Hopefully, this chapter is up to snuff. My computer died and I lost everything including my plans for my stories. I hope I don't end up leaving threads hanging that I had planned out, please send me unanswered questions or leave a review.

Enjoy!

You found it in the vault, half buried beneath worn journals and loose sheathes of paper. A curious muggle contraption, you've seen it's like before and manage to fiddle with the buttons, the music box you came for forgotten for the moment. The tape begins to play, first with a hiss of white noise that speaks, then a crackle.

This should be, this should be easier than writing. That takes too long and my mind wanders. I've put the books in the vault, I don't need them to remember, they aren't for me anyway. I-

The sound of a clearing throat and rustling. In the background is childish laughter.

I followed my watcher last night. Thana. I was led somewhere, a wasteland of broken obsidian and bleached bones. Black sand beaches and smooth pebbles on a black river bed. The sky was, was spectacular really, full of stars that followed you. Stars that blinked...it's...not a place where you trust your eyes. Things...moved or faded I'm not sure and others you don't want to see but you know are there. You just know.

There is a long pause in the recording.

Death as a, as a sentient concept is...hard to really wrap my head around. Before...magic, it was the end. Things died and that was, well that was it. It's, its like gravity. A limitation and a changing active presence and a passive effect all at once. It, I suppose it, consumes in a way. There was this cliff face with a massive clock on it with hands and marked times and why a clock? I didn't expect something so...or maybe it conformed to something I would understand? It kept time, I could see the hands move but they didn't actually go anywhere I don't-

Another pause, this one filled with noise or poorly imitated animals and cries of 'Moony! Pa'foot! Ta'a!' There is another voice, you are sure of it, but you can't quite make it out.

There were echoes bouncing off those cliffs. Sometimes it sounded like a busy street, other times conversations or arguments, or just the wind whistling. They all ended the same way. With an ending. The screech of metal and glass, a gunshot, the sound of a body hitting the ground. There was a section where the cliff face stretched sideways and not up and those echoes were...

There is a loud squelching sound, a moment of dead silence. A child's unearthly screeching.

Oh my God! Thana, give that back, give it to me, give it! Shh, Harry, don't cry, I'll re attach-shh, look, mummy can put your hand back, be quiet and let her work. I need, I need blood and...and you're not bleeding, just a..dark hole where...okay. Okay. I can fix this, where's the necklace? Don't cry, Harry.

Muffled murmuring and someone takes a heavy step forward.

Don't you touch him! I told you, not to touch him! Not to touch him and you do this? Why would you do this, don't answer me just get out. One year. I don't want to see you before then or I will hurt you. Get out! GET OUT!

Her voice is abruptly closer.

Shhh, Harry. And of course this thing is still bloody o-

After three minutes and twenty eight seconds of static, another recording begins.

Thana apologized with a present today, I assume it was a present. I hope it was. The head of Antonin Dolohov. It must have, it had to go into Azkaban to...I lifted the ban early. Let it see Harry again. Shouldn't have done that. I really shouldn't have done that. Death Eaters as acceptable targets, I couldn't have set a worse precedent, what happens when there are none left to hunt?

One minute, seven seconds. You find it hard to believe it's part of the same recording session, 'it' has become 'she.'

I don't know what I am going to do with that girl. I really don't know. She's an incomplete child and then she's...she's a monster and I just don't, she's going to go too far. I'm doing to go too far and Harry-Harry! Who had his first outburst of accidental magic yesterday. And last night, Death noticed. First time it had to come see him, I had to tell it he even existed but now, no spells, there's something about magic-!

The recording goes dead so abruptly you almost believe it to be broken. A chill inches its agonizing way up your spine. You can feel it sink into the gaps between the vertebrae. And squeeze. What about magic? What? You hold it closer to your ear as if the silence held the answer. She speaks again in hurried, clinical tones.

Incomplete. She was incomplete. Getting more complete by the day. Small fragments, had to be small, too much and she changes. Change. She can change reality now, move pieces around. Take objects, people, characteristics and traits. Rewrite them. Reach right into your head. Limitations, if she ever lets go of her alterations, the backlash is...interesting. Does reality notice? Poltergeists can make walls bleed. Thana can too.

The pause in the recording is barely five seconds long but the difference in voice is frightening.

