Set Fire to Rain

Draco slapped me across the face. The beating and the punishing had gone on for a week now, and I finally decided that I was dead, and that I was in hell. Or maybe I wasn’t dead and he had come back to haunt me, in this place that I was in. usually in a situation, you learn to deal with your surroundings, and you stop crying after a while. I cried every moment, every hour of these meetings, knowing that my Draco is lost forever, and that what we had will never come back.
My arm is bleeding, as I look at it. The words that have been carved there, scars for the rest of my sentence here in this prison. They read “tainted blood” in bloody script. Because I was a Potter. This is why this was happening to me, I was unpure.
Draco stood in front of me, cold eyes staring at me for a long time. Tears ran down my dirt, blood, grime stained face. My breathing was shallow and ragged. If I wasn’t dead- which I think I was, but maybe I wasn’t- I was dying. Because this definitely was not my most lively moment. I wanted this to end. I want to just stop existing, and go into blackness and mourn over my lost Draco. My lost hero, my lost life.
“You’re pathetic,” he growled. I had heard this a million times. “I could never love you, a dirty, half-blood Potter. You’re a murderer. You’re a liar. You’re pathetic. In fact, I’m quite sick of beating you, so I’ll let a friend of mine join me. Blaise?”
I watched in misery as Blaise walked through the door. His chocolate brown eyes stared at me, void of emotion. The warmth and friendliness that I usually found in this dear friend of mine was gone, and I knew that in him I would only find pain. I would find no solace here. I was dead. Or maybe I was alive.
“Blaise,” it came out as a horse whisper. “You must understand…”
“I understand nothing,” he spat at me. “except the fact that you are a traitor and you amount to nothing. You never really could be a death eater could you? Bloody hell, I don’t know where they found you. You should have died with your filthy parents a long time ago.”
And then it began. It began with the simply cruciatus curse, and proceeded forward from there. The burning my arms, the cutting, the bone breaking. Always the same, but never less painful. I screamed. I cried. I begged. Nothing worked on those who I thought had been such a big part of me. I shouldn’t have been crying. As far as they were concerned I was dead. Or maybe I was alive?
It seemed like hours into the torment when I looked up at Blaise, ready to ask him to kill me. He laughed at me for a moment when I asked, raising his arm to cast a spell. Blaise was left handed, so that was how I saw it. On his dark skin, the dark mark stood in contrast, inked on him. My eyes zeroed in on it, and everything seemed to slow down all at once, as I tried to see past the pain, the terror, the misery.
There were two things I became certain of. I had known Blaise for a very long time now. Although he did not deny he would eventually become a death eater, Blaise was not exactly in favor of becoming a death eater- in fact he often saw himself doing other things, although he was already working among our ranks somewhat. But what I knew for certain, was that Blaise did not have a dark mark. He was not officially a part of us. And he looked down on those that joined early, like Draco and I.
The second thing I was absolutely sure about, was that Voldemort did not induct a young follower without consulting his closest followers. I would have been let in on the decisions months before it happened, and Blaise would have to perform multiple tasks to join. As far as I knew- when I was alive anyways- was that Blaise had done nothing worthy of the mark yet.
And then I was laughing. Laughing so hard I could barely breathe, and both of their faces began to falter. They cursed me, and hurt me, but I continued to laugh like a manic woman. Because I knew now. I understood. And now that I understood, I found that piece inside of me that had retreated to a dark corner like a puppy. I found my rage.
My fists clenched and I lifted my head, looking right at my two friends. I felt my rage flow through me and then I felt my power. I opened my hands and in a burst, the chains I was hung by broke. I felt them release my bloodied wrist. I landed on the floor and wobbled for a moment but regain composure quickly.
“You bitch,” Draco sneered and raised his wand, but I blasted them out of my mind, shaking the room in the process.
Suddenly everything was different. I was standing in the same room, but Draco and Blaise were gone. They had never been there. All the hours of insanity, all the visions, all the pain, all the torture was in my mind. Apparently Gregory Bane’s mother had lost her sanity and her well being, but had managed to perfect her skill in legitimacy, the ability to invades minds. She made a very large and dangerous mistake though- not doing all her back round check.
The woman was laying on the floor from the blast, crawling to her wand. I moved quick as lightning, although it made me feel nauseous and grabbed it, pointing it at her. She looked up on me, and I saw in her face that she was going to accept her death. That she would not fight me.
“I applaud you,” I said, shaking my head. “You had me crawling on all fours like a dog!” I flung her against the wall with her own wand. “You had me at my weakest, I was pathetic, nothing but a shadow of misery. Well done, I must say. But you know what? That just makes me ten times angrier.”
I picked her up by her shirt collar then, holding her against the wall. I looked at her in the eyes then, ready to kill her. Her eyes were empty, dead. This woman had died a long time ago it seemed, and had nothing to lose. She had accepted death long before me.
Something struck a cord in me and I dropped her to the ground and backed away, clutching her wand in my hand still. I knew exactly what had happened was my own fault. This was a women who had everything taken away from me because I thought it was the right thing to do because Voldemort told me to do it. The things I had done to this woman indirectly were horrible enough. She had done nothing wrong… the thing she suffered at my hands, were undeserving.
“What, are you too weak to kill me?” she demanded. “Go ahead and torture me.”
“No,” I said shaking my head, knowing what I needed to do after everything I had gone through. “I’m sorry. Obliviate.”
The change that came over the woman was instant. Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and then she looked at me with a confused face. I had erased every single memory that existed in her mind. She was to young for death, and I didn’t think that she deserved to die, although she might have preferred it.
“You’re name is Lily James,” I told her kindly, kneeling down. “I know you don’t know me. You are a wizard, and you can seek help at St. Mungos. I wish you the best.”
I left the newly named Lily James to a new life, free of the memories that would plague her. I felt in my heart that it was the right thing to do, and something told me that my parents would like the name that I gave her. That they would be proud of me. Something told me that Harry would be proud as well.
I walked out into a street that I didn’t know. Nothing about my surroundings look familiar at all. This was not the house I had previously left Lily James in. I had located my wand in her pocket, and left her hers. I pulled my wand out, and thinking of the best memory I had, swished my wand saying, “Expecto patronum.” Silver seeped out of the tip in wisps of light, and my beautiful dragon formed, bellowing into the daylight. “Harry,” I told it. “I don’t know what day it is, or how long I’ve been here- quite frankly I don’t know where I am. But if Dumbledore could figure it out, I would be grateful. Oh, and Harry… I choose you- your side.”