"Sneaking around won't help when you reek of blood and Wrath," Lysander Crouch commented without looking up from her book. "What do you seek, Akira?"
"I need to find Sirius Black for So-chan," Akira leaned against her desk, towering over her seated form with his impressive height—not that it imitated Lysander, not much did.
"Blood-magic then," Lysander waved her wand and several books floated themselves neatly from the bookcases and stacked themselves on her desk in alphabetical order. "Try not to get any more blood on them."
"Blood calls to blood," Akira commented wryly as he glanced over the titles on the generously blood-stained leather-bound books, pausing on one. "Is this human skin?"
Lysander glanced over and nodded; "Yes, I believe that one was bound by Beatrix Blaec sometime in tenth century—she caught a man peeking on her whilst bathing and made him regret it."
"She kept him alive as she flayed him?" Akira asked, more than slightly impressed when Lysander nodded.
"It's apparently quite easy if you do it right and use the right spells," Lysander commented. "Muggles can even do it without spells."
"True," Akira hummed as he began thumbing through the first book, looking for the tracking spells and rituals.
Blood-magic would make his task much easier than normal tracking spells and rituals or manually attempting to track Sirius.
The best thing about blood-magic? It couldn't be blocked, Sirius could have found himself a wand and hid himself from normal tracking spells and rituals, but he couldn't hide his blood—at least not easily, painlessly, and not while on the run with the whole country looking for him.
Sirius hadn't made many—if any—friends amongst people that would hide him from the Ministry, he spat in the face of more than just the family after all. And despite his belief, his 'pranks' didn't just target future Death Eaters—Dark-magic didn't always mean Death Eaters after all—and he burnt the bridges between him and the Dark-neutral and plain neutral families in Hogwarts.
The Light and the Light-neutral families condemned him because of his name and would not lift a finger to help him; Sirius had effectively shot himself in the foot when it came to almost all the wizarding families.
Sirius, Akira mused, wouldn't be too impressed that the family he ran away from was the family that was willing to save him—though he'd probably have a good laugh when he found out that So-chan, half-blood daughter of a muggle-born and disowned Black daughter, would be the next Head of House Black.
Calypso Tonks was stubborn, it was something that could be a glaring weakness as well as a strength.
She had stubbornly kept her tears and nightmares to herself when she first remembered—when Dora's death seeped into her mind and gripped her heart in fear—and refused to mention the nightmares that made her wake in the middle of night with great heaving sobs and hands shaking as she hugged one of her soft-toys close to her chest and used it to muffle her sobs—Toothless was a favourite of hers, the warmth that Akira had charmed into the black dragon was soothing when she woke up shivering and sobbing in a cold sweat.
She had stubbornly kept studying Aunt Cassi's runes, ignoring how her head would throb, her eyes teared up and how it took several times before things made sense as her dyslexia played up—dyslexia she didn't tell her family about because she wasn't stupid, and she had enough memories of the other her, the her of before, feeling stupid to last her lifetimes.
She had stubbornly stayed friends with Harry Potter—despite the fact part of her was still terrified by him, despite the fact she would sometimes look at him and see a future of war and suffering unfolding before her—if only because people suspected him and disapproved her fledging friendship with him—Blacks didn't do as they were told, or at least they weren't meant to, and they never bowed to the opinions of others, or at least they weren't meant to.
She had stubbornly gone to each training session with Kris during the summer, had pushed her body to its limits to keep up with Kris' strength and speed, she had stubbornly continued with Kris' bloody lessons—despite that fact she would wash and rub her hands almost raw afterwards as she tried to erase the blood from between the creases of her palm and the blood hardening under her nails, as she tried to forget the lax body of Kris' transfigured animals and the dead look in their dark eyes all because of her.
She had stubbornly kept fighting against Dora, holding her shield-charm as long as she could as Dora sent spell after curse after hex at her—she ignored how her body felt weak, how she would feel head-light when she used too much magic in one go, she ignored how it almost burnt when she reached for more magic than she had or could handle.
She had stubbornly gone back down to the Torture Chamber—the man that haunted her nightmares, the man that wanted to take her and touch her and hurt her, long gone—and she learnt to breathe through the stink of blood that almost hid the underlying smell of waste as Akira pointed out each of his 'toys' and what they could be used for as he held her gently to him—hands gentle, hiding the violence and strength that he could wield so easily if he so wished, but never against her, Calypso knew without a doubt.
Now, she was stubbornly ignoring the Weasley twins and their so-called love and affection;
She ignored the recurring Lovers—as some unimaginative fool decided to call the non-Howlers, the name sadly stuck—that they sent her every morning without fail and with a slightly different message.
