oh hello hello, guess who just moved apartments and didn't have wifi for five-odd days? truly it's a miracle my sanity held.
very, very Whelmed by the response to the last chapter and hope you enjoy this one. :)
love,
speech
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Pansy supposed it was pain, the thing she was feeling. Yes, that was it. Her knees hurt from digging into the gravel for so long, and her sprained ankle was throbbing.
The pain couldn't quite penetrate, though. Nothing had for a while. She was barely listening to the voices swimming around her.
"… blood traitor scum, tell us where they've gone!"
Pansy looked blankly over at the figure writhing and kicking on the gravel. A redheaded woman. The Weasleys' mother. Her limbs looked so strange, disarranged that way, and there was blood all down her sleeve. Her husband and son were begging, their voices confused in the smoky air.
"Madam Lestrange," panted an ash-smeared Auror. "The courier's arrived with the Veritaserum."
Bellatrix Lestrange raised her wand to lift the curse, and Mrs. Weasley slumped, insensate and heaving, to the ground. "Good," Bellatrix spat, casting a venomous look at the seven other people still kneeling in a line on the gravel.
Well, six were kneeling. Oliver Wood was slumped unconscious to Pansy's left, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. Pansy wondered if he was dying. She'd limped past a dead man earlier. His skin had been burned in so many variegated shades that he'd looked as if he'd been quilted together.
Pansy looked up at Bellatrix. Her dress robes were singed and torn, her dark hair a chaos as formless as the smoke. Pansy knew she should look away; one didn't stare at Bellatrix Lestrange, the Dark Lord's right hand. Yet Pansy didn't feel afraid to do it, or even defiant. She'd felt nearly nothing since the battle.
She hadn't panicked when Rodolphus Lestrange had dragged her out of the crowd, snarling that he'd seen what she'd done, filthy little traitor, helping them escape. She hadn't felt angry or ashamed when he'd flung her to the ground between Wood and the Prewett woman. Pansy should have been appalled to be grouped in with blood traitors like these, but all that high emotion had extinguished, like a flame that had burned itself out.
The Aurors, who had started to administer Veritaserum at the other end of the line, were swearing, muttering something about Memory Charms. Pansy wasn't really listening. Her friends were ten feet away on the grass. They all looked like strangers, even Greg, tall and thick-necked, a shiny burn blistering on the side of his neck, Greg whom she'd known since the cradle. … Greg, whose father had been levitated off on a stretcher, unresponsive.
Vincent was trying to say something to him. Greg wasn't looking at him, wasn't answering.
Theo, though … Theo was watching Pansy, his hair grey with ash. What do you think? he'd murmured to her before the speech had been meant to happen. Want to stay and hear about what good members of society we are? Or we could go back to mine. Dad won't get away from all this for a couple more hours.
It had been an offer of forgiveness, after the way she'd acted in Draco's room. Theo was always ready to forgive her, but Pansy never felt grateful for it. She didn't want cycles of anger and absolution. She wanted the kind of innate understanding that feels like breathing.
She'd thought, given enough time, she could find that with Theo, but maybe not. Their relationship had always been tumultuous—lash and backlash and mutual sensitivity. Nothing like … like …
For a split instant her eyes strayed to the smouldering wreck of Malfoy Manor. She felt a sharp pang like a stiletto knife between her ribs.
Two people crunched to a halt in front of Pansy: an Auror with delicate features distorted by anger, and a scribe holding quill and parchment. Before Pansy could even react, the Auror took Pansy's chin in her fingers, wrenched her mouth open, and shook three clear drops from a vial onto Pansy's tongue.
The effect was instantaneous. All thoughts of the manor, of him, evaporated. Pansy's mind became a hollow chamber.
The closest thing she'd felt to the effect of the potion was the Imperius Curse in fourth year, but while that had been hazy and dreamlike, a sensation of delicious relief, this was harsh and depersonalising. She was a book to be read, now, a pile of documents to rifle through. There was nothing to her except what she could give them.
