eyes opened more to the space. I saw the pattern of the moth eaten rug now, the wall of a room with cobwebbed crown moulding, holes in the plaster. My heartbeat quickened. I felt my magic putting up a fight, but it collided with a barrier it could not pass, a firm wall of soul-deep shock as the memory of George lying dead returned to me.

The man gave a low laugh at the sight of my fear and traced his thumb along my lower lip, which was slimy with drool.

"How long's it been, Walden?"

"Six days," said the gruff Mancunian voice which had announced my waking, somewhere behind me.

"Mmm."

My head felt very heavy and slow compared to my rabbit-quick heart. But in the next moments I put the pieces together. Walden… Walden… Macnair.

I was looking at Rowle, then.

One of the visions I'd had in the safe house in Belgium seeped up through the cracks of my splintered consciousness; the one of them raping a muggle woman, tying her up and making her scream with their knives. Dread trickled down my spine as I realised this was the same room. Floorboards rotting in the corner.

My hips bucked against the restraints and I tried to scream, but the sound was kept back by the gag pressing down on my tongue. I tried to shift my weight to turn but all I could do was lift my head up and twist my neck a little, the angle of my body keeping me trapped. The pressure on my lungs was making me wheeze and cough with every gasp, my tongue threatening to pull back into my throat.

"Oh, you poor thing. Crying like a child."

Rowle's finger was sliding between my lip and my teeth now, his hot breath making me choke. Again I tried to roll away, though I knew it was for naught.

"Want to move?" he said, like a man encouraging a dog. "Want to move? Go on!"

He sighed, seeing that I couldn't. "Do you need help?"

He broke the knee bindings and rolled me onto my back, crushing my arms underneath me. I thought I felt my shoulder dislocating, but I couldn't make a sound. I used the slight freedom of movement I'd been given to press my knees against his hands as he prised them apart, pitiful resistance though it was.

"She's a fighter!" he laughed, and wrenched my knees apart so that my hips burned. The restraints slithered to adapt to the new position. I tried using the slight unbalancing of my weight on my arms to twist away, but the restraints held me fast in place.

Rowle ripped apart my knickers and tipped me back, my upper vertebrae chafing against the rug and a grunt coming out of me as the weight of my pelvis suppressed my lungs further. He held me there with my restrained feet pressing into his lower abdomen, my whole self exposed.

His eyes shone.

"Look at that, Walden."

"I see it."

"You don't see it, you're not looking."

Macnair grunted and I heard the distinct sound of metal scraping against metal.

Knives.

My mind went blank with fear, everything in me freezing as my body anticipated pain. Rowle just sat there, staring down between my legs.

It dawned on me that I could use Legilimency, as Severus had used it on the cursed tree in the Cairngorms. Infiltrate his mind and convince him somehow to let me escape.

But even that unruly and newly developing part of my magic was useless.

It was as though all the lights had gone out in the rooms, in the house of my magic.

"What a pretty girl," Rowle whispered.

Holding me in place with one hand, the restraints tugging me wider against even the slightest twitches of protestation, he drew his wand. I watched as it approached my core, and a sharp scream left my throat raw as the wooden tip dug up under the skin protecting my clitoris and inflicted a hot red stinging jinx.

I was openly sobbing now, gagging on my tongue, my wrists going numb beneath me.

"Such a shame you aren't a maiden." Rowle gazed at my stinging centre, his eyes flicking down to mine as though I had spoken. "But not to worry. We'll make you feel like a virgin. Like you've never had a man up there before."

A high squeal of resistance left me, my sobs turning into gasps of disgust. "That's right," he murmured, trailing off into soft soothing clucks.

He was truly mad, carrying on a sick fiction with himself, and using my body to fuel it.

Tears of defeat and weakness flooded my eyes. My mind reached out to Severus, with a desperate prayer that our minds might connect over who knew how far a distance. But that way out was blocked too.

Rowle's wand was still pressed against me, the wood aggravating the sting. His eyes brightened and bored into mine as his wand slid lower and probed at my entrance.

I stiffened and whimpered.

"Shh… Shh, pretty…"

And he pushed it inside.

My muscles screamed in protest at having anything touch that fragile skin, let alone a wand that my whole self could sense had been corrupted and polluted by the blackest magic, the blackest thoughts. Inch by inch he forced it up, until I felt the tip brushing and bruising my cervix.

