HOW'M I SUPPOSED TO DIE
WHEN THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO LIVE?
CIVIL TWILIGHT, HOW'M I SUPPOSED TO DIE?
HEAT SPILLED through Aspen's chest like the first sip of a warm mug of tea, but there was no comfort. Stars littered the enchanted ceiling above them, imperfect patterns of silver pinpricks against a sheet of immaculate indigo. Students of all houses, clad still in thick socks and pyjamas, were stationed around the four long tables, but there was little time for fatigue. Every set of eyes in the room was trained to Professor McGonagall, who was speaking, stone-faced, at the top of the Great Hall, backed by the remaining teachers and members of the Order. Aspen, who had slid into place mid-speech at the Gryffindor table for the first time in her short life, was trembling openly now, unable to hide the rigid fear that had paralysed her since she'd stepped foot inside the castle.
"If you are of age, you may stay," said Professor McGonagall, a statement which seemed to be a recurring theme of the evening.
"What about our things?" called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. "Our trunks, our owls?"
"We have no time to collect possessions," said Professor McGonagall. "The important thing is to get you out of here safely."
"Where's Professor Snape?" shouted a girl from the Slytherin table.
"He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk," replied Professor McGonagall, to which an explosion of cheer erupted from the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws. Aspen could almost feel the delight radiating from the open-lipped grins of Fred, George and Alessia at the Professor's use of the phrase.
"We have already placed protection around the castle," Professor McGonagall said, "but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects—"
But her commands shrunk into the void as a new voice swung violently through the hall, raw and rasping. Aspen folded in on herself, eyes darting around the room maniacally to find the source, but it seemed there was not one. In fact, the voice appeared to emanate from the walls that cornered them inside, stuck inside there between the ancient pipes and carved stone.
"I know that you are preparing to fight." Screams circled the room like a dull jolt to the head, throbbing through Aspen's skull as she reached out and snatched Alessia's hand into her own. Behind her, Fred's fingers had grasped her shoulders protectively. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."
An overwhelming silence settled into the room now, rotting slowly like a water-bloated corpse just hauled up from the depths.
"Give me Harry Potter," said the voice, "and they shall not be harmed. Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."
A wild chill slithered along the length of Aspen's spine, as silent and grotesque as the quiet that had swallowed the room. Everyone, whether maliciously or not, had turned to find Harry, seeking him out like a prize amidst a crowd of mundane oddities. It seemed only one person was brave enough to intervene, however, as a smug-faced brunette rose from the Slytherin crowd, pointing venomously at the Boy-Who-Lived.
"He's there! Potter's there. Someone grab him!"
But as quickly as she'd offered up Harry's head on a silver platter, she'd been shunned, ostracised as an army of red, yellow and blue rose up, wands pointed and faces severe at even the suggestion.
"Thank you, Miss Parkinson," said Professor McGonagall, biting her tongue impressively. "You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow."
With that, a rivulet of students glided out of the hall, green swirling into blue and then yellow, with only a minimal addition of red to finish off the stream. McGonagall, face as stern as stone, had to exert herself further to usher away the rest of the underage pupils, who were sporting a brave face despite the danger. Aspen envied them, the determination that steeled them to stay at just fourteen. Standing slumped at twenty-three, she'd never been more inclined to run.
Harry and the Order reconvened at the end of the Gryffindor table. Everyone leant in, squeezed tight, shoulders touching and breath baited as they awaited instructions. Aspen couldn't quite hear as Harry and Arthur conversed opposite, but it mattered not anyway as Kingsley spoke up, voice booming.
"We've only got half an hour until midnight, so we need to act fast. A battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout and McGonagall are going to take groups of fighters up to the three highest towers — Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryffindor — where they'll have good overview, excellent positions from which to work spells. Meanwhile Remus," — he indicated Remus — "Arthur," — he pointed toward Arthur, who sat near Harry — "and I will take groups into the grounds. We'll need somebody to organise defense of the entrances or the passageways into the school—"
"Sounds like a job for us," Fred called, and although he motioned at the three of them, Aspen shrank back, and it was only George who grinned eagerly in response to Kingsley's satisfied nod.
"All right, leaders up here and we'll divide up the troops!"
There was a brief rumble, the scraping of benches against dusty flagstone as the troops of Hogwarts students burst straight to work. Fred stood, holding out a hand for Aspen, but she shook her head, nodding almost imperceptibly in the direction of her younger sister, who had leapt into Remus Lupin's ranks at the very first chance, his most loyal soldier from the get-go.
