Purple Rain.

Chapter Sixty-Six.

Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around the, blocking their way left and right; eyes glinted through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand-tips were pointing directly at their hearts. Ginny gave a gasp of horror.

"To me, Potter," repeated the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy as he held out his hand, palm up. Harry's insides plummeted sickeningly. They were trapped and outnumbered two to one. "To me," Malfoy said yet again.

"Where's Sirus?" Harry demanded.

Several Death Eaters laughed. A harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to Harry's left said triumphantly, "The Dark Lord always knows!"

"Always," echoed Malfoy softly. "Now, give me the prophecy, Potter."

"I want to know where Sirius is!"

"I want to know where Sirius is!" mimicked the woman to his left. She and her fellow Death Eaters had closed in so that they were mere feet away from Harry and the others, the light from their wands dazzling their eyes.

"You've got him," said Harry, ignoring the rising panic in his chest, the dread he had been fighting since they had first entered the ninety-seventh row. "He's here. I know he is."

"The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo," said the woman in a horrible, mock-baby voice. Harry felt Ron stir beside him.

"Don't do anything," Harry muttered. "Not yet—" The woman who had mimicked him let out a raucous scream of laughter.

"You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"

"Oh, you don't know Potter as I do, Bellatrix," said Malfoy. "He has a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about him. Now give me the prophecy, Potter."

"I know Sirius is here," said Harry. "I know you've got him!" More of the Death Eaters laughed, though the woman still laughed loudest of all.

"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter," said Malfoy. "Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."

"Go on, then," said Harry, raising his own wand to his chest height. As he did so, the six wands of Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, (Y/n), and Luna rose on either side of him. The knot in Harry's stomach tightened.
But the Death Eaters did not strike.

"Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt," said Malfoy coolly. It was Harry's turn to laugh.

"Yeah, right!" Harry said. "I give you this— prophecy, is it? And you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"

The words were hardly out of Harry's mouth when the female Death Eater shrieked, "Accio Proph—"

Harry was just ready for her. He shouted "Protego!" before she had finished the spell, and though the glass sphere slipped to the tips of his fingers, he managed to cling onto it.

"Oh, he knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter," the woman said, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. "Very well, then—"

"I TOLD YOU, NO!" Lucius Malfoy roared at the woman. "If you smash it—!"
The woman stepped forward, away from her fellows, and pulled off her hood. Azkaban had hollowed Bellatrix Lestrange's face, making it gaunt and skull-like, but it was alive with a feverish, fanatical glow.

"You need more persuasion?" Bellatrix said, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "Very well— take the smallest one," she ordered the Death Eaters beside her. "Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."