Crispy Ben is crispy. (dontcallmeleo) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-02-19 23:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1980-02] february, ! group threads, atticus avery, leoben yaxley, marius lestrange, rodolphus lestrange, walden macnair |
Who: Rodolphus Lestrange, Walden Macnair, Atticus Avery, Marius Lestrange, Leoben Yaxley
When: 19 February, 1980
Where: Lestrange Library (what's left of it)
What: Night of the 19th
Rating: R
Status: Complete!
Thursday nights brought with them a certain sort of pleasant tedium in the Lestrange household, filled with paperwork and wine and reading. Rodolphus remembered, with a smear of nostalgia that was unusual for him, that Thursdays were once the days during which he mentored Bellatrix (and how long it seemed since she was the pupil, rather than the wife). Ah. But things had improved rapidly since then. The Dark Lord's desires being met, the government overturned, the populace slowly growing settled with the new regime. All was well. And then his stomach lurched with a finality that sent a tremor across his spine. Deep in the inner sanctum of his waistcoat, a sharp heat seared out over his ribs, and he dug the culprit out within seconds: his pocket-watch, or, more aptly, his ward-status-checker-whatsit (it didn't really have a name so much as a very important function) showed the library wards had been breached -- and not just breached, but breached. Heart in throat, he had grabbed his wand and apparated without so much as a cloak or a word to the servants. The sight that greeted him in Hogsmeade drove all sense and sanity from his mind. The library was on fire. His library. It was as if someone had lit up a nursery and ten thousand of his children were screaming in pain, and rather than pause to assess the situation -- whatever that situation was, Rodolphus barrelled straight for the door, tearing his outer jacket and waistcoat from him and leaving a trail of clothing in his wake. The initial heat was bearable, warm, meaningless against the burning adrenaline that scorched through his veins. He had no idea where to start, but knew the first floor was lost. Like an idiot, he went for the stairs -- pausing only a moment to rest his hand upon the already-dead wolfhound that lay curled beneath a fallen bookshelf. If he were capable of tears, they would have gripped him now, but horror pressed him onward, half mad with grief and the obsessive need to save as many as he could. Second floor. Third. Rodolphus grabbed books and shoved them beneath his arms, too blinded and air-starved by smoke to even recognise the titles he pawed for. He had to save them. Leoben had barely had a moment to react. As soon as he saw Mr Lestrange disappear into the burning library, there were only three things that registered properly in his mind. The library was in flames (quite a lot of them), Mr Lestrange was inside... and that Ben himself was a lot smaller than him. His journal was hurried and brief and he didn't wait for a response. As soon as he'd tapped the book with his wand, he raced inside, shedding only his outer robes in the process. He inhaled to call out to Rodolphus, for a clue of where he could possibly be in the flaming building. Instead, he got a mouthful of smoke. Excellent. This was exactly what he needed. After a fit of coughs, he cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself and then sprinted up the stairs. At least he had enough freedom to breathe now, never mind that he was running around a burning building that was filled with nothing but fuel. Marius had been flipping through his journal with no particular thought in mind when he saw Ben's frenzied message. Damn it all, he knew his father and if he was inside he would be going down with the ship-- or so the figure of speech would go. As much as Marius appreciated Leoben's skills, he was not sure that the man would be brave enough, even in the face of death, to hex Rodolphus Lestrange to save his life but Marius had no such qualms. He would crucio the man if it came to that. His father was everything to Marius. He didn't wait to give any word of his whereabouts, apparating away into the night. The Library was in flames and peices were falling down around him as he charged inside. Marius cast the first spell that came to mind to allow him to breathe. He doused flames as he went trying to keep a path open to the exit for when he found his father. He would apparate if he could but under the circumstances it might not be possible. He caught a sight of someone moving and ran to their side. It was Ben. "He will let himself die in here. We must find him," Marius said urgently. "These books are his life." Atticus was not a man who ran into burning buildings. As a rule, he considered such action reckless and generally a quick way to certain death. And yet as he apparated to Hogsmeade after seeing the Yaxley boy's message and took in the sight of the flames erupting from the Lestrange