Chapter 5 -- Captive Child
Dec. 6th, 2006 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleidoplexTitle: The Devil's Due
Rating: NC17 (eventually)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary: Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N: Many thanks to my betas, Selenya and Bneuensc. Thanks also to Selenya, who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
Avery finished his speech, then shoved Granger up the stairs towards his room.
She was his prize. Oh, he’d have to turn her over to the Dark Lord tonight, and she’d have to be in relatively undamaged condition, but he was the one who had tracked her down, hunting her for months. Most of Voldemort’s supporters thought her dead, but in truth she was the last living symbol of resistance. With her capture and death, the Dark Lord’s power would be secure. And it was Avery who had accomplished it, not that crazy LeStrange bitch (a right nutter, she was), the increasingly incompetent Malfoy, or the treacherous Severus Snape (Avery still didn’t trust that bastard), but him, a second-generation Death Eater and son to Voldemort’s first supporter. In reward, to him was given the honor of making sure she was primed for her presentation to the Dark Lord.
He hoped she was a screamer.
Opening the door to the room he regularly used for his diversions, he ushered the bound girl in, shoving her forward onto the wooden bedframe. The new proprietor of the Cauldron always made sure to remove the mattress for him; a simple scourgify charm could only clean up so much blood.
“Are you going to rape me?”
The loud-mouthed bitch hadn’t stayed silent for more than two minutes since he caught her. He spared her a sneer as he swept off his cloak and hung it on a hook. He pulled out a dark velvet bundle and moved towards the bed.
“No. I’m not. Unlike Malfoy, I don’t fancy fucking animals…or vermin.”
He unrolled the bundle on the bedside table, his hand lightly, lovingly skimming over the implements nestled in the black. They were beautiful – gleaming steel blades of different lengths and widths, with handles of chased silver. One of the few Avery family heirlooms. His family tree wasn’t particularly old or distinguished like the others in the inner circle, but it did have a few luminaries lighting it and a strong family tradition passed from father to son.
He pulled out one of the knives, the one that he hadn’t had a chance to use on the last whore before she died. He’d make it up to the blade this time. It was a rather large, single-edged knife with several wicked barbs along its back edge. For all its size, it was satisfyingly sharp. He heard the Granger girl’s breath catch as she saw the light gleam off the silver. She began struggling frantically against her bonds, and he pulled out his wand with his free hand. He hated strugglers. It was so much easier when his patients would just lie still.
Before he could cast the spell to immobolize her, he heard a rustling at the window. Turning, he saw a large black crow flap through the open casement, lighting on the top edge of the wardrobe.
“What the…? Here, you. Get out of here,” he moved to shoo off the cawing bird, slashing at it with the blade. That’s when he saw the cloaked figure, dressed like a Death Eater, watching from the shadows between the wardrobe and the window.
“Here now. Who’re you? How’d you get in here?”
“ ‘Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore,’ ” the figure replied in a woman’s low, sing-song voice.
“What? What’s that mean, then?” Avery’s hand tightened around the handle of his blade. He hated to be interrupted. It set him off his game, “you better have a good reason for coming in here. Did our Lord send you? If not, it’ll be the worse for you. Who are you?”
“ ‘Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore,’ ” The figure cocked its masked head, but at his continued incomprehension the head sagged with an exasperated sigh, “Really, Avery, you should have bothered to read some Muggle literature at some point. It might have saved your life.”
“Muggle lit--?” the clinical detachment he’d been stoking in himself dissipated, and he was left with hot fury. Dropping his wand, he lunged forward, slamming the figure against the wall with one hand around her throat and the wicked blade flat alongside her face. He trembled with rage and excitement as he pressed against her. Bugger wands. He’d always preferred the up and close. Sliding the blade along the fabric of the hood, he slowly cut her mask away. The Death Eater’s hood fluttered to the floor like a dying black bird.
She was pretty, in an Irish sort of way – red hair and green eyes. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Then again, he liked the Irish girls…did them a lot. They were made of sturdier stuff than the English, lasted longer. That was probably why she looked so familiar. He heard the Granger girl gasp behind him and he spared her a brief glance.
