InsaneJournal

Who: Thaddeus Avery and Gwenog Jones
What: Torture!
Where: Abandoned building outside of the city
When: April 19th, Sunday night
rating: Mature. There's torture, so that means pain, blood, fear, trauma, language, a loss of power
Status: Started in docs, finished in comments Because Roz sucks at consistently tagging

Avery was a man great at laying low. He could easily slip back into the stream of thing, easily make himself invisible, or extremely visible. It came natural to him. So when Voldemort fell, the death eaters either got imprisoned or simply disappeared - Avery took their lead, slipping back into the role of normal everyday wizard. And for a man who did so much killing and torturing before Voldemort’s death - that probably should have been quite the feat to pull off.

But Avery hadn’t entirely gone the straight and narrow. And he was looking for any kind of reason to return to his ways. The Death Eaters were looking at things too boringly. They were so paranoid about getting caught again, it was like they were walking under water or something. Everything was progressing so bloody slow. Not to mention they kept getting distracted by shit that did not matter.

But the moment he saw Gwenog express her emotions about purists, he got an idea. Why not just doing some freelancing over here. Take the girl, torture her, leave her broken body to be found - dead or alive, he didn’t really care about that part. She was famous, she was a mudblood lover. It’d all work out in the end, and might even help the cause. Of course, he didn’t entirely care if it helped the cause either. Either way, he dressed in his robes, and wore a death eater’s mask.

Avery broke into Gwenog’s apartment, even while there were ward’s in place. His occupation as a metal charmer did help him expand his ability for magic, but Avery had always been good at getting into places he really oughtn’t be. He saw the woman asleep on her couch, journal on her stomach, mid journaling, probably. He could probably take her now. He could take her somewhere else before she even realized what had happened. But where would the fun be in the that. So he knocked over a lamp and watched it shatter on the floor.

---

Gwen was more reading the journals than anything else. She hadn’t felt like responding much, all the talk of the election, Peter’s warning about her post, it made her just want to sit back and observe. She had been alternating between reading a book and journaling Peter here or there when she dozed off on her couch. She hadn’t been asleep more than a few minutes when there was a loud crash, and Gwenog gasped, sitting up, instantly wide awake. She didn’t see the Death Eater in her home at first, but when she did she let out a scream.

Grabbing her wand, she immediately journaled Peter Help me before tossing it aside. She held her wand at the ready “Protego!” She shielded herself and took a step back, watching him intently. She wasn’t in pajamas, thank goodness, but in jeans and a t-shirt. It made it easy to move - she thought about grabbing a broom, it would be her best bet. She didn’t bother saying anything, and in her head she thought the incantation Accio Broom! It didn’t take long before a broom was breaking it’s way out of a closet door.

But he was still in the way, so she aimed a curse at him - a reductor curse, hoping to knock him off balance so she could grab her broom and go. There was a platform at the top of the stairs with a window meant for flying out of. It was closed, but she knew she could blast it open and make her escape if the broom could just get to her.

---

Gwenog was going to have to be more clever with her curses if she hoped to catch him off guard. Thaddeus Avery wasn’t the most skilled dueler to ever take up the dark arts, but you didn’t survive this long in this line of work without knowing how to handle yourself in a confrontation. He easily blocked the curse she threw at him, and instead of attacking her in return, he used that same curse on the broom fighting its way to her.

The curse landed, bursting the broom into a fine mist. The dust of the broom was still scattering when Avery turned back to Gwenog. “I could tell you there’s an easy way and a hard way this ends,” he said, conversationally. “And there is. It will be easy for me and hard for you. Even if you don’t fight, it’s going to hurt. There is nothing you can do from this point to escape certain death. You can scream if you want. I’ll wait.”

---

Watching her broom shatter into a million pieces was heart-wrenching. If it had been an accident, if something had happened and she wasn’t about to be attacked by a damn Death Eater, she would have shed a tear. But she was in full-panic, fight or flight mode. And her fight and flight were just totally ruined. He easily threw off her attack and Gwen had never been particularly good at Defense Against the Dark Arts. She had learned quite a bit but never needed to execute a real duel, and despite her age and practice in magic she was quite sure she was no match for whoever this was.

Didn’t mean she wouldn’t try, though.

“I’m not dying today.” She replied cooly, ignoring his comments. She threw another curse at him and went for the door, nonverbally spouting a stinging hex at him as she made a break for her front door. She’d run all the way to Fabians if she had to, or at least, she’d disapparate once she got outside. But her mind was racing and she wasn’t as focused as she needed to be. If she tried to disapparate right now, she’d splinch herself.

---

Avery was half tempted to wait and let her run. He was also half tempted to throw another reducto curse at her to blow up whatever she was about to use, but seeing as she was about to use the door… the curse felt a little too helpful to him. There was no sense in clearing the path for her, even while doing so might actually be a great mindfuck.

