---
“Why must you antagonize people so, Harry?” The disappointed sound in her voice belies the panic I know she feels. “I just honestly do not see why you have to push people. If you’re going to not tell her anything, then don’t tell her. Be silent. Don’t mock her in such a way as to make her revel in your torture. Foolish man.”
“I love you too, Padma.” The anger in her eyes lightens up just a bit. She opens her mouth, but I already know what she’s going to say. “You ask me this constantly, how I always know you two apart. And I can’t explain it to you in a way you’ll understand. But I can say, I’m glad it’s you and not Parvati.”
“You should be, considering she surely wouldn’t be as gentle in doctoring you up as I am being right now.”
“About Parvati…I’m sorry Padma. I know I don’t say it enough but…”
“Harry. If you hadn’t gotten her out, any way you needed to, then I don’t even want to think…” The tears in her eyes are too much for me. I don’t handle weepy women well, so all I can do is change the subject.
“So…what’s the damage?”
“Well…She worked you over.” She looks away from me, and I can’t help but notice the way her hair flutters over her shoulder. I’m hoping the glimmer in her eyes I see is just my imagination. I’m really hoping they aren’t tears of any kind. Because that means it’s bad. And I can’t handle bad right now, I have some vengeance to administer and a bitch who is in serious need of having her place in the world clarified for her.
There’s a fear in Padma’s eyes that pulls at me. She’s afraid for me, and I hate when people feel that way, because it makes me hesitate before doing the stupid things I tend to do. I can’t afford hesitation. I can’t afford Padma being here right now. “Forget I asked, Padma. Don’t worry about me. Just get out of here. I’ll think of something and get myself out of here, you need to rest. If whatever alarm system Narcissa has installed goes out, don’t leave your room. It’s easier if I don’t need to watch out for you.”
She sniffles and leaves the room, glancing back at me as I sit myself up and hold my destroyed right hand to my chest, my mind spinning.
---
A part of me is surprised that the alarms don’t start sounding for quite some time. I am however, not at all surprised that wherever I am seems to have been built like some fucked up corporate labyrinth where everything looks the same, there are no guiding signs, and the overhead lighting is dim and depressing.
How…expected.
When the alarms start, I’m considering how I’ll get myself out. When the first few people leave a room together and voice the opinion that I must be escape and on my way out, I realize my escape might be as simple and following these group of morons out the front door.
But things in my life are never that easy, as the shadows rapidly evaporate as it becomes clear to me that the dark atmosphere I have been kept in is not the norm for this little paramilitary hideout that Narcissa has cultured, and soon the dim lighting becomes bright and illuminating.
I’m barely able to take out two people from the group I have been tracking before the rest of the group spot me. Using the wand from the first I remove from the fight, I am able to magically banish the largest of the group into the brunette beside him, his body sandwiching her head between the stone leaves a sick crunch and the scratching sound as her skin drags along the stone wall.
I cast as many banishers as I can in all directions before breaking out running in the direction I assume they were going. Apparently my navigations skills leave something to be desired however, because I soon charge through a set of double doors that I am sure lead me out. Instead, I find myself in what could only be a conference room, and seated facing me, is Narcissa. She reaches over and grips her wand, leveling it at me calmly, seeming to be waiting for my next move. The moment it takes for me to deliberate between doing something and giving myself up seems to stretch on for a long time. I begin to lower the wand I hold, which gives her enough time to raise a delicate eyebrow at me before the words “Fuck it” reach her, shortly before the table I banish at her does. The world goes black for me, but I’m satisfied to hear Narcissa’s screaming right beforehand.
Hope the fucking table crushes the bitch.
---
The table didn’t crush her.
Fuck.
She’s in bad shape, but she makes sure that by the time she leaves, I’m doing much worse. I go unconscious a bit into whatever it is she and her aides for the day start doing to me, and wake up to once more see Padma.
“I can’t fix you, Harry. I can’t. No one here can. She worked you over something terrible.” She stops and chokes back a sob, and I’m completely sure that she’s crying and crying very hard, even though I can’t see it. “That bitch broke most of the bones in your wand hand and your wrist as well.”
“I’ll kick her ass…”
“You won’t be kicking anything, Harry. At least not now. You knee is damn near destroyed, your shin is in pieces, and you have some internal bleeding. I’m surprised you’re conscious at this point, honestly, considering this is just the damage I saw when I got in here. Unnatural, really.”
