Hermione gave an ear piercing scream and kicked out in pain, causing all the male members of the order to try and rush to her defence. None succeeded, not even Ron who attempted to sweep the leg of his Death Eater. Jessica glanced over at Pansy, who though previously expressed a hatred of Hermione, was looking rather in despair. She thought maybe Pansy was now feeling guilt that she had ever done that to a person herself. Her eyes connected with Jessica and she mouthed "do it to me, it's okay." She had never looked so sure. She probably felt like she deserved it.
"Fine!" Jessica shouted, making Voldemort turn his attention from Hermione to her, "I'll do it."
Theo finally dragged his head up, surprised. However, it wasn't a sad surprise. It looked like both Theo and Pansy shared guilt that they felt they needed to repay. Voldemort stepped aside, gesturing for her to put her money where her mouth is.
Jessica raised her wand, tried to look as heartbroken as she could, and went to curse Pansy. She had planned to use her spell for fake cuts, which she had learned non-verbally so nothing would've been given away. No matter how much Pansy thought she deserved pain, Jessica knew that deep down she didn't.
"Not with your wand," Voldemort advised, "use the necklace."
Jessica paused. She had not learned how to control the necklace yet. If she used it she could do real damage, without knowing anyway of stopping it. She stole a look at Hermione, who was whimpering and slouched over on the floor, then looked back at Pansy, who just nodded her head. She was telling her to do it.
Jessica adjusted her clothes, making sure the necklace wasn't caught on anything, and closed her eyes. She focused really hard on her thoughts to try and make something happen that would show Voldemort she was doing something without hurting Pansy. She felt it glow, a cooling sensation covering her chest. It was working. She was powerful, surely she'd be able to make sure Pansy wasn't hurt...right?
Except...she had never really controlled it before. Only for visions. Out of everything she learned this year, she hadn't managed to learn how the necklace worked. This could very easily go wrong. She could be responsible for making someone else endure the same pain she was trying to save her friends from. She would almost be just as bad as him.
The glow diminished, and along with it the cooling sensation. She couldn't bring herself to risk Pansy's wellbeing. She just couldn't. Then, the sudden rush of dread poured over her, as she realized Voldemort had seen her fail. There was going to be consequences. She looked down at Harry, who gave her an encouraging nod. He knew how she felt.
"A coward...," said Voldemort. It was almost as if he was reveling in it. "...just like your father. He was scared of his power too. Didn't choose the right side."
"I won't use it," Jessica stood up to him bravely, "I'm not like you. I will never go with you or help you."
He did not look pleased with her decision, but his head quickly turned and he forgot about it within a moments thought. "Well I gave you a chance," he said, "just hand it over to me and this will all be over. You can go back to your muggle life."
Even if she could trust him she wouldn't have wanted to do so. It would be appealing, to go back to normal life, and a school where a teacher couldn't make students torture each other. But she was in too deep in now. She had made friends here, found herself here, she had fallen in love here.
She was home.
"Go to hell," she retorted, "you'll never get your hands on this, If you try and force it off me it will blow your wrinkly no-nose head off."
She could hear George try to suppress a chuckle.
"Who said anything about taking it from you," Voldemort taunted, "you're going to hand it over."
"And what makes you think that."
"Because," he started to explain menacingly with a haunting smirk, "for every ten seconds you still have it in your possession from now, I will pick of your friends at random to suffer...and it will all be your fault."
Jessica took a bold step forward. She took that threat personally. "You hurt anyone of them and this necklace is dead to you. I can't take it off so hurting them won't achieve anything."
She didn't know if he knew the only way to truly get it off her.
"Do you hear that?" Voldemort told the group, turning around to his audience, "she would rather have you all suffer than give it away. Some Protector."
The Order all glared at him with contempt.
Jessica tried to reason with him,"No I mean I literally cant-"
"And we'll support her every time," Fred spoke up in her defense.
"Yeah it's just a few scratches," George chimed in, "could go for hours couldn't we Fred."
Jessica's lips curled up into a sad smile. They were so bloody brave, but so bloody stupid. They had just put themselves in the firing line all because they wanted to support her. Arthur quietly begged them to be quiet next to them. Bill, was somewhat the opposite, he looked proud.
"A few scratches?" Voldemort hissed, rushing over to George, "well it's been over ten seconds, I'll guess I'll have to give you a bit more...crucio!"
Jessica closed her eyes shut as George called out in agony. Voldemort was showing no mercy, and they had made him angry with their disobedience. Her visions had not been enough to make her immune, she could not stand to see George tortured. She heard a slam, meaning he had fallen to his knees. Fuck.
"It's alright Georgie," Fred said encouragingly, though Jessica could sense he was just putting on a front, "laugh it off yeah. Didn't hurt did it?"
Jessica opened her eyes. Fred was looking down sorrowfully at George, who was achingly getting up from the ground. Arthur Weasleys head was down, seemingly appearing to trying to stop himself lashing out. Jessica glanced at Tonks, who mouthed "stay strong."
Remus was next to her, and he knowingly nodded in agreement.
"Fred...Weasley is it?" Voldemort asked Fred. Jessica's fist clenched. She looked back at Tonks who repeated her words.
"What's it to you?" Fred asked back fearlessly.
Voldemort turned his head to Draco, who still was holding Theo and Pansy, and Draco nodded to him. Voldemort gave Fred a cold stare, then continued walking to Jessica's relief.
"Time's tick-iinggg," Bellatrix sang from behind Jessica's ear. She was utterly the most insufferable woman Jessica had ever met.
"Who's next?" Voldemort asked the line, his Death Eaters cheering him on.
"Me," Remus volunteered, to most of the young people's surprise, "it's okay Jessica, I've felt enough pain today to make me numb."
"No," Jessica disputed, "Remus-"
"Unless you'd like to hand it over?" Voldemort asked her.
"I can't."
Voldemort raised his wand and cursed Remus. True to his word, Remus hardly showed any pain. There was twitching in his eyes, but his expression was dead to the world. The memory of Sirius was clearly the only torture that could consume him.
"Should we do another one?" Voldemort goaded, getting drunk with the torture.
"I can't take it off!" Jessica shouted in frustration.
"Sure you can," Voldemort taunted, "eenie, meeny, miny, you."
Jessica jumped in fear as the red light hit Tonks in the chest, causing her to shriek. Her hair just turned a dull brown.
"No I mean I can't! It won't come off even if I wanted to!" Jessica tried to bargain with him. She could see the others starting to show fear.
"Liar!" he jeered, "just like your mother."
Ginny was next to fall. She tried to take it on the chin and act tough, but Voldemort took a liking to her, and made it last longer than any of the others.
"Stop it!" Jessica shouted as her necklace started glaring red, "don't touch her!"
Voldemort's eyes glimmered when he saw the glow around her neck. "Aha! We are getting somewhere? Was it the girl? Bring the other one Dolohov."
The man with an overgrown dirty beard who he had called Dolohov stepped forward with Luna in his clutches. Even in the face of certain danger she had an air of day-dreaming about her, and an innocence no one could copy even if they tried. That's what made it so tragic, he was about to torture the most pure thing amongst them just to get a stupid relic that was never his to own.
It was disgusting.
"Stop it!" Jessica shouted, "Just stop it!"
"Cruc-"
"I'll do whatever you want just stop it. I'll give it to you just stop fucking torturing people!"
She grabbed her throat as Voldemort lowered his wand. She had shouted so much her vocal chords were scratched.
Voldemort was dubious of her proposal. "You're trying to trick me, you can't fool me girl."
"You can take me until we work out what spell to use," Jessica breathed, "it's got to come off somehow."
"Jess no!" said Fred, "don't you dare."
He caught his attention, and Luna was suddenly out of the firing line. She was dragged back into place as Voldemort made his way over to him. "Ah yes, it's your turn," said Voldemort eyeing Fred up and down, "the boyfriend."
Voldemort grabbed him and threw him to the floor, eager to have his fun with him. Jessica panicked and lost her composure.
