"I'm sorry," he managed between his breaths, something dark in his eyes. Anxiety stirred in her stomach at the terror lining on his face. What the hell happened while she was asleep?
Madame Pomfrey was nowhere to be seen, nor Harry, nor anyone else, but Adeline didn't have time to react properly to this weird, confusing situation as an explosion suddenly sounded, and the large wooden doors to the hospital wing blew open with small sparks and smoke.
Draco flinched at the sound, and she immediately sprung out of bed, kicking the sheets away; her bare feet stinging as they met the icy tile floor. Figures in dark cloaks and masks emerged from the smoke, and her blood ran cold as the familiar, ear-piercing shrill of Bellatrix Lestrange echoed through the room.
Backing away frantically from the door, her body numb with fear, all Addie could think was this is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening—and yet it was happening, right before her eyes, as Bellatrix came into view, twirling her newly amended wand in her fingers, a haunting smirk playing on her lips.
"Well done, Draco," she said.
Addie swung her hand at the hospital wing beds lining both sides of the wall, but they barely moved, and she cried out as a searing pain eclipsed her head as a result of trying to use magic in such an ill state. She could barely stand, though continued to back away as the death eaters approached.
"Poor...little...Riddle," Bellatrix pouted her lips tauntingly as she stepped closer and closer. Addie desperately looked to Draco, but he refused to meet her gaze. "...Too weak to defend herself!" she cackled loudly.
"FIGHT BACK!" Adeline yelled to the Malfoy, and though he looked at her, he didn't move. "FIGHT BACK, YOU—"
Addie was cut off as she was hit by a nonverbal spell that sent her flying into the wall behind her; the breath knocked out of her on impact. She collapsed on the floor in a barely conscious state, the back of her head throbbing, unable to move away as a blurry Bellatrix came closer.
"My favourite part is that..." she started in a seething whisper, kneeling to Addie's eye-level, "...you have no headmaster to save you now..." Bellatrix dissolved into laughter as sobs wracked Adeline's weak figure on the floor; the side of her face helplessly against the cold tiles.
"HELP!" she screamed as loud as she could, hoping someone, anyone would hear her; her voice coarse and breaking between cries echoing through the hospital wing. "HELP!"
Addie only screamed louder as the red Cruciatus Curse hit her—and for a moment, all she knew was pain, pain, pain, as she cried: pain for her godfather, for the fear coursing through her veins, for not knowing where Harry was when she needed him; if he was okay, or if he was as dead and gone as she was about to be if this continued.
And though the torture curse was cut off, the blaring pain just kept throbbing through her core, only just recognising Snape's voice as he said, "We have to go, that's enough," and sealed a bloody wound on the back of her head. "The Dark Lord needs her alive, Bellatrix."
Her blurry vision turned black, and suddenly she felt nothing anymore.
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He'd never run that fast before.
Harry was out of breath and sore and confused and shocked and grieving yet somehow numb all at once. He'd lost track of where the death eaters had gone in the castle, his shoulders brushing with students as they raced away in panic, feeling the weight of the Dark Mark hanging high in the clouds.
ch. 25 - the rose
Start from the beginning