She was staring at the woman, cow-eyes wide and jaw slack-open. Probably hoping he’d do the woman first and give her a little more time. Not a bad idea, that. It would take the edge off, so that he’d be sure not to damage the Dark Lord’s prize too much. Plus, Granger was panting in uneven, wheezing breaths. He should have known. Not a screamer, that one. A breather. The worst sort, really, all that gasping and huffing. Like cutting open a great big bellows. Not a bit of satisfaction in them. He turned his attention back to the woman he had pinned to the wall. Despite his rough grip at her throat, she was smiling slightly at him, completely still and serene. Ah, now this one, she’d try not to scream, but he knew eventually he could pull it from her like sweet music.
He moved his knife to her throat and quickly searched her with his free hand, but she had nothing, no wand or weapon, just layers and layers of black velvet. She smiled the entire time his hand groped her body. Once he was sure she was clean, he slid his hand into the hair at her nape to steady her head, smiling back at her.
“Pathetic rescue attempt, my dear. What, did you think I wouldn’t know right off you weren’t really a Death Eater?” He thrust her more firmly against the wall, but her smile just widened, “Oh, you like that, do you?” The knife slid up to graze her cheek and he leaned close to whisper, “Well, I’ll give you something to smile about.”
The mudblood on the bed gave a choked gurgle, but the redhead’s eyes just widened slightly as he carved her a smile from ear to ear. Her flesh parted so easily before the silver edge of the blade, just the slightest bit of resistance. The blood wept like warm satin over his hand. He began laughing for the sheer joy of it, but his exultation was cut short when she threw back her head and began laughing with him, mouth open too wide, slit cheeks gaping, blood streaming down her throat to soak the darkness of her cloak. Unnerved, he pushed away from her, stumbling back several steps.
Her head jerked forward again, her mouth clapping shut by the force of the movement. The wounds he’d carved across her face began to knit together. When she smiled again, her cheeks were whole and unblemished, only the blood that smeared across them stood as proof that he’d sliced her.
“What is this?” He whispered.
“I’ll tell you what it isn’t, Avery,” her smile dropped, and suddenly he knew where he’d seen those piercing green eyes before, “it isn’t your lucky day.”
With a mad roar, he rushed forward to skewer her. It seemed as if she was just going to stand there and let him stick her, but then he heard the shouted ~Impedimentia~ behind him, and felt the familiar torpor overtake his legs. He toppled to the floor in his headlong rush. In an instant, the woman had darted forward, catching up his bloodied knife and skewering his right hand to the wooden floorboards with it. Moments later, his left hand was skewered by another of his blades, and she was straddling him, the rest of the velvet bundle draped across his stomach. The filthy mudblood was huddled on the floor, his discarded wand in her bound hands, which were twisted to one side of her so she could train it on him. She was still staring at the green-eyed woman like she was a ghost, but now he knew why. Granger’s hesitant whisper was all the confirmation he needed.
“You…you’re Lily Potter.”
Avery lay panting, the edges of his vision beginning to buzz white with the pain from his hands. It was true. He recognized her from school. It couldn’t be, but it was Lily Evans.
The red-haired woman who couldn’t be Evans but somehow was rose from her straddling position. She moved over to the Dark Lord’s prize, the prize that Avery had worked so hard to win, and cut her free with his own blades. He snarled at this and began struggling, but the effort only made the white buzzing at the edge of his senses ring more loudly. Evans looked over to him, and her face was as cold as any Death Eater’s.
“I’m only letting you keep your tongue because I want information. If you keep this up, I’ll cut it out like I did Nott’s.”
His struggles subsided, and he began panting to keep from passing out. He vaguely realized that Granger was prattling questions while Evans kneeled beside him and examined his precious heirlooms.
“How…how can this be? You’re really here. You saved me. Are you here to stop Voldemort? How are you alive? Everyone thought you were dead? How is this possible? Is Harry alive too?”
Evans looked up again, and whatever look was in her eyes, it shut Granger up.
“You knew Harry?”