The scribe knelt at her side, spelling his quill to create a transcript. "You are Pansy Parkinson, seventeen?" the Auror said, her eyes boring into her.
The truth seemed to roll itself off her tongue, it was gravitational. "Yes."
"Ms. Parkinson," the Auror said coldly, "your responses to these questions will be used in your hearing with the Wizengamot. Are you allied with the organisation known as the Order of the Phoenix?"
"No."
The Auror hesitated. "Do you have any information about any plans, secrets, or workings of the Order of the Phoenix?"
"No."
"You attended Hogwarts School with the Mudblood Hermione Granger. Has she contacted you in any way since she attended Hogwarts School?"
"No."
The Auror was frowning now. She exchanged a look with the scribe, who muttered, "Another Memory Charm, maybe?"
"She didn't run with the others," the Auror said. "She'd have had to cast it on herself. Get her wand from Runcorn and try Priori Incantatem."
The scribe nodded and strode back into the smoky night. Hardly a minute later, he returned, shaking his head. "No Obliviation," he said.
"Hmm." The Auror turned her dark, piercing eyes back on Pansy. "But you did cast Aguamenti tonight alongside members of the Order of the Ph—"
Another voice broke in: "It was only that one spell."
The Auror rounded on Theo, who'd taken half a step out of the group gathered on the grass. At first the Auror looked ready to snap, but then her eyes found Mr. Nott, standing not far from his son and immediately recognisable.
She settled for a curt, "Quiet, please. This record will be used in court for—"
"We were with her the whole night, though." Now Greg was speaking up, apparently emboldened by Theo. "She was on our side the entire fight. It was only one spell."
Millicent and Crabbe stayed silent, Crabbe's eyes flicking toward his father, but after a moment, Blaise nodded, too. "It's true," he said. "Maybe she just wanted to escape. We were all trying to by then."
Distantly, Pansy realised she felt grateful to Theo, Greg, and Blaise. That gratitude seemed to snag in her mind. … Yes, there was a reason she wanted to speak around the circumstances, she remembered … but what was it?
The empty simplicity of the truth quavered.
Pansy, stop …
Stop.
Draco's voice ricocheted. Rather than fading like an echo, it amplified, scything through the blankness of the Veritaserum.
Draco, alive these past seven months, apparently working for the Order of the Phoenix. Draco, without whom Pansy had felt like a moon flung out of orbit, hunting for some new anchor, finding nothing except vacuum.
She felt as if her whole head had jarred, like she'd been struck by a heavy object. Lucid thoughts burst into the void of her mind. Soon, the Auror would ask why Pansy had helped the Order escape—and she would have to confess that Draco was alive.
He was a traitor to the Death Eaters. He would be hunted down and murdered.
The potion pushed against her thoughts, trying to clear them away, but Pansy fought. No, she thought, something kicking to life in her. No. … Part of her was livid with Draco, wanted to scream and rage at him for letting her believe he was dead—but she could never betray him.
"It's true," the Auror said slowly, "that you spent the earlier part of the battle fighting against Granger and her accomplices?"
"Yes."
"Yet you admit you broke ranks to cast the Aguamenti charm?"
"Yes," Pansy said. Long strings of thought were forming now, slow and foggy, yet determined. She tried to think of a way to obfuscate … she could hold the intention in her head, but it was acutely painful, as if she were forcing herself to lower her own hand over a flame … still, she had some control, as long as she stayed within the bounds of the truth.
Strategy, she thought. All her life Pansy had been raised to think strategically. Her parents had always pointed out her assets like breeders examining a thoroughbred. Not the brainiest, they'd told her when she was eight or nine, but you've got more drive than others, and that's always useful. Not the most beautiful, they'd said in her fourth year, but you're confident, and people like to see confidence, because it makes them feel confident in you. This was the way into the life you wanted: to know yourself, and to know how to wield yourself like a weapon.
No, she couldn't lie under Veritaserum. But Pansy was seventeen, and she knew she looked a fragile, shaky wreck in the tatters of her dress robes and her slack expression. These could be weapons of a kind.
