CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I COULD SMELL DENSE LAVENDER, when I retrieved a few of my senses, my eyes remained enclosed behind my lids. My body felt sore, faintly aching like a radiation being emitted to and fro inside my bones. I didn't suppose I had the strength in me, and a terror seized me when I tried to move a limb, only to find the effort being allotted more than I could bear at present.

My back was flush against a soft surface—a bed. My mind rushed to recap everything that had occurred to me in the darkness behind my eyelids. I didn't want to open my eyes clueless as to what to expect. That felt worse than anything I could name at present.

The Cruciatus curse. I had been put down with it by that witch. An official, perhaps, of the British ministry of magic. She had shown no remorse, so deep was she in her willful slavery to Voldemort. The wizarding authorities were to keep wizards safe, and Umbridge hadn't hesitated to put me out, brutality in her manner that reflected a certain personal tinge to it.

I tensed suddenly as a familiar feeling stirred inside me. My constellations—like electric eels under a clear water surface—sizzled inside. Their impulses were slow, the information they carried for me heavy in their hold as they struggled to spark the forefront of my knowledge, trying hard, being deflected and then trying hard again. Eels trying to swim against a strong water current. My forehead ached then, and an impulse finally sparked in my center.

A muggle mother, a squib brother.

This was the witch—Umbridge's—plunge into her profound hate towards rest and the willfulness to Voldemort. Like him, she also harbored hate for muggleborns and muggle kind. Or perhaps, there was more to it than just that. My constellations had only ever picked up a single defining factor that was at the front, no more and no less.

But I understood her slightly. I knew what family stains were, and how hard it was to live through them, dirtying yourself in the process just by association and proximity. Then you grew out of them, didn't you? You fought hard to find your own way and what you choose to do with that stain. Perhaps this Umbridge had long ceased to fight for her own.

I felt a shuffle in my periphery. A muted soft sound. Feet against carpet. I opened my eyes then, my vision being incarcerated by lush deep greens that were all around me, accentuated by the deep polished mahogany of the roof and furniture.

My eyes went to the threat first, and I saw a woman in the distance with platinum hair—very reminiscent of Draco Malfoy's—tied neatly up in a do. She was clad in a cinched black dress that flowed down her petite form elegantly. Her back was to me and her pale wrists searched for something in a glass cabinet on the elaborate cupboard amongst a cacophony of small glass vials.

The woman had been looking after me, I could deduce. Perhaps assigned by Severus, Umbridge or even Voldemort himself to bring me forth. I wasn't beneficial if I just died, taking my heuristics and the loyalty of The Elder Wand forever from the world.

I examined the room as my head lay on the pillow, not finding the energy to move. The bed was covered with a lush green duvet, and the cushions in the sofa nearby matched the exact shade of green. The curtains covering a window behind were thick and that same shade of green too. Everything that wasn't green was the wood of the furniture, and the little trinkets I couldn't make out in the other glass shelves of the cupboard.

"You are awake," The woman spoke then, her voice mist as she spotted my wandering eyes.

She approached me, holding in her hand the vial she had been searching for.

"I have been trying to decrease the effects of the Crucio from your body," The witch took a seat at the edge of the bed, her eyes pinned plainly on me. "I must admit it is arduous, and I have purposefully neglected putting my effort in the task The Dark Lord saw fit to assign me."

Her face was pale, a skin tone that was also awfully reminiscent of the Malfoy boy, and her eyes reflected him entirely. I knew in an instant who she was.

"I harbor no wish to even slightly aid the bitch who murdered my husband and my son."

I blinked at the ferocity of her words, but my own composure had steeled too. Crucio had affected my brain badly, making my constellations suffer as they tried to contact me. I remembered the agony of the curse well as it pushed on my memories, and the pain of having my spine twist close to breaking point was still bursting through my back. My limbs felt so sore, I feared they had died and turned into dark lumps of unmoving decaying flesh still connected to my body.

It was clear to me that while the task had been arduous—considering that she could only work with potions and spells, and not runes—the platinum witch hadn't bothered to put in any effort at all.

"Your son is alive," I offered plainly, half suspecting my lips to not move at all. But my voice sounded fine, though smaller in its strength.

The witch's brows furrowed, resistance clear on her face before it all melted away as she registered what I had said.

"Battered, I believe," I continued. "I tried to help him, and he can get around just fine when he heals a little more. But he's alive."

