CRUEL NINETEENTH

(HER SPINDLE WHEEL)

♡

she's locked in the cellar of some house. She quickly figures that it must be the Malfoys' mansion, considering Bellatrix's cackle, that rings from upstairs to the underground prison. She doesn't know what to do with herself. Partly she's in shock. When she woke up this morning, not once did she think maybe I'll get kidnapped by Death Eaters today! Didn't even cross her mind... And yet here she is... Kidnapped by Death Eaters... How fucking strange...?

And then she remembers the vision. Harry saying that Sirius is in danger, and that she was going to be in danger, too. She is in danger, what is she saying? She's trapped in the Malfoys' fucking dungeon, because apparently there are families that blue-blooded to have a little jail in their cellar... Fucking rich people, Briar thinks, as she gets to her feet. They didn't take the red scrunchie from her wrist — she doesn't know why they would, but she's glad she still has it — and she puts her hair into a ponytail. Time to sort this, Briar.

She isn't going to stay here long enough, to get tortured, or anything like that. She can hear voices upstairs, so she knows she's got to be careful. She closes her eyes and attempts Apparating, knowing full-well they'll be a spell blocking it — and, funnily enough, there is, one that creates a wind, knocking her off her feet. She falls to the floor, scraping her knees, her palms, her cheek. Lovely.

Briar sits up. Right, OK, so, what can I do? She can figure out how the open the door. Maybe then, she'll be able to run upstairs, or climb out of the cellar window opposite the cell she's in, and Apparate from there. And if that doesn't work, she'll make a run for it until it's safe. Or... she could... wait until they come back down, and get their wand — but that seems highly unlikely, considering Briar's only quick on her feet when her inner eye's helping her out, and it's still deadly quiet. It didn't even warn her about the Death Eaters surrounding her in Diagon Alley, it's not working, not because of this vision...

Her brows furrow. She does find it odd, though, that this whole countdown has led up to Sirius and Briar are in danger. It's important, sure, but it doesn't feel that... world-ending, or at least not compared to some of her other visions. So she finds it odd.

And then she hears the cellar door open.

Well, shit, Briar thinks, as she hear footsteps, getting louder and louder. She hears the cellar door close, too, and the footsteps are joined by another set. Briar holds back her tears. The suspense is killing her. She doesn't know what to do. She can't hide, she can't fight back, she's all out of options...

What if she dies?

"Miss Briar Crouch..." Bellatrix's voice echoes through the cellar. She begins to laugh. "Or is it Lupin, now?" She opens the cell door. Briar steps backwards. "There's a lot of people upstairs that are very interested to see a part-Seer, part-beast—"

That does it.

"Oh, piss off," says Briar, fear turning into anger.

Bellatrix tries to grab Briar, but Briar resists — or at least she tries to, struggling so much that Bellatrix can only keep one of Briar's hands behind her back. Bellatrix attempts to reach for her wand, but Briar hits her free hand against Bellatrix's, sending the wand flying across the floor.

She doesn't know how, but Briar's shoved back to the floor. Bellatrix takes a dagger out from her dress, and Briar thinks, you're not going to die today, you're getting out of here.

"This is what happens when brats like you get in my way," says Bellatrix, and she points the dagger at Briar's collarbone. She feels the dagger pierce her skin, ever so slightly. Enough to scare her. Enough for Bellatrix to cackle at Briar's widened eyes. Enough for Bellatrix to hold onto Briar's head with her hand, her sharp nails digging into her skin, as Bellatrix runs the blade across Briar's cheek. Again it only just pierces the surface, but it's close to her eye, Briar can't help but panic...

And then Bellatrix draws back, casting her gaze to the abandoned wand. A never-ending trunk of torture and suffering comes from that wand, and Briar thinks, I can't let her get hold of it... If she gets it, I'll be done for.

She needs to get the wand before Bellatrix does. Once she's got it, she's got the upper hand... Briar tries her hardest to wriggle away from Bellatrix, but Bellatrix grabs Briar by the face again, laughing, "Don't even think about it." Her hand covers Briar's mouth in an attempt to stop her moving... But Briar has a thought. There's one thing that I can do, that'll freak her out, enough to let me get the wand.

She looks up at Bellatrix with narrowed eyes.

And, without another thought, Briar bites down on Bellatrix's palm, hard.

Bellatrix immediately screams and scrambles backwards. She's been bitten by a werewolf, hasn't she, she's too stupid to know that it means fuck-all right now? Might just make her like raw meat, but that's that. But it's done the job — Bellatrix screams out, "SOMEONE GET HER!" but by the time the cellar door swings open, Briar's got Bellatrix's wand, and she's out of the cell, able to Apparate the second she's past the iron bars.

But she still can't Apparate. She'll need to get upstairs, or out of the house. Shit, she thinks. If she goes upstairs—

"Briar, Briar, Briar," says Greyback.

Don't freeze now, she thinks.

She thinks back to her defence lessons as school, and quickly shouts out, "Stupefy!" Her panic at the sight of him must've given the spell some power, because he flies across the room, landing next to the stairs. But Briar can't worry about how close he is to them, as she runs up the stairs, pushing the cellar door open.

