InsaneJournal

Well, wasn’t this a cock-up.

Amidst the new-found chaos brought on by the unexpected presence of the bloody Order, the reams of light streaking across the dark field and lighting it up like Guy Fawkes in London as Death Eater and Order member alike traded barb and curse, Alecto started laughing.

She liked surprises.

A Cruciatus curse was tipped from her wand, thrown at the nearest body almost as an afterthought, the resultant screams a soundtrack to her new hunt. If the Order were here, then that meant Dorcas bloody Meadowes was too. Alecto had made her a promise, after all. It was time to keep it.

She ripped off her mask and hood, tossing them carelessly into the field. Never saw a point in them and thought her fellow Death Eaters hid behind them too often, the whole cowardly lot. Too concerned with their fancy tea sets and crumpets and silk panties to be anything other than dull and ineffectual. Give Alecto Carrow blood, give her meat, give her the filth and stench and destruction of nature. Give her death -- it was the most natural part of life, after all.

“Meadowes, Meadowes, Meadowes,” she shouted, nearly sang, voice pitching high and then dipping low. “Lil’ pretty McKinnon paid me a ghostly visit -- she really misses you! Says you ought to join ‘er!”


Dorcas didn’t particularly care how or why Lady Noir had managed--purposefully or otherwise--to get the Order and the Death Eaters to show up at the same place at the same time. What mattered was coming out on top. It felt like old times, before that December came. Dorcas wanted a fight, and the adrenaline was singing through her blood.

And there in answer was a voice, a voice that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Carrow was here, and there was no way Dorcas was going to pass up a chance of ending her.

She dodged toward the voice, wand out, left hand slipping into her pocket. “Carrow! Nice of you to show up to your own funeral!”


Ah, there was the bird singing. Alecto’s smile grew wider; she turned to face Dorcas Meadowes, standing tall and furious, like some pale, fiery haired fury. For all the blood and hatred and enmity that lay thick between them, they had not ever had a direct encounter before. It was well due.

She raised her wand and bared her rotting teeth at Dorcas. “Well, anything’s got to be better than that last one, innit?”


“Considering you didn’t have the good grace to arrive dead to the last one, yes,” Dorcas spat out through her own bared teeth. This had been too many years coming, but Marlene would be avenged.

She shot a quick Incendio at Alecto and threw up a shield charm for herself.


The edges of Alecto’s robe caught fire, and she instinctively reared back, only to have the flames follow her. She cried out, angry, gutteral animal fear, and hastily stamped them out in wild, frantic motions. The fear jolted her heart, blood pumping harder and faster, adrenaline sharpening her senses -- fight or flight. And Alecto would never, ever flee. With a snarl, she hurled out a leg-locking curse at Dorcas’s legs.


Alecto’s cry of fear sent a thrill through Dorcas. The feeling wasn’t exactly glee, but it was some perverse second cousin of it. Her shield held against the curse, but that didn’t stop her from dodging anyway. It was near, though, and somehow that heightened everything. She sneered at Alecto and sent a scorching spell her way as she slipped an item from her pocket up into her left sleeve.


The spell was almost brutally blocked with a quick slash of her wand through the air to throw up her shield. The heat of it still emanated through the shield and kissed her skin, pushing her hair back in its forceful wave. There was fury and rage behind it -- Alecto could feel it well enough. It made her happy. Here, here was one who would struggle and fight. Good.

“That all? I think that girl put up more fight and she didn’t even have her wand. Even with her hands pinned to the dinner table by the family steak knives.” She’d happily give Dorcas a taste of that, what it might feel like for a blade to pierce flesh; from her wand, she sent a curse balled up in a brilliant blue light, hot enough to melt flesh, to burn holes right through anything in its path.


Dorcas threw herself out of the way, but the flame did catch the side of one of her boots, melting through the dragonhide. It hadn’t been quite close enough take a chunk from her leg, but the feel of it the heat alone was going to leave a sizable blister. Scrambling up, Dorcas sent an arrow shooting spell at Alecto as she shifted the item up her left sleeve down into her palm. She flicked the switch-blade--elegant, but still in a way a thug’s weapon--open and advanced towards her target. “How much fight do you want? You’ll not pin me like a butterfly, Carrow.” She shot a blasting curse at the Death Eater, eyes gleaming in the firelight.


The arrow of light, small and deadly swift, glanced across Alecto’s temple as she tried to avoid it, drawing blood. Better than right between the eyes, though. Still reeling from the near miss, she only just managed to throw up a protective shield, and even still the force of the blast had her stumbling back several steps.

The blood dripped down her face, curving around her cheek. She stuck out her tongue and licked at the corner of her mouth, tasting iron. First blood. Her gaze immediately fell to the blade in Dorcas’s hand and her eyes lit up. Wands were well and good, but nothing -- nothing -- came close to the physical feeling of holding a blade in one’s hands, of directly ending a life and feeling it. “Does the little bird have claws after all? Alright, bird, I’ve a taste for gingers now.” She reached down and drew her own favourite knife from her boot, sharp and thirsty. One in each hand now, wand and blade, arms drawn wide as if to welcome Dorcas’s next move. “Did you know I left her for last? Made her watch as I took every single life of her family members slowly. Painfully. Made her regret what she took from me.”


