Sirius lay on the hard ground, entire body aching fiercely. He felt as though he would die here. He was losing hope that this mission was anything but eternal suicide. Fleecewood had burnt to the ground. Dumbledore had joined the world of the dead, as had Alastor Moody. His daughter had become a Death Eater.
If there was one thing that Sirius had learned from his brother's life it was that no one escaped the ranks of the Dark Lord except by death. His daughter, his wife, his… son-he had a son-would all likely be joining him long before he would be able to save them.
"Sirius Orion, get your lazy rump up this instant and stop your pouting!"
It was a voice he had not heard since he was nineteen and he had missed it dearly. He looked up to see a woman with dark auburn hair and grey eyes. She had fewer wrinkles and less grey hair than he remembered, but she still had that twinkle of mischief in her eyes that she had passed onto her son and grandson.
"Mrs. Potter," he breathed.
"I told you it is Mum," Dorea Potter replied, then smirked. "It annoys dear old cousin Walburga so."
Sirius scrambled to his feet and wrapped his arms around the woman he considered a mother. She was still a good foot shorter than him-had been since he was fifteen. He choked back a few heavy sobs as he clutched her tightly. She smoothed his hair, the same way she had the night he had run away from home, bruised and bloodied after his family's less than fond farewell.
"Now, now, enough of that," she said brusquely with all the authority that her own Black blood afforded her as she pushed him away. "What did I always say to you about these pity parties?"
"They're the coward's way," he said, straightening suddenly. "And that they meant Walburga had succeeded in breaking me."
"Good, you were paying the barest amount of attention to me," she smirked.
"Oh, Mum, you know I always hung off your every word," Sirius teased, fluttering his eyelids. She snorted.
"Then why are you laying on the ground instead of getting the hell on with it," she asked. "Your wife, your baby, and your terrified daughter are waiting for you!"
"No one escapes being a Death Eater," he said bitterly.
"And no one escapes Azkaban!" she sneered. "But if there is one thing I know about Sirius Black-about my son-it's that there wasn't ever a rule he couldn't break."
Sirius gave her a small smile as a dangerous thing blossomed in his chest.
Hope.
Amelia had to force Blaise out of the house to go to Diagon Alley in order to get their school books for the upcoming year.
"What is the point of even going to Hogwarts?" Blaise had moaned as she yanked his comforter off of him that morning. She had scowled and threatened him with dumping a bucket of ice water on his head if that was what it took.
The Alley's emptiness was unsettling, made even emptier by the fact that it was only the two of them, not four. Amelia took in a sharp breath at the pain as she strode down the street quickly. She turned to notice Blaise staring at the apothecary. She steeled herself, knowing that she could not break down, nto yet.
"Come on, Blaise, do keep up," she said briskly, keeping her head high. It took a few moments, but she soon heard him moving. She paused long enough to loop an arm through his and physically pull him through the Alley.
"Merlin, can you not stand to be seen with me or something, Amelia?" Blaise groused.
"There's no one to see us. I don't want to be out of the wards for too long," she said simply. "Even Mikey has left Britain-"
"Coward, he's a Pureblood, perfectly safe-"
"You and I both know better than that," Amelia said darkly. Shaking herself, she pulled Blaise forward to Flourish and Blotts. "Now, what classes are you taking?"
"WHo cares?"
Amelia shot him a look. He sighed.
"Transfiguration, Runes, Astronomy, Charms and Defense."
"No potions?"
Almost immediately, Amelia could have kicked herself. Blaise shut down completely as they walked. Trying to distract him, she began babbling.
"For myself I'm taking Potions, Magical Creatures, Charms, History of Magic, and Defense," she said, "I'm absolute rubbish at Trans-"
"No Divination," Blaise said snootily.
Amelia bit her lip to stop herself from snapping back something crueler. There was a pause.
"I'm sorry, that was-"
"I still don't understand it!" she exclaimed, shaking with yet-to-be-released. The few passerbys looked at them. Blaise, seeming to sense the coming explosion, pulled her to the side of the street. "I've Seen this war end so many times and almost all of them contain the New Rise of the House of Black. Something went wrong. This isn't how it was supposed to go. She's not the one who was supposed to die!"
Blaise glanced at the Apothecary down the street as Amelia tried to calm her breathing.
"You really Saw nothing?" he seemed to beg. "You're not just trying to make it easier that you couldn't stop it from happening?"
"Of course not," she said, fighting to hide the quiver in her voice. "It still doesn't feel right."
Blaise continued to watch the entrance to the apothecary, unable to listen to the pain in his friend's voice. It reminded him too much of his own. There was a mother carrying a basket, two small children clutched in front of her. A man walked in who had what looked to be spectacular scars from spattergroit. A girl with long, dark hair readjusted her hood, giving him a flash of a pale aristocratic face, gray eyes flashing.
Blaise's heart caught in his throat. "Amelia-look!"
"What?"
"Walking into the apothecary!"
Amelia rolled her eyes at him, but then narrowed her eyes at what she saw.
"Is that-" she snarled.
"It can't-"Blaise said breathlessly.
Rage boiled inside of Amelia, fiercer than she had ever known as she began to take long strides across the street.
"Malfoy!" she shouted, her red curls becoming more like a Gorgon's snakes.
The blonde boy turned, his skin greyish. Amelia felt some sort of righteous satisfaction.
"Amelia, Blaise," he said, voice trembling. "You shouldn't be here, you need-"
SMACK!
Amelia stopped him in his tracks as she slapped him so hard that he stumbled back a little. But she wasn't done, ceremonial words bursting out of her in a torrent of anger and hurt.
"You have dishonored your family name and soiled the status of your blood," she began in the almost liturgical rhthym that her governess had taught her such things in as a young child.
Blaise's eyes widened as he realized what she was doing and Malfoy looked absolutely panicked at the thought, despite the fact that both of them had planned on ending the betrothal as soon as they were legally of age. That had changed with the war.
"Amelia, no, no-I know I deserve it, I know we didn't want this-but you don't want to do this! Don't do this now!" Draco begged. Amelia's eyes hardened.
"You have brought harm to the doorstep of your own home and," she choked a little, "you have failed to protect the most vulnerable of your own House."
"Amelia, please-"
"Lia, you should think about what you're-"
"You've allowed members of your House to perish under your watch!" she shouted above the protesting voices of Blaise and Draco. "You are no protecto. You are no provider. You are not trustworthy and unfit to take the hand of the Daughter of the Most Noble House of Blackwood in marriage! I hereby destroy our betrothal contract!"
An audible snap broke the magic between the two and there was the smell of ozone in the air.
"Damnit, Amelia, now I can't protect you!"
"Don't flatter yourself, Draco," she sneered. "You can't even protect yourself."
"I'm not the only one who has made mistakes!" Draco shouted. "Bailey-Salazar help her-was not a saint! She was as Mar-"
Blaise drew his wand then, pointing it inches away from Draco's nose.
"She protected her own," Blaise said softly. "That's more than you can say."
"There was nothing I could do! I knew nothing until it was too late."
Amelia was now pointing her wand as well. He sighed and stepped back from his oldest friends.
"And I'll protect you two now," he said. "Get out of here. And don't come back to Diagon Alley."
"You absolute-"
But Blaise saw the look in Draco's eye even if Amelia was too far gone to notice. This was a warning they should heed.
"C'mon, Amelia," he said, grabbing her by the wrist. "We need to go. We can get the rest by owl order."
Before she could say anything else-or attack Draco full-out, Blaise had apparated them both back to Zabini Manor. Neither of them saw the green lights begin to flash across the sky, but Blaise certainly saw the dirty look that Amelia gave him before flouncing up the stairs to the guest room she had claimed.
Blaise could not settle, moving listlessly from room to room well into the night. Amelia's comments that Bailey was not supposed to die in any of the futures she had seen-that girl with the hood in the alley that he had caught a glimpse of. Memories of the night she left floated to the surface of his mind, when he had given her that claddagh necklace. She had been scared, he knew, but he had also known the look in her eye. It was the steely determination of a Slytherin's hope.
What had gone wrong?
He had been so certain that Professor Snape would help her. The thought of the dark man betraying one of his Snakes, much less his own Apprentice, was unimagineable. Blaise had not believed even the pull of the Dark Lord to be strong enough to sever the ancient bonds of Head of House to his charges, much less of Master to his Apprentice. If the Dark Lord truly had the power to break bonds that if not created by Merlin himself had certainly been perfected by him-well, one could hardly think on that possibility.
So then, had it gone right?
The funeral had been closed casket, as Fleecewood and its inhabitants had burnt to the ground. Nothing had remained of the Black after the inferno, as the papers had reported. Nothing but unidentifiable bones. The family not just dead, but obliterated.
Had Bailey's life not been horrendously altered by another such instance of faking one's death in Peter Pettigrew?
"You're still awake?" Amelia said. Blaise looked up at her words, realizing then that he had wandered into the kitchen. Blaise shrugged and flopped onto one of the stools at the tall counter. Amelia continued what she had been doing-making herself some chamomile tea, it smelled like. After a few moments, a steaming mug sat itself in front of him. He looked up at Amelia, who would not look at him. Her apology, he knew, for having blown him off earlier. Not that she needed to-he certainly had not been pleasant the past few weeks.
"Thinking about constantly won't bring her back, Blaise," she said softly. "You're hurting yourself."
"Something just doesn't add up, 'Melia," he replied. "She had a plan when she left Hogwarts, she wasn't supposed to die-you've said as much how many times?-and I just cannot be-"
"Blaise, slow down," she said, wrapping her dressing gown tightly around herself like armor. "I can hardly believe it myself. But Bailey is gone. The Dark Lord is powerful and she denied him something he wanted. We all know that those the Dark Lord sets his sights on are living on borrowed time. You and I just have to keep our heads down through this year and when we graduate, we can run as far as we can-convince MACUSA or some other country to aid Britain. But we just can't keep focusing on Bailey's loss."
"Says the girl who just broke her betrothal with a Death Eater very publicly," Blaise replied dryly. She shrugged.
"C'est la vie," she replied, finishing her mug of tea. "Now, to bed!"
Blaise followed her orders, but he dreamt of the grey-eyed girl in the hood all night long.
