Chapter 2

Getting to Gringotts in the middle of the night by muggle means was a little tricky but well worth it. The goblins were able to provide Ivy with a self-updating passport that would pass both magical and muggle inspection for a fee of twenty-five galleons and provided her with a booklet containing the location and access instructions for various wizarding areas in Europe for an extra sickle. Parting with a further three galleons gained her a money bag which could only be opened by the witch it was magically keyed to. She then exchanged her Galleons to pounds sterling for a small fee – she could change half of it to francs in Dover or Calais – and deposited her Firebolt in her trust vault for safe keeping. It was a rather expensive trip to the bank, but well worth every Knut.

Her business with the goblins concluded, Ivy made her way back through Diagon Alley and into muggle London, where she found a decent looking all-night café to wait for the first train from St Pancreas station to Dover.

There was a brief tense moment when she boarded the first available ferry to Calais; one of the border guards was curious about why a teenager would be travelling alone so early in the morning, but Ivy was able to come up with a somewhat plausible excuse about boarding school, a sick grandparent, and her parents having gone on ahead. Once in Calais she travelled onward to Paris, again by train, where she planned to spend two weeks exploring the magical and mundane sides of the city and enjoying her first ever holiday.

Naturally, everything went wrong five days in.

Ivy wasn't quite sure how she had ended up in this situation. She had gone for a walk to help clear her head of the dark thoughts and recurring nightmares, a habit she had picked up after the events of second year. At some point she had wandered away from the main thoroughfares and was now cornered in a narrow back street by a group of young men, some of them barely out of their teens. One of the men leered at her.

"Hello pretty girl. Want to come and have some fun?" He asked in French. The way he was eyeing her made it very clear the kind of fun he had in mind.

"Not interested." She replied in the same language, glaring at him. Ivy had learned French back in third year, having discovered magical language learning kits while browsing Diagon Alley after Vernon kicked her out for the Aunt Marge Incident. The kits allowed a person to learn a language fluently in three months for languages that used a Latin alphabet and four months for those that didn't, with just a few hours of study a week. Ivy had taken advantage of her discovery to learn French, Italian, German, and Japanese over the past two years.

The men didn't take her refusal well. One of the younger ones pulled out a knife. Ivy looked at the knife and then back at the men. Clearly, she wouldn't be leaving without a fight. She shifted her stance a little wider and glared at the men. The first man who had spoken to her sneered. "Grab her."

The men closed in as more knives were drawn from their hiding places.

Ivy's eyes glowed purple.

Squalo Superbi was leading his squad back to the hotel after a successful job when he felt a strong burst of Cloud Flames nearby. He stopped and looked in the direction the Flame signature had come from.

"Captain…" Mirage, the squad's Mist, said, looking in the same direction.

"Voi, I feel it." Squalo replied as he started heading towards the Active Cloud Flames. They needed to prevent the Cloud were from violating omerta, preferably before the Vindice showed up. Getting caught using Flames in the back streets of Paris wouldn't do anyone any favours.

A young man stumbled out of the narrow side street the Flame signature was coming from, quickly followed by two others.

"Demon! She's a demon!"

"Run!"

The terrified trio ran off down the street. Squalo turned to Mirage. There could be no civilian witnesses. Mirage nodded in understanding and vanished from sight. Squalo carefully stepped into the side street just in time to see a skinny teenage girl with glowing violet eyes jump up and slam a man's head into the nearest wall, causing the man to drop his knife and fall to the ground. That was one pissed off Cloud. He could tell she had no combat training, but her Flame control wasn't bad. The girl scanned the street, coming to rest on him. Her eyes faded from luminous purple to a vivid green and she looked down, only now noticing the bloody beaten men at her feet.

"Merde." She swore in English-accented French.

"Come with me and I'll make sure you don't get in any trouble for this, voi," Squalo said.

The girl eyed him suspiciously.

"How?"

"We have ways of making them forget."

"Bribery, drugs, or murder?" The girl asked; she obviously had some idea how the world worked.

"None of the above. We have a different way – one that doesn't leave traceable evidence behind," Squalo replied. The girl's face remained carefully blank, though he could tell from the feel of her Flames she was intrigued. She looked down at the fallen men at her feet contemplatively.