Granger knelt down on his other side. His breathing had eased, the pain had subsided, but everything around him had a strange, muffled quality, as if he was wrapped in cotton. He noticed that Granger was crying. She hadn’t cried once the entire time since he’d taken her captive, and now she was crying? Bitch.
“He…he was my best friend.”
Evan’s face took on a strange, hungry expression, “Show me.”
“Show…what? I…I don’t know how—” but Evans was already reaching across him to the girl, brushing her bloody hands over the younger girl’s bushy hair. Nothing happened to Granger, but Evans suddenly gasped, her eyes clamping shut, her fingers tangling in the girl’s hair. She began trembling, then shaking. Then she was pulling away with a ragged breath. A tear formed and ran down her cheek.
“Enough,” she whispered, trying to wipe the tear away. She only succeeded in smearing it into the blood. She looked up at Granger, then back down at him. Picking up a knife, she began slicing away his clothing with calm deliberation.
“You should leave now,” she told Granger, “Harry is dead. And so is everyone who killed him,” Avery shuddered as she laid the cold scalpel against his cheek. Suddenly, the intensity of those green eyes was entirely focused on him, “some of them just don’t know it yet.”
He heard Granger scrambling to get out of the room, but he couldn’t look away from those eyes. His death had finally come for him, and he couldn’t look away.
“Now,” she said when they were alone, “I believe we were learning to smile…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Notes: The two lines that Lily quotes are of course from Poe’s “The Raven” (can one do a Crow fic without it?). I won’t include a lot of poetry quotes, but in my mind a Crow story just isn’t a Crow story without it. It lends to the gothangst atmosphere.
Lily’s next to last line is a close paraphrase of Eric Draven’s line from the original Crow movie, “They’re all dead. They just don’t know it yet.” For the record, I will always try to write my own dialogue, rather than quote or paraphrase from any of the canon texts. In this particular case, I just really think this line resonates with the larger thematics of the Crow story, and I can’t think of a cooler way to say it. Unfortunately, I am not a very cool person, and I can’t come up with dialogue nearly as cool as some of the lines from the comic book or original film. That’s why I’m writing a Harry Potter/Crow crossover. I’m way cooler than the characters in Harry Potter!
Rating: NC17 (eventually)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary: Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N: Many thanks to my betas, Selenya and Bneuensc. Thanks also to Selenya, who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
Avery finished his speech, then shoved Granger up the stairs towards his room.
She was his prize. Oh, he’d have to turn her over to the Dark Lord tonight, and she’d have to be in relatively undamaged condition, but he was the one who had tracked her down, hunting her for months. Most of Voldemort’s supporters thought her dead, but in truth she was the last living symbol of resistance. With her capture and death, the Dark Lord’s power would be secure. And it was Avery who had accomplished it, not that crazy LeStrange bitch (a right nutter, she was), the increasingly incompetent Malfoy, or the treacherous Severus Snape (Avery still didn’t trust that bastard), but him, a second-generation Death Eater and son to Voldemort’s first supporter. In reward, to him was given the honor of making sure she was primed for her presentation to the Dark Lord.
He hoped she was a screamer.
Opening the door to the room he regularly used for his diversions, he ushered the bound girl in, shoving her forward onto the wooden bedframe. The new proprietor of the Cauldron always made sure to remove the mattress for him; a simple scourgify charm could only clean up so much blood.
“Are you going to rape me?”
The loud-mouthed bitch hadn’t stayed silent for more than two minutes since he caught her. He spared her a sneer as he swept off his cloak and hung it on a hook. He pulled out a dark velvet bundle and moved towards the bed.
“No. I’m not. Unlike Malfoy, I don’t fancy fucking animals…or vermin.”
He unrolled the bundle on the bedside table, his hand lightly, lovingly skimming over the implements nestled in the black. They were beautiful – gleaming steel blades of different lengths and widths, with handles of chased silver. One of the few Avery family heirlooms. His family tree wasn’t particularly old or distinguished like the others in the inner circle, but it did have a few luminaries lighting it and a strong family tradition passed from father to son.
