In The Heat Of The Night

In the heat of the night

In the heat of the day

When I close my eyes

When I look your way

When I meet the fear that lies inside

When I hear you say

In the heat of the moment

Dominion, Sisters of Mercy

In his eyes she was dead. Blood, indistinguishable from her lips save for the fact an ugly split ran across her upper lip, fell drop by drop onto her neck. Esme Nott grimaced at her still figure. His one last shred of humanity, if you could call it that, was slightly sickened that the Ministry was now sending women in to fight. They were now sending women in to have their last breaths kicked out of them, to die lying in their own blood, their friends' blood, their families' blood. After staring at her for a number of minutes he picked her up and roughly threw her aside.

Sympathy was the trait of fools and idiots; if the stupid girl had chosen to be an Auror Operative then she knew how the game went. If she'd chosen the losing side then she was even more unstable than he had thought previously. What kind of woman becomes an Auror Operative? He turned his back on her and went over to check the body of another Operative, enjoying the look of terror on the man's face; the man's mouth was slightly open and his eyes stared up into Nott's, as if begging him in death to have mercy. Nott found this quite amusing but rather disturbing as it was unsettling to have the dead man constantly looking at him as so for a bit of fun and for the want of something to do, Nott decided that he would simply take the eyes out of their sockets. As he leant down to survey the Operative's eyes in closer detail, he felt a dull ache in the back of his leg and instinctively he looked down. As blood gushed from the wound the dagger had left in his leg, Nott turned towards the girl. She was sitting upright, sneering at him before smiling, the sort of sadistic smile the Dark Lord had when Wormtail recounted the ever-rising number of dead Aurors to him.

"How many have you killed?" she asked. Well, this was hardly a standard first question to ask, was it? She raised her eyebrows as she asked the question and winced at her split lip, running her tongue over the blood and swallowing. She smirked as she saw him blanche at this. Nott had bad memories of licking people's blood. The Death Eaters had a number of inanition ceremonies and one of them included drinking a concoction of your own and a fellow Death Eaters and dragons blood. He felt bile rise up in his throat at the memories of this. He had sadly had to drink Rookwood's blood and he'd been violently ill for the next three weeks. Swallowing, lest the girl should think of him as a coward she gave her his most malicious look, as id daring her to say anything else.

"You've never tasted your own blood? It isn't as bad as it sounds." Clearly this woman was deranged; tasting your own -or anyone else's blood for that matter- was digusting and Avada Kedavra was needed as soon as possible. However the numbing sensation in his leg hampered any movements, the feeling had slowly spread from the wound itself to the rest of his leg, infecting each nerve with a dull pain. With great effort he reached for his wand with his left hand.

"Expelliarmus," she said lazily, as the wand flew out of his robes and landed into her hands. Nott silently cursed himself for being so stupid; first rule of being a Death Eater, always remove their wand. If you didn't you could end up with a loony, blood tasting, deranged witch disarming you and leaving you at their mercy. She walked over to him and pointed her own wand at his head. "You can either tell me now or I'll have to stun you and let the Ministry deal with you. As much as I hate the bastards I work for, seeing you under a truth potion spilling it all out, from lovely Voldemort to your probably non-existent sex life would just about make my day. Now pick."

Nott hesitated as he opened his mouth. Either way he was doomed. If the Dark Lord didn't kill him for exposing his part in the atrocities committed, this psychotic witch who looked as if sunlight would kill her would. Weighing up all the possibilities in his mind he made a mental pros and cons list for each. Eaither way it would be painful. The Dark Lord was not known for forgiveness and by the looks of her narrow dark eyes this one was probably devising various ways to make his death slow and painful. The question was really 'Esme Nott are you a weak man?" His train of thought led his mind to other personal places until an incredible feeling of pain brought him to his knees. The fire coursed through his body, setting every never a flame. This was it, digging his nails into the hard earth, gritting his teeth and feeling them scrape until he could no longer bare it and let out a long anguished scream into the night. He prayed it would be over soon, Nott through the searing pain finally realised why so many Muggles went in for religion. Suddenly it stopped and he felt a rough kick to his stomach, his eyes glittered with tears and through the blare saw a black boots crunch against the leaves. Deciding Voldemort was the lesser of two evils; Nott began to speak.

"Twenty, maybe thirty. I honestly don't know." Her wand remained pointed at his temple and for the first time in seventeen years he began to prepare for death. She looked as if she would have no hesitation in killing him. Operatives had power given to them which Aurors and Unspeakables could only dream of. The last time they had been called, so many had fallen to Operatives, so many has been killed in deaths that even the most sadistic Death Eater would have trouble topping; well excepting that bastard Macnair. The last time he had faced an Operative they had made his spine stoop with Crucio, before by some miracle Rosier had passed and killed them. The Operative had died laughing; they'd left the body with a wide smile on its face, a smile that haunted his nightmares. This girl was clearly made from the same material and even if she did defy all expectations and let him live, the Dark Lord would make his torture and death the evening entertainment.

"How many have died in the past months?" Her voice had lost the sarcastic tone it held before, now it was flat and emotionless. He dared not look at her and stared at his own blood, now a puddle around his feet.

"Seventy. More once the bodies here have been counted." He had kept a tally of the bodies, something the Dark Lord insisted upon, to see how the Death Eaters were faring against the Ministry. She nodded and Nott heard the bang of her wand and watched the cords entwining around him with a helpless fascination. She levitated him and they moved along the forest floor, the crunching of leaves and something that sounded disturbingly like bone the only noise. It was humiliating, to have been so easily captured by a sadistic Operative who couldn't have been older than twenty-five and who was a woman, the most severe dent to his Death Eater pride. Either they were getting better at their job or he was getting old. Nott could feel it now, the sudden realisation that he was old, and that hurt most of all.

"If you're lucky," he heard her drawl in amusement, "you might get a goodnight kiss off your wife before you get dragged off to wherever the Ministry puts you."

"If you're lucky," he snapped, the humiliation still stinging, "my Master will kill you quickly." She roughly yanked his head back and pain shot straight through to his brain.

"Well, I'm sure we'll have a lovely time. Esme Nott isn't it?" He nodded and his bonds tightened. A light shone painfully in his eyes and he screwed them up to shield them.

"I know you," she said, "Someone's told me all about you." As the cogs in his brain began to turn slowly through the pain of the sly yanks to his head another voice broke the strange connection between the two of them. Not a pleasant connection but one that he needed to fathom out without rude interruptions from other people.

"Miss Earnshaw," a man's voice called out. "Celeste, are you OK?" He heard her snarl behind him.

"Arsehole," she said through gritted teeth. "I'm hardly dead am I?"

Nott opened his eyes and saw a middle-aged wizard peer at him and then Celeste. His overgrown schoolboy looks had him agreeing with the sadistic little witch for a moment. On looks alone he had found someone he hated more than he. The man, whose body had never quite left puberty, was looking at him with undisguised disgust and leered at Celeste. Obviously men at the Ministry liked to play rough. Very rough if you were going off the new standards of sadism set by Celeste.

"Well Celeste dear, there is a carriage waiting over by the pond there to take him to Azkaban." He looked at Nott and grinned "Not so confident are you now we've caught you?"

Even in his state Nott managed to laugh, however hoarsely. This stupid pillock actually thought that he had done something, when it was the curse and knife happy Celeste that had done the work. If this was the kind of people she had to work with then he wasn't surprised she was mad, it'd drive him mad. Celeste was clearly not in the mood for showing a little kindness. Never mind, she would be dead as soon as the Dark Lord found out about her and her little games; the sly yanks, the curses. That was of course, if he ever found out.

"We?" he said incredulously "I believe it was Celeste. I'd keep an eye on her, the Dark Lord himself would have been proud of her tonight."

"And if you haven't noticed Alamus, the Dementors have left Azkaban. He'll be out in days, like the rest of them." Celeste sounded pissed off and slightly weary, as if this was an argument she'd fought before.

"Yes my dear, but it is procedure. Mr Fudge has insisted all caught Death Eaters are returned to Azkaban. Aurors are now guarding the cells."

Nott heard Celeste sigh and knew how she felt, what catastrophe of fate had allowed this Alamus to be born? However he couldn't resist getting one last jibe in.

"Yes Celeste, it is procedure. Lord knows we all must obey the mighty Fudge and his army of fools."

He felt his head jerked back once again and the knife was pushed slowly into his back. Seeing Alamus looking slightly stricken, as if he had seen Celeste do this before, he remained silent. Making it to that carriage alive was now the best he could hope for.