Chapter Text
“I’ll head around the back of the house, you three take the front.”
When had Flint had gained the authority to start giving out orders? There wasn't any time to argue, but Oliver scowled silently as he followed. Why had Robards decided to assign the man to the team? Flint was a Slytherin, even if their school days were behind him.
Poisonous toadstools don’t change their spots.
The Slytherin had somehow grown taller and beefier since their graduation as well, and he’d shaved his hair into a stupid, overgrown sort of mullet.
When they had met again for the first time since school, Oliver almost hadn’t recognized him, but he still wore that same arrogant smirk, running his hands through his hair all throughout the briefing and grinning widely when he caught Oliver glaring in his direction.
And now here he was, acting as though he was the leader of the team. Stupid git.
Oliver pushed away these thoughts and followed the Terry and Susan past the front door. It was heavy, oak, and had fallen off its hinges, leaning against the frame. They had to duck to get underneath it, and Oliver grimaced as the top of his head touched the rotting wood. The building was old, dilapidated and crumbling at the seams, the air was musty and held the faint smell of smoke. Half the furniture inside had been shattered into pieces of splintered wood, and there were deep scorch marks in the carpet, a mucus-yellow paint was peeling off the walls.
They passed the remnants of a large bookshelf, a table with three legs blasted off, and a stack of chairs which had been scorched into black, charred remains.
The three split up and cleared the area systematically, Oliver kept his wand pointed out in front of him, the tip lit up as he went from room to room. Each one was barely illuminated by the grubby windows, despite the blazing sun outside. There were damp spots on the walls, and a hole in the roof of one of the bedrooms, he shielded his eyes against the bright sunlight which shone down through the rafters.
Other than the poorly treated furniture, the rooms were empty.
For a moment, he worried that this might have all been for nothing, but then he heard a shout from the other side of the house.
“Over here!”
Terry’s voice was muffled through the walls, and Oliver quickly skirted an overturned armchair and made his way down the hall.
Both Terry and Susan were already in the room, crouched down next to two girls who looked barely to be Hogwarts age. Footsteps told him that Flint brought up the rear, lingering underneath the door frame.
The girls were thin and dirty, with scraggly, unkempt hair. Oliver wondered just how long they had been here. One of them was crying, the other staring blankly into the space ahead of her.
“We need to get them past the magic shields before we can apparate.”
Terry said in a low voice, while Susan murmured softly to the girls as she unbound their wrists.
“Can they walk? I’ll carry one.”
Oliver quickly offered, but Flint interjected from behind him,
“No, Susan and Terry, you two carry the girls. We’ll defend until we get past the barrier, and then we’ll all apparate the hell out of here.”
Oliver opened his mouth to argue, but Terry shook his head at him as he gently picked up one of the girls, her head lolling against his arm.
The group moved back out of the house as quickly as they could, picking their way through the disorderly furniture. Flint took the lead while Oliver defended from the rear, wand at the ready. Every shadow, every creak of the old shack had him on edge, and it was blessed relief when they made it back out of the musty, stale air and into the outdoors.
The grass was long here too, overgrown, with the remainders of what had once been a stone path hidden deep beneath the greenery. He wondered who had lived here, and how long the Death Eaters had been using it. The magical anti-apparation barrier ended just past the tree-line, where the landscape was infected with a forest of ancient-looking, gnarled oaks.
He hoped Flint was keeping an eye out for any movement in those shadowy trees while he watched the abandoned house.
They shuffled through the grass quickly, and had almost reached the border when there was a sudden, loud popping sound, and three cloaked figures appeared just beyond the tree-line. Their masks glinted silver in the sunlight, empty, soulless eyes staring gleefully at their new prey.
“Fuck, get back!”
In an instant, both Oliver and Flint were standing in front of the other two, wands at the ready. Threads of red and blue light danced through the air with powerful crackles as the masked figures gleefully began to throw out curses.
The middle Death Eater cast a spell Oliver didn’t recognise, it glided straight through his shield charm, barely missing Susan by an inch.
“Get past the tree-line, get out of here! We’ll cover you!”
He yelled, not turning around to make sure they followed his orders, his attention still on the hooded figures. Flint was close at his side now, throwing spells with an intensity Oliver had never seen, but he had no time to watch.
The left Death Eater easily blocked the red flash of his stunning spell, and he felt a sizzle as a streak of purple light whizzed past his left ear in retaliation, leaving the smell of burnt hair in its wake. He was hitting them with all the spells he knew, Stupefy, Impedimenta, Petrificas Totalus- but the Death Eaters were blocking them so easily…
They inched backwards as a group, parallel to the tree-line, slowly moving closer and closer towards freedom. He heard two unmistakable pops of apparition, Susan and Terry must have gone-
And then, as if in slow motion, the streak of blue came towards him. He had no time to block, it was already too close, and then it hit him square in the chest and he keeled over backwards. The spell had bound him, almost like a full body bind yet so much worse, as though invisible ropes were squeezing him tighter and tighter while he lay there, motionless, out of breath.
