Gotten a couple reviews mentioning just how much Mel swears in her head. If that's been bothering you, this chapter just here is, like, the naughty-language apex. And it was always going to be. It'll be less egregious in future. And it was always going to be :P

A couple sentences in this chapter are copied from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

His first day of class, History, Potions, and Runes had been exactly what he would have thought. But Melantha didn't quite know what to expect from Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor William Weasley. So, after taking a couple steps into the room — along with Ron, Hermione, Moon, Bones, and Abbott (the last three seemed to be making Ron very uncomfortable) — he paused a second to look around.

It was the same place they'd been in the last couple years, the same rectangular room with arched windows overlooking the lake, the same rows of paired desks, the same longer desk for the professor (now littered with papers and odd little bunches of crystal), the thing slightly higher with how the room tiered up a little over there. Bill had obviously been in here, though. Here and there were shapes glowing harsh colours drawn into the walls. Obviously runes, he could tell, but he couldn't read all of them. There were a couple relics obviously borrowed from somewhere in Egypt. Melantha noticed in particular a long, low statue of a shining, black, regal-looking cat laying right in front of the desk, and a crumbling, waist-high plinth on the opposite side of the desk from the board, dozens of weathered Egyptian hieroglyphs covering the entire pale granite surface, and atop it... Was that a pensieve? The rough, rune-encrusted bowl seemed a bit larger than Dumbledore's, the only one he'd seen before, but it looked like the same kind of thing.

Huh. Interesting

And, of course, the Professor himself was in. Leaning back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, both feet propped up on his desk. He knew Missus Weasley had tried to convince her eldest son to make himself up a bit more professionally before taking such a job as teaching at such a place as Hogwarts; it was obvious she'd failed. Bill's hair was still long, tied back in a loose, casual-looking ponytail. He still had the earring with the curving, glinting tooth dangling from it, which Melantha guessed he could understand — not very many people could claim to have survived a fight against a nundu, even a juvenile one. His dark boots on the desk were the same gleaming dragonhide, his simple trousers and tunic far more casual than most professors would teach in. As always, it looked like Bill was going to try to maintain that same impression of really just not even trying, but still making out all smooth and suave anyway.

Melantha was positive half the girls in the school would be completely smitten with him by the end of the week.

Hermione and Abbott dragged the six of them into seats at the front of the class — though only Ron seemed to really be opposed, looking slightly uneasy with the idea of taking Defence from his eldest brother. Melantha knew, due to the age difference, Ron hardly knew Bill or Charlie that well at all, had never been too comfortable around them. Hermione had claimed, over the summer, that Ron had a bit of hero-worship going for the both of them, bad enough he didn't really know how to talk to them most of the time. Which Harry had plenty of experience with, if entirely from the other side.

After a few minutes of whispered speculation on exactly what they were going to be up to this year, Bill tipped around a little, his feet slipping off the desk to fall softly to the floor. With a simple beckoning gesture, wand nowhere to be seen, the door at the back of the room slammed closed. Fully half the class jumped, everyone instantly falling silent.

Casually showing off wandless magic would do that.

Rising slowly to his feet, casually pacing around to the front of the desk, Bill said, 'Welcome to fifth-year Defence Against the Dark Arts. I'm William Weasley — though I suppose I have to get used to being called Professor, now.' He pulled a face of awkward reluctance; Melantha heard a few muffled snickers. 'And, yes, before you ask, those Weasleys.'

He could sense the eyes flick to Ron next to him, who shuffled in his seat slightly.

'The Headmaster was aware, selecting your professors the last years, that their tenures would be, hmm, brief, and their abilities quite likely less than spectacular.' That barely-restrained snort of laughter was probably Seamus. 'So, he tried to choose people who specialised in one area or another of defensive magic, to give you as wide of a grounding for your eventual OWLs as possible. Last year, you had wanded curses and basic duelling with Sir Moody — at least, you were supposed to, although Crouch was surprisingly faithful to the planned curriculum. Master Lupin managed to get all the lower years through most of the creatures likely to appear on the exam, or your daily lives. Quirrel gave you the first-year introduction to basic self-defence principles and, I expect, a few strategies for combating the inexorable advance of boredom, which is more useful than you'd think.' There were a few snickers at that, as Bill's eyes flicked to someone to Melantha's left. 'Yes, Mister Smith?'

'You skipped Lockhart, Professor.' There was a faint challenge on the boy's voice, as though daring Bill to come up with anything positive to say about the man — everyone knew he'd hated their former professor.

Bill raised an eyebrow at him. 'You tell me. Can no one think of nothing useful they learned during Lockhart's tenure? Miss Bones?'

An obvious smirk on her voice, she said, 'How to spot a fraud?'

His lips tilted a bit into a rueful smile. 'I suppose, but I would argue Lockhart wasn't even very good at it. His improvisation was awful. No one else? Miss Granger?'

'Not everything written in a book is true, even if it claims to be.' Melantha blinked, glanced over at Hermione. He could vaguely recall, when they'd finally proven how enormous of a fraud Lockhart was, how absolutely offended Hermione had been. At the time, he'd thought she was in some weird denial, refusing to believe her hero (and slightly disturbing crush, don't think he hadn't noticed) could do any such thing. But she hadn't mentioned him ever again, had she? Now that he thought about it, it was obvious she hadn't been offended because she'd thought their accusations were false, but because she knew they were true...

'Exactly,' Bill was saying, smiling brightly at her. 'No person is infallible, and books are written by people. Even excluding the ones who're intentionally misleading, simply fraudulent, or just plain lazy, even the certified experts writing your textbooks are completely capable of making mistakes. To be honest, I would be surprised if even half of everything in the library here were perfectly accurate.' His angle on her wasn't great, but Hermione still looked slightly disheartened at that. 'In most situations, it doesn't necessarily matter if whatever source you're using isn't perfect. But in my line of work, using a text with too many errors will get you killed. It's almost better not to use them at all.

'Speaking of my line of work,' Bill said, leaning back against his desk, 'there is one major field of magic you haven't touched in this class at all, which is part of why the Headmaster approached me. Some of you may know this, but immediately after my graduation from Hogwarts some years ago, I was taken into a curse-breaking apprenticeship with the Goblin Nation in Egypt, during which I also completed Masteries in Enchanting, Warding, and Dark Magic — Runic Curses, specifically. Since I had recently paid off my educational debts to Gringotts I felt it was time to return to Britain. I'll admit, that I felt I could lend a hand with the Dark Lord situation we're having at the moment was a part of that.'

Well, if Bill had been intending to impress half the school, that was pretty much all he had needed to say. Yeah, I heard about Voldemort, the most infamous British Dark Lord in centuries, somehow returning to life. That's exactly why I came back, no big deal.

'As for the other part of why the Headmaster offered me the job...' Bill reached a hand behind him, picking up one of the weird crystals on his desk. He bent over, placed the little thing on the floor, stood back up, and jabbed in its direction with his wand. The air in front of and above the student desks was suddenly filled with... Well, Melantha wasn't sure what that was. It was magical light, obviously, softly glowing in every colour of the rainbow, suspended in the air. Not a thick cloud, but hundreds of disparate filaments, a forest of lines twisting, splitting apart, joining together in a confusing web. Deep at the center, a brighter, thicker orb of white light, shining with pure brilliance. Even if Melantha had absolutely no idea what it was, he could admit it was definitely pretty.

'This,' Bill said, speaking over murmurs from the class, 'is a three-dimensional runic diagram of the wards of Hogwarts.' Oh. Well. Melantha leaned in a little, narrowed his eyes. Now that he was paying more attention, he noticed the little filaments were lines of writing, rune after rune after rune — must be hundreds of them, thousands in all. 'The work here is unique, and has long been of interest to warders and enchanters. This especially,' he said, pointing at the ball of white at the center, 'nobody's entirely certain what that is. I must have read dozens of theories, no consensus.

'We've all heard of how the Defence position is cursed, that's why no one lasts more than a year. Interviewing me for the position, the Headmaster asked me, if such a curse exists, where I would look for it. I thought the answer was obvious.' Bill pointed his wand again, and the image shifted. Instead of the large web, there was only a single thread, four strings of runes braided together, glowing a bright, lively red, accented here and there with a splash of blue. Bill pointed at the hanging runes, his voice perfectly smooth and casual. 'That, boys and girls, is the curse on the Defence position.'

For long seconds, the room was absolutely silent.

'You've got to be bloody joking!' shouted Seamus from somewhere near the back. 'It was on the wards the whole time?!' No one else was quite as noisy, but half the class was whispering to each other about it.

With a (completely deserved) self-satisfied smirk, Bill said, 'Yes, Mister Finnegan, I said much the same thing myself, when I found it last night. Does seem an obvious place to look, doesn't it?' Turning slightly more serious, he pointed again to the representation of the curse, floating innocently in the air. 'How many deaths is this responsible for? How many experts in their fields of study saw a premature end to their careers, right here in this castle? How many innocents have lost their lives, the Department of Law Enforcement that should have protected them gradually weakening due to substandard education among their applicant pool? How many, because they were never adequately taught to protect themselves?

'This,' he said, jabbing at the curse with a finger, 'is an example of why, if only in self-defence, everyone should learn absolutely everything they possibly can about warding, and runic curses. Which is exactly what I'll be teaching you this year.'

While Bill started going over the basic outline of everything they'd get into that year — everything from curse and poison detection, some basic warding, to a very elementary introduction into breaking harmful enchantments and piercing wards — Melantha couldn't help smiling to himself a little. Looked like they had another year of DADA that wouldn't be a total waste.

Before too long, the class was called to an end, and everyone was clamoring to their feet. Melantha stood up with everyone else, about to sling his bag over his shoulder when Bill's voice cut over the chatter. 'Miss Black, stay behind.'

Melantha blinked, but dropped his bag back onto his desk, weathering the curious glances from a few of his classmates before they had all trailed out. Soon she was alone in the room with Bill.

A few silent flicks of his wand, and Melantha felt successive waves of magic wash past him — palings slipping into place, he knew, so no one could listen in. Then Bill, perched back on his desk where he'd sat for most of the class, smiled at her. 'How'd I do?'

