op (maldito) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-11-09 01:19:00 |
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Alecto had returned to the Carrow estate. The Fidelius Charm which hid the estate from neighbors was still intact, and Alecto felt quite safe. Safe and smug. Leaving the children at the site of the Potters' demise had been brilliant, and no one would convince her otherwise. Not Sevvie, who mistakenly thought he was smart enough to pull off being a traitor. Not Bellatrix, who had forgotten all the reasons why their Lord deserved their adoration. She was the only one who remembered why they were superior. She remembered, even if they did not. During the last two wars, she had gotten off unscathed. She had not died, and even her imprisonment after the Battle of Hogwarts had been insubstantial, replaced instead by this chance to make a true difference. She would not be locked up. No, no, no, she would serve her Lord to the end, and he would remember her always and forever. Alecto served me best, he would say. Alecto was always my favorite, he would say, and Alecto smiled a dimwitted smile at the prospect. She was like a girl dressing for a ball, so happy was she. She put rouge on her cheeks, the red bringing out the ruddiness in her complexion and the copper in her dull hair. Her robes were too tight around the middle, but she didn't even care about the gape of buttons that showed the yellow she wore beneath them. She mattered. She was important. She had plans. She twirled around the living room, spinning cheerfully to music only she could hear, and it was the howl of pain of the muggle man she'd lured home that made her cackle gleefully. He was downstairs, in the basement, bound and naked, and he'd been so much fun the night before. So much fun. She could still taste his blood beneath her tongue, and she giggled a wheezing giggle as she flicked her tongue at the air, trying to catch that lingering taste. She sighed; if only Amycus was here. She missed her brother, but they would soon be reunited; she was certain of it. Her bed was a lonely place, and even the blood of the moaning man couldn't lessen that longing. But there was her Lord, and he took up that place Amycus had vacated. He filled her, and she loved him. With that last thought, she took up her wand, and she left the safety of the hidden estate. She would not hide. There were things to be done. Namely, more things in His name. More things to prove her undying love. Her love which was better and stronger than anyone else's. She hummed cheerily as she walked. She would bring a girl home tonight, she decided, once she was done with everything. She'd make the man hurt her, she thought gleefully, another wheezing giggle escaping her as she slipped out of the confines of the wizarding world. Muggle London, and the library she walked into was very quiet indeed. Shhhhhhh. She giggled. Cursing the children in the reading section was nothing. Boring nothing, but they would go home tonight and kill their filthy muggle parents, and a Dark Mark would lift itself high above every home. That would be satisfying, even if leaving their sweet skins unmarred was not. And finding her girl to take home, that was also easy, but taking a teenager home meant being less careful. No matter, it would be worth it to see her cry, cry, cry. And that made her impatient and messy. Just inside the confines of the wizarding world, she dragged the girl into a quiet copse. She cried, and Alecto giggled. Oh, she giggled. Imperius, and the girl dropped to her knees, pretty lips swollen and parted. Alone, James had been trailing Carrow. With Sirius’ and Remus’ noses (and wands) in addition to his own, he’d have been on top of the girl in minutes, he’d have her bound, gagged, and waiting for the DMLE, but without, he was a step behind—he would arrive only in time to hear the telltale pop of disapparition and to feel the fan of disturbed air on his face, but to see naught. From underneath the shimmering fabric of his cloak, returned to him by his ...son, sweating in the night cold and with his glasses sliding harriedly down his nose, his wand gripped tight by white fingers, he could only do his best to anticipate the girl’s next move. James was an excellent duelist, skilled in transfiguration and defense, handy with jinxes and curses, with a great deal of inherent magical power, but he was no great tracker, no spy. He didn’t have the tools or the subtlety. It took a patience he lacked, an ear to the ground and a willingness to listen until one had a solid lead to follow. James was not patient. His sense of smell was fabulous as a stag, but his patience remained the same as ever. He’d picked up the trail Sirius had followed to Hogsmeade, down the tracks, but he hadn’t found the children. Next he thing he knew, he was at the old house, the house where he and Lily had supposedly died, where their graves stood as a monument, the house he knew as home, and he’d tried to re-capture the poor children, to return them home to their worried parents. But the Ministry had closed in, no doubt rung in by alarmed residents of the Hollow, and he’d