Defeat

Attica fastened the chain around her neck and snapped back to the present. Something that Snape had said before was nagging at her. "What do you mean, Potter isn't running?"

Snape had finally gained enough strength to stand, but he needed the support of the wall to remain upright and was leaning heavily against it. "Just what I said. He is not running. His time is almost up. He may be confronting the Dark Lord in mere minutes," he said through gritted teeth. He was still struggling against the pain that lingered from the attack.

Attica usually prided herself on her unwavering fortitude, but she was suddenly fevered at the thought of the boy slipping out of her grasp. She shook her head. "I don't believe you." If Potter confronted the Dark Lord, he would surely be killed. She couldn't accept that.

"You do not need to believe me. You can see for yourself." He drew aside the tattered curtains, revealing the view from the window behind him. From there, she could see a fire burning somewhere in the Forbidden Forest. From their vantage point in the Shrieking Shack, they were able to see down into a valley of the Forbidden Forest. She stepped closer to the window and realized that the fire was burning in a clearing much closer than she had initially thought. A group of masked Death Eaters surrounded the fire, waiting.

"And?" she asked impatiently.

"And," he snapped, "you can watch Potter's attempt for yourself. The Dark Lord is awaiting him in that clearing. The roof will undoubtedly provide a better view."

Attica wanted to deny that it was possible for Potter to do anything but run. Why would he walk willingly into the Dark Lord's midst when any fool would know that to do so would be nothing short of a death wish? Instead, she accompanied the professor to the roof in silence. He moved at a clipped pace, far faster than she had expected considering the blood he had lost. Undoubtedly, he was in immense pain, but his intractable pride prevented him from showing it.

Please, she thought, let him be mistaken. The boy must be running...

The clearing was easily visible, and she could make out a cluster of people in front of the fire, their figures brought into relief by the light of the flames. Malfoy would be there, as he and his wife would be too afraid to deny the Dark Lord their presence on this momentous occasion. Attica absently ran through the short list of names that Voldemort would have requested be present for his triumph.

If Snape was correct, she was quickly running out of time. She wished for a way to salvage her plan, and her breathing hitched. She was desperate for some tactic that would allow her to deliver the blow that ended Potter.

But it was too late for plans and schemes now. She ceased breathing and watched as a scrawny figure walked meaningfully into the clearing from the surrounding foliage.

When the figure that had to have been Potter's came into view and she saw the green arc of Voldemort's spell hit the boy, she gasped as if the curse had met its mark in her own chest. She crumpled to her knees even as Potter crumpled to the ground in the Forest below. The years that had gone into planning the boy's demise, the tremendous risks she had taken, finding it within herself to muster the immense amount of bravery it had taken for her to lie directly to the most powerful Dark Wizard in the world and acquire his almost impossible to gain trust... It had all been for naught. The deaths of her grandparents would never be avenged, even after years of meticulous preparation. She had always felt that out of anyone, she had reason to seek vengeance for her loss through the death of Harry Potter. And yet, she had failed. She had been branded with a mark of loyalty to the man who had taken her parents away from her before she even had the chance to know them. Now, he had stolen this from her too.

Before she could perceive the deep sorrow in Snape's eyes as he watched the scene unfolding before them, Attica was already slipping past the professor, running down the narrow steps and into the small room.

A million thoughts flooded her already crowded mind, and she could nearly feel the thrum of the Dark Lord's victory through the mark on her arm. Through a red haze of conflicted anguish she tried to think clearly. What should she do, where could she go, how could she bear to stand upright when the only thing that had allowed her go on for so long was now no longer tangible? Any chance for vengeance was slowly becoming a misty El Dorado that she could never, ever hope to reach.

Potter was dead, and she was not the one who had yielded the wand.

She had lost.

It was all... for nothing. She had nothing left. Even her sanity seemed to slip further from her grasp as she frantically tried to search her mind for the next step, for any way to erase what had just happened in the last few moments.

Anger and the quest for vengeance had brought Attica's thoughts into a bitter lucidity that had now, somehow, erupted into a surge of broken, riotous thoughts that she herself could barely follow.

