"Crucio!"
She screamed in pain.
"Where are they?" One of them shouted.
"Go to hell--"
"Crucio!"
She arched her back in agony, then dropped back to the chair she was chained to, sweat dripping from her forehead.
"Tell us, now!"
"I said, go to hell!"
"Crucio!"
-----
Neville, Luna and Ginny didn't know for sure how they worked up the nerve, but five minutes after midnight they found themselves outside the wall where they heard November's screams coming out from. Tonight was one of those rare nights when they didn't have to listen to her painful screams for too long, it stopped around an hour before, maybe the Death Eaters needed a break sometimes.
Luna suggested tapping the tiles with their wands to see how it worked, she thought it could be like Diagon Alley. Not surprised when that wasn't the case. Death Eaters don't do that. Then there was a crazy moment when Neville thought they might be in the Room of Requirement, but that was until few seconds later, Ginny reminded him that they were the ones hiding in the secret room, not the Death Eaters. Ginny went a little ahead of herself when she said that the room entrance was somewhere else, not near the wall where they thought the screams came from. But who knew, right? Anyway, they started looking for other possible places near there until they reached the forbidden corridor.
"At the beginning of the year, they said we shouldn't go here if we don't want a painful death." Neville recalled, shivering at the thought of his own death.
"This is the place." Luna, with her dreamy expression, was the first one to put her feet onto the staircase.
"Luna, hang on!" Neville called out, but she had already skipped her way out of their sights.
Ginny, after one split second of thinking, followed Luna immediately and was soon out of sight into the dark corridor, Neville was the only one left behind. He hesitated, what would happen to them? Then, he nearly screamed when Luna's white head popped out from the dark and stared at him.
"Are you coming or not, Neville?" She asked.
"Coming, coming." He gathered himself and ran after the two girls.
It was dark, way too dark to even be recognized as a part of the beautiful and magnificent Hogwarts they first saw six or seven years ago. The three friends felt their ways down the corridor, they didn't dare to light up even just a little with their wands, yet they were afraid of what they might encounter at the end. Luna, with her bright grey eyes, spotted a sliver of light from afar.
"Are you sure, Luna?" Neville asked "I can hardly see anything."
"I see it too." Ginny said "Come on."
They sped up a little and after a few moments of Neville nearly tripping himself and Luna humming to a weird, eerie melody, they found a wooden door. It looked like it had been there for centuries, like a breath could take it down and a flick could turn it into splinters. It was nearly closed, the cold light escaped through the gap and shone into the corridor.
They exchanged frightened looks before Ginny stepped up and peered into the room behind that door. Luna and Neville held their breath, anxiously waited for Ginny's answer of what was inside the room. Ginny, who had spent nearly a minute squinting her eyes to look, had her eyes widened in surprise and just swung the door opened, making her two friends nearly die in shock. The redhead Gryffindor ran straight into the room and crouched down in front of a girl sitting in a chair.
Luna and Neville followed and saw why Ginny reacted like that. In the chair was a bloody, battered, beaten and barely conscious girl with long, jet black hair. Her breath was shallow, her head hung low as her body was tied to the chair with rope. Around her, in the cold, damp room were knives, whips and things they didn't even know.
Ginny tried her best to untie the girl's leg, but the ropes were jinxed and they, being students, couldn't find the suitable counter-jinx for them. Ginny's eyes were already brimming with tears at the thought of what she had been through in this hidden room.
Suddenly, she moved. A slight twitch of her finger and her head jerked a bit.
"November?" Ginny asked.
"You shouldn't be here..." November whispered with a raspy voice that they could hardly recognize as hers "Get out... They'll be back..."
"They left, Nov, they left." Neville said.
"No, they didn't." She lifted her head, revealing her scarred and bruised face with sweats rolling down the side of her cheeks "They'll be back. They want information and they won't give up."
"Nov, what information?" Luna asked.
"Doesn't matter..." She coughed.
"We have to get you out of here." Ginny tugged on the rope tying November's left ankle "You're smarter than us, you must know a counter-jinx that can--"
November suddenly let out a maniacal laugh, sending shivers down her friends's spines. She had gone a bit mad, being tortured for months could do the worst things to people.
"Save me? You can't save me. No one can save me. I'm already dead--" With a sudden stop, she pulled herself back to her normal state "Help Harry."
"We don't know where he is right now. No one knows." Neville said.
"You will when they reach out for you. Be ready." She said "Go, now! Leave!"
"But you--"
"Leave! They're back, I can feel them from here." She gritted her teeth "Go!"
Neville grabbed Luna and Ginny by their elbows and dragged them out of the room, running the way they had came through and sprinted back to the Room of Requirement as quickly as they could, as if a Death Eater was on their tails trying to hunt them down. November slumped back into her torture chair, she sighed shakily as she heard footsteps coming nearer, and nearer, and nearer. A teardrop rolled down her cheek, her red eyes stared fixedly at the tattered wooden door.
She had been there for months, tied to that creaking chair with ropes, feeding off trash and torture. She may be hurt and she might have turned slightly insane, she could still remember the last time she met her friends on the Astronomy tower. She remembered what she had told them, she remembered Dumbledore disappearing over the balcony, Snape's cold and harsh face as he performed the most unforgivable curse of all and Draco Malfoy's words as he abandoned her in the claws of the Death Eaters. It was all in her head, replaying like a movie. Maybe it was the reason for her slight insanity, not the physical torment.
The door burst open and there they stood, cruelty and madness emitted from their bodies. Bellatrix Lestrange stepped in first, her wand twirling in her hand, followed by Fenrir Greyback who, unsurprisingly, were baring his sharp werewolf teeth. Severus Snape, the murderer of Dumbledore and Hogwarts's new Headmaster casually walked into the damp, dirty room with his stone-hard face, after him was Lucius Malfoy who was bailed out of Azkaban not long ago, his eyes still bore that haunted look Sirius used to have when he was first out of the wizard prison. They stood in front of November, staring down at her beaten small figure as she glared daggers at them with her blood-shot eyes.
"Do you have anything to tell us, dear little girl?" Lestrange said with her maniacal voice.
"The same thing I have been telling you for the past months." November gritted her teeth "Go to hell."
"You sure have learnt nothing." Snape said.
"I learnt about loyalty." She spat at her Godfather's feet.
"We thought we didn't have to do this, but clearly you left us no choice." Lestrange said with a smug smile on her face.
They parted and a hooded figure walked into the room. He glided with no effort, and even though November couldn't see his face, she could still feel his eyes burning a whole through her forehead as he stared intensively. She gulped as her heartbeats went faster, but she kept her face forward and looked as calm as she could. The man removed his hood, a familiar cold voice chilled her spine and her blood turned cold at his face.
"Good evening, November Avery."
To November, she was officially dead.