Escape

“He escaped from Azkaban today.”

The statement was made simply and softly as I stepped into our common room. I hadn’t even walked through the entry way yet. Those five small words destroyed my world in a matter of an instant.

I froze on spot.

There was a long drawn out pause of silence. It seemed like hours, but was really more like seconds.

“When?” I ask. It’s all I can manage as my voice cracks.

The boy was sitting on our couch in front of the lit fireplace. The room was completely dark and cool with the exception of the light and heat coming from the roaring fire in front of him. He had a small glass of brandy in his hand. A sight I hadn’t seen in a few months.

The dark liquid looked as if it were blood in the firelight. He moved the glass on to the stand next to him. I could hear the ice cubes hitting the glass in the silence of the room.

I still hadn’t moved.

He rolled his eyes and took in a deep heavy breath.

“Will you please come and sit down?”

I am still standing in the doorway.

Still completely frozen in place.

Still trying to figure out how I can allow six little words to destroy my life like that.

You can feel the fear radiating off of me.

Smell it in the air.

Read it in my face.

I am terrified.

Completely and utterly shattered.

“He can’t get to us here.” The boy said to me, trying to convince us both that this has no effect on either one of us.

I try to say something, anything. I try to force words out of my mouth. I try to will my legs to move. Neither of which happen to work.

All I can manage to fall from my lips is a small squeak.

The only movement I can make is my book bag falling from my shoulder to the floor next to me.

He stood up and he walked quickly to me and put both hands on my shoulders, squeezing, trying to gain my attention.

“Look at me.” He demands.

I continue to stare at the drink next to where he was just sitting. He shook my shoulders a bit.

“Look at me!” He said with more force.

I look.

“We are safe here. He can not get to us!”

I continue to look at him, but my mind is working in over drive.

He is on the loose. He escaped!

I take a deep breath.

“When?” I ask.

“This morning. They found out at sunrise. I got an owl from mother an hour ago.”

More silence.

“He could be anywhere by now.” I said shaking my head. I was looking at my feet now.

“Hey, look at me. Look here!” He points to his eyes.

I look again.

“Yes, he could be anywhere. But he is not here! He can’t get to us here. He can’t! You have to know that!” He is starting to squeeze my shoulders harder now.

I can smell it on him too. The fear. He is afraid too. This makes it worse.

I allow a tear to fall.

Just one, because if I allow them all to fall, I may never stop.

He wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.

Since we made the decision to get along for the greater good, we actually realized we enjoyed each others company. We actually had quite a bit in common. All those months ago, when we were enemies, no one would have thought that we would get along. People still think that we are faking this friendship. They just don’t understand.

Living together at school was not our first choice. Unfortunately, we became Head boy and Head girl, so it came with the territory. It was expected on my part. The whole school knew it would be me. It was a real surprise when he was announced though. No one knew how smart he really was. He hid it well, with all his trouble making, and the fact that he was so social. How could he possibly have the time to study?

It’s a wonder to me still.

It was that first day back at school that we made the decision to get along. We were, after all, going to be spending a lot of time together. We had to at least try. He had become a different person. No longer that asshole. He had to change.

We both did.

We started off slowly, with going to each other with problems regarding certain students. Then we moved to studying together. He was the only true academic match I had. Once we started going to the library together, and quizzing each other on tests, people started to talk. Some thought I was his latest conquest, and once he got what he wanted, he would drop this façade. Others thought I was trying to “save” him.

Whatever that means.

They didn’t get it.

We actually understood each other better than anyone else could.

“How do you know that?” I ask him. Because honestly, who can really know that they are completely safe?

“How do I know that you’re not him right now? There is always polyjuice, or spells, or charms. He could sneak in at any moment. It happened once before. It can happen again!”

I am panicking. I am instantly bought back to that terrible day.

He is too. You can see it in his face. He is remembering what we both don’t want to ever remember again.


It was a little over a month into the school year. By now, word had gotten around that we were friends. People were already talking about it, we still didn’t care. I mean who’s business was it? We weren’t hurting anyone.

His father had been out of Azkaban for a few weeks at that point. Good behavior, they said. I still say he paid someone off.

I had decided to take a walk by the lake. Just to think and get lost in my own mind.

My two best friends and I had gotten into a terrible argument about my new found friendship with my roommate. They didn’t understand. They said it was wrong. I tried to convince them, they didn’t want to hear it.