She hears a couple of men shout, telling the others that she's escaped, but she's already gone; she Apparates the second her feet touch the ground floor, going straight to Grimmauld Place. Maybe they've got Sirius, maybe they haven't yet, but Briar knows she'll be able to contact the Order if she's there. She arrives in the hallway, and immediately she runs towards the kitchen.

"DAD!" she calls out. "THEY'VE GOT SIRIUS—!"

But Sirius is there, along with the rest of the Order.

"Uh..." she says, frowning.

She begins to sway, about to fall over from the adrenaline leaving her body, but her dad appears out of nowhere, bringing her into a warm hug. Across the room Fred looks up, relief washing over his face. Briar mouths, I'm fine.

"What happened?" says Remus.

"Oh, I was kidnapped but — Sirius, I had a vision, Harry thinks you've been kidnapped by Death Eaters," says Briar. Mrs Weasley moves a chair for Briar to sit down. Both Fred and George cross the room to stand next to Briar. "I was taken because they thought I'd get in the way, like last year... Why didn't they take you?"

"Maybe they weren't planning on taking him," says her dad. "Briar, you said that Harry said this, in the vision?"

Briar nods. "Y-Yeah..."

Fred kneels down next to her, to hold her hand. Mrs Weasley must know, now.

And then, Snape appears, looking graver than ever.

"Potter said that—" And then he sees Sirius. "Oh."

Briar frowns. "I don't get it..."

"It's a trick," says Moody, suddenly. "They're after Potter."

Well, they normally are.

"I don't know where, though," says Briar.

Remus nods. "Briar, you need to rest..."

Briar frowns. "Well, I wanna help."

"You've done enough," says Remus. "Briar—"

"I'm fine," says Briar, and she stands up, but she starts to sway. She sits back down. "I'm fine, Dad. Everything is fine."

Remus looks at the twins. "Fred, George, can you look after Briar?"

But, just as he asks, Snape mutters something to Sirius about his daughter, and George's head whips around.

"Mia's part of this?" he says. "I'm going!"

Mrs Weasley begins, "No, you are not—!"

"I'll do what I want!" says George.

Remus tries, "Fred, could you please look after—?"

"No, we're going!" says Briar, and she turns to the twins. Fred looks as if he was waiting for Briar's response to decide what he was going to say, and he stands up, nodding.

"Well, what, if it's Harry, then it's Ron too!" says Fred. "Maybe Ginny, too!"

"Our friends are in trouble!" says George. Briar knows he means Mia, but the comment's true nonetheless. "Do you think we're gonna sit back?"

"You said we could be in the Order now!" says Fred.

"Woah, woah, woah, how come I'm not in the Order?" says Briar, turning to Remus.

Remus sighs. "Because they left school before you—"

"So I'm in the Order now?" says Briar.

Remus frowns. "N—"

"Brilliant, so, us three in the Order" — she motions to herself and the twins, "— are gonna go and help our friends, because obviously that's the right thing to do—!"

"Now!" says Moody, banging an ash tray on the table. Briar jumps. "What we're not going to do is allow children to dictate this meeting!" He glares at Briar, Fred, and George. "You three! I want you out of the room!"

All three of them don't argue. Moody's scary, Briar won't lie... She's also convinced he's still her uncle because of last year, still uneasy around him.

The three of them leave the room, frowning. They go upstairs into the drawing room, and the second the door closes, George's grumbling turns into full-blown pacing.

"I'm not having this," says George.

Fred crosses his arms. "Ron and Ginny—"

"And Mia!" says George.

"All right, bloody hell," says Fred, under his breath.

"Oh you can't talk!" says George.

Fred goes quiet. Briar frowns.

George looks at Briar. "Do you think you could figure out, where they are?"

"I can try," says Briar. "But I had a vision earlier..." She catches Fred's gaze, and quickly looks away. "... So I'll need a crystal ball, or something..."

Luckily the ancient and most noble house of Black is fucking weird, and there's one in the cabinet, which Briar holds onto. She sits down, and tries her hardest to focus. I know I shouldn't have another vision, not too soon after the last one, but please, please tell me where they are...

She sees a dark room, blue lights making the lowest of lights. She hears whispers, her inner eye's voice multiplied, whispering different prophecies and visions... But that's all she can see, so she thinks of something else: where will Harry be, in five minutes? And the crystal ball doesn't show her the blue room, but rather, a room with a veiled archway in the middle, a long set of stairs spiralling up the stone walls. She doesn't know how, but her inner eye says, it's here, in the Ministry.

"I know where to go," says Briar. She knows it's taken a while for her to figure it out, wasting at least thirty minutes staring into the crystal ball "Or... I know how to get there."

"Then, let's go."

Briar holds both of their hands, after checking she's got her wand back.

"Wait, Briar," says Fred. "Why are your lips red?"

"Oh, I bit Bellatrix," says Briar, and she Apparates them into the Ministry.

