Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

2 May, 1998 - Mercy

From the moment Lavinia fired the first spell, time lost all meaning. Her world became a blur of friends and foes, her wand as whip-quick as it had ever been, her heart forgotten somewhere between her chest and her throat. All she could think was that she would not go down without a fight. She would not be able to stand before her beloved dead, before James and Lily and Sirius, unless she fought for every last breath she could take. She would not give up because if she did... if she did then live or die, there would be nothing but an eternity of shame waiting for her on the other side.

So she fought. She fought with a ferocity that surprised her. A ferocity she had never had before. A ferocity she had not always understood when she'd seen it in her friends. For the first time in her life, she fought with a lion's heart and not that cautious, hesitant thing that truly belonged in her chest. For the first time, she felt brave.

And she hated it.

It was like being someone else. Someone who didn't linger on the faces of the people she shot at, didn't think about the names she knew belonged to them or the families that would be left behind. She just... fought. Because her life and her poor little heart that she knew would bring those faces to bear in her dreams, didn't matter. The wounded in the ward behind her mattered. The children fighting at her side mattered.

And if she risked some immortal soul, or perhaps just her fragile mortal heart, she would care later. Because she couldn't right now.

The worst part, really, was that it worked. It made a difference. Under the rain of spells from the wands of every able body in the hall, the acromantulas retreated and though Lavinia heard shouts and names called and thought someone must have gotten caught in the receding tide, it was, she told herself, better than if the spiders had swarmed in instead of out. Because though she hated herself for even thinking it, it was better one life than many.

Of course, then a giant's foot landed not ten feet from the steps up to the castle and all thoughts of spiders or moral dilemmas vanished from Lavinia's head. She had seen people fight giants before and it hadn't gone well. Those had been fully trained wizards already familiar with battlegrounds too. With this army... Better to stay away, she thought, sending a locomotor spell that jerked a student out of the way of the giant's wandering feet. The child looked around, as though searching for who to thank, wasting precious moments he should have used to protect himself.

But Lavinia paid him no heed, wand already turned elsewhere, to the steps of the Grand Staircase, the halls off the sides of the Great Hall, the balconies and staircases above, anywhere at all where she saw faces that belong to Death Eaters. Anywhere she saw unfriendly spells fired from. And she did not give herself room to think. Room to feel. She just moved.

And when there was the occasional brief lull in the fighting, she ran for the bodies she could see scattered on the floor and pulled them back towards the ward, leaving them at the entrance where Heather and Madam Pomfrey could help them. Or rather, some of them. Because some of the faces were staring and blank. Some of the eyes were glassy and open when they should not have been. Some of those hearts had simply... stopped beating.

And still, Lavinia did not let herself pause because somehow there was always another Death Eater. Always another monster. Always something else to fight. So however much the safety of the hall behind her beckoned, Lavinia did not retreat. Even as those moments of pause she'd used to collect bodies dwindled and disappeared. Even as she and the other defenders were pushed back and the front doors became a line they could not hold. Even as she realized nearly every spell she was casting was defensive, a desperate shield against the seemingly endless onslaught. And with every spell she fired, her wand seemed to get a little heavier, like a weight was pressing down on her, a darkness that was a physical thing. It became harder, it seemed, to separate herself from the faces on the other side. Harder to force their names out of her head. Harder to ignore the families she knew waited for them at home, praying for their safe return.