Who: Jo and Rodolphus Where: Norfolk moorlands What: idk my bff Rosephine? When: 16 April 1980, after this
Rating: PG-13 for some blood and minor violence Status: Complete, logged
Jo could still feel the elation suffused in the warm glow of flames licking up the brick walls, troubling the air to quiver with energy as the Avery mansion merrily burned. And the success of the former mission had sent her on her own into an unexplored territory ...
Rodolphus Lestrange's house, up in the Norfolk moors, surrounded by ancient miasmatic bogs, needed to come down with as much gusto as did his Library. The sun - when she could see the sky - had tinged the inky darkness with a pale-pink hem as Jo crept carefully through the spongy turf.
... his wards would be far more difficult to broach than Avery's. She knew this man almost as well as she knew herself; the bogs, dangerous as they were, had only the most bare-faced of dangers when compared to what lie before her. She could appreciate its natural honesty, unlike a ward that would sidle up to you sideways and blow you to pieces before you had a chance to think.
Wand out to light the way through the grey earliest morning fog, she adjusted the satchel that held all her fiery equipment on her shoulder and soldiered on. Her estimate told her that it would be some yards hence before she would reach the end of her bog to meet the parklands, where her real test of ward-breaking would begin.
Rodolphus had finally recovered from the slump he'd wholeheartedly succumbed to; with the help of his more responsible sister and bulwark of a wife, he'd literally dragged himself out of the pervasive melancholy that seemed to consume him so easily at a moment's notice. His leg had vastly improved, and he deigned to exercise it now, willingly and without complaint. The cane lay abandoned at his bedside since Sunday night, and he'd even taken to the fresh air, the waspish echoes of his mother's insistence that the natural vapours would do him well ringing in his ears.
Today he was much invigorated by a healthy breakfast and a trip to the stables, where he visited his favourite and long abandoned hunting steed. He rarely took much interest in the animals' upkeep -- that was more to Bellatrix's liking -- but there was some vague enjoyment to be had in staying informed as to their health, their spirits.
He'd just contemplated a brief walk when his pocket-watch warmed suddenly in his inner pocket, sending a tremor of familiarity down to his stomach. The last time he'd received warning, it was of his library being burned to the ground and he was, for a brief moment, hesitant to inform himself about what was going wrong now. But habit had his hand dipping into his waistcoat and pulling the device out before his thoughts had caught up, and he pressed it open. A hand glowed and moved to the mark representing the borders of their lands. Relief, then. Likely just a large animal. He returned his attentions outward again, though the watch remained nestled in his palm.
Unlike an animal, however, Jo moved with great intention as she made her way out of the fen and over the parklands. The estate - ostentatiously palatial, she had thought - loomed before the horizon. The real warding, deadly with its precision, would be soon upon her and she stopped to test the air with her wand.
The warmth grew stronger in Rodolphus's hand, and he didn't need to check the watch to know what it meant. The creature, whatever it was, was making its way deeper into his lands -- close enough to the wards that it had triggered more sensitive proximity alerts. He did not have his journal open, he could not know of the tragedy that had befallen Atticus -- yet -- and so his concern was mostly perfunctory. Still, it warranted investigating, though he was in no particular hurry. Several steps took him out of the stables and onto the main path that would quickly become untracked moors.
Taut as a bowstring quivering with the anticipation of the archer's release, the wards around Rodolphus's house felt. Impregnable. But Jo had not come this far to give in. The sun behind her had covered the sky in the gentle paleness of just prior to sunrise and her breath fogged the air as she concentrated, attempting to unravel this ancient tapestry.
And that was where warmth became heat, danger, infiltration. Rodolphus's expression grew dark and angry in the short flash of a second, and then calm again, a forcible stoicism that etched hard into his jaw and eyes. His wand was withdrawn and he moved just beyond the innermost set of wards that covered his house so he could apparate to the borderlands, a few hundred paces back from the wards.
So began the hunt.
So deep was her concentration, so far within the magic she was exerting to overpower the magic that kept the Lestrange household safe, that she would not have noticed a familiar looming presence had he been within a hair's breadth of her. The tension within the wards wearied her arms as she held her wand aloft, looking for weaknesses as she combed through. Ah - one thread snipped! But only one and five more to take its place as she thrust her concentration forward, attempting to maintain her infinitesimal breach.
He stalked through the soft land with all the silence afforded him by the moist earth, making rapid progress along the circumference of his lands, an occasional homenum revelio cast, lest he stumble over a hidden wizard in his pursuit. At long last, there it was. There she was. A surge of anger swept over him, and his wand was out before him, a silent expelliarmus cast. He wanted her conscious while he wrapped his hands around her throat.
It took a moment - half a second, but what seemed like an hour - to watch her wand fly out of her hand and the force of the wards expelling her to pitch her back on her arse. She knew that she didn't simply drop the wand - and it finally dawned on her - Rodolphus there, awash in stormy fury. She scrambled, diving for the satchel to grasp at the knife she kept with her always. Fuck. She went in too far. She took too long.
Two long strides took him close enough and his hands were out, wand not even necessary as large palms moved against her, shoving her backwards and away from whatever protection she'd been foolish enough to set aside. Viciously strong fingers wrapped around one of her ankles and he tugged, hard, to drag her close and into him, voice dripping with malice and an irrepressible something: "was taking my library from me not enough, little Josephine? Would you rob me of my home as well when I have gifted you your life so many times?"
Even as her hip drug over the spongy turf, she found enough purchase to rear a fist back, to send it speeding into his sneering face. She spit at him, too, terror taking over. He was going to kill her; but he would probably do worse before he was through.
Blood spattered from his lip across her, rich scarlet contrasting starkly across the smooth olive of her throat; hands then were in her hair as he jerked her roughly upwards, using the thick dark strands to wipe the saliva from where it smeared obscenely across his cheek. "Well?" He demanded, holding her by the hair so that their faces seemed held apart by only the heat of their breaths.
A thousand different scenarios, all which included his lips on her skin and her knife in his gut, sped through her mind (despite the pain, despite the fear). But she stood, a stone angel, staring him down as her fingertips sought purchase for his wrists or anywhere to cause pain. Anywhere to break concentration. "One life amongst so many," she gritted out, "why let me live when you know I will come back again and again to be the pebble in your shoe?"
Her fingertips ground hard into the veins of his wrist and his jaw tensed at the pain. He was already tiring -- too long spent inside and he had no stamina, only the brute force of his weight and muscles, which he used against her now. Heaving forward, he shifted his weight into her until they were against the ground, moorland pressed against her arms and hair. "Maybe this time I won't," he growled, dipping down so that his voice was in her ear.
She strained, his weight like a cairn over her, moving her face to draw breath even as that same hand that pressed to his jaw sought to press into his chin, to snap his neck. "We'll see," she managed, "who dies first."
Rodolphus normally might have found the idea that such a small creature could really hope to break him, and in so clumsy a manner, rather amusing -- but right now he had been divested of all lesser emotions. He felt only anger mixed with the smallest twinge of violation. She'd taken away the one thing that mattered most to him after his Lord and his family -- and she would repay it ten fold. He'd see to it. Death wasn't enough. His hands were occupied in keeping her pinned to the ground, and he turned his head abruptly, catching the soft flesh of her wrist in his teeth; so captured, he paused for a heartbeat and then bit down. Hard.
Surprised tears stung at her eyes as she ripped her wrist from his teeth, using the momentum (despite their close quarters) to back-hand him across the cheek. Here he was on top of her. Here he was laying his mouth upon her. Any other feral inclination that rose up in her was barely bridled by the sense that should she lose her head, he would certainly kill her.
A darkness clouded his features, abruptly, violently, and Rodolphus dragged his hand from her now-tangled hair. His mouth hurt and his body was beginning to loudly protest the exertion he forced it through, and he had to do something quickly before he became careless enough that this girl might truly hurt him. Arm rearing back, he landed a vicious punch across her cheek. The sounds of breaking, of bleeding, didn't satisfy him. Not today. He was too angry.
And then she was slack in his arms and he was pulling himself off the ground and leaving her in the earth as he reeled slightly, punished by uncooperative thighs for this diversion. One broad hand curled across his mouth as he considered her body, soft and harmless now. He wanted to murder her. Painfully and violently and left out for the dogs to devour.
No. She deserved far worse.
In one abrupt moment, he was gathering his wand and reaching for her again, now by the very wrist he'd ruined. In another, they were gone.