The Dark Gryffindor

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Continuation of….


Chapter Fifty-one: Dark Duels


Valerie saw peripherally Neville fighting independently. He had a difficult time focusing on aiming at targets because his right eye was still bruised and half-shut from the Carrows’ torture. Instead the future Auror was busy tossing venomous tentacles at Death Eaters.

People were fighting on the second floor now as well. Like an earthquake things started falling from above and there was a great tremor.

Suddenly the entire Great Hall and surrounding passages was full of a dust like fire. Valerie could hardly see where she was going, which was a disadvantage to combat, but an advantage in her victoriously assailing Death Eaters. A stunning spell wrongly directed by a student nearly disabled her from going on.

But the moment passed amid the dust, and the dust lifted just as Valerie could move again.

Mcgonagall was busy transfiguring desks to make into animated fighters. All the other teachers were also fighting but they were just a blur to Valerie. Meanwhile, Valerie could not see Ginny’s fiery redhead in the distance. Valerie knew Ginny was very short and she was probably impossible to see surrounded by a group of tall Death Eaters.

Without thinking it through, Valerie sprung on top of the desk and ordered it to halt for her. The desk listened to her command.

Valerie scanned the surrounding area, now able to see over everybody’s head. There was no Ginny fighting between the Death Eaters where she had suspected.

Something like a bullet wound smote her in the thigh. She toppled off the desk, suddenly realizing how foolish it was. In her desperation to find Ginny or Severus she had made herself an easy target, standing on the desk like atop a pedestal.

Luckily the hex was only a shrapnel wound. It only just grazed her. She saw the wound oozed copious blood but ignored it. There was nothing she could do for it at the moment.

She staggered to her feet. Barely in time, Valerie parried another curse coming her way and then she shot towards the high ceiling. Flying above, hovering in mid-air she had a panoramic view. She was disappointed that Severus wasn’t fighting here.

She saw two students trying to fend off a group of Death Eaters and Snatchers. They were going to lose if she didn’t help.

One of Voldemort’s men panicked when they saw her flying above. For her ability was a distinct advantage over theirs.

Thorfinn Rowle went wild, casting jinxes all over the place. They backfired and ricocheted off the walls.

Valerie was forced to land to avoid the oncoming spells. Some of the spells hit Snatchers and wounded them.

“Get away from them!” she seethed. With an invincible drive she ran toward Rowle. It felt like she could do anything, and she was bloodthirsty for revenge. Her mum was still on her mind. To Valerie, Louisa was like a shadowy remnant of her memories, one of the few bright spots of her childhood. But unfortunately her untimely death had left only the shadow of mourning.

But Rowle had escaped through the throng. It was a massive crowd of the bereaved. Occasionally spotted by a Death Eater carousing through it, cruelly jeering and punching people out of the way.

There was a loud, extrinsic cry that fully awakened her to the reality of what they were all facing. A piercing sound of pure terror.

“My son! My son!” Draco Malfoy’s mother, Narcissa was flitting all over the hall, demanding for someone to divulge his whereabouts. But nobody knew anything at all, and most just ignored her. Her husband was more direct, “Excuse me did you see my son, Draco? He looks like me only shorter” he asked a stocky wizard with bifocals.

“I’m sorry. I have not,” answered the man honestly to Lucius.

Valerie watched the couple go, still desperately searching, never giving up faith that he was alive.

She continued summoning as much nerve as she could, despite the wound in her leg. She had never known she had such tremendous valour.

She skidded to a stop in the midst of battle; (at the moment there was nobody present to fight). From the back of the Great Hall she saw Snape by the entrance, staring at her. She gestured for him, understanding he could not hear her voice in the crowd and explosions.

But he just stood there somber and deathly still. “Severus! Join me! Come back!”

But he had turned quickly away. Valerie wondered what would make him do such a thing. Why would he stare at her and then turn away? And then she thought she had the answer…..It was because his Mark must have burned. Lord Voldemort must have called him back from the battle. This was true, and Snape did not want Valerie to return to his master - he was too afraid he'd use her or worse kill her.

Snape started out to go alone to Lord Voldemort in the Shrieking Shack. He first past the miserable dementors and went on his way to the Whomping Willow. He would take the shortcut he’d known since boyhood.

A high-pitched maniacal scream shrilled back in the Great Hall. Valerie turned at once.

The source of the commotion was none other than Voldemort’s most loyal. The Death Eater, Bellatrix Lestrange. Valerie remembered her from Walpurgis Night. She had been most keen to enjoy the grisly festivities and had insisted that she alone was closest to Voldemort.

Remembrance of this woman gave her a chill. And then, she heard that she’d tortured that little boy earlier tonight. Valerie knew what she’d do.

She sprang to action.

“No! Don’t interfere – she’ll get you too,” screamed an old man with an arm outstretched to impede her. Valerie felt a burst of hope at the appearance of this figure. To Valerie he looked just like the former headmaster. He also seemed to realize how highly dangerous this witch was.

Her shock at this resemblance made her withdraw from entering the fray. She went into the watching crowd instead of confronting Bellatrix. For a single second she had thought Dumbledore had somehow returned from the dead. But then she saw it wasn’t quite Severus’s friend.

Bellatrix laughed, insanely elated. “You will not besmirch my ancestor’s any longer!” It took Valerie a second to realize she was speaking to Tonks. For Tonks was in actuality, Bellatrix’s niece.

Lupin snarled, sounding most unlike himself. He flicked his wrist, but Bellatrix deflected the disarming spell without even use of her wand. Lupin stared at her ferociously.

“Neither will you make a progeny with it.” It took a second for all of them to comprehend that “it” meant the werewolf, Remus Lupin. “Avada Kedavra!” And so in one instance Lupin was there, alive and in the next he was dead upon the floor.

Tonks fell to the ground feeling more defeated than ever in her whole life. “I shall now obliterate the last of this rot! This girl who tries to slither into my lineage!” She reveled in her power over the girl. Bellatrix never took her eyes off the crowd. She gloried in having an audience. There was her theatrical scream of delight at Tonk’s tear-strewn face.

“Avada Kedavra!”

The crowd hushed to see the two dead lovers. It was horrible to see Tonk’s glassy-eyes still full of more tears that would never fall, with Remus cold and dead beside her.

Bellatrix wasted no time. With a powerful spell she blasted people out of her way and dashed out of the Great Hall.

Now that the biggest threat was gone people collapsed. It seemed everybody had lost their energy and will. There were currently no Death Eaters in the Great Hall. It had become solely a refuge for the bereaved.

The walls and ceiling shook, the giants were doing it outside. There was another explosion, an especially loud one right outside. And the dust returned again, descending like clouds.

There was a buzzing sound in her ears and then everything went quiet. It was like an empty void where sound was muzzled by pressing silence. She was temporarily deaf.

Along the way down the hall were rows and rows of people. Lonely face after lonely face. Not one could offer Valerie the solace she craved. She picked her way through them. Her feet crunched on the ground.

The Giants had smashed up every window. The shards of glass on the floor made reflections from the moonlight. And then there was the blood. The amber-coloured liquid had a phosphorescent glow from the moon shining forth outside.

It seemed all had been lost. Valerie could not bear to remember Tonks and her former Professor Lupin right now. Her daze brought her to her mother again.

Surrounded by the dead and outpourings of grief she saw a decayed, gray hand reach out to her. Vividly she saw Louisa, cold and dead upon the ground in the Jackson Avenue home again. A haunting, lilt came out of the body's throat. It was nothing like her mother’s voice in life. Different in death….It was a haunting plea, a call from beyond. ”Help me! Help me!”

Valerie screamed and pulled at her hair. She struggled to come out of the nightmarish vision. She felt like she might go insane. Filled with guilt over her mother's death at the hands of people Valerie associated with: the Death Eaters. Even if it was espionage, it had been wrong. She refused to wipe the tears falling down her face. She let herself go....

She cried and cried and nobody paid it mind. Plenty were doing the same. Valerie remembered something from her past. It all seemed like a dream of long ago now.

A bowl on a table filled with pure water. Her mother's hands again, but now alive and energetic. She picked up Valerie's school robes, so dark and black. And Louisa put it in the bowl to soak.

With love and patience the mother asked her daughter, "How does your clothing get so dirty when you go to Hogwarts, Valerie?"

The Valerie of the past watched her hands come out of the bowl and gesture to her. They were so loving and seemed to rescue her from fear. But they were stained with blood. Valerie felt a pang in the present. The blood reminded her of her mother's murder. She felt like her own hands were stained with the blood of the crimes she had witnessed and partaked in with Voldemort.

And it was even worse to see Louisa smile innocently and benignly. She never knew of the violence of the Wizarding world, having only seen Diagon Alley when it was whole. She knew nothing of the school she let her daughter attend. She might have seen some of it's wonder but she knew none of it's gore....It's horror. It's darkness and yet she had been a victim of it in the end.

Around her more and more people desperately clung to life. Although they were surrounded by the presence of death. Was this all there was to life….suffering? To suffer because of the madness of one? It seemed meaningless now….

Oh, she could never, ever consider joining Voldemort again! Her heart went from gray to light in an instant epiphany. Here amongst this sorrow, awash in despair, it felt like the wounds of her soul had been cleaned. But they still hurt. She could never erase her wounds.

And Valerie rose, feeling restored. She must not ever give up….there was still Snape. He had asked her to promise she would survive, no matter what happened. No matter how hopeless.

She went out the hall and found more duels to occupy her. And so she happily took up arms alongside Colin Creevey and some members of the Order of the Phoenix.


NOTE: Just one more quicky chapter. I’m getting nervous for you all, my wonderful readers out there, whoever most of you are. But don’t forget there will also be an epilogue with a ray of hope. Please review. If you have any questions or comments. Or even just to tell me you like it. Thanks.