Stronger Chapter Eight

Stronger

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

Author’s Note: I lasted about twelve hours before I decided I couldn’t leave this unfinished. I apologize for the scare I caused yesterday, but I missed this and before I realized what I was doing had started writing another chapter. Strange, I know. And so I would greatly appreciate it if everyone simply forgot the sixth book existed and allowed me to pretend this wasn’t an improbable story. It was so heartbreaking to write this, though. Since, you know, it’s now a certainty it can’t happen.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time I’d reached the circle of faceless sirens bemoaning death and destruction, there was almost absolute silence. My fellow Death Eaters were standing around something I couldn’t see, their wands hanging limply at their sides and their excited whispers mingling with the January frost: the result was an eerie rustle that should have induced pride, not fear. A curtain of dread enclosed me as I wordlessly pushed my way to the front of the circle.

Hermione Granger was on her knees, her wrists magically bound together and behind her back. There was an expression on her face that I’d never seen before: it was the most bizarre combination of determination and fear, fortitude and panic. She was biting her lip so hard that I could see a minute drop of blood blossom and fall, the proof of her vulnerability landing unceremoniously in the snow beneath her: slowly, it stained the icy white perfection and became nothing but a crimson memory.

Her eyes were wide, cold, and hard. They expelled her reluctant desperation with a stunning lack of intensity; it was as if she didn’t want to be rescued.

Her eyebrows were drawn together in concentration and I wondered if she was contemplating death. If she was thinking about those final bittersweet seconds of light and color and sound. If she was remembering everything she regretted or everything she loved. I wanted to know what was going on behind those brittle beacons of endurance; I wanted to know what could drive someone to keep quiet when all she had to do was scream, cry, tear at the ground as the curse seeped into her: just a little bit longer and it would be over.

But she wouldn’t open her mouth. She stayed still, resolute, her breathing even and her cheeks flushed.

It amazed me that she could kneel in front of twenty-something Death Eaters and maintain that impenetrable façade of gritty indifference. I watched her from behind my mask, drinking in every inch of her: she was so frail, so small, compared to the hulking shapes that surrounded her.

“We’ve saved you for last, Mudblood,” someone hissed at her, twirling their wand and chuckling.

“I’d thank you for the special treatment but I’m not entirely sure you’d understand words that consist of more than two syllables,” she retorted, biting back a wince as the ropes tightened around her wrists.

“Wouldn’t be so quick to talk. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll wish I’d killed you,” the same hooded figure told her.

“Oh, so you’ve finally made up your mind to torture me, then? How lovely. We’ll have something in common afterwards. Since, you know, Voldemort really likes to express his affection with--”

“Shut up! How dare you speak his name?”

“Come now,” she replied easily. “You’re about to put me through unimaginable pain and you’re telling me I can’t say his name?”

“You don’t have rights. You’re scum. Filth. A pestilence to wizard-kind that must be exterminated.”

“Please,” she snorted sarcastically, “don’t stop there. I’m terribly immodest.”

“Crucio,” the man shouted.

I gave an involuntary gasp as her features contorted in agony and she pressed her lips together; her arms convulsed as she unconsciously tried to wrench them from behind her. She kicked out and flopped from side to side, her hair flying behind her and her nostrils flaring indelicately.

Yet she refused to scream.

“This is wrong,” I mumbled to myself.

“I know,” a familiar voice whispered into my ear.

Before I could register my shock, Snape had petrified the man who’d been bent on tormenting Granger; as soon as he’d sprinted to her side, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, thirty or so wizards brandishing wands and yelling hexes come out from behind the empty buildings.

I tore off my mask and watched, disinterested, as one by one my comrades fell. I’d seen Pansy rush off towards the castle, her robes billowing out behind her as she escaped. I didn’t move, didn’t try to save myself: I was stuck, staring, at Granger.

She was sweating slightly, her lips bruised and swollen and crusted with blood; she was being held up by Snape, a flask tilted towards her open mouth. She looked too weak to move, too broken to speak.

Her eyes, however, far from fluttering shut, were brimming with unshed tears: she was finally succumbing to the terror that had evidently gripped her from the very second she’d been captured.

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I stood in the shower, letting the hot water sprinkle over my body, and tried to forget I was crying.

I’d never seen someone die. I had never, not even once, witnessed an Unforgivable Curse be performed on an actual person. I’d never been presented with the chance to murder someone, never been offered the chance to end someone else’s life.

I glanced down at my left arm, my gaze settling on the patch of skin that I’d forfeited for a lifetime of dubious bloodshed.

As if I was possessed, I grabbed a bar of soap and scrubbed at the Mark, harder and harder, knowing it wouldn’t come off yet praying it would fade, just a little. I scratched at it with my fingernails, sprayed it with water, snatched at a washcloth and rubbed at it until my skin was raw and pink. I let out a sob as a steady stream of moisture flowed over it: it wasn’t going to disappear.

I collapsed onto the tile, clutching my arm and wishing, wishing, wishing I could sit there forever and pretend that everything was going to be alright, like a fairytale.

But fairytales aren’t real.

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