[this chapter is bit different from all chapters in the poems series and you'll realise why when it starts. This is just a note to say that this book's style isn't suddenly changing, it just caters best to this chapter]

Chapter 40

Adria's P.O.V

Cold sweat dripped down my forehead mixed with the lukewarm, thick blood dripping from the wound slashed across my forehead. Bleeding.

Four days.

I had been trapped in some sort of prison, a dungeon - a cage...for four days with Blair trapped to the left of me and Isaac to the right. The sick, twisted smile mixed with malicious intent and more than a dash of evil left my stomach sick but I couldn't do anything about it.

A spell had curled its way around my voice. I couldn't scream out - I couldn't speak and opening my mouth seemed like lifting a weight three times the weight of myself. It was a curse that all three of us had been subjected to.

I had to watch the tears stream down Blair's face when Isaac's mouth finally opened and nothing came out. I didn't want to look but a death eater gripped my arm so tightly I would have yelped if I could, another spell forcing my eyes to stay open as much as I begged my body to protest - I couldn't.

Isaac writhed in front of me on the floor, twisting in positions I didn't know anyone could get themselves into but I knew with the cruciatus curse aimed at him that the positions weren't something he was doing on his own accord.

He couldn't relieve the pain, he couldn't scream in agony and as sick as it sounded - I wondered if that was a good thing. The thought of hearing the agonising screams of my best friend near death...near insanity, the thought sent a shiver down my spine.

As did the thought of Sirius. Sirius.

A tear slid down my cheek every time his smile popped into my mind. The sight of him and my Jude was the only thing that could ease my mind when the pain of the slash wounds fit for a mud blood - the words of death eaters, not my own - entered my mind.

I had memorised their routine and the pattern of the days from the smallest crack of sunlight that penetrated the stone bricks of the dungeon we had been locked in. Dingy, small and rat infested and disgusting. The putrid smell of dirt mixed with burned flesh from our own torture sent sickness to my stomach, and in some horrid turn of events...none of us could bear the weight to open our mouths to vomit.

I didn't know if that was better or worse.

Food wasn't something we had a luxury of in our half week of imprisonment. None of us had our wands and the death eaters knew that, so weakening us down for an unfair fight wasn't something entirely necessary - we needed our wands to do some real damage and that wasn't so hard to figure out.

None of us knew why we were still alive.

The thought entered my mind more times than I wished to think of it and every time I was left with a mountain of confusion as to why I was still breathing. Perfect families with happy faces and infant children weren't spared, they weren't given a choice to live or die and granted we weren't either...but our hearts still thumped in our chest.

Torture was something I could live with...if it guaranteed another day with the love of my life.

Sirius was no doubt panicking. The thought of storming out on an argument was the stupidest decision I could possibly make and one I would never forgive myself for. Sick with worry, I imagine, and nothing short of hysterical...I needed him to be okay.

The lack of protection of my friends seemed like my fault. It was my fault.

They left with me for my sake after my stupid decision to walk out on my husband. Our fight could have easily been solved, we could have gotten through it with talking - with communication and yet I left...I stormed out with pettiness in my head and fury taking over me for something he said out of anger.

Something I had already forgiven him for.

Yet I sat with tight chains bruising my wrists and an unbearable ache in my stomach and bones far away from him. He'd never want me to fight again, I knew that much...and Blair - Blair was pregnant!

She hadn't yet seen Remus since he arrived, they hadn't had even a smidge of a reunion like I had been given...and she wasn't alone. They hadn't given her such a curse as they had tortured Isaac with, and they hadn't slashed her stomachs with wounds as deep as my own...but I could see it in her eyes.

I could see the fear and pain she was suffering with, the worry of her unborn child and the stress that was evidently over her. I'd never tell a soul, I had been babied myself by my friends and yet I never admitted to being the exact same as them with my own body.

Sitting down slower, walking at half of the speed as I once did, taking Sirius' help more times just because. The worry of hurting the soul living inside of me was ultimately hurt anyway - but that worry...I could see it in Blair's eyes, behind the tears glazing them and the tremble of her heavy lips...a pain unimaginable.

I shifted my body to the side, the shackles tight around my arm pulling me down to the ground as I moved my body towards Blair cowering in the corner. She had to watch the boy she grew up with - the boy she saw as her family twist in fear...the boy unconscious on the ground and hadn't yet woke up for three days.

My tears dried out, but they merely returned when I wasn't as drained.

My eyes lifted to the metal door at the very end of the room. A sliver of sunlight beamed down into the small cracks just left of the door and beyond that, the small flicker of the tiniest light illuminated the smallest part of the room.

Someone was coming. The footsteps were unfamiliar, I had memorised the patterns of footsteps just for something to do, to know who it was - but these ones...softer and slow, I didn't know who they belonged to.

The death eaters never spoke when they arrived to torture us. They didn't want information, that or they had simply gotten all that they wanted, but I couldn't be sure.

