Chapter 228 - Crucio — Steel and Blood

Lavender took a deep breath and told herself to calm down. At least Neville had taken on the great terror of Prince. Her own opponent was only Parkinson.

"Yeah!" She forced out a heavy response, holding her breath, though her heart was in complete chaos.

Honestly, she was a member of Dumbledore's Army, had been since fifth year, but real combat experience? She barely had any.

But then again, Lavender thought, wasn't this exactly what real combat experience looked like?

She had joined the DA to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts. If she hid every time trouble showed up, that would betray the whole reason she'd joined in the first place.

Lavender looked toward her opponent and found that Parkinson, like Neville, was watching Prince. And Prince herself was watching Amycus Carrow.

Praeris blinked, her thoughts turning inward. Amycus's arrangement matched her instinct. Switching her opponent to Neville was, perhaps, actually the right call.

And Amycus, the one being watched? His gaze was utterly fanatical, as if he were lost in some imagined peak of violence.

He was trying to play the professor, to shape his face into something kind and approachable. He couldn't manage it. The fake smile only made his facial muscles misfire, twitching in jerky spasms, his teeth chattering as he let out a horrible, breathless laugh.

"Very good! Very good!" Amycus said loudly. "Do you all remember what we did last lesson?"

Dead silence.

"Hm? What's this, no one wants to answer?" Amycus put on an exaggerated look of disappointment. "Macmillan. Has a week of detention brought you to some reflection? Tell me: what was last lesson about!"

What could Ernie say? His original one-week detention had already been stretched to something monstrous because he'd joined Ginny Weasley and the others in stealing the Sword of Gryffindor.

Over this past week and more, Ernie had suffered considerably.

Zacharias had once patted him on the shoulder and said, "Brother, your detention is going to last until graduation. I get it, you can't stand them. But resistance doesn't have to take this form, does it?"

"Sometimes giving them grief in private, where they can't even catch the culprit. Isn't that more satisfying?"

Thinking of it now, Ernie swallowed everything he'd endured and said, with as much reluctance as he could squeeze into three words, "Practicing the Cruciatus Curse."

Ernie's reluctance gave Amycus pleasure. That was exactly the feeling he was after: unwilling, but forced to comply anyway.

"Correct!" Amycus let out a rasping laugh. "But in real battle — are your enemies insects? Spiders? Salamanders, lizards, frogs — are they!"

"No, no, no, no!"

Amycus charged from the open space at the front straight into the middle of the students. Everyone lurched backward in a flash, like a herd of gazelles on the African savanna that had just spotted a cheetah.

His thick finger stabbed toward Neville: "Your enemy is you!"

Then toward Crabbe: "Is you!"

"And you, and you, and you, everyone around you could be your enemy!" His finger jabbed wildly in every direction, a general surveying his conscripts. "Therefore, I want you to treat each other as opponents and practice Dark Arts, Defence. Which means the Cruciatus Curse we learned previously!"

Neville turned quickly to look at Praeris. Her expression was calm. She looked as though she had seen this coming. Crabbe, the other student singled out, looked thrilled.

Amycus's words hit the room like a bowl of water thrown into a wok of boiling oil. It erupted.

"What?"

"This can't be real."

"I, I, I can't, I can't do this —"

"Silence!" Amycus's face turned dark. "Whoever speaks again demonstrates first!"

The room went still.

Amycus surveyed them with disappointment. "Does no one want to go first? Cowardice. Cowardly as jellyfish. You have lost every quality that befits a true witch or wizard. Your bloodlines are ashamed of you."

"If the wizarding world is to be handed to rubbish like you, what future does our kind have?" He spoke with the particular fury of someone who has expected better and never received it. "It is because of what you are that our power is stolen by Mudbloods. That our bloodlines are polluted!"

Amycus clutched his chest, the picture of heartbreak and wounded principle. Then the next second, the sorrow collapsed off his face entirely. His bloodshot eyes swept the students.