“Thanks, dear…” She scowls at me through her hair as she wipes obsessively at her eyes.
“Shut up and listen, Potter. You’ve made her very mad. She sent me in here to make sure you were doctored enough for her to have another go at you. I’ve convinced her to wait until tomorrow, if nothing more than for her own health and recovery, and I’m not sure I completely succeeded in that. So all I can do is hope that I can get to Susan quickly, and we can find a way to get you out of here fast.” She still hasn’t turned back toward me, though I can see her dark eyes glancing at me on occasion. “Cover be damned. If I have to blast you out of here, then I will.”
“Sorry…but I can’t let you do that, Padma.” Her head whips around, sending her long black hair flying. “You’re doing good work in here. You blow your cover, Susan loses her woman on the inside. And for the good of the people, you all need to know what the hell Narcissa is up to.” I pat her knee, with my left hand, to comfort her. “Hell, I had to go through quite a lot of effort to get you in here, I can’t think of anyone else I could get that looks like you to take your place. Well I do know this one girl…” I pat her knee again, but can’t resist the urge to squeeze her thigh just a bit, and a slight smile shows on her lips despite the tears, as she slaps my hand away. “Besides, I’m tougher than you all give me credit for. I put up with Ron’s heavy-handed sister pawing at me for years, little Narcissa and her caveman tools don’t scare me.” Sighing loudly, I close my eyes and place my left hand across my face and mutter “much.”
She hears, but doesn’t comment on it, and I’m thankful for that. She sighs herself some time later, before standing slowly. “You need to sleep, Harry. Those numbing charms I put on won’t last long.”
“So what’s the point in sleeping? I’ll just wake up from the pain.”
“True, but in the meantime, I have a lot of checking to do on you, and need to try and get as much healing done on you as I can before tomorrow, so at least she can’t make anything she’s already done absurdly worse. Not that it can honestly get much worse. I know you, and it’s better if you’re sleep for it.”
I know what she’s right, I don’t like it. But I can’t fight my way out of here this injured, and with no sleep. “It’ll work out, Padma. They won’t kill me. And they can’t break me.” A yawn overtakes what I was going to say, and I realize how tired I really am. Exhaustion. Mental more than anything else, I suspect.
“Take care of yourself, Padma.” Her sardonic laughter echoes back to me as I drift to sleep.
---
I wake to the sound of heels, clicking on the floor.
“Welcome back, Narcissa. Care to start in on my left hand today? I’ll even hold the comments until after you’re done with my pinky finger! Promise!”
“Potter…” The seething in her voice is evident. “I must apologize for my actions yesterday, they were unbefitting of a woman in my station, and I will not make that mistake again. Today, I won’t be breaking any more bones, that I can assure you. No. Far too crude and ineffectual, it would seem, and not my work in the least, I assure you. One of the helpers I had assisting me last night after you little escape attempt got a bit overzealous, and that, too, I must apologize for. Though, on a positive note, the ruination of your leg does make you a bit less likely to go for midnight strolls. However, emotional frenzy attacks upon my guests can not be permitted, so I saw it prudent to attain a new helper for today.
“Now Harry, I do ask that you keep your delightful anecdotes to yourself for today, as I do not wish to find myself enraptured by my own emotions either, as you will probably bleed out on this table should that happen. I was preparing my dinner last night when I held this blade in my hand. And the overwhelming desire to introduce you to each other filled me.”
I find myself wondering where the poised, prim and proper woman Narcissa Malfoy was, disappeared off to. I also find it quite quaint that she prepares her own dinner. Oh how things have changed in this society. She was a lady of society and class when Hogwarts fell. And it was that grace that carried her into a meeting of the council, and that charm that convinced those in power to hear her words. It was her reputation that led them to take what she said as a possibility, and her beauty that finalized her plans.
Somewhere since then, it has all crashed down. The woman is still beautiful. Unnaturally so, given the fact that she’s easily in her forties. But the grace isn’t there anymore. Her heels click in a constant rhythm, and her voice still caries well, but the air she gives off isn’t the same.
“Ah, a knife this time? Are we talking bloodletting, or amputation?”
“It depends on how forthcoming you are with anything I want to know.”
