Insantity Ground

Title: Insanity Ground
Fandom: Harry Potter ~ General Series. My Big Damn Table
Pairing, etc: Sirius, Bellatrix
Prompt: 68 ~ Lightning
Word Count: 400
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Same storm, two different points of view. I wrote both of them for the natural disaster challenge over at hp100 and have expanded and combined them for this challenge. And, as a small aside, I actually have a friend of mine who, in a lightening storm, ran out with a metal pot on his head, screaming Bella's line...



The storm raged outside the prison. Howling winds sidled through windows, down corridors, under doors, carrying a freezing mist that soaked everything. Lightning split the night, casting an eerie glow in the cells while thunder roared overhead. Everything, down to the bedrock of the island, shook when the waves smashed into the rocks below.

As a dog, all he wanted to do was curl up and whimper. As a human, the storm seemed less threatening, less of an instinctive danger.

Until the rats came.

Swarming up from the bowels of the island, they overran the prisoner's cells in their attempts to find higher ground, biting and clawing all in their path. Swallowing a yelp of surprise as the first rat crawled over his foot, Sirius shivered in abject horror.

When the rats were swarming over him, drowning him in a sea of fur and tails, Sirius howled with fear and misplaced rage, certain that he would die by the rat.

Bone chilling water, straight from the sea, floods his cell and Sirius weeps with unabashed joy while the water chases off the rats.

* * * * *

Bellatrix laughed as the storm approached, maniacal laughter that overrode the noise of the storm to bang off the walls and pound into the prisoners’ ears. Lightning split the sky, Bellatrix raised her arms, beckoning it down to her.

“I defy you!” She screamed to the heavens, electricity in the air making her hair stand on end, “Come and get me, you old bastard! I dare you”

Thunder boomed and Bellatrix laughed again, exulting in the power Nature was unleashing on the prison. Mayhap the storm would do her a favor and breach the walls. Or drown her idiot cousin. Suddenly, she shrieked, this time in fear, as a rat invaded her cell, seeking higher ground.

“Get off!” Screaming, she kicked the rat to the wall. It hit with a solid thud and slid, a trail of blood left behind. Another rat came. And another. Eventually and despite her efforts, the rats overran the cell, swarming in her clothes, her hair, ignoring her efforts to shake them off.

The water drains out of her cell and Bella sits in the corner, rocking back and forth, not noticing as her head bangs repeatedly into the wall. The Dementors look on and smile. She screams like the rest of the prisoners, her insanity no longer protecting her from Azkaban.