"You two go," Aspen said softly, standing up onto her tiptoes so that Fred could hear her hushed tones over the hubbub. "No man left behind, you know?"
She felt his hands on her hips, the prints of his thumbs digging into the thick seams of denim there. Long after they'd hurried off in pursuit of different challenges, she'd feel his touch burning there, a reminder that as long as Fred existed, there was something left to live for.
"I get it," he said, and desperately pressed the briefest of kisses to her chewed, chapped lips. "Love you, Pen. I'll see you later?"
"See you later," she confirmed, and snuck another peck for good measure. She could feel his breath against her mouth, nestling on the tip of her tongue even as he pulled away from their temporary goodbye. "I love you, too. Be safe, yeah?"
A final squeeze of his hand and they were gone, falling away from one another in a haze. Remus was already filing his team out of the Great Hall, and Aspen could hear the squeak of her trainers against the paved floor as she raced to catch up. Alessia was at the forefront of the group, never one to fall behind. Aspen cradled herself in an open-palmed embrace, fingertips drawing comforting shapes on her abdomen as she tried to soothe the nerves with the remembrance of how Fred's touch felt against her, the perfect antidote to her anxieties.
"Alright?" Alessia asked as they finally fell into step together.
"Never better," Aspen hummed, trying to shake off the agitation that was perching hungrily on her back, a gargoyle perpetually stuck to its pedestal.
Alessia chuckled darkly, and snuck her hand into her sister's to ease the evident nerves. They were marching into battle together, two soldiers with little known but so much to live for. They were silent, for there was nothing to say, at least not until they arrived in the courtyard, where troops were assembling like sheep, following their leader faithfully until the end.
Midnight was approaching, and they sat there like sitting ducks, awaiting the inevitable. Aspen had developed a new habit of checking her watch with every passing minute, glimpsing helplessly as time crept on at a painful pace. Alessia would slap her wrist, chastising her for the self-torture, but there was little that could stop the subconscious gesture as time ticked on painfully towards the following day.
"Midnight," she murmured as the hand twitched past twelve, continuing on its perpetually circular journey as though it hadn't a clue that life as they knew it was about to implode.
Alessia reached over, squeezing her elder sister's hand for just one reassuring moment as the cool night air made their bare arms pucker with goosebumps. Overhead, the sky lit up, sparks of fiery scarlet setting the canvas of inky black ablaze. Aspen found it hard to tear her eyes away as they bounced, at first, against the barrier of protective enchantments, a futile child on the world's largest trampoline. And yet, in what felt like no time at all, a crack, a tear, a horrible rip, and suddenly curses were raining down through their shielding safe haven. This was the end, or perhaps, only the beginning.
At the forefront of their little group, Remus rhymed off tips and tactics like he was born for the fight, but Aspen found this very hard to comprehend with her eyes glued to the distance, where streams of Death Eaters were pouring into the grounds, an ocean of dark hoods and fury. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage so fast she thought it might burst through, puncturing through her sweaty flesh and splatting onto the cobblestones.
"Your right, Pen!" Alessia called, giving her only a second to jolt backwards before a spear of green light shot past her like a bullet. A duel broke out between the two, one barely seventeen and yet somehow holding her own tactfully until the hooded figure lay crumpled in a heap of black robes on the ground.
"You need to move, Aspen," Alessia said with all the command of an army officer, and suddenly, Aspen was transported back to her adolescence, where her younger sister would list off demands at only four years old, and playing pretend, she would obey. Now was hardly different — she would obey, only this time, it really counted for something more than a toddler's temper tantrum.
And so the fight began. As the first wave of Death Eaters descended upon them, Aspen pushed aside the terrible metallic taste of her heart in her mouth, and sent her mind drifting back to the Defence classes of her teenage years, letting any curse and spell of use tumble from her tongue until the crowd of enemies dwindled. Every so often, a sharp buzz of pain would lacerate her, an opposing strike against her cheek or arm, but the pain did little damage, and adrenaline rushed her forwards with a blood-hungry thirst to quench.
"We're here! What's happening?" came a voice from behind, and flinching terribly, the Andrews sisters span on their heels, wands poised as a common reaction to sudden distractions.
Somehow, against their better judgement, Nymphadora Tonks and Ginny Weasley stood there, breathless and sagging with exertion but cheeks still glowing with an enthusiasm to fight that Aspen had never possessed, not once in her life.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Aspen called, soaring into her best friend's arms, listening to the thud of her restless heart against her chest, which was fuller than she remembered from their last encounter months ago. "Where's Teddy?"
