The Potter Twins and the Order of the Phoenix {5}

38. Life and Death

"An awful voice filled the air, I heard a scream in the woods somewhere. A woman's voice, I quickly ran into the trees with empty hands" ~ In The Woods Somewhere, Hozier

Black shapes are emerging out of thin air all around us, blocking our way left and right; eyes glint through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand tips are pointing directly at our hearts; Ginny gives a gasp of horror.

"To me, Potters," repeats the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy as he holds out his hand, palm up.

My insides plummeted sickeningly. We're trapped and outnumbered two to one.

"To me," says Malfoy yet again.

"Where's Sirius?" Harry demands. "And our Dad?"

Several of the Death Eaters laugh; a harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to my left says triumphantly, "The Dark Lord always knows!"

"Always," echoes Malfoy softly. "Now, give me the prophecies, Potters."'

"I want to know where Sirius is!"

"I want to know where Sirius is!" mimics the woman to our left.

"It was a trap," I say shakily, swallowing the lump in my throat. 

She and her fellow Death Eaters have closed in so that they are mere feet away from us, the light from their wands dazzling my eyes.

"No, Haylee, they've got them," says Harry desperately. "They're here. I know they are."

"The little baby woke up frightened and fwort what it dweamed was twoo," says the woman in a horrible, mock baby voice. I feel Ron stir beside me. 

"Don't do anything," Harry mutters. "Not yet--"

The woman who was mimicking him lets 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 the Potters as I do, Bellatrix," says Malfoy softly. "They have a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about them. Now give me the prophecies, Potters."

"I know they're here," says Harry, sounding panicked. "I know you've got them!"

More of the Death Eaters laugh, though the woman - Bellatrix - laughs the loudest of all.

"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter," says Malfoy. "Listen to your sister, she's figured it out. Now give me the prophecies, or we start using wands."

"Let's go, then," I say, raising my own wand to chest height. Harry and the others follow suit, and soon wands are raised all around us. The knot in my stomach tightens. Sirius and Dad aren't here, and we've led our friends to their deaths for no reason at all...

But the Death Eaters do not strike.

"Hand over the prophecies and no one need get hurt," says Malfoy coolly.  

Harry is the one to laugh this time. 

"Yeah, right!" he says. "We give you these--prophecies, are they? And you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"

The words are hardly out of his mouth when the female Death Eater shrieks: "Accio proph --"

But we're just as ready for her; we shout 'Protego' before she can finish her spell, and though the glass spheres slip to the tips of our fingers we manage to cling on to them. 

"Oh, they know how to play, little bitty baby Potters," she says, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. "Very well, then--"

"I TOLD YOU, NO!" Lucius Malfoy roars at the woman. "If you smash it--!"

My mind is racing. The Death Eaters want these dusty spun-glass spheres. We have no interest in them. I just want to get them all out of this alive, to make sure none of our friends pays a terrible price for our stupidity ...

The woman steps forward, away from her fellows, and pulled off her hood. Azkaban has hollowed Bellatrix Lestrange's face, making it gaunt and skull-like, but it is alive with a feverish, fanatical glow.

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