library all sense and reason left him. "Son of a bitch," he swore, something else he never did and covering his mouth and nose as best as he could with his arm, he charged into the building. His first and foremost thought was to Rodolphus Lestrange - one of the few men he called friend and who he knew would have to be forcibly pulled away from his burning books. But oh, the books. While Atticus did not, could not match Rodolphus's devotion to the library, the sight of centuries of carefully collected knowledge going up in flames left a sick feeling in his stomach. But there was nothing to be done about the pages that were now mere kindling to the fire. Coughing, sputtering and trying to blink the thick smoke out of his eyes, he bounded up the stairs with speed he did not know he possessed until he had caught up with Leoben and Marius. "Where is he?" he gasped, looking around frantically but unable to see a thing. At least he finally had the sense to cast a bubble-head charm on himself so he could actually breathe. Think quickly, Atticus. "We need to spread out. Send green sparks if you find him. It will take all of us to drag him out of here," he instructed, his speech uncharacteristically brusque and clipped as he tried to take some control in the face of this impossible mess. "And for Merlin's sake, don't get yourselves killed in the process." As Ben was joined by Marius and Atticus, he simply nodded. "I don't think he's on this floor any more," he informed hastily, glancing around as one of the shelves all but disintegrated in the flames. Without another moment of hesitation, Ben sprinted up the stairs. Third floor. The smoke was so thick. How could anyone be breathing up here? As quickly and carefully as he could, Ben peered down smokefilled rows of books, looking for any sign of Rodolphus Lestrange. Books strewn here and there, but it was hard to tell if they'd been knocked loose by the explosion or if they'd been dropped by a very hurried man. Walden had been attempting to read a book that had been suggested to him by Jacqueline but had quickly given up, trading the heavy volume for his smaller journal. He immediately flipped to Ben's ward and he was on his feet in an instant. He dressed quickly and grabbed his wand, informing Jacq that there was something he needed to tend to. Moments later he was standing outside the library, now engulfed in flames. A normal person would have chalked the fire up to an accident but Walden knew it was so much more than that. The bastards would pay. Walden hadn't dressed in bulky clothes and thus had none to shed and so he ran inside and found the small group of men who had all come for the same purpose. Get Rodolphus out alive. What a task. He was in time to hear most of what the others were saying and he gave a definite nod. "Go up until you can't go up any further. Do what you can to extinguish flames, if only to make a movable route for yourself." Walden scanned the burning room and frowned. He had never appreciated books the way some of his colleagues had, especially not like Rodolphus had, but he understood what this meant for his best friend. "There are a few side stairwells so I'll take the left side. Be careful, keep a sharp eye, and get out as soon as possible." He pulled out his wand and ran (something Walden rarely did) towards the side stairs. He would climb until the flames stopped him or he found Rodolphus. He hoped for the latter. The best Marius could hope for is that his father had not gone straight for the seventh floor as he was not entirely certain of the wards. If anyone could get through them though without being torn apart for his blood, it ought to be him. He shared blood with his father and hopefully that would keep him alive. "I am not certain if everyone could get into the seventh floor!" he shouted over the roar of the flames. "I am not even positive that I can myself but I will try. If someone finds him they should shoot sparks to alert the others if at all possible so that none of us stay behind to rescue him if he is gone," he said. "We can all meet back at my father's home." It was all he could manage to say before taking off toward the stairs. The wards were incredibly strong on the sixth and seventh floors so it might be that his father would not worry about those areas at all but they must be checked. If the entire building collapsed under them no amount of warding could keep him from his death. "I'll take the right," Atticus said as he sprinted off but the words were lost in the roar of the flames. He climbed the stairs two at a time until he had reached the fourth floor of the library and was stopped only by a heavy, flaming beam that fell from the ceiling, taking the nearest bookcase with it and blocking any further ascent. If Rodolphus was any higher, he could only hope that one of the others was still able to reach him. Sweat poured down his face and into his eyes - from both the heat of the flames and the sheer adrenaline