“I see…Well, goodbye left hand, I hardly knew ye.” She groans low in her throat, and grabs my left hand, placing the tip of the blade into the center of my palm. She holds it there, as if threatening me, but as I said, I don’t do scared. And I won’t tell her anything she wants to know, just because she threatens to put a hole in my hand if I don’t. “Well, bring it on. Nothing you can do to me can undo what your idiot of a son did to himself, but you’re welcome to try.” Her rage is palpable. Anger radiates off of her, and her entire demeanor shifts. I may have gone a bit too far, but if she’s blinded by her rage over her son, then maybe she’ll make a mistake. Not that any mistake she could make would somehow allow time for me to wander my broken body out of a building I’m sure is made more like a labyrinth than a series of linear hallways. But, one can always hope.
I don’t get to dwell on my sudden reaffirmed belief in hope as Narcissa is hurled away from me and into the far wall. I hear her body hit it, and I wince in spite of myself. The “enforcer” that Narcissa mentioned steps from the shadows, and it’s all I can do to not groan.
Her eyes are wide and wild, but a grin slithers onto her lips as she sees me looking at her.
“Harry, darling!” Damn, damn, damn. Someone wake Narcissa up! “Why’d you just run off like that? I told you we had things to talk about! So imagine my surprise to return here to find out you’ve been taken to Mistress Narcy’s special play area!” Mistress…Narcy? “And I just couldn’t let her scar you, and I surely couldn’t stand by as she ruined your hand! How ever would you hold me tightly without one of your hands in proper working order?”
“…Romilda.”
---
Romilda Vane is fucking insane.
I realize this as she practically drags me through corridors, left turns and right turns again and again, leaving me confused and dizzy. It’s confirmed completely when the alarm begins to sound and she cackles madly into the darkness.
The first Defenders to reach us are blown back through a wall, and then the next to come near are hit with a chair that she had summoned and dragged noisily behind us for some time. As they dodged the chair, she felt the need to impale one through the stomach with a detached leg from the chair she had just banished, and then snapped the other’s neck with crafty wand word.
Fucking. Insane.
---
Romilda Vane is my fucking hero.
The masterful way in which this girl seems to employ both dismemberment and disemboweling is one part amazing, and one part disgusting. She walks the halls, her wand flashing left and right, all the while seemingly intent on keeping up some inner monologue masquerading as a conversation with me.
I start to worry for her as Cho Chang rounds the bend. As has become the custom, the metal cart she has been pushing me around on comes to a halt, this time a bit more hastily than usual. Something in Romilda’s eyes worries me, as she all but shoves me to the side and literally saunters toward Cho, the hallway between them devoid of life.
Someone I don’t know comes rushing around the corner and out in front of Cho, charging toward Romilda as he fires spells toward her. His body bounces off of the wall due to an overpowered banisher from Cho, and his head rolls back around the corner he came from, severed from his body by Romilda’s charmwork. The fact that this girl has been using parchment-tripping and, of all things, Wool Shearing Charms, to remove people’s body parts makes me reconsider my estimation of her being insane. There’s a level of genius to it, and my admiration of that makes me fear for my own sanity.
“Vane.”
“Chang.” There’s a venom in Romilda’s voice that I have never heard before. The syrupy sweetness that all but oozed from her any time she spoke to me had evaporated instantly upon seeing the shorter girl down the hallway.
Rocking myself on the cart, I eventually get it to fall over, spilling me onto the ground with it laying on its side between me and the two women. Several wands Romilda had been looting from the dead bodies she left in her wake rolled along with me, which I gathered up into a little pile in front of me, keeping half of my attention focused back the way we just came, and the other half awaiting some movement between the two.
For someone who spoke so much throughout what had become an hour-long joyride turned killing spree, Romilda was shockingly silent. Her posture was straight, her wand to her side, and the blood she had reveled in being splashed with was running down her arm, spiraling down her wand, and dripping to the floor. It was a striking visual, seeing pristine Cho Chang, in what could only be her white sleeping clothes and a crisp gray Defenders’ robe tossed open and over it, standing down the hallway from the vision that was bloodstained Romilda.
Cho’s hand twitches, and immediately a volley of spells from both women begin. Romilda tosses out a hex that shatters bone without damaging skin, splintering bone fragments out through the limbs. Cho blasts a stone out of the wall and directs it to intercept the spell, before banishing the massive amounts of fragmented rock in all directions, hoping for a hit. A few zip past my head and a few more hit the cart, but none hit Romilda, who turns herself to the side, presenting her profile. She turns back and grins at me, a swath of blood from an earlier kill painted diagonally across her face. Even while looking at me, she slashes her wand in a vertical line beside her, the length of her body, firing a spell usually used horizontally to cleave down trees.