been forced to apparate away, so as not to be apprehended himself. Now, the boy was more determined than ever to catch Carrow—at all costs, the Ministry be damned. He knew her to be the culprit—Snivellus was too busy slobbering over Lily’s shoes, Narcissa was trying to keep Bellatrix ...under wraps…, that left no one else he knew of. So when he landed in the wooded area, with the sky overhead pregnant with stars and black as hell, he held his breath under the cloak. A girl was sobbing nearby and he could smell Carrow’s handiwork in the cold night’s air. Fall was around them and footfalls were cushioned by the death of leaves splashed with the blood of autumn. The forest was as familiar to James as the grounds of Hogwarts. The wilderness was understood by the stag and danger only heightened his senses. The cloak was carefully discarded and hidden, and James focused on the crying. He followed it a ways, bent over behind the black-green smear of brush. He heard Carrow giggle and whatever remnants of forced caution had lulled in his bones evaporated in the heat of iron-red, honest Gryffindor rage, all it took was a second. He jumped through the scratch of brambles with his wand aloft. Not knowing how the girl was behind held, he didn’t want to throw a curse that might be ill-aimed. (That was the last of his caution right there.) He was a good ten feet away. The girl was on her knees. She was young. Tears stained her cheeks in the dimness and her mouth was open. Carrow was there, her eyes alight with sadistic delight, she was almost… aroused. James’ fury surged through veins. He aimed his wand at the inbred’s heart. “LET HER GO, CARROW,” he bellowed, trainers sinking into the decomposing earth as he circled the copse. Alecto spun, dried leaves and cold snow beneath her feet. Her wand was already out and raised by the time she faced James Potter, and her eyes were alight with cheery brightness. Her cheeks were flushed, and it wasn't rouge that gave them color now, nor was it the unforgiving English cold. No, it was the tears of the girl in front of her, and the prospect of proving her love to her Lord by ending James Potter's life right there, in the winter air, with no one the wiser. But she would tell! She would tell! She would dance around his corpse and sing through the streets of Diagon Alley, and she would be the one that mattered then. Not Bellatrix! Not Sevvie! Her! She giggled, and the Imperius'ed girl stepped in front of her, a body shield with a gaping shirt and panties down around her ankles. Giggle, giggle, and she pointed her wand over the girl's shoulder and shot off a stunning spell, then another, then another, hoping one would land between the ones James would surely block. She'd never been very good with fighting spells, more prone to other abuses and uses for her wand. But she pointed and cast, pointed and cast, and the girl moved in front of her and cried. "You will just die again!" she insisted. "You and your wife! Dead! Dead! And your stupid son. Stupid, stupid!" She giggled gleefully, moving behind a tree, her shield moving with her. "And if you take me down, he'll love me MORE. He'll love me more than he ever has, and he will come back stronger because I died. Either way, I WIN." Cast. Cast. Cast. James had no intention of killing anyone. He wasn’t them. He would if he had to, as this was war, but if it could be helped, he’d avoid it and its accompanying guilt. There was no vindication in ending life. There was no justice served. It took mercy for justice. It was not a ruthless thing. It was a sparing to serve time that was owed. Kill someone and you saved them. Kill someone and not only were you committing an atrocity and they got away with their own. No. James had no intention of killing anyone. He would bind her. He would subdue her. A shield came up (Protego!), an invisible convexity between Alecto’s haphazardly flung hexes that whizzed green through the air and the boy himself as he stood knee-deep in shrubbery. The Muggle girl stood, eyes glassy, Imperius’d and lost, as Carrow’s own shield, albeit a very human one. James could hardly look on her. That once-white shirt hung open low, revealingly, obscenely, and the dirt and leaves that were pressed to the skin of her knees trickled down bare shins and onto underwear. He grimaced, his stomach knotting tight and roiling like an angry sea contained in a human body. It was surprising, in all honesty, how level-headed James was able to remain in situations like the one at hand. He would feel anger and it would fuel him, it would offer adrenaline, but he was a more strategic duelist than he was a spy. He kept his wits about him naturally and let the rest of the world fade into the syrupy slowness of the background. It was similar to Quidditch. Intense focus produced a stillness and a fast-moving reality, gapped by a divide. His heart pumped and pumped and pumped, slow through the blood, and he let the shield down. He rolled to the side, never feinting, one hand to his glasses and the other clenching the wand and thrown over his face to keep the scratching thorns away. He stood immediately, as quickly as possible. An oily sheen of leaves tumbled from his hair. A jinx was unleashed wordlessly from his wand tip and, if it met its target, would rend skin, would feel like a knife and would slice just the same. Not deeply, but enough to give pause. James then clenched his teeth. “Expelliarmus!” Alecto was counting on the sight of the girl bothering him. It wasn't tactical, because she was too sloppy to be tactical, but she liked the idea of it once she stumbled on it. That grimace of his made her giggle with glee, like she'd won something by making his stomach turn over. Stupid Potter, thinking these muggles were anything more than playthings. She tore the girl's shirt wider, and she slid her hand beneath the girl's skirt, and the girl cried, and Alecto watched Potter's face, having too much fun with the entire situation to worry about hexing just then. She didn't even have time to throw up her wand to block that jinx, having it lowered said wand during her fun display with the muggle girl. No time for that, and she just moved the girl, using the muggle's flesh to intercept. The girl screamed, and Alecto smiled and bounced joyously. "Look what you did! Look what you did!" she chanted, still holding onto the back of the girl's shirt as she screamed and screamed, the sound an agonized bounce off the dead trees. All of it gave her just enough time to block that Expelliarmus! and to issue a "Sectumsempra!" of her own (Sevvie's spell, and she thought it fitting), as she tossed the screaming girl aside into the filth and stepped on her, as if she was nothing but more ground beneath her feet. He knew to expect—and to dutifully ignore—the taunting, however cruel. Falling prey to hisses and calls from ugly, spiteful little leeches was for Hogwarts, for days spent out in the long grass by the Lake, trying to propel a greasy-haired Snape into the depths of green water for a bath. Here, now, amid the skeleton reach of trees shedding for winter, amid the death rattle of nature, with the cries of a young girl constant, it would be stupid to be duped into careless impulse. But that did not make it easy to restrain oneself. James felt his heart leap to his throat, felt his stomach curdle, and felt blood and heat rise in his face, as Carrow reached forward to touch the Muggle girl. She shrieked and laughed madly, practically dancing, ecstasy apparent in the dull soap of enlarged pupils. He wanted to kill her, but he couldn’t. His jinx cut across the perfect whiteness of non-magical skin. Carrow trod on the girl as one did a welcome mat. “REPULSO,” he shouted, the jet from the girl’s wand shearing a multitude of black hairs from his head as he shot out of the way. James wanted to throw the girl against the berth of a nearby tree, to let the bark tear at her flesh, to hurt her, before he took her in. "Engorgio!" Alecto cast, over and over, hoping to bring him to the point of exploding, and she crowed with giggly glee as the hairs were left in James' wake. She was laughing and laughing, and that repulso! hit her hard enough to send her slamming back into the tree behind her. It rattled her, and her counterspells went here and there and everywhere, since she couldn't see him clearly. But stupid or not, Alecto knew when she was down and when she was done. She tried to scramble to her feet for a moment, and then she stopped entirely. "He will remember me!" she called loudly to the sky, as she pointed her wand up to send a Dark Mark high into the sky. "He will know I love Him!" She looked at James, her unfocused gaze making him out as a shape amid the trees. "You will lose, as you lost before!" She giggled, and she pointed her wand just too far right. "Avada Kedavra!" A vein stood out on James’ forehead as Alecto was lifted from the ground, from the spine of the girl she subjected to her terrors, and was thrown backward into the blank face of the tree behind her. Livid green whizzed just to the right of the boy’s face, close enough to blind and glare off of prescription lenses, but he didn’t react to it, or to the proximity to death. Instead, he threw her against the tree once again, to quiet the hoarse laughter that fell from chapped lips, ugly and cracked. Spells burst in the air around them like a show of fireworks. His hair sopped onto his forehead and his glasses slid down sweaty skin. “Expelliarmus! Petrificus totalus!” One after another, without the expansion of air in lungs, he shouted into the halo of trees. His principles dimmed in his mind as he focused on hurting Carrow, on shutting her up. Once she was taken care of, he came to the aid of the Muggle girl. He removed his cloak and shrouded her narrow shoulders, plans to Obliviate her crowded his mind. The sparks falling from the skull above them as a snake slithered through the plates of teeth was given only a cursory, angry glance. He looked at the girl on the ground, at the fan of her ugly hair, so different from Lily’s, so ugly and pathetic. His sneaker on her wand snapped it in half. “You’re nothing. No one will remember you,” he spat at her locked form, before stepping over her like she was a Muggle and he a blood purist, like they had switched sides. |