running through his veins - as he ran through the stacks of the fourth floor. He couldn't see a thing and was starting to believe that the only way he would find Rodolphus was if he charged right into him. Or worse, tripped over the fallen man. No, that was not a thought to be indulged. Falling plaster, ash and flame rained down on him as he pressed onward. He tried to banish the thick smoke that surrounded him to clear his line of sight but it was only moments before the air had clouded over once again. Still he continued, running and casting the banishing charm over and over again with no sight of Rodolphus, only his precious, now-burning books. Somewhere on the fourth floor, Rodolphus's lungs were burning with the acrid taste of smoke and dying parchment. He had several books in his hand -- his wand was lost to the first floor so he couldn't even shrink the ones he was collecting so that he could get more. Several first additions were buried against his chest and he groped against a burning bookshelf in search of several texts he knew were here. That he knew were the only ones of their kind. He couldn't lose them. Merlin, how stupid he had been to leave these here in a public place. How foolish not to predict the worse. Arrogance! How he regretted it desperately. Panic overtook him as heat and billowing smoke pushed him down to a slow crawl. Just a few more and then he could leave -- though if he'd been in his right mind, or any mind at all, he'd have realised that he could not see the staircase, that the shelves all around him were in flames, that there was no way out of this disaster on his own. But he didn't care. As Atticus forced the thick wall of smoke to momentarily dissipate yet again, this time he caught a brief glimpse of Rodolphus's unmistakable form further down the stacks. Any sense of relief at having found the man (and still alive) was quickly replaced by irritation. Of all the stubborn, reckless, idiotic , behaviour... not that Atticus had expected any different under the circumstances, but that did not make it any less infuriating to see the other man's steadfast refusal to save himself from the burning building. He shot a fountain of sparks out of his wand to alert the others and tapped a quick sonorus to his throat that allowed his voice to carry over the roaring flames as he called out, "fourth floor, come quickly," before turning his attention to Rodolphus himself. Crossing the remaining distance between them as quickly as he could, Atticus grabbed the other man's shoulder. Overpowering him wasn't an option to be considered and he was not particularly inclined to curse Rodolphus unless it proved truly necessary. So he did what he did best and attempted to reason with the other man. "Rodolphus. We have to get out of here before the building comes down around us," he urged, as he tried to pry the books out of the larger man's hands, stopping only to turn his wand on the flames that were creeping closer and closer to the two men, trying to hold them off as long as he could. "Give me the books. I'll grab what I can, but you have to get out." Rodolphus stared back up at him, seemingly uncomprehending, and handed over the books. "Shrink them, we can get more that way," he ordered between coughs, before turning his attention back on his shelf and pulling books out by the fistful. He'd stopped paying attention to titles long ago and was merely dragging anything out that he could get hold of. If he was cognisant of the danger around him, it wasn't apparent, and he utterly ignored Atticus's urging. Marius had been listening for any indication his father had been found so he raced back down the stairs toward the fourth floor as soon as he heard Atticus's voice. He continued to cast any spells he could think of to evaporate the smoke to give him a better view but as he stepped onto the fourth floor it was enough to nearly blind him. The heat was intense but Marius had only one concern and that was getting to his father. He came upon the two men and began to cast spells to buy them more time against the encroaching fire since it was clear Rodolphus did not intend to come along peacefully. "Father-- you must leave," Marius said angrily. His wand was out but he was loathe to turn it on his flesh and blood until he had no other choice. The fire had clearly increased on the fifth floor because things began to crash around them and burning debris sent sparks flying into the air. Leoben was not far behind. As soon as he heard Mr Avery's voice, he abandoned his attempt on the floor and bolted up the nearest flight of staircases. He felt like he was being cooked, and narrowly avoiding a crumbling shelf didn't exactly help matters. He beat a spark off his arm before it ignited any clothing and hurried to the converging group of men, dousing flames as he went. "We have to go," Ben shouted above the roar of the flames. "The building isn't going to stay standing much longer!" Walden found himself