Part II Who: Fabian & Gideon Prewett; Alcander, Rodolphus, Thubana, & Corbina Lestrange, Orion Black, Graley Rosier, Walden Macnair What: Prewetts attack card night at the Lestranges Where: The Elder Lestrange Manor, Breckland, Norfolk, England When: 19 July 1979
Rating: R at least (violence, death)
The stentorian crash of shattering glass and protesting portrait occupants came jarringly unexpected over the quiet sounds of the card game, but not one of the men (nor the dealer) stirred in their chair. It was likely a servant or a house elf creating a ruckus that would be dealt with later, and abandoning the card table when the stakes were already high was recipe for disaster. Thubana, though, (always a worrier), skittered out of the room after a quick glance to her husband to investigate what exactly had caused the crash.
Moving through the double doors into the next room, Thubana's eyes settled on the destruction that was shards and pieces of marble beneath an abandoned portrait. Her shriek of horror over the loss of the urn -- it had been in their family for years -- was nothing to be matched with the shriek that would have erupted had Thubana not been too distraught to notice the door into the next room slowly creaking open, wand pointed at her back. Within moments a stunning spell sent the woman crumpling in a heap onto the carpet, and she was quickly dragged through the doors by the twins while they waited to see if the woman's scream would attract further attention.
"Thubana," was a put-upon sigh. Flicking a fingernail's breadth of ashes into a tray, Alcander's brow rose precariously over his hooked nose as he glanced at his compatriots around the card table. Though his face betrayed only mild annoyance, the backs of his teeth ground and he made a note to speak with his wife about her small indiscretion while company was in the house at a later time (when there would be no witnesses). "I dare to think about what she gets up to when no one's about. Startled at shadows and sure that branches on the windowsill are the calling card of the Inferi."
With Mrs. Lestrange's body sprawled on the carpet behind him in a rather undignified fashion, Fabian felt some unease skittering back into his system. He hadn't planned - or rather, hadn't wanted, as there wasn't too much planning involved - to storm the fort, as it were, as it seemed rather a Gryffindor approach and one Molly would have favoured in her day, if it hadn't involved the rather high risk of death and dismemberment. However, as the destruction of the urn had done little but relieve temporarily some of the frustration against Rodolphus Lestrange, instead of luring Death Eaters out of hiding (or card-playing, which was really the same thing), Fabian could see no other option. "We're going to have to go in there," he murmured, his hand pushing the door quietly out into the hallway. Approaching, once again, the double-doored den from which idle chatter and smoke emanated, he took a long breath and held his wand at the ready.
Gideon didn't like it - the numbers still weren't precisely what he'd call favourable - but he didn't care as much as he might in other circumstances, and stepped readily enough up to his brother's shoulder, lifting his own wand. He glanced sidelong at Fabian, and there was a faint, fey smile lingering on his face. Whatever happened, this time, he wasn't leaving with the blood of someone he loved on his hands. Not this time. Not happening.
No count of three. Just one of those moments of synchronicity - they had fewer of them than people expected of identical twins, but they made them count - and they took the two steps to the drawing room doors together, boots hitting the door panels in unison and they stormed in, wands high and spells already flying.
Walden's mouth was open slightly as he'd been ready to counter Rodolphus's quip about his back and also see to Graley's bet but he found himself most surprisingly interrupted, once again. The first time had been due to the crash in the other room and now the older wizard would be willing to bet galleons to doughnuts that these two boys had been the cause of the previous noise, seeing as how they had just entered in such a graceful fashion. The two doors had crashed against either wall, causing wall decorations and such to fall to the floor in a cacophony of shattering glass.
Walden reached into the pocket of his jacket that hung just on the back of his chair and his wand was quickly in hand as he shouted a number of curses in panicked retaliation. He took a quick moment to glance around him, trying to see if any of the others had been injured but the room had turned into complete chaos in just those few moments which made it almost impossible for him to make sense out of the sudden turn of events.
The moment the doors had crashed open and Rodolphus saw Gideon and the boy who must have been his twin, he knew better than to gawp; the Prewetts were hardly likely to waste time chatting about the little present he'd sent off earlier this week - a reminder of their failure in breaking into his library (for who else could have gone that far into his wards without setting off the dogs?) - and though Rodolphus had desired to see them, to fight them, he hadn't expected them here, now. His surprise at their timing did not stay his hand for more than a second, and with a powerful growl of strength, he sent the card table upend, spelldust bursting at its edges, and grabbed his sister by the collar before she had time to do something foolhardy and courageous.
With a bestial, possessive insistence, he dragged her across the sitting room floor and towards the cove the led into the antechamber, depositing her behind one of the outjutting walls that would protect her from stray fire. "Don't move from this spot," and there was a severity there - a vague smear of distress - that brooked no refusal.
