A Difficult Night

Chapter 6: Crash and Burn

She must have drifted into a doze, after all, for at some point in the small hours of the morning she found herself lying awkwardly with her head resting against the velvet cushions, in silence but sure there had just been a noise below. Her cat, awoken by a twitch of her legs, was bristling against her, hissing. She ran a hand along its back to soothe it, and felt a tingle of sparks. Hush, she whispered, listening out for footsteps climbing up to her room, expecting Benedict's slow shuffle but still half-hoping to hear the lighter tread which would tell her that her brother had come after all. But there was no further sound. With the unease never far away on these nights hollowing her stomach, she leant out towards the mirror, and cast a swift Scrying Charm. The hallway appeared, and a figure at the foot of the stairs: her husband, standing motionless with one hand on the banister. His head was bowed, and she could not see his face.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. There could be any number of explanations, couldn't there? Perhaps one of their spies at the Ministry had been discovered. Or tonight's mission could have been a failure - which did not have to mean that any of the participants had been injured. Merlin knew, the Dark Lord himself could have fallen. And perhaps even that would be bearable, as long as... The need to act, to do something, anything, to cut off this train of thought, seized her; whatever had happened, she could not simply sit there immobilised. She swung her feet to the floor, went across to the cradle; sketched out signs of protection about Theodore and lifted him up in a bundle of blankets. He stirred slightly, but did not wake. He would soon be too heavy to support within one arm, as she did now, but for now she was still able to keep a firm grip on her wand. Holding him close, feeling the familiarity of his warm bulk in her arms, steadied her, as Benedict at last began to climb the stairs. She even discovered she was humming a snatch of a tune to him, and at once broke it off. Then she wished she had not; there was now nothing to distract her from the sound of Benedict's feet, reaching the top of the flight, making their way along the landing, stopping at the door. His usual diffident knock, her name spoken softly. She called him in.

Her alert stance obviously startled him: his eyes darted to her wand hand and then returned to meet hers uncertainly. All the elaborate props of denial, in which she realised she had never really believed, fell away. Strange, that you could think you had worked through every possible scenario, every script for the event you dreaded, yet at the moment of its arrival the scope and frequency of your rehearsals only made the situation more unreal, as if life were trapped behind the protective glass of imagination. She felt icily calm, almost capable of laughter as she watched him floundering to find the best way to broach the subject though it was clear they both knew what had happened.

"I have just come from the Ministry. The raid tonight was surprised by Aurors..." He paused, as if he expected her to say something, perhaps even to cry out, but she gave him no help. She would show no weakness. "I am so sorry. He fought bravely, if that is any consolation. And he was with Simon Wilkes. Not alone."

He approached her hesitantly, but she stepped back. She wanted none of his attempts at comfort. Of course Evan would fight bravely; to say so was to say nothing. Was Simon dead too, then? The old fancies she thought had long given way before the realities of adulthood and war rose up like smoke to sting her eyes, clog her throat. Oh, she should have been there; she should have been with them. She saw her husband's lined, grey face, the defeated stoop of his shoulders. His very presence, when they were dead, was an affront. What was there between them?

"Will Aurors come here for us, Benedict? I know the house's defences will be able to account for them, easily enough. But I want to fight..." Her voice was high and tight. She knew she sounded like a little girl pleading for a pet Niffler, realising even as she spoke that it was hopeless.

"Isabel, you know our instructions: we must do what the Aurors require of us. They have no proof of anything against us; we will just have to answer a few questions, agree to go into their custody for a short while. They should treat you well, and Theodore. Think of him: if we attack representatives of the Ministry openly, our position in society is forfeit. A life in hiding is no life for an infant. Can I - for a moment...?" He reached out for Theodore, but once more she pulled away from him.

"Deliver him to the Ministry, would you?" she spat. "To those who killed my brother?"

"Your brother died a hero's death, Isabel. Take pride in that. The Dark Lord will see that he is avenged: you must have faith in him."

He too seemed to be finding it hard to speak, each word falling oddly flat. She felt a late pulse of pity, even some shame. Benedict was a good man, had been kind to her. They had been happy, she supposed. She did not resist now as he touched her arm gently. She could see the truth in what he said - it was not his fault that it was not enough for her. She had been able to conjure with thoughts of the Dark Lord when she knew Evan was out riding in his crusade, could even share, sometimes, the aftermath of a successful mission: sensing her eyes darkening as they met her brother's still wide and black with excitement; her own breath catching, harsh and greedy, in sympathy with his. But now Evan was dead, and Simon with him, the Dark Lord was a distant figurehead, only, and the glorious future of which they had all dreamt dim and lustreless.

"Evan would want you to be safe - you and Theodore."

