Chapter Twenty-Nine
Confronting the Faceless 💀 CompleteFebruary, 1998
"Do not pity the dead... pity the living"
Odette has given up on not using magic.
It was feasible in the beginning, when there were leaves on the trees for shelter and berries in bushes for food. Now though?
Now she's trudging through knee-high snow and sleeping wherever she happens to collapse. There's no cover at all from the Snatchers, so when she's unfortunate enough to cross paths with them fleeing is rarely an option. She could Apparate of course, but you have to have a destination in mind and the entire forest looks identical under its endless white blanket.
She has blind apparated a few times when things were going poorly, and by some miracle none of those situations resulted in her being splinched, but she knows that each time she does she's increasing the risk that something will go wrong. And she really can't afford any health issues right now - finding food is hard enough. Medicine would be nigh-on impossible.
Honestly she's not sure why she ever thought not using magic was a viable long-term option. At least she's learned (through accidental trial and error) that the only thing the Snatchers can actually trace is if she speaks the Dark Lord's name, and she has no intention of ever doing that.
She has no idea where she is these days, or what day or month or year it is. She thinks there's been snow long enough that it must at least be January, so it must be 1998. She missed the New Year. Her best friend Zoe always hosts a massive New Year's Eve party and she always drags Odette along to it and Odette never complains because they really are fun (except that one time when a guy got way too drunk and handsy but Zoe had hexed him and never invited him again).
She wonders if Zoe still had her party. She isn't sure what she would want the answer to be.
She refreshes the warming charm around herself as she continues her trudging, her ribs pressing against her skin like a threat. She really needs to find food today.
There's a faint rustling from off to her right and she jumps, tenses, flinches back to press against a nearby tree. Her eyes dart around the area, wand raised in a white-knuckle grip as she scans for enemies. She's so tired, she doesn't think she can win if she doesn't get the first shot. She has to see them before they see her, she needs-
A squirrel darts across the snow and up a nearby tree, and Odette nearly sags to the ground in relief. Only the threat of wet clothes keeps her standing. Wet clothes means sickness, and she can't afford that. She can't afford anything right now.
She hunches her shoulders and continues walking, wishing fervently that she'd learned to magically darn clothes at some point - her own robes are frayed after months of continuous wear and no washing. She'll learn how afterwards, she decides, when she's back at home and all this is finally over.
She does that sometimes, makes plans for after. Her mind whispers that there might not be an after, but she has to believe there will be. Has to think about seeing Zoe again, and Dirk too. She'll meet his boys finally and his lovely wife and one day this will be far enough in the past to just be a bad memory. She has to believe that. She'll go mad if she doesn't.
Of course, to make it to the 'after' she really needs to find food. She kind of wishes she hadn't let that squirrel get away, but her stomach turns at the idea of killing it. And skinning it. And having to sort through its guts to figure out which parts are edible and-
She doesn't think she's very hungry anymore.
She keeps walking through the snow, ignoring her damp socks and increasingly heavy robes as she repeatedly refreshes her warming charms. Moving burns calories but it also keeps her blood pumping, keeps her just a bit warmer.
The sun drops and the temperature goes with it, and Odette shudders and tries to draw her cloak tighter around herself, brushing the wet hem across her lower legs in the process and only succeeding in making herself feel colder.
She needs to stop soon, but she hasn't found food. She needs to find some today. She'd told herself she would, and for all its scarcity she hasn't actually gone more than five days without eating something, even if it's slightly rotting meat from some wild animal's kill.
But today she hasn't come across anything, and with the light now gone - the sliver of silver offered by the moon not nearly enough to see by - she knows she has to stop for the night. Her stomach clenches, but it's been empty long enough that it doesn't register as anything more than a slight pressure in her abdomen. Her brain is accepting the lack of food so her body is ignoring the hunger pangs for now.
Tomorrow, she thinks, she'll definitely find something. She has to.
She wonders if there's a town nearby, if she can root through the trash like she had before the snow. But no, she's written that off as an option, hasn't she? She can't remember why she did, but she thinks she did.
The memory lapse doesn't bother her, they're too common these days for her to really worry about them. It'll come back when she's rested, or eaten, or had some water. They always do. For now she takes out her wand and dries up a spot on the ground and casts a few more charms to make it soft. She dries out her robes next and then pulls them off to use as a makeshift blanket.
Once she's as comfortable as she can manage, she curls up as small as possible and closes her eyes. The sounds of crickets lulls her into a light sleep.