I’m not really sure how it happened, but he must have been watching me, waiting until I was alone. He must have snuck up behind me, and hit me with some object or curse in the back of my head. I have no memory of it. Just darkness and cold, and that is more of a feeling than a memory.

It was many hours later when I opened my eyes all disoriented. It was dark out, and I was on the floor of a room.

It looked familiar, much like the shrieking shack. I couldn’t be sure until I looked around a bit more. Only when I tried to stand up, I realized I had no control over my legs, or arms, or anything. I could blink and I could breath.

That was when I became really worried. I had no wand, no voice, and no control over my limbs. What was going on? Who did this to me?

That is when I heard laughing. That is when I screamed, at least in my head I did. My fear had reached a new level.

He had sent a letter a week earlier. Just one letter, and that was it. He had heard of our friendship, and forbid it. He said that I was not worthy of being friends with his son. I would destroy their name. People would no longer respect their family.

Like there was anyone left who had respect for it.

He made a threat. Simply said if it didn’t end, we would regret it deathly.

I wish we had listened. I wish we had taken the threat more seriously. We had laughed at it, and burned the letter. “He can’t get to us here. We are safe.”

That’s what I had said.

I was glued in place to a dirty floor, completely helpless. I had become a victim.
His victim.

It was bearable at first.

I could handle the fact that he was going to torture me. It was expected.

The crucio was horrible. I can remember the pain. To this day my body still hurts when it rains out.

He preformed the curse on and off for what seemed like hours. It had to be close to midnight when he took a break.

He said something about being famished, and he left the room for a while. I don’t know how long it was. It all blends together now. My memory has been altered since that night.

They had to be looking for me by know. I was sure of it. They would be concerned for my absence. My roommate would especially be wondering why I wasn’t there to join him for our usual study session.

When he came back, I was cursed once more. Then he decided he was going to rape my mind.

He did it slowly, breaking into my mind little by little. Seeing all of my memories, and laughing at my embarrassments, smiling at my failure, and seething with anger at my accomplishments.

That is when he began to alter them, change them.

He began to break me.

Once that was done, I was destroyed.

Completely wrecked.

A stranger in my own mind.

I knew who I was, and who he was. I knew what he was to me.

Those things he wanted me to remember. He wanted me to hurt, when he did what he was about to do.

“Well, I have raped your mind. Now I will rape your body.” He smiled a sick smile, and laughed when he saw the panic across my face.

“Oh yes, it will hurt. Quite a bit, as I imagine you have never done such things before. I intend to leave you completely broken.”

My eyes were so wide with fear. How could I not have expected this?

“That’s right. I want to be the one to ruin you. After I am done, no man will want you!” He cackled.

He began to move toward me. Even though I couldn’t move, I tried my hardest. I even tried to summon up the last ounce of magical strength I had left in me.

I had been working on wandless magic for months. So far I could only levitate small objects.

It felt like an explosion went off in my mind.

It was the worst pain I had felt in my head ever. But as he began to tear at my button down, he was thrown backwards, and into the wall behind him.

I did that.

I threw him with my mind.

I couldn’t gain control over my body, but I could manage to throw him across a room.

Only now my head was throbbing, and if I am not mistaken, my nose was bleeding as well.

It took him a moment to recover from his dazed state.

“How the fuck did you do that? Magic like that is beyond your years!” he was snarling. Spitting mad. He was searching around with his eyes, unable to believe that I used wandless magic.

Realizing that no one else was in the room, he began prowling back towards me, attacking at my shirt again, tearing at it.

I had used all I had left. I was completely out of options.

That’s when the door few open, people flooding in. He was stunned with a curse, and fell on top of me.

I still don’t know how they found me. I still can’t believe how lucky I got.

Many before me were not as lucky when they fell upon this man. Many girls were killed, or destroyed for life.

So now, hearing that he has escaped, I am immediately bought back to that night.

Replaying it in my mind over and over.

Becoming more and more panicked.

I took a breath and shook my head.

“Really? You honestly think that we are perfectly safe? That I am perfectly safe?” The terror in my voice was so evident, and tears threatened to come again.

“Because we were both stupid enough to think that we were safe last time around too. Look how well that ended!” I continue, on a rant.

I began pacing.

“He is not here!” He stated firmly. “Dumbledore promised me this time. He swore it. He can’t get to us. He can’t! Not here!”

There was finality in his voice. He was so certain in his words, but his face was full of confusion.