"You bit—?" says Fred, as they arrive in the room, on the stairs. The room's dark, lit up by the eerie light coming from the archway. Weird.

"Yes, I bit Bellatrix," she says quietly, in case anyone else is in the room. "Because I needed a way to distract her to escape and obviously the hag doesn't realise that a werewolf bite is fine, albeit kinky, when a werewolf isn't a werewolf."

George looks at her oddly. "... Let's... find the others."

Finding the others proves a lot easier than expected, because a series of crashes and screeched spells come from a doorway, at the bottom of the stairs. The three of them exchange a glance, before Briar grabs Fred and George's hands, and thinks, send me to the place Harry's going to be in ten seconds.

They Apparate into a dark room, the glow of a green tank creating light. Briar's brows furrow; the twins immediately spot Ron and Ginny and run towards them. She follows them. Harry's crouched next to Ron, holding a prophecy in his hands. Briar's eyes widen.

"Why do you have—?"

"It's about me!" says Harry. "And Voldemort! They're after it!"

"We need to get Ron and Ginny out of here," says George.

Briar looks down at Ginny. She had been in the dark, Briar hadn't even realised that Ginny had been hit with a Stunning spell, and was now unconscious. Her eyes widen.

Fred picks up Ron, and George gets Ginny. "Briar, will you be—?"

"I'll be fine," says Briar. The Death Eaters are trying to open the multiple doors leading into this room. She looks at Harry, and Holly, and Neville and, shockingly, Mia. "Where's everyone—?"

"Back there," says Neville, but his nose is blocked, so it's bacd dere.

"The prophecy," says Briar. "I can Apparate, but not everyone all at once — and they're about to get in here—"

"So what do we do?" says Harry.

Briar tries to think. "Uh—" She pauses, her inner eye beginning to speak. "There's offices this way. We can get to the fireplaces, then the Floo Network."

"I'll hold them off," says Mia.

George, who was about to Apparate, turns to her. "No you w—!"

"You weren't even there when Umbridge went psycho, you can't talk!" she shouts back at them. She turns to Harry. "You need to go, now!"

"I'll stay, too," says Holly. She shrugs. "I can do Crucio."

"Sweet," says Mia with a smile.

Briar exchanges a look with Mia, who must be scared because the brain tank's glass is shaking like a hammering heart. "I'll come back for you two," says Briar. Mia gives her a thumbs-up. Briar turns back to Harry and Neville. "C'mon," she says, leading them out of the room, and towards the offices.

She tries to open the doors, but they're all locked; she uses magic and sheer force but nothing budges the doors open. Briar, crying out, "No, no, no, no, no!" runs down the hallway, trying each door. But nothing's working. She doesn't know what to do. She thinks Mia or Holly have already been injured, because she can hear Bellatrix shout, "They're getting away!"

"Shit!" says Briar. "Come on!"

She forces Harry and Neville to start running. There's a different door at the end of the hallway, and she recognises it as the door from earlier. It's a way out.

"Through there, through—"

Her vision starts to blur.

"No," she says aloud. "Please no, not now!"

Briar tries to fight it off, because she needs to be able to see her surroundings now — she needs to defend herself. She's a werewolf being chased by Death Eaters, and looking after two kids. She's going to get killed if she stops — or, even worse, she could get Harry or Neville killed.

"Briar!"

She spins around, and it's Fred.

"It's happening," she says. "The vision, Freddie—"

"Briar!" says Harry, panicking.

"Keep on going!" she says.

"I thought the vision already happened," says Fred.

Briar shakes her head. Tears are gathering in her eyes. "That must've been a small one, this is it, this is the vision, Fred," she says quickly, getting more and more panicked. "I—I—"

Fred holds onto her, like he always does, and manages to break the glass of one office door. He unlocks it, and closes it behind them. The small room is pitch-black, so they must be fine...

Briar doesn't know what happens; she doesn't know how she ends up curled up in the corner of the room, the faint outline of Fred and the desk morphing into an awful black mass, but this is it. She knows it. This is the vision. Why else would she be having one, right now? She never has visions after a big one... And if the last one wasn't, then, this is it...

She closes her eyes...

And opens them, finding herself back at Hogwarts. She frowns, because this makes no sense. Why should she be back at Hogwarts, of all places? This isn't even her school... Beauxbatons was. The only reason she'd have a vision about Hogwarts is because one of her old friends is involved — and then, just like that, she hears a bang, a scream, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione through the dimly-lit corridor.

Briar can see the fire in the distance, the bright licks that curl up the sides of the castle. She can see the Quidditch pitch, out in the grounds, lit up with an orange glow. Her heart sinks as her inner eye tells her the date: 1st May, 1998.

So two years from now. Briar keeps on hearing screams and crashes and explosions and all she wants to do is run, but she's stuck to this spot. She wants to find anyone in the castle, and see what's actually happening. But she can't move. Her inner eye focuses her sight on the window next to her, overlooking the grounds, where the fiery glow of the Quidditch grounds slowly becomes less and less noticeable, as the sun rises.