He pulled out one of the knives, the one that he hadn’t had a chance to use on the last whore before she died. He’d make it up to the blade this time. It was a rather large, single-edged knife with several wicked barbs along its back edge. For all its size, it was satisfyingly sharp. He heard the Granger girl’s breath catch as she saw the light gleam off the silver. She began struggling frantically against her bonds, and he pulled out his wand with his free hand. He hated strugglers. It was so much easier when his patients would just lie still.
Before he could cast the spell to immobolize her, he heard a rustling at the window. Turning, he saw a large black crow flap through the open casement, lighting on the top edge of the wardrobe.
“What the…? Here, you. Get out of here,” he moved to shoo off the cawing bird, slashing at it with the blade. That’s when he saw the cloaked figure, dressed like a Death Eater, watching from the shadows between the wardrobe and the window.
“Here now. Who’re you? How’d you get in here?”
“ ‘Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore,’ ” the figure replied in a woman’s low, sing-song voice.
“What? What’s that mean, then?” Avery’s hand tightened around the handle of his blade. He hated to be interrupted. It set him off his game, “you better have a good reason for coming in here. Did our Lord send you? If not, it’ll be the worse for you. Who are you?”
“ ‘Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore,’ ” The figure cocked its masked head, but at his continued incomprehension the head sagged with an exasperated sigh, “Really, Avery, you should have bothered to read some Muggle literature at some point. It might have saved your life.”
“Muggle lit--?” the clinical detachment he’d been stoking in himself dissipated, and he was left with hot fury. Dropping his wand, he lunged forward, slamming the figure against the wall with one hand around her throat and the wicked blade flat alongside her face. He trembled with rage and excitement as he pressed against her. Bugger wands. He’d always preferred the up and close. Sliding the blade along the fabric of the hood, he slowly cut her mask away. The Death Eater’s hood fluttered to the floor like a dying black bird.
She was pretty, in an Irish sort of way – red hair and green eyes. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Then again, he liked the Irish girls…did them a lot. They were made of sturdier stuff than the English, lasted longer. That was probably why she looked so familiar. He heard the Granger girl gasp behind him and he spared her a brief glance.
She was staring at the woman, cow-eyes wide and jaw slack-open. Probably hoping he’d do the woman first and give her a little more time. Not a bad idea, that. It would take the edge off, so that he’d be sure not to damage the Dark Lord’s prize too much. Plus, Granger was panting in uneven, wheezing breaths. He should have known. Not a screamer, that one. A breather. The worst sort, really, all that gasping and huffing. Like cutting open a great big bellows. Not a bit of satisfaction in them. He turned his attention back to the woman he had pinned to the wall. Despite his rough grip at her throat, she was smiling slightly at him, completely still and serene. Ah, now this one, she’d try not to scream, but he knew eventually he could pull it from her like sweet music.
He moved his knife to her throat and quickly searched her with his free hand, but she had nothing, no wand or weapon, just layers and layers of black velvet. She smiled the entire time his hand groped her body. Once he was sure she was clean, he slid his hand into the hair at her nape to steady her head, smiling back at her.
“Pathetic rescue attempt, my dear. What, did you think I wouldn’t know right off you weren’t really a Death Eater?” He thrust her more firmly against the wall, but her smile just widened, “Oh, you like that, do you?” The knife slid up to graze her cheek and he leaned close to whisper, “Well, I’ll give you something to smile about.”
The mudblood on the bed gave a choked gurgle, but the redhead’s eyes just widened slightly as he carved her a smile from ear to ear. Her flesh parted so easily before the silver edge of the blade, just the slightest bit of resistance. The blood wept like warm satin over his hand. He began laughing for the sheer joy of it, but his exultation was cut short when she threw back her head and began laughing with him, mouth open too wide, slit cheeks gaping, blood streaming down her throat to soak the darkness of her cloak. Unnerved, he pushed away from her, stumbling back several steps.
Her head jerked forward again, her mouth clapping shut by the force of the movement. The wounds he’d carved across her face began to knit together. When she smiled again, her cheeks were whole and unblemished, only the blood that smeared across them stood as proof that he’d sliced her.
“What is this?” He whispered.