"Alright. I accept your offer."

"Follow me then, Brindille."

Squalo turned and headed back out of the alley, smirking slightly when the Cloud muttered "That's not my name" before following him.

"Umm, mister?"

Squalo looked down at the new recruit as they entered the hotel suite the squad was using during their stay in Paris. "Call me Captain."

"Captain. Why did you help me?" Brindille asked.

Squalo gestured for her to sit on the sofa. "Take a seat, voi. This'll take some explaining."

Once they were both seated comfortably, Squalo set up some discreet Flame security against bugs and eavesdroppers and began his explanation by calling up a handful of Rain Flames in his right hand. "These are called Dying Will Flames, voi. There are seven types, each with a different colour and ability; mine are Rain Flames, which have the property of Tranquillity. You also have Active Flames – that's how we found you."

"I've never summoned blue fire before. Mine's violet," Brindille said, eyeing his Flames with interest.

Squalo extinguished the blue flames. "That's because you're not a Rain primary, voi. You have Cloud Flames, which are violet. Cloud Flames are the second rarest type of Flame, with the property of Propagation or Multiplication."

"Which is why I get stronger and faster when I call on them."

Squalo nodded. Brindille remained silent for a few moments.

"Captain sir? What exactly have I gotten myself into by agreeing to come with you?"

A sensible question that really should have been asked earlier.

"Having Active Flames automatically makes you a member of the criminal Underworld, voi. All Flame Actives are overseen by the Vindice, who police the Underworld and enforce the Laws governing Flame Actives. Flames and their use falls under omerta."

"A whole lot of trouble then," Brindille said with a sigh. Squalo snorted at that accurate summary.

"By agreeing to come with me you agreed to be recruited into the Varia, an organisation working for the Vongola Famiglia."

"You're mafia." That wasn't a question. Squalo nodded. Brindille sighed and dropped her head into her hands. "I've joined the Mafia. Just my shitty luck," she muttered mournfully. Squalo gave her a moment to let the information sink in; some recruits had more trouble accepting their new circumstances than others. Brindille took a deep breath and looked back up at him. "And what does the Varia do for the Vongola?"

"Assassination."

Ivy's mind fixated on that one word. Assassination. She had joined a group of mafia assassins. Who, from the sound of it, were aware of and could use the strange fire ability she had been able to since the end of second year. Of all the things that had happened to her this one took, if not the whole cake, then a rather significant portion of it.

"I'm not killing people just because some rich twit wants them dead." She said firmly. Her hands were not clean – between Quirrell and the Death Eaters she had killed escaping the graveyard they were anything but – and she accepted killing as a tactical option, but she would not kill people just because she was being paid to.

"So, when would you kill people?" The sole woman in Captain's odd group asked from her perch on the windowsill. Ivy looked over at her, trying to decide if the question was serious or not. Then again, these people were assassins…

"When there's a reason that they need to die. Like rapists or abusers, or if official justice isn't an option."

"Even if you don't want to take missions, there are other things you can do. You'll get more information once we get back to headquarters, voi. The plane leaves in four hours." Captain said, effectively ending the conversation as he rose from his seat.

"Do you need to get anything from where you're staying?" The woman asked as Captain strode off. Ivy shook her head, glad that she had her satchel with her and never bothered unpacking it in case she had to move fast. The woman glanced at the bag doubtfully but dropped the subject.

Ivy spent the ride to the airport deep in thought. This whole situation should really be bothering her more. While not exactly comfortable in the presence of a group of killers, she wasn't quite as uncomfortable as she thought she would be. That they weren't actively trying to kill her at present was probably part of it. The fact that there were people among them who could use Flames, as Captain called them, was probably another reason. Her Cloud Flames had been just another thing making her a freak; another way she didn't fit in, another secret to keep to protect herself. Finding out that there were others with similar abilities and that having these abilities made you part of their society whether you liked it or not was a bit like finding out that magic was real again – just without the added Girl Who Lived crap.

Everything was probably going to hit properly later, but for now she would just go with the flow. At least it got her further away from the mess back in Britain.