The days had been dark and gloomy, an unearthly mist hovering menacingly over the world. But this day, this last day, was bright and sunny. Children were begging to be allowed outside to play. The people walking to work found their moods lifting, their fear abating a little bit. They greeted each other with smiles and lingered outdoors for as long as possible, drinking in the sunlight.
Those working indoors were restless and unproductive, spending most of their time staring out the windows and hoping that this good luck would hold, at least until lunch time.
Remus and Tonks were walking, disguised as Muggles, to an Order meeting. The hurried message they had received had said only that Charlie Weasley had found a lead on Ted Tonks and Dean Thomas and a couple of others in a forest somewhere and that they may need help.
“Do you think it means anything?” Tonks said hopefully, looking up at the bright, cloudless sky. Remus could see her working hard to keep her hair the mousy brown color of her disguise.
“I hope so,” he replied. “If nothing else, it has meant a little bit less fear, a little more cheerfulness for all these Muggles.”
Some Muggles had begun streaming out of their workplaces for an early lunch. Remus realized, suddenly, that there wasn’t really any laughter or much smiling around him – it was simply the absence of frowning, of bad-natured insults, of fear in people’s eyes.
The world turned orange all of a sudden and Remus looked around wildly. For a few moments of insanity he actually thought that something was on fire; that the entire sky was on fire. It was exactly eleven thirty in the middle of the day when the world blazed, for a few moments, bright red, and then went suddenly, deadly black.
Remus groped around in the dark for Tonks. His heart pounded in his chest at an alarming speed until his hand found hers. He waited in silence, gripping her hand tightly. He waited and the minutes passed. Muggles were shouting and screaming all around. Remus waited for the cloud to pass. He waited for the darkness to lift, but deep inside he knew that it would not. The chilling words of a prophecy from thousands of years ago echoed in his mind.
“We have to Apparate, Remus!” Tonks hissed in his ear, bringing him out of his paralysis.
“Yes,” Remus said, “but it has to be right in front of the safe house, so we can get inside the protective circle quickly, without being seen.”
She did not say anything, but he could almost feel her nodding beside him. They let go of each other’s hands so that each could Apparate safely and precisely. Remus turned on the spot, focusing on his destination.
He came out of the deadly dark and cold of nonexistence into a place of equal darkness. He let the sound of Tonks’ stumbling movements guide him. A light went on in the safe house and a tabby cat guided them inside. Minerva did not change back into her own form until they were inside. “Do you have the book with you, Remus?” she asked tiredly.
Remus pulled it out from inside his coat. Kingsley took it from him and McGonagall transformed into the cat again, leaving the safety of the latest order headquarters to lead someone else inside. They stepped through a gloomy hallway to a dining room with a large table. It wasn’t the best place for a meeting, and would barely house all of the expected members, but it had three large windows.
The world outside was pitch black and no one had lighted any candles yet. This had been a Muggle house, so it must have had electricity at one point, but no one had attempted to work it. Remus pulled out his wand and muttered “Lumos!” Those around him did the same and soon the room was a bright beacon against the inexplicable, oppressive dark.
The small and urgent Order meeting became a gathering with more and more members abandoning their work and business to join their companions in their vigil. Word of Ted Tonks and Dean Thomas passed around the safe-house and parties went out several times that day only to return, shaking their heads. If there had been a feeble hope of finding and helping the runaways before it had certainly been quashed by the sudden darkening of the world.
At around midnight Kingsley cast a Patronus. It danced around the room, casting a hazy brightness, and then it was joined by more silvery figures. They lit up the room in a way that a regular wand-lighting charm or a candle could never do. They cast warmth that penetrated straight to the heart. A Patronus was not only a light; it was a defiant symbol of all the hope that still existed. It was a manifestation of the strength of that hope.
Remus grinned and cast his own Patronus, and, beside him, Tonks cast her four-legged wolfish one reminding him that even from his own nightmares and weaknesses others could derive hope and happiness. They stayed up all night together, waiting for the sun to rise.
And waiting for the sun to rise, stumbling around in the rubble, Mat found a sick-looking, but beautiful young girl. Her shoes were all but dissolved, her clothes torn and her arms and legs scratched. Her lips were cracked from thirst. She was hovering weakly on the edge of consciousness. He put down his flashlight on a nearby rock, so that it still cast an illuminating circle around the girl, and bent down.
“It’ll be alright,” he said, pulling out his water bottle. “I’ve got a little bit of water right here. Drink from this and then I’ll get you to hospital.”
The girl’s eyes flickered feebly, opening just enough for him see fear, but she seemed unable to move. He lifted her head gently and trickled the water slowly into her mouth. She gasped a little and one of her hands tried to grip his arm. It was too weak. She looked starved. She looked half-dead.
“No,” Mat whispered. “I’ve seen too many good, innocent people die. This time, I’m going to help. Did you hear me? I’m going to make sure you’re all right!”
Sickening screams and laughter were making their way to Mat’s ears from the heart of the city. It was as if all the thugs and bullies in Cambridge had immediately decided to take advantage of the strange darkness that had settled over the city. With his free hand Mat took up his flashlight and used it to illuminate the area around them. Finally, he found a small alleyway that he knew to be a dead end. It would make a good hiding spot for the moment.