Corbina had barely a moment to look up from her cards as the doors crashed open, scarcely a second to register that something was very very wrong here, that there was no way in the world that Gideon From The Library and his twinperson would have been invited to card night. Hexes began flying through across the room, just missing heads and arms and priceless heirlooms, and then suddenly she was nabbed from her chair before she could even think about fishing her wand out of her pocket, Rodolphus hauling her away from the fray.
The moment she was dumped unceremoniously away from the action, behind the wall, Corbina's wand was out and she was scrambling to her feet, torn between rushing back to do something and knowing that it would do no one any good if she dared disobey her brother when he had that tone to his voice. She stared back at Rodolphus -- no protests of refusal, no ordering him to be careful -- and merely nodded the slightest bit, glancing around the corner of the wall and shooting the strongest blasting curse she could muster at the twin with the longer hair. She wasn't allowed to play with the men this time, no, but Corbina would be damned if they expected her to hide quietly while her home was being attacked.
Alcander too, was surprised by the sudden appearance of the boys in his drawing room. And so he stood slowly, giving them a calculating stare as he wound his way around the card table to stand in front of his guests. His wand pointed toward the longer-haired one and he gathered the strength in his brittle lungs, "Avada ..."
Poor decision on his part, that. Because Gideon hadn't even seen where - or even if - the stunning spell he'd shot had hit, but no doddering curmudgeon was pulling that sort of shit on his brother, not tonight. He snapped his wand in the old man's direction, his reducto whip-fast and unspoken but fueled by his rage and his grief. It blasted Alcander back from the table, his chair screeching across the floor and his body thudding into the mantlepiece, shattering what was probably another priceless artifact before it slumped to the floor.
Graley heard the door open and he was up with Walden and everyone else, grabbing his wand as he took a moment to assess the scene and the situation. He growled at the noise and when he saw the spells flying and ducked one, quickly shooting a stunning spell at the people he didn't recogize. He could see Rodolphus grabbing Corbina and dragging her and he watched as Alcander was thrown across the room. He turned and shot a blasting spell at the pair before he began to move, heading towards them, a grim look on his face.
Fabian had had his attention on the others - too many others - with his back turned to Alcander, but his attention was brought rather abruptly to the older man as he flew across the room and collided violently into the mantle. He wanted to look at Gideon, though what he would say was beyond him, and at this time, superfluous. The time for speech was gone, and in that brief moment- a tenth of a second, really - Fabian felt his brother's presence in a way he never had before. They were alone, the two of them against the world - for this room was the world in this moment. Nothing else existed.
He was brought to himself again by a stunning spell in his direction, which he managed to dodge. The wake of the blasting spell caught him briefly on the shoulder as he ducked, and he hissed as he stumbled back into the wall, where a now-empty portrait fell, torn, next to him on the carpet, caught by another blasting spell. He responded with a crackling, angry burning spell in Graley's direction, as well as two blasting curses toward Walden, hoping to fell one more.
By the time Rodolphus had pulled himself away from Corbina and into the fight, it was too late. He watched his father crumple as he was hit by a spell, and in those slow seconds it took him to fall, he knew there would be no getting back up for that vehemently ill old man. Rage like he'd never felt before erupted through him, burning his blood hot against every organ and strengthening the grip that held his wand painfully tight. Gideon Prewett. Betrayer of his trust and of his blood. He would taste metal upon the air before this night was through.
With a violent bellow, Rodolphus had kicked the card table from where it lay, haphazard upon the ground, his huge frame stalking over it like a wild bear, fury etched into every once-stoic feature. "Crucio!" Gideon would suffer and then he would die.
Distracted by spells flying, by flinging his own in response, by the surging clangour in his heart and in his head (was this how Gryffindors felt all the time?) Gideon had barely turned his head (Rodolphus's bellow would have woken the dead) when the Unforgiveable caught him full in the chest.
He went down in agony, wand dropping from numb fingers as he convulsed on the floor. But in some distant corner of his mind - the part that had been behind cold, hard, impenetrable walls since he woke up on Friday and Benjy was still dead - simply refused. His brother was in danger and Benjy's murderer was right there. Pain didn't matter.
Gideon clawed against the carpet, twisting and stretching for his wand as his heart thundered and his lungs laboured. His fingers brushed the wood, fumbled it closer, closed around it, and he brought it up and around (like dragging his arm through fire) to wheeze, "Expelliarmus."
