The Little Lightning Girl

8-All of My Plans Involve the Risk of Death

Just having something to do made the days go by faster, and gave me something to look forward to, other than the ever-fading hope for escape. It wouldn't be false praise to say that Pietro and his books kept me sane. It gave me something to think about, while they carved into me with a mixture of muggle tactics and magic. I'd begun to run through the book in my head whenever they took me from my cell, to run through the new words and phrases I'd learned. I'd finished the book in two days, and could keep up with simple small conversations after those first few days. I proved it when Pietro returned to my cell on the fifth day and I gave the book back to him.

So quietly that it would be impossible for anyone outside a ten foot radius to hear, I spoke my first sentence in Russian.

"How was your day, Pietro?"

I heard his quiet laugh and he responded out loud, also in Russian, "Fine, how was yours?"

"A little warm."

The joke was that my tormentors had spent the day firing incendio spells at me, burning me to the point that I was sure my skin had melted off. And then they healed me and started all over. It was a different sort of torture, the healing. It made it so that I didn't know what was real and what wasn't, because when I woke up in my cell there was no proof that I hadn't imagined every second of the torture. I wondered how long it would be before I didn't have enough energy to heal either James or myself.

It was in written form when Pietro responded to my half-hearted joke. And in english.

I am so sorry, Alana. I want to stop what they are doing to you. I am sorry.

More and more, I was becoming convinced that this was the truth, that Pietro wasn't just a pawn in the game we'd been playing. He'd already revealed that he had been the provider of the clothes that I kept finding folded in my cell. That night, he told me of his childhood. He told me how he was raised and how when his parents died they forced him to move in with his uncle, who'd never cared for him. He told me how he'd only graduated Durmstrang three years ago, he was just twenty years old.

I couldn't tell him much, in return. I wanted to, but I couldn't. But I told him bits and pieces, well thought out until I figured none of the things I'd told him were important enough to warrant concern. 

When we were done talking, he slipped me another book, the second volume of Russian for Beginners. I asked him to give the first one to James. I had no doubt James Potter would have no trouble picking up the language. He already spoke French, so he clearly had a knack for linguistics. Those books were the only way to pass the time. As the days passed, we went through four volumes of the language learning books. In the darker hours, James and I practiced with each other, forming fractured conversations. 

I didn't know how long we'd been in here. My best guess was about two weeks, but there had been times I'd been unconscious for long enough that I didn't know if it had been an hour or a day. At some point, they'd blocked the window in my cell. They must have used some spell to fill it with the same concrete that was around me, and it was as if the little opening had never existed at all. And then my days were filled with darkness. I relied rather heavily on Pietro to tell me when it was morning, and when it was dark enough to have hushed conversations. 

And I was tired. Sometimes I barely had enough energy to cry out as they hurt me. And I definitely didn't have enough energy to hope for rescue. It became clearer that our only chance to escape would be if we orchestrated it ourselves somehow, we couldn't rely on people outside to come to us. And so, even through the pain that encompassed me every day, I began to plot.

James's POV

One day, sitting in my cell as I usually did, Alana's voice rang through the thick wall, the first time I'd heard it in five days. She didn't say anything I expected her to say.

"There's a door in the east wing that's rusted shut. It's the only door in this whole place that they don't lock by magic or mechanics."

I was shocked enough that I moved to lean onto the wall between our cells to hear better. I knew I hadn't misheard her, but what she'd said... she was planning to escape. She had no doubt come to the same conclusion that I had, if we were ever going to get out of here, we were going to have to do it ourselves. It was how we were to do it that I hadn't thought of yet.

"When?"

I knew Alana well enough to figure that she'd been planning for a while. We'd been here for what felt like months, so I wondered when she'd started coming up with this plan. I also knew her well enough not to question whether or not she was sure it would work. Escaping was risky, but she wouldn't have even bothered to tell me about this plan if she thought the odds weren't on our side. Or maybe we were just that desperate.

"Three days from now. The guards posted here tomorrow don't guard, they drink in the room at the end of the hall. I'm going to ask Pietro for one last favor, and hopefully, it'll get me a way to blow up the west end of this place. I'll tell you more later."

She revealed the rest of her plan the next day, and I realized that it was highly possible that neither of us would make it out alive. I should've known, seeing as most of Alana's plans involved the risk of certain death. But at this point, dying seemed a better alternative to this half-life we'd been living for two months. She had asked Pietro for two things, the first thing was his wand. And surprisingly, Pietro did not hesitate to give it to her. The next thing she asked for was essentially a bomb. Not a bomb of science, but of magic. Several spells that caused explosions. Over the next three days, Alana and I carefully wove those spells together to become one. The new spell, used with the word praemodo, would certainly blow off the west half of this place.