She saw the path forward, though it would be a painful path to claw through. Yes, she would tell the truth. She would tell so much truth that it would hide the only truth that mattered.
"Is your friend right?" the Auror asked. "Did you cast the charm so that you could escape the manor yourself?"
"No."
"Then tell me." Cold anger seeped back into the Auror's voice. "Why did you help the Order escape?"
"Because of Draco," said Pansy.
"Draco?" the Auror repeated.
"He was the Malfoys' son," the scribe supplied, his quill scratching across the page of its own accord. "That boy who died at Hogwarts in May."
"What does he have to do with it?" the Auror said to Pansy.
"I've had nightmares almost every night since his funeral," Pansy said, her voice still flat and recitative. "I wake up and see him in the dark. I see him everywhere. Every time I walk into the Slytherin common room or sit down in the Great Hall to eat, it's like he's still there. … My friends and I try to joke sometimes about him haunting us, but I never felt like it was a joke. I've felt like part of him has been close the whole time. Angry with me. … Sometimes I talk to him in my head. We have whole conversations, even. I tell him about my day and I imagine what he says back. I can hear him speaking when I do it. …"
And it was all true. Pansy had done these things, half-blind with rage and grief, lying catatonic on her bed in summer, making herself sick at Hogwarts so she didn't have to go to classes. She'd spent most of the past seven months in dark tunnels inside her head, thinking about the last time she'd seen Draco—how the last thing she'd done was give him a cold look of disgust, because they'd been arguing, and he hadn't even seemed to care.
The Auror didn't stop Pansy. The hard glint in the woman's eyes had faded, and her eyebrows were rising. The scribe was no longer looking at his quill, which was skating a rapid record onto the parchment, but up at Pansy.
"I didn't want to come tonight," Pansy went on. "I told everyone it was because the gala would probably be a lot of boring speeches, but it was because I didn't want to be at the manor again. I knew it would be worse than ever. … I was right. It was awful. I kept crying in the bathroom and told the others I was fixing my dress. We were up in his room earlier and it still smelled like him. I kept remembering his body in his coffin. … Then, during the battle, I heard him. Draco. He spoke to me out of a middle-aged man's body, one of the accomplices. He had a big black beard and curly hair and blue eyes. I cast the Aguamenti because I wanted to keep speaking to him. … I tried to find him outside, but I sprained my ankle coming down the steps … I just want to see him again."
Pansy's body felt taut with discomfort, as if her skin was shrinking upon her frame. She hadn't lied, technically, but there was a metallic taste in her mouth. The potion knew misdirection. It could feel her stretching at its constraints.
The Auror's eyebrows were halfway up her forehead now. The anger had gone, replaced by something between annoyance and pity.
"You … heard your dead friend's voice come out of a middle-aged man," said the Auror. "What did he say?"
"He said, 'Pansy, stop, stop'."
"That's all? Three words?"
"Yes."
The Auror exchanged a look with the scribe, and Pansy experienced a fleeting sense of victory. The hardest part was complete, the planting of the seed. If they doubted that she was sane, reinforcing the notion would be easy. No one sounded madder than someone trying to prove their sanity.
But before the Auror could say any more, another figure materialised. "And this one?" said an imperious female voice.
The Veritaserum jarred again. Fear displaced Pansy's emptiness for a split instant as Bellatrix Lestrange stopped in front of them.
The Auror lowered her voice. "The girl only did the one spell to help Granger's lot, Madam Lestrange. Eyewitnesses and Veritaserum both confirm. She doesn't seem right in the head. Seems to think the ghost of a dead friend of hers was … well, possessing one of the attackers."
Bellatrix's lip curled. "This is the Parkinson girl? Whose parents are still in Azkaban for blundering when they could have caught Harry Potter himself?"
The scribe gave a sycophantic chuckle. "Apparently not the brightest family around, Madam Lestrange."
Bellatrix ignored him. Her eyes lingered on Pansy's face, and she crouched, her singed robes fluttering in the night breeze. