#eatsmymind

@eatsmymind

           One moment amidst the chaos there was the smallest glimmer of peace.  Bailey wasn’t certain how much time she and Mary had together and even though her heart ached for Julien and she feared every thud of steps outside the door, she was happy to be with her best friend again.  She hadn’t yet begun to wrap her head around the thought that she was pregnant or that she wasn’t certain how she’d be with Julien again or how she and Mary would find a way to be free from this place, but she was trying.  Bailey had to cling to hope of good to come for fear she’d relapse into all the evils that had suddenly come to poison her world.  No sooner had she started to try and gather her feet beneath her did they come for her again, pulling her from Mary no matter how hard she fought, no explanation to come.  She kicked and screamed and threatened with words she’d never dared used before.  When her fear-induced rage didn’t work she collapsed into tears and sobbed, still resisting, just with less swings of her fists and screams.  She begged to be returned to Mary, but they didn’t listen.

           Say we just do a quick spell on ‘er?  Just, knock her out.  That doesn’t constitute as hurting her, now does it?  How can they blame us, I mean, listen to this...

           The men grumbled under their breath as they made their way up a snow-blanketed path with her in tow.

           I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

           Came a voice - a different voice - and Bailey snapped her head up, blinking at the semi-familiar face of Jack Dalton, the wizard who owned the Three Broomsticks.  He barely looked at her and her heart filled with hope.  Even though the school trips to Hogsmeade seemed such a world away, it seemed Thomas had come to confront the two men who stood on either side of Bailey, fingers curled tight into her arms as they pulled her the way they wanted to go.  “Mister Dalton!”  She cried out, tugging against their hold.  “Help!  Please!  They have my friend, Mary!!  You need to go and tell Neil Lockewood!  He’s the Head of Law, he’ll be at the castle, he’ll know what to-”

           On second thought, maybe a good charm to knock her out wouldn’t hurt anyone.

           Said Jack Dalton, face slack of any compassion toward her pleas.  Bailey’s heart plummeted just as she watched him draw a wand from his robes, point it toward her and mutter an incantation that draped the world in black in a snap.  She went slack in the arms of her captors...

           And awoke to the sound of gentle rapping against a wood door.  For a moment it all felt as if it were a strange dream, but she wasn’t certain where she was going to wake up.  At home, in her bed, before her father had torn the house to pieces looking to do the same to her?  At Hogwarts, in the Hufflepuff Common Room, after Julien had broken rules to secretly visit her before the holidays?  In Mary’s home, where she was being held captive by the darkest wizards and witches Bailey had ever known?  But no... none of it was a dream, it was all very real, and when the immediate area came to focus her arm was no longer held by Jack Dalton, but a very different man who’d always struck fear in her heart just by his presence alone.  “Governor Stellakov?”  Her voice was so small, it may have been as if she hadn’t spoken at all.  He didn’t spare her a glance, only stared straight ahead at the closed door before he spoke in a low, beckoning voice.

           “St. Jean.”  He hissed it as though he was attempting to not speak too loudly in case any others were wandering the halls in the pitch black of night.

@eatsmymind with love, because this is grossly overdue

           It seemed it took an eternity, each day longer and more hellish than the last.  Neil only ate what was necessary; he knew with little doubt Stellakov might order he be removed and placed under surveillance should his health fall any lower.  Already his body appeared more thin than the athletic solidity it had previously.  He wasn’t aware how much weight he’d lost, but it was apparent by looking at him.  His hair was disheveled, longer than he normally kept it.  Unruly.  Scruff had grown along his cheeks, chin, and around his mouth.  His eyes were sunken in, heavy bags betraying his recent lack of sleep.  His clothes were wrinkled and held awkwardly off his body, not quite as fit-to-form as they naturally were.

           Day in and day out he drove himself mad doing the only thing he was allowed to do: reading reports.  They might have taken his wand, they might have confined him to a room and kept him under guard, but they couldn’t take his mind.  Using that, Neil dug through everything, took note after not until his hand cramped from pinching the quill.  Ink stained his clothes, his skin...

