King Of My Heart | R. BLACK

27 | freedom is long gone

When Angela had come to for the first time, she had no idea where she was. It was a relatively standard apartment of sorts. The rooms were rather gloomy though she assumed that was to be expected in the home of Death Eaters.

It didn't take her long to figure out that it wasn't just the home of any Death Eater but the home of Walburga Black. Meaning this was the old home of Sirius Black before he ran away and joined her and her brother at Potter Manor. Which meant his younger brother was here and he did nothing to stop the events that took place in his own sitting room every evening at five on the dot.

It was like clockwork. The group of them would floo in through the fireplace and set to work.

Bellatrix was always first. Her favorite spell was the Cruciatus Curse which she used on Daisy more often than she did on Angela. After Bellatrix, was her husband Rodopholus Strange. He seemed to prefer a rather bland form of torture. He would just apply cuts all over their bodies. The least he could do was get creative with it.

After him was Lucius Malfoy. Something about him stung more than it should have. While they were by no means friends, she had gone to school with him. She was a second year when he was a seventh and she had walked the same halls as him. She had probably sat in the same seat as him. The thought made bile rise up in her throat but she refused to give them the satisfaction of getting a reaction.

That was what she was most proud of. No matter what, she would not scream. No matter how she wanted to. She would wait for them to leave so she could cry silently to herself but they would not see a single thing.

Angela was pretty sure there were more after Malfoy but by that point, she was usually in and out of consciousness.

The process was continuous. Never changing. She had been keeping track at first but after a week, she gave up. If she was going to be saved, it would have happened by now. She was going to die here and she had accepted it. But she would never let them see her fear. Especially him.

When she first saw him, it was rather anticlimactic. He was just like any other man, and rather attractive though she would never admit it out loud. But that was only the first time.

It was gradual, she had noted. His eyes slowly started to gain a red tint to it and his skin started to pull taut against his bones. He was gradually becoming less and less human. He was slowly losing his soul.

She wasn't sure what she wanted more. Death or an escape. Technically, she had an escape.

The fireplace.

It was taunting her. The floo powder was right there. The fireplace was right there. But she couldn't get to it. She couldn't move and she could barely breathe. The worst part was that she couldn't even look away because if she were to turn her head the other way, she would be staring at the limp body in the corner that belonged to her best friend.

Correction, had belonged to her best friend.

She wasn't sure when it had happened but at some point she realized the girl had stopped making any noise and the Death Eaters had steered clear of her. And then there was the smell that had developed the longer she was there.

Angela wasn't sure whether it was intentional. Leaving the body in the room with her. A torture method of sorts. Forcing someone to smell the body of their best friend decomposing knowing they themselves are not far behind. It felt as though she was numb to the physical torture so maybe it only made sense they do this.

But the worst torture wasn't the spells or the cuts or the smell. It wasn't even knowing that she would never see her family again though she had believed that not too long ago.

It was the knowledge that somewhere in the building was one Regulus Black. The one person who could have saved Angela Potter but was too much of a coward to do so. He could save her but he never would.