Eloquence.

I was in pain, so much pain. There was something warm trickling down the side of my face and I couldn’t move my wand arm. Glass, there was glass on the floor. I was on the floor. I struggled to remember how I’d gotten there. Everything was muddled up, my head was banging and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth. Then, so suddenly it made my head spin and my stomach twist, I remember how I’d gotten on the floor, remembered that the warmth on my face was blood, remember how the glass had ended up around me. My eyes snapped open and noise flooded my brain.

Screaming, there was so much screaming. Voices begging for mercy, shouting for vengeance and screaming in absolute fear. The voices of my classmates, of friends and boyfriends and girlfriends and everything in between, all clamoring together in the panic that came with fighting a battle that had not been expected. I rolled onto my side, ignoring that pain in my right arm, and I only made it so far before I blacked out again.When I came to the screaming had stopped and horrible silence was left in the room. I pushed my head up to see beyond the couch I had once been sitting on.

Figures, clad in black with skeleton masks covering their faces, pointed wands at the far wall where my classmates stood in a ground. Thirty students and former students verses thirty skeleton faced people; the only difference was that the skeleton faces had wands and my classmates did not. I caught sight of Loyd at the front of the group with the Marauders and Sam, they had placed themselves in front of the others like shields. The thought had my stomach rolling, human shields.

I turned my head toward the window I had been looking out with Loyd; it was an empty hole now, jagged spikes of the glass that had once been there jutting out like teeth. Three feet away lay Will, sprawled out and eyes wide open. He wasn’t moving, his chest wasn’t rising or falling, his glasses had gone missing. I dropped my head to the floor and pressed my face to it, he was dead I could feel it. One look at Sam’s face and it confirmed it. Her eyes burned with rage, her face was streaked with tears, her jaw had set and her teeth were bared, if she had a say in this the figures she was protecting the others from would die and painfully.

A wand stupid, I scolded her in my head, you need a wand to fight them. And then I looked at her, I mean really looked and realized that she didn’t need a wand to fight or to maim or to kill. She’d do it with her hands, she’d do it with whatever she could, she’d do it for Will. I let my head drop again, feeling tired and knowing going to sleep would mean death.

“Come on, Lark. Where’s that Gryffindor courage?”

“I said shut up!”

I froze at the name, at the accusation those words held. Lark, only Loyd called me that, only Loyd would know the actual meaning of my name and then insist on calling me that. Only Loyd would call me out when I’m bleeding from my head and possibly internally and name me a coward. Only he would be stupid enough to say something when they were obviously told to be quiet. Get the wands Lark, his voice whispered through my head and I stiffened, the box on the table Lark.

Ten years ago, Loyd and I had gotten into the books his mother had hidden in the attic. We had no idea what we were doing when we decided to perform one of the binding spells in that moldy old book. His mother had told us to stay away, that evil lurked in those books. Bad magic, she had said in her heavy Scottish accent, only bad magic is written in those books. We didn’t listen, why would we? The binding spell had gone wrong, we didn’t have the right materials, we didn’t know how to say the words. Substitution was a bad idea when it came to ancient magic and we were to young to know, to care. We’d woken up in St. Mungos two months later and if we focused hard enough, we could share our thoughts and ideas in no time at all.

Which table, you idiot, I snapped back and struggled to push myself to my knees. The low rumbling chuckle that Loyd had never done outside of his head filled my mind, Over the couch, to the left. You can get it, Lark, cmon. I thought Gryffindor’s were supposed to be brave to the point of idiocy. I ignored him and looked back at Will, get the wands and probably die. Yeah that sounded very Gryffindor to me. How far to get them to you? I asked my good arm started into tremble with my weight. One good kick, Lark, and get the guy to the right of you. Hurry, I’ll keep them distracted.

He was panicking, I could feel it. That was the thing about mucked up bindings, too much information was passed, things meant to stay in shadows came to light. There were no secrets. I bit back a cry of pain when I had to catch myself with both my arms, Loyd was talking again. Not only that but he was joking, he was making fun of the skeleton faced people, and then he screamed. Agony shot through the connection and nearly sent me back to the floor. Oh Merlin it hurt, but it was diluted nothing like what Loyd was dealing with. I forced myself to keep crawling, one shuffle at a time quiet as I could be.

His voice kept running through my head, Over the couch and to the left. I bit my lip until it bleed. If I threw myself over I’d only had seconds worth of surprise, seconds that it would take me to recover and seconds to get it over before taking down the guy I was warned about. Seconds to live, I hadn’t meant to let it go over the connection but it did and Loyd let out a shaky sounding laugh.

“Seconds, love.” He called out still laughing, “But not to live. You don’t die here, not today. Not if I can help it.”