A / N : Um, by "properly infrequent updates", I didn't mean this infrequent. Chapter three was supposed to have been written weeks ago, but my computer crashed and in between trying to fix it, buying a new one, catching up with weeks of reviews, and retyping notes for three very long fics (I'm about halfway through), I haven't had much time to write. To everyone who's stuck with this fic anyway, thank you, and enjoy the update! It was fun to write, in all its creepy, morbid . . . . oddness. And I promise not to keep you all waiting so long again. Okay, off to bed now . . . . :)

"Slow down little one,

You can't keep running away.

You mustn't go outside yet

It's not your time to play . .." - "The Racing Rats", by The Editors.

The Mark was still there, hanging above him like some celestial signpost, when he woke up.

Barty was lying on the floor, but that didn't matter. There wasn't much roof left now to mar his view.

Was it quiet? It was hard to tell, with the ringing in his ears.

He groaned, forcing himself into a sitting position as his memory returned in a rush.

The Mark. The window. The noise. The light. The dots were all connected somehow, and they all ought to spell 'danger', but Barty just couldn't seem to join them up properly.

A cold breeze ruffled his hair. He was sitting amid the remains of the window, surrounded by tiny, glittering particles of broken glass – a sea of shrapnel sand, glowing green in the light of the Mark. Barty watched it, head tilted to one side, with a sort of childish fascination, enthralled by the way the once dull floor now caught the light. It was only when the sea began to move that he realized the room was swaying at an angle, and his eardrums were still buzzing. He closed his eyes - breathing deep against the nausea - and shook his head, but this did nothing to ease his dizziness. It simply brought on another wave of nausea, so he put a hand in his pocket and pulled out his wand. Pressing it blearily to his temple, he muttered a spell which cleared his head just enough to allow him to look up . . . . and to wonder why he still had his wand at all. The room he was in did not seem to contain anyone living, though somewhere in the distance he could hear a hiccuping sound it took a moment to place as sobbing.

Glass crunched under his feet as he stood up, and the room gave another alarming lurch, only settling back into place when he seized the window frame. Surprisingly, the action stung.

His palms were ribboned in blood, his cloak tattered beyond all resurrection. There was blood on his face too, but it came away easily enough at his touch and the skin beneath it was smooth, so it had to belong to someone else. This, Barty guessed, was the reason he had been left unharmed – he must have looked as though he were already dead.

That, or no-one considered him a threat.

Slightly demoralized by this, he pulled his sleeve down to cover his wand and stepped cautiously into the hall, straining his ears as more glass splintered beneath his shoes. He was trying to piece together how long he had been unconscious for, and to remember in which direction he had left his mother, when a hand shot out and seized his ankle. He jumped. A thin ribbon of light flew from the tip of his wand and whatever had clutched at him released its hold, falling quietly to the floor.

Barty cast a swift glance over his shoulder, frowning, and then picked up the only candle still possessed of a faltering flame. As he bent down a flash of orange caught his attention. He narrowed his eyes, lifting the candle a little higher, and realized that what he was looking at was not wholly unfamiliar.

It was the girl he had spoken to earlier in the evening - apparently his antics hadn't put her completely off the party.

He laughed. She was probably starting to wish she'd never come. Barty, on the other hand, hadn't felt so alive in months.

He jumped again as the light fell across the girl's eyes, which were stark and staring. She was soaked in blood. Did that make her dead, he wondered, or dying?

She blinked, answering his question for him, and her lips moved. It took her a painfully long time to produce any sound.

"H – h – hel . . ."

Barty moved the light out of her eyes and knelt down beside her, suddenly patient. He had never watched a person die before. And she certainly seemed to be dying . . . .

Unable to prevent himself, he reached out. The girl was cold as marble, her skin pearly white and shining with sweat, and she was crying. Barty watched the tears seep from the corners of her eyelids, mascara staining her cheeks a grimy black, and realized he had been right in his earlier assessment. There was nothing special about her.

"Help," he whispered, wiping her cheek clean with his sleeve. "Help."

The girl's breath caught, and a sudden, unmistakeable flicker of recognition lit her gaze. She took a haggard, tortured breath, her entire frame stiffening, and then she opened her mouth again.

"Help," she repeated, like a child learning her first words. Her voice was low and cracked with pain. "Help . . ."

The tears were coming thick and fast now, faster than he could wipe them away. So Barty abandoned his efforts, rocking back on his heels and studying the girl with a detached expression. His annoyance was easily masked. After all, she scarcely deserved it.

A new idea occurred to him.

Ensuring they were truly alone, he leant closer again, catching her face in his hands and stroking her hair as she shivered against him.