“I’ll tell you what it isn’t, Avery,” her smile dropped, and suddenly he knew where he’d seen those piercing green eyes before, “it isn’t your lucky day.”
With a mad roar, he rushed forward to skewer her. It seemed as if she was just going to stand there and let him stick her, but then he heard the shouted ~Impedimentia~ behind him, and felt the familiar torpor overtake his legs. He toppled to the floor in his headlong rush. In an instant, the woman had darted forward, catching up his bloodied knife and skewering his right hand to the wooden floorboards with it. Moments later, his left hand was skewered by another of his blades, and she was straddling him, the rest of the velvet bundle draped across his stomach. The filthy mudblood was huddled on the floor, his discarded wand in her bound hands, which were twisted to one side of her so she could train it on him. She was still staring at the green-eyed woman like she was a ghost, but now he knew why. Granger’s hesitant whisper was all the confirmation he needed.
“You…you’re Lily Potter.”
Avery lay panting, the edges of his vision beginning to buzz white with the pain from his hands. It was true. He recognized her from school. It couldn’t be, but it was Lily Evans.
The red-haired woman who couldn’t be Evans but somehow was rose from her straddling position. She moved over to the Dark Lord’s prize, the prize that Avery had worked so hard to win, and cut her free with his own blades. He snarled at this and began struggling, but the effort only made the white buzzing at the edge of his senses ring more loudly. Evans looked over to him, and her face was as cold as any Death Eater’s.
“I’m only letting you keep your tongue because I want information. If you keep this up, I’ll cut it out like I did Nott’s.”
His struggles subsided, and he began panting to keep from passing out. He vaguely realized that Granger was prattling questions while Evans kneeled beside him and examined his precious heirlooms.
“How…how can this be? You’re really here. You saved me. Are you here to stop Voldemort? How are you alive? Everyone thought you were dead? How is this possible? Is Harry alive too?”
Evans looked up again, and whatever look was in her eyes, it shut Granger up.
“You knew Harry?”
Granger knelt down on his other side. His breathing had eased, the pain had subsided, but everything around him had a strange, muffled quality, as if he was wrapped in cotton. He noticed that Granger was crying. She hadn’t cried once the entire time since he’d taken her captive, and now she was crying? Bitch.
“He…he was my best friend.”
Evan’s face took on a strange, hungry expression, “Show me.”
“Show…what? I…I don’t know how—” but Evans was already reaching across him to the girl, brushing her bloody hands over the younger girl’s bushy hair. Nothing happened to Granger, but Evans suddenly gasped, her eyes clamping shut, her fingers tangling in the girl’s hair. She began trembling, then shaking. Then she was pulling away with a ragged breath. A tear formed and ran down her cheek.
“Enough,” she whispered, trying to wipe the tear away. She only succeeded in smearing it into the blood. She looked up at Granger, then back down at him. Picking up a knife, she began slicing away his clothing with calm deliberation.
“You should leave now,” she told Granger, “Harry is dead. And so is everyone who killed him,” Avery shuddered as she laid the cold scalpel against his cheek. Suddenly, the intensity of those green eyes was entirely focused on him, “some of them just don’t know it yet.”
He heard Granger scrambling to get out of the room, but he couldn’t look away from those eyes. His death had finally come for him, and he couldn’t look away.
“Now,” she said when they were alone, “I believe we were learning to smile…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Notes: The two lines that Lily quotes are of course from Poe’s “The Raven” (can one do a Crow fic without it?). I won’t include a lot of poetry quotes, but in my mind a Crow story just isn’t a Crow story without it. It lends to the gothangst atmosphere.
Lily’s next to last line is a close paraphrase of Eric Draven’s line from the original Crow movie, “They’re all dead. They just don’t know it yet.” For the record, I will always try to write my own dialogue, rather than quote or paraphrase from any of the canon texts. In this particular case, I just really think this line resonates with the larger thematics of the Crow story, and I can’t think of a cooler way to say it. Unfortunately, I am not a very cool person, and I can’t come up with dialogue nearly as cool as some of the lines from the comic book or original film. That’s why I’m writing a Harry Potter/Crow crossover. I’m way cooler than the characters in Harry Potter!