"In that case, I will simply have to call names."

"Crabbe, you look very excited." He drew the words out. "Let me find you a practice partner. Ah, Mr. Seamus Finnigan."

Seamus's face went tight. He didn't doubt for a second that Crabbe would enjoy hurting people. But he had no choice.

He was a British boy. He had standards. He couldn't leave a creature like Crabbe to Parvati and the others, could he?

In Slytherin, the 2 people hardest to deal with were the notoriously powerful Praeris, and thugs like Crabbe.

Neville had already taken on Prince. Parvati was going up against Malfoy, which was at least easier than dealing with his girlfriend.

Amycus settled into the expression of a man looking forward to the show. "Not bad. It seems Mr. Finnigan is ready as well,"

Seamus gripped his wand. Fine beads of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

Merlin. He wasn't going to cast the Cruciatus Curse, absolutely not. But if he didn't, that left Crabbe to attack first. And if he used some other spell to resist, who knew what this damned Death Eater would do to him?

"Professor Carrow!" Praeris spoke suddenly, cutting clean through the moment. "Compared to Crabbe, wasn't it I who performed better last lesson?"

"Oh?" Amycus's expression sharpened with interest. "What exactly do you mean?"

Praeris felt the weight of every gaze in the room land on her. She didn't care. She raised her chin and said, "Why not let Mr. Longbottom and I practice first?"

Crabbe was just excited. But Prince had actually volunteered to cast the Cruciatus Curse on Neville. Was that something a student was supposed to say?

Praeris turned to look at Neville. Her voice was level. "Do you have any objections, Mr. Longbottom?"

Neville gripped his wand. "None. I look forward to seeing what you can do."

Amycus's murky eyes moved from this girl, this beloved protégé, Snape's worthy successor, to the son of the Longbottom couple that Bellatrix had destroyed.

Excellent. Excellent!

He applauded inwardly. This was the scene he had wanted.

This girl had fought 4 Death Eaters on her own, including his sister. But when her wand turned its aim toward the son of an Order of the Phoenix member, toward a DA member who had been nothing but trouble, the feeling Amycus had now was something different entirely.

"Excellent." He said the word slowly, meaningfully. "Let me see your — performance."

The students pulled back. The Gryffindors looked at Praeris like they wanted to tear her apart. Pansy grabbed Praeris by the arm and refused to move.

"Why do you have to go first?" Pansy's voice was frantic. "He didn't even call on you!"

"Worried about me?" Praeris looked down at her, voice soft. "I've never lost a fight yet."

"Millicent will be worried," Pansy said, grasping at names. "And Draco, and Daphne, and Nina, and Frog..."

Praeris nearly laughed.

Even Nina and Frog. Was this silly girl being serious? Nina was one thing, but Frog was a bit dim these days, bouncing around the dormitory and still managing to crash into the bedpost.

Did it truly understand what worry meant? Would it even worry about a wicked witch who had used the Cruciatus Curse on it?

Praeris pushed Pansy back. "This isn't a big problem," she said quietly. "Wait for me."

Then she walked, unhurried, toward the open space in the center and took her place opposite Neville.

Neville wasn't sure he could handle Prince. Hermione had acknowledged Prince's strength. Ginny had said Prince had beaten up Harry, though that was a sneak attack.

"What are you standing around for?" Amycus said, almost bored. "Begin."

The word had barely left his mouth when Neville sent a Stunning Spell straight at Praeris, seizing the first move.

The Stunning Spell was a type of Stunner with strong offensive force. A continuous barrage could do real damage, but it demanded that you aimed.

The best counter was a Shield Charm. But Praeris had decided there was a better option: just move.

She stepped swiftly to the left and twisted sideways, the Stunner passing clean past her and slamming into the wall.

Praeris was agile. So Neville decided to take that away from her. He followed up immediately: "Petrificus Totalus!"

He knew this one well. Hermione had used it on him in first year, and he had never quite forgotten the memory.