The sound of his name had alerted Remus from the front of the pack, and at the sight of his wife, he dashed over, furious and delighted all at once. Aspen stepped back, tearing herself away from the woman to allow her husband to dote on her instead. As she did so, she assessed the area, pleasantly surprised by their group's ability to have picked off most of the antagonising pack so far.
"Mum's got him. He's fine. I just couldn't rest thinking about you all here," Tonks heaved, breath still not steadied from her sprint to find them.
Beside them, Alessia had latched onto Ginny like a lifeline, two girls ready to face the world together and anything it ought to throw at them. They stood back to back, bodies melding like melted gold, filling in each other's cracks and soft places as skin and bone sunk together.
A cacophony of shouting from ahead pulled them all away from the sentimentality, and planting their feet to the solid ground, they prepared themselves for the fight. The only one without someone watching her back, Aspen found herself thinking of Fred, her brain flashing images of ginger and sunshine for the briefest of moments until a whoosh of warmth flew past her ear, and she was hauled back into the now.
"Dolohov," Remus said coldly to her left, and Aspen fought off the urge to look as she fired off one last spell that sent her assailant flying through the air, landing on his back twenty feet away with a sickening crack.
Momentarily free, she craned her neck around, observing her friends with all the care of an ageing grandmother, slow and solicitous. Indeed, life moved in slow motion as she watched a swarm of Death Eaters approaching like darts to a board: sharp, precise and deadly. Though she seemed to miraculously have managed so far, it would seem her unit was struggling under the pressure, and she watched as the others sagged under the weight of the attack.
Remus, it would seem, was out of practice, and sloppily sent several spells flying over Dolohov's shoulders, missing him by an inch. Aspen felt like she was watching from above, an angel floating amidst the clouds as the scene unfolded before her. It couldn't have been longer than half a minute, but it felt like forever as chaos rained down like dislodged stalactites beside her.
Bellatrix herself had joined them now, and Aspen felt her breath hitch in her throat as she took her aim at her beloved Tonks. Family ties evidently meant nothing, Aspen thought, as the two struck spell after spell at one another, each more lethal than the last. Defending herself was the last thought in her mind as she swallowed thickly, unable to intervene as two flashes of green soared through the air and her friends collapsed to the cobblestones. An involuntary sob wracked through her body, though she had already cried herself dry as she witnessed their final attempt to clasp each other close, hands outstretched and fingertips just barely brushing as they lay there miserably on the ground.
"Aspen!" a weak cry ripped through the air, leaving her little time to mourn their losses.
Across the courtyard, Ginny was tucked away behind a half-wall. Knelt down over a crumpled figure, her face was wrinkled with a hopeless despair that made Aspen nauseous. She felt her heart detonate inside her chest, setting her blood alight and hysteric with red-hot frenzy. Gone was the heartbreak, replaced instead with hideous fury that seeped from her every pore like an odorous pus. Suddenly, she felt she had all the power in the world, that no-one could even touch her without falling at her knees. This wasn't bravery, it was sheer maternal delirium.
"Who?" she screeched as she bolted across the stones, crashing down beside Ginny to take in the sight of her sister, breathing but barely and utterly wrecked as she twitched in feverish pain.
"It's her leg, Aspen," Ginny said, pointing shakily at Alessia's left limb. She'd already used her wand to tear away the denim of her jeans there, revealing the steady incline of smoky vine that curled up her shins, rotting her flesh as it went and leaving behind only remnants of skin and sickening scar tissue.
"Who, Ginny?" Aspen repeated, terrifyingly quiet in her disposition. Forcing herself to tear her gaze away from the slowly rising lesions on Alessia's skin, she stared out at the battlefield ahead of her, her teeth grinding and her jaw set as she observed the black hoods that strutted past maniacally.
"Dolohov," Ginny replied solemnly, her voice wavering as she cradled Alessia in her arms, trying desperately to keep her awake and lucid. Her eyes were drooping into a pain-induced trance, though her best friend's consistent shaking and speech was just enough to keep her tied to consciousness.
Moving without thinking, without even deciphering a plan in her head first, Aspen leapt up and out from behind the wall. Her hands shook terribly and she could barely feel her feet inside her boots as she stamped across the cobbles, eyes stuck to him like a swooping hawk to its prey. This would only end one way, and despite the blinding rage that almost made her faint, she felt for the first time that she was untouchable, that triumph was not just a pipe dream but a necessity.