He shrugged. 'Seemed fine to me—' She couldn't help smirking a little. '—Professor.'

Bill made an over-exaggerated shudder at that. But he was still smiling. 'Anyway, since I had your last class of the day, the Headmaster told me to tell you to come up to his office right from dinner. You know where it is, right?'

Oh. Well. He'd known this was going to happen eventually. Dumbledore actually telling him things, he meant. He had said he would, as soon as Melantha learnt that occlumency stuff. Probably her least favorite thing she'd ever studied, but by that last week at Grimmauld Place, she'd been able to hold Sirius off perfectly well. Not without getting a headache, but still. This was...good, right? Yes. Good. Anyway, Bill was waiting for him to answer. 'Yes, I know where it is. What's the password?'

'Guess.'

'Lemon drop?'

'Got it in one.'

Melantha rolled his eyes. 'Well, thanks, I guess.'

With a few shivers of magic in the air, the palings dropped away. 'Good luck, Miss Black.'

Slinging his bag over his shoulder again, he said, 'Thanks, Bi–Professor.' Whoops. Going to have to get used to not calling him by his name anymore. That's going to be annoying.

Though, had to admit Ron definitely had it worse.

After an uneventful couple of hours — excluding that little snit Hermione and Ron had gotten into again, and wow did they ever seem to be fighting a lot lately — Melantha found himself standing in front of the gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore's tower. He couldn't help being a bit nervous. More nervous than he really thought he should be. This was what he'd wanted, right, for Dumbledore to tell him stuff? None of it could really be that bad, could it?

All that talk about needing to know occlumency, certain things not meant to be public knowledge... Dumbledore had just intimidated him a bit. That was all. Yeah.

He gave the stupid-but-strangely-appropriate password to the little stone monster, watched it leap out of the way in its smooth, disturbing imitation of life. That thing had always bothered him. Then it was on to the rotating staircase, which also bothered him. The first time he'd been on it, he'd only gotten a vague impression of oddness, not quite sure how to put words to it. But then Hermione had explained it to him: standing on this staircase, he should find himself going in circles, but staying at the same height. It was simply rotating, after all, not visibly ascending. For some completely inexplicable magical reason, he'd end up at the top without taking a single step. It was just...subtly unnerving.

And then he was knocking on the gleaming wooden door. And then Dumbledore was telling him to come in. And then he was looking around the room with slight annoyance. He had to admit, it was a really nice office, all big and open with shining granite and gleaming wood. But, all those little clinking, snittering devices that did who-knew-what... They were pretty neat, he guessed, but they made so much distracting noise he had no idea how Dumbledore could think with them in here.

Come to think of it? He probably just silenced them when he really needed to concentrate. Kind of seemed to defeat the point, though.

And then he was seated in a very familiar, comfy chair. And then Dumbledore was offering him one of those ever-present lemon drops he damn well knew Melantha wasn't going to take. And then he was asking after Melantha's occlumency training, then warning him he had to check he'd done well enough, and just as Melantha was about to ask—

Oh, god dammit! He flinched away from the acid tongue of fire stabbing into his head, immediately turned to thinking of nothing but coldness and smoothness, forcing his mind as placid as he could possibly make it, even as he ignored the splotches of white agony flickering across his eyes, the clenching in his own jaw. For a few seconds the fire surrounded him, dancing across the glassy surface of his mind, searing so hot he thought his brain might be boiling. How long was he going to keep—?

And then the fire retreated, so abruptly Melantha lost balance, even though he was already sitting, nearly falling out of his chair. By how bright the sky still was, he was sure that couldn't have lasted very long, but he was suddenly exhausted, as though he'd been practising quidditch for hours, covered in sweat, shivering in his seat. He rubbed at his now throbbing head with unsteady fingers, shooting Dumbledore a glare. 'Was that really necessary?'

'I do apologise, Miss Potter.' There was a hint of regret on his voice. Not a lot, but it was there. 'I had to be sure, and there is no other way.'

Better be damn well worth it. While Dumbledore got up, disappeared over by one of his cabinets, a pitcher of ice water appeared with the slight pop of elf magic. Melantha immediately poured himself a glass and drained the whole thing in one go, the cold almost painful on his throat — his headache didn't go away completely, but it did make it a little better, and he did stop shaking. He poured a second glass, pressed the smooth, cool material against his forehead, almost shivering with relief.

He'd have to sneak down to the kitchens tomorrow, find which elf sent this up, and thank them. They always loved it when he thanked them. He got the impression people didn't do that much. Which he could completely understand — the elves' reactions, he meant. Over the summer, Sirius and Remus (and, later, Missus Weasley) had almost actively fought him doing anything in the kitchen, but he'd still managed to take over a few times, if only to clear his head for an hour, and he hadn't been entirely sure how to react to them thanking him. The Dursleys certainly never had.

He'd noticed before that the people in magical Britain he tended to identify with most were the house elves. He still wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.

After a few moments, Dumbledore was back, his pensieve set in the center of his desk, filled to the brim with a silvery, ethereal shimmer of memory. Looking at it again, Melantha got the distinct impression Bill's was not only larger, but older — Dumbledore's had not a single chip along the rim, smooth and gleaming, the curve of the bowel and the arrangement of runes seeming somehow more...streamlined? Whatever. Not really important, he guessed. He could just ask Bill later if he was really curious.

'Before we begin, Melantha,' Dumbledore said, his voluminous sleeves pooling between the pensieve and the edge of the desk, 'there is one thing I must briefly inform you of. Upon your father's passing, you became Lord Potter. However, you were obviously too young to fulfill your obligations to your House. Your parents did prepare for such a possibility — Sirius was to be Lord Regent, but, obviously, he was in no position either.'

Melantha tried not to snort at that. It'd been explained to him over the summer that Dumbledore's position in the government was something rather like the magical equivalent of the Lord Chancellor (back when they mattered). Which, since higher offices had been vacant since the Statute of Secrecy, made Dumbledore effectively the most politically powerful person in the entirety of the country. Sure, the Minister had plenty of power himself, but he was essentially a bureaucrat: his job was to enforce the laws the Wizengamot passed, provide the services the Wizengamot funded, make sure all that functioned properly and efficiently. Fudge's actual power in the Wizengamot, which was sort of a combination of a legislature and the nation's highest court, was very minor. While he could make his opinion known on the floor, his vote didn't even technically count. Dumbledore, while he didn't technically have a vote either, was in charge — the presiding officer, basically, under some modification of parliamentary procedure. It was also his responsibility to ensure the proper functioning of the judicial side of the justice system. Not only should he have done something about Sirius not getting a trial, it was literally his job.

Hermione had wondered aloud at one point if it was really wise to have the High Enchanter (Lord Chancellor), Supreme Consul (both their Ambassador to and President of the UN General Assembly), and the Headmaster of Hogwarts be the same person. Melantha thought anyone who couldn't admit she maybe had a point was delusional.

But he guessed there was really no point in making a thing about it right now, so he didn't comment.

And Dumbledore was talking. 'I took the liberty of assigning Ignatius Fawley and Elphias Doge — both men I would trust with my life — respectively to manage your estate and represent House Potter in the Wizengamot.'

Melantha could only blink at that. He'd known, though not entirely processed, that he had a hereditary seat in the Wizengamot, but... Estate?

'Sirius wanted me to confirm to you that, at his request, they are currently in the process of transferring over trusteeship of House Potter to House Black. Unless I am very much mistaken, I suspect Remus will be filling you in on all salient details sometime in the near future. With that, I'd like to get to why I asked you up here. Unless you have any questions?'

Well. He did have a couple thoughts, but he wasn't sure just how important they really were, whether it mattered to him either way. He somehow doubted Dumbledore should have had the power to just hand over control over Potter stuff like that, but...did he really care? So he just shook his head.

Dumbledore's voice dropped slightly, his tone turning somewhat less business-like, a little warmer. 'I would like to show you a memory tonight, Melantha. You will recall, some years ago, when you were exhausted and weak from your trial with Quirinus, you asked me why it was Voldemort was so interested in you, why he tried to kill you as an infant.'

In an instant, the lingering heat and pain from the legilimency attack was gone, replaced by sharp ice slicing through his veins. For a moment, he could only stare at Dumbledore's composed, wrinkly face. Yes. Yes, he did remember that. 'You said—' He paused, swallowed a bit, trying to steady his voice. He just knew he wasn't going to like this. 'You said you'd tell me when I was older.'

'Yes, well.' A flicker of chagrin crossed his face, but only for a second. 'Sirius is quite insistent I should have told you then. If not the specifics, at least the general idea. And while I'm still not sure I was wrong, I can admit Sirius may have a point.'

Melantha somehow managed to not roll his eyes. That might be the most half-arsed apology he'd ever heard.

'The memory I am about to show you—' The swirl of glimmering thought and memory in the pensieve contorted, as though anticipating what Dumbledore wanted, already organising itself. '—took place in Hogsmeade, on the First of November, Nineteen Seventy-Nine. I had made an appointment to interview an applicant for the Divination professorship. I'll admit,' he said with an easy shrug, 'I had no intention of actually hiring her. There are so few Seers; I thought it better to perhaps offer a minor elective in the second year to introduce a few basic concepts, perhaps screen for the legitimately talented, instead of sinking so many resources into a subject few get any benefit from. I wasn't planning on hiring anyone. But, this applicant was a descendant of an exceptionally talented Seer and Oracle, and was already well-regarded herself, so I felt obligated to at least meet her.

'The meeting almost didn't happen at all,' he said, a darker tone slipping into his voice. 'The previous day, a large force of Death Eaters, lead by Voldemort himself, tried to take the village in what is now referred to as the Battle of Hogsmeade. At first, it seemed the Ministry defenders were outmatched, but the appearance of a few Order members, backed by an influx of civilian volunteers, tipped the balance before too much damage could be done, Voldemort himself retreating before Lily, James and Sirius, and my brother Aberforth. But our meeting place survived, Sybill confirmed she yet intended to come, so there we were.

'It happened at the very end of the interview.' With a slight, wry smile on his face, he added, 'If I didn't know better, I would almost think she'd planned it.' Dumbledore beckoned, gesturing at the pensieve between them.

Melantha grimaced — he hadn't exactly had great experiences with these things so far. It didn't help that he was very sure he wasn't going to like this. But he reached his hand forward anyway, dipped his fingers into the soft, cool water-but-not-water.

With a sickening lurch, he was yanked forward, straight out of himself and into the pool of memory. For an infinite instant he was falling, surrounded by twisting silver light and a tingling chill, pressing inward, forcing him inexorably downward.

And then, with a sudden snap that ran through him head to toe, he was standing on solid ground. Or hardwood floor, anyway. The room he found himself in was rather shabby-looking — the stone of the hearth was crumbling a little, the glass in the windows was scratched in places, the rugs covering most of the floor were faded and threadbare, the plush armchairs were littered with holes, stuffing poking out in a few places. Which was especially peculiar. This was obviously a magical place — the everlit candles gave it away — but all those were things that could be fixed, at least superficially, with a simple mending charm. Hmm.

Just getting to their feet from the wounded armchairs were two figures in robes. Dumbledore looked almost exactly the same, maybe a couple fewer lines on his face. Though he did look exceptionally weary, face drawn and shoulders curled with exhaustion — if he had just been fighting the previous day, that wasn't so unusual. The other was a slightly younger-looking Professor Trelawney, complete with bug-eye glasses and innumerous beads slung all over her. God, she looked so ridiculous. He didn't know much about her, honestly, just that she didn't have the best reputation. A third of the school seemed to think she was a fraud. Another third was sure she was a pisshead. The last compromised, and said she was both. From what he'd heard, he really couldn't thank Hermione enough for talking him out of taking her class.

He watched Dumbledore escort her to the door with something about contacting her later with his decision, Trelawney saying in that throaty, melodramatic tone of hers that yes, she was perfectly sure he would. He was just wondering what the hell he was supposed to be seeing here when it happened.

Melantha recognised it instantly. Because he'd seen it before, hadn't he? Making his way across the seventh floor, nearly running into the weird, reclusive Professor, half panicking when she suddenly seized up in some kind of fit. He'd been just about to run off to get help when Trelawney had grabbed at him, fingers hard as steel crushing his arm. Then she'd spoken, her voice completely wrong, deep and harsh and inflectionless, the air shivering around him with some weird magical something he didn't know enough to read, talking of servants and masters...

This younger Trelawney grabbed at Dumbledore much the same, a wince of pain shortly flickering across his face. And then she was speaking in that same impossibly deep and wide tone, Dumbledore's eyes widening and face paling with every word. 'One with the Power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches—' Trelawney took a violent, shuddering breath. '—born to Two who have thrice defied Him, as the Seventh Month dies — the Dark Lord will—'

Dumbledore jumped at a sudden thud, followed by muffled voices and indistinct scuffling, slipping in from the other side of the door. He gestured sharply with the hand not locked by Trelawney, the noise instantly cutting off.

'—Mark One as his Equal — One who will have Power the Dark Lord knows not — Both must fade at the Will of the Other — for Neither can endure while the Other lives — One will be born as the Seventh Month dies—'

The last word wrung out of her, Trelawney collapsed, slumping with a messy rattling from her beads. If Dumbledore hadn't caught her, she probably would have fallen straight to the floor. Dumbledore was staring at the shivering, stammering woman, a peculiar sort of expression on his face. It seemed, maybe, part-shocked, part-terrified, part-...relieved? He wasn't sure. Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak, hesitated for a moment, then—

He was yanked off his feet, the solid world around him abruptly vanishing. For a moment there was nothing, only light and cold, a vague feeling of upward motion. Then he was thrown back into himself, sitting right in the same chair in Dumbledore's office he'd been in before. He shook his head, trying to clear away the lingering disorientation, trying to process what he'd just heard.

But, it seemed like Dumbledore didn't feel like giving him the opportunity. 'Then, of course, the race was on.'

Melantha could only blink at him. 'Huh?'

'You may have heard the struggle on the other side of the door, partway through the event itself. I later learned a Death Eater had overheard, rushed to inform his—'

'Yeah, I don't care about that.' Dumbledore broke off immediately, blinking at him, but she ignored that. The portraits of old Headmasters long deceased were voicing their disapproval of him interrupting — some a bit more loudly than others — but he ignored that too. He really didn't care about the history lesson, he didn't. He really didn't think that mattered at the moment. He knew what that was, vaguely. Hermione had read about them, informed him. But not a lot. 'Prophecies.' He hesitated a moment, his fingers tapping restlessly at the arms of his chair. 'I don't really know much about the things. Much of anything, really.'

For a second, he thought Dumbledore was going to resist the slight change of subject — he'd obviously planned out which direction this conversation was going to go in beforehand. But then he nodded, folding his hands again on his desk. 'Not a lot is known of prophecies, to be honest. The mechanics of how they function I mean — it is one subject magic theory has managed very little to illuminate. We know certain people, referred to as Oracles, who are usually but not necessarily also Seers, will occasionally go into something of a trance. Oracles themselves never remember a word of the prophecy given through them, are usually completely unconscious of the process — though they sometimes need medical attention afterward, so in those cases they know one happened, just not the details of exactly what.

'Outside a few exceptional situations — for example, cases where individuals involved have committed suicide rather than allow it — prophecies seem to always come to pass. Though, often not in the way people expect. Prophecies tend to be couched in ambiguous or subjective language, so, not infrequently, it's only obvious what was meant in retrospect. One must be cautious with prophecies.'

Increasingly, more and more each day it seemed, Melantha was coming to believe the world was an absurd place.

Because, it was rather ridiculous, wasn't it? This big civil war (by magical standards) going on, with a magical giant on either side. One, probably the most widely-respected champion of the Light in...well, centuries. The other, the most powerful, most dangerous, most feared dark mage since Frances Cromwell in the Seventeenth Century. (Apparently, Cromwell was still considered to have been worse — it baffled Melantha that there had ever been people worse than Voldemort, but maybe he was too close to see clearly.) One half-seriously called the second coming of Myrðin, the other a self-proclaimed immortal Dark Lord. Figures so much larger than life they were quite nearly legendary.

And they both listened to a drunk blathering about the imminent birth of someone fated to defeat one of the two. It was just... It was just so silly. Dumbledore had listened to the prophecy, hid the Potters away, done everything he could to ensure they weren't killed before their time. Voldemort had listened to the prophecy, done everything he could to hunt them down to ensure they were killed before their time. To kill him, the prophesied fucking saviour. An infant! It was ridiculous!

Honestly, he had no idea what he should feel being told this. No idea what Dumbledore probably assumed he was. But he was certain this wasn't what anyone would have expected. This... It was just so stupid! He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh at how ridiculous reality was sometimes, or just sigh at everyone's combined idiocy. Really? They'd all gone crazy over a baby because of some random, vague prophecy? Really?

'Melantha?' The tone of concern on Dumbledore's voice was clear, blue eyes sharp on him. His entire bearing seemed oddly cautious, delicate, as though he were handling an armed bomb or something. 'Tell me what you're thinking.' Phrased as a command, yes, but his voice was soft and gentle enough he probably thought it came off more as a suggestion. An offer, maybe, to help with whatever was going on in Melantha's head.

But, really, there wasn't much going on in his head. This was all just so silly! It was far too ridiculous for him to really take seriously. He might change his mind later, he guessed. But even then, he expected he'd mostly just be annoyed at everyone else for, well, taking this nonsense seriously. Really? But, he didn't think calling Dumbledore an idiot was exactly the best way to handle this situation, so he just shrugged. 'What do we do about it? What's the plan?'

'The plan?'

Melantha frowned at him. 'The plan. For me. I figure Voldemort has one hell of a head start on me, yeah? So, if I'm to have any chance at all, I have to start learning.' Actually, come to think of it, Dumbledore probably should have arranged more intensive Defence lessons a long time ago. But, this wasn't really the time to argue about that — nor would it really do any good. Maybe he could whip it out later, sometime Dumbledore wouldn't be expecting it, just for fun. It was possible Sirius was starting to influence him. 'I'm sure there's an Order member or an Auror we can talk into coming to the castle on weekends to—'

'Melantha,' he started, cutting across his ramble with his sympathetic voice only slightly sharpened, 'I think you may have misunderstood something. I don't plan on you fighting Voldemort. Not directly.'

For long seconds, all he could do was stare silently. What? So...Dumbledore obviously believed this prophecy was a thing, right. If he didn't, he wouldn't have bothered telling him about it. But... But if he believed this stupid nonsense so much, why was he working against it? Sure, he'd expect Sirius to fight it, if he knew about it, but Sirius was a stubborn son of a bitch.

Heh heh. Son of a bitch. Padfoot.

Anyway. The prophecy said Melantha would have to be the one to do it, right? To kill Voldemort? That was the basic essence of the thing, if he hadn't misunderstood. Which, honestly? The idea didn't bother him too much. Not counting the one he was a baby for, so didn't remember, he'd already faced Voldemort in one form or another, what, four times? He'd known that, for some absurd reason, Voldemort was obsessed with making sure he died. So, the psycho was going to come after him anyway, even without a prophecy saying so. He'd sort of always known it'd be the two of them, in the end. Which was probably why he wasn't freaking out right now. That prophecy was less telling him something new, and more confirming something he'd sort of already known. Though, doing it in a completely idiotic way, but still.

Dumbledore saying he didn't plan on Melantha fighting the bastard was really just more confusing than anything. That's it, he was just completely confused. 'Isn't that what the prophecy says, though?'

With a soft-but-authoritative nod, Dumbledore smiled at him. A gentle, beneficent smile, as though doing some great service for Melantha or something. Giving him a gift he'd always wanted. 'That is not what the prophecy says. Not really. I admit,' Dumbledore continued, again speaking over him, this time before he could even get a full syllable out, 'I'd once thought the same. In a way. That this was all leading to a direct confrontation of some kind between the two of you. Not a proper duel, of course — it will be some time yet before you could ever hope to match Lord Voldemort toe-to-toe. I believed some other power you held would carry the victory for you, defeating Voldemort on a level on which he can't even defend himself. But, circumstances have since changed, and I've reevaluated my opinion'

It took barely a second for him to figure out what Dumbledore was talking about. 'My mother's protection, you mean. You thought it would kill him. Again.'

Dumbledore nodded again, a slight aura of sadness pulling at his face. Melantha ruthlessly suffocated his own short flare of annoyance — he couldn't even come close to regretting the loss of something that required subjecting himself to the Dursleys to maintain, especially not now that he had something not entirely unlike a real home. 'That was my theory, yes. Unfortunately—' Oh, stop moaning about that already, god. '—that possibility no longer exists. But perhaps I shouldn't have been so focused on that anyway. Notice, the prophecy does not say you will kill Voldemort yourself. It does say Voldemort will be destroyed by your will — your will, not your hand. It's an interesting word choice. I now believe it far more likely that this power of yours is political, or social, people either united behind you, or personally loyal to you, defeating Voldemort in your name. Or some situation much like that. Whatever the exact details of how it will come to pass, I no longer believe it will be something you do yourself.'

Oh. Oh, gross. He was really regretting coming here right after dinner now. Near the end of last year, he might have let slip to the kitchen elves that some people these days put almonds on treacle tart in place of breadcrumbs, and they'd followed through marvelously. And, somehow, it had never occurred to him to try hitting a slice with a warming charm — the elves tended to serve it at about room temperature — and he was really beating himself up for that now, because it was absolutely genius. It had been so absurdly good that, honestly, probably half of his dinner earlier had been treacle tart, which he knew was weird, he couldn't help it. And he'd used far too much clotted cream.

The point was, his stomach was rebelling all of a sudden, a tense sort of nausea working all the way up to the back of his throat, a cold sweat falling over him. He could almost taste the cream, all tainted by stomach acid, so fucking nasty. He took a long breath, trying to sit completely still, not make it any worse. He somehow doubted the Headmaster would appreciate him spewing treacle tart all over his desk.

That, and it would be a bloody waste of treacle tart.

He'd been worried about this. The thought had occurred to him, over the summer, that Dumbledore and Fudge or whoever would try to use him as some...political...thing. He didn't know. But...that was just far too...with too many...

Honestly, he'd rather just fight Voldemort again.

Melantha took another long breath, fighting the nausea down, fighting the uncomfortable flush that always seemed to come with that sort of thing. 'But what if you're wrong? I mean, Voldemort will probably come after me either way. Shouldn't I learn to defend myself, just in case?'

An odd, wary look in his eye, Dumbledore said, 'I'm not sure how much you'd be able to do.'

Oh, and now he was flushing for a completely different reason. Somewhat distantly, he felt his fingers clench on the arms of his chair, his throat tighten a little — which wasn't making it any easier to not be sick, but he couldn't really help that. Because, oh, yes, he was just completely helpless, wasn't he? It wasn't like he'd successfully fought for his life a dozen times already! Hell, in the last four years, he'd faced Voldemort right in his stupid snakey face more times than anyone else! And that was while he was at Hogwarts, under supposedly the best wards in the country, surrounded by adults whose job it was to keep him and the other students safe. Last year, they'd had much of the staff and even people from the DLE here actively trying to protect him. And still he'd ended up in that joke of a duel with Voldemort all by himself, and he'd still managed to survive long enough for help to arrive — which Dumbledore had himself admitted was as good as they could expect from someone several times his age! Considering everything that had happened over these years, and the fact that they knew Voldemort would come after him no matter what anyway, this was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard!

And now Dumbledore had a faint impression of exasperation about him, in that slightly disappointed way he was so good at. 'I did not intend any slight against your personal abilities, Miss Potter.' Oh, well, of course he hadn't meant any slight against his abilities when he'd made a slight against his abilities. Obviously. 'I think you perhaps fail to understand just how much of an advantage Voldemort has. You were fortunate enough to be born a very powerful mage, yes, and with an impressive degree of natural talent. Few your age are as gifted. But Voldemort was born with equal, if not greater, power and talent. And he has over a half century on you. A half century to study magic you've not even yet heard of, far beyond your abilities at this stage. A half century to perfect all the various and deadly skills he has long worked to acquire.

'I'm not trying to offend you, Melantha, only make you understand the reality of the situation. At this moment, Voldemort is far beyond you. But that is to be expected: he is an exceptionally dangerous Dark Lord, and you are fifteen years old. It would be no shame to admit it. Quite honestly, if we were to try to wait long enough for you to develop enough ability to last in a legitimate fight against him, one he is putting forth his concerted best effort to kill you, just enough for you to survive for ten seconds, we would have long lost the war in the interim. It is not the way.'

Melantha glared at him. 'I'm not saying you train me up to beat him or anything.' Except, he was sort of saying that, but it was obvious he wasn't going to win that argument. 'Just a little bit, so I'm not completely—'

He cut off with a flinch. That look Dumbledore was giving him. Suddenly razor sharp, completely serious and a bit annoyed. Melantha abruptly felt like a chastised child sent off to the Headmaster to be scolded, and it took everything he had not to awkwardly shift in his seat like one. Maybe he shouldn't have been arguing like that, but it was his own damn life, so he felt he was entitled to argue a little when someone else was doing something stupid with it. Dumbledore didn't even say anything right away. He just stared at him — just a sliver softer than a glare really — for a long, tense moment. Then he unfolded his hands, lifted one a bit above the surface of his desk, hand open.

There was a slight blur of motion, and a tiny glass bottle came to a rest in Dumbledore's hand with a soft smack. His voice low and intense, he said, 'To my knowledge, there have been four people, total, who have fought Lord Voldemort, one-on-one, and survived. Three of the four were long-established, well-respected wizards. One was not.'

Before Melantha could even think to ask what the point was, Dumbledore continued, unstoppered the bottle and poured the silvery liquid-gas into the pensieve with an absent sort of air. 'Late in Seventy-Nine, we received convincing evidence the Death Eaters planned to strike at the Noble and Most Ancient House of Bones, who had been steadfast political opponents of Voldemort's puppets in the Wizengamot since the beginning. We thought it best to place someone with the family, to protect them in the event of an attack. There was some disagreement — half the family wanted someone from the Order, the other half an Auror. In the end, they settled on a compromise candidate, a friend of the family, a member of the Order who had partially completed an apprenticeship with the Aurors before leaving to act independently.

'Early in the morning, December the Thirtieth, the attack came, and Lily Potter crossed wands with Lord Voldemort for the third time.' And Dumbledore gestured to the pensieve with an open hand, the order clear.

Melantha hesitated for a second. He wasn't entirely sure how to feel. For one thing, he still hadn't shaken his anger at Dumbledore basically brushing off his request to be taught some really basic things, honestly, he didn't think it was too much to ask. But also because, well. Unless he was reading this completely wrong, Dumbledore had gotten this memory from...

He took another long breath, cautiously reached forward until he felt the cool not-liquid against his fingers.

After floating through silvery ice for a couple seconds, everything was black. He couldn't tell where he was. Actually, he didn't much feel like he was anywhere. He tried to turn his head, but the vague impressions of shape he could see in the darkness didn't move at all. He moved his hand in front of his face...at least, he thought he moved his hand in front of his face. He couldn't see it. This was really—

He jumped a little at the sudden sound of Dumbledore's voice, unnervingly close, as though he were standing right over his shoulder. 'A little different this time. I've anchored our view a little above, behind, and to her right. It would be hard to see, otherwise — she moves around too much.'

Melantha was just opening his mouth to ask what was going on with all the blackness when there was suddenly a shuddering thud through the air, as though everything around were vibrating. There was also a weird flickering of multicolour light, but so dim and brief he wasn't sure what that was. The shadows around them lurched into motion, he heard a bit of shuffling cloth. A quick flash of dim, green-blue light, and then the dark was suddenly pierced by a flood of silvery-white.

After a second of blinking, trying to get his eyes to stop complaining, the image in front of him came into focus, and his breath caught. The light, as he'd expected, came from a patrōnus. A rather familiar one, actually — he wasn't sure it looked exactly the same as his new one, but it was a very similar kind of big cat. The soft glow emanating from the thing revealed enough to suggest they were in a bedroom. Standing right next to the patrōnus was...

Well, he was behind her, and it was dark-ish, so he couldn't see her very well. Somewhat taller than him, he thought, clothes in the middle of a transfiguration, stretching into simple trousers and tunic. Long braid, glinting a little pinkish in the silvery light, stretching down her back. He couldn't see her very well. But he knew who it had to be.

It was strangely hard to breathe at the moment.

Lily crouched a bit, wrapped an arm around the neck of her patrōnus. And then...well, he didn't know what this was. The world around them got weirdly...smeary? Everything wiped away, broken apart in several places by bright, silver-white streaks. It was...peculiar. It didn't take long for him to guess what had to be happening. He'd known it was possible to send a patrōnus to someone, carrying a message or whatever, but he hadn't known it was possible to go with.

Five seconds into this memory and it was already official: his mother was awesome.

After a short moment, the world smeared back into place, and they were somewhere else. A hallway, green carpet and wood-panelled walls and stucco ceiling brightly illuminated with dozens of flamelight enchantments. And they weren't alone. 'No, no, no,' Lily said, approaching the two men and two women rushing down the center of the hall. She pointed to one of the women — tall and round-faced, freckled and red-haired — who was obviously pregnant, rather far along. 'You go to the ward room, Liz.'

The woman's face pulled into a glare, and she crossed her arms in something like defiance — which looked slightly awkward with how very pregnant she was. 'I can still—'

But Lily cut her off with a single word: 'Susan.' He blinked at that. Though, now that he thought about it, that this must be Susan's mother was really pretty obvious. Lily suddenly jabbed her wand in her direction, a soft white light surrounding, erm, Susan, just for an instant. 'Stasis charm. Now go.'

The woman grimaced but, after a sigh and a quick exchange with one of the men, turned on her heel and started off in the opposite direction. Now four, Lily and the Boneses continued their way down the hall, talking about wards and floos and portkeys. Over the babble, hoping Dumbledore would hear him, he said, 'Stasis charm?'

And there came Dumbledore's voice again, from uncomfortably nearby. 'Certain magics, both casting them or simply being in their presence, can have a number of detrimental effects on an unborn child. A certain type of stasis charm can be used as a sort of magical isolation, for a short period of time, as a preventative measure. Elisabeth doesn't get anywhere near the fighting, but I assume your mother thought it prudent to take precautions anyway, just in case.'

Now they were in what was obviously an entrance hall of some kind — a large, tall room made of bright, shining granite a yellow-white, before a tall door of heavy, dark wood. Lily came to a halt a couple feet away, spun to face the others. His view spun with her, which made him slightly dizzy. 'My Lord,' she said to the oldest, a tall, distinguished-looking middle aged man looking not at all diminished for being in a dressing gown, 'I suggest you stay back here with Dilwyn, stop anyone who gets past Amy. Don't want to leave the door undefended — they could get back to Liz.'

The other woman — slightly shorter than Lily, with short, dirty-blonde hair matching both men, a sharp, focused sort of look about her — jerked her head toward the door. 'I'm guessing we'll be holding just outside.'

'You'll be just outside,' Lily said with a slight nod. 'I'll be keeping Voldemort busy.'

Melantha was slightly surprised when nobody so much as twitched at the name.

In a perfectly level voice, if a bit severe, the older man, who he decided had to be Susan's grandfather, said, 'So he came himself, then.'

Lily nodded. 'He's out there, alright. I can feel him.'

Er...

'You mind if I blow up your door?'

'If you think it necessary, feel free to blow up the whole house.'

'I think that would be counter-productive.' But Lily turned to the door again, and both her hands were moving. Her wand made several quick slashes through the air, thin white lines settling into the wood, the stone some distance to the side and above, dividing much of the wall in front of them into a couple dozen sections. Then, she was writing with the pointer finger of her off hand, runes formed of searing red-white light carving themselves into the air. He didn't recognise most of them, but he thought that one might be Egyptian for fire. While she wrote — a bit surreptitiously, as though she didn't want the others to notice — she turned her wand to her own waist, a soft white light flashing for an instant.

Just like the stasis charm she'd done for Susan.

He did some figuring in his head quick and realised that, in December of '79, his mother should have already been pregnant with him.

Huh.

With a curving, twirling swish of her wand, Lily gathered up the runes floating in the air, and sent them flying off to the door. Except, not quite that simple. They seemed to sort of divide on the way there, multiplying, one set of runes settling into each section of the divided door and wall. He was getting the feeling there was about to be a very big boom. Lily glanced over her shoulder — his view didn't turn with her at that, but he only saw as much as the curve of her cheek, the slightest glint of green. 'Ready?'

A short, tense chorus of agreement.

'Give me a second to burn through them. I'll try to take out as many on the way as I can. Oh, and block your hearing a second.' Lily turned back to the door, waved her wand quick at her own head. All sound instantly vanished, leaving them in rather eerie silence. She then gave her wand a circular little twist, then a sharp, forward jab.

With a flash of reddish light, in perfect silence, the door and much of the wall exploded outward, debris flying out into the night. Flying over and into—

The only sound he heard was his own gasp. Somehow, when he'd imagined the Death Eater raids he'd heard described, he'd never expected there to be quite so many of them. Judging by the number of moving shadows out on the half-illuminated grass past the door there had to be...two dozen? Three? A lot, anyway.

He was suddenly wondering how his mother and the Boneses could have possibly survived this.

And then another weird thing happened. It was a lot like the darkness the memory had started in — completely black, with only the vaguest impression of shape, almost unnoticeable streaks of colour. An instant later the blackness fell away, and Lily was standing in the moonlit yard, barefoot on the grass. Standing right in front of three cloaked and masked Death Eaters. In a fluid motion, she stabbed her wand out at the nearest, and—

...

And a fountain of blood and bone, glittering black in the wan light, exploded out of the Death Eater's back, the fresh corpse crumpling to the ground with hardly a breath of protest.

...

Erm.

Again the world shifted in a dizzying spin as Lily twisted on her heel, her wand arm moving in a wide curve. A cutting curse, so overpowered it was visible as a sharp blue arc, sliced into the air out in the opposite direction, heading straight for another group of Death Eaters. Two dove out of the way, one simply dropped to the ground. They were smart; the stupid one put up a shield. The curse slipped through it like it wasn't even there. Sound snapped back into existence just in time to catch the man screaming.

Stone and wood were falling from the sky, debris from the obliterated wall and door finally approaching the ground.

The world disappeared into shadows again before he could get a good look, but he was pretty sure that Death Eater was just bisected shoulder to hip.

Just... Did he just watch his mother kill two people? Just like that?

Bloody fucking hell, what was even happening...

Reality smoothly snapped into place again. Lily had apparently turned around during...whatever she was doing to move around, because he could see the Bones mansion laid out in the center of the clearing. Most of the Death Eaters, he thought, were now between Lily and the building, as well as a lot of roaring, red-orange fire. Where had that come from? Surely it hadn't been there a second ago. The debris from the explosion, maybe? Had Lily charmed it to set anything it touched on fire? Whatever.

When Lily had reappeared, she'd had her open hand extended out back toward the mansion. Now she eased herself gradually back, her hand slowly closing into a fist, drawing away. It... Well, it was one of the stranger bits of magic he'd ever seen. Little splinters of orange-red, like flame pulled off and condensed into something solid and glimmering, split away from each of the fires in front of her. The thin little flecks of light shot toward her hand through the air. And, judging from a few voices raised in surprise and agony, a number of Death Eaters as well.

Lily turned, flicking her hand, now surrounded by roiling splinters of frozen fire, off somewhere to her left. Half of the darts left her hand, slicing off into the air — and into a few more Death Eaters. Most managed to dodge them, one absorbed them with a strange shield charm of pulsing blackness, but one got a sizzling wound through her shoulder. Again, she spun half around, sending the rest off in the opposite direction at, unsurprisingly, another group of Death Eaters. They all managed to block or dodge, though.

Even as those weird things flickered through the air, Lily jabbed her wand down at the ground to her right, then flicked it up, and suddenly there was a glittering wall of green-blue crystal blocking the entire right side of his vision. An instant later, the whole thing shattered into a million pieces — must have been a powerful blasting charm of some kind. The Death Eaters in front of her were ducking their heads away from the raining fragments, but Lily hardly even reacted.

She casually turned in the direction the blasting charm must have come from, his vision turning with her, to reveal Voldemort standing hardly a few feet away. Well then. Exactly as Melantha had heard him described: thick, black robes, impossibly pale skin, flat-nosed face with slitted eyes an unnatural red. He was playing with his wand, casually rolling the thing between his fingers, staring at Lily with...almost a smile? Maybe not quite, but... It was kind of creeping him out and he couldn't quite say why.

It didn't help when Lily said, in a high, girlish voice, 'Why, Thomas, we simply must stop running into each other like this.'

Okay, yeah, he was definitely smiling now, the faintest hints of pointed teeth visible past thin lips. That was so very creepy. 'Miss Evans.' Did... Did Voldemort just address her halfway respectfully? And not mockingly? The fuck... 'I might have guessed you would be here.'

'Didn't you hear?' She held up her off hand, wiggled her fingers at him. 'It's Potter now.'

Voldemort raised an eyebrow at that — or, he would have, if he had eyebrows, whatever — his lips twitching with amusement. 'Mm-hmm.'

'Don't much approve of my husband, do you?'

'I suppose that might depend on which one you're talking about.'

And just what did he mean by that? It must have made sense to Lily, because she just gave a slight snort of laughter. Really? What the fuck...

Lily's wand hand raised at her side, an orangish shield charm appearing in the air just to her right, a charm of some sort splashing apart in a bright flash. The shield still up, Lily turned a little that direction, enough he could see some Death Eater, one of the few who hadn't left to join the noisy battle he could hear in the direction of the manor. 'That—' A few flicks of her wand, each releasing a thin, curving band of deep red flame, each coming to rest against a shield charm the Death Eater cast in response, but not vanishing, a soft white glow appearing at each point of contact. '—was—' Lily's wand moved in an odd, retreating twist, the tips of the fiery ribbons contorting, changing into hooks piercing the shield; a downward yank of the wand and the shield was torn away, dozens of yellow sparks falling to the ground. '—rude.' This time, just a sharp jab.

With a flash of light and a soft bang, roughly the upper left quarter of the Death Eater's body was blasted away, blood falling to the grass over the next seconds with the soft patter of rain.

Melantha would admit he was in something of a shock by now. Nothing anyone had ever told him about his mother had prepared him for this.

And, when his view twisted back to show him, Voldemort was still smiling. That was just so creepy. 'Young people these days,' he said, shaking his head slightly. 'No manners.'

Lily snorted again. 'I'm sorry, that's just funny coming from you. Does your glass house even have any walls left, old man?'

A smirk twitching at his lips, Voldemort shrugged a little. 'I'll admit, I've been—' His wand arm snapped up, catching a curse coming in from Lily on a shield charm springing from nowhere, his entire form vanishing behind a sudden explosion of fire. And the duel proper started.

Melantha could barely even follow it. It was just so fast, he could hardly even tell what was happening. Lily never stayed in the same place for two seconds. Which, sure, he knew that was basic duelling tactics — it's hard for someone to hit you if you move — but she wasn't using her legs to get around. For a couple seconds, she and Voldemort would trade attacks back and forth, rapid-fire charms splashing off shields, redirected on the tips of wands, or deflected with bare hands, a dazzling dance of light in every colour of the rainbow too fast to hardly even pick them apart, intermixed here and there with a bit of so-quick-and-you'll-miss-it conjuring, his ears pounding with the constant thudding and crackling of curse after curse after curse. Then Lily would move — her surroundings would disappear and, after an instant of still blackness he couldn't even see her in, she'd be standing somewhere else. Sometimes Voldemort would be the one to move first, apparently through the same bit of magic. It was this odd, complicated dance, each trying to step into an advantageous position on the other, magic consuming the air each time they met.