Malice kept Rodolphus's hand upon his wand, and the wand trained upon Gideon. It was not only rage that kept the evil spell billowing into the other man in waves of violent red, but some vague, too-deep-to-be-properly-understood iota of trust betrayed. Rodolphus had never had cause to put his faith in any non-familial person, man or woman, in decades, but he'd felt some sort of academic kinship with Gideon. Something rough and dispassionate and stoic - but, still, something. Perhaps it was anger at himself for trusting in a traitor, or perhaps it was anger at the treachery itself - but Rodolphus's fury was passionate, emotional, physical, and nothing made tangible those emotions like the cruciatus. This was not some testing spell upon his son or some righteous vengeance upon mudbloods. This was personal, and it would soon be deadly.
His surprise at Gideon's fortitude lay plain upon his face (in this act of violence, even Rodolphus's pittance of emotions were lay bare), and he could not stop the magic that flew up at him - recompense for his actions that he never guessed would come... and then his wand was free of him, falling lifeless and inflexible to the floor where he could do with it neither good nor evil.
But Rodolphus had never needed his wand for violence.
A growl of rage erupted from him, and in a motion faster than one could possibly hope for in a man his size, he lunged into Gideon, huge fists knocking at the wand so that he might have this man - this boy beneath his fingertips, crushing, wrenching justice from the yielding tendons beneath.
Barely had Gideon had chance to draw in breath in the sudden euphoria of being pain-free when it was crushed back out of his lungs. His wand was knocked away - he heard the clatter of it, impossibly far away this time. His head thumped against the floor, stars momentarily clouding his vision, and there was an iron bar - no, it was hands - around his throat and there was a familiar face, a hated face, a face he'd wanted for so fucking long not to believe was associated with evil and Merlin, he'd been so stupid, so fucking unforgiveably stupid.
I'm so sorry.
He scrabbled at the fingers around his throat; might as well try to unbend cast iron. He flailed at Rodolphus's arms, trying to push him off, trying to reach his face. Bared his teeth with the effort and between them snarled, with all the breath he had left and all the poison that was burning inside him, "I hate you."
Anger, anger, anger. All that pumped through the massive fingers and the unyielding wrists was rage - first for his father (but Rodolphus could not look, could not yet face what he would be forced to deal with next, tomorrow, forever) and then for his own wild foolishness at never realising what snake he'd brought into his den. His fingers closed tighter and tighter until that last bit of spiteful breath had been quenched. One twitch. One twitch of strong muscle and he would be free of the blood traitor.
For the first and last time, Rodolphus Lestrange hesitated.
He harboured no special love of Gideon (not now, anyhow), nor would he ever forgive his horrible misdeeds... but something inexplicable stayed his hands just long enough for Gideon's last breath to die away, for one last ounce of that primal magic that held the fabric of space together to gather in his captive's heart - for it to spread across sinew and veins and pour, hot and angry, through dying fingertips.
As Rodolphus let out a noise of grief - as he twisted his palms to bring the boy's life to an end - the poison that had kept Gideon with this world for second after long second leeched from his fingers and into his attacker's wrists, angry and burning and scarring, making it certain that Rodolphus would never forget this fateful day.
The world was turning hollow and distant, thundering blood drawing a veil across Gideon's ears, across his eyes. He felt heat between his fingers, something leaving him, and he didn't understand it at all, but he felt a grim satisfaction.
The last thing he knew before it all ended.
All around him Orion could see chaos crashing about. What had begun as a calm, peaceful evening of cards had degenerated into screams and crashes and spells flying every which way. What had happened to Thubana, they still could not be certain, and just before their eyes, Alcander Lestrange had fallen. His age and the strength of the spell made it questionable as to whether he would be getting up again.
When the responsible ambusher fell at the hands of Rodolphus, Orion had already turned his attention to the other twin. To burst into a private home and attack, unprovoked, kill the master of the property and attack the guests was utterly aggravating and unacceptable. Although Orion was left as the only among them who was not trained in combat as a Death Eater – after all, he had settled for political and financial support whenever needed, and his son and oldest niece had risen to the task of war instead – to stand and watch was out of the question, and without hesitation, he shot a blasting hex at Fabian.
Facing several hostile enemies and fighting, screaming, clawing for survival which he was certain - had always been certain - would not be his, Fabian's mind became lost in the chaos so that it was only after his brother stopped his terrible, agonised vociferation that he was aware of it at all. Turning to his brother in an abrupt about-face and saw, as if in one of those Muggle films Benjy was always talking about, first his brother, and then his attacker. Without thinking - he was past thinking now, it was all emotion, it was all instinct - he raised his wand, moving toward Lestrange as if to charge, his mouth opened to shout a spell, but he was thwarted by a blasting curse from across the room, which missed him by only a fraction and sent him hurtling into the wall.