Her conviction refused to falter even as she watched him slaughter three of their own in a row, a trio of green flashes searing across her vision as bodies fell sleepily to the floor. Even as her nervous heart thudded against her ribcage, threatening to wear through her flesh with its drumbeat, she gripped her wand, letting her knuckles turn white from the pressure.
A shudder of red flew past her, missing her nose by inches as she ducked backwards, stumbling over her heels to evade the shot. She glanced around quickly, but it seemed it had not been a direct aim at her, but rather a misfire from an undetermined source. She swallowed thickly, finding it a reminder of how tethered she still was to her hesitant self. Doubt swam into her stomach vicious as a shark, and thirsty for blood too, and she found herself unsettled and distracted only for a moment.
"Aspen, now!" she heard through the fray. Ginny's unmistakable voice sprang through the air, surfing over the wave of violent sound that was becoming increasingly like white noise as the battled raged on.
It was just enough to steady her once more, and she set forth again, eyes swivelling in search of her sole target. In the centre of the courtyard, she was more exposed than was sensible, but it felt nonsensically irrelevant to her. She didn't care if she went down in the fire so long as he burnt with her. Death would feel sweeter with revenge as her parting gift, anyway.
The thudding of her heart stilled to an illogically calm patter as she locked eyes with him. It was as if he was waiting on her, his thin lips pulled into a smug smirk of acknowledgement barely hidden by the shadow of his cloak. Bitter hatred coursed through her. In unison, they raised their wands, and she felt the heat of her magic in her veins. The tip of her wand lit up, her hands shaking with the strength of her resentment, with the power that she felt culminating towards this one, final spell, the most important of her life, perhaps.
This was for Remus, she thought, for Tonks, but most of all, for her sister. This was it.
Dolohov's face began to twist, mouth agape as the words forced their way over the damp landscape of his tongue and out into the early morning air. Tension pulsed through the atmosphere, simmering in the breeze, and yet in that second, she felt able to conquer anything; everything. At the final hurdle, she would beat him at his own game.
"Confringo!"
The spell scraped past her throat so violently she jolted backwards from the exertion. Her hand flew up to cradle her neck, as if the press of her palm against the sweaty flesh there would soothe the ache of her scream. She'd remember that pain forever, letting it keep her awake at night as the image of her opposition's explosion danced across her eyelids.
She'd known the second that fiery orange light had soared from her wand that she had beaten him to the punchline. Time moved so slowly and yet immeasurably fast, and as the bundle of energy smacked into his chest, a wash of relief spilled over her like a cold shower, hauling her back from her rage and into reality. Dolohov slammed like a lump of raw meat into the pillar behind him, and without warning, he was ablaze, a glistening, pulpy muddle of limbs.
Her destruction was complete.
At once, Aspen Andrews was a murderer, and yet she had never felt more alive. At least, she had never felt more alive until she remembered the state of her baby sister, and her organs turned instantaneously to rot. Her fear curdled inside of her like sour milk, and she forced down the rising bile in her gullet as she raced at speed towards Alessia and Ginny.
They were, of course, where she had left them, although the declining condition of her sister made a tearless sob wretch forward from her mouth inexplicably. Ginny had her head cradled in her lap, but she was almost certainly unconscious, the pain of the expanding wound proving too much for the bravest girl Aspen knew. Now, it seemed to have crawled up almost to her knee, and was weeping a putrid black pus that she almost refused to believe came from a human being. The stench alone was enough to bring forth a second wave of nausea that she swallowed down once more, though with increasing difficulty.
"We need to get her inside, Ginny," Aspen insisted, ignoring the wetness pooling in the rims of her eyes. "Can you help me carry her?"
Ginny had been rendered speechless, but she managed to collect herself enough to nod numbly, wipe the weepy snot beneath her nose with her sleeve and push herself to her feet. Aspen slipped her own slim frame beneath Alessia's right armpit, and Ginny took the left, both women struggling under the dead weight of her comatose remains.
There was little to be said as their muscle memory lead them around the school grounds, ducking into narrow corridors and hidden nooks in an attempt to avoid the Death Eaters that still sprawled out like spilt ink, the memory of their trailing black capes staining the flagstones. By the time they reached the Great Hall, they were sagging, backs bent double from the effort. Only adrenaline could keep them at their steady pace.
