Happy Never After, everyone!
Title: Mudblood
Author/Artist: ???
Recipient: For The Community
Word Count/Mediums Used: ~730/Photoshop, Tablet
Rating: NC-17 for nudity and dark themes
Characters: Hermione Granger, mentions of Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.
Warnings: Execution, Major Character Deaths
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its respective characters and settings. No copyright infringement was intended.
Summary: After a war won by the dark, Mudbloods get treatment slightly different than everyone else.
Notes: This wasn’t my original project for this fest, but I hope it’s well-received all the same. So sorry to the mods for my extreme tardiness! Happy Never After (literally!), everyone!
They raped us, they tortured us, they starved us. They left us in cells so cold our fingers turned blue. Days flew by in that same manner. Any longer, I would have lost my sanity. My humanity. Would have become one of the captives who talked to themselves, who moaned when taken, who ate the rats that passed their cages. Because the executions took place the first of every month, because I had been captured only a week before, I hadn’t been kept for as long as anyone else. And because my mind was strong, because I’d always been stubborn, I hadn’t succumbed like most everyone else.
Even now, I’m not quite sure if that was a blessing or curse.
October First came and they set us painfully on our crosses. Our ankles and wrists were bound, our arms wrapped behind so that they held the entirety of our weights beneath them. They carved the first letter of what they called us onto our stomachs, said a prayer that our deaths help cleanse the blood we soiled, and set our crosses to air.
They wasted no time in putting the ground beneath our feet ablaze. Showed no discomfort in laughing at our increasing cries. They cackled madly as the flames rose and billowed around us, raised goblets when we screamed at the sweltering heat. The people who didn’t wear masks, the people who weren’t Death Eaters, looked on at us in varying degrees of emotions. They were awed, they were pitying, they were horrified. Yet not one of them did a single thing to help. Not one of them made a sound above a gasp of fear or cry of empathy. They stared at us as if we were animals at a zoo, as if we weren’t about to be burned alive in public display for no other reason than just being born. They looked at us as if we signed up to die for their sole entertainment and hadn’t been captured against our wills and made to suffer a fate no living thing, no feeling thing, should ever meet.
When the stares became too much I closed my eyes and lowered my head.
Not a minute had passed since they cast Incenido to the faggots underneath us, and already the smoke had become suffocating. Already the flames were dancing around us, above us, inching so close our skin perspired.
It wasn’t until the sound of crackling became louder than the laughs and murmurs, until the screams of fear started to become screams of pain, that the layer of numbness that had moved over me since the time I’d been captured crumbled like a sand tower in a storm, and my dry, clear eyes leaked their first frightened tears.
The realization that dawned was painful.
I was going to die.
I was going to burn to death.
The tears that fell couldn’t have stopped even if I begged them to.
Then, more than ever, I wanted Ron. I wanted Harry. It was a selfish wish, a cruel wish, but I didn’t want to die alone. Didn’t want to die so painfully, harboring feelings of loneliness so great it made my heart hurt. They’d all gone before me, captured by a quick killing curse, left me to hide and fend and suffer on my own. For the first time in years I felt like I had in Hogwarts; the third wheel to their unbreakable duo. I was always the one left behind, always the one trailing after-the one left to pick up the scraps and clean the mess. Even in this situation, it felt the same. They’d gone and gotten themselves killed, painlessly, effortlessly, one after the other, and not for the first time I wished I’d been with them. Wished I’d died with them. Wished that, just once, they’d included me, too.
It shouldn’t have been so surprising, and I shouldn’t have been so resentful, that things hadn’t turned out that way.
But it was, and I was, and despite it all I wished that wherever they were, they were waiting for me to catch up.
The first flame licked at my toe, and for a second my mind went completely blank. Then it rose, and swallowed my foot, and I tilted my head back and screamed.
And screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
And prayed for death to come.
Author/Artist: ???
Recipient: For The Community
Word Count/Mediums Used: ~730/Photoshop, Tablet
Rating: NC-17 for nudity and dark themes
Characters: Hermione Granger, mentions of Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.
Warnings: Execution, Major Character Deaths
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its respective characters and settings. No copyright infringement was intended.
Summary: After a war won by the dark, Mudbloods get treatment slightly different than everyone else.
Notes: This wasn’t my original project for this fest, but I hope it’s well-received all the same. So sorry to the mods for my extreme tardiness! Happy Never After (literally!), everyone!
They raped us, they tortured us, they starved us. They left us in cells so cold our fingers turned blue. Days flew by in that same manner. Any longer, I would have lost my sanity. My humanity. Would have become one of the captives who talked to themselves, who moaned when taken, who ate the rats that passed their cages. Because the executions took place the first of every month, because I had been captured only a week before, I hadn’t been kept for as long as anyone else. And because my mind was strong, because I’d always been stubborn, I hadn’t succumbed like most everyone else.
Even now, I’m not quite sure if that was a blessing or curse.
October First came and they set us painfully on our crosses. Our ankles and wrists were bound, our arms wrapped behind so that they held the entirety of our weights beneath them. They carved the first letter of what they called us onto our stomachs, said a prayer that our deaths help cleanse the blood we soiled, and set our crosses to air.
They wasted no time in putting the ground beneath our feet ablaze. Showed no discomfort in laughing at our increasing cries. They cackled madly as the flames rose and billowed around us, raised goblets when we screamed at the sweltering heat. The people who didn’t wear masks, the people who weren’t Death Eaters, looked on at us in varying degrees of emotions. They were awed, they were pitying, they were horrified. Yet not one of them did a single thing to help. Not one of them made a sound above a gasp of fear or cry of empathy. They stared at us as if we were animals at a zoo, as if we weren’t about to be burned alive in public display for no other reason than just being born. They looked at us as if we signed up to die for their sole entertainment and hadn’t been captured against our wills and made to suffer a fate no living thing, no feeling thing, should ever meet.
When the stares became too much I closed my eyes and lowered my head.
Not a minute had passed since they cast Incenido to the faggots underneath us, and already the smoke had become suffocating. Already the flames were dancing around us, above us, inching so close our skin perspired.
It wasn’t until the sound of crackling became louder than the laughs and murmurs, until the screams of fear started to become screams of pain, that the layer of numbness that had moved over me since the time I’d been captured crumbled like a sand tower in a storm, and my dry, clear eyes leaked their first frightened tears.
The realization that dawned was painful.
I was going to die.
I was going to burn to death.
The tears that fell couldn’t have stopped even if I begged them to.
Then, more than ever, I wanted Ron. I wanted Harry. It was a selfish wish, a cruel wish, but I didn’t want to die alone. Didn’t want to die so painfully, harboring feelings of loneliness so great it made my heart hurt. They’d all gone before me, captured by a quick killing curse, left me to hide and fend and suffer on my own. For the first time in years I felt like I had in Hogwarts; the third wheel to their unbreakable duo. I was always the one left behind, always the one trailing after-the one left to pick up the scraps and clean the mess. Even in this situation, it felt the same. They’d gone and gotten themselves killed, painlessly, effortlessly, one after the other, and not for the first time I wished I’d been with them. Wished I’d died with them. Wished that, just once, they’d included me, too.
It shouldn’t have been so surprising, and I shouldn’t have been so resentful, that things hadn’t turned out that way.
But it was, and I was, and despite it all I wished that wherever they were, they were waiting for me to catch up.
The first flame licked at my toe, and for a second my mind went completely blank. Then it rose, and swallowed my foot, and I tilted my head back and screamed.
And screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
And prayed for death to come.