The Crown of Thorns was a notoriously painful way to die. The wizarding way, that is. When placed atop a witch or wizard's head, it would dig in its poisonous spines and constrict its red vines slowly, always slowly. It hadn't been used for executio...
The Great Hall was a frenzy of moving bodies. Bright light shattered through the air of every colour, screams piercing the air. Everywhere Eloise turned, wizards and witches alike were falling. The tide was turning.
It was as if the world was moving in slow motion. With each beat of her thundering heart, the world around slowed to a blur of movement. Her hand was slick on her wand as she whipped her heavy head back and forth, trying to find a break in the mass of darkness. But it was a living, breathing thing. For each body that fell, it grew larger and all-encompassing.
Pain lanced through her skull, and her head snapped left, leaving her reeling. When her hand came away from her face, it was coated in a dripping ruby red, and her vision was clouded with a film of sticky something that refused to be blinked away. As if by some unknown force, she turned her head back to the side and squinted at the figure she couldn't quite make out. Their arm raised once more, and she knew she was about to die.
It wasn't worth it. They had failed.
All those months hiding, running, fearing. It had all been but a brief reprieve from the inevitability of loss, death, and carnage.
A hand gripped her shoulder, and Eloise was wrenched to the side with such force that her shoulder clicked painfully, and she fell in a tangle onto the uneven stone floor. She caught sight of red hair and a pretty face she recognized, but it took her a moment to register it was her friend. Ginny Weasley tugged her up from the rubble-strewn floor, and then they were running, knocking into people as they went and tripping over what could be shrapnel or bodies. Eloise didn't look down to check.
At some point during their mad dash, Ginny's hand slipped from hers, and they were separated. Still, Eloise pushed on, ducking between flailing limbs and throwing up Shielding Charms to dodge wayward spells. When she broke through the thick of the fighting, she started to run in earnest, pumping her arms and breathing heavily.
It took her a moment to notice that she wasn't alone. There were others like her in plain clothes, disappearing down corridors along with a few packs of dark-robed Death Eaters that followed.
It was a massacre; she was just one of the stragglers they would eventually hunt down like shivering prey. A part of her wanted to give in to the Death Eaters, Lord Voldemort, the painful burn of her lungs, but she couldn't. She was their prey, but prey still ran, still fought until the last breath. It was in their nature.
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