The reports from the scene would likely have indicated that, but Dorcas hadn’t really stuck around that long. She’d seen the bodies, seen Marlene, and then bolted out of the house to vomit and try to hold in the screams that had so desperately wanted out. After that, she’d gone hunting, and had only just now managed to find her quarry. She lunged at Alecto with the switch-blade as she threw a jelly-legs jinx at the same time.


The spell hit true, and Alecto laughed as she sank to the ground, bringing her knife up towards Dorcas’s side now that she was at a sudden, lower angle, slashing out as quick as a snake with her venom-laced blade.


The blade caught Dorcas on her side, just below the edge of her dragonhide waistcoat. That was a weakness of the garment that she should have anticipated, but it couldn’t be helped now. She hissed but told herself it could be worse. Dorcas, in turn, slashed at Alecto’s extended arm.


Alecto accepted the bite across her arm with a hiss, a long red gash that immediately beaded blood. She brought her wand up to Dorcas’s torso and snarled a Crucio.


Dorcas crumpled. That was a definite downside to close-quarters combat with wands involved. She fought hard to keep what grip she could on her weapons, but was mostly just glad she managed to not fall on her own blade.


With Dorcas now dragged down to her level, Alecto attacked, shouting an expelliarmus at Dorcas to disarm her, then tossing aside her wand to grab a fistful of her hair and yank her head back to expose her throat, attempting to dig the point of her blade into the corner of her jaw.


Growling as Alecto yanked her head back, Dorcas grabbed Alecto’s wrist to try to pull the knife away. She felt the tip of the blade break her skin, then fought harder try to wrench the knife from Alecto’s grasp.


Alecto struggled against Dorcas’s strength, hand trembling with the effort. The sight of the tip of the blade pressing into Dorcas’s pale skin made her growl in delight and renew her struggles. “I’ll do everything to you that I did to her. Maybe it’ll make you feel closer to her. Wouldn’t you like that?”


Keeping a tight grip on Alecto’s wrist, Dorcas twisted around. She felt the knife slide upwards toward her ear, but she’d worry about it later. She twisted a little more and aimed a decidedly awkward kick at Alecto’s head.


The force with which she had been angling downward in order to drive the blade through Dorcas’s skull had her glancing Dorcas’s scalp and embedding itself into the earth by her head, shearing off a lock of flame coloured hair. The kick, though weak, was enough to dislodge Alecto, sending her sprawling but for her tight grip on the knife. Quickly righting herself, her other hand found her discarded wand. She hastily uttered the counter-spell to Dorcas’s jelly legs jinx and yanked the knife from the earth, whirling back to face Dorcas with a guttural noise of frustration and another Crucio! spilling from her lips, not particularly taking great care as to who she hit with the curse.


The fresh cut to her scalp stung, but Dorcas was more concerned with getting her wand and knife back. She found them and turned back to Alecto; Alecto’s spell glanced off the edge of the shield spell she managed to throw up just in time. She struck out with the switch-blade and cast a Conjunctivitis Curse.


As the curse deflected off her shield, Alecto only had time to throw her arm up against Dorcas’s blade, blazing a long line of crimson down the forearm of her dominant hand. The sharp bite of it washed over her, she accepted it with a grunt as she did the cold or hunger, the very motivations of life itself, kill or be killed. She turned the handle of her own knife and hurled it at Dorcas with unerring accuracy, as if she could pin a fly to the wall, angling to embed itself in the shoulder of her wand hand.


Alecto’s blade flew true and it embedded itself in Dorcas’ right shoulder. Dorcas nearly dropped her wand, but managed to clench her hand around it. She aimed the switch-blade at Alecto and threw it, then yanked the blade from her shoulder. She was starting to feel the effects of the venom now. She made the blade a makeshift sheath--she was not letting Alecto have it back if she could help it--by thrusting it through the pocket of her jeans before switching her wand to her left hand. There’d be a lot of left-handed spell practice in Dorcas’ future.


When the blade struck true, Alecto nearly crowed in delight, so much so that when she missed the answering blade splitting her wand straight down the centre and lodging itself into the paw of her raised wand hand. In the pained shock of it, she cried out, dropping the bisected halves of her wand.


That had worked out in a far better way than Dorcas had bothered to hope for, and she didn’t bother fighting the short laugh that escaped her throat. Dorcas slipped her wand into her left hand and pointed it at Alecto. “Too bad I’ve got no table to pin that to,” she said, nodding at the knife sticking into Alecto’s hand. “I think I can do something nearly as good, though.” She flicked her wand, sending a charm at the switch-blade to make it spin slowly, burrowing its way deeper into Alecto’s hand. She followed up with a Locomotor Mortis then took a step back. Grinning, she aimed an Incendio at Alecto’s legs.


“This isn’t over, you filthy, perverted bitch--” Alecto’s snarls of rage at Dorcas quickly devolved into screams as she found herself unable to move in the midst of the flames springing up around her, licking at her legs and robes. She only just managed to shed her outer cloak and with it, the fire, when the world suddenly turned pitch black, with not even the light of the moon to illuminate the field.


True, it wasn’t over--Alecto was still alive, after all--but it still felt pretty damn satisfying to Dorcas. She was about to set Alecto on fire again when the darkness came. That was her cue to leave. Just as well, probably, with the venom in her wounds. She’d definitely need a Healer, again, but at least this time she felt a bit victorious. And she had a souvenir, as well, she thought, as she Apparated away from the field of battle.