The platinum haired witch's lips parted as she tried to grasp at words that seemed to abandon her, her eyes darting to and from and falling to her lap, a vein pulsing in her forehead.

"I—I—No," She insisted, her voice breaking slightly. "You are lying to me, you conniving bitch."

Unfazed at her insult, I tried to lift myself up. The pain was there, bursting throughout my body. But I had somehow grown accustomed to it. It was bearable to me now, dulled in equally into all my senses. Umbridge had been partially right.

"I am not, actually. Your husband is dead, I did in fact murder him. But he's the only Malfoy I murdered."

I sat up on the bed, and the witch didn't make a move to stop me, still in shock at the revelation she had been given. To my intense surprise, the woman broke down, sobbing into her palms as her frame shook.

"Your husband deserved it," I spoke cautiously. "He murdered my best friend. I won't apologize for it."

I looked around, trying to figure out my next step. I couldn't escape. Submission didn't warrant escape for me. I only needed to see Voldemort. I wanted to get it all over with. The copper plated manacles made a sound as I brought my hands together.

A stark realization struck me then. Would Voldemort force me to duel him in these things? Would I not be able to get them off? If he did, I didn't know how I would survive. If The Elder Wand could recognize inner magic, like Sirius Black had said, would it recognize my heuristics even after suppression?

Suddenly, a hand shot out and grabbed my throat, yanking me forwards as I faced the platinum haired witch. Her eyes were wild, and red. The whites seemed to dissolve under the stark jagged running veins crowding her cornea as she glared at me.

"You will not mention my son to The Dark Lord," The witch cried, her voice trembling and desperate as her hold tightened on my neck—not enough to cut off my breathing but enough to discomfort me.

"He thinks Draco is dead—they all think that."

"Let them think that," Tears ran free from her eyes again, the wetness catching the bare light in the room that was composed of only the firelight from the hearth and the sporadic placements of delicate candles about the room.

"Please," The witch added. "Please."

Sympathy churned inside me. Here was a death eater—but she was wife and a mother first—begging me for the possibly the least I could do. Keep the secret that her son was alive.

Draco Malfoy had no business in my mind. I barely considered the boy—let alone reveal his presence to Voldemort. Besides, the boy was where he should be—away from the influence of death eaters—of his own mother who had succumbed willfully like so many others.

Carefully, I took her hand and pulled it away from my throat. She retrieved it, clutching her wrist as though it had acted of its own accord.

"Am I at the Malfoy manor?" I asked then, slightly bewildered at the idea.

For how long had I been meaning to come here? When had Harry told me about Voldemort's presence here first? It had all led down to this, to me readying myself to face him alone.

"Yes," The witch's voice was soft now. The woman had stopped trembling, a dazed resolve settling over her at the thought that her son was at least still alive.

The woman didn't seem much like her husband had been towards Draco, deeming him useless moments after he'd been crippled. Lucius Malfoy had been raving madman with a stone in place of his heart and he deserved to die unlike so many others he and his Dark Lord had butchered.

"You are to stay here," The witch looked at me, a sniffle punctuating her sentence. "Until The Dark Lord comes for you."

The wait hadn't been long. Narcissa Malfoy—the platinum haired witch finally gave me her name in a small voice, busied herself at her vanity. Both of us tried our hardest to ignore each other's presence. From time to time she might glance at me from her mirror—the briefest of glances that would ensure her that the Crucio hadn't entirely rendered me hapless, and she would not in fact be receiving a reprimand from Voldemort at the incompletion of her task.

My own distractions were my throbbing head, and limbs that seemed to weigh like lead. I tried to get off the bed, and a pain so sharp and blind shot up my spine, causing me to crumble at my feet on the carpeted floor of the room. Narcissa had merely observed me, slightly pleased by my own efforts to right myself instead of her having to lift a finger as she had been asked to. Ignoring her, I suspected a break in my spine—a slight crack that was causing me this immense torture. If the break was any bigger or in a different spot on my spine, my body would have never responded—becoming a husk taking orders from no one.

After a small while, as I got to my feet, giving time to the rushing of blood in my head to stop, Narcissa Malfoy went into an attached room and brought out a dress that she silently handed to me.

"Wear this," She cast me a plain look. "The Dark Lord must be arriving any minute now. It won't do to disrespect him."