For minutes — they were keeping it up so long, not even slowing! — Melantha could only stare, blinking to himself, the dazzling light and deafening noise of the duel washing over him. Was this what actual fights between adult mages were like? That famous duel Dumbledore had had with Grindelwald, all those battles over the last war, he hadn't been imagining anything like this! This was insane! He hadn't even known this was fucking possible!

The unforgiving pace of the duel slowed for a moment, Voldemort hidden behind an odd shield charm made of angular panels that seemed to glow an angry purple and black, the sight of it almost entirely obscured under the dozens and dozens of blazing yellow charms crashing against it, one after the other without pause, incendiary curses setting the air ablaze, churning scorched dirt up metres above, carving craters down metres below. Then, from the centre of the conflagration came something that, even though he knew it was a memory, still clenched at his heart, set a chill down his spine. Bursting out from behind the shield was fire, flowing out in a wave taller than Lily, but it wasn't exactly normal fire. There was orange, yes, but also a deep red, a crimson colour no natural fire should be, and black, tongues of flame as dark as the night sky. Sort of like the cursed flames Snape had put in the potions room just before the Stone.

But as the wave of fire inverted, contorted, he could see... Well, he knew what this was. He'd never seen it before, only heard it described, but it couldn't be anything else. The flames rose not as random, indistinct shapes, but as dragons, tigers, hawks, chimerae, serpents, each only holding its shape for a moment before splitting apart, or merging with a neighbour, fluidly shifting from one form to another, the conflagration letting off a constant, high, malicious hiss that seemed almost eerily quiet. Melantha had read of fiendfyre, knew just how incredibly dangerous the stuff was — difficult to control, all but impossible to extinguish, as much a danger to the caster as it was to the target and everything around them.

And the wave was advancing, leaving nothing but blackened ground behind, toward the Bones manor.

Lily turned immediately, the world again vanishing, reappearing an instant later. She was now standing right in front of the insanely dangerous magic, infernal creatures of heat and darkness tumbling over each other in their haste to consume her.

That...just seemed like a really bad idea to him.

For a moment Lily stood there, hardly moving a muscle. She drew in a long, slow breath. Her wand hand slowly raised, coming to point at the approaching fire, smooth and casual, as though she weren't just about to be obliterated by dark magic. Melantha had to bite his lip to hold back the ridiculous urge to yell at her to get out of the way. And then— Wait, what was that? He could have been imagining it, but...he thought he saw a flicker of white and purple dance across the fingers gripping her wand, sparking all the way up her arm, so fast, there and it was gone, he almost wasn't sure he'd seen it at all. Huh. Then, in a stern, commanding voice, Lily said, 'Is-ã lũgesat.'

The inexorable wave of fiendfyre...stopped. It was still shifting and contorting, creatures of flame still forming and breaking apart, but they didn't advance another inch, the attack halted. Lily took another long breath. 'Obvertite.' The red and black fire contracted, the creatures constricting into concentrated flame, pulling itself together into a roiling, hissing ball six metres wide, a smooth orb of dark flame floating in the air.

'You can't be thinking of doing what I suspect you are.' Lily turned a little, revealing Voldemort standing a short distance away. He was staring at her with narrowed, calculating eyes, an odd, slack expression on his disturbingly inhuman face, as though seeing Lily for the first time, and realising he had never seen such a thing quite like her before.

He couldn't see Lily's face from this angle, but he was sure from the peculiar teasing sound of her voice she was smirking. 'I have to teach you not to use fire magic in a duel with me somehow.'

Voldemort frowned at her. 'I'd rather you didn't kill yourself,' he said, tone flat. 'It would be boring.'

'Such confidence you have in me, Thomas. I'm offended.' And then Lily's wand was moving, twisting in a little circle toward the fiendfyre. 'Prō mē elementa—'

Voldemort shot a dense web of spells at Lily — Melantha was a bit surprised when she recognised the familiar red of stunning charms. But Lily drew a couple runes in the air with her off hand, shields springing up to intercept, deflecting away the few that got past with twitching fingers.

'—meam nexum subīte—'

Lily was shaking now, fingers and shoulders twitching in hardly-visible tremors. He saw more flickers of strange light running over her in brief flashes, white and purple and black, so short-lived he could hardly see them, but the soft orange glow slowly brightening around her wand between her fingers was impossible to miss. Voldemort tried to stop her again with another stream of charms, but this time she just slipped through the dark again instead of bothering to defend herself. For the short instant the world was only blackness, the colours wreathing Lily were far more visible, a shimmering sheath of twisting, rainbow light...

'—et in meā manū vigēte.' With the last syllable of the lengthy incantation, Lily drew back her wand, tapping the wrist of her opposite hand.

Lily disappeared in a torrent of black and red, the fiendfyre falling upon her, and she screamed. And she screamed, and she screamed, a high, long note of agony, almost too loud and unbroken to believe it could have possibly come from a human throat. The fire couldn't be burning her, he knew — if it were, she'd already be dead by now, and, er, he would never have been born. Something else must be happening, but he couldn't even begin to guess what.

Eventually, the screams faded out, reducing to harsh, breathless panting, even as the riotous fury of the fire settled somewhat, contracting inward. Through a haze of red and black, Melantha could barely see Lily shakily pushing herself back to her feet, teetering for a moment before settling. The cursed flames calmed further, moving inward until...until... What the hell was this? A circle around Lily, a couple metres wide, shimmered with low, flickering flames. And around and on her... A long, graceful cat hugged her right leg, a shaggy, vicious-looking wolf growled at her left, a serpent wrapped around her waist, over her shoulder and down her right arm. On her left shoulder perched a dark phoenix, a trail of fire sheathing her skin from the end of the bird's tail all the way down to the tips of the fingers of her left hand. All of them still obviously made of fiendfyre, nothing but hissing orange and red and black, but seemingly oddly stable, almost solid. And, somehow, not killing her.

Just...just...how?!

Voldemort was again standing in front of Lily, giving her a look. Melantha wasn't sure what kind of look — his face was distorted a bit from the heat shimmer surrounding Lily — but he was sure it was a look. 'You're lucky you aren't dead, foolish child.'

Lily's shoulder lifted in a shrug, the coils of the serpent visibly tightening for a moment in subtle protest. 'I would almost think you care, old man.'

'Almost?' It was yet hard to see him, but Melantha was still disturbed enough by the smile on Voldemort's face he couldn't repress a shudder. 'I honestly think this war might be boring without you around. And that's closer to a compliment than most will ever get from me.'

A short chuckle, almost lost in the hissing from the cursed fire surrounding her. 'I'm flattered. Not gonna stop me from trying to kill you again in two seconds.'

'Didn't expect it would.'

And the duel started up again. If anything, it was even harder to follow now. There was still the nearly constant stream of charms coming far too fast for Melantha to interpret. They still kept skipping around, both moving through blackness in the same confusing dance. But now the fiendfyre was a constant part of the fight. Black and red flames, either concentrated in the form of one beast or another or flowing free, striking at Voldemort again and again, battering at oily, glimmering shield charms, consuming conjured barriers. It seemed Lily could do whatever she was doing with the borrowed fiendfyre and keep up the same duelling pace from before, because she hadn't seemed to have let off on the curses a single bit. It... This was going to sound a bit crazy, but he almost got the impression Voldemort was spending most of the fight on the defensive — constantly throwing off curses from Lily, shielding against or countering the encroaching fiendfyre, too busy ensuring he didn't die to counterattack. Lily only had to block or deflect a curse once every couple seconds, the fight now clearly lopsided.

He was starting to get the feeling his mother might have been completely terrifying.

But, amazingly, he had something else to distract himself with. He almost turned to Dumbledore, his mouth already open to ask the question, when he suddenly realised Dumbledore wasn't here to look at anyway. And then he hesitated. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to ask for clarification. Because he wasn't entirely sure Dumbledore had even noticed.

It had been at the end of his second year, fucking second year, just after that insanity in the Chamber. He'd been disturbed by Tom Riddle, the boy who was far too like him in too many ways, but had grown up to become Lord Voldemort. He'd been scared. He hadn't even been sure of exactly what. He'd said, to Dumbledore, that the Hat had wanted to put him in Slytherin, how everyone had thought much of the year that he was Slytherin's heir, because he's a Parselmouth...

The Headmaster had said, he remembered it clearly, 'You can speak Parseltongue, Harry, because Lord Voldemort — who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin — can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar.'

An odd theory, sure, predicated on Voldemort leaving something behind on that night. Which, of course, he had. It was peculiar his scar had faded now — he'd certainly taken plenty of healing potions before — and Dumbledore had said something about finding magic in that room he hadn't expected, which he implied had given Melantha Parseltongue, though the ability had remained for some reason Dumbledore couldn't explain. 'Anyone who claims to fully understand the functioning of mind and soul,' he'd said, 'is either hopelessly arrogant or a liar.'

But, if the assumption that whatever magic that had been had been what had given him the ability was faulty in the first place...

When he'd told Hermione some of that conversation with Dumbledore shortly afterward, she'd pointed out a problem he hadn't thought of at the time. Salazar Slytherin lived over a thousand years ago. He'd had children, roughly a dozen of whom had lived to adulthood to have children of their own — the exact number depended on which source was consulted, and there was apparently some disagreement over exactly how many of Ravenclaw's children had been his. She had been married to someone else, true, but people at the time had pointed out how peculiar it was that some of her children were Parselmouths. Anyway. He'd had children, his children had had children, those children had had more. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Slytherin had been active in Britain until about the fifteenth century, intermarrying with dozens of other magical families, in Britain and a few other nations.

Hermione had said it was absolutely ludicrous to assert Tom Riddle was legitimately the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin. It was simply impossible. In fact, back in fourth year, she'd once pointed out that, yes, he was, in fact, descended from Slytherin — House Black had been a major ally of House Slytherin back when it existed, intermarriages had not been uncommon — but so was everybody else. Certainly everyone in the Noble Houses, probably most in the Common Houses, and, most likely, even some of the muggleborns, through squibs born into one family or another. For extra hilarity, numerically speaking, it was likely that more of Slytherin's living descendants were muggle than magical. Slytherin lived a thousand years ago. A thousand years is a long time. After centuries of intermarriage, well, that's just what happened.

