Hannah Potter knows how this ends (heroesinthedark) wrote in flippedrpg, @ 2012-04-25 00:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, ch: swap: hannah potter, p: abby |
Who: Hannah Potter
What: Hannah's final moments
When: 9:30am, Wednesday, April 25. (Pre-Dated)
Note: Feel free to reply if you want.
WARNING: CONTAINS CHARACTER DEATH
There was a sickening sound: a platform dropping, a rope pulling taut, a person dying. First Fleur, then Moony, then Joseph Wronski. The body cut down, tossed aside like a life-sized doll and the gallows reset. Awaiting its next victim…
It had been days since she last stood before the people in front of the gallows. The day of trial and a sentence that Hannah had been too emotional, too crazed, too lost to even hear or comprehend until she was being dragged back to the dank dark jail without a chance for a word, a look. Sirilla was dead. Her body being prayed over by members of their own group, their minds no longer their own. Killed by the same person of different gender. The verdict had been foreseen, all the answers she gave had been taken and twisted, her scar used as key evidence of her pact with the devil, a sign of power... a power and a responsibility that she would have gladly given up so many times but could not.
She was already dead. Yes she had put up a good front, she’d talked to the others, she tried to keep herself from looking too dour, but Hannah Potter couldn’t feel anything but numbness and did not know if it was better than the turmoil of waiting for the word of your fate. At night she’d fall asleep and find herself on her broom overlooking the lake at Hogwarts Castle, a small mercy from her own subconscious, trying to ease the immeasurable emotions that were pulling for control under the surface.
The crowd was murmuring. People cheering, gasping, yelling, screaming, cursing, praising god for deliverance. The sinners being cut down one by one were to them an animal race that had to be purged for the good of the rest. Committing a holy act for the god by whom each had supposedly been created, in his image as the book she'd been given to read and learn her lessons to repent in jail had said.
Someone pushed her, hard. Hannah fell forward, using her weight to catch herself. Her hands - securely tied behind her back - were not helping with her balance. It was a cue. A harsh unfeeling cue. The stairs were waiting. Looming in front of her in the morning sun, the gallows casting a long shadow that fell across her face, leaving her forehead untouched, almost as if the universe were laughing at her in this moment. But the joke was on it.
Each step was an eternity. Her back straight as she took to the platform, step by step, eyes focused on the place where she was to stand. The voice seemed to crescendo as she got to the top, one woman's shrill voice meeting her ears telling the witch to make her peace. But these people would not get the show of repentance they wanted. The impending nature of death and its place in her future were things she had made her peace some time ago. She had gone into the quest with the knowledge that she might not be coming back, and now, after everything else was taken away, all that was left was the cool exterior of a woman heartbroken by recent events, emotionally lost and tired. Very tired.
Eyes were on her, expectant eyes, waiting eyes as she took her place upon the scaffold. Hannah inhaled, squaring her shoulders, straightening her posture. There was no going back. The failing of the plans was a foreseen possibility and the fault of no one but those who had put them here. They would not get grovelling, they would not get begging. They would get last moments of a woman fighting against fate, of a Gryffindor, they would get the last moments of a Potter.
She was roughly placed, her eyes closing only for a moment as the rope was placed around her neck. Moony was dead, Padfoot was dead. Sirius, Fleur, and so many more. She looked to the side for a moment, trying to find Nora standing with the others, but the man behind her grabbed her hair and turned her head back so she was facing the crowd. Hannah's eyes narrowed but her demeanor didn't change.
“Have you any last words?” The man, Parris, seemed almost too nice in asking. A moment of civility in this witch hunt. While she doubted it greatly, she took the moment, her eyes scanning the crowd, looking for the Harrys, for Ronnie, for Burg, for anyone who might even think about shedding a tear over this. She would have given anything for it to just be her up here, for the others to have been set free. She would have gladly given her life. But it wasn't in the cards.
Hannah caught several eyes, tilting her head forward ever so slightly. And then it was done. Her response was simple, it was polite. "No, thank you." She had nothing she wanted to say. Nothing to place before this crowd. Those who needed them already knew precisely what she would say.
The noose was brought down closer to her neck, the pulsing of her blood was now more evident in her ears, she could feel it, hear it, as if every fiber of her being was saying that this wasn't right. Something she knew. She closed her eyes momentarily, feeling a few small tears starting to well up in their corners; but this was not the time for it. She would be sturdy so others could fall apart. There was a creaking and she pulled up that image of the lake at Hogwarts at sunset by broom, picturing the people would be too painful, but they slid into the frame anyway, her family, both the one here and the one she'd left when she'd been pulled. Her family and the lake. And the creaking and the lake, and the sun and the crash as her body dropped pulling the rope taut. A snapping sound. And nothing.