"Help. . ." she pleaded again. She was shaking uncontrollably, but that wasn't an attempt to evade the encroaching cold. It was just a reflex, like her senseless plea.

Barty put his lips to her ear, smiling when she stilled at the touch of his warm breath against her cheek.

"You still don't know my name," he whispered. "Do you?"

The girl froze. She hardly seemed to breathe. "C – Cri . . . n – no . .." She fell silent, and Barty let the smile slide from his face.

"That's a shame," he said softly, as he let her fall too.

She hit the floor with a tiny, broken gasp. Her fingers scrabbled briefly against the floorboards, and then her arms went limp and she tucked her head against her chest. Eventually she stopped struggling. She had been trying to curl into a protective ball, but it seemed she was too broken even for that.

Barty ran his hand curiously across the girl's limbs, feeling her shiver and shake beneath his fingertips. She grew colder shockingly quickly, and though she continued to cry, her eyes had become stark and staring once more, something unseen reflected in the vacant mirrors of her pupils. Barty frowned, wondering what she could see that he couldn't. Her lips were quivering like a humming-bird's wings, in tandem with the frightened-rabbit beating of her failing heart, and there was cold sweat beading on her forehead.

Barty felt his heart-rate accelerate. He could hardly hear a thing now above the blood rushing in his head.

"Are you scared?" he whispered.

He couldn't explain why the question seemed so important. He only knew that he had been searching for the answer longer than he could remember, and had yet to find it. But it was here – the question he really wanted to ask, and the answer too. It was hanging in the air, in the cold, in the silence. She had it now, she knew, and she was going to tell him. She had to tell him.

But when the girl opened her mouth it was only to take a small, gasping breath. She shivered, a tiny tremor passing through her like a sigh . . . . . and then she was still.

Abandoned.

Barty stared at her. He ought to move, but his legs wouldn't obey him. Whatever had snatched the light from the girl's eyes had emptied everything around her too – a vaccuum so crushing and complete it had stolen even the air, and without it he felt dizzy.

Move, he ordered himself. Leave.

It was senseless to just sit here. He was wasting time on morbid curiosity when he ought to leave, or to do . . . to go . . . . to find . . .

His mother, he decided at last. It was something to do with his mother.

He considered the situation. He could get up. He could search every room in the building. He could call his mother's name, or cast a spell . . . . or he could simply wait for destiny to intervene. Barty wasn't entirely sure he believed in fate, but there had to be something, didn't there? There had to be some deciding factor, some purpose to it all. There had to be a reason he had been left unscathed tonight. There had to be a reason he had decided to come to the party at all – after all, in all honesty . . . . how often did he try to keep his mother happy? He frowned. There was a pulse beating against his brain, a headache knocking for admission. If he didn't calm down he would lose control again, but the pieces were finally starting to fall into place, he was finally starting to join the dots. If he hadn't gone soft on his mother, for some unknown reason, and agreed to come to the party, he wouldn't have met the not-so-special girl, the unlucky pawn in a deadly game, and he wouldn't have seen death. If he hadn't argued with his father, and lost control, he wouldn't have gone to the window, and he wouldn't have seen the Mark. And if he hadn't seen the Mark . . .

What then, he wondered?

And then he heard it. Wild, melodic laughter, floating down the stairwell. It sounded like a symphony all on its own - chaos and triumph and savage, shattered desolation all rolled into one. It was the single most beautiful sound Barty had ever heard.

Destiny, it seemed, did not intend to keep him waiting much longer.

He was on his feet before he made the decision to get up, climbing the stairs before his survival instincts had a chance to kick in.

He saw her the instant he stepped into the light.

A tall, slim figure with wild black hair and blood red lips, a black cloak swirling about her like a silhouette. She was standing in the centre of the room, eyes alight behind a shining silver mask, and crumpled at her feet, sobbing, was Barty's mother.

"Crucio!" the woman cried, and as his mother let out an anguished scream, Barty remembered to breathe and stepped into the room.

The woman froze instantly, and his mother's screams trickled into nothingness. Her attacker hardly seemed to notice. She was watching Barty with her head tilted to one side, evaluating him, and for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure what the verdict was. He met her gaze, stuck.

There was a long silence, punctuated only by Theresa's broken sobs, and then irritation flashed across her tormentor's face.

"Shh!" she snapped, bringing her wand down in a whip-like motion. Theresa flinched, struck mute, and her captor smiled. "That's better," she crooned. She raised her wand, levelling it at Barty's chest, and her smile widened.

"Well well well," she said softly. "Have you come to play?"