           “Lockewood.”  A sharp, heavy tone.  Neil might have ignored it, but it hadn’t come during a time when they brought him a tray of food and begged him to eat its entirety.  He rubbed at his eyes, his vision bleary, and turned his head to look at the auror without betraying emotion.  “They left.”

           “Who?” His voice was cracked, his throat dry.  It hurt to talk.  He did so little of it.

           “The Children of Neficus.  They left the manor they were staying in.  We haven’t sent a team in yet but I—— ”

           All at once, Neil moved.  He stood too quickly, the room spun and he stumbled, but it seemed he paid little mind to how weak his body had become.  His hand shot out to stabilize himself on the towers of newspapers and reports from around the globe which now made a maze within the room provided to him at Hogwarts.  His own personal Azkaban.

           As he grabbed his coat he marched toward the flabbergasted auror who was ( quite frankly ) amazed at how quickly the Head of Law was moving, but unsettled by the panic which seemed to have taken him.  Neil’s fingers wrapped firm and tight about his subordinate’s shoulders and if ever he looked a wild creature, it was now.  “What about the girl?  Mary?  Where is she? Did they take her?”  He fired his questions quickly.  Forcefully.  He needed to know.

           “We don’t know, they could have taken her, I——”

           Neil shoved him aside.  “No one is stopping me this time.”  He growled as he stormed past the auror and stepped into the hallway.  A group of men and women stood waiting.  His best aurors, he recognized them immediately.  The look in their eyes was nearly enough to shame him — the pity he saw looking back at him — but all that mattered was Mary.  All that had mattered this entire time was Mary.  Neil, his appearances, the way the Ministry thought of him... he cared little.  “We need to leave now.  Give me my wand.”

           The aurors looked at one another before one stepped forward, the man who’d last come to try and break through to him.  The man who might have been his brother-in-law in a different life.  He pulled Neil’s wand from his coat and handed it quietly to him, looking on with a weighted gaze.  “Neil, you haven’t been cleared for this mission.”

           Neil’s heart sunk and rose all at once.  He was dejected for only a moment and then, he was fire.  He lifted his chin, eyes hard enough to appear as stone. “I’m going.  You’ll have to curse me if you want to hold me back this time.”  His fingers flexed on his wand.  It felt good to hold it again.

           “If the girl isn’t there, you have to come back with us.”

           Neil didn’t want to think about finally storming through the home only to find it empty.  Mary had to be there.  He needed to find her.  He couldn’t go another day thinking of her alone, afraid, likely thinking he’d abandoned her entirely.  He’d go mad if he had to distract himself in reports for another hour.  But he couldn’t say this, not when he was so close to finally being allowed to try.  Neil nodded, pretending to agree to comply if it seemed they were too late to save her.

           Leading the aurors outside the boundaries of Hogwarts, the group disapparated in loud cracks, the world flashing past them before they stood outside the large, ominous appearing manor.  It only seemed that way for how quiet it was, and the state of the grounds which had fallen into disarray during the CoN’s stay.  Neil’s heart crawled into his chest, its beat visible in the hollow of his neck.

           He stepped to the door, opened it, pushed it open with an eerie creak, a soft brush of air as it revealed the dimly lit room before them.  Neil was the one to cross the threshold first, three aurors behind him, the others securing the perimeter.  

( x )

           She’d been afraid to tell him.  Not because of Gideon himself or her faith in him as a father, but because of the faith ( or lack thereof ) in herself as a mother or in general.  Alice was never meant to be the homey type.  Too abrasive, too quick to jump the gun, too obscene in both the way she dressed and how she spoke, Alice was nothing close to mother material.  Because of this, in spite of how much she loved Gideon and he, her ( she wore the engagement ring on her finger, after all, he wanted to truly tie himself to her for the rest of her days ), Alice had already begun to assume he’d turn against the idea of her mothering his child.  He’d never given her any reason to doubt his trust in her abilities, but Alice did enough of it for the both of them.

           But rather than turn to stone or appear in any way disappointed with the news, Gideon behaved the exact opposite.  His reaction released the tense, sick nervous curled tight in the bottom of her gut.  A mist glossed her eyes and the world blurred for a moment as he held her hand and sunk into the cushions of their couch.  Gideon blurred, the hard edges of his frame becoming soft.  Hazy.  She reached with a free hand and wiped at her eyes, cleared them, a smile stretching her full lips as she pulled her hand away.

           He was happy.  More than happy.

          Alice choked back a laugh when he spoke, not in mockery, but because she’d thought the very same.  She didn’t deserve Gideon and his unconditional love.  She didn’t deserve the ring he’d placed on her finger months ago.  She didn’t deserve to carry his child into this world, to raise a piece of him, a piece of her, together.  “Neither do I.”  She managed to say with a sniff, trying to pull back her emotions even while the love between them was so strong, she could feel only it with every breath she took.

@eatsmymind

           Time crawled for the Children of the Neficus and for their pseudo-leader, Ronan Alister.  Anger boiled cold in his gut any time he slept, thinking of the woman whose life had ended when Neil Lockewood wrapped his arms around her neck and stole the life from her lungs.  Was this truly a man the masses wanted to put their trust into?  A man who was a murderer in the worst sense of the word?  If he could, Ronan would have exposed him.  Went to him.  Treated him with the same decency he’d treated her.  Or, eye for an eye; he might have wrapped his wide palms around the throat of his pretty little bird, done the same to her and turned her body over.  How would Neil have enjoyed such a present?  The message would have come across quite clearly then.

           But he was denied.  Dominik Stellakov warned him against any rebuttal directly after learning what Ronan had done when he defaced the girl.  He’d earned an earful of scolding for it, but he was still faintly satisfied in some dark, twisted part of his soul.  The girl was their bargaining chip to sway the Head of Law and they couldn’t kill her, nor would they harm her unless it was to gain some sense of response from him.

           Yet Ronan couldn’t take it.  Multiple times making way past the room she had begun to occupy with a friend he considered committing heinous acts in the sake of vengeance.  How pretty she might look with panic in her eyes, blood on her lips, bruises on her skin, spread out beneath him.  He wanted to ruin her, to leave her a shell of a thing to return to Neil so that when he thought he had her back, he’d only be met with spoiled goods.

           A lesson taught.

           But even that, he was denied.  So Ronan moved quietly through the large house they’d seized on Christmas Day.  He spoke very little and his brothers and sisters tip-toed around him, often going completely quiet if ever he walked into a room.  They saw the change in him.  They knew there was something dangerous lurking beneath the surface.

           The girl Mary had been placed with was taken away to be secretly escorted through the cloak of night behind the barrier around Hogwarts and into the castle.  The Children of Neficus had another brother; Dominik’s bargaining chip had worked when it came to her, though learning of her pregnancy had likely heightened the odds.

           Ronan paused before the door of the room the little dove was kept prisoner.  Alone now.  Alone again.  Against better judgement he reached, turned the handle of the door and stepped slowly inside, closing it with a decisive click behind his back.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me.”  He slurred ever so slightly, complete with a cheesy grin as he happily marched from the porch inside the apartment.  Rather than be a well-behaved guest who waited for the hostess to move into the room before he did, Jack walked in as if he’d been there a hundred times before.  He squinted at the room, looked toward the kitchen and then back to the living space, ultimately deciding the couch sounded better than a rummage for something more to drink.

Rhett jumped and was frankly surprised he didn’t just shit himself.  He whipped around, eyes wide at the sight of an all-too-familiar creature who put on this charade as man, then swept down said human form to realize how nude he was.  Which was absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent nude.

Heat crept up his neck and burned in his cheek, hand automatically flying up, arm outstretched between them to block the sight of the man, even as Rhett closed his eyes and turned his head to the side.  While he tried to pretend he was turned off, his body, on the other hand, was definitely aroused.  This only led to confusion and panic.  He could not afford to be turned on by that... that... thing.