“God fucking- Wood!”
Flint was on his own now, and Oliver willed him to leave, to get out while he could, apparate past the shield and get help- but he did not. Instead the idiot took a step right in front of Oliver’s prone body, as though to defend it, shooting off spells in a losing battle against the Death Eaters.
It did not take much longer before he, too, was hit with something, and he fell to the grass with a loud thump. The middle Death Eater cackled loudly, black, curly hair peeking out from behind her hood.
***
It took a while for the curse to wear off.
In that time, the two of them were bound with rope, and moved to one of the rooms in the crumbling house. It had once been a bedroom by the looks of it, although in his position Oliver could only see the underside of a desk and half of an overturned chair.
They were left alone then, to sit and wait for the curse to end and to wonder what was going to happen next. Oliver had no doubt some kind of torture would be involved, and then likely death. At least he’d go out for a good cause, and maybe they’d make him a memorial. Oliver Wood the War Hero. It had a nice ring to it, although odds were that he’d have to share his little statue with Flint, stuck together for eternity in marble form.
He hoped whoever was tasked with making said statue would at least make him the taller one. He imagined Flint would have a fit at that. Probably enough to bring him back as a ghost just so he could tell them to do it right.
Oliver first began to regain the ability to wiggle his fingers, then his toes, his hands, neck, until finally he could finally sit up properly and stretch out his limbs as far as he could.
“Well, I hadn’t planned on my day going like this. I had leftovers in my fridge and everything- nachos, if you can believe it. What a waste.”
Flint sighed in a bored voice from his left.
“Yeah? Well you could’ve been eating them right now if you’d left me and apparated away.”
Oliver said glumly, struggling against his bonds, despite the fact he knew they would never come loose. His wand was gone.
“And let you have all the fun here by yourself? No chance.”
They fell into silence for a moment. Oliver gave up on the attempts free himself.
“So they’re probably going to torture us then?”
Oliver’s hands were shaking slightly. He quickly gripped them together, knuckles turning white, and hoped Flint had not noticed.
“Yeah, seems that way. Child’s play for me I reckon, can’t be as bad as putting up with you for seven years.”
He punched Oliver lightly on the shoulder with his bound hands as he said it. Oliver scowled back.
“I hope the first thing they do is shave that stupid thing off your head.”
He stared pointedly at Flint’s mullet.
“Like it, do you? Makes me more aerodynamic on the quidditch pitch. It’ll probably become part of the standard uniform in a few years.”
He shook his head to demonstrate, the dark brown fringe flopped around his eyebrows. Oliver snorted, but did not deign to respond.
He supposed it did suit him, maybe just a little bit. Not that he’d ever admit it out loud.
They sat in silence again for a while, until footsteps echoed in the hall outside, and Oliver felt Flint tense up beside him. Two of the Death Eaters entered the room, still wearing their expressionless skull masks. One was very big and tall, maybe even taller than Flint, and Oliver could see blond straw-like hair peeking out from underneath the hood. The other man was shorter, he pointed a white wand at them, perhaps forged from holly, and thicker than any wand Oliver had seen before.
“Get up.”
The shorter one sneered down at them, while the bigger man yanked Oliver and Flint up by their bound wrists, and began to drag them through the hallway.
“You two are in trouble now. We’ll be hanging your entrails across the lawn before the sun rises.”
The shorter man leered at them beneath the mask, reaching up and pointing his wand hard against Oliver’s temple. The tip was burning hot, and Oliver leaned as far away from it as he could, a difficult feat to do as he was being dragged across the scorched carpet.
“Big talk for a man hiding behind a mask.”
Flint sneered at the Death Eater from his other side.
This earnt the Slytherin a quick hard slap across the face, and he fell silent.
Oliver groaned internally. Why did he have to goad them now?
“You little shit. I’ll have you begging for death while I cut off all of your fingers, you-“
“Shut up, Ronen, and bring me that one first.”
They were at the threshold of the living room. Bellatrix Lestrange’s disguise had been discarded, wild black hair spilling across her shoulders, eyes lit up in delight as she pointed at Flint, chest heaving with excitement.
Oliver was roughly discarded on the floor next to the broken table. The larger Death Eater stood beside him, gripping his wand menacingly as Flint was dragged into the center of the room.
“Marcus Flint, is it? And a Slytherin as well? How disappointing.”
But she sounded anything but disappointed as she pointed her wand at different parts of his body with relish, seemingly deciding which part to curse first.
