Chéri || Fred Weasley

lxxii

Triggering content (GORE), viewer discretion advised.

Once again, Madeleine was being dragged out of the room she was being kept in by two death eaters. At first, she tried fighting back but a week after trying and trying she simply gave up. Being thrown onTO the dark wooden floor had become the new normal for her, as well as waiting for the jet of red light to hit her body. Agonizing pain, clouded vision and feeling how her insides were on fire also became normal as Bellatrix tortured her on the daily. Maddie wanted to scream her lungs out, she wanted to cry and beg for death to take her but besides twitching horribly, the only response her body allowed her to do was laugh as manically as her aunt did.

Narcissa had tried her best to intervene but Bellatrix refused to stop. She refused to stop until either Madeleine was driven into insanity or until her brain caved in, whichever happened first. Her whole body ached as the two death eaters threw her again on her bedroom's floor, knowing that in a few hours the two of them would be back to take her to what her aunt referred to as 'fun time.' She curled on the floor and began crying softly, wishing to disappear but before she knew it, she was back in drawing room again as Bellatrix slowly paced in front of her.

With the tip of her wand, Bellatrix lifted Maddie's chin up so that their eyes could meet and laughed. The black-haired woman could see the hatred and pain in her niece's eyes but they had had that conversation before. She pushed the blonde's face back onto the floor and raised her wand before the red sparks collided with her body again.

Maddie knew that even though her mind was strong, there was only too much of the Cruciatus Curse that one's brain could handle before giving out completely. She had thought plenty of it since she was captured. Bellatrix gave her two options: becoming like her or ending up with her brain fried. She could feel her soul slowly being ripped from her as the minutes passed, hearing her own mental laughter echoing in her head. The choice she had was simple, she could shut everything out and focus solely in what the prophecy stated, which would earn her more time after all."...see her as her equal and will turn her to mirror her own self."

"...you can't fight a fiendfyre with water..." Mad-Eye Moody had said once. Madeleine had made her choice at last and she knew the horrible things she would be forced to do in the near future. She knew that if Bellatrix were to see her as her equal, she would have to become equally as crazy as she was. If she was to gain her aunt's trust and become her right hand, she would have to hurt people along the way. Maybe even losing him in the end. She would never be the same and she knew it, but the darkness in her must be embraced to convince Bellatrix about the insanity she had caused upon Madeleine.

*****

Slipping in and out of consciousness the following days felt like being back between the life and death limbo, but instead of life and death, Madeleine was slipping between the path to insanity and the path to sanity. Memories were replaying incessantly in her head, mostly about Fred. She remembered their first kiss under the stars the night of the Yule Ball. She remember all of the innocent and not so innocent touches. She remembered his laugh and the way he lit up a room by just stepping in. She remembered how much love she felt for him and she knew that if becoming bad for some time would take her back to him, then so be it. She safely savoured in the past's memories before shutting down her eyes, letting all of the goodness and humanity in her slowly vanish. The means would eventually justify the end.

Bellatrix and Narcissa could see the evident change in Madeleine's eyes as she was dragged again to the drawing room where the older Black sister was waiting impatiently. There was no more light, no more life in the green jade eyes that had completely darkened to mirror Bellatrix's own. Narcissa was terrified as she watched her older sister pace around Maddie, the latter who had no expression but a dark smirk plastered in her lips. "Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it," she looked back at Bellatrix who came to a halt.