She wakes with the rising of the sun and is soon up and moving again. She melts some snow for water - at least that isn't something she needs to worry about finding these days - and takes small sips from her palm as she walks, warming each mouthful against her tongue before letting it into the rest of her already too-cold body. Her stomach whines pitifully, reminding her that the liquid is far from enough to calm it.
She once again thinks longingly of the trash (and she hopes one day to look back on that in horror), but now, after some rest, her brain is alert enough that she can remember why it's a bad idea - every town bordering the woods is a veritable hive of Snatcher activity. She'd barely gotten away last time, and as weak as she feels now she definitely wouldn't be so lucky again. Individuals and small groups of two or three she can generally handle, but the dozen that buzz around the towns are definitely too much for her.
Hopefully she'll find an abandoned kill today. She knows she can go longer than this - has gone longer - but she has to keep up her strength. If she's too weak she won't be able to fight off the next round of Snatchers, and there are always more.
Odette wonders sometimes if she's the only one left out here. If all the other Muggleborns have been caught and dragged off to sit in front of Madame Umbridge. Zoe had told her what was being planned - she'd learned before everyone else, she always does. Benefits of working for the only major Wizarding newspaper.
Odette remembers Zoe bursting into her apartment in London with a duffel bag and a magical tent at the start of September and telling her to pack her things and get gone. At the time Odette had thought her friend was being overly cautious, but it didn't take long for her to realize how bad everything was really getting. And so she'd packed up and vanished into the night.
At the time it had seemed like a good idea. Now? Now she's thinking that they must at least have food in Azkaban.
She trudges through knee-high snow against biting winds and scans miserably for telltale signs of a struggle that might lead to a carcass. As she does she lets her mind wander. Distraction helps her keep moving, keeps her from focusing too much on how bleak her situation is, stops her from getting lost in the darker thoughts that have moved into her psyche in recent weeks.
Today she ponders the magical mechanics of summoning and wonders why one can't transfigure food and water as easily as they could most other things. Gamp's Law was a fun topic in NEWT Transfiguration - she remembers chatting about it at length with Head Boy Percy Weasley when they did their prefect rounds together seventh year and they'd had quite a bit of fun trying to come up with plausible theories for the reason behind the exceptions.
Thinking about prefect patrols gets her thinking about her other friends from those years. There was of course her fellow Hufflepuff prefect Lucas Elstewart who'd been a very good friend in those last three years - even Zoe had liked him and she had a "creep until proven not-creep" opinion of men during their school days. Zoe's getting better, but Odette knows she's still generally suspicious of most guys until she gets to know them.
She thinks about her other friends too, like Adeline Lindberg who had been her roommate for seven years at Hogwarts and as such is a friend by default. She wonders what they're all doing right now, if they're safe wherever they are. If she remembers correctly none of them were Muggleborns, so they at least shouldn't be on any Snatcher radars.
She wouldn't put it past Zoe to do something risky in the name of helping though - her friend is a Gryffindor through and through.
Odette smiles faintly at the thought of her friend, her mind taking the bleak whiteness of her surroundings and transforming them into something brighter and more welcoming - a memory of school, when she'd stayed over the winter holidays and the entire Hufflepuff House (and some people from elsewhere) had gotten into a massive snowball fight for an entire afternoon. Odette remembers how half the House had gotten colds afterwards but it had been so much fun that no one was complaining.
She stays lost in her memories as she walks, and she only blinks out of them when she realizes that the sun is going down. And she didn't find any food. Again.
Her cheerful mood is stamped out immediately, but she can't look now. She quickly sets up a sleeping area for herself and settles in, knowing she won't sleep well but trying for some rest regardless.
She's up again with the dawn and her stomach is desperate in its demands. Day six today, and from past experience she knows that if she doesn't eat today she'll start passing out randomly from hunger and exhaustion, so she needs to find something. She can't afford to not be alert at all times during the day, not with Snatchers around.
She doesn't linger on the fact that it's tragic she knows that about herself now. She just focuses on the food.
Unfortunately for most of the day it seems she's still flat out of luck, and the sun is slowly creeping down the sky (alongside her sinking hopes) when she hears a sharp crack of Apparation nearby.
A Snatcher. She needs to leave, needs to change directions and hide while he or she is still unaware of Odette's presence. After all, the best confrontations are the ones you don't ever have.
And yet her feet remain rooted to the ground. She hesitates, her stomach clenches. And then she climbs up a tree - and intentionally makes a noise as she does.