In that same moment, Praeris raised her wand: "Protego!"

Her magic was strong. The barrier she formed didn't simply absorb the incoming spell, it bent it back. Harry had taught them the Shield Charm in fifth year, and they all knew it could rebound. Most people just couldn't produce that effect.

Praeris could. And so could Harry.

The tables had turned. They had just turned very, very fast.

A second later, it was Neville dodging his own Full Body-Bind.

"Tsk." This gentle back-and-forth clearly wasn't satisfying Amycus. "Where is the Cruciatus Curse? Is this class a game?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Praeris obliged with a spell she had used before: "Dust Devil."

Yellow sand and gravel erupted from the flat floor, churning up in a spiral that swallowed Neville entirely.

Neville had never seen anything like it. He closed his eyes without hesitating. If he couldn't see, then presumably Praeris couldn't either. That was fair.

She was directly across from him. He only had to keep his direction and attack forward.

What Neville didn't know was that the Praeris across from him had just cast a silent spell on herself.

"Estofor."

Praeris could see. She could see perfectly clearly.

"Expelliarmus!"

The Disarming Charm hit Neville's hand with precision. His wand snapped out of his grip and spun across the room.

Neville's eyes went wide. He had no idea how she had hit him through a wall of sand. Neither did Alecto, as it happened. Unfortunate, having that in common.

Without his wand, unable to see where it had landed, unable to do wandless magic, there was nothing he could do.

"Gale Sweep!"

To Neville's surprise, Praeris herself dispersed the sand, sweeping it away in a single gust to reveal him standing in the middle of it.

Neville bolted for the wand on the floor. He ran fast.

He wasn't fast enough.

He was already bending down to grab it when he heard Praeris's voice ring out, cold and merciless: "Crucio!"

"Ah —"

That wasn't Neville. That was the room. Several students screamed. Others pressed their hands over their eyes, unable to watch.

In Neville's mind, time stretched and slowed. He had never been put under the Cruciatus Curse. But he had spent years imagining what it felt like.

He had imagined what his parents must have endured, what inhuman thing had been done to them, to leave them the way he found them at St. Mungo's.

The night Barty Crouch Jr. demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse in class, Neville had nightmares until morning.

He had dreamed of the spider writhing under Barty's wand. Then the spider's face became his mother Alice. He jolted awake soaked in sweat.

He turned toward Praeris. The light of the Cruciatus Curse hadn't reached him yet, but his body was already curving forward, already bracing, as if he could feel across 13 years the echo of what his parents had felt.

Then it hit.

And his eyes went wider.

With Prince's power, power that had killed a silver arrow frog in seconds last lesson, power whose Shield Charm had deflected his own spell moments ago, this Cruciatus Curse was nothing like what he had imagined.

In fact, the pain was controlled with precision. He was in real discomfort. But it was nowhere near severe torture.

"Prince getting an 'O' in Charms, I'd accept that without question. She's mastered spells that even I've never seen, and she can work out counter-curses in almost no time at all." Hermione's voice, frank and unguarded. "Her control is extraordinarily precise. She never wastes an ounce of effort and she still gets exactly the effect she wants."

And Ginny: "Hermione says Prince can be trusted."

In that single flash of a second or two, Neville understood. It wasn't that Praeris couldn't hurt him. It was the opposite. This was exactly the effect she had chosen.

Neville bent double and screamed. His whole body shook like it was being wrung apart, every muscle seizing, every nerve alight.

6 seconds. The Cruciatus Curse lasted 6 seconds before Praeris lowered her wand.

She looked toward Amycus. "Professor. What do you think of that?"

Neville was curled on the floor like a shrimp, hunched over, groaning low in his throat. He had never imagined he could act this well. To be honest, he thought, he had his parents to thank for that.

From beginning to end, not one second had passed where he considered doing anything else. The moment Hermione's voice and Ginny's voice rose in his memory, he had known, without thinking: cooperate with Praeris.

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