Enraged, Fabian recovered quickly and sought out his brother once again. He knew, before he even laid eyes on him, that he was too late. He felt, rather than saw, Gideon's last breath. He was unprepared for all the cold, collected calm - the grim resignation to his fate - to depart and leave no trace of its existence, and be replaced by a fulminating, indescribable rage.
With Gideon lost, Fabian's mind, insistent on retaliation on whatever - whomever - had kept him from reaching his brother in time, found his target. It was an older man he vaguely recognised, though he couldn't care less who it was at the moment except that he had dared to interrupt him.
He didn't seethe, didn't spit out any venom for the man to be insulted with, but instead raised his wand. The spell he had to use came instantly to him; it was the only logical way, the only fitting way to dispose of anyone at this point. And it was a disposal; for they thought of Benjy as trash- a waste of air- garbage - all of them! And now his brother, his twin, his constant companion whose every movement was familiar and every word spoken welcome, the only person Fabian could ever truly understand and be understood by-
The hurt took shape in a ripping, bloody curse that had no name Fabian knew except vengeance. The spell worked quickly, exploding arteries and slicing (no, slicing was too precise - hacking) pieces of flesh from the sorry victim whose identity Fabian would never learn.
Before he had the chance to react and acknowledge the retaliation, Orion felt innumerable gashes cut into his skin – all over his body was a hot, sharp, crippling pain as he dropped to his knees, fingers digging into the flooring. No clenching of his fists or clenching of his eyes, no tensing of his body and flaring of his temper stopped the pain from shooting nor the blood from gushing. Within seconds a terrible dizziness clouded over him – there was no time to reason out why they were here, why there were attacking, what would happen –
As his wand-grip loosened, his body curled a bit more in a full collapse onto the carpet, blood soaking in around him in a pool of stained red.
Walden clutched his left arm tightly as he tried to force away the pain that was quickly traveling through the limb. One of Fabian's spells had clipped his shoulder, nearly knocking him from his feet. Alcander was dead and not far away Rodolphus was looming over the dead body of his father's killer. For a short moment Walden seemed to forget the fray and he watched his friend for a moment, as if waiting for something.
He was quickly pulled from his reverie at the sound of the one boy who remained standing. Orion Black was dead in a pool of his own blood and the twin looked positively murderous. Walden didn't give the boy another second, lest he decide to continue his vengeance spree, and he released his injured arm in order to point his wand in Fabian's direction. He was unsure exactly what spell had spilled from his lips but a bright light flew from his wand and connected with the boy's midsection.
Walden's gaze found Graley and he gave him a look that read a thousand words. No one burst into the Lestrange home without consequence and those who tried would learn why it was strongly ill advised.
Graley looked around at everything around him, the corner of his lip twisted up into a scowl as he threw a spell out now and then, but the mayhem seemed to have died down and so he was able to stop, think and see everything. Alcander was dead, and he could see Orion sitting there and he had never really hated the man, but he couldn't really bring himself to care either way. He turned, spotting Walden holding his arm and then he noticed the look, reading it and nodding.
People didn't get off lightly for fucking with them, they never had and they never would. He raised his wand as he jerked his head towards the one remaining intruder before casting a quick blasting spell, no need to speak out loud. There was no point. He wasn't going to waste his breath on someone as simple as this.
Fabian, being distracted briefly (but long enough) by a sudden fascination with the sheer volume of blood on the carpet, and with the fact that he had possibly - no, definitely - just killed someone, was caught by Walden's spell with no defense. He crumpled to his knees, a blinding agony erupting in him as he felt his organs collapsing. He was surely hemorrhaging, he thought, though no blood spilled from him. He clutched at his abdomen, his wand slipping from his fingers, as if he could somehow hold himself together. Dizzying flecks of light danced before his eyes.
He fought to stay upright, but in an instant he was thrown backward several feet. He lay on his back, motionless but for the desperate movements of his hands to grasp at his stomach, and making curious gurgling noises. He coughed wetly and tasted the iron in his blood as it swelled up his throat and burst past his tongue. He fought to breathe against his collapsed lungs, but soon his body began to give up the battle, and his mind was swimming. His eyes rolled around, searching across the floor for something to focus on, and as he had hoped, his gaze landed on the still face of his brother. It was funny, he thought as his vision faded, dying didn't seem so terribly hard. Easy, in fact. Maybe too easy. They were so fragile, every last one of them-
And then all thought ceased.
[ooc; At the end of it all, Graley went and dumped the Prewetts' bodies off somewhere where they will certainly be found by someone who is known to be in the Order, hence how they all find out. Walden went to personally tell Walburga and Regulus Black.]