And then suddenly, the wave of darkness that seeped through the room seemed to evaporate. A light spread through the space, with candles lit across the walls and Lumos cast with a quiet whisper.

I almost gasped, Sirius.

No - no. It wasn't my husband with fear in his eyes and a quiver to his lips, but a forgotten member of the same family.

My brother in law.

I could feel the tightness in my throat ease and gasped intakes of large breaths just to feel the air on my tongue and the weight of my lips ease. I could talk.

"Reg-"

He stopped me. Hurried towards me and fell to his knees right in front of me, a pink heating his cheeks with the new found warmth from the candles and eyes similar to those I had fallen in love with, but not exactly the same.

He was too thin. His bony hands fumbled with his wand and moments later my wrists were free of the shackles I had been subject to.

He crawled to Blair next, eyes dark and low and whispered apologies to the girl with a softness to his voice. They were in the same year, one below me and yet she sat there with pain in her eyes at the sight of what he had become.

I had asked her once if she knew him.

Quiet, she had told me but never was he hurtful.

"You shouldn't be here," I whispered through the room, my voice soft and hoarse and almost painful to use, "you're going to get hurt."

His eyes fell to me, and then fell to Isaac - a pain-stricken glint taking over his features at the sight of the unconscious boy, "he's hurt...even more than I could be."

He took a deep breath, eyes scanning over the three of them, "it's not fair."

"...What about-" I couldn't find the words to finish my sentence, "your beliefs."

It struck a chord, I noticed, when his eyes fell to the ground and his jaw clenched...as did his fists, "don't you mean my parents?"

I shifted, my shoulders straightening and my hand tightly clutching Isaac's, "my brother was always smarter than me - I should have followed him when I had the chance. I was too blind by the need to be wanted...to be loved by my own parents and not see how harmful my actions were."

He looked to Blair, and then to Isaac and lingered more so on the unconscious boy, "how harmful I was being to innocent...good people."

"Thank you."

"Consider it a wedding gift," his eyes wavered from the floor and lifted to me, "sister."

I didn't think I could smile until I felt my lips tug softly and watched him hurry with soft steps to Isaac, his wand in his hand and a whisper falling from his lips. I didn't know what to say, I never did know Regulus well.

One encounter with him was all I had ever had, back in my third year and as much as he was a changed boy - well, man - I never did know him as a person. He still looked like his brother, though his hair was much shorter and for a year's difference, there were still many boyish features he had yet to grow out of.

Sirius screamed older, and part of me was sure that was because of his force into adulthood that made him like that. Regulus had no doubt endured many things I could never wish to think of, but there was something smoother...younger about his features, a difference between him and my husband.

"You need to get out of here as quickly as you can," Regulus hurriedly said, "I can make up some excuse."

My eyes widened. Confusion ran through me, as did pain at his words.

He was going to lie for us, for our safety and something within me knew that wasn't right. I knew it wasn't right - he was granting himself a death wish and I wondered if he was doing so on purpose. That not living at all was an easier time than living.

That the pain of all he had believed in the past was a haunting weight he couldn't bear to live.

"What about you?" asked Blair, taking the words out of my mouth before I could utter them. She hadn't taken her eyes off Isaac before that second when she finally looked Regulus in the eye, watching the boy she knew more than I did with a confidence I had always been proud of.

She was shy like I had been - but she had grown into her own...she wanted him to see the look in her eyes, to see the pain she was in and had felt. Not because she wanted him to feel guilty, but because she wanted him to know that he wasn't the only one to feel pain.

"What about me?" asked Regulus. He could've been James' brother with the oblivious struck across his features and at the thought of my best friend, I could've easily burst into tears.

"We can't..." I took a deep breath, shifting on the cold stone beneath me, "Regulus...we can't leave you here."

"Wh-what?"

"You're just as trapped as we are," I whispered, he knew I was right. I knew I was right, "come with us?"

"I can't - they'll find me."

I shook my head, "do you think I'd let them hurt my brother in law?"

"Please," said Blair, "if it wasn't for you...we'd still be trapped down here."

"Why are you so willing to trust me?"

"You're my husband's brother," I said, "and you're mine now, too. We help family, Regulus. None of us - not even Isaac, who can tell you himself when he wakes - would ever leave family behind. We couldn't live with ourselves."

Blair winced when she moved forward, reaching for my hand and squeezing tightly, to which I squeezed back with comfort in my hold, "will you come with us?"

[A/N yo yo yo it's me ya girl. Anyway, so a while ago to celebrate reaching 2.5k (thank u) I did a contest thing, but I never really promo'd it or anything. I didn't get a lot of entries pfft and so I wanna keep the contest ongoing, the deadline is way past now but I wanna see if more people enter cause it's fun and cool and I like it so please enter. The contest is literally on my book "contests" so check that the hecc out

ps. let me know what you think of the chapter, like the pov thing. i have a new book idea and i wanted to try out first person again...also, i think it worked well for this chapter]