The atmosphere in the Hall was, somehow, graver than Aspen had expected. She had been out there, she had seen the devastation, and yet still her brain had conjured up the possibility that what they had experienced had been the worst of it. From the rows of dead and injured that littered the enormous space, she knew at once she had been wrong.
In the corner, Madame Pomfrey was among a jumble of medically gifted wizards as they sombrely tended to the worst of the wounds. Selfishly, though, Aspen couldn't imagine any of them suffering more deeply than her sister, and without a second thought, she used the last of her depleting energy to haul Alessia over towards the witch, leaking desperation like a broken dam — in floods.
"Madame Pomfrey, please," she called out desperately, catching the woman in the process of moving between patients. "She can't lose the leg, please! It's my fault! Please help us."
She was trying her best not to become hysteric as she spoke, and she could see her impatience startling the older witch, but the impending possibility of her sister's death was gutting her like a fish, leaving her feeling floppy and faint. Words were beginning to fail her, and at risk of becoming nonsensical, she motioned to Ginny, who managed out the most flustered of explanations as they collectively transferred Alessia onto a makeshift camp-bed.
"I've never seen anything like this," Pomfrey stuttered out, inspecting the advancing wound with eyes both wide and unreassuring. "Did you manage to catch the spell?"
"I'd never heard it before," Ginny said, bottom lip trembling with terror. "Something Vinea? I'm not sure. I'm sorry."
As if her lungs had been swiftly punctured, Aspen began to find breathing a painful chore, the air refusing to cooperate as she manually sucked it into her mouth and out through her nose. The concept of her sister's death seemed more plausible by the minute, and with each reminder of her fragility, her body seemed to find yet another way to shut down.
Madame Pomfrey had her wand out, working away as best she could at the puzzling condition of Alessia's leg, but Aspen found herself unable to watch helplessly. Never before had she been unable of providing comfort or solution for her sister, and desperately, she searched the room like a madwoman, as if someone somewhere would be able to help.
Across the room, Molly Weasley was bent over a figure, and a lightbulb flickered on, a momentary bright sheen amidst the darkening cloud of impending grief. Molly was a fantastic healer, and though Pomfrey seemed to have stopped the spread, she wondered if miraculously, Molly could make it all disappear with some sort of potion or salve, as if the curse had never struck Alessia's skin at all. In her delirium, Aspen was convinced she could banish the gangrenous lesions and scar tissue, replacing the stinking wounds with her sister's supple skin, her smooth, meaty expanse of shin and calf whole once more.
"Molly! Molly, please!" she called helplessly, weaving her way through the crowd that blurred before her, obscured by the tears that were threatening to stream down her cheeks.
Perhaps it was the chaos of the day, but despite the grim quiet of the Hall, there was no response. Aspen's desperate pleas for assistance were falling on deaf ears, as if she had bottled them instead and washed them out to sea, refusing to let another human being share her pain. For a moment, she wondered if she had gone mute, and her hysteria had made her imagine the sharp call that escaped her maw as if in prayer, as if she were begging on her knees.
Her tunnel vision had meant she had eyes only for Molly, and it was only as she reached her and tapped her briskly on the shoulder that she realised she was not alone, but instead, surrounded by a crowd of gingers. It was only as Molly turned, wet-cheeked and hollow, that she noticed the Weasley clan were inexplicably together, and sobbing in each other's arms.
"What's happened?" she asked vacantly, though the sunken pit in her stomach was expanding as possibilities raced through her mind.
But there was no vocalising an answer. Her blurry vision was enough to confirm her darkest fear as she stared, slack-jawed, over Molly's shoulder. Lying on a camp-bed of his own was Fred, the shock of ginger hair sparkling against the paling complexion of his bloodless face. Briefly in her mind he was sleeping, the etchings of a laugh embroidered on his lips, but as any remaining sense of being was knocked from her like a boxer's punch, she knew he was gone.
With a strangled sob and the latching of familiar arms around her frame, life tumbled away from her in an instant. It was inconceivable, a shock of pain and shame that jolted her like electricity. Staring at Fred, acknowledging he was gone, she felt the part of herself she'd dedicated to him only break away too. Who was she without him, without the pair of them?
Aspen Andrews was a worrier, an affectionate older sister, a hard-worker and the proudest Hufflepuff you'd ever meet. But most of all, Aspen Andrews was a failure, because she had let the two people who meant the most to her in the world get hurt, and that was something she would never let herself live down.
hehe an update how unheard of!
hope this didn't suck too much and you're not all too upset with me :')
one chapter to go! xx