Venom & Virtue

chapter 59

Everything seemed to happen in a split second; Bellatrix uttering the killing curse, the green spark darting through the air towards Draco, and then, a thunderous explosion.

I heard it first, and then felt the impact, my body thrown backwards like a rag doll along the ground, tumbling and rolling until I lost all sense of direction.

When I finally came to a stop, it took countless seconds to register anything.

For a moment I wondered if I was dead, the mysterious force having wiped me out in an instant, but as I felt the hard wood of the floor below me, I knew I'd survived it.

I groaned loudly, pain shooting across my body, the amalgamation of Bellatrix's torture and the bomb that seemed to have detonated around me.

Beyond the high, shrill ringing of my ears, I managed to decipher a cacophony of shouts and screams, terror and confusion all around.

I tried to raise my head, slowly lifting it as coughs racked through my chest, the cement dust thick in the air.

My eyes widened in shock as I took in the sight surrounding my form; chaos, so much chaos, the very definition of pandemonium spread around across the atrium.

The first obvious difference was the sheer state of the building; huge cracks in the tiled walls, missing chunks that had fallen to the ground, shards scattered like leaves.

The fountain in the middle had tumbled inwards upon itself, the golden statues half-submerged in the blue water like the architecture of Atlantis.

A heavy cloud of smoke hung everywhere, making it difficult to decipher the far reaches of the space, my eyes stinging from the viscosity of it.

At the very least, everyone seemed to be alive; the brigade stumbling to their feet, pulling wands from their pockets as they searched for an understanding of what had happened, disorientated.

My gaze dragged towards the source of the screams, the captive woman and children coughing and crying as they desperately reached for one another, huddling in their families for safety.

That's when I noticed no one was bound by the magical handcuffs anymore, their wrists free to move.

I looked down at my own hands, relieved to see that I'd been released too, the impact of the blast seeming to have sabotaged the magic.

There was blood all over my palms, caused by Bellatrix's handiwork across my forearms, the red darker than it should have been, almost black and oil-like in appearance as the flickering light hit it.

I frowned, confused and dizzy as I raised my body to its knees, my eyes swivelling wildly in search of Draco, eventually locking onto him a fair distance away.

One thing was definite, even through the haze of dust, he was alive, very much alive as he struggled to his feet, reaching for his wand that had fallen a few inches nearby.

Bellatrix wasn't far from him either, coughing and spluttering as she looked around for the culprit of the detonation, her eyes swivelling in a delirious manner.

And that's when I spotted them, their forms eerie as the smoke slowly began to settle against the ground, illuminated oddly like angels.

Dumbledore with his wand raised, Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and a smattering of other wizards and witches that were entirely unfamiliar to me, twenty at least in total.

They wasted no time waiting for the brigade to react to their presence, instead raising their arms and beginning to fire unspoken spells towards them, a rainbow of light as the sparks bolted across the atrium.