I didn't want to. I was so sure, it was just a-it was just a little sacrifice. I didn't want to, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry Andy, I couldn't-she can't fall apart. She can't fall apart! I can't keep them, can't keep them here, can't keep anything! James, I-I miss you so much, you and your-your stubborn pride! We should have left the country, should have ran far away. I wouldn't have had to, I couldn't do nothing! Not...not Harry. Should've-and this fucking house!

In the background, glass shatters.

It's in my head. The fire, the smoke, the heat, all in my head. The voices, this song all in my head. Breathe, Lily. Just, just...just..I'm losing my mind, I can feel it leeching away everything, I can't-It's-it's in my head and it won't get out! SHUT UP!

A child wails.

Not you, Harry, Mummy would never yell at you, shh. I'm here. What is it, Thana?

The child's voice is clear for the first time. A little girl, solemn.

They talk to you too?

There is one final recording, partially obscured with static. It might be linked to the prominent crack in the plastic casing or the black residue that sticks to your fingers. The topic was touched on before, but she hadn't been able to complete her thoughts then.

Those echoes from the strange cliff face were less noises as they were feelings. Of knowing something terrible was about to happen. Seeing a shadow move when it shouldn't, that moment just after the lights go out. That instant you realize you've stepped in what used to be someone. And I can't...at first I thought it was just the remnants of some past horrors that were shaking through me. That the reason for those screams had passed. That the silence that came after was long gone.

But Death is like a strange...gravity, everything spirals towards the inevitable center. The cliff, beneath an ivory and obsidian clock. Stars that blink. There, echos move backwards. I was hearing the future coming.

A minute of quiet, unsteady breathing and pleading whispers.

It won't be the future for long.

It plays itself out in white noise before coming to a close with a final click.

You open the case as you've been instructed, expecting to see a 'tape' you can transfer to a less damaged recorder for play back. You expected a pensieve and are glad you didn't find one. Still. You know quite a few people that need to hear this. Valuable insight into the deranged mind of Lily Potter, growing more valuable by the minute.

There is nothing inside.

Warning delivered, the recorder crumbles to an ash that drips off your finger tips.

And, abruptly, your shadow is home to other things.

Deathly Hallowed

There's only one real consequence to rule breaking, Mr. Potter.

You learn what the rules were for.

-T.M.R

The old grandfather clock chimed half past nine.

A black sun shone overhead, waiting.

Narcissa Malfoy took a sip of her bitter tea, grimacing and then another as she wrapped her shawl tighter around herself as an ill breeze drifted in through the broken window. Truth be told, candles made for rather poor lighting to read by, the flickering playing tricks with her eyes. Lengthening some words, shortening others. Bleeding the letters together with blurred shadows. Her fingers tightened around the cup as she closed her eyes, stubbornly fighting off a throbbing headache right in the middle of her brow. For a moment she could almost imagine a little blue man standing on the bridge of her nose wielding a pickaxe, determined to strike gold.

With a heavy sigh, she hesitantly lifted one eyelid.

Nope, still there. Always with the distractions.

"Would anyone mind informing me," she began quietly before raising her voice in irritation. "Why the walls bleeding?"

A blue eye in the dark wood grain scuttled away.

"Don't you run away from me. I'm expecting my husband to be home soon," she informed it crossly. A bloodless cut on her cheekbone stung. When she had looked in the mirror, pulled the skin apart, there were stars within. "And the house simply cannot be like this when he returns."

He's late, of course, blissfully, irritatingly late and what else is to be expected? Lucius is an important man with the Minister's ear, well respected, essential even and the sun has just gone dark. No doubt once everyone at the Ministry stopped browning their trousers, they saw the need of putting their heads together. So of course he's late.

That didn't soothe the burning lump in her throat she was ignoring, the need to bury her fingers in his hair, see his smile, have him hold her and just be alright. He had to be alright.

A deeper, darker and more desperate smolder was worried about Draco, but if she thought about it-allowed herself to think about it Hogwarts the safest place on earth her tight buttocks, Potter was there she'd drive herself insane.

She gingerly brushed a finger across the wall, warm to the touch, and came away with that clinging redness.

The reading room in Malfoy Manor looked like something that could only come from the feverish nightmares of a cold three a.m. The walls had eyes, gone were her soft beige floral patterns, black scrawling lines of cancer creeping across as she was watched from all sides. The mahogany bookshelves were stately shadows, slick and leaking. Her peacock feather collection wilted, the wooden furniture and linens eaten through by fat maggots. Streaming from the corners of the ceiling towards the center were rivulets of blood that fell as bizarre rain. Right onto her crimson centerpiece rug.