"And what right do you have to speak of what he would want for us?" Her anger flared up again, but almost immediately lurched sickeningly into something else as they heard the deep note of the bell toll from the hallway. Benedict's hand went to his wand, and he gazed down at her and Theodore with despair so clear in his face that she barely suppressed a gasp. She had not thought her husband was capable of such emotion. His reply, when it came, was a low rush of words, nearly inaudible over the reverberations still thickening the air.

"No right at all, Isabel. But would you listen, none the less, if I were to tell you that he tried to keep you at a distance from all of this? Such desires cannot be hidden from the Dark Lord; he called for our marriage to show Evan that he could keep nothing back from him, that the loyalty he had sworn must know no bounds. I confess, I saw your brother's behaviour, once, as reprehensible, as nothing more than self-serving pride, an arrogant assertion of independence. Tonight, though... perhaps I understand him better. So please, Isabel, for him, if for no-one else, will you do as I ask?"

The bell clanged again, more insistently. She stared at Benedict, remembering Evan's excuses as she begged for inclusion, Bellatrix's voice softly venomous in a dark corner, overheard and misinterpreted, "You think too much of yourself, Rosier," the momentary flicker of the Dark Lord's eyes to her brother's face, when first she stood before him. It was impossible even to begin to work out what she should feel, still less think. But there would be time to take this in later, wouldn't there? For now, her decision was simple and inevitable. Evan had always done all he could for her - more than she had known, it seemed.

"All right. I will do what Evan would want of me."

Benedict's shoulders sagged in relief. He summoned a house elf and dispatched it to answer the door, then laid down his wand, gave a weak smile. "Oh, my dear, thank you. Now, what should we do to appear unconcerned? If they were to find me reading to you, perhaps..."

He moved towards a bookcase. She heard the bolts below sliding open once more, kept her eyes on the mirror, where the last remnants of her Scrying Charm still gave a hazy view of the hall. Five men, beginning to follow the elf up the stairs, their wands out; the last, who appeared to be their leader, looking back behind him warily as he climbed. Blood thrummed in her ears. This must be how Evan had felt, so often. She blinked the tears that blurred her vision hastily away. No time for that now. When the Aurors had reached the landing, she turned round, slowly, to face her husband. She would have liked to have said something, first, but she could find no words, and besides, she could not risk giving him any warning of what she was about to do.

"Stupefy!"

Still straightening up from the shelves, Benedict had no chance to deflect her curse. His expression a study in shock, he crashed to the floor, the book he had just selected spinning out of his grasp. The two Aurors who appeared in the doorway at that moment faltered, and that gave her chance to take out one with another quick Stunning Spell before she turned her wand and full attention to the second. Memories of duelling practice at home with Evan flooded back to her. Up and down the gallery, under the appreciative gaze of the portraits of their ancestors. The heat of her rage flowed into her wand. "Incendio!"

The curse caught, enveloped the Auror in a sheet of flame, and he fell to the floor with a hoarse scream. A bolt of light came at her out of the pall of smoke billowing up in the doorway, but she easily ducked it, sent out one of her own and was rewarded by a yell of pain. When the smoke was forcibly dispersed, a second later, the other three Aurors were standing in front of their stricken colleagues. Three wands pointed straight at her. She shifted Theodore in her arms a little so that he covered more of her body, saw their discomfiture with satisfaction.

"Madam Nott, you see you're outnumbered. And you no longer have the advantage of surprise." The lead Auror edged forward into the room. "Be sensible, now. Think of your son... just put him down..."

"And my brother? Should I not think of him?" There was a bloodied cloth covering much of one side of the Auror's face, and she was sure she knew how he had come by the wound. The curse she was reaching for still wouldn't come, and the calm she had preserved since Stunning Benedict was beginning to fray. She took aim, fired directly at him.

But he was quick with his Shield Charm and her spell went awry and shattered a window, whilst two jets of red light came at her from the others. She dived sideways out of their path behind the chaise longue, still clutching Theodore tightly to her, sent out a Body-bind Curse which failed to hit a mark. The old Auror took a step towards her, then another. One curse, that was all she needed. She knew the incantation. What did it matter that she'd never cast it before?

"Av...Av...Avad..." Her mouth worked uselessly. Hate wasn't enough. Passion wasn't enough. Who would have thought it? I can't, Evan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry... For the time it took her adversary to pace three more steps across the room, she touched her lips to Theodore's forehead, allowed herself to breathe in the sweet familiar smell of his hair. Then she leaned out of cover once more. "Incendio!"

"Protego!"

And as her curse rebounded into the chaise longue, so that she had to roll away to avoid the flames leaping up beside her, the yowl of the startled cat as it shot out from their shared hiding-place and Theodore's little hiccups as he began to wake at last almost drowned out the sound of the curse that took all powers of perception from her and left only pain.

"Crucio!"

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