A/N: Can I just say how miserable I was writing this in the first place, then again during the rewrite? JKR ought to apologize for killing Sirius every year.

Bailey just barely dodged an Unforgivable from Bellatrix Lestrange. Funny, she used to think herself to be a decent dueler; she had been one of the best in her year during the disastrous Dueling Club second year. Now, however, she was barely holding her own against her cousin, and that was even with brilliant Granger's help.

Potter, of course, had been wrong. Her father was probably perfectly safe with her mum in Grimmauld Place, meaning that her publically neutral stance in the war to be blown to smithereens for no good reason. She could curse Potter into next week, if she didn't realize that it (mostly) was not his fault. Though she was loathe to admit it, she had been just as impatient as her godbrother had been to leave Hogwarts and find her father. She had just met the man, they had just become a real family again; there was no way she was going to lose her father again without a fight.

"Hold up, Potter, let me try this first!" she demanded as her godbrother practically danced with impatience to leave and go after her father.

"There's no time to wait! Voldemort could have killed him by now!" he all but yelled at her as she scrambled around in her bag, searching for the mirror her father had given her. She was just as anxious as he.

"Damn it all!" she growled before pointing her wand in the bag. "Accio mirror! Now—Dad? Dad! Can you hear me?"

"He's not answering!" Harry said. She shushed him.

"Give him a minute, for all we know he could be in the loo or something'," she said. "Da'? Mum? Someone, please answer—Daddy, please!"

The godsiblings looked at each other, Bailey with tears clouding her vision.

"He's not answering. He never ignores the mirror," she finally admitted. Harry held out a hand.

"C'mon, we need to go!"

"Minnie! Look out!" someone shouted. Bailey dove to the floor to avoid a flash of green light flying out of Lucius Malfoy's wand. She hissed in pain as her wrist hit the flagstone of the Room of the Veil. She was almost positive she had broken it.

"It's Black to you, Potter!" she growled, focusing on her annoyance rather than the pain radiating down her arm.

"Not to me!" her father said, giving her a hand up. She gaped at him.

"What the bleeding hell are yeh doin' 'ere, Da'?" she halfway shouted. "An' where the 'ell is yer mirror?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Minerva. Now get your brother and the others and get—WATCH OUT!" he yelled, pushing her beneath him. She gasped as he wrist was crushed beneath her. Both were relatively unscathed, though her father did have a nasty gash on his arm. "Get the others and get out, Minnie!"

"Not withou' you!"

They didn't have any more time to argue for Dolohov and Macnair had begun to advance upon them, so the father and daughter backed against each other, trusting their lives implicitly to one another. Soon Malfoy also joined in against them, and Bailey could feel their defenses crumbling into dust beneath his attack. Then, out of nowhere, Potter joined their fight and shouted "Petrificus Totalus!" causing Dolohov's legs to snap together and his arms snap to his sides.

"Nice one, Harry!" her father called, before Bailey could rib her godbrother for using a first-year spell against a Death Eater. Bailey used the distraction of an incapacitated Dolohov to send a Conjunctivus curse flying to Mr. Malfoy's eyes. He just barely dodged it in time.

"Be careful, Ms. Black," he said in a bored voice. "You very nearly used Dark Magic."

"I'm a Slytherin Mr. Malfoy," she hissed. "We tend toward neutrality, if you're smart, that is."

"How funny it is that you are here fighting with Harry Potter of all people, then," he said pompously.

"I think you would agree, Mr. Malfoy, that nothing is more important than family," she replied, before sending another curse his way, neither noticing the change in the fighting around them.

"DUBBLEDORE!" Longbottom shouted behind them, pointing.

Bailey spared the minutest of glances to confirm that their disgraced Headmaster had indeed arrived to save the day. Bailey felt a great wave of relief go through her. All the Death Eaters gathered there would not be able to stand up to Dumbledore himself, even if they all went against him together. The Headmaster would rescue them all and get them back to Grimmauld Place where Bailey would lay into him for allowing her father outside of the house and finally be rid of this whole spying within her own House business.

"Minnie, Harry, get out of here!" her father screamed, sending a curse in Malfoy's direction.

Potter looked at her before grabbing her hand to pull her away from the fight, both knowing that if she was not there he would have ignored the order. (Bloody sexist bastard.) Bailey resisted for the briefest of moments, wanting to fight beside her father. But, Dumbledore was there. No one could touch them now.

The remaining Death Eaters were beginning to flee, though Dumbledore whirled his wand through the air causing the fleeing Death Eaters to be whipped back through the air and tied up, ready to be picked up by Aurors and shipped off to Azkaban.

Except for one.

Bailey wasn't sure how she hadn't realized this before, but her father had apparently challenged Bellatrix Lestrange, the most insane, the most dangerous, and the most powerful Death Eater in the room, to a duel. Bailey knew very well that her father had not had much chance to recover his former dueling skills since Azkaban, but once a witch became powerful off the Dark Arts, there was no losing that skill or power. And Bellatrix was obviously still in top form. In short, her father was at a severe disadvantage. So, Bailey wrenched out of Potter's grip and began toward her father.

Bellatrix sent a jet of red light at him—a Burning Hex, Bailey thought—but her father dodged it smoothly.

"Come on, you can do better than that!"* her father laughed as he returned her hex.

But then a second hex left Bellatrix's wand.

And it rang true.

Her father's eyes widened in shock.

She smelt burnt flesh.

He went flying backwards.

Bailey didn't hear her own yells.

She watched as the Veil enveloped her father in its folds, pulling him in and under.

He did not come out the other side.

She screamed.

Potter charged forward.

Remus caught him.

And Bellatrix laughed.

Bailey was only semi-aware of Potter running after Bellatrix, who was chanting "I KILLED SIRIUS BLACK! I KILLED SIRIUS BLACK!" She was running toward the Veil, screaming for her daddy.

Not real, not real, she chanted in her mind.

She was praying that this time he would come back. She fought as though the Dark Lord were pulling her away as her godfather physically lifted her away from running through the Veil. She could feel her magic willing her to escape, could hear her godfather hiss in pain as her magic lashed out at him.

Not real, not real.

Finally, she heard him call for Tonks, who, before Bailey could escape, had lifted her wand at the younger girl and Bailey saw the edges of her vision go black before she was falling… falling… falling…