She'd never get the stains out.

Narcissa bit her lip, running through half a dozen scenarios of Lucius walking out of that green fire to see...this.

"If this is in anyway permanent there will be consequences," she warned the eye, ignoring the odd lubb and thubb her heart gave. "In fact! You're grounded."

There was a cough that started off suspiciously like a snort by the doorway.

"Maybe a bit premature, Cissa?" Andromeda knocked the door frame once with a free hand. The other was clutching surgical gloves, freshly used. Her face was pale and drawn, and did nothing to hide the molten glow emanating from her pupils. Narcissa thought about asking, running a contemplative finger over that shallow wound on her face, but then dismissed the idea. "She's not even awake yet."

"And what does that have to do with anything?" She responded stiffly.

Her sister went to roll her eyes, but instead of going all the way around they stuck to the ceiling. "Nothing at all," she muttered distractedly before commenting on the surreal fountain dripping from above. "That's new."

"Ah, yes." Narcissa followed her gaze upwards. Oh, lovely. Something was moving in it. "You can understand my frustration, I hope? I do not remember Potter having to deal with anything like this before."

"That's because Anna has never had to let go of everything before." Those brown eyes tore themselves away. "Including what was left of Lily's sanity. Which was precious little. And the parts-"

"I don't want to hear the details." She really didn't. Obligingly, the other woman stopped. "A shame about Yaxley," she said eventually. She imagined what it would be like to suddenly realize you've been made to accept a lie. Much like how it would feel to realize you've been obliviated, she supposed. Dread, mixed with fear and a heaping of anger. She sympathized, she really did.

But he had confronted her in a room with a large window.

The lights in Andromeda's eyes flared as she flinched violently, squishing the weeping surgical gloves in her hand until the plastic protested. "What are we going to do?"

Everyone in the world even capable of seeing the writing on the wall was in this house. This was just like her nightmares, the ones that froze the blood in her veins until her lips turned blue and her fingertips prickled on the edge of frostbite. The dark eye of a storm. And it would swallow the world.

What are we going to do?

That question hung in the air.

And Andromeda's all consuming fire, is it something we need to watch for or are they just dreams?

Just dreams.

"We need information." Narcissa's eyes flick over to her own bookshelves and their ruined treasures. We need time. "Potter's library. Her notes. She must have had some idea of how to keep a Sleeper from waking."

The mediwitch relaxed a smidgen. "Some of those are in Gringott's, Dumbledore has the key."

"Dumbledore?" That came out more horrified than she had intended. "Why ever did she give that old fool such a thing?"

Her answer was a wan smile.

"Gryffindors." Narcissa groaned.

"Telling him might be for the best," Andy mused. "If anyone knows of the more old magic, it would be him."

The blonde scoffed. "You cannot be serious." Ritualists, witchdocters, alchemists still in touch with the various realities, even barking mad would still be more useful than bleeding Albus Dumbledore. "The answers are likely as steeped in blood and dark magic as the questions were, we'd be better off knocking on the door of the Lovegood's than-" The answer came to her suddenly. "We need another like Potter."

Andromeda quirked an incredulous eyebrow. "If you didn't notice, we only have one of those. And she's in-," a brief hesitation. Insane. "Indisposed."

"We need another like Potter," she insisted. Not what ifs, what ifs weren't good enough. They needed answers and there was only one other she knew of that had dug just as deep into the annals of their repressed history to even recognize what they were facing. Lily Potter was not the first to ask after those books. "Knowledgeable in dark magic. Skilled enough to call up the dead and avoid Death itself."

Throughout the Manor, the melodic chime of a grandfather clock rippled.

Andromeda's face was blank.

"No."

"Bone of the father-"

"No."

"What would you suggest we do?" She spat back with venom. "Spend who knows how long deciphering the texts, her ramblings? Starting over from scratch? We don't have the time!" That eye, that eye, that eye. That eye in the sky was going to open, Death was going to wake

Ia! Ia!

"It's the surest chance we have," she finished quietly.

Her sister blew out a harsh breath, turning away, and Narcissa knew before she said anything that she had already won. "We don't know where the bones are."

"We'll find them," she countered calmly.

Burning pits within brown eyes cut to her. "There's more to it than just the bones, isn't there?"

