The Darkest Silence

The Darkest Silence

Even at this, the darkest hour of midnight, I can still see the mad gleam in her eyes. Her raven hair is a mess, and she's sweating, but I can not tell whether or not she has been hurt during the battle. She knows as well as I do that she's been cornered. And we both know that she will kill in order to escape.

Neville's breath is quick and raspy. In the almost non-existent light I can see blood dripping down his left side, forming a little puddle at his feet. Bellatrix has her wand at his throat, and if either of us moves the 17-year-old will lose his life.

In the distance I can hear the screams of the battle, still raging on without us.

"Give me a reason, half-blood, and I will do it."

There's a sharp hiss from Neville. She has her arm around his neck, holding him in a firm grip against her, and as she speaks she draws him closer into her death grip.

"Give me one reason, and I'll blast his head right off his scrawny neck." She whispers. "It's a pity he can't go the same way as his parents. I'm sure they'd have liked the company in St. Mungos. But if it's my life or his.." She leaves no room to doubt whose life she holds in higher regard.

Neville stares blankly over my shoulder and I can see that his teeth are clenched and his fists tight and he is trying not to let her words touch him. He looks different here and now, two years after that battle, when the two of them first came face to face. When I fell to one of her curses, and Sirius fell to something far more terrible than a curse. I do not remember Sirius's fall, but I remember the look on Bellatrix's face as she struck me down.

Such a gleeful triumphant look at the pain she inflicted upon me.

"What do you want?"

Four words, I know she was waiting to hear. Four words, I know I'm stalling for time. Four words, Neville's blood splatters the ground, and her laughter fills the night sky.

"What do I want? Do you take me for a fool, Nymphadora?" She cackles again, and I wince at the sound. "I want a lot of things, but you can't give them to me. I wonder; what will you do to save the boy's life?"

Neville has stopped looking past me now. He gives me a look that is almost unreadable, but I know what he is telling me. No, he is not worth saving; No, he is not important; No, he does not want me to listen. He does not blink as his eyes bore into me with deep, buried fury that seems to have come unleashed since he found out she was here.

I ignore the look.

"Beg."

"What good will that do you?"

Her face contorts into a snarl like an angry wolf, and once again I wince at her sharp words.

"On the ground, filth, or he gets it!" Her lips curve into a twisted smile and she continues in a soft hiss hardly more than a whisper. "And it always does me good to see half-breeds put back in their proper place." Suddenly the quiet is gone as her voice regains its commanding tone. "Move, before I lose my patience and cast something Unforgivable!"

I do not move. Neville's face has suddenly gone chalk white, and all three of us know why.

"Beg."

The ground is cold on my knees, but I crouch anyway, my palms scraping the dirt as my forehead touches the ground, leaving a musky brown mark when I pull away to look up at her, still standing too far away for me to reach either of them, before she kills him.

"Please."

"Surely you don't think that will save him?" She tosses her head, hair gleaming, her confidence returning as I show no resistance. "I expected better from you, little Nymphadora."

She always uses my first name. Perhaps because she does not want to remind herself of my half Muggle heritage that taints her family tree, perhaps because she knows it annoys me every time she says it, or perhaps she no longer has a reason, nor needs one.

"Please, don't hurt him." I tell earth, and I know my voice is cracking, from exhaustion, from hunger, from pain, from loss, from sacrifice, from suffering, from the battle that seems so far away now. "Don't touch him. Please. Please, don't."

"Look up, Nymphadora."

I raise my head slowly, and find her standing several feet closer to me, a smirk playing on her lips, a little hissing laugh escaping slowly from her mouth as she surveys me like some regal queen speaking to a lowly peasant.

Dried and wet blood is all over me, most of it from a serious wound on my scalp. Tear tracks make little clean roads down my face, leftover souvenirs from deaths that no one could see coming.

And I suddenly see Neville, his jaw set, his blood still dripping, his own tears now dry. And in the second before it happens I know.

Though her stance is not relaxed, Bellatrix is caught off guard by the sudden, non-magical attack, inflicted by her supposedly defeated prisoner. The punch thrown into her face gives her almost no time to react, and leaves behind a black eye that almost makes me wince again. Almost.

Before Neville has pulled his fist back from her face I am on my feet, my wand out, my free hand grabbing Neville and pulling him away, behind me as he scrambles to draw out his own wand.

There is a howl of rage as Bellatrix fires the first spell, her aim only slightly impaired by her loss of one eye.

"Crucio!"

"Impedimenta!"

Nether spell hits their intended targets, as all three of us dive for cover, which comes in the way of several large boulders. The Crucio curse blows a chunk of the rock, flying past Neville's head; while my own jinx leaves a scorch mark on Bellatrix's chosen hideout.

As we throw spells back and forth, the rocks gain black scars and lose large pieces from some of the darker curses. As the minutes pass, it becomes apparent to all of us that we are at a stalemate. There is no cover around us except for these rocks, making it impossible to get away safely, most likely what Bellatrix intended when she came this way. None of us will give up at this point, and it seems unlikely that any of us will even hit the opposing person, much less take them down, from our current positions.

Neville throws a disarming spell around the left side of our fortress but it ricochets off one of the boulders and is lost in the darkness. My mind is racing, but there seems to be no answer to my silent question as we waste another two minutes in the same fashion as the previous five, throwing spells, missing, searching for the advantage.

"Stupefy!"

The spell comes out of nowhere, hitting Bellatrix in the back, just giving her time to let out a piercing scream before she falls, her wand flying out of her hand and coming to rest a few feet away.

I stand, Neville beside me, as Remus comes into view, his face a mask, covered in blood. He looks both furious and sad, and I know his revenge is not as sweet as he wishes it was.

He is thinking of Sirius, and of unfinished arguments and unsaid words, and I wish there were some way I could change the look of longing and suppressed rage in his eyes as he glances at Neville, and then at me. And when he turns back to Bellatrix, the rage seems slide away, replaced only by the deepest of sorrows.

The darkness seems to swell around us as my own fury finds its voice at last, screaming silent words of rage to the unhearing night. The injustice of it all hits me afresh and a wave of sadness burns in my throat beside the anger, and I find that I don't know what I wish anymore, only that this is not fair and not right and that I no longer want to feel anything anymore.

Neville stares only at Bellatrix, and I can not look at him for long before fresh tears make their way through the dirt and blood, down my cheeks.

I don't know what he is remembering, or wishing he remembered, but I know the look on his face wrenches my gut as I watch him struggle with his emotions. She is the one who took everything from him, and he is not the one who stunned her. In the end, he did not stop her, he could not stop her, and knowing that sends a tear down his cheek. He will not get his revenge.

The silence is stifling, almost suffocating. I can not break it though. It is not my place to do so. The silence is not our silence, but the silence of those gone beyond. The silence is for lost children, and unnamed heroes, and forgotten sacrifices. It is not my right to end it, and so we stand.

I do not know if you can hear silence, but if you can, I know that is what I am hearing, but at the same time I do not think that silence is this black. Silence always seems to prelude great disaster, or death, or destruction. This sort of silence always makes its appearance before the inevitable moment when a sacrifice must be made. And yet, here and now, the silence is the aftermath. The sacrifices were made years before, and yet the same silence is still here, the funeral theme for something it witnessed.

There is no peace, no calming realization that settles in on us slowly. There is only the knowledge that when it comes down to it, we can not change the things that really matter. The knowledge that there will always be something we can not stop, and that the one thing we can not alter will be the one thing that is worth saving.

And in the distance, I hear the battle raging on, unaware of the silence surrounding us.