Elysia

Chapter Thirteen ~ The Aches

The pains started quicker than even I thought they would. There was this deep, aching pain where I could feel the heavy tumours pressing against my bones, the other was the burning where the tickled my nerves. My body had lost a lot of weight due to the diet and the cancers, making the bulges clearer.

I kept the robes and the blanket covering my swollen body when Gerard entered the cell, and a week and a half had passed leanly since I had first entered. I let the cancers fester as my greatest project, my greatest achievement in my lifetime. I would cure the world.

"What happened to your little ghost?" Gerard probed, sitting precisely where my faux-Neville had.

"He was judging me too much." I laughed, feeling the strain of my lungs under it.

A toilet had been installed in the cell, aiding me in my secret as I passed only blood nowadays. Gerard looked at me with that curious gaze on his face, cheek twitching every now and then as I had discovered he had a tendency to do.

"Why are you here, Gerard?" I asked.

"Voldemort wants to train the new blood with you." he said simply.

"No, you know what I mean." I continued.

He pulled his sleeve up to look at the ugly tattoo, one that I had borne too. Sighing a deep breath he looked up at me with desperate eyes.

"I was under the Imperius curse, at first. He made me kill so many. But when he freed me he gave me a choice, Go back to normal life a lonely killer, or join all the other kids who had been hurt like me." he laughed a dry, merciless laugh at this,

"Somehow, I thought I'd get some sort of support here. I don't think it occurred to me that You-Know-Who doesn't give a shit about feelings. But I'm branded now. If we lose the war I'll be killed when they put me into prison, and the Ministry will turn a blind eye upon it. If we win, I'll kill me."

"You can change, you know. I'll make a spell, we'll get rid of that tattoo." I whispered, shuffling closer to lay a hand on it.

"You sure your boyfriend would approve of a Death Eater converted?" he spat in reply, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Neville believes in justice, yes, so you'll come to my hospital. You'll work off your time here, Gerard." I promised, holding his hands tightly.

"This is just a stupid ploy." he groaned, shaking me off and stomping out of the cell.

I stared at the door as it slammed and clicked, hoping that no-one overheard, and that he would come back eventually and join me and Neville. The way he spoke of Neville, however, wasn't a tone I would have expected. It was something that I was too tired to determine.

Whispering "Scan." I watched as my skin turned a black colour, white growths, organs and bones all that were visible. Staring, I saw that my bones had carried a lot of the disease, yet it was spreading upward not downward. The cancer has metastasised, spreading to my brain.

I had made them fast-growing, they were supposed to spread this fast, but in a week? My own body was betraying me, I realised, and I felt offended. In this world we don't control much. We control our kids for, like, five years of their life. One thing we have complete control of is our bodies.

Yet, that wasn't true was it? I wasn't being killed by Voldemort, or a bullet, but by myself. I know that I had inflicted it upon myself but that didn't stop the betrayal any less. I knew it was time to scrape these growths from my body, scour myself clean and enjoy a painless day.

Scouring my brain for any sort of Latin, this one spell affording the class of past spells, I found it. "Cancer panacis." Heal Cancer. Simple at heart, but this would be the most prolific of all my spells. This was it. This was important.