She smiled thinly. "Flesh of the servant, willing sacrificed. Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken." An old piece of dark magic. And if one is not perfectly precise..."The servant will give us the most trouble," she thought out loud. "One who still serves, but all those that did not denounce the Dark Lord publicly are dead." Lucius could not take up the Dark Lord's cause again.

The oaths they took in exchange for freedom were thorough.

Damn you, Potter.

"Or in Azkaban," Andromeda finished for her. And then again, once she realized what she just said. "Or in Azkaban. Narcissa."

"Andromeda. Have you seen what's written in those journals?" Italian, German, French, Gibberish, Nonsense, Rambling, Enochian ciphers with a smattering of English. In her opinion, storming that island of dementors would be far less painful. "And besides," here she carefully softened her voice before offering the bait she knew Andromeda would be hard pressed to ignore. "Was anyone more faithful than Bella?"

The other woman didn't respond immediately.

"Let's..." the woman sighed. "Let's try something less extreme first."

"Oh?"

"We get the key from Dumbledore. We get books, the journals, the notes. And we get Harry Potter."

"Expecting Potter to make a miraculous recovery for the sake of her son, is it?" She drawled sardonically. "The odds of that happening are slim at best."

If looks could sear flesh off bone. "I know."

The blood falling from the ceiling suddenly stopped, red droplets hanging in mid air. The feasting maggots died at once, falling off in sheaves to carpet the tiled floors. Every blue eye in the dark wood grains closed. And Narcissa was left breathless as a sudden vacancy in her chest burned.

Andromeda turned towards the west, brows furrowed. "She's awake."

"Then go to her!" Narcissa Malfoy gasped as a cold fire raced through her veins. There was a twinge from her ring finger and roughly five seconds later, a decidedly un-masculine scream of horror shook the walls. Her headache returned with a vengeance. Oh, of all the-now? Really?

"And that would be my husband."

The sisters shared identical exasperated looks even as Narcissa felt a burst of apprehension. She ran a trembling finger over the cut on her cheekbone, contemplating it. What to say, what to say...

"I won't tell you what to tell him."

"Then what good are you-"

"But no more lies," Dromeda cut in sharply before turning towards the fireplace. And suddenly, her little sister began to wonder what the woman had been telling her own family, about the nightmares, the oddities, the cracked glass and empty window panes. "I think we could all use a bit of honesty right now, don't you think?"

She was gone in emerald flames and the blonde woman, fingers curled into a claw over her heart, hazarded a peek outside.

...missus malfoy?...

What is it

...i didnt mean to...

I know Anna

At a black sun, waiting.

Harry lay in bed at the Hospital Wing on his stomach, head on crossed arms not trying to sleep so much as trying to just blank his mind. He didn't want to think, but it seemed like the harder to distract himself, the more thinking he actually did. Which was just as aggravating as it sounded. He clung to that irritation, gripping his forearms until he felt like he was bruising himself and tried to bury his face further into the bed sheets. Stopped him from feeling a lot of other things.

Anger.

Fear.

Guilt.

Shame.

The memories weren't all back.

Small favors.

But there was enough for him to piece together into a picture he didn't like seeing at all.

"Stop thinking!" he hissed, squeezing his eyes together. Stop thinking.

His necklace defends him. Not at the tree. And his mother had never been surprised to see it. Don't take it off. But she had never said that she had been the one to give it to him, had she? A gift, boy? And Alex...she had saved him, he was sure of that. I owe her. That's what kept coming back to his mind, above everything else. The first coherent image he could make out from the mess of light, sound and adrenaline was of her brandishing her wand high in the doorway, standing between him and that...that thing.

I hate it. I want it to die.

Alex saved his life.

He owed her.

And I don't know how to pay her back.

Because she was dead.

His arms were starting to go numb and Harry reluctantly eased up on his grip.

There was a soft knock and he turned his head, just knowing that his eyes were still puffy and bloodshot. He must look a right fright, sure that the half a dozen magical candles littering the room wasn't helping much. At least he blown out his nose before crushing his face into the mattress. He had a little bit of dignity left.

"Sorry," he sniffled a little. "I'm in here."

Professor Flitwick poked his head in, compassion written all over the diminutive man's face. "So you are, Mr. Potter," he murmured. "So you are."

There was a moment of companionable silence.

Harry got off the bed, self consciously trying to smooth away wrinkles in his robes and clear his throat. "I heard classes were canceled, sir."