I cried out, the gag mangling the sound, unable to believe it. After everything. Here, again. Helpless.

White noise filled my head, my entire existence narrowing to a flat thin line of shock. One final jolt of my knees caused the restraints to practically rip my legs apart, and I stopped struggling.

Rowle's eyes watched me with excitement.

"Diffindo."

No word for pain could describe it. Heat broke out over my skin and black stars crowded my vision. All I knew was that I was feeling something that I was never supposed to feel. That no-one was ever supposed to feel.

Blood flooded me, filled me, and when Rowle let my legs down, crushing my hands again, it flowed hot over my thighs.

"No more magic," Macnair growled.

I was blind now. With every heartbeat the pain expanded through me so completely that there was no room for vision. No room for anything but more pain. I crawled up into a cave deep inside myself and huddled there, waiting it out.

But I couldn't ignore the feeling in my gut. That there would be no out.

Not this time.

Rowle moved away and I felt the presence of a much larger man. He gripped me with freezing cold hands and rolled me onto my belly, unclasping my brassiere.

His fingers touched my back, not scratching, not hurting, not even taunting. Just methodically mapping out something for his own benefit. A blueprint.

Then came the knives. They cut shallowly at first. Then more deeply. I heard myself weeping, low cries of shame and destruction.

He turned me again and squeezed my breasts, making little cuts and licking the blood. Then the flat of his blade pressed against my swollen clitoris. He held it there just long enough to make me scream in terror, then changed the cold metal for his tongue, burning as the blood. Back and forth between them, over and over, until I was screaming simply from the uncertainty of whether he was going to cut me or not.

I was disgusted. Demeaned beyond repair. My insides ached, pounding, stretching, contracting. The feeling was wrong. Vomit was climbing up my throat but I fought to keep it down, afraid of swallowing my tongue.

"Enough playing," Rowle said calmly.

Then he was there again. I smelt and tasted his awful breath and then he started raping me, petting my breasts with his hands and letting his full weight crush me with each thrust.

I didn't know how long it went on. I just laid there, letting myself sob and gag quietly. There was no reason to keep my dignity now that I was going to die.

"Let me," Macnair said.

"No."

"Her arse, then."

A moan of brokenness heaved up from my belly, more tears seeping out. I wanted it to be over. I wanted to die.

Rowle heard my sound and stroked my face. "Oh, you're a virgin back there, are you? Lucky boy, Walden. Alright… Gently does it..."

He rolled over, crushing my leg under him. Though I was now on top of him I had no more power than I had before. My entire upper body was numb, and my lower body was on its way to senselessness as well. There was just enough sensation left in me to feel Macnair's cold hands on my hips, to hear the sound of spit behind me, to feel myself tearing inside as he penetrated me.

He squeezed my throat with his hand, pulling my head back, and I struggled against the weight of my tongue, trying to breathe only from instinct now.

My head filled with blood and my sense of hearing was taken away too. All I could feel was their thrusts jolting through my whole body, rigid with shock.

There were no comforting memories. Nothing at all. Just the coldness as I slowly shut down.

Last time, with Rookwood in the forest, I'd wished to slip out of my body. Give birth to my soul and escape the pain.

This time I got my wish.

Warm breezes caressed my skin.

Sun softly kissed my eyelids.

The sound of waves soothed my ears.

This felt so wonderful after what I had come from. I didn't know how long it would last, and was too curious to keep my eyes closed any longer.

I knew the place at once. It was the beach outside Shell Cottage, but more beautiful than the real place had ever been, even on its most beautiful summer days. The kind of beauty that only exists in romantic memories and good dreams.

The sand dunes were topped with wildflowers blowing in the wind. The sand was golden and sparkling, and the water was painted, beneath the robin's-egg sky, in striking tones of teal.

I breathed in the smell of the wind and sea.

My body was different here. It was pure and bountiful and energetic. Like being a little girl again. Whole and undamaged. Clean.

"Willa."

I turned around and there he was. Freckled face shining, red hair blazing in the sun. I ran across the sand, light as a bird, and into his arms. They closed around me, and the miracle of feeling him filled me with joy.

"What do you think you're doing here?" he said, cradling my head.

I felt sadness, but it was only vague.

"Is George here?"

"This isn't the afterlife, silly."

"...it's not?"

"No. But he's there. He's safe now. Beyond pain. You… are in between."

For the first time I noticed a rowboat floating in the shallows.