Ah fuck it. He threw a reducto curse anyway. The door burst into dust right in front of Gwenog. “After you, m’lady,” Avery said. and then he had to pause and literally let her go ahead of him because he was too busy amusing himself that he didn’t block the stinging hex. “That was rude,” he said, muttering the counter curse for it. Shrugging it off, he began after her.

---

Just as she headed for the door, it was blasted to bits. Flying wood went everywhere, stinging Gwen’s skin. Not nearly as bad as Avery’s skin would be stinging from the curse she’d thrown, but it was still enough to make her hesitate. Fortunately, Gwen was in fantastic shape and even with the hesitation, she knew she could be long gone before Avery ever caught up to her. She didn’t bother saying anything - instead, she sprinted past the broken door and headed down the stairs, once again throwing a shield over herself.

---

Avery gave chase. Give their occupations, Avery was likely never gonna be as in shape as Gwen. But he did keep throwing curses at her. Well - not at her. Toward her, mostly. He kept blowing holes in everything she past. Walls, doors, light fixtures, the railing of the stairs. As if to remind her that he was there, that the second she dropped her shield, he could be blowing a hole in her.

He was about to start throwing random curses at her, to see if any of it stuck when her shields finally fell. But he didn’t. He needed to be smarter than that. He didn’t need to outrun her, he needed to contain her. That was when he began to direct reducto at the ground beneath Gwen’s fine, blasting holes into the ground. If one could not run as slow as their prey, they simply had to make their prey run slower.

---

The railing of the stairs is what did it. Gwen was quite capable of dodging things - she was used to it, as a Beater for most of her life, but it was when the railing of the stairs and part of the staircase itself was blown off that she lost her footing and fell the rest of the way. She let out a yelp - she even attempted to scream for help. But the area was still pretty sparse - not a lot of people lived near her just yet, and even the shop below her wasn’t rented out. She tumbled to the ground and lay stunned for just half a second, before hopping back up.

And she was ready to make a full escape of it, too, when the ground in front of her was reduced to nothing and she fell into the small crater, twisting her ankle and effectively making it impossible for her to run. But Gwen didn’t admit defeat - she let out another yell and tried to get back up, attempted to run more but she was hardly moving - the two falls made it impossible to put weight on her ankle.

---

Finally. Avery easily and leisurely made his way to Gwen now that she wasn’t just moving slower than him, she was more slower than your average garden slug. Avery grabbed Gwen’s arm and pulled her back to her feet, helpful as ever. “That was fun, but I think we ought to stop wasting time and get down to business.” He lifted his wand. “Now if you’re finished with your unsatisfying escape attempt, we can go.”

---

She was done for. Gwen didn’t want to admit it, but there was some part of her that knew. The second he laid hands on her and pulled her up, she knew. The fight didn’t leave her, not just yet. “We’re not going anywhere.” She spat, trying to yank her arm away. Wand still clutched tightly in her hand, she pointed it towards him, directly underneath his chin, and held it there as steadily as she could. “Let go of me.”

---

Avery smiled, but it wasn’t visible with the mask on. “While you’re making unlikely requests, is there anything else you’d like to add? A ransom note? Three wishes? Perhaps a return to simpler times, when you were still a star quidditch player people actually cared about? Your hand’s shaking. Crucio.” He said the curse as calmly and conversationally as he’d commented on the state of her hand. Avery tended to like to play with his victims, to joke with them, to terrify them, but that didn’t make him any less threatening to them.

---

Just as she was about to hex him, she felt the pain. Immediately, even as he said the word. An Unforgivable. He’d used an Unforgivable on her. Gwen crumbled to the ground, her body spasming. She lost control of her wand, it slid away from her as she curled up on the ground, her body writhing in pain. “HELP!” She screamed, her cries echoing off the buildings around her.

---

Avery knelt beside Gwen to retrieve her wand. He pocketed it, intending to hide it within her apartment. It’d been far too many years since the wizarding world was rocked with the threat of the Knocker, a serial killer even the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had failed to identify, let alone catch.

“This is going to be quite uncomfortable for you, but you can consider it a preview of the level of discomfort you’ve yet to experience, love.” Avery lowered his hand to Gwen’s arm, and then he disapparated. He had an intended place for her, outside of the city. It was one of his favorites during the war. Distant enough that he won’t have to gag her, remote enough that he knew he wouldn’t get interrupted.

---

It was worlds more pain than anything she had felt before. Gwen couldn’t imagine anything hurting worse than this. It was almost as if she wished he would just kill her instead. When it finally let up, she felt like she was gasping for air. Breathing deeply, she feebly attempted to escape again, but he had her. The second she felt the crushing pressure of Apparation she knew she was done for.

When they reemerged, it was in a small room she’d never seen before. Old, dusty. She wasn’t home - there was nothing familiar about it, and Gwen felt the fight go right out of her. She was going to die here. She knew it. There was no way out of it. She tried to apparate herself, but she couldn’t, not with him still holding on to her.