The man smiled. "One step at a time! How are you feeling?"

"I-" Harry stopped. How was he feeling, exactly? Penelope's image came to mind. Of her taking one look outside at the black sun that had haunted his last dream as his head felt like it exploded and just screaming until Edward turned his wand on her, like she had done to Vincent. Both were being kept sedated and Pomfrey wouldn't look him in the eye.

"Scared, sir." He swallowed thickly. "Very scared."

"Ah, well," his Head of House patted him on the arm reassuringly before handing him a small slip of paper. "You are most certainly not alone."

Harry looked at the message curiously, not quite able to..."Sugar quills?" That was the password to the Headmaster's office, wasn't it? He glanced back up to Flitwick, gesturing with the paper. "What did I do?"

For the record.

The sun thing was not his fault.

"Nothing! Nothing." the professor was quick to explain. "I've just been told, well, there is someone here to see you. One Andromeda Tonks, to be precise. I remember that girl," he chortled softly. "Slytherin but not ambitious so much as...curious. Always curious." A thoughtful hum. "Could have easily been a Ravenclaw but." He shrugged helplessly.

He knew that last name. Tonks. His chess set.

Thana.

"I'll go see her now," he said quickly. "That's alright, isn't it?"

Flitwick nodded slowly, looking apprehensive. Not that Harry could blame the man, he didn't think anyone knew what to do anymore. "As you have said, classes are canceled. We are trying to keep everyone where we can find them, in their Common Rooms but Dumbledore did give you something of an...an exception in this case." He was gazed at curiously. Harry started off for the door before a question halted him dead in his tracks. "Don't you need help getting there?"

His shoulders slumped a bit. Half a dozen turns, more hallways and rooms that you could shake a stick at-he turned around, sheepish. "Please...?"

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The Headmaster's Office looked much the same as it did the last time he was there, with its mysterious gadgets and whirlygigs, the gigantic clawed desk and sleeping portraits. But at the same time, it was so very different. Dumbledore himself was missing and it was as if much of what made the room what it was, the magic of it, had gone missing right along with him, leaving only a carefully wrapped square package on his desk with a note.

Harry crept further into the room cautiously, peeking around Professor Flitwick's shoulder. Maybe he was in the back? "Headmaster Dumbledore? It's Harry." When there was no response, he approached the desk. Stiff brown paper and thin rope string, the package was nevertheless carefully wrapped. A contrarily ornate gift card lay on top, just below the butterfly knot addressed to: Harry.

"Now this is odd," the man stated with a shrug. "I wasn't aware the Headmaster wouldn't be in. Perhaps we-"

"Dumbledore had an errand to run," a woman's voice cut in smoothly out of nowhere, making him jump. "He shouldn't be gone for too long."

Harry glanced around the room again.

This time he saw her.

Sitting on a plain wooden chair by the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other and hands laying demurely in her lap as she stared into the flames was one Andromeda Tonks. And she was...surreal looking. Harry couldn't really...put his finger on it. The fire was reflecting off her dark hair in waves, turning it into a burning gold that fell in curls. She had dark eyes, he thought, but what color they were exactly he couldn't say. And she was pretty, in a high born kind of way that made Harry feel like a dirty peasant unfit to even lay eyes on her. If Albus Dumbledore, with his long beard, colorful robes and presence, was the wizard in Harry's mind, then she was the fairy tale princess. And it felt as if she was just as real.

His Head of House wasn't as impressed. "What did you do, girl?"

"A bit of this," she said nonchalantly even as her eyes sharpened. "A bit of that. You know how it is." She waved a casual hand at Flitwick. "If you will please excuse us? I'm afraid I must speak to Mr. Potter here privately."

The professor turned to Harry, frowning and with eyebrows raised in a silent question. And after a long moment, Harry nodded. And as soon as he heard the door close behind him, he regretted sending the man away. He felt horribly exposed standing there as she watched him, like she was seeing things about him he didn't know existed.

"You have your mother's eyes," she told him eventually. It wasn't a compliment.

He shuffled a little. "Thank you for the chess set, Mrs. Tonks."

It was the right thing to say, teasing a smile out of her. "Anna told you that I helped, huh? She thought your favorite piece would be the thestral, but I had my bets on the chimera."

The thestral? That definitely sounded more like Thana's kind of animal, girls liked ponies and while the chimera was pretty neat...Harry shook his head. "The Chinese Fireball!" He cried, complete with arm waving. "It was...it was flying over it's pedestal and the roar, and how'd you get it to blow real fire?"