And, well, Salazar Slytherin was hardly the only source of Parseltongue around. There were places in the world were the talent was common, cultures that prized it, did their best to spread it around, keep it alive. Most Parselmouths in western Europe had been descended from Slytherin, but he wasn't the only option. So it didn't even necessarily mean anything.

He wasn't surprised Dumbledore hadn't noticed. Surrounded by the hissing of the fire, from the perspective of a speaker, he would admit it might be hard to tell. He'd only known because the way it had lingered in the air, the way it'd pulled at him, meaning almost more known than simply understood...

They, Lily and Voldemort, had spoken Parseltongue.

Lily Potter had spoken Parseltongue. Natural, fluent, easy Parseltongue.

His mother had been a Parselmouth.

...

Did nobody know? Nobody? That...

Had Dumbledore lied, or was he just wrong?

He wasn't sure how to feel about this. Any of this. He probably didn't have to be the one to kill Voldemort, the absolutely ridiculous magic done constantly in this duel, the fact his mother and Voldemort seemed to have been oddly friendly (even while trying to kill each other), the fact that his mother had been a Parselmouth. He just... He had no idea.

He didn't understand anything anymore.

He was so dazed, lost in thought, he didn't even notice the duel ending. He jerked with surprise when the December night long ago was washed away by cold, silver light, and he was suddenly thrown back into his body in Dumbledore's office. It felt almost strange, being somewhere so soft, so quiet, after the harsh violence that had been going on all around him for what had to have been an hour or more. And the duel had been long — the sun had dipped quite a bit in the sky, he noticed with a glance.

Dumbledore was talking about... Honestly, he wasn't really paying attention. Something about how his mother had been a ridiculous prodigy, had been capable of most of the third-year charms by her first day of first year — wandlessly — had worked every single day since she'd first learned of magic — when she'd been seven — to make herself the absolute best witch she could possibly be, an arduous, incessant campaign of self-improvement. By the time of that duel, she'd been teaching herself whatever she could get her hands on for over a decade. And she still hadn't been able to defeat Riddle. Expecting Melantha to do any better, in the short window they likely had before a still-weakened Britain would collapse, well.

He was trying to be all nice. Saying they would take care of it. Melantha didn't have to worry too much. They might need a little help from her here or there, but it wouldn't be anything too demanding. Most everything direct would simply be far beyond her abilities — beyond most anyone's. He would keep Melantha informed, because Sirius had demanded it. But there wasn't actually that much he had to do. It was all taken care of. Or would be, in time.

Melantha was hardly even listening, the words washing over him. He was still and silent, hardly even thinking a thing, hardly aware of his surroundings at all. Still and silent.

He didn't understand anything.

Melantha snapped out of it two days later.

Ever since coming back to Hogwarts, he'd been a bit careful about exactly how he handled bathrooms and loos and such. He timed things in the dorm so he was never changing or washing at the same time as his roommates — which was a little inconvenient schedule-wise, but he'd figured it out. They were rare, but dotted across the castle were a few little rooms with a single toilet and sink. He'd tracked them down on the Map, used them whenever feasible. He couldn't really explain why, he just felt vaguely awkward about these things. He just couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't supposed to be in with girls, had a niggling of guilt at the back of his head. Years of social conditioning, he guessed.

And maybe a slight concern people would figure out who he was and freak out. Couldn't deny that was there a bit too.

He stood at the sink, slowly washing his hands, the almost too hot water running over his skin. Absently feeling the strange tingle from the soap. He'd noticed that, this year, the soap made his hands tingle. He had no idea why. He suspected there might be magic in the soap, that he was feeling it work. Which was a little weird, since he'd never felt it before. But he had been told before that, so to speak, you have to use magic to gain magic — people gradually grow more powerful with literally each spell cast. Minimally, but that's how it works. That, and he hadn't been magically mature yet anyway. Maybe he was just now sensitive enough to feel it, hadn't been before. It was a possibility anyway.

God, he was so... He didn't know. Restless? Exhausted? How could both of those be options, that made no sense. He wasn't sure what word to use. Sitting in class the last couple days, lazing through the introductory lectures always repeated at the beginning of a year, had just felt...wrong, somehow. He wasn't sure how. It was rather similar to the feeling he got in a girls' loo, actually, come to think of it. Like he didn't belong there. And it was so frustrating, and he didn't understand what was wrong, and he was really just starting to get tired of it.

He was so tired of being tired.

And he heard Ellie's voice ringing in his head again, repeating what she'd said some weeks ago. 'You know, Melantha,' she'd said, that knowing smile on her face again. 'You know what you're feeling. You can tell me you don't as much as you like. You can pretend to yourself, maybe even so well you'll almost believe it. But, deep down—' She'd shrugged. '—you know. You don't have to admit it to me, but at least try to admit it to yourself. It'll be a lot easier on you.'

Alright. Fine. He could do that.

He would do that.

He'd been all dazed and empty for a little while, sure. But it was becoming increasingly obvious. And it was starting to get really hard to ignore.

There was a slight rattling in the air, the toilet seat vibrating against the bowl.

He was angry. Dumbledore had pissed him off.

He was completely fucking furious.

He took a long breath, pulled his hands out of the stream of water. Placed one on either end of the sink, perched on the lip. He felt drips of water slide down his wrists, between his fingers, slipping away across the black surface. He didn't turn off the faucet, just stared down at the rushing water.

Dumbledore was fucking doing it again. Again! Had that old coot ever done anything right? It was like he hadn't even thought about this at all. Certainly not from Melantha's perspective. Oh, don't worry, Miss Potter. Just sit back and let the adults take care of everything, no need to worry yourself over it all. Right, because they've all bloody well done a perfect job so far! Just great!

He could practically hear Snape in his head now, saying something about how he was such an arrogant child to think he knew better than all these fully-trained wizards, blah blah blah. Oh, yes, how dare Melantha look at every single thing that had ever happened to him in his entire bloody life and notice the bloody fucking obvious pattern. How arrogant of him!

Seriously, how stupid was Dumbledore? They'd take care of everything? Just focus on his schooling? He'd been paying attention the last...forever, right? When had the adults in his life ever been there for him when he need them, huh? When?

Never. That's when.

He knew at some level that his experience certainly wasn't typical. He knew, intellectually, that the kind of shite that had always happened to him was supposed to be the kind of shite adults took care of, so kids didn't have to. He knew that. He just... He didn't feel it. It'd always been him. Alone.

The rattling was getting louder, he absently noticed steam was rising from the sink in front of him, but he wasn't really paying attention to that.

He was too busy being furious.

He'd always had to take care of himself. He was used to that. Honestly, he wasn't sure if he knew anyone he would trust to take care of, well, anything for him. Hermione, maybe. Sirius, maybe. Andi...maybe. He doubted he'd be comfortable with it, but maybe. And he'd been, he was, perfectly willing to learn, do, whatever he had to to protect himself. He'd been in the middle of a sentence, voicing an idea. It wouldn't even have been the first time he'd gone out of his way to learn magic he really didn't need to for class or whatever, but because he needed it to protect himself, and he'd wanted to. It had taken him forever, but the patrōnus was an infamously finicky spell — Remus had been impressed he could do it at all. Actually, most everyone who had learnt about it had been. And he was rather proud of that one. Probably his favourite thing he'd managed to do with magic so far. Not only because it was advanced, difficult magic, though that was part of it. Not only because he'd managed to successfully protect himself, and even a few others, though that was certainly part of it too. But because it had been hard. He'd been told he probably wouldn't be able to do it no matter how long he worked at it, but he'd tried, he'd worked on it every damn day for months, and never gave a fucking inch, even after the days he'd practised against the boggart, drained both emotionally and magically, until he'd fucking done it, until he'd proven he wasn't the useless, lazy, talentless, stupid waste of space honestly half the people he'd ever met seemed to think he was. He'd actually achieved something, and it'd felt great.

And he'd been all prepared to do all that again. Actually fucking work for once. And what did Dumbledore say? Nope, not needed! Voldemort would crush you like a bug in seconds! There's really no point to it! Because, obviously, Voldemort is the only person who's ever going to attack you ever! Not like he has dozens of followers, not like dark creatures are a thing, not like there are all kinds of people in this country who hate you for no good reason! Nope, you have no chance against Voldemort, so there's no point even trying!

That was the most fucking idiotic thing he'd ever heard!

What the bloody fuck was that arsehole thinking! Fuck!

He could feel he was shaking now, he could feel the power rising inside of him, like helium filling his chest, pushing up and outward, furious, lashing tendrils stretching out into the room around him. The gentle everlit candles at either side of the mirror flared, narrow pillars of flame reaching up to scorch the ceiling, filament cracks running through the mirror, the stucco walls around, the granite tiles at his feet. The water still pouring from the faucet was flash boiling the instant it hit the surface of the sink, as though striking a hot skillet. Some of the superheated drops splashed up to his hands, his arms, but the heat didn't affect him. The toilet seat behind him was clanging, almost deafening, he thought he heard the water in the bowl quicken into a roiling boil. Sparks of electricity crackled in his ears.

He was losing control of his magic. Obviously. He wasn't sure if he could stop it. At the moment, he wasn't even sure he wanted to.

He just...

He was just so fucking tired. He didn't want to do this anymore. To just sit back, ignoring the huge target painted on his back, waiting for the next disaster to strike. He was so fucking tired of the cautious, passive life he'd been living. Who knew doing nothing could be so exhausting? He was done. Just done.