He lifted the girl up and, stumbling under her weight, took her to the less exposed hiding spot. He tucked his jacket as comfortably as he could under her head and stood up, clicking his flashlight off. Something grabbed his ankles and tried to pull him down. The girl’s weak hands had been animated by the fear of being abandoned again. He forced himself not to think or wonder about what might have happened to her before he found her.
“I’m just going around the corner to get you something to eat,” he whispered. “There should be a Coffee shop there and you need something in you.”
He walked into the shop with his head ducked, hoping that no one would have the presence of mind now to look at him carefully and recognize him. He was not going to let the girl die. Mat ordered a cup of soup, a cup of hot chocolate and a bagel. If the girl really was starving he wasn’t sure her stomach would be able to handle the hot chocolate or the bagel, but she could at least have the soup.
Ignoring the comments about where he was going to put it all, and whether it was the last of his money (he had paid with small change) Mat went back out and practically ran towards the hiding place. The girl was still there and, thankfully, still alive and awake – just barely. He put the food down on the ground nearby and sat, cross-legged, propping the girl up on his arm again so she could eat.
The night passed and the sounds of raging destruction and looting continued. The girl managed half the soup before closing her lips tightly and letting her head fall back in weariness. He gathered her dying body more closely into his arms and closed his eyes.
When he had been young his mother had always washed away his fears by reciting passages from the Quran. He had grown into a teenager and rebelled against anything and everything that made him seem different or less cool, but now, waiting desperately for the sun to rise and the destruction to stop with a dying girl in his arms Mat began to recite the familiar words in his unused voice. He kept his voice low and quiet, letting it be a song and a prayer just for the two of them, like a light against the chilling darkness.
And in the chilling darkness the Dark Lord summoned his Death Eaters to witness a punishment. Blaise went to Theo this time, and he saw, in his friend’s eyes the same fear that the darkness had caused within him. They had waited too long with their unsaid plans and their vague dreams. Blaise would never see the world except from behind the mask of a Death Eater now. He might even be the one destined to die that night – a terrible, painful, inglorious death. Even if he survived he would never see his dreams come true.
Now that it was all over, now that dark had settled with such finality over his heart Blaise saw is dreams more vividly than ever. As he walked to the edge of the forest with Theo and Snape he saw protective barriers falling from around a small, but impressive building, a building he had imagined so many times that it seemed to have substance now. He saw defensive enchantments that he had been learning so hard to set up being destroyed by the Dark Lord. He saw Theo running between the beds of patient after patient, trying to send them off to safety before they were killed.
He saw himself standing in a darkened hallway casting healing spells at a first year boy and then he saw himself from Neville Longbottom’s eyes laughing cruelly and casting illegal hexes and the torturing curse. And that second image of Blaise Zabini, the one that had never been, was now much more real than the first.
They had been summoned to Malfoy Manor, but for the first time it was not Draco who met them and led them inside. No one led them inside except a swelling mass of Death Eaters coming to answer the call of their master. The word tasted vile under Blaise’s tongue as he whispered it, bending down to kiss the hem of the Dark Lord’s robes.
The Death Eaters were commanded to stand in a circle at the center of which stood Voldemort and at his feet were four miserable, groveling creatures who had been sentenced to death. Even as he saw the young, pale-haired boy clinging to his mother Blaise knew that it was a mistake. Draco had broken, in his last moments, and was showing affection for his mother and he would soon pay for it.
Suddenly, Snape’s hand came to rest bracingly on Blaise’s shoulder. That, more than anything, chilled him to the bone. The Dark Lord laughed and Blaise recognized the furious anger behind it. Long, thin fingers grasped a wand and used it to magically bind Draco Malfoy and force him to stand upright in his bonds, looking down at his still-groveling parents and aunt.
“What happened?” Theo asked in a whisper. “What did they do?”
Someone, sounding just as frightened as Blaise felt, answered in a whisper from behind. “They had Potter and his friends and they let him escape. And I think they lost something else that the Dark Lord wanted, and a couple of prisoners.”
Blaise watched, transfixed, as Bellatrix Lestrange was tortured over and over. Each time the Dark Lord stopped the curse she would force herself to her knees and crawl, crying beseechingly towards her master to kiss his robes. And each time, before she got there, she would be hit with another Cruciatus curse. Her screams were soon loud enough to shake the ancient stone of Malfoy Manor. Her cries for forgiveness, her obvious worshipful attachment to the Dark Lord, were much, much worse. Bellatrix Lestrange may have possessed an independent mind once, but it had been twisted long ago into a mind capable only of servitude, capable only of loving the hideous creature that was now torturing her to within an inch of her life.
Images of Pansy’s defeated eyes and then his mother’s own strong ones penetrated Blaise’s mind, sending a chill up and down his spine. He forced them away, successful for the first time in keeping his mind blank and impenetrable. Pansy was still safe in Hogwarts and his Mother’s strong eyes would never break unless he did something stupid; unless he, like Draco, allowed the Dark Lord to see his weakness.
