Buttercup Boy | fred

Chapter 07

a/n: play (on repeat) the song linked above when you see the symbol: *

Her arm was tingling from the grip on her wand. 
Or so she thought.

Fred lets out a roar of murderous rage as the brunt of a spell begins to take effect, casting Cheryl's arm a nauseating green.
It drew veins of ebony from a point on her forearm, crawling towards her shoulder.
Eventually, it would reach her heart.

Well...if she let it.
Which she wouldn't.

Not after seeing the agony woven in Fred's expression when the spell hit her.
She'd thought he'd been hit at first, an undeniable fret sending a suffocating rage to her chest.

"Cheryl!" Cries the Weasley, diving to the left as their opponents drive them deeper into the forest.

"Don't call me that!" She scolds, groaning as the spell strangles her arm, creeping beneath the skin and tangling with her veins.

The opposition was advancing. So was the spell.
They were stronger, skilled, and swift in their attack.
Fred and herself continued to stumble away.

But Cherry's movements were growing feeble, the Weasley too far to see her struggles.
Perhaps defeat was all she could accept. Perhaps death was no longer debatable.
Not that it ever hadn't been.

A rock snags her heels, sending her reeling into a tree trunk, her head aching at the blunt impact.
Three menacing cackled erupt from afar, rattling the forest floors and shaking the trees of timely crows.

"Not so skilled now, are we, Winfred?" Hisses one of the witches. They approach with twisted grins and narrowed eyes, obscured by lowered hoods and - most likely - spells to mask their identities.

Due to their advance, Cherry begins to believe they want her to know who they are. To see her murderers, to watch the same faces she supposedly knew steal life from her lungs.

However, all she can think is of Fred, battling another in the forest or frantically returning home. Gathering his family and hiding them away from the danger.
Cherry would just become another guest they occasionally reminisce over, eventually set aside as a small memory, no longer cared for.

She would become what she always had been to Fred Weasley.
Temporary entertainment.

And she'd be damned if that was how she died, knowing she could no longer keep Fredrick in order.

"Expelliarmus!" Cherry cries, dispersing the witches' wands. Before they can mutter a spell of defense, their opponent casts spell after spell, attack after attack, driving them backward with screams of agony.
Their skin melts under the impact of her hits, forcing them to retreat.
As Cherry's final spell boils on the tip of her tongue, each of the opponents nod in unison, instantly diapperating, their cackles a foreshadowing farewell.

*

Trees rustle. Pulses thrum. Eyes dart.
She lets out a shaky exhale, drinking up her surroundings in the sudden quiet.

It was almost more unsettling, the eery quiet after such screams of terror and suffering.

Time stood still, holding the world rigid for a moment, letting the young woman swell with relief before the tribulations of her next decision.

But as the cooling breeze flutters over her features, Cherry's pulse quickens, the memories of Fred's calls rattling her mind in tormenting visions.

And so, as much as the woman would have loathed to admit it, her only burden at that moment was the survival of her old enemy.

Her old companion.