She gritted her teeth whenever they conjured a cloud of petals to follow her around—seething quietly when Professor Snape banned her from Potions class before feeling quite pleased when Professor Snape took fifty points off the twins for interfering with another student's learning and another fifty points for unseemly displays of affection on top of the lecture that Professor McGonagall gave them which made them stop that particular show of 'affection' after the first time.
She only sent stinging hexes after them when they decided to suddenly hug her whenever they saw her—Professor Snape quietly gave her ten points whenever he caught her, Professor McGonagall only sighed when she saw her and only took a point from her for each hex she caught Calypso sending towards her lions, and Professor Flitwick pointedly ignored her whenever he passed by her raining stinging hexes down upon the yelping red-heads.
She refused to give in, she was a Black, she would become the Black when she came to her majority, and she wouldn't give in to those devilish demonic fiendish Weasley twins—she refused.
Remus Lupin was a nice man, Nymphadora Tonks would say easily and truthfully, he was nice and mild and unable to take a compliment, and his blush made her grin, but that didn't mean that she was interested in him in that way.
Perhaps in another life, Tonks would have been charmed by his niceness, his mildness, his obvious attempts to make himself harmless, but it was this life, and this Tonks, and she wasn't charmed.
Tonks was a Black—her mother's blood ran strongly through her veins and the veins of her sister—she had grown up surrounded by her Black cousins and she didn't understand why someone would purposely blunt their teeth and claws when she and her cousins were encouraged to sharpen their claws and teeth, to get them bloody and ready for war—a war that was coming sooner than they had thought, but they were preparing and they knew they would win.
And Tonks thought that Lupin would hesitate in love, would hold himself back and separate from her, and always looking for it to crash down around them—she didn't know why she thought that, but it was something she thought as soon as she saw him and briefly considered any thought of a romantic relationship with the elder man, something she completely dismissed during their talk.
Tonks wanted a love like her parents, like Cynthia found with Jared, like the quiet partnership of Ayame and Alexander.
(She wanted a fraction of the love that Akira freely felt and bestowed on Calypso, he had lost his heart to her the moment he first held her, hours after she was born, and Calypso simply yawned in his face when he had put his scarred features close to her pink and chubby face so her weak eyes could see his scarred mug in all its glory, and never shied away from showing it.)
She wanted a partnership, a love with someone that would love her as fiercely as she loved them, that would stand back to back to her and fight with bloody claws and teeth, she wanted someone that wasn't just nice, who could bite back as well as bark, and Remus Lupin would never be that someone.
That didn't mean, however, she was going to stop feigning an interest in him just to rile up her little sister because it was funny how annoyed Calypso was when she wrote back.
Blood calls to Blood, it wasn't just a saying in the magical world, it was a truth. With a single drop of blood, a witch or wizard could track the blood-donor no matter where they were or what wards they were under.
Akira didn't have any of Sirius' blood—nor did he have any hair or baby teeth—as wizards and witches were notoriously protective of their blood, of their hair, of any bodily materiel that could be used against them—which was everything really—but he didn't need Sirius' blood because they were family, they shared the same blood, and blood still calls to blood, and magic was all about intent underneath it all.
Instead of having maps filled with moving dots of blood that showed everyone holding Black blood in their veins, the enlarged and detailed map held only two dots of blood; one to show Calypso, to show him where Hogwarts was hidden, and the second to show Sirius, which showed him hiding around the wilds of Hogsmeade.
Sirius had returned to Hogwarts after all, Akira mused, he supposed even Fudge had to get lucky and be right occasionally—surprising though that was.
Akira supposed he best get his wayward cousin before he did something more foolish and upset his dear So-chan.
AN: So, yeah, very short chapter but I'm being struggling over this. My brain has also been exploding at the thought of her next life—how I'm going to change things so it's not exactly the same world, but still familiar to both Calypso/Kallisto and the reader without it feeling boring with the same old things—and chewing over changing the pairing again.
I had decided to pair her with Harry, but then you kept saying Akira—something I had so not planned—and I could see it and then someone asked if Akira would be reborn into the next verse with Calypso/Kallisto and my mind exploded into ideas and thoughts and if I did go through that then I would have to scrap the Dragon Age story I had planned because it wouldn't work with Akira there, especially if I pair her with him and keep them together through a life-jumping adventure of blood and mayhem. And yeah, sorry about the rant, but my mind won't stop spinning and exploding with ideas and—yeah, going to stop now before it turns into another rant.
Your thoughts and feelings would be very helpful to help me decide the course of this series of SI, so please, read and review. Sorry again for the short chapter.
It also turns out I didn't have food poisoning, nope, I just got some nasty bug that has messed up my system and my doctor decided that I would have to work my own way through it as I'm too 'delicate' for most drugs that could help me.