She expected grief to flood through her. She expected to feel bereft with the loss of the tenuous thread she had been holding onto, the thread that connected her to the one way she could compensate for what she had lost. She had convinced herself that only by following this thread to its end could she ever be happy again. With this connection destroyed, she expected only defeat. Instead, the thrum of victory intensified. Glory beckoned. With what little of her mind she could still undoubtedly call her own, she listened and welcomed this new feeling of hope.

And then it occurred to her.

Now, Potter would never fall at her feet and beg for mercy. He had already fallen to the Dark Lord. But Voldemort survived. Voldemort had murdered her mother and father. Voldemort had taken them from her just as surely as Potter had been the catalyst that had ended in the deaths of her grandparents. And even then, the Stone had been destroyed because Voldemort had been after it. It was Voldemort who was deserving of her wrath now, not Potter.

Snape's voice brought her out of her reverie. "Miss Flamel?"

She looked up at him from where she had fallen on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. "I have to go," she said, motioning with one hand to the doorway.

"Wait. You must tell me..."

"I don't have to tell you anything, Snape," she spat.

She expected his icy retort, maybe even his signature vitriol if he was feeling especially irritated. But she did not expect the barely-there whisper that now accosted her. "Maybe I can help you."

She looked down, discomfited and unable to know how to respond to anything but harshness since her foray into the Death Eater circles. "No one can help me," Attica whispered. "I'm going to take care of this myself."

"You cannot mean..." Snape seemed to be at a loss for words. "You will not survive if you challenge the Dark Lord! Have these last two years taught you nothing?" he countered. "Have I taught you nothing?"

Attica knew that it was foolhardy to attempt to kill Voldemort. She knew that she would probably not survive the encounter, and it was pure madness to try. But she had given up on attempting to hold onto the few threadbare pieces of sanity she imagined she had left. Revenge she had sought, and it was revenge she would get. Or she would die trying. Either way, she needed to release the anger and frustration that had been boiling inside her, under the surface, for more than half her life. She didn't grace him with a response and, instead, turned on her heels and walked to the door of the Shrieking Shack.

"Attica," Snape called. She stopped, but did not turn around.

"Why?" he asked, and his speech held a note of some emotion that felt completely out of place coming from the impassive man. It was imploring. Severus Snape, of all people, was pleading with her.

Feeling vaguely shocked, Attica took a deep breath. And, for the first time in a very long time, she spoke the truth, unencumbered by hate or agenda. "Because if I don't, it will have all been for nothing. Everything I have sacrificed..." She trailed off.

"It will not bring Potter back," he said softly.

Bring Potter back? Attica turned a bewildered gaze on the Potions Master. She snapped out of her anguished haze for a moment to truly look at him. His normally proud posture was replaced by shoulders slumping under agony and exhaustion. The expressionless face was no longer steeled toward the world, but was filled with emotion and paler than Attica had ever seen it. He looked drained, pained, and desolate as he stood before her with his arms held limply at his sides.

This is what a broken man looks like, she thought fleetingly.

When Attica didn't answer, Snape moved almost imperceptibly closer to her. "You are not the only one who has failed in protecting him."

Snape thought she was a protector of Harry Potter, she realized with a click of belated understanding that persisted even through the foggy haze that had become her mind. It was amusing, really, and hysterical laughter threatened to bubble up from her chest. She was exactly the opposite of that brat's bodyguard; she was no Snape. She was an agent for her own agenda, biding her time until she could claim his life for herself. In the midst of her musings, Snape had closed the distance between them so that he was standing immediately before her. When he touched her gently on the arm, Attica flinched and shrugged away from the contact and the pity in his black eyes.

"Don't," she said flatly before slipping out of the doorway of the derelict building. Leaving behind her the only person who had continually protected her since the loss of her family, Attica felt a brief twinge of guilt before the overwhelming tug of revenge flooded through her once again. Never before, not during her childhood when she had sat in the dungeons as he taught her Potions, nor in the years she had served the Dark Lord by his side, had she ever seen Severus Snape defeated. And she had seen no small number of Cruciatus curses thrust upon him.

The fruit of this quest has long been sought,

But faint of heart should tarry naught.