"Stop," she screamed, "I said I'd give you what you want why are you doing this?!"
"Because this girl..." Voldemort told her self-righteously, "..is power. I've known exactly how I could get that thing off of your neck ever since your mother sacrificed herself to save you. I just had to wait until I could get the right...as you called it earlier...incentive."
Jessica's heart was thumping so loud she couldn't hear anything else. She felt like she was going to pass out and faint right there. Voldemort knew, he had known all this time. Now it all made sense. This had probably been Draco's plan all along, to make her ties to him and his Slytherin friends so strong that when Voldemort would threaten to hurt them she would sacrifice herself. She probably wouldn't even put it past them that Umbridge was their idea, just to cause a divide and cut her off from everyone else. He needed to have her care for someone so much she was willing to risk her life to save them.
Then along came Fred.
Voldemort sneered and directed his wand to the back of Fred's head. Everyone in the Order, even Pansy and Theo, were alarmed and afraid. Fred did not break eye contact with her. If he was going out, she was going to be the last thing he saw.
"Avada-"
"NO!"
The necklace turned pure black as Jessica screamed at the top of her lungs. It took control of her, a sour electric spark sprinting through every inch of her bloodstream. A cloud of darkness covered her eyes and she was blind. The necklace sparked an ultrasonic sound and blasted the four death eaters holding Dumbledore and Harry away from the pure force of the ripple. She felt time slow down, so much that it felt frozen, the green light emitting from Voldemort's wand hardly moving towards Fred. She knew what she had to do to end this, the necklace driving her and taking her consciousness over from her rational thought. Jessica wasted no time and ran forward, placing herself between Fred and Voldemort. As soon as she stood her ground she knew she had just cemented her fate. The necklace stopped working, the black fog clouds lifted, and time sped up.
Everything became normal again, and Jessica was hit in the chest with the curse. Every thing cut to black. She fell to the floor, dead to the world, her body collapsing with no breath emitting from her lungs.
"Jess!" Fred cried as he scrambled to his knees to pick her up. He placed his head to her chest to check for a heart beat, but there was none to be found.
Arthur, Bill, Tonks and the rest of the Order struggled to be with him and help him revive her, but the Death Eaters all managed to successfully restrain them. The only ones who could get to his side were Harry and Dumbledore.
"Did it work?" Bellatrix asked impatiently, jumping up with excitement from the floor.
The necklace around Jessica's chain broke in half at the clasp and it clambered onto the ground in front of Harry. Her neck had a bruise all around it from where it had become one with her skin.
Dumbledore tried to grab the necklace, but he was too slow, and Voldemort stunned his hand away. Triumphant, Voldemort walked over calmly and picked the necklace chain up from the floor. He examined it, saw the chain had been dull to a bronze colour and pointed it towards Harry.
Nothing happened.
He then closed his eyes, and despite of Fred's sniffling, he concentrated and pointed it towards the rest of the order.
Nothing happened again.
When his eyes opened again they were filled with nothing but disappointment and fury. It didn't work. He had failed, the necklace had been broken. He angrily threw it against the wall, and it smashed down to the ground, all still perfectly intact.
He looked down at Jessica's lifeless body, Fred grieving over the top of it and Harry trying to comfort him as Dumbledore attempted to revive her. "Pity," he said coldly, "what a waste of my time."
He turned to his followers and beckoned them towards him. He apparated from the room and within seconds all the Death Eaters had vanished, leaving just the Order, Theo, Pansy and Draco in the Ministry lobby. None of them cared about the devastation they were leaving behind. There was a few minutes of silence, the group collectively moving towards Jessica's body but not saying a thing. There were exchanged glances, a few hopeless glances down, however little effort was made by anyone except for Dumbledore to do anything.
No one had survived the killing curse, except from the boy holding Jessica's cold clammy hand.
"Is she?" asked Neville nervously after a while.
Luna placed her hand on his shoulder to give him the answer without speaking. He lowered his head.
"How?" asked Ginny quietly, "the necklace was meant to protect her right?"