I wanted to glower at her, but I had no strength to. The manacles on my wrist seemed to weigh heavier each second, and combined with my aching limbs, movement was a task in itself. Is this the state I'm going to duel Voldemort in? I cried internally, my eyes aching with tears as I snatched the dress and stripped in front of the witch, pulling her given dress on my bruised and aching body.

It was a dark black dress that hugged my curves in a way that startled me. The witch had put a charm on the dress, making her dress size change itself and fit my body. The dress was full sleeved, the bust made of thick brocade and the skirts sleekly flowed down outwards from my waist, trailing slightly on the ground. An elegant dress, but without life. It felt like mourning wear. And perhaps that was just so, for I hadn't yet mourned many things in my life in the traditional sense.

Voldemort had come then, his presence infiltrating the room like a gust of cold hard winter air. The wizard looked less of a carcass, his inhumanely pale face and hollowed out eyes—the jarring plain where a nose should've been. Voldemort was a corpse brought back to life, a hairless, fleshless monster who had been dragged from the pits of hell. Yet he looked less of a carcass then when I had encountered him in London in that gentlemen's club.

The wizard was getting life from somewhere, his connection to immortality strengthening and strengthening slowly like a diseased cell might double and spread throughout a person's body. Or perhaps it was his settlement into life itself that had changed me like that. Perhaps having dozens of death eaters at your bidding made life appear brighter, filling you with its ripeness.

"My heuristic sorceress," The slither-like tone escaped from between the dark wizard's thin and gray lips and he smiled a smile I couldn't figure in London and I couldn't figure now.

With Voldemort were a pair of death eaters, but the wizard dismissed them before I could scrutinize any of them further. Narcissa Malfoy was also dismissed with a vague gesture of the wizard's bony and sharp nailed fingers—the latter walking backwards and bowing simultaneously while the former paid her no heed at all, his eyes remaining fixed on me.

"My heuristic sorceress," The wizard spoke again, nearing me slightly, but maintaining the distance between us as though he was considering something—giving me careful space. But why would a wizard like him be careful with me?

"What is your name?"

It was amusing to me then, a brief second of something akin to pride flushing through me. With everything Voldemort has managed against the wizarding world thus far, he still hadn't been able to determine my identity. He didn't know my name, which school I went to, who my great uncle was—nothing of that sort had found its way to him. All this time he had only known that the heuristic witch was a girl, who had defeated Albus Dumbledore in a burlesque dress at an expensive gentlemen's club in London.

"Dominique," I spoke, something in me forcing me to answer. Perhaps it were the manacles, Mon Dieu, perhaps they held some sort of power to control me with compulsions.

"You are French," The evil wizard mused, his smile dimming only briefly before it widened again. The observation pleased him, I could tell.

"After four centuries," Voldemort shook head, a faint laugh on his lips. "A heuristic witch emerges from France of all countries."

"Do you know I went to France once?" He continued when I stayed silent, his tone was light yet daunting. A serpent-like edge to his voice.

"It was years ago," He stepped closer, his deep dark eyes pinning me with his gaze. "I was looking at Grindelwald's reign of terror, when he was at his most active. I was watching him, studying his moves, shaking my head at his mistakes."

A chill ran down my spine. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Voldemort knew more of me than he let on.

"I was only brought to Hogwarts by Albus when I saw a newspaper and realized Gellert Grindelwald had long been terrorizing the wizarding world. A Durmstrang wizard expelled for inciting rebellion and horror long before I was even born. So many years later, there he was, continuing what he had started. I was entranced. Mesmerized. Over the years after, I studied his tactics and found breaches where he had struck walls. It was all very exciting."

Voldemort neared me more, no longer giving me space. His scent filled my nostrils. Oddly, the dark wizard smelled of pine and smoke under the stern cologne he was wearing. He smelled utterly, and completely, human. He smelled like someone who could bleed if only I could cut him deep enough.

Then he startled, circling me, slowly. His steps were deliberate and steady, his eyes not leaving my form once as I fixed mine ahead, daring myself not to falter under his piercing gaze.

"That was when I visited France. I heard he had escaped a prison and had fled to that country. I was in my fifth year at Hogwarts at that point. Academia had to be put back for a brief moment."

"My purpose for telling you this—," Voldemort stopped right beside me, his pale hands pinned at his back. He was taller than me, my forehead onto reaching up to his jutting clavicle. "Is that I can practically hear the thoughts raging inside your pretty little head, my heuristic witch."

