The Last Lieutenant

Hellfire

She is standing between her mother and father.

It was the first time that Audra had been in the same room with since that night at the Stanton mansion where she and her father screamed at each other that Vance's death was everyone's fault but his own, and even though weeks had passed, the sight of them was not any easier to take than it had been in the days after.

They're cutting a ribbon.  It's the offical opening of some new wing of St. Mungo's that had been constructed thanks to her father's bottomless pockets, a move he only made to throw off public suspicion now that Voldemort was back in the open, and it's so wrong, so fake, like one wrong move or one awkward word could send it all shattering apart like glass, and Audra can't stand it.

"Audra, if you would like to do the honors?"  Her father is smiling down at her the way he used to when she was little and she never had to question the fact that he loved her.  Back then, she had believed him when he said he would protect her from all the monsters in the world, and never imagined he was one of the people she should be running from.  Now, she can't tell if it is just an act for the people watching or if he really does think that a few nice words would be all it took for his little girl to come back home again.

But I'm not that girl, father, she thought, and there's nothing that you can protect me from that I haven't already taken care of, so maybe I never needed you, after all.

Still, everyone is watching, and the sooner she gets this over with the sooner she can leave.  The minister is watching, and her father's hands on her shoulders is making her shudder, and Audra can see Mr. Weasley's face flashing in the crowd, so its with a certain amount of haste that she raises her wand and slashes through the tape.

The people clap.  The healers converge on the her father, pictures are taken, and Audra keeps the smile on her face, the perfect picture of the devoted daughter right up to the moment where she slips away and apparates.

It's not really a conscious choice to go where she does, other than the fact that everything is falling apart and she had no where left to turn.  She hasn't seen Fred in two weeks, Clary seems to have gone up in smoke, Emmeline is getting thinner and paler by the day, and Audra doesn't know how much longer she can live like this.

"Oh, god."  She catches sight of the grave for the first times since the funeral, this giant marble monument their parents built to a boy they didn't really know, and Audra crumbles right there in front of it, the pads of her fingers scraping over the sharp edges of his name engraved into the stone.  "Oh, god, Vance."

Audra coughs up her tears, taking great heaving breaths that make her shoulders shake and force her down to her knees, bending over so her forehead is resting against the stone.  There are so many people she has failed and Vance is one of them, because if she were a better sister, she would not have let his final resting place ever look like this- with the wilted flowers dying in spiderweb covered vases, the leaves that scatter over the cement plating.  

"I'm so sorry."  She never really said good bye. At first it was because she was being swallowed up by guilt, and then it was because she thought that any emotion at all would be a gate way for Voldemort to use, one little crack that let him pry her open.  "I never meant, I never wanted-,"  Everyone that ever met her had told her how beautiful she was, but she was not beautiful now, ripping her hands up on the stone and coughing her words out through her tears, mascara streaming down over her face and the hair tangling in the wind.  "You weren't supposed to leave me!"  Even at the end, when she was holding him in her arms and he was taking that last, rattling breath, like it had got lost in his chest somewhere, she hadn't really thought that he would leave her.   "I wasn't supposed to have to do this alone!"

But here she was.

Alone.

"Ain't this a sight."  The voice makes her whip around, and she stumbles, slipping in the damp grass.  It's only that keeping her from hexing the person on sight, and it turns out to be fortunate- she didn't think the Order would take kindly to the fact that she had cost Dung a few of his fingers.  "Aren't you supposed to be at some big ministry thing?"

Audra had expected to run into Mundungus long before this, considering the types of places that she had begun to frequent, but out of all of them, she hadn't thought it would be a graveyard.  "Fletcher."  She wipes at her tears, not seeing the point of hiding it, and too exhausted to be embarrassed over the fact that he had snuck up behind her, anyways.  "What are you doing here?"

"Got some business."  He starts to shove a misshapen bag out of sight with his foot, and then shrugs.  "Been using that cellar as a hide out."

Audra snorts.  "Nice."  She heaves herself to her feet, trying to ignore the stinging in her palms where she had scraped it against the grave and the way that her tights were ripped at the knee.  "Good seeing you, dung."

"Wait."  He looked extremely awkward, like he thought that it might be the right thing to offer her some sort of comfort but couldn't think of any.  "I have a message for you.  From Molly."  Audra waits.  "She said to stay away from that dueling club.  Says your going to hurt somebody."

Audra feels a hot wash of shame, and then just as fast is covered up by a wave of anger, because what right did anyone have to tell her what she could or could not do?  They had thrown her to the wolves.  It is her fault that she came back out stronger than any of them, having done what she had to in order to survive?  

"That's pretty hyprocritical, coming from you."  Audra regretted not hexing him.  

"Hey."  He draws himself to his full height, then, which was not much, and levels a finger at her.  It was the first time he had acted like any sort of adult.  "I don't hurt people."

"We all hurt people."  She thinks of cursing him just to prove her point, and for a moment he must have seen it in her eyes because he flinches back, but before he can even raise his wand to defend himself, she has already turned her wand on the flowers instead.  "Ennervate."  They straigthen up and the flowers bloom all over again, slightly paler than they had been before, but still alive.  "See you around, Mundungus."

"Yes."  He pulls his hood up, and it strikes her with a sense of familiarity.  She'd seen that same hood, lurking in the doorway of the fight club, following her around the room.  "I expect so."