He felt a smirk pull a little at his lips. He had thought to himself he didn't want to be Harry Potter anymore, didn't he? His magic had been nice enough to grant him his desire — if not quite the way he'd been thinking — and look what he'd done with it. He'd hadn't changed a bit! Different container, contents the same. The same meek, shy, passive, pathetic Harry Potter. Wouldn't do a thing for himself, wouldn't step an inch out of his rut, unless he absolutely had to. Someone about to steal a Philosopher's Stone, arseholes being bullying gits, best friends' sisters being kidnapped, if he was fucking forced to — then, shite, he'd barrel through everything in his way like an unthinking, stereotypical Gryffindor halfwit. Arguably, he'd only even learned the patrōnus because he'd felt he'd had to. But if he didn't have to?

And what had he been doing these last few months? Either what he'd been told, or what he felt he had to.

In other words: the same fucking thing.

And he hated it so fucking much!

He was done! He was so bloody fucking done! That was it! From this second onward, he was going to do, in everything, what she damn well fucking pleased!

Dumbledore thought it was pointless for her to learn anything beyond what was taught in class, she wouldn't need it to protect herself. Well, fuck him! She didn't need his permission! She had an Auror for a cousin, didn't she, a Hit Wizard for a godfather? She'd just ask them. She'd send them both an owl, before bed, tonight!

She still had the Room of Requirement — note to self: get Dobby more socks. Not only could she use that as a practice space, somewhere people (McGonagall) couldn't just barge in and force her to explain herself. But not only that, she could ask the Room to give her all the books it might think she'd need, that might be useful on her new path toward not being so completely helpless. Some of it might not be too great, but the Room had to have something.

Oh, what probably would have something? Her mother's journals. She'd flipped through a few of them, and it wasn't just notes for classes — she'd been writing about her own work too. And, as that memory had shown her, her mother had managed to make herself into a complete and utter monstrosity with a wand, so that was a good place to go. That was another owl she should send: to Gringotts, asking them to send her the rest of the journals. Would have to remember to write that one as Harry Potter.

Ha ha, Dumbledore, she thought to herself with a high giggle, didn't expect that one, did you? Showing me that memory, showing me it was completely pointless to try, at least in the short term, that I'd never catch up. Well, whoops! You just showed me where to look! Good job!

She would get Dora here, or someone Dora might be able to set her up with, to learn how to not be completely useless in a fight. Yes. She would have her mother's journals sent in, look for other books, to learn as much awesome shite as she possibly could. Yes. But that wasn't all she wanted to do. Oh, no.

She was still giggling, and, really, her throat was starting to hurt a little from it now. She just couldn't stop. What her magic was doing now really wasn't helping. She wasn't destroying the room anymore, the flames had fallen back to their usual height, the water had stopped boiling. The tense, tight, violent shivering of fury in her chest had melted away into something different. She wasn't even entirely sure what it was now. It was light as air, lighter, like it was about to pick her right off the ground, shining bright like a flamelight enchantment set between her ribs, warm and soothing like a good mug of hot chocolate. It was making her a bit dizzy, and rather giddy, and she couldn't stop giggling like such a fucking lunatic.

And, honestly, she didn't really want to.

She stared at herself in the mirror for a long moment, taking a few deep, slow breaths. Familiar green eyes, her mother's eyes, stared back at her, more sharp and intense than she thought they should be, almost seeming to gleam in the candlelight. But, her magic had been being weird, and that could happen, whatever. She let her gaze trail over her face, the heavy lines of her dark eyebrows, the gentle curve of her cheek, the sharp point of her chin that she was pretty sure was genetic, her razor nose and thin— Whoops. She noticed she was biting her lip, stopped. Oh, wow, that steam from the sink must have really fucked up her hair, it was much messier than usual. She hadn't really noticed when it was shorter, but the jet black mass was dense and wavy as fuck, it got so tangled so easily. There was a glint of sweat along the curve of her neck from it too.

Oh, wait, maybe that'd been the magic, come to think of it. She'd noticed before when Hermione got especially worked up, she lost control of her magic a little bit, and the first thing to be affected was her hair, making it even more of a mess. She suspected the bushiness was mostly from her magic, actually — both her parents had rather straight hair by comparison.

Anyway.

Okay.

So.

She was a girl now. 'So fucking what?!' What was so bad about that, honestly! It was even nice sometimes! She'd been being so fucking ridiculous the last couple months! Seriously! Really, had she been that attached to being a boy in the first place? No, no was the answer, no she hadn't. And if... If she were completely honest... She really...

Oh, you can think it in your own head, you fucking lunatic, stop being such a psycho!

She was really fucking girly sometimes! There!

She'd long made a habit of, just, ignoring it. Hiding it. Because, fuck, Dursleys didn't want any freakishness around them, did they? She'd learned a long time ago to try to be as normal as possible at all times, to not even think freakish thoughts in the privacy of her own head. And, well, boys aren't normally supposed to be all girly, are they? You can bet that's a bit of freakishness Vernon never tolerated.

Well, she was done! She was done being all self-conscious about this shite! She was going to do what she damn well pleased!

Yeah, Vernon? Fuck you! Flowers were pretty! If she felt like drawing them in the margins of her books, guess what? She was going to fucking do it! If she felt like painting them onto her hands, or carving them into her bedframe (the elves could fix that when she graduated, right?), or, fuck, picking them and putting them in her goddamn hair, she was going to do it, and he could just bloody go to fucking hell!

Fuck it all! Just fuck it! She was going to say what she wanted the way she wanted, she was going to do what she wanted, and everyone else could fuck off! Even herself a few hours ago, yeah, fuck that pathetic bitch. It was so ridiculous what she'd let the Dursleys do to her. The Dursleys were so ridiculous! Seriously, Petunia had locked her in the cupboard once, denying her lunch and dinner, because she'd caught her skipping. Skipping! Or how about that time, back in year two, when Dudley and his stupid gang had teased her with insults that, in retrospect, weren't really insults, and kicked her around for nearly an hour, just because she'd been having lunch with a few girls in their year that week? Seriously?

What the fuck was wrong with those people? Honestly...

There was a Hogsmeade weekend in a few weeks here. And, know what? She was going to drag Hermione out — because someone had to know what she was doing — and she was going to buy herself some clothes. Because, damn if what she had didn't suck. She was still dressing like Harry Potter! But she wasn't Harry Potter anymore, and she didn't want to be! Fuck that! She was Melantha Black now, and, honestly, she was actually sort of starting to like the idea. And if she was going to act like it, she was going to dress like it.

Because, fuck, as long as she was being honest right now in her head, for once, she might as well come out and think it. Not only did she think she looked rather nice in the small number of dresses and skirts and whatever other girly shite Andi had made her wear, it was also sort of fun! She liked it! And no, little tingle in the back of her head saying she shouldn't like that, it was weird, it was not weird, she was a girl, that was perfectly acceptable! She was going to do it, she was going to like it, and anyone who was uncomfortable with it could just fuck off!

Including herself when she actually got around to it, as she assumed would happen. Fuck her!

Because, yes, she wasn't so naïve as to think all her head fuckery was going to be over just because she'd decided just now it was going to be over. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Of course her plan to not be so passive, to go and learn the shite she thought she needed to learn, of course that wasn't going to go perfectly smoothly, was going to take a lot of bloody work. Of course she wasn't going to stop being pathetically shy and self-conscious just because she didn't want to be. It wasn't going to be that easy.

But damned if she wasn't going to try.

She was tired, she was so damn tired of her shitty, passive, self-denying nonsense. It obviously hadn't helped her a single fucking bit. She was done. So very, very done.

She was going to do what she damn well pleased.

Yes.

With a nod to herself in the mirror, she pulled out her wand, did as much as she could to repair the damage she'd unthinkingly done to the room. Which was most of it — she overpowered the mending charm a bit. Tucking her wand away, she stepped into the hall, a soft smile pulling at her lips.

Well. This was going to be great. She wouldn't allow it to be anything but.

Supreme Consul — Supreme Mugwump in canon. Which makes absolutely no sense. "Mugwump" as a political term originated in nineteenth century America, ultimately from a word in an Algonquian language (presumably Massachusset/Wampanoag). It would be a bit peculiar for the top position in the European ICW to be a Native American word. Instead, I picked a term referencing the Roman Senate, which seems much more plausible.

Frances Cromwell — In case you're curious, yes, that Cromwell. In my headcanon history, muggleborn sister of the (in)famous Oliver Cromwell. Sister, not Cromwell's youngest daughter, who had the same name. Dark Lady, successfully conquered magical Britain (and, through her brother, the muggle side as well), and thus partially responsible for the enormous mess made of the Seventeenth Century, which led to the Statute of Secrecy happening.

[but it was a very similar kind of big cat] — Yeah, Lily's patrōnus isn't a doe. There are reasons why I did that, they'll come up later. Although, from a certain perspective, I didn't even change it. JKR confirmed Lily's patrōnus was a doe in an interview, it wasn't actually in any of the books. So bleh.

[I suppose that might depend on which you're talking about.] — Why, yes, I do have irons in the plot-fire. Why do you ask?

Is-ã lũgesat (IPA: /ɪ.sɐ̃.l̥ʊ̃.ɣʰɛ.sat̪̚/) — This is from a conlang, the language they speak in the civilisation of magical Crete I've made up. Means "bow to me", as a command. If it seems familiar, Lily just used the same spell in the most recent TLG chapter, incantation slightly shortened.

Obvertite — Plural command of Latin verb meaning "turn to(ward)"

Prō mē elementa, meam nexum subīte, et in meā manū vigēte. — "Elements before me, submit to my binding, and live (with)in my hand." The verb for "live" used also means to flourish or thrive. In short, this is a spell that binds some bit of elemental magic to the caster in a way that gives them such control over it they can make it do pretty much whatever they want by thought alone. Originally made for that same TLG chapter, but ultimately cut. Usually, you can only do this with a spell you cast yourself, but Lily cheated and used lũgesat–obvertite to transfer ownership of the spell, so to speak, to herself first. And, in case you're wondering, yes, that is a completely insane thing to do with Fiendfyre.

Holy shit, I'm so glad I finally got to that scene. I'm probably just as sick of the constant angst as any of you are.

Oh, and, uh...about Lily's use of completely badass magic...and Tom apparently knowing her...and her apparently being a Parselmouth...ah...

*flees*