“How can you possibly know that?” I questioned him, because it was so obvious that he was unsure.

“Our conversation was brief, but Dumbledore is well aware of the circumstances. He knows that we need extra provisions.” He said to me. “There were no precautions last time. This time we are better prepared for it. We are better protected.” He finished.

He was working his hardest to calm me, which was no easy task. Not when I could read him so easily.

It wasn’t as if we hadn’t dealt with this sort of thing before. We both had been attacked by this man. It’s the memory that haunts us both.

It’s the memory that keeps us as friends. Our mutual distain for the same man binds us. If only we had realized that we both hated the same person so intensely. If would have save a lot of pain in both our pasts.

“Well if you’re so sure, then why are you drinking? You gave it up once he was locked up again. You said there was no reason for it now that you were safe from him. You didn’t need to hide away in some drink!” I prodded, looking over to the almost full glass sitting on the table by the fire. The ice was starting to melt from the heat of the flames.

“I haven’t drunk from it yet.” He said to me carefully, looking me in the eyes. “I wanted to. I poured it, waited for the ice to chill it. I was about to take a sip from it when you walked in. I saw your face. That stopped me.” There was a pause.

He took a breath.

“I didn’t want to scare you, or disappoint you.” He finished quietly.

“It didn’t disappoint me. It just made me wonder what could have you so spooked, that it would make you want to have a drink again. It’s obvious you’re scared too, so stop berating me for being frightened, when I have every reason to be frightened. I have every right to want to go home and hide away in my childhood bedroom!” I said with what I hoped was a determined look on my face.

We hadn’t lost our passion for arguing with each other. Just because we were friends, it didn’t mean that we had to get along or agree all the time.

“I just don’t want you to be upset! I can’t stand that it was my father that made you this upset. I hate that I can’t do anything to make this go away, or to make him understand that we are going to continue to be friends, that I don’t follow those stupid death eater ways. I won’t any longer!”

He was upset now. He wasn’t on the verge of crying like I was, but he was on the verge of something. I just couldn’t figure out how to tell what it was.

What I needed was a distraction. We both did.

He must have been reading my confused mind.

“Cards?” He asked me.

“What?” I was puzzled. What did cards have to do with anything?

“We need to take our minds off this. Do you want to play a card game?”

“I don’t think that a card game is going to help take my mind off of this, I think I might need something a bit more.” I said as I strolled over to the table by the fire.

The whisky glass still sat untouched.

“Something a bit stronger than a simple card game.” I said. I picked up the glass and swirled it.

I sniffed it, and made a sour face. Then I took a sip, and made another sour face.

It burned my throat.

“What in the world are you doing? You have never drank in your life!” He said in a state of shock, while rushing over to me.

He reached for the glass, but I bought it to my mouth once more, and took another sip.

I tried, unsuccessfully, not to make a face as it burned my throat.

“I think we should make this card game a little more interesting. Every time you win, I have to drink this.” I took another, larger sip to demonstrate, and flinched a bit.

“Every time I win, you have to…. Ummm…. No that doesn’t work because you don’t drink anymore. What do you suggest?” I asked him, while taking a fourth sip. It still burned, but I didn’t make any faces this time.

He was looking at me as if I were Fluffy the three headed dog! “You have never drank alcohol before, you will be shit faced before we finish our third game!” He laughed still in a bit of shock.

“That’s the point. I want to forget, even if it’s just for a night. I don’t want to remember that he could come in here at any moment and finish what he started.” I said with a shudder, and I took another sip larger than the one before. No burn this time.
He just continued to stare at me in bewilderment.

“So what do you suggest you should do for every game you lose?” I asked him with a smile.

My cheeks, I could feel, were already turning a pinkish color as I felt the warmth of the liquor spread through the rest of my body.

He did a sort of half laugh. “I suppose you think I will actually lose?”

My smile faded a bit. Uh, oh.

I forgot that once I taught him how to play muggle cards, he practiced every chance he got.

I never bothered to ask him how good he got.

“Darling, I never lose when it comes to card games.” He smirked, with that devilish gleam in his eyes that he only reserved for me.


*A/N*- Hey guys, this is the first fan fic I have ever posted on this site. It was originally going to be a one shot, but the story just flew away with me, and I currently have about 6 chapters typed. Im am editing them bit by bit, and finally grew a pair and decided to post chapter one. Go easy on me.....