The Potion Princess

The Prophecy

She feels it for the very first time in the middle of charms- a white hot, scalding burn so painful that it makes her cry out and has her knees buckling, stumbling back into Lee's arms.  Her wand falls from her fingers and rolls across the floor to rest at Emmeline's feet, and she can hear Flitwick asking her if she's alright, if she's okay, suggesting that she should go see Madame Pomfrey.

"I'm fine,"  She gasps out, straightening up and trying to hide the tears streaming down her face.  Pain is always worse when you aren't expecting it, when you have no time to prepare, and this unaniticipated pain came with all kinds of complications.  "Just... hospital wing."

Emmeline takes her, peppering her with questions, both of them knowing that she has no intention of going to the hospital wing.  Audra sprints back to the dorms and changes into different robes, then she's back into the corridors and racing towards the humpbacked witch statue, holding onto the walls for support.  Her mind is racing, because she must tell someone (but who to tell, Dumbledore gone, McGonagall gone, the twins gone, everyone just kids), because she must get away undetected (but how, with the castle on lock down), because something horrible is about to happen and she's found herself right in the middle of it.

"You have to go."  Emmeline kept watch, and they both stared at each other, both of them with words waiting on the tip of their tongue but unable to say them.  Then Emmeline crosses the space between them and wraps her into a hug.  "Now.  Before He gets angry."

She apparates the minute she steps off of Hogwarts boundaries and finds herself in the middle of the Malfoy's front line.  Audra stumbles forward a few feet before running, racing up the steps and pounding the brass knocker down onto the door, and after a minute of patiently waiting, the door is thrown open to reveal a smiling Vance and an upset looking Wormtail.

"Vance."  She breathes out his name, stunned in spite of herself, and then she's letting out a shriek and jumping towards him, hugging him tight like she used to when she was much younger.  It was good to see him, even with that smug look on and his thin frame being swallowed up by the robes they all have to wear.  "I didn't know you'd be here!"

"Miss me?"  He reaches out to ruffle her hair and she ducks away, swatting out at his hand.  It reminds her of better times, when they were both younger and his smile was a little less sharp and hers was a little less weary.  Still, it's nice to see him, and she feels a bit better when he wraps an arm around her shoulder and leads her into the room, a comforting weight to help keep her from running away.

"So what are we doing?"  She tries to sound casual about it, but she comes off as too eager.  Vance doesn't seem concerned by it, just plucks a glass off the table and forces it into her hand, shooting a charming smile at the young woman across the room from them.

"We're weaving a web, little sister."  Vance always talks like this, in metaphors and grand gestures.  It normally seems over the top, but it's fitting here, with him in his dark robes and his golden hair and surrounded by people that seem to drink in the sight of the two Stanton siblings whenever they walk into the room.  "And we're going to catch us that Potter boy you thought so highly of."

The plan unfolds in pieces, about how Audra and Vance had somehow gotten the honor of going on this mission, about using the thought of Sirius as bait becuase Harry was awful at gaurding his mind and when the rescue team comes, the prophecy would be retrieved.  "Why go myself when everyone is so nicely ignoring my excistence?"  The Dark Lord has said, and everyone had smiled, because he was happy and that meant everyone else could afford to be happy, too.

Audra is stuck behind a forced smile and spurts of slightly hysterical laughter, but it slips more often than it normally does, because she's quickly spiraling into a downward spiral of panic that comes from not knowing what to do. It's so similiar to how she felt when she was kneeling beside McGonagall that she finds escaping the room as the only option, fleeing to the drawing room, intending to send a fire message to the Weasleys.

Except that Bellatrix found her first, when Audra was still just hunched over the table, the edges biting into her palms and forcing her breathing to be slow.  "You're losing it,"  Bellatrix said in that sing song voice of hers, moving towards her.  She digs her hands into Audra's shoulders, forcing the tension out of them, and steers her towards the full body mirror in the corner of the room.  "Look at you.  Do you look like a girl that needs to be freaking out over facing down a bunch of kids?"

Audra took a deep breath.  They look so similar like this, side by side, even if Bellatrix has aged in a rather ungraceful fashion.  Bellatrix has her cheek pushed up against hers, and Audra can feel the thick coating of powder that she uses to cover up the pockmarks and shadows that seem permanently attatched to her face.  But they looked strong, the two of them.  "No."

"Exactly.  And if you do get in trouble, just stick to me.  I'm good enough for the both of us."  She smiles, and its a nice smile even though her teeth are still yellowed.  "Now come.  We have a prophecy to retrieve."

They move in perfect formation, sliding out of the fireplaces and moving through the shadows as they find their way to the Hall of Prophecies.  It's a haunted place, with all the glowing crystal balls and the tall, towering shelves that stretch up to a ceiling that Audra can't even see.  There were ten of them, all seperated into pairs of two, waiting with bated breath for Harry to show up and save his godfather.

Audra was with Vance, which was a good thing, because anyone else might have commented on how strange she was acting.  She still wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, but she was sure that Harry was going to show up, because that was just the kind of stupid stuff that Harry did.  Her heart hurt for him, for the moment when he would see that he led himself and Ron and Hermione into danger on a trick.

"Vance,"  She blurts out on a whim, because she still believes in the good parts of him that she knows- the brother that fixed scraped knees and learned to braid hair just for her and wrote her three times a week when he went to Hogwarts without her, just because she was lonely.  "Maybe we should stop."

"Stop?"  He looked at her like she had lost her mind.  Maybe she had.  "Why would you say that?"

"I'm scared, Vance."  It was the truth, practically, and it was enough to make him turn towards her and actually listen.

"Don't be.  You're going to do great."  He smiled, the real one just for her, and it makes her feel better, even if he was talking about something very different than what she intended to do.

They appear in the middle of the room, racing down the halls with wands held out high.  Harry had brought more reinforcements than normal- Neville, Luna, and Ginny had joined the trio, apparently.  Audra feels her heart climb into her throat as she falls into line behind Lucius, looking at their stunned, scared faces when they realized what they had gotten themselves into.

Audra yanks off her mask and shakes her hair out of her face, searching out Harry and holding his gaze.  She takes a second to thank that his hatred for Snape kept him from learning Occlumency, and forced her way into his mind and opened a bridge up to hers, keeping it going until she was sure he understood.

On three, she tells herself, and Harry hears it too, sharing the message back through his tiny army.

One, and Harry shifts from one foot to the other, eyes darting and fixing the grip on his wand, Ron to his left and Hermione on the right.  She catches sight of Ginny, her jaw set and eyes flashing, and there's a shadow of Fred in her face.

Two, and Audra looks at those around her, remembers dueling with Bellatrix just for fun and how the spells came so fast and how she couldn't keep up.  She was going to lose, she knew, but at least she could buy them time.

Three, and the Hall of Prophecies explodes.