WHO: Lily Evans, Bryce Winchell, Amery Wilkes, Bellatrix Black, & Voldemort
WHAT: Lily and the professor try to escape and Voldemort has some fun
WHEN: Sunday evening
WHERE: Who knows?
NOTE: AGAIN, a Wilkes brother was NPC'd. This was waaaay before Ron played Amery, so heads up on the OOC.

When she woke up again, it was even darker than before.

Lily didn't know how long she'd been out or even what day it was, but she supposed the lack of light coming through the window indicated some time in the late evening. This time, she sat up and blinked, happy--or as happy as one could be in this situation--to note that her monstrous headache from before was mostly gone and she was able to allow her eyes to adjust to her surroundings a bit better.

There really wasn't much to see that she hadn't seen before. It was still an empty room, one fireplace on the far wall, a single window on the right. On the other side of the room from her was still Professor Winchell, except this time he was sitting up himself, and doing... something...

Feeling eyes on him, Bryce looked up suddenly, fearfully, only to lock gazes with Lily. The terror in his visage slowly ebbed away as he noticed that she wasn't a Death Eater somehow snuck into the room, and he felt relief flow through him. "Q--quite a predicament we've gotten ourselves into, isn't it, Miss Evans?" he asked quietly. He looked like he was trying very hard to fake a comforting smile, but he was failing miserably. Realizing that it was probably a lost cause, he exchanged that awkward smile for one of sympathy before going back to what he was doing.

"I... yeah, I guess it is," Lily answered quietly, her throat still dry. Merlin, she didn't know how she looked right now, but he had to look ten times worse. His previously short hair was grown to the point of becoming scruffy, there were cuts and gashes all over his face, arms, and legs, and his clothes were tattered and bloody. And his voice... how fearful and haunted it sounded, so tremors evident... what horrors had he been through? And how long had it been, even, since he had disappered? She couldn't rightly remember, but it had to have been too long.

For just a moment, she forgot in her pity that she was probably going to end up the same exact way.

Immediately, she felt dizzy and rested back against the wall, the overwhelming sense of despair and helplessness settling over her like a dark, stifling cloud. She couldn't help it this time. Lily cried.

At first it was just a few tears, then silent sobbing; she just couldn't hold it in any longer. What did it matter, really? She was going to die. Pride wasn't going to be of any consequence when she was dead.

Hearing the girl's sniffling from the other side of the room, Bryce looked up and sighed. He really didn't have the power to make her feel better--he wasn't very good with people, and besides that, he wasn't exactly feeling wonderful about the situation either--and it wasn't as if there was much to say, was there? But maybe, if only he could get this thing to...

Snap!

Aha, success! Throwing aside the sharp woodchip, he pulled his wrists apart, causing the rope that had bound them to fall to the floor. Bryce brought his wrists back in front of him and flexed his hands. Four days of work, and fingernails worn down to nothing from digging out the wood from the floor, but bloody hell had it been worth it. He was free. Sort of.

Lily didn't look up at the sound; whatever it was, she didn't care. Nothing could possibly matter anymore and nothing that he could possibly could say could make her feel any better.

"Miss Evans..?" Bryce crawled forward a few feet before stopping, noticing that she wasn't moving albeit for the shaking of her shoulders. He edged forward a few more feet, stopped again. "Miss Evans?" Again, a little further, until he was right in front of her. "... Lily?"

"What!?" the Head Girl snapped loudly, testily, not caring at all that she had just, for the first time in her life, yelled at a teacher. He wasn't a teacher here, though--he was a dead man, or as close to it as she would see him get. She'd probably be dead herself before she got to see him truly lifeless.

If she were in a rational mind, she would have regretted shouting this way. Too bad for Bryce that she wasn't in a rational mind; and good for him that, right now, he didn't care. Reaching out, he took Lily by the shoulder and gently moved her so that her back was exposed to him. "Don't move, and please don't speak so loudly. You'll alert them."

"Why does it matter?" she shot at him with a scathing look; however, her voice lowered a great deal until she continued in a harsh whisper. "And what the bloody hell are you doing?"

