Evelyn Lockhart

She kept a running commentary on the dresses, unkind without restraint, until the bride came down the aisle and all rose. Then she couldn’t be unkind anymore. Not because dress or bride were that breathtaking, though Mia shown and overshadowed everyone as brides do, but because that moment when groom saw bride was more important than any difference in taste and everything became a fairytale again.

It was a dream....and then it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare she had reoccurring since learning about the last war and the word deatheater. She didn’t know enough to know these weren’t the masks, but neither did half the wedding guests from the reactions and even understanding these had to be different figures then the stories, faceless danger was the terror of the past three years; it was just now getting a physical form. Pandemonium broke out almost immediately, and she knew with a chilling certainty she was going to die.

She had told everyone. She wasn’t going to survive a war, and here war was. Here also was the moment she should find a new determination, so much to live for, a confidence in her own ability and a defiance of fate. She should but she didn’t. She didn’t cast off her heels and grab her wand from her purse. She didn’t start yelling orders for people to join shield spells together and circle around those that couldn’t. She just screamed.

Ed would have thrown a shield around her. Ed would have protected her and maybe he did and she was the one who ran outside the radius because a blast went off near them, a spell that if she  was thinking analytically she would have said had been so far from anyone standing that it was a purposeful miss, that it was meant to herd people together away from it, and she was running without conscious thought even though scrapnel hadn’t touched her—so maybe she had been shielded by Ed or someone else when she froze up—and by the time she stopped she was lost in the different skirmish in another part of the Selwyn grounds and she’d lost Ed completely in the crowd.

She screamed his name once, and then it was back to senseless screaming as she saw a body fall and she couldn’t tell whether it was stunned or dead. Then her feet were off the ground and the scream frozen in her throat as she flew through the air, wild, senseless thought—though not one of doom—racing through her mind that she had been picked up on someone’s broom and they were taking her away, or that this was just a nightmare and the scene was about to shift. Pain blossomed through her head as she hit it hard and she felt something give and rip near the bottom of her dress as she was dragged across the ground a bit on landing. She pushed herself up on one arm, slowly, painfully, disoriented, and touched her other hand to her head. She was bleeding. It was a numb, emotionless thought amongst all the turmoil a little calm in the storm. Bleeding. She hoped it didn’t get on her dress. She was going to have a hard enough time with the rip and the grass stains.

That’s when the determination kicked in. Yes, she was going to have a hard time because she was going to live. Her clutch was gone. She’d dropped it sometime long before and now she wouldn’t have a wand, but she’d rip up the earth itself and bury these masked men. She was a Lockhart. She was better than this.

And she was moving again, not of her own volition. Cold and wet and weighted down with it. God, she was drowning. She was drowning and she couldn’t get air and...no, her head wasn’t under. She could feel the bottom with her feet. She was in a....fountain? This was just like Leo Alvarez throwing her into the pool. Keep your head, get to the edge, then push Tyler in for laughing....or bury whoever was throwing her around. She heaved herself over the edge, already calling out to the earth, feeling the cracks beneath and willing them to widen, but nothing was happening and there were hands on her. She was not going back in the water. Anything but the water. She scrambled and scratched and her nails raked her attacker’s forearm, getting under the sleeve. She should grab the sleeve, pull him in too, but all she got was more skin and a few looser hairs from the forearm.  

Her head rang again, a sudden roar amidst the already pounding pain, as she was struck across the face and it startled her grip loose. A face, bone white and featureless, a mask loomed above her.

“Breathe for me. Lie still and breathe.”

The pounding retreated. The sounds of the battle retreated. A delicious fog settled. She did need to rest. Take a deep breath. It sounded relaxing. It would help her refocus.

Part of her fought it, part of her knew she was going back in the water. She screamed but it was soundless; it did no good....but her closed fist would. It would be too late for her but Evelyn Lockhart for once had something aurors wouldn’t be able to help but listen to. Closed in the creases of her palm, two hairs and in her nail beds, trace blood.