The spell used in this application clips through all of the rock shards heading toward her, and forces Cho to either move or deflect the incoming magical blade. She deflects, casting a momentary shield before pulling the magic back in, clearly expecting a long fight. Even as she draws the shield’s magic back in, she is casting again, seeming to reroute the magic directly into her next cast, a series of several varying pain curses. They are meant to distract as, even as they fly, Cho casts a spell I recognize from my fight with Fred, the same heat curse he fired at me. Romilda apparently recognizes it, and counters it with a shield of her own, set to redirect the spell instead of absorb it. Immediately, she disperses her shield, but instead of reabsorbing the magic back into her, she uses the momentary ambient magic to conjure.
The lack of ambient magic makes it near impossible to conjure anything, but with enough ambient magic, something very small can be conjured for a short time. Romilda uses that magic to cast a charm once used a long time before drying charms, to conjure, and magically suspend, a clothesline. The small amount of magic leaves the line very thin, and Romilda casts distraction spells, which for her seem to be bone-breaker curses and heavy bludgeoning curses, before she banishes the thin line toward her opponent. On Cho, the line is neck-level, and at its speed, would take the girls head clear off of her shoulders, assuming it had enough magic left in it to ensure it didn’t break. There’s something…worldly about Romilda’s magic, I admire as her clothesline’s attempt at decapitation is severed by Cho’s diagonal Cutter, which Romilda readily evades.
Cho starts to seethe as she drops to the floor, her first movement in the battle so far. Romilda has countered everything Cho has sent at her, and then some. Cho has had to gracelessly fall to the ground to avoid a set of four parallel horizontal Wool Shearing Charms aimed toward her, and even as she hits the ground, she finds herself banished into the far wall. She turns just in time to not have her head splattered against the stone, however, her back slams into it painfully. She’s slow to get up and appears to be waiting for another curse to come, but nothing happens. I look to Romilda, wondering why the girl has stopped casting as well, to find her wand at the ready, watching the hallway from the way we had just come.
Turning toward it as well, I bring a wand up in my left hand, watching who might be coming. Romilda glances to me and for the first time, I see a light in her eyes. A demented, creepy light, but this unyielding…joy in her eyes. She turns back to Cho and I keep my attention more focused on covering Romilda’s back than watching the fight.
I can hear the spells flying and feel the crackling of magic in the air behind me as I stare away from the battle between the two women, waiting for anyone who might try and sneak up on my psychotic savior. Sure enough, within a few moments, several people round the corner, and I send them flying backwards, taking out many of their comrades in the process. They begin to get up, but soon find themselves unable to as I send out Severing Curses any time they try and stand.
I hear Romilda’s voice shout out, the first time she has made noise in the fight, and I turn to look. She’s clutching her hip, and from where I sit, I can see blood coming over her fingers. It’s not a deep cut, and it’s not life-threatening, but it will slow her down. Cho has tried to press her advantage, but her spells are quickly rebuffed by Romilda banishing the headless body of the man who had closely followed Cho around the corner and into the hallway at the Asian woman, slowing her down a moment.
When I look back down the hallway, many of the people I had knocked over are pulling themselves up. They fire disarming spells toward me, a foolish idea considering the pile of wands in front of me, but I’d still rather not lose the wand I’m holding, seeing as it is working just fine. So, dropping the wand I am using, seeing as I’m not exactly fit for evasive action, I grab a hold of one of the random wands in front of me, just to have it yanked from my fingers.
The fact that they are simply going for disarming means Narcissa either wants me back, or isn’t in any situation to tell them their previous orders for capturing and not killing me no longer apply. Meaning that I can put them down, but they will be wary of hurting me too badly, at least until told otherwise. Sending Bone-Shattering Curses across the corridor, I can hear the crunch of destroyed bone, both as legs were broken, and as other limbs broke in their attempt to break the fall of their owners’ bodies.
I get enough time to glance back at the war between the two women behind me, and I’m just in time to see Romilda using a variety of Cutting Curses to push Cho back down the hallway away from her, forcing the girl to give up ground to avoid having her feet removed.