"I'm letting you out of this, what do you think?" he asked, quickly and skillfully loosening the bonds around her wrists until they fell to the floor, just like his had before. Lily blinked a few times in rapid succession, the anger draining out of her visage, and slowly, as if testing the reality, moved her hands. "That's better, isn't it?"

All the Gryffindor could do was nod numbly, and she looked at her free hands, then up at the professor, then down at her hands, then back up at the professor. "How did--what--... thanks," she said, looking to be in disbelief. "But how did you...?"

"They far underestimate the abilities of a determined man," he answered simply with a shrug. "But come now, if we've got any chance, we've got to be off before they come up to check on us." Bryce grabbed one of her freed wrists and pulled Lily upwards to her feet--and allowed her to rest against him as she got used to the feeling of being upright again. "...which should be in no more than five minutes."

"Go--go where? What--?" Lily asked confusedly, shaking her head. She stepped away from Bryce, causing him to let her go. He reached out again, catching her and saving the disoriented girl from falling into a wall as she stumbled on unsteady feet, and this time she did not resist.

"Why, escape, of course," he whispered, drawing close to her as if even the walls were their enemies. "You don't plan to stay here and let them have us, do you?"

What was wrong with this man? was the first thing that came to Lily's mind. Defense professor or not, this was crazy. No one escaped from the Dark Lord when he had them, not one solitary person. The professor's expertise in defense against the dark arts must have cause him to become delusional!

"Yeah, in fact, I kind of do," Lily answered back sternly, grabbing herself away from him again, this time determined to stay away upright and away from him. "I was kind of planning to keep obedient so maybe, maybe whatever they do, they'll be easy on me."

Bryce snorted, laughing an ironic, condescending laugh. "Take it easy? Are you kidding?" he asked, rherotically. "And here I had always thought you one of my brightest students."

Lily turned on him with a glare. If there was one thing she truly hated, it was being spoken to as if she didn't know anything... or anyone doubting her intelligence, for that matter. "Your plan isn't brightness, it's bloody insanity!" she whispered loudly.

"Of course it's not, don't you get it? If you're going to die anyway, might as well go down fighting, yeah?" he asked, sounding and looking either very enthused or very mad. "Come on, girl, you're a Gryffindor, aren't you?"

Lily stopped at that. She didn't know wether to be shocked that he had just insulted her for the second time in less than thirty seconds or that something that he was saying had just clicked in her mind. Oh, she had to be going insane along with him, she had to be--but she was starting to understand where he was coming from. Of course she knew there wasn't such a thing as 'taking it easy' when it came to You-Know-Who, but to escape...? It took guts, a whole bloody lot of guts. It took...

...a Gryffindor courage (or it may have been stupidity, but there was such a fine line--).

"Come on, Evans, what do you say?" Winchell urged her. "Are you going to just sit here and let him have you, or are you going to give it a fight and give yourself a chance to live?"

"Alright, I'm in, I'm in," she said quickly. Quickly, before she came to her senses and changed her mind. Before she had time to think about it any more than she already had.

------------

Hearing through doors was a lot less difficult than those stupid mudbloods thought, Amery Wilkes thought with a snarl, as he stood on the other side of the doorway from where Bryce and Lily spoke. Lowered voices or not, he had been trained to be on his guard and when you were on your guard, you always knew how to listen for the right things.

The first thing that had tipped him off had been the snapping of the ropes; then, it had been the telltale heavy fall of those ropes on the ground, which always followed a split-second later. And then, if he hadn't already been sure that something was going on, there was a second set of the same sounds, telling him that the other was free as well. Now, as if they meant to insult him, they dared to speak to one another--he didn't know exactly what they were speaking of, but anyone with any common sense about them could get a damn good idea.

He would have liked to go in there and hex the shit out of the little bastards himself, but Amery Wilkes thought himself a good servant above anything else. His Lord had expressly ordered that if there were any hint of conspiracy, that he himself was to be alerted--and with what a uppity sort of man the professor had proven to be so far, he had suspected it would only be a matter of time before he had drawn the girl--whom Grayson had said earlier seemed not at all inclined towards escape--to his side.