I jolted, my resolve cracking as I stiffened. This wasn't Legilimency. This was something else. This wasn't wand magic, it wasn't my magic. How was this possible?

"Your manacles," The dark wizard mused then, answering my thoughts obligingly. "They are quite the rage since I had some of my death eaters work on them. Apparently, all I have to do is drink a sip of your poor mother's blood in order to hear the forefront thoughts in your head. Yaxley insisted upon filling up an entire bottle so that I could replenish when I found the need to. It is quite tedious."

I swallowed. My mother's blood—half of my blood was in these manacles. This was the connection.

"It is, might I say," Voldemort walked up to my front, raising his bony, sharp nailed hands in front of me. "Quite a pleasure to meet the great niece of someone as mighty as Gellert Grindelwald. Though I would've definitely beaten you in ripping out his innards had you not caught me by surprise, Dominique Grindelwald. It baffles me really, that you must come out a kin of Grindelwald. There must be something in his reign I haven't managed to crack yet."

My hands shook as I held them together at the base of my stomach. My gaze dipped to his extended hand, and fear swallowed me whole. With my tattered mental strength, I held myself back from having any forefront thoughts that would endanger everything I still loved and cared for in the world.

"No?" The dark wizard asked, retrieving his hand. "No matter. I do not prefer handshakes myself."

"I see you have learned quite a bit since our chance stint in London," Voldemort spread out his dark robes behind him when he stopped a distance away from me. His back turned to me. "Your presence feels.. hot. Like cool metals that have only just realized they could cause more harm when molten."

"But still," He whirled to face me again, pale skin glistening in the flickering lights of the candles. "As I remember telling you before, you do still have much to learn."

"Come with me, Dominique Grindelwald," The dark wizard let out then, his tone considerably louder as he gestured to the exiting door of the room. "There is something that requires my attention and I wonder perhaps if it would be of interest to you too."

Reluctantly, I followed him as he took the lead. His steps were graceful in an utterly morbid way. He was like a corpse gliding on air when he walked. I didn't have to struggle to keep up with him, for he walked slowly, gradually. We walked past a dark room adorning a large rectangular wooden table that seemed to stretch on for eternity before it stopped—dozens of chairs at each alternate distance lining it. This was where they schemed, I supposed, though I quickly moved on from that thoughtful, fearful that the dark wizard would hear me speculate.

We walked for a while, past rooms and through a corridor. We passed by death eaters who seemed to stop what they were doing and drop to the ground as though they had been sliced through, bowing their heads and murmuring frantic praises for their Dark Lord as the latter paid them the barest of acknowledgements and swiftly passed them by.

He took a turn then, and we were plunged into the corridor that led to the Malfoy manor dungeons. Dungeon entrances were easy to spot. They reeked of damp moss and rusting iron, and they were hidden away from the polite sensibilities the owners tried to emanate with the rest of their house.

But what could he be taking me to see in a dungeon? My thought was instantly severed as the answer pierced through my brain, almost eliciting a gasp from me.

Angus and Aurelius Dumbledore.

My body couldn't recoil in the miniscule time I had before I was standing taut facing the a small, damp cell in which Aurelius Dumbledore's sweating body was firmly manacled to the wall—all his limbs pinned apart and his shirtless pale body glistened with sweat and blood oozing from his many torso wounds. The Dumbledore's head hung low, unmoving.

"Is he dead?" I managed to ask, a tremble in my voice.

This wizard who had jumped in to save me regardless of my many dismissals, was here now, close to being impaled like an animal on a hunter's wall.

"He isn't," The dark wizard let out after a brief pause, his eyes surveying me curiously.

A sudden shift sounded at my back, chains dragging across the stone floor. I turned around to find another cell right opposite to Aurelius'. This one harbored Angus.

The Halmasti Jinn was in his bodied form, his humongous presence reduced to the size of that tall unshapely and disturbing tree I had seen on the grounds of Hogwarts. Angus was hunched over, sitting on the stone ground with no space to move at all.

"Angus," I whispered softly, my voice breaking at the edges as I neared his cells and clasped my palms over the bars.

He wasn't unhurt. His fur on numerous areas of his body was dug open along with chunks of his flesh. None of his wounds had scabbed over, they were so deep that his blood still sparkled in the depths. His face—Mon Dieu. My knees wobbled at the sight. Angus's large cream white whirlpool eyes had been gouged out and dry blood cake his face and drench his dark wolfish snout. He was blind. Angus—who had shared his sight with me numerous times—had been rendered blind. He was alert of my presence, he knew I was there.