rather unimpressed with the laws of science and the world, what with heat rising and the like. The smoke was thick and the air was heavy with the heat from the flames that he tried his best to extinguish. "Rodolphus!" He was shouting as loud as he was able but his voice was choked off and lost in the sounds of crackling wood and burning paper. Although his own voice had been quiet he could hear Atticus down below and he turned to head back toward the staircase. The fifth floor was almost completely engulfed but Walden did what he could to grab important looking books from shelves as he went. He would never understand what Rodolphus found so facinating about old texts but Walden would do his best to salvage even a small slice of the man's collection. It didn't take Walden long to join the other men on the fourth floor and he rushed forward to help, digging for his wand so he could shrink the books he'd just lugged down the nearly burning stairs. "Ben's right. This place is being held together by almost nothing." Walden was at Rodolphus's side now, feeling rather small next to him as he always did. He situated himself at his friend's side and took it upon himself to help to support him. If Walden had to remove him by force he would. It might take a fair amount of work but he was confident he could get Rodolphus down and out of the inferno. "Let's make it out alive and then we can worry about rebuilding." Rodolphus did not take kindly to the badgering; half-mad with panic and grief, he continued shovelling books into his arms, utterly ignoring his own son and a burning book that fell to the ground within inches of him. Only when Walden grabbed hold of him, did he pay the others any mind. "Get your hands OFF of me," he snarled, whipping around in mixed rage and instinct and shoving his fist into his best friend's face. The sound of cracking cartilege and the heat of blood pouring out over his fingers did little to deter him, and the books fell from his arms and onto the floor around him in pitiful thumps (drowned out against the roar and heat of flame) as he lunged for Walden. He'd barely managed to get his hands on the other man before a more serious predicament befell him -- literally. The fifth floor balusters, unable to take the pressure of the sixth floor and the constant erosion of heat and flame, began to crumble, sending down huge chunks of the railing down upon them; one ended Rodolphus's onslaught abruptly, crushing half of his torso and pinioning his thighs against the hardwood floor. A howl of agony signalled his forfeit, and he released Walden, no longer able to struggle. No; it was all going wrong. Horribly, irrevocably wrong. Walden had not expected Rodolphus to make things easy but the sudden onslaught of violence was not something that he was prepared for. He felt his nose break on impact and he stumbled back slightly, narrowly missing flames. He knew there was blood all down the front of him but he didn't care. He pushed through the pain and focused on Rodolphus. This was easy to do because the large man was now clutching at Walden, preparing for another attack. The building was falling apart quickly and it was going to take them all along with it. Walden ignored the searing pain in his face and he dropped down to the floor where Rodolphus was now trapped. He concentrated and used a mixture of physical strength and magic to remove the rubble and with help he was able to get Rodolphus free and mobile (or as mobile as he could be in his current condition. "Grab the books that he dropped. They're not yet lost. We need to get downstairs now." He was yelling behind him, not caring which of the men followed the orders. He turned his head enough to look at his best friend and he growled. "If you try to struggle or grab anything on the way out I will knock you out and sling you over my shoulder, broken body or no. Your life is the only thing I'm concerned about at the moment." Although he did not give voice to any of them, there was a decidedly colourful stream of profanities running through Atticus's mind as he attempted to shrink and stash as many of the books as possible, letting the others take their turn with the apparently futile attempts to badger Rodolphus out of the building. And then the unthinkable happened. It took a moment for Atticus to notice that Rodolphus had fallen as he had been rather preoccupied with dodging the collapsing ceiling himself, falling into one of the bookshelves and setting his shirt on fire for his trouble. Once he had regained his footing (and dealt with his flaming clothes) and caught sight of the scene before him, he froze for just a split second before instinct set in and he quickly moved to help Walden clear off the remaining debris. The heat was unbearable, his body ached and his head was spinning but all of these seemed to be quite minor concerns at the moment. The only important thing was getting Rodolphus, and themselves, out of the building alive, a task