So as two pairs of footfalls sounded behind him on the steps leading up to the room, Amery felt, like a good, devoted, servant would, just as much satisfaction about what his Lord was going to do to them as he would have had he been allowed to punish them himself. They would be sorry, oh yes...

------------

The two of them had hardly had time to react before the door was blown open, off its hinges. Lily, having been facing that direction, gave her professor a forceful push to send him off to the side right in time as the door crashed into the other side of the room and literally exploded into millions of shards of wood. Each winced as the chips, jagged all over, found their marks and buried themselves into skin. It was like broken glass, but oh so much worse...

Bryce was the first up, with what had to be a horrible tolerance for pain wiping away the pieces that stuck out like they were nothing. His show of pride didn't last long, however, as the second he was up, a flash of light had him down again, writhing on the floor. Then, just as quickly as they had gotten him, barely giving her time to look and recognize the use of the Cruciatus curse on her companion, the same jet of light hit Lily and she was sent back feet, screaming from the second it had her.

Three dark forms walked in through the destroyed doorway, calmly, the further two holding their wands in front of them. Through her wince and the tears that were streaming down her face, Lily could tell that they were the ones that had set the curses on them--two of them looked distinctly masculine, while the other, one of the ones with a wand, seemed... surprisingly, female.

The two holding the wands calmly walked forward to stand over their writhing, screaming victims, keeping the torture going as if it were nothing.

The feminine one spoke, and when she did, it was obvious that she was, indeed, female. "Look how cute they are," she said, a smile evident in her voice. "I do so like it when they twitch in pain."

"They are rather amusing to watch, aren't they?" the other answered, his voice low, with almost a hissing quality to him. "My favorite pasttime, in fact. Watching mudbloods getting what's due them."

"... and yet you seem dissatisfied." Lily wondered how in the hell he could possibly be dissatisfied with this. Nothing could be worse than this, she thought. This was worse than death.

"Ah, Bella, my darling, always so observant."

Bella, her name was Bella. Bryce started next to her--or as much as she could discern, for it could have been a large twitch--and turned to look, with renewed fear, into the woman's eyes behind the mask.

"Y-y-you!" he exclaimed. "You're the--"

"Silence!" Bella snapped, and jabbed her wand towards him harder, causing him to collapse backwards again in increased pain. "We're talking. Haven't you any manners?"

Bryce said no more--honestly, he didn't know if he could, it was like his lungs were closing up around him--and Bella smirked, then turned back to the man. "You were saying, my Lord?"

"Yes, I was saying... I am dissatisfied. But it's nothing that a little fun can't fix."

"Fun, my Lord?"

"Fun. A... game, perhaps. I do enjoy games."

The woman seemed confused to Lily, but she didn't really care, because all she could concentrate on now was keeping her consciousness and stopping this tunnel vision from closing in on her. She felt like her whole body was engulfed in an inferno, could feel the excruciating pain all the way down into the marrow of her bones. Please just stop, stop stop stop please do anything, kill me but stop, she mentally willed, knowing it was useless.

"May I inquire as to what kind of game, my Lord?"

"You know what kind of game, Bella."

There was silence for a long moment--to Lily it felt like hours--as Bella took the time to figure out what the man was talking about. And then...

"Ah, games are fun."

She could hear a smile in the man's voice. "Yes, very enjoyable."

"When, my Lord?" Now she sounded undeniably excited, anxious.

"Patience, Bella. Soon. Very soon." Walking towards the last man in the room, who had been standing silently in the destruction of the doorway, his voice turned stern and commanding, not at all like the gentle, doting tone he had used with Bella. "Wilkes! You are to take these two to another room, secure them, and make sure that they don't try to pull anything cute again. Punish them if you like, but do not kill either. I want them alive..."

He nodded. "Yes, my Lord. As you wish."

There was a mutterance, with a snap the pain was gone... and Lily could remember nothing else.