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jonloughty · 11 years

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At Great Cost || Self-Para

Jon had taken his share of damage during the initial battling. His ear had been spliced by a poorly-aimed slicing charm, and along with his various scrapes and bruises from running about and--admittedly--tripping several times, the same arm that had been damaged in December was spliced back open. He had managed to keep himself in one piece until the opposition began to fall back, thankfully.

Jon turned on his heel and began the jog to his classroom, where he could grab a few items that he hoped would help those in need of healing. As he came to the corner before the North Tower, he heard the high tap of a woman's heels. She sounded as if she were running. Concerned that one of his fellow professors could be in need of his help, Jon rounded the corner quickly to offer his aid but was surprised with a bright green glare headed his way.

He deflected the spell quickly though had to regain his footing in doing so, and as he raised his wand back and behind him to throw a curse back, he suddenly stopped with his eyes wide and his jaw slack.

She was dressed all in black with the majority of her hair pulled into a braid, though plenty of it had spilled out and was stuck to her glistening forehead. There was blood on her hands and her face, but she was only herself bleeding from a gash in her thigh. Her eyes were wild behind sweaty curls that had been thrown out of her usually perfect hair and tossed haphazardly about her head like a frazzled, broken halo. And even though her face seemed animal-like and bent in anger, she was still as beautiful to him as he recalled seeing her last.

He couldn't understand why his disheveled sister was suddenly at Hogwarts, looking as if she had been around during the fight. He hoped that she hadn't come for him, only to get herself hurt. Worry met with the confusion that clouded him from seeing the obvious.

"Kate, what the devil--"

She shrieked and jerked her arm violently at him, sending bright emerald curses with the same fervor of a cornered animal. Startled, Jon did nothing more than deflect them as best as he could. She didn't stop hurling spells at him until the toe of her shoe caught on a felled bit of ceiling in her path. When she came down, she came down hard and bashed her chin into the rubble.

Jon hurried forward out of instinct to pick up his younger sister, but again she let out a yell and blindly struck out with a vicious bought of Sectumsempra. He felt the invisible blade slice his ear and flinched, cupping the side of his head to stem the bleeding. It was then that it clicked. Why she was here, why she was injured, why she seemed half crazed. An ache took over Jon's chest, followed by a sharp pain worse than any cutting curse.

"Kate, no... Please, tell me you aren't... that you haven't..." He couldn't form the words. His hand dropped from his ear and gripped his chest, closing into a fist around his shirt.

She smiled wickedly at him and stood, tossing her hair away from her face. Somehow her dark eyes looked less whole to him now than when they had been shrouded.

"That I'm not what, brother dear? Standing with the Obscura against your precious precious little pile of filth?"

"What are you--?"

"This place, this whole place is rubbish!" Kate threw her arms about in a wild gesture, shaking her hair back into a curtain over her creamy face. "Mixing the vermin with the wizards and the witches! Filthy little mudbloods that ought not to have ever been let into our world, let alone ever been born!"

Jon furrowed his brow, taking a tentative step forward and reaching his hand out in front of him, as if he could close the space between them and repair whatever had crept between them without his notice. How could he not have even seen that she was in the Obscura? She had become odd, had drifted from him somehow... but he never would have dreamed his sweet sister could kill. Children, for that matter!

"Katie, what are you talking about? People are people, and magic shouldn't be exclusive. We don't have control over who we're born to. You shouldn't be messing with these kinds of people, Kate, they're dangerous..." he took another set of slow steps toward her. "We're not even Purebloods. You know mum was--"

"Don't you say it!" She erupted back into a fit of angry magic. Some of which he deflected and some of which he countered. He even managed to set her back and nearly disarmed her, though that seemed to only have pushed her further away, so to speak.

If she had been angry then, she was purely livid now.

"Don't you talk to me about her! Don't you even speak...! She's filth! She was always filth! He was wrong to marry her! She's beneath us! She was a worthless witch and a worthless mother!"

"Kate!"

"Diffindo! She never did love me. Not like she loved you. Not like I could ever hold a candle to her sweet Jonny, the apple of her bloody eye!" She began to advance on him as she hurled her spells, ranting as she pushed him back down the corridor.

"Protego!"

"I wasn't worth her time! I wasn't worth her attention! I wasn't even worth her shit!"

"Stupify!"

"Protego! I was a bleeding little nothing to her! She hated me! She never loved me! She never did!"

"Don't be daft, she's our mother, Kate! She loves you!"

"Your mother! Incendio!"

The tapestries lying on the ground lit quickly and suddenly the dim corridor was awash in bright orange brilliance. Jon flinched from the heat and the light of the fire, shielding his eyes with his damaged arm. Long enough for Kate to hit him with a knockback jinx.