"Ah," Voldemort mused then. "This is the one you care about."

"Why—," My voice cracked, tears running down my cheeks. I didn't know what I was saying. How could I demand a reason for cruelty, from an evil wizard?

"He wouldn't tell us where you were," The dark wizard at my side offered then, his tone plain. "I do not have much tolerance for those who make me wait—let alone creatures of his kind."

I didn't say anything, only tried my best to muffle my sobs and shut my eyes. Was this how I had planned to overtake this evil wizard? By breaking down like glass in front of him. Regret churned in me and turned into hate at myself.

"Won't you ask why I have brought you here?" Voldemort asked then, amusement taking its place in his serpent like voice. "I need you to kill them both for me."

I whirled on him, my eyes wide in shock, mouth agape. Stupid, Dominique. You have shown him just how much you care, and now he will ruin you for it.

"Dominique?" A third voice spoke up, indescribably weak.

I looked at the former Credence Barebone then, his head groggily lifted up as he looked at me, several emotions rattling through his eyes. But the one that screamed the loudest to me was defeat.

"The former Credence Barebone," The dark wizard rapped a nail on a bar of Aurelius' chest. "What a deceiver, is he not? I want him to be the first to die."

I looked at Voldemort, and was startled. Despite his order to kill Aurelius and Angus, the dark wizard looked.. composed and amused. He looked as though he had merely asked me to flip to a certain page in a book. He looked as though he was asking something natural of me.

"This is how you learn, Dominique Grindelwald," The dark wizard's tone sharpened. "You have blood heuristics in your veins. As much as I would like to cut you open from limb to limb and have it all transferred to me, I cannot."

I blinked, brows furrowing despite my terror.

"Not even The Elder Wand you carry will aid me in the endeavor."

"Why?" I dared.

"For the simple defining fact that it is not possible," Voldemort settled his gaze on Aurelius Dumbledore's form briefly before pinning me again with his gaze.

"Blood heuristics cannot be transferred. Even if I forcefully pair you with one of my death eaters and have you produce children. Heuristics is not genetic—even if blood sometimes is, Dominique Grindelwald. Heuristics is a miracle that was once abundant but then died out only to resurface in a single flicker amongst billions and billions—in your form."

I shakily swallowed an empty lump in my throat. All of my fret had been for nothing then. The fight for The Elder Wand, because I had felt that it was only with it that my magic could possibly be stolen from me. No, I tried to reason with myself. It had not all been for nothing. The Elder Wand in my possession still kept it away from Voldemort's grasp when he could've used it to cause irreparable damage. But I was here now, was I not? Trembling with the dark wizard in my periphery.

"You know nothing about your magic," Voldemort seethed then, his raw fury breaking through. "Even if you learned a measly few tricks with it. You shouldn't have had it in the first place. I should have."

My heart pounded wildly in my chest, fear making my chest ache.

The dark wizard collected himself then, assuming the composed and slightly amused stature he was apparently so fond of.

"But things have not worked like that and we must not dwell on it," The wizard gestured to the cells on either side vaguely.

"This is how you learn the depths of your powers, my heuristic sorceress."

Voldemort took out his wand and muttered a spell. The manacles at my wrists opened instantly. Leaving my wrists, they hovered in the air beside me.

Like ink dissolving in water, my heuristic strength rushed to me, seeping into my deprived cores and enveloping me entirely.

"Kill them, and you shall realize just how far you can go."

Fresh tears sullied my face, the pain my body was feeling somehow centered all to my throbbing heart. I stood still, feeling the strength of my heuristics, but it too was not strong enough to revive me from my stupor.

"Kill them." The words were raw on Voldemort's tongue. I still didn't move.

"Finish them!" He shouted then, his voice clashing against my ear drums rendering the throbbing in my head to intensify wildly.

But the resistance inside me had long since snapped. If I didn't kill Angus and Aurelius, Voldemort would, and then he would lock me in a cell of my own—no longer bestowing the semblance of acknowledgement he had been showing to me at present. I should kill them if I didn't want them to be killed by him, just like I had killed my great uncle because he hadn't wanted to die by Voldemort's hand. The kindness I hadn't shown to Albus Dumbledore, merely because he hadn't asked me for it.

It seemed that this was to be a recurring theme in my life. Killing people because they didn't want to be killed by the dark wizard. Bestowing them this kindness.

