The air cracked like a whip as a snake made of fire materialized in front of him. That made some more people scream, maybe because they thought Voldemort was there. Harry ignored them and whispered in Parseltongue to the snake, propelling it forwards with another slash of his wand.
The snake immediately wrapped around Flint, who thrashed in what seemed to be pure surprise, and managed to get another spell off and reduce another of Madam Rosmerta's tables to a smoking ruin. Harry hissed, "Bite him," and the snake plunged its head down and bit into Flint's collarbone.
Flint screamed as the wound caught on fire, and dropped his wand, spreading his fingers. "I surrender, I surrender!" he was babbling, while the serpent kept biting him and wrapped its tail around his waist to maintain its hold.
Harry managed to cancel the spell and call the snake back to his wand. Shacklebolt was scowling at the sight of Flint on the floor, his hands up and his wand rolled over to Harry's feet. Harry rolled his eyes and turned around as he heard Hermione and Ron creeping out from under the table behind him.
"Why in the world would he do that?" Ron whispered. He sounded shaken. "He can't hold that much of a grudge from Quidditch!"
Harry grimaced and decided to act now before someone came in and took charge of the scene the way they'd totally failed to do when Flint was actually attacking. He carefully used a Severing Charm on Flint's left sleeve.
"That will do it," he said, and he and Ron and Hermione stared at the pulsing Dark Mark in resignation until the professors remembered they were adults.
Narcissa stalked into the room where Lucius was keeping Barty Crouch, with Regulus right behind her. Regulus was silent, but his eyes were darting between Narcissa and the prisoner when they at last halted.
Lucius was holding the Imperius on Crouch. Narcissa knew that, and knew that he wouldn't answer her in the way she might have wanted him to. He stared past her, expression slack, eyes blank.
But still.
"Lucius has had some information from you," Narcissa whispered. "But not enough. Not enough to anticipate the attack on my son today." She paused. Behind her, Regulus took a breath, but released it without saying anything. "Because we asked who the active Death Eaters were, and you apparently didn't consider Flint active because this was his first mission."
Silence. Crouch stared at the wall. Narcissa stared at him.
She knew that she should be doing other things. Reassuring Henry through the Floo. Reassuring Draco the same way. Her older son was blaming himself, thinking that if he had gone with Henry to Hogsmeade, the attack wouldn't have happened. It wasn't his fault, and Narcissa needed to tell him that.
But her head was full of white light, a wintry blast she had last felt when Sirius had tried to kidnap Henry again, and she needed to remove it.
"Cissa?"
Regulus, trying to remind her she was human. Well, that was fine, but it was not what Narcissa needed right now.
"You may wish to leave the room, Regulus," she said softly.
There was a long enough pause that she thought he had. Then she heard him saying, "I'll stay."
Narcissa drew her wand. Crouch continued to look past her.
She touched her wand to his throat and thought about Henry screaming in pain because he'd had nightmares of the Dark Lord, backing away from Sirius in panic, huddling in the darkness of that Muggle home.
"Afflicto," she whispered.
The spell touched Crouch, although the only sign that it had was a slight widening of his eyes. He was suffering, Narcissa knew that. The Affliction Curse would chip off a bit of the soul, much as the Dark Lord had done when making Horcruxes.
Narcissa's next spell was the Imperius. She layered it on top of Lucius's, not taking control over Crouch from him but forcing Crouch to obey her as well.
"Show me the pain you are feeling," she whispered, and smiled as his screams filled the room, soothing some of the white light in her head.
She could not protect her son. She had sworn that she would never let him be kidnapped again, and this man had set up the trap that had taken him to the graveyard. She had agreed to let Henry return to Hogwarts, believing it would be a safe haven for him, and instead Sirius had almost taken him again and then a Marked Death Eater had attacked him.
She needed to let out some of the madness, or she would simply kill Crouch, and Lucius would have to bind his spirit to get him to talk, in much the same way he had bound the spirit of Crouch's mother to capture the man in the first place. Lucius wasn't good enough at necromancy to do that kind of spell twice in a month.
So Narcissa made Crouch scream, and the light inside her diminished and died. By the time that Crouch had finished sobbing, it was gone completely.
She stepped back and removed her own Imperius. Crouch slumped and drooled some more.
She turned around with a smile, and saw the round eyes Regulus was staring at her with. Narcissa inclined her head. She didn't regret using the spell, and she had given her cousin a chance to leave. If this changed the way Regulus saw her, that was the way it would be.
Regulus swallowed, and swallowed again. Then he looked at Crouch and whispered, "He deserved to suffer that much?"
"He did."
Regulus closed his eyes, then opened them again. There was a faint sheen of tears to them. "All right."
....
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