𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘭 𝘖𝘧 𝘚𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝄂︎ ☠︎︎ 𝄃︎ 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘗𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳

𝟻. 𝙸 𝙷𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚃𝚘 𝙳𝚘 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜!

It was dark. But not more than the shadowmancer was used to.

She could faintly hear her father speak the charm before everything went silent. She closed her eyes, expecting something bad to happen.

She waited minutes, nothing came. So, she opened her eyes. In front of her was still darkness. She turned around slowly, feeling the crunch of something beneath her feet.

She looked down. Rocks. A path. Her eyes followed the path. "Alright.. not odd at all. Rocks in a cabinet." She huffed as she began to walk the trail.

She walked for what seemed like ages. But then, she'd made it to a fork in the road. Two different paths. One crumbling at the seams, the other seeming to be blocked.

There were two paths. That's why they kept coming back! It's blocked!

She took her wand out of its holster. The one broken must have been an old cabinet, long since destroyed.

Pointing her wand at the already crumbling path, she shouted, "Bombarda!" Causing the rest of the path to blast away.

"Okay.. next." She looked back to the other path, blocked by a magical barrier.

She holstered her wand back to her thigh. Holding her hands up to the barrier she began to whisper counter curses for blocking spells.

It only took another few minutes before the barrier broke. And as soon as it did, she was stepping out of the cabinet. Into Borgin's shop.

"FUCK YEAH!" She yelled, jumping in the air. Her excitement was quickly cut short with the realization....

It would all be over soon. She'd have to kill Dumbledore.

Esme reappeared at the Room of Requirement a few minutes later. To Severus, only five minutes had passed since he sent her in. To Esme, it had been almost an hour she was walking that trail. "I did it. There were two paths... one falling apart, and the other with a barrier. Time is.. different there. Everything spent so long in there waiting for a path to open that it died and the cabinet pushed it back out." She told Severus, who had been anxiously waiting the entire time.

Draco had burst through the doors just then, only just now hearing from Madam Pomfrey that Esme was awake and out of the wing. "Are you insane?!" He ran up to her, pulling her into his arms and burying his head in her shoulder.

She couldn't help but wrap her arms right back around him. "I did it, Dray... it's fixed." She mumbled into his shirt.

Severus had backed up, allowing them to embrace. Even though a slight scowl had grown on his face. "You two know what this means now, don't you?"

The two teens paused, slowly releasing each other. "This is the end." Esme spoke. "Call them... tell them it's time."

~~

It didn't take long for them to get in contact with Voldemort, and tell him to ready the Deatheaters.

Even less time for them to get there and actually begin rioting.

Esme and Draco had run up to the Astronomy tower first chance they got, knowing Dumbledore had gone that direction. But just before they entered, Esme pulled him up against a wall, smashing her lips to his.

She had heard someone talking with Albus, and hoped that distracting Draco for even a moment would give whoever it was time to run. She would only take one life tonight.

He gave in, for that one moment of weakness.

"I love you. Remember that. Okay?" She mumbled to him as they broke apart, both panting.