He flew a good few meters before hitting the ground again and catching his shoulder on the corner of the broken stone littering the floor. He struggled to a sitting position, finding he had harmed his back and hip in the fall as well. He was getting to be a bit too old to be thrown about like a rag doll.

Quickly he scrambled to take hold of his wand again, staggering back on his feet and throwing back a hex to keep her from coming closer. Whatever he was dealing with--whatever his sister herself was dealing with--he was starting to feel as if appealing to his memory of her was not an effective plan.

"They understand, you know." She spat at him. "Understand how it is to have earned something, to be entitled to something, to have been born into it--and have to hand it over to someone useless. Someone who doesn't know anything. Someone who shouldn't even be able to wipe the dirt from your shoes!"

She swung her wand and the walls seemed to shake. She had always been so brilliant, so unbelievably powerful. He could see know why her classmates and her professors had feared her so much as a child. She was gifted.

But she was twisted and mad.

"I was always better than you! You were pathetic! You couldn't even levitate your own quill without my help! And I hadn't even a wand then! I was always smarter too. Than you, than anyone else! And all you or mum or everyone ever did was hold. Me. Back!" She threw a harsh curse that he barely pushed aside. Had he not, he could have lost not only his wand but his whole wand arm.

"Kate, stop it, you're going to kill me." The shock was clear in his voice, and it seemed to have the same effect as a shrieking mouse would to a hungry cat. Kate's lips spread and a sick smile took over her face.

The two of them began to duel, and Jon soon realized he had engaged in a fight for his life. His own sister; the air in his lungs and the light of his life. And she was trying to kill him. They dueled in that hallway for what felt like an hour while he frantically began to pray that someone would come around the corner and relieve him from this craziness. He was tiring out, a problem that she didn't seem to share. The longer they opposed one another, the farther gone she seemed to be. She eventually seemed to lose the sense of speaking, and instead let out her spells in a series of aggressive wails and broken grunting. His best opposition became his only defense. She was right about one thing, at least, he had never been a match for her. She was a marvel of magic. So strong, it had taken them three appointments and hours of scouring the shelves at Olivander's to find a wand capable of keeping up with her. He remembered jeering her then that she had better take good care of that wand or else she might never find another match, and would lose her status as a witch.

The thought became a stone that sunk in his gut and hollowed out his core. He realized what he had to do... and what would most likely result.

Jon threw himself back into his spell-casting. Forcing himself to forget the lead in his limbs and ignore the ache in his bones. His heart was weary of the task at hand. But it would have to be done.

His advance puzzled his sister, who disliked her brother's new found backbone. She became sloppy in her curses and left herself open; a fact that Jon took advantage of. He waited until he had drawn close enough until he was able to once again see her eyes fully. And then...

"Expelliarmus!" With a gasp Kate was left empty-handed, her eyes following the path that her wand took through the air. "Accio wand!" It slowed it's backward rotation before shooting towards his outstretched hand, landing flat in his palm. He looked to the woman before him another time and realized with great pain that he could no longer recognize her as his sister. The devil she had become had eaten away at her and left behind only the worst of the world.

Her expression was pitiful. She seemed so small and frail now. So unremarkable without her wand. Her pleading face and sightless eyes like a frightened bird's.

"Jon no... Jonny, Please..." He took a breath in, holding her wand in both hands. Her rage returned, and she belted out another shrill. "Don't you dare, Jon! Don't you dare!"

'I'm so sorry...'

The sound of her wand snapping filled the hall, leaving behind two broken halves of wood and his hands and two broken spirits.

She came at him like an animal, clawing at the air and then his face. But she was tiny now. She lacked his height and what little muscle he had was not gifted to her. It didn't take him long to wrestle with her, and once he had her turned around he pinned her arms around his and held them behind the base of her neck in a full nelson. He held onto her and rode out her rage until two sets of footfalls came. Most likely brought on by all the screaming, two Aurors rounded the corner and helped Jon secure his wild sister.

They put her in a white belted jacket, still fighting like the devil was in her as she screamed at him how she hated him. How she would kill him. How he was nothing to her. Not a brother. How she would find him and hurt him back. And with an official on either side of her she was whisked away to Azkaban. At least, he could only assume. He had tuned out their talk once they had appeared, and had only nodded or muttered little nothings when asked twice to respond.

He was tired. There was a strong weight now bearing down on top of him. His father's death had been a hard blow to Jon's psyche, he thought, but now all this with Kate...? He could hardly even force himself to think on it clearly for more than a second. Eventually he was left to himself, two halves of a broken wand in one hand and his own in the other.

He turned slowly, sadly, and headed to his classrooms to retrieve what he had set out for. It would have to be done. There were others in need.

#sp #katel #wmstories

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