She knows the Snatcher heard it, can hear heavy snow-dampened footsteps making their way towards where she's hiding. Her heart is pounding a mile a minute but her grip on her wand is steady.
The Snatcher is unconcious on the ground before he even has time to process that a stunning spell has been cast. Odette stays in her tree, still tense, wand still raised, listening for if the wizard below her has any friends. It's rare that Snatchers travel solo, but to her immense fortune this one seems to have been bucking the rules.
Of course, the whole group has been weirdly quiet the past week or so so perhaps there's something going on behind the scenes she's unaware of. Pushing the thought from her mind - there are more important things to attend to - she drops from the tree and inches nervously over to the prone figure in the snow.
She isn't entirely sure what she's doing, if she's honest. Her usual modus operandi with Snatchers is to avoid them entirely, or run as quickly as possible when that isn't an option. But today...
Today she's so hungry.
She roots through the Snatcher's bag, feeling something more like guilt than hunger coiling in her intestines as she does. He's a Snatcher, he wants to kill you. She reminds herself firmly, even as her subconcious screams about the morality of theft.
He has food. Two chocolate bars and a wrapped sandwich. Odette shoves them guiltily into her robe pockets - only for all of it to fall out into the snow (thank goodness they're all covered up well). She stares at them for a long moment before slowly putting her hands into her pockets and discovering the giant holes torn in the bottom.
She stares mournfully at the fingers sticking out of the bottom of her robe - and then looks past them at the prone figure again. He's small for a guy, and his robes look nearly new...
She shakes her head, takes a few steps back. She can't. Isn't that crossing a line? He can go get more food (He can go get new robes her mind whispers traitorously) but leaving him without protection in the frozen forest, unconscious for who knows how long? She can't, she can't do that, she won't bend that far. She isn't that desperate.
(Not yet her mind hisses)
She grabs the food off the ground and runs blindly away. She's scared of what she'll do if she stays any longer.
She makes camp a little earlier than she normally would, curled up against a rocky outcropping with her pilfered goods. Each bite feels like a betrayal, a new dent in the principles she holds so dear. She pretends the comforting weight in her stomach makes up for it.
The next day she's feeling more alert, but the guilt of her actions hounds her every step and she swears she's moving slower than normal. She refreshes her warming charms and thinks of the Snatcher's cozy winter robes before shaking her head violently, as if she can physically dislodge the horrid thoughts. She's better than that. She has to be. If she breaks her morals now, how will she be able to look at herself in the after?
She saves the food, eating the chocolate slowly and only having the sandwich when it's threatening to become stale. She goes a week without feeling too hungry and it feels like heaven.
Then she goes a week with nothing but snow. She makes it past day six without fainting, by some miracle, but days seven and eight see her losing a lot more time than she's comfortable with.
On day eight she's huddled against a tree, head between her knees and breathing labored as she tries to dispell the dizziness that had overtaken her a moment earlier, when she hears the familiar crack.
Her fear reaction kicks in immediately, but her stomach also perks up and her mind lands on the promise of possible food.
She doesn't move, reasoning that she's too unstable to do so anyway, ignoring the way her ears are peeled for the Snatchers' footsteps and how her wand is perfectly steady in her hand.
There are two of them this time, and Odette barely has time to remember to cast a Disillusionment spell on herself so she won't be seen before they step into view.
"I'm just saying it feels weird to go against Theo. Is Zara really sure about him?" One of the two women is saying as they stroll into the clearing, far less cognizant of their surroundings than Odette would expect, but she supposes they don't know she's there and don't know to be careful.
The other shrugs. "She makes good points you know, and Theo's own uncle didn't take his side."
"According to Zara." The first girl responds, but she sounds uncertain now.
"And besides," The second woman declares, "I don't know about you but I'm not interested in upsetting Zara, and she's decent enough as a leader. With or without Theo we'll be fine."
Odette distantly finds it ironic that it's just after saying this that the two women come into range of her stunning spells. They're both down in moments, though one has enough time to look startled and start reaching for her wand before collapsing under a second stunner.
Odette stands shakily and stumbles over to the two, praying for food. To her utter dismay there's nothing, and her stomach wails desperately.
Shaking she collapses back into the snow, barely registering the cold and wet that immediately start seeping into her tattered fall cloak. It hasn't kept the elements out in weeks, and a sudden surge of anger wells through her. Here she is, cold and underdressed and hunted and all she wanted was a little bit of food. Don't they owe her that much? Don't they-
It's simple magic, to trade her cloak for the smaller woman's. Almost instantly she's warmer, though still a bit damp due to the fact they're both sitting in the snow.