I hear the pattering of feet coming from back down the hallway away from the girls, and I realize a second wave is coming. They swing around the turn to as many Cutting Curses as I could fire in the time, and one of the less observant loses a few fingers. They quickly throw up defensive shields, and I try and keep my barrage up for as long as I can. As I cast, they seem to be talking to the first group, almost all of which are unable to stand or cast due to ruined limbs. However, they eventually hammer out a plan, and the downed members of group one who are still able to cast, take over shielding, while the members of group two get into an attack formation.
Racking my brain for an idea, I immediately remember Pansy’s spell. The dominant shield is a large, bright one, which means if it were to be destroyed, the magic would stay in the air and act as a smokescreen of sorts until it had settled and then been drained away from the air. I decide to layer The Harry Potter with an Excavation Charm. If Pansy's spell doesn’t work on the shield, if nothing else, as I understand the Excavation Charm, it will ricochet and hit the stone surrounding us and cause enough of an explosion to distract them.
Casting the spell, I summon some of the severed fingers that had rolled outside of the shielding area and use them to take a few of the lighter Pummeling Charms they were sending my way, disfiguring the digits and allowing me to avoid shielding as much as possible, though the occasional shield still had to be cast.
When I can, I aim and fire all the Blasting Curses I can into the shield, the sound of my magic banging into the shield audible. The man who is holding the lead shield signals that he is going to drop it, and for everyone else to cover his slack until he can get another one up, which means all firing on me will stop, at least for a moment. I use this time to send any spell I can at the shield while it stands, hoping that a few might get through when he drops it.
He drops the shield, and it’s the moment of truth, whether he will reabsorb it or simply let it dissipate. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I need to quickly inhale to get the air needed to magically yank some of the stone from the floor beneath me to prevent the destroyed remains of the many human bodies that had just been hit by the ensuing explosion from showering over me.
Holy shit.
When the smoke clears, all I see is a corridor splattered with blood, innards, and a lot of scorched rock. I quickly turn to see Cho’s advanced shield blocking the other girl’s curses, Romilda having had her back to the men behind her, had no idea what had just occurred. Cho isn’t nearly as lucky, as her jaw hangs open in shock, not realizing the damage her shield is taking until she winces as the blunt force of one of Romilda’s hexes gets through, possibly fracturing Cho’s forearms.
Eyes snapping back into focus, Cho casts several spells, trying to get Romilda on the defensive long enough for the former to have enough breathing room to recast her shield. Romilda falls back, blocking the minor, and badly-aimed curses, which confuses the hell out of me because she could just as easily dodge them and continue her assault.
And then it happens. Cho drops her shield, and as the wisps of magic dangle in the air, she goes to reabsorb the magic back into her. Quicker than even I can see, Romilda strikes, her wand flying in a mad rush of motion, sending two jets of magic toward the smaller girl. Romilda’s first spell hits the suspended magic that had once been Cho’s shield, and immediately hardens into multiple long, thin silver knitting needles. And right on the conjuration spell’s tail, the Banishing Charm drives them into, and subsequently through, Cho’s chest.
Romilda’s maniacal laughter echoes out through the hallway as I try and pull myself up to a standing position, trying to be careful not to slip on the blood that is pooling around me. As Romilda’s laughter stops, however, I can hear a clicking sound in the distance. Clicking I recognize. Narcissa is on her way, and given how few people came from the way we were headed, I have to assume that we are almost out.
Romilda rushes over to me, lifting the cart before helping me up and onto it. She looks at me for a long moment, and I can’t help but realize exactly how insane she is. The light I had seen was still there, but there is a glint to it, this hungry desire that almost reminds me of the look Narcissa had affixed me with when I thought she was going to kiss me. But Romilda doesn’t kiss me, no, she does something much more disturbing. Before I know it, she is running her tongue up the side of my face, licking the blood that had still managed to land on me before my shielding could stop it. I can’t suppress the shudder that racks my body at having this clearly unbalanced woman so close to me, and for a moment, she laughs. Not the deranged cackle I have heard from her, but an almost feminine chuckle.
I lay back on the cart, exhausted, in pain, and wanting to be free of insane women and insane dungeon-like buildings. The doors burst open and light streams in, blinding me. I shut my eyes and let out a sigh, and just as the cart begins moving again, I feel a weight on my chest.
I can’t help but acknowledge just how cold Romilda’s skin feels as we roll out of the building on the cart.
---
The cart wobbles and shakes before hitting something and toppling over, spilling me onto the ground and uprooting the woman who had been laying atop me.
