The Seven {tom riddle}

Chapter Two

The next few months were a blur. Evelyn was in the dark. Physically, mentally, she was in the dark. All she saw, felt, heard, breathed, smelled was darkness, all day every day.

The only reprieve from the crushing, smothering darkness were the few times she was taken Upstairs. They would come down, unlock the door and pale wand light would flood into the tiny room.

She would squint, her eyes adjusting to its harshness, but she never saw who came to fetch her. They would drag her up the flight of stairs, muttering and poking at her, and force her through the big oak door at the top. Then it was 10 paces down a darkened wood corridor, the next left, and through another door. Then she would be in the ballroom.

It was always unbearably bright in there, enchanted candles in shell shaped brackets on the four walls, an awfully ornate chandelier on the high, gilded ceiling, and wide paned windows with rich drapes always wide flung open. The floor was polished smooth, so much so she slipped and slid as she was shoved across it, to the chair in the middle of the room.

They were always waiting for her there. It was always the same. The flashes of red, the cry of 'Crucio!', the unbearable pain, the sharp sting of a knife on her upper arm. It was always the questions. So many questions she didn't know the answers to.

'Where is the wand?' That was their favourite. She didn't know. She didn't know where the wand was, she didn't even know WHAT the wand was. She screamed this every time, buckling under the pain but they never believed her. She screamed and screamed but she never cried.

See, Evelyn got used to the dark. She never got used to the pain, but the darkness became her friend. The pain was hot and sharp and burning, and the darkness was cool and smooth. It was soothing, it was thick and velvety, warming her at night, and caressing her wounds when she was sent back Downstairs.

The darkness whispered to her. It told her when they were coming and to be strong, to be ready, to hold fast. It whispered to her that everything was okay, to hold that seed of anger in her heart and let it grow and fuel her, keep her sharp. She always did what the darkness said.

One day the darkness told her something different. It said help was coming. It said she had to trust the help. It said she needed hope, that she was hope, that hope was dark but she was darkness and she was angry and she needed to trust it.

When the door burst open and the room filled with light, she knew she had no choice but the grab the hand that was held out to her.

She had been expecting an order member, maybe Ginny or Fred or even bloody Harry himself, but certainly not a dark robed figure with taloned fingers. The bony fingers latched onto her wrist, and she winced as they scratched her. Then they were both whirled away as the figure disapparated.

△⃒⃘

When the world stopped spinning, Evelyn sat up. She blinked. She was in a very familiar room, sun streaming relentlessly through the smashed windows, dust blowing in little eddies on the wooden floor.

The wand shop looked much the same as when she'd been taken from it, with the ripped boxes littered on the ground. The only difference was every single wand, every splinter of wood had been taken. Her heart hurt a little wondering what was done to them.

Her saviour turned from where it stood in the middle of the room, sunlight bathing the dark robes so they looked almost brown rather than the black of the darkness she was used to. The figure pulled off its peaked hood.

Masses of curls sprung from within it, crazy, wild curls that bounced with reckless abandon. The same recklessness was mirrored in the figure's smile, but its eyes were as flat as Evelyn remembered: Bellatrix Lestrange leered at her.