“Where did they go? The others, the mudbloods, where did they apparate to?”
Flint glared up at her, lips sealed.
“TELL ME, YOU FILTHY TRAITOR.”
She screamed at him, eyes wild, but he didn’t so much as flinch. Oliver was impressed by his bravado.
“Not feeling talkative today are we? We’ll see about that,”
And then her wand was pointed right at his face and she hissed “Crucio.”
Oliver wanted to look away, but he couldn’t take his eyes of the Slytherin as Flint writhed on the ground, face screwed up, eyes shut. His teeth were clenched, hard, but they could not block out the scream of agony that ripped through him, his knuckles were white-
And then the curse stopped, and he lay there panting, breathing heavily, and opened his eyes. His lips were pale, and he was shaking slightly.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
His voice was trembling, but he glared up at Bellatrix, eyes full of hatred, and fury.
It was even worse the second time, Oliver stared down at a scorch mark in the carpet instead of watching the scene unfold, but nothing could block out the loud screams before him.
“Fine. Fine, we’ll have some more fun later, shall we? If you don’t want to talk first, then maybe your little friend here will.”
She licked her lips as her eyes drifted over to Oliver. He met her gaze defiantly, gritting his teeth as he was dragged out from his position and towards the middle of the room, the friction of the carpet burning his back, his shirt riding up slightly.
“And here we have a filthy halfblood.”
Her voice was filled with disgust, as though he were a bug she longed to crush or pull the legs off of.
He made eye contact with Flint for a second as they passed each other, but he could not decipher any kind of meaning from the look.
Comfort? A reminder not to tell these Death Eaters anything? Oliver didn’t know, but he didn’t need the reminder. He would die before gave anything away.
“We’ll start with a little taster, would you like that?”
Bellatrix cooed down at him in a sing-song kind of voice, lips drawn back into a cruel grin. Oliver said nothing, glaring up at her, waiting for the inevitable. He had never been hit with the Cruciatus curse before, but he’d heard all he wanted to know about it. The worst pain, the kind of torture that made you want to die. Nothing could have prepared him for truly experiencing it himself.
His bones were on fire, his flesh was melting, a thousand thumbtacks were being pushed into his skin. There was nothing else, nothing but pain in every limb, every nerve of his body, he was going to explode, he was going to die, he wished he would die. There was no room for thought, no room for anything expect begging for it to be over- and then it was over.
Oliver was lying on the floor, breathing heavily. Every part of his body ached, and his throat felt raw, sore, and he belatedly realized he must have been screaming.
“Ready for a little conversation now? A nice back and forth between friends?”
Bellatrix cackled from above him, and he wondered if he could really do that again, go through the pain- but no, he would never give them information. The safety of those muggleborns, of his team, it all relied on him, on Flint.
A faint feeling of embarrassment nudged the back of his thoughts. Flint had seen him screaming and writhing around on the floor, he hadn’t even tried not to react-
And then the curse hit him again. Experiencing it once did nothing to dampen the effects, and Oliver was sure she cast it for longer, but he would have never been able to tell.
When it was done, he couldn’t even find the strength to lift up his head and face her. Oliver could not do it a third time. He wished she would just kill him.
“Still not ready to talk? Well, how about we try something different? Maybe this’ll loosen your tongue.”
It was not an incantation he recognised, but the effect was immediate. It was as though tiny knives were slashing at his skin, up and down his arms. There was blood everywhere, his head was on fire, his bones felt as though they were being slowly crushed, he was screaming in pain…
Oliver was still lying on the floor when the spell ended abruptly, and he barely registered that there was some kind of commotion going on outside his field of vision.
“Stun him, you idiot! STUN HIM-“
And then there was a bang and a flash of red, something heavy fell down next to him with a thump. He could see long strands of curly black hair splayed out on the floor…
There was swearing, more flashes of light, and then-
“Wood- Fuck, okay. Can you stand? Use my arm.”
The bindings around his wrists were quickly severed, and Oliver groaned as he was heaved to his feet by Flint, head pounding, his full weight on the other man with his arm slung over his shoulder. Everything hurt, he was covered in blood-
“We just need to get past the barrier. Here, watch where you step.”
And then they were walking past the stunned Death Eaters, and down the hallway. The mask of the shorter man had been knocked off, and he was sporting a fresh bloody nose.
Oliver limped, putting all his focus on dragging his protesting body through the grass, and then they were at the tree-line…
Flint held Oliver’s wrist in a vice-like grip, there was the familiar painful squeezing sensation of apparation, it’s effects doubled by his pounding head, his organs compressing uncomfortably, eyes pushing back into his skull…and then there was darkness, and they were gone.