I whirled on Aurelius Dumbledore, and the wizard's eyes widened as he met the expression on my face. He knew what I had decided—or perhaps he suspected it, thinking me vain and not bold enough to hold my own against an evil wizard when I was clearly the more powerful one in the room. But this was me holding my own. This was me showing Aurelius Dumbledore a kindness. Why wouldn't he look at it that way? Had he become so blind even with his eyeballs intact? Couldn't he see that I was doing it for him as much as for myself?

The rune drawn at my side was blaring hot this time. It glowed a deep blue as I jutted my hand out, half of my arm through the bars and inside Aurelius' cell. The former Credence Barebone's iron shackles shattered as he let out a terrified yell. I lifted him up in the air and slammed him back down, his frail Obscurial body crashing against the stone ground. I lifted him back up in the air, he was still alive—groaning painfully and blood completely drenched his face. With a flick of my finger, sharp lines appeared at his neck. In a mere second his head was sliced clean away from his body, as it dropped to the stone ground of the cell with a sickening thud.

I let go, and the remainder of the Obscurial wizard's body dropped to the floor.

"Burn him," Voldemort's voice tore through my senses, his gaze fixed on me—watching me carry out his bidding, unafflicted by any potion or Imperius curse. He watched me obey him willfully, and I couldn't stop.

I set Aurelius' body on fire, and the smell of burning flesh enslaved the air around us. I coughed.

"Good, my sorceress," The dark wizard praised me. "Now it is the Jinn's turn."

I turned to face Angus' cell. The Halmasti Jinn hadn't moved an inch, yet he was awake, alert at everything that was happening in front of him.

I faltered suddenly then, as the image of Angus drinking mushroom tea from a dainty tea cup with the wandmaker Gregorovitch filled my vision.

"I won't ever harm you, Angus," I had promised him that day as Viktor Krum and the wandmaker conversed inside the cottage.

"I do not know how the Fischers treated you."

"I know I enslaved you, just like them. And at that moment I didn't know what else to do. Now I do realize that I really need you to be on my side."

"I offer you protection. With my magic I will protect you. I just need you to stay loyal to me."

Is this where being on my side had gotten him? Is this how Angus' loyalty to me was to be rewarded? Is this how I will protect him? The vision cleared and a gust of warm air from Aurelius Dumbledore's burning body swept across my tear stained face.

Yes, yes, yes. I repeated inside my head. This is what loyalty to me had begun to cost. This is what it cost Bridgette Monet. But unlike her, this is how I will protect Angus, by offering him a death from hands that loved him and a heart that saw no fault in him. This is how I will reward this loyalty.

Please, see it that way Angus, I spoke to him inside my head, fearing that our connection was already broken.

"Yes, my lady," The Halmasti Jinn's undeniable deep and clear voice reverberated inside my head then, the force of it rattling my already Crucio tortured and throbbing mind.

"Please take care of yourself," The Jinn finalized then as I wept fresh tears.

My rune was already drawn, and with a swift sweeping gesture, I turned the blood coursing through Angus' material body into hard ice. The creature let out a brief grunt, before he went entirely still—a statue of ice, flesh and bones.

"Now, break him," Voldemort was there to guide me, and I obeyed, flicking my fingers as the Jinn's giant form burst from the inside out, like glass being exposed to a stratospheric temperature.

The dark wizard had created a transparent shield in front of us with his wand, and Angus' pieces—frozen chunks of blood, muscle and his immeasurably thick and large bones shattered into minuscule pieces went flying past us in the aftermath of the blast. The sound of it was deafening.

A piece of sharp bone nicked my wrist, making a clean cut that instantly bled.

I looked at where Angus had sat, once Voldemort removed the shield. The cell was crowded with battered pieces of his corpse. A stomach churning mess that reeked, mixed with the smoke of charred flesh. And all I could think was that I loved Angus, and I hadn't had the courage to tell him that.

I coughed and doubled over, falling to my knees, my hand on the stone ground as I coughed and coughed, my body desperate for oxygen and respite from what I had done. I cried and I screamed, a hand on my chest as I rasped. 

I was grabbed then, Voldemort's hands clasping around my body as I was lifted up. Soon the air became lighter and the reek slowly disappeared, and my vision darkened. 

***

A/N: 
I don't know what to say about this chapter. It was intense to write. Things are flipping, and I'm setting the stage for the sequel. See you in the last chapter </3