Even her laugh was pretty.

"Talk to me again once you've covered Fourth Year charms and I'll teach you."

That killed a good bit of his excitement. "I can't. Dumbledore said-" He found his eyes straying to the unoccupied desk. "He said I can't do them. The complex spells, they won't work for me."

Something in her face shifted. "I-I'm sorry to hear that, Harry. Did he give you a reason why?"

"Nicholas Flamel," he murmured after a moment of searching his memory. "He was going to contact Nicholas Flamel about it."

"Flamel? The alc-" she stopped. "I see."

"Well I don't," he blurted out before biting his tongue to keep everything else bottled up. Why couldn't they keep talking about the chess set? Why couldn't he just wake up and have everything back the way it should be? He tasted blood in his mouth.

"I know you don't." And she didn't look guilty, or like she was pitying him which was good because Harry didn't really know if he even wanted her to feel sorry for him. She just looked...sad. "Ask me anything," she promised quietly. "I'll answer as best I can."

Harry stood in the middle of the Headmaster's office, barely daring to breathe.

Answers.

There was only one question he really wanted to ask.

"Why is this happening?"

The Headmaster's office didn't look at all like it had the last time he was here. Shadows pooled in every corner, under every chair and stretched in long fingers off the gadgets. The comforting murmur, buzz and hum of sleeping portraits of former Headmaster's was absent, replaced by a shrill whistling of wind against the outer walls of the tower. The claws of the desk seemed to flex and shudder in the flickering light and he still couldn't tell what color Andromeda Tonks' eyes were.

"The short version?"

But they were wrongwrongwrongwrong-

"You died."

Harry couldn't breathe. "The tree?"

"I don't know the details," she admitted quietly and averted her eyes. Harry stepped away from her, and he remembers that it had been on the train when he had known why that green eye was there. The tree. "Was there anyone there with you when...?"

Harry didn't want to answer, but eventually he dragged the words out. "My cousin. Dudley. It-it was an accident."

She frowned. "Dudley. What House is he in?"

"He-" Harry paused. He didn't want to use that word. "He's not in one, he's...he can't use magic."

"Then he couldn't have seen anything, but...through Lily, maybe he felt something."

"It was an accident," Harry repeated. "I wasn't paying attention. I tripped and there was the tree and it-it was an accident."

"Lily made a bargain she needed you to keep. You broke the terms." And that wasn't registering in his brain, just bouncing back and forth like an echo chamber because what kind of deal includes 'don't die?' And with who? Why? "And your mother doesn't think it was an accident."

The third guest room on the second floor.

Narcissa kept a running tally of the Manor's guest accommodations and it was one of the least opulent, simple even and Anna would love it to death, because it was the room Narcissa always gave her.

Anna did always hold tightly to her things.

She knew what she should expect, a nondescript room with bland walls and lightly decorated linens. There would be a cherry wood wardrobe with a full length mirror along the far wall. A modest bathroom, two windows and a four poster canopy bed dressed in maroon and cream. A small room, a tad claustrophobic perhaps, carpeted flooring that matched the hallway and a brass petaled gas lamp over the overstuffed reading chair in the far right hand corner.

That wasn't the room the third door on the second floor led to.

The door opened with a raspy whimper.

Beyond it was nothing.

A void.

She didn't let herself hesitate even as some part of the reptilian hind brain screamed.

"Anna?" Her throat was dry. She licked her lips as a single blue eye opened in the dark. Her tongue was made out of sand paper. "Are you healing well?"

The eye shifted.

i guess

"Then why are you..." she paused, trying to find a diplomatic way of saying it. Hiding away. "Like this?"

Four more eyes opened.

cuz i want to

"I see," she said slowly at the petulant answer. She really didn't. "I thought you liked your mortal body?"

it broke

A disbelieving scoff broke free of her before she could stop it. "It's broken before." It has and there will always be something extremely wrong about seeing a small child literally falling apart (Potter was there) and writhing in agony (but the Gryffindor was Slytherin enough to take advantage of pain). "Was Yaxley insufficient?"

The eyes narrowed.

no i just want to okay

"You want to stay here and brood, is what you mean."