that was proving more and more daunting by the moment. Once Rodolphus was free from the rubble and in Walden's care, Atticus stopped only to sweep his arm across the floor, scooping up as many of the books as he could manage before rushing after the other two to escape before the entire damn building collapsed around them. With his free hand, he used his wand to try and clear a path before them as best he could, dousing flames and moving chunks of fallen library as he went. Leoben narrowly avoided the falling, flaming chunks of ceiling... and was mortified to see that Mr Lestrange had not. He was only superficially aware of the fact that Mr Lestrange had just punched Walden and for once, the threat of physical harm didn't stop him from taking the few steps forward to help clear the rubble. There was an itching notion in his head that said quite clearly that if he didn't help here, they were all going to die. And that was simply unacceptable. A few careful steps later, Ben found himself on Mr Lestrange's other side, opposite to Walden. With a muffled grunt of effort (that was unlikely to be heard anyway) he got an arm under Mr Lestrange and helped Walden pull him. Salazar's blood, he was heavy. It would take both arms, one of which had previously been trying to keep some of the fire at bay. Ben only hoped Mr Avery was very, very alert right now. Marius had been close enough to his father that when the fiery rubble came crashing around him a large chunk of it managed to slam into his leg. The searing pain was difficult to ignore but it had not pinned him and he would live so despite the sparks still smoking and the spell he had to cast to put flames out on his leg. If this had been for anyone but Rodolphus, Marius would have left them to their death but because it was his father his own pain paled in comparison with the pain he would feel should he lose the man. Marius pushed Ben slightly over so that he could slip an arm around Rodolphus as well. He tried his best to support some of the weight while keeping his arm out to cast whatever he could to keep the fire at bay. This was the sort of scene he had never imagined-- books burning around him, fiery pages blowing about in an orange breeze between the billows of smoke. And still, he didn't give a damn about any of it. Nothing but getting them all out alive seemed of any importance. As difficult as it was to get Rodolphus to leave the building, it looked as if that was going to pale in comparison to actually finding an escape route. Atticus led the way down the stairs, staying close to the others and ready to provide what support he could if needed, but he was far more focused on the flames before them. The lower levels were all but completely consumed with fire and it was all he could do to force a gap just wide enough for them to move through. Aside from their narrow path, as they moved lower they were quite literally walking into a wall of flames. As best as he could, Atticus watched for more of the falling ceiling, but he could barely see over his own head and oh, he truly was becoming convinced that it was going to be a miracle if they made it out of here alive and in one piece. No, there was no time for those thoughts, he chastised himself, a thought that became all the more apparent as he felt the stairs weaken under his feet. "Stop!" he said suddenly, throwing his arm back in warning before taking a moment to reinforce the stairs. "Son of a bitch," he muttered for the second time that night as he tentatively tested the stair before nodding and moving on. Embarrassment, a natural emotion at this point, would have been welcome; Rodolphus could barely feel the heat of the fire for the wretched agony ripping through his lower extremities. He couldn't remember ever suffering this much pain, not at the hands of his father, not in a duel; a faded memory of the cruciatus led him to believe he'd have rather felt even that pain than this searing, unrelenting anguish that left him breathless and still gasping for relief. Every mouthful of desperately needed air filled him with the bitterness of smoke and ash. In one poignant moment, he was acutely aware of his surroundings, of decades of work going up in flames, of thousands upon thousands of books dying, of his life's work destroyed by his own arrogance. Watching in horror as bookshelves fell before his eyes, pages of centuries' old books crumbled to the floor, a horrible noise of grief quavered in Rodolphus's chest; "oh God," fell shaking from his lips in a voice that didn't sound like his and the hellish vision became blurred behind a wall of wet heat. He hadn't felt tears on his cheeks in what felt like a lifetime, but he was too overcome by misery to give a damn about himself anymore. His whole body went slack as he sobbed, and it wasn't until the pain grew too great and his lungs filled too much with remnants of his library that he ceased, eyes closing for what he was certain would be the last time. |