When Bellatrix’s body could no longer respond to the Cruciatus curse, when she lay there limp and unconscious, twitching every once in a while, the Dark Lord lifted the curse and turned in a full circle to face each of his followers with those haunting red eyes. “You see,” he hissed, “this is what happens to those who fail Lord Voldemort!”
Blaise felt Snape’s hand tighten around his shoulder and he clenched his fists as the Dark Lord turned to Lucious Malfoy. Several Death Eaters gasped as Voldemort handed Lucius the wand and ordered him to stand. Voldemort pulled out another wand and pointed it at Lucius. “Make her feel the Dark Lord’s displeasure, Lucius!” he ordered, gesturing towards Narcissa.
For one long minute Lucius Malfoy stood rigid, resisting the Dark Lord’s order to torture his own wife. Blaise knew that it had not been simply an order; he could almost taste the Imperious curse in the air all around him. Finally, the man broke and a jet of red light shot from the wand in his hand towards his wife. Blaise’s eyes flew towards Draco’s horrified ones and he kept them firmly there as Narcissa’s screams rent the air.
Blaise wanted desperately for the sun to rise, for a ray of light to penetrate the blackness of this scene. The time for the sunrise came and went and still Lucius Malfoy continued to torture his wife under the Dark Lord’s laughing Imperious.
Something in Draco’s eyes was shrinking back deep inside, like a star in the dark sky fading slowly. The boy stood there, bound and helpless and watched his father torture his mother.
Beside him, Blaise felt Theo begin to shake. He forced his own stiff arm up to his friend’s shoulder and gripped him tightly, determined to hold him up no matter what.
After hours, when Narcissa’s body was even more lifeless than Bellatrix’s had been, the Dark Lord gave one, sharp order: “Kill!” and the life in Draco’s eyes finally blinked out of existence.
“Avada Kedavra!” Lucius hissed with something of the Dark Lord in his voice. The light left Narcissa’s eyes and the last traces of life left her body.
Draco was suddenly unbound and a wand materialized in his hand. He stumbled forward like an animated corpse, holding the wand up. Lucius turned, fear in every inch of his face, and then there was green and he was no more.
“Now, Draco,” the Dark Lord said, finally sounding pleased for the first time that night, indicating that everything had gone precisely to plan. “The real question is whether those two people really were your parents or not… because you see, you will never know.”
A sharp stabbing pain penetrated Blaise’s chest. Draco’s face was a marble mask now. A few seconds ago, he had been dead. Now he was forever enslaved.
“You shall not fail me again, Draco.”
It was a statement of fact, not an order or a question.
And then, out of nowhere several bodies came floating into the middle of the Death Eater circle and they were thrust before Draco. And he killed them all one by one, an insane gleam in his eyes.
Twenty four hours passed and still the sun would not show its face. Jeremiah sidestepped the pools of blood and made his way towards the tiny half-hidden movement he had glimpsed. His soldier’s instinct drove him towards the spot even though he knew that there should not be any life left in this part of the city after the terrible lootings and killings. He drew himself up to his full height before showing himself to the hidden figure, arming himself with his frighteningly large physique since he had no real weapon.
The sight he saw made him step back in shock. A boy, a very familiar boy who had been on television suspected of involvement in the attacks, was desperately clutching at a dying young girl. The boy’s eyes were running with tears and he was whispering the same thing over and over. “I won’t let you die. I promise I won’t let you die. I won’t let you die.”
Jeremiah turned to go; he did not want to be involved in any part of this. He had seen too much of this in the war. This was why he had never returned or showed his face after the convenient assumption circulated that he had been killed in that explosion. He was not made to kill or to watch people die. He pulled his cap over his eyes, but a desperate voice called him back.
“Please help!” the boy said, struggling to stand, to pull the girl up with him. “She’s dying, she’s too weak to move and she’s too heavy for me to pull her all the way to Hospital. Please!”
“No,” Jeremiah said flatly, “you just don’t want to walk into the Hospital and get caught by the police.”
“I’ll come with you,” the boy replied desperately. “I’ll go in there and give myself up – whatever you want, just help me save her.”
“I can’t show my face in Hospital either, kid,” Jeremiah said, looking anywhere but at the girl’s frail body.
“No one looks for the dead!” the boy said staring him directly in the eye. “No one will recognize you in all this. Please, you’re much stronger than I am, I can’t lift her – she won’t survive being dragged there…”
“Who is she, your girlfriend?”
“I – I don’t know. I found her over there. I think she’s starving. I fed her water and soup… please.”
Jeremiah allowed his eyes to settle over her small figure. It was clear that the boy wasn’t lying – there was no way his thin arms could carry her, even emaciated as she was. She was too tiny to die. Jeremiah was not made to watch people die. He stepped forward and gathered her as gently as possible into his arms.
“You stay here,” he ordered. “What’s her name?”
The boy shook his head. The unconscious girl in Jeremiah’s arms exhaled deeply and he waited, with baited breath, for her to draw breath again. It was midday and still the sun was not rising.