I find myself staring up at the sky. The pain is echoing itself in pulses up my arm, and my leg is completely numb, which I am amazingly thankful for.
The sun rains down on me and burns my eyes even when I close my eyelids to protect them, and I can’t help but feel like the heat is going to irreparably damage my body. Why the hell is it so damned hot all of a sudden?
Pushing myself up to a seated position with my one good arm, I try and feel around for Romilda, not wanting to open my eyes and bear the pain of the sun. I feel her hand, and use it to move my hands up to her shoulder and push on it, hoping to stir her awake. I push a few more times before the lack of movement begins to worry me. Covering my eyes with my left hand, I am suddenly aware of the sound of feet moving. I reach out toward where I had felt Romilda laying again, when I retract my hand quickly at the feel of spell-fire, my hand having been just missed. Panic lances through me, as I realize that my savior may have been killed. When I hear what could only be Susan’s voice as she wraps her arms around me and squeezes me tightly, too tightly, my mind begins to race. What would the Aurors have thought, having me roll out of the doors with a Defender covering my body? Would they have cursed Romilda first, and not bothered to have asked questions? Pulling away from Susan, I crack my eyes open, forcing sunlight in.
The brightness of the sun blinds me, and all I see is white for what feels like forever. When color begins to seep in, everything has a washed-out tone to it, and when I look over, all I see is long dark hair covered a face. I may have thought she was psychotic, but Romilda didn’t deserve to die like that. My eyes began to allow more color in, and I look again. Still, I see long hair masking a face, a face with empty dead eyes. Dark, dead eyes. It had not been Romilda who had been laying on top of me after all, it had been…Cho! Looking her over, I see, clutched in her right hand, a wand. Weird, because, while Romilda is right-handed, Cho was left-handed, so why would she be holding a wand…
That’s my wand…
Romilda Vane had not only found a way to get me out of wherever this was that I was being kept, but also returned my wand to me. I look it over as Susan kneels next to me. I can feel her eyes running over me, assessing my condition, and how much of the mass of blood covering me was mine, and how much came from any number of other sources. The sound of clicking reaches me and I immediately level my wand as Narcissa regally walks through the doors I can only suspect I just rolled out of.
I fire a throat-level Cutting Curse, and it’s only Lavender Brown, Narcissa’s current Elite Guard detail, that prevents the woman from being beheaded. The deflection saves the woman’s life, but as it is, I shear off a large amount of the woman’s blond hair at throat level on one side of her face. Her eyes flash, but instead of addressing me, or allowing Lavender to attack me, she instead turns to Susan, who has brushed herself off from being on the ground with me and had gathered up as much of an intimidating air as she could with tear streaks going down her face.
“Bones! What is the meaning of this!”
“You tell me, Malfoy. Why the fuck do I have a battered and bruised Harry Potter exiting your building while apparently escaping captivity from one of your Defenders?” I don’t have the energy to correct her and inform her that it was Narcissa who had instead been holding me. Lavender is eyeing me, looking like she’s just searching for an excuse to curse me, and given the way the Elite Guard work, anything I say against Narcissa in a public area in her hearing, Lavender can take as an attack on Narcissa’s person, and treat as such. And I sure don’t want to do anything that could lead to them legally attacking me and Susan having no way to defend me, legally. So I keep my mouth shut, and watch politics in action.
“I have no idea what you…”
“Don’t, Malfoy. I’m not an idiot. We will be taking Potter now, and believe you me, we will be having a long conversation in my office first thing tomorrow morning. I would suggest you work out what the hell happened here, and be prepared to make a full report.”
“I don’t answer to you, Bones!”
“You’re right, usually. But you see, Harry is my jurisdiction.”
“Potter is not on your Auror enlistment record!”
“Call him…freelance, contracted, I don’t care what you call him. Potter is one of mine. So, it would appear, one of yours, hurt one of mine. So, that means, you bloody well answer to me.” Narcissa swallowed audibly, before making a grunting sound of dismissal, turning on her heels, and clicking her way back into the building. The door slammed behind her, and then Susan’s face was back in view beside me, panic in her eyes as she looked me over. But I couldn’t fight the smile, regardless of the pain.
I can’t recall being happier at any point, to see Susan’s face, eye-patch and all. And it was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep. However, the last thought in my mind was wondering if, and how, Romilda got out. The world is a much scarier place with her out there in it, but at the same time, I can’t help but be glad for it.
---