[ 1 ] EXPLODE ( r. black ! )

six || deal with the devil

ACT ONE; CHAPTER SIX
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

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THE TRICK OF the world really was that you have to fake it until you make it. Since she was eleven on that stool, waiting for the verdict on which House she'd be in for seven years, Eleanor had known that as a fact. Faking it was what stopped her from screaming, resisting and making a fool of herself when 'SLYTHERIN' echoed around the room in a wave that engulfed her. Making it was what happened two years later when somebody called her a true Slytherin and she didn't vomit.

If faking it until she made it worked to keep her alive after the worst situation she could've imagined then, she hoped that it would do the same for the worst situation she could've imagined now. The situation she was about to walk into, eventually, and come face to face with Voldemort.

After minutes of rushing the halls to move, only stopping when footsteps warned her that she 'ought to dive behind something stat, Eleanor reached the miniscule corridor outside the foyer that Regulus had pointed out to her. While hidden behind the plant pot, in fear that somebody could exit the room at any moment, she thought. The thought showed that she definitely should've listened to Regulus in that first room – Eleanor had no plan.

"Shit," she whispered to herself, then shuddered when the infamous sound of Voldemort's voice trickled into the hallway, drowning her out.

But Eleanor had made it because she was a Slytherin, she knew that for all she spoke of making it. So, banishing the Dark Lord's hisses from her mind, she focused on what she could do and that was what her mind set on happily – a perk of being stereotypically ambitious and cunning. As her brain reminded her when she set her eyes on the plant she hide behind, Slytherin's were also resourceful.

Then again, that didn't mean their resourceful ideas weren't downright terrible. Eleanor could have laughed to herself when the idea of transfiguring herself into a walking plant popped into her head in a lightbulb. Instead she simply rolled her eyes, which must have alerted her brain to the matter at hand because she noticed the deadly quiet that now surfaced both rooms.

Swallowing her fear and going back to the original plan, Eleanor breathed out carefully. When she forced herself to look up Eleanor was met with the sight of two men – both their cloaks were the darkest black which matched their piercing eyes. However, it was their grins that struck Eleanor cold, something so evil shouldn't have been allowed.

"Hello, sweetheart," one man said as the other grabbed her. Eleanor instantly began struggling against him which got his fellow Death Eater rushing to his aid. Both their power on her combined made Eleanor's fight worthless as she was majorly smaller and weaker without the use of her arms and she was dragged into the foyer.