"That was it's job," Dumbledore replied as he waved his wand over Jessica's chest, "however once the wearer uses it to sacrifice themselves to save another life, it stops working for them. She was cursed from the minute she wore it."
He noticed that Fred didn't take this news well, or want to hear it. "She knew that though," he told him matter-of-factly, "the necklace does was the wearer wants, it was her choice."
Perhaps understandably, this brought little comfort to Fred. His grief turned to rage and he looked over to Pansy, Theo and Draco, all who appeared to share the same sense of loss. Theo and Pansy were arm in arm, and Draco was a meter away, standing tall but looking gaunt.
"You!" he shouted at them, still holding Jessica in a craddle, "you got her into this, this is your fault! She trusted you!"
He was met with only despondent expressions. The snakes were finally scared of the lions biting back. Fred was looking for Revenge, and they were directly in the firing line.
Theo, visibly upset himself, just managed to say, "i'm-i'm sorry, we-"
"Go," said George who had placed himself behind his twin so that Fred couldn't get out, "Jess wouldn't have wanted him to turn into a killer, but I can't promise that if you're not gone within ten seconds I won't let him destroy you."
Pansy realised the grace they had been given on Jessica's behalf, and grabbed Theo by the arm. She slightly tugged on his arm to pull him away, but in the end it was a struggle for her to drag him out of view. Draco seemed almost paralysed to the spot he stood, but one step backwards from George made him silently leave too.
Once they were gone, Fred climbed back into his shell and became mute.
"Surely there's something we can do," Hermione said in a hopeful tone to Bill, "I've read a lot about ancient relics, not this one of course, but maybe you've come across one that could counter-act it maybe?"
Hermione's hope was short lived, as Bill just shook his head. "I'm afraid there's nothing that can counter-act this."
"This is not fair," said Tonks, starting to freak out, "I said from the start that we should have done more research into this before bringing her in."
"Tonk-"
"No Alistair, she is just a girl!"
"I agree," said Remus, "we should never have bought her into this."
"Well it's too late for Objections now," Moody stated, "let the boy grieve."
"We are all grieving," Remus argued, "we all lost close friends tonight. Sirius has always been a part of this but she wasn't, she could've been spared."
"We were all in agreement before this."
"I think you'll find two of us weren't," Bill spoke, and he turned around to see his dad, who currently had his head in his hands. "How the hell am I going to tell Molly?" Arthur questioned himself.
"How are we going to tell the people at Hogwarts," said Ron, keeping Harry in his view who was sitting silent alongside Fred, "she had friends there, and people are only just starting to get over Cedric."
"We can deal with that later," Dumbledore advised, and he stood up to be level with them all, "but for now lets not fight around her, she deserves peace at least. I think it's best if you all go home."
"Where do we take her?" Arthur asked.
Dumbledore pulled him aside so that no one else could hear and whispered something into his ear that Arthur appeared to not be happy with. He disputed it firmly, however when Dumbledore tried to convince him he gave in reluctantly.
"Come on everyone," Arthur walked forward and said to the kids, "Dumbledore will take of her, he's just going to go to St Mungo's so that she can have the best care. Let's go back to Grimmauld Place and wait."
"No," Fred refused, "i'm not leaving her."
"Me neither," George backed him up, "we'll go with you."
"I'm afraid I have to take her alone," said Dumbledore, "and I have to insist. There may be some things you may not want to see."
Fred grabbed Jessica tighter protectively. "What are they going to do to her?"
"Nothing harmful," Arthur reassured him, "just might be upsetting for you to see it that's all."
He wasn't convincing anyone. They had all seen him fight Dumbledore on whatever he had said. "More than this?" Fred disputed woefully, "no absolutely not, she trusted him too you know. He's just as guilty as Draco's lot."
"Fred!" Arthur gasped, "don't speak to him like that."
"It's fine," said Dumbledore, starting to raise his wand, "I deserve it. But i'm afraid if you're going to refuse to leave then I apologise but I must do this, it was the only promise she ever asked me to keep...obliviate."