"If you choose, you take it across."

"Across to where?"

"Across," he said. "Or, you can go back."

"I don't want to go back."

Fred looked down at me, studying my eyes. "Are you sure? I don't think you're quite done yet."

My face trembled, the curtain between this place and the place I'd come from threatening to pull back.

"I'm dirty inside," I whispered.

I cried, and my tears fell like diamonds on the sand.

"You are not dirty, Willa. You never will be."

The curtain slipped slightly, and I thought about the ugly little room of pain and tears I had escaped from.

"That's not life, Wilma," he murmured, seeing my mind effortlessly. "Life isn't an ugly little room of pain and tears."

I shook my head. "But it's so hard to get out."

"You can do it. If anybody can do it, you can." He reached out and tucked my hair gently behind my ears. "I want you to live."

"I don't want to. I'm too tired. I'm done."

"You're strong. And you're brave…"

I looked out at the rowboat. At the peaceful sea. "I want to go."

Fred looked at me and nodded, the slightest hint of disappointment in his eyes. "It's your choice."

I walked towards the rowboat, feeling the soles of my feet on the warm sand, then the wet sand, then in the lovely cool water that came up to my ankles. The sea made a quiet sound against the hull and the wind sighed, blowing my hair back from my shoulders.

Something gave me pause.

The sight of the rowboat reminded me of the black lake. I remembered Severus. His arms pulling me up.

I thought of Remus, and my family, and the people I loved.

My eyes filled with tears. It was now that the good moments came back to me. A fragile golden chain, refusing to be broken against all odds.

I remembered… sitting on the Hogwarts Express for the first time. The sound of the whistle as I waved goodbye to Molly and Arthur, Ginny and Ron.

I turned to look at Fred again, and his voice merged with the voice of the warm wind.

"I think you've already decided. Look."

I looked down at my hands and arms. They were becoming translucent. I could feel my heart beating, the tether to my real body growing stronger again.

Panic flared in my chest, the water growing colder around my ankles. "Will I see you again?"

The wind became louder, almost drowning out his voice, the sun so bright I could barely see him. "Yes. Not for a very long time."

I returned to the room, but not yet to my body. I hovered in the corner, looking down.

I could barely see myself, trapped as I was under Macnair's body.

It was like being a bird, far over a battle, and knowing you are not really a bird but the soul of a soldier. Knowing you must return to your body to fight back, even though you are being impaled by two swords from two sides.

But I would return.

And I would fight back.

This time it was different. Not the accidental, subconscious magic I'd unleashed on Greyback. I knew there was a deadliness in me. It would have to be released, the same as the scream that had destroyed the stone. It was dark magic, made of anger and pain. And I knew it would mean their death.

I wanted them dead.

I pushed myself through the air, like a worm through earth. Closer, and closer, and painfully close, storing up my hatred as I squeezed between their ugly sweating bodies and pushed myself back into my chest.

Resistance.

A splitting pain.

And then I was inside.

There was no time to feel the agony of their invasions. My blood screamed in my ears, my power roaring within me like a towering wave.

I was ready.

The scream inside pushed itself out. A most painful labour.

Sound shattered through me, past the barrier of the gag.

And they exploded.

Blood painted the entire room. Painted my insides. Painted my skin.

Total silence filled my ears and I opened my eyes to the wreckage of their bodies.

The blood. The bones. The entrails. The melted eyes.

And it was all covering me.

The blood. The heat. The mess.

I was still tied up, and couldn't crawl away.

I just laid there in it.

For minutes.

Silently.

Not giving up.

Then the patronus came. The raven. Its light turning the blood pitch black and the bones blue. Sev's voice. Asking where I'd gone.

I knew I had to make a sound. Just a little sound, and he would be able to trace the patronus to this room.

The weight of Macnair's corpse pressed down on me, and tears oozed from the corners of my eyes.

I just barely managed a low whine of heartbreak.

And with it I saved my life.

NOTE

SUMMARY. Wilma is captured by Rowle and Macnair, tortured and raped. Near death, she sees Fred and is given the chance to escape to the afterlife. She chooses to live and willfully murders her attackers, using a scream that unleashes the full power of her magic. Severus sends a patronus and she manages to respond, making her location traceable.

I cannot leave her here, so I am posting another chapter directly after this one. These dark themes will continue into 95, but there is no active violence.

I am so sorry.