Every eye closed.

go away

Narcissa bristled at the dismissal. "You are still recovering, so I will let your behavior slide just this once. But if you think you can just order me around in my own house-"

why are you making this hard Anna shot back angrily, prickling the hairs on the back of the woman's neck as she felt a twisting underneath her feet. The anger was almost palpable, a stench in heavy air that quivered. i want to be left alone!

She pressed on. "Not until I see you."

Several hundred eyes slammed open in the abyss, wide and bleeding.

YOU DO SEE ME

They vanished, leaving her alone in the dark.

Shaken, Narcissa smoothed the front of her skirts compulsively, carefully going over each and every crease until her finger snagged on a button. Twenty eight front creases, she stopped on the twenty third. Odd number. She had to do it over again. And again, counting the seconds until the burning urge at the back of her throat and acid taste faded and she could breathe. It wasn't the pages of her beloved books (ruined, stained, wet pages easily tear and they smelled of copper) but it would do.

"Anna Marie McKinnon," she said quietly at first. Her voice trembled. "I will give you to the count of three. One."

No answer.

"Two-"

okay okay!

Part of the void...puckered like a flower bud before peeling back over pale skin like an ink stain and congealing into long, messy black hair. "Okay." Blue eyes without pupils peeked out from under long eyelashes. "Happy now?"

Narcissa let out a shuddering breath. What would have happened had she reached three? She had no idea, but the girl was still a child where it counted, at least. "Yes, for the moment."

Anna wasn't standing, not really. Bracing twists of shadow wrapped her legs, burying under the skin in places like parasitic worms. A livid burn scar (no, it's still raw, bleeding) crossed her throat and her left hand was still wrapped. There was one wound that was hidden underneath the robe fascimile. Narcissa didn't ask to see it.

"How are you feeling?" She asked instead. She kept her hands to herself and clasped in front of her as if they would be enough of a barrier between them. "Still angry?"

"No," the girl muttered. "I- no. Sorry."

"That's quite alright," she lied. Play nice, Narcissa. You don't know what will happen if you don't...Phantom echoes of fear shivered down her arms and had her running creases with her index finger. "I didn't realize I would upset you."

Anna grimaced. "It wasn't you...exactly. It's-" she huffed. "I can feel it. The-" she waved upwards. "That. It wants to wake up." The girl shrunk in on herself. "And I kind of want it to?"

"But you aren't helping it, correct?" Narcissa questioned sharply.

"No!" She blurted. "I want to, but I don't want to and I'm trying but it's in my head like a-like a color!" She continued to babble helplessly. "Like green! Like green but I have blue and it's yellow and I want green but I don't at the same time because then I won't-I won't," she hiccuped. "I won't be me anymore. And everything will be gone."

And everything will be gone.

When Anna looked back up at her, it was with wide, innocent eyes that made something in her chest ache. "It makes sense to you, right? I'm not going crazy or anything?"

"You aren't crazy," That sounded like a falsehood. "Trust me."

Anna looked at her dubiously. "But Lily-"

"Lily Potter played the victim," Narcissa cut in harshly. "If she wasn't seeing things, it was the voices and if not that, then the dreams."

Perhaps being critical of the girl's godmother wasn't the most intelligent thing she'd ever done, but damn it, Narcissa knew what it was like. Of waking in the dead of night with ice in her hair, the crooked reflections in the bathroom mirror, the visitations. Of drowning in air, the smell of ozone and the sounds of thunder no one else could hear, she knew it.

"Devoid of those things, Potter never questions her own mind."

Because it's necessary, because she has to, because she needed it and the quintessential Gryffindor, too brave to really look at herself and what she was doing-

"The truly insane never do."

The silence that followed wasn't quite comfortable until Anna's eyes, all of them, snapped to the door.

"Harry?"

Oh, yes. That.

"Did I forget to tell you where Andromeda went?" she commented casually. "Pardon my neglect."

Anna stared at her, aghast. "Wha-no! He can't-" a bandaged hand flew up to her hair as she stared down at the potato sack robe in dismay. "He can't see me like this!"

The sliver of a genuine smile ghosted onto Narcissa's lips. She remembered, fondly, when she was like that. More concerned about her blonde locks than a potentially life threatening injury (her hair was her life and Bella once threatened to cut it all off-). Although this was the first time she'd ever seen vanity from the girl-

Ah.

The smile turned upside down.

The girl saw it. "Don't. Say. Anything."

"The Potter boy?"

"I said don't say anything!"

The door slammed in Narcissa's face with a frustrated cry.

"Merlin!"