Lily Snape [3]

Chapter Nine:

Chapter Nine: 

For days after, I listened closely at all the conversations which flowed around me, hoping without hope that I'd be able to get some snippet of information regarding Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley or any Weasley for that matter.  I'd heard that bad people were hanging outside Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and I hoped that Fred and George knew about it and were being as safe as they possibly could be. 

By now, every student had been through the horrors of Dark Arts.  You could see first years crying together in the hallways, begging to go home, yet every professor seemed not to realize just what was going on.  Well, it wasn't as if they could read minds. None of the students were going to risk their lives, so how would the other professors ever find out?

My mind constantly wondered that if a student did tell someone about the way Professor Carrow treated his students, would anything even be done? 

I sighed, setting down the food I was about to try to eat and instead looking up at the professor’s table for the first time since I came back to Hogwarts.   There were undoubtedly new faces besides Professor Carrow’s.  In fact, there was at least four new professors this year, and they all looked as unpleasant as the others and familiar. I realized with a start that all of them were Death Eaters, that I had seen all of them  when I was captured.

I was practically surrounded by them in this school.

Strangely enough, as miserable as I was, time moved by quickly, which I was unbelievably grateful for.  I wanted to go back to the Weasley’s, I wanted to see Fred, I wanted to be hugged and kissed and held as I slept.  I was homesick, there was no doubt about it. 

“Did you hear?” I heard someone whisper next to me, though as I looked over at the person I realized it wasn’t me who they were speaking to.  “Harry Potter broke into the Ministry of Magic last week!” 

My eyes widened as I quickly turned to my food, pretending to eat as I continued to listen in on the conversation happening beside me.  “They’re on the run now, being hunted by Death Eaters and Ministry officials.”  My breathing sped up as I glanced at the professors, noticing that two of the Death Eaters had zeroed in on the couple that I sat next to. 

“Stop talking about it now,” I muttered quietly, still staring at the Death Eaters through the corner of my eye.  “The professors are staring at you, you’re going to get yourself into major trouble.”

“Thanks Ginny.” 

I breathed a sigh of relief as they began eating and no longer talking about Harry, the professor’s glare began moving around the room, no longer focused on the Gryffindor table. 

Thank Merlin.

*_*_*

“Too many of you kids are idiots, burdening yourselves with friendship and love, boyfriends and girlfriends, you take away from your potential as a good witch or wizard when you do that, imbeciles.  I won’t have any more of it.  None of you are in a relationship, if I see love notes, holding hands, secret looks or anything of the kind, I’ll have you sent to Filch and tortured, do I make myself clear?” By the end of Professor Carrow’s lecture, he was screaming at us.  A few people were cowering in a corner, as if they could somehow manage to escape his wrath. 

My stomach twisted at the thought of having to break up with Fred, but I didn’t have to.  Fred didn’t go here, I wouldn’t be caught holding hands with him or passing love notes to him… thankfully, that was a good thing in this case. 

Loving Fred Weasley did not make me weak, he wasn’t a burden of any sort.  He made me stronger, he kept me standing when all I wanted to do was fall to the ground, he kept me smiling when all I thought I could do was cry, he kept me strong when I thought I could only crumble.

Merlin, I loved him so much.

“Weasley!”

I didn’t answer, thinking it was honestly someone calling for Ron or Ginny, but by the time I realized the name was directed at me and I was supposed to be Ginny, it was too late.  The curse was shot at me.  It hit me directly in my forehead, and at first.. at first I felt nothing.  Then slowly, oh-so-slowly, it began.

An icy feeling crept into my skull, seeming to surround my forehead and seep into my mind.  My head felt heavy, like every strand of hair I had weighed a whole pound,  each a thick icicle or something.  It spread down my face from my forhead, before moving around to the back of my head as well, and I whimpered at the painfully cold feeling.

Oh it hurt. A slow hurt, like I’d stuck my head into a pile of snow and held it there for hours. 

“What are you doing, Carrow!  End the spell, immediately.”

The voice sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t possibly begin to place it with the pain wracking my brain.  Oh merlin, make it stop.  My hands moved towards my head, and I whimpered as my fingers pressed against the skin, and though it felt frozen to my mind, to my fingers my skin was hot.  Way too hot.  I whimpered more as the feeling seemed to spread down my spine before it stopped as if to obey the command someone had said moments before.

But the feeling didn’t go away.  It still hurt, I still felt frozen and in mass amounts of pain, more than I cared to attempt to describe, but at least it had stopped spreading.  That’s all I could be thankful about because everything else outside what I was being put through, I was ignorant to it. I could no longer hear people talking around me, nobody made any more orders.

I barely registered the feeling of arms wrapping around me, picking me up and carrying me as if I weighed no more than ten pounds, and though I didn’t know who had me in their arms, I whimpered and pushed my face into their shoulder.

Even my tears, which soaked the person’s cloak, were icy moving down my face.