Odette staggers to her feet, not letting herself think about what she just did - maybe not able to, her mind has been buzzing constantly these past few days with a hungry desperation and an inability to focus on anything but her dropping energy and empty intestines - and stumbles away from the two Snatchers. It takes until the sun is nearly set to remember to dry off the robes magically, and she collapses in them for what is her warmest rest in ages.
She sleeps past dawn. She can't remember the last time she did, but she doesn't have the energy to wake up until the sun is already partway through it's journey across the sky. Even when Odette does get her eyes open, the rest of her body is unwilling to cooperate and she lies there for what must be hours, to weak to move.
She needs food. She needs food and she knows now where she can maybe get some. But she can't predict Snatcher movement, can't just hope desperately that they'll show up, or a carcass will appear after weeks of not seeing any, or that the snow will vanish and her old fallback of berries will become an option again.
She doesn't move that day, only shifting enough to eat some of the snow around her for hydration and to renew her warming charms whenever the wind's bite inches too close to unbearable. She more passes out than falls asleep that night, and her rest is anything but energizing.
When she wakes up she has a pit in her stomach and a plan in her head. It's desperate, and she knows that when she's fed and energized again she'll hate herself. But right now it's the only way her addled, starved brain can see.
Her desperation and determination manage to compensate for her bone-deep exhaustion and she finally hoists herself up off the ground. She scans the area blearily, looking for anything that can help her with her plan. There isn't very much, but she does think to dig a series of pits around the area and hiding them magically. She then clambers awkwardly up one of the larger trees and charms herself invisible.
It's only now that her brain decides to wake up and start questioning everything she's doing. What are you doing? It shouts, why are you doing this?
She wonders where that question had been twenty minutes ago when she was magically vanishing snow and dirt from the ground to make a hold big enough for a grown man to get stuck in.
All at once she's scared - not of the plan, even, but of herself. What kind of a person is she, if she can do something like this? If she does this is she even worth anything as a person? Wouldn't it be better to die noble than live crooked? Isn't that what she believes?
Her stomach whines and her vision swims, and she nearly tips out of the tree she's clinging to as the world spins around her. Once again her focus narrows to a desperate need for food, and before she can think any further is open and faintly forming the word she never thought she'd say.
"Voldemort."
It only takes a few moments before people begin apparating into the area, wands up and looking for her intently. She presses against her tree, heart in as her logic screams while her hunger keeps her wand hand steady.
Three people fall into holes, two knocked unconscious by the tumble. The third is kept down by Odette freezing him magically in place. She knows he's still conscious and aware of his surroundings, but he won't be able to move until he thaws naturally or one of his friends notices his predicament.
She knows she can't afford to give them a chance to do that, and she doesn't know if her spell was spotted. But she planned for this. What that says about her, she doesn't know, doesn't ponder, not now. She will later.
For now she flings a blasting curse into the center of the group and stuns all the ones she can see as they scramble to recover from it. A few more fall into her pit traps. One runs away entirely, apparating with a crack that nearly knocks Odette from her perch.
There's a tense silence that falls after his departure. Odette peers down in terror, unsure if she'd gotten everyone, hands gripping the coarse bark beside her hard enough to bleed as she scans the area.
It's quiet - nothing so much as rustles in the wind - and Odette doesn't know if it's an empty silence or one that's waiting for her to make a mistake. She can't see anyone but no one can see her either. With magic her eyes don't mean much. Which is good considering she suddenly can't focus on much of anything.
She sits there in the tree until her joints are stiff with cold and her nose, fingers, and toes are completely numb. Her wand is still out, but she fears that any motion, even a single flick to restore her warming charms, will give her away and the monsters she's trying to wait out will attack.
But nothing emerges from the shadows. And finally, Odette's hunger wins out over her fear and she lowers herself back to the ground, the climb down made more difficult by the sticky red covering her hands, seeping from where the bark had gouged into her palm. She'll fix that. Later. Now she's driven only by the hope of food.
She roots through everyone's pockets hopefully, desperately, and comes up with a few energy bars that she devours right there in the middle of the clearing, too hungry to have space to think about saving them for the long term. The food does bring her back into the present somewhat, and with the clarity comes the first sparks of regret.
There are seven people in the clearing, counting the ones down the holes, and every one of them is unconscious. A few are bleeding. They all have snow slowly soaking through their robes and are sure to be freezing when they wake up.
Odette hesitates. Now that she's gotten what she was aiming for when she first set up this horrible trap her logical mind is coming back to the forefront, and it's screaming that she needs to get as far away as possible before one of these people wakes up, or the Snatcher that had run away comes back with reinforcements.
But she's rooted to the spot, staring at the carnage around her, searing the image into her memory. Slowly she finally starts to move - but not away. Instead she begins pacing the area, casting warming charms over everyone to ward off potential hypothermia. She double checks their pockets as she does, but she doesn't find any more food. She does, however, find some flyers for the Muggleborn Registration Commission that she takes. She doesn't make fires anymore - she doesn't want to attract attention - but she'll make an exception tonight.
Finally she reaches the pit that has the frozen Snatcher in it. He's looking directly at her, and she shudders slightly.
"I'm sorry." She croaks out. is rough, her voice unused in so long that's she's not even sure she made words just then. She doesn't repeat herself though, just casts a warming charm over him and quickly turns away. With the charm in place he'll be able to move and revive his companions soon enough, and she needs to be very far away when that happens.
She gets maybe twenty feet before her legs give out. She looks at her bloody hands and realizes that they're shaking, that her legs are too, that they won't be able to support her weight.
Taking a shaky, shallow breath into compressed lungs she closes her eyes and risks apparating.
She doesn't end up halfway in a tree, which is good. Her hands are still the only things bleeding, which is also good. And the hunger demon in her guts is reluctantly content, which is a small miracle.
And yet she doesn't feel good at all. She releases her warming charms and lays back in the snow, letting the chill settle her burning skin and churning stomach. She can't afford to throw up, she needs everything she ate to digest. Needs the energy it will give her.
She lays there long enough that the sun vanishes and the quarter moon takes it's place. It's more than a quarter now, really, and it's starting to provide adequate light to see even at night. Odette remembers the flyers she'd taken and fumbles them out with numb fingers.
She stares at them, feeling her eyes start to hurt as they attempt to focus in the dim light on the small letters in front of her. She doesn't really want to be able to read the propaganda, but her subconscious reflexes pay no mind to that and continue their attempts to decode the paper in front of her.
She drops her arms a moment later, holding the flyers to her chest and fumbling slightly for her wand. She'll decide what to do with her unwanted papers after she wards off possible hypothermia.
Finally she manages to get a grip on her wand and refresh the warming charms that should have been reapplied hours ago. She also dries out her robes and the area around her while she's at it, though she doesn't soften the ground - she's gotten weirdly comfortable.
She gazes unseeing up at the stars visible through the light cloud cover and the skeletal tree branches, and finally her mind turns back on fully.
A rush of guilt and fear and hate slams into her almost immediately, and it feels like a physical blow. She chokes down a wounded sound and closes her eyes against the mounting headache.
How could you do that? Her conscience shrieks, and she turns on her side and curls into a ball, feels the sharp edges of the flyers scrape against her ribs as she does. How could you steal their food, how could you intentionally lure them into a trap specifically to hurt them and steal from them?
"They deserved it, they'd do the same to me." She whispers weakly, her vocal chords scratching painfully at the inside of .
So you're no better than them. You're supposed to be. You're supposed to be the good guy and yet you let yourself fall and for what? What was it you sacrificed your principles for? Were three energy bars worth your basic decency?
Odette, despite everything, hasn't actually cried very much since she'd lost Dirk all that time ago. She's never had time, and after a while the situation just didn't seem worth crying about. It was just how her life is now, not some massive trauma.
But now she feels her eyes stinging, even after she closes them to try and ward off the feeling. She keeps trying to tell herself she had no choice, even as the traitorous tears slip past her lids and trace frozen paths down her face.
Once she's started she can't stop, her body shaking with muffled sobs as she curls tighter into herself, overwhelmed.
She falls asleep at some point in the midst of it all, must have, because the next thing she knows is sunlight. She blinks awake, aware of how cold her face is, and slowly sits up. The flyers are crumpled from where her knees had crushed them, bloody from where her untreated hands had gripped them.
She looks down at the papers, finally able to read what she hadn't last night: Mudbloods and the Dangers the Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society. Her stomach turns, and this time not from hunger.
She walks away from the pile of pamphlets a few minutes later, leaving them to burn to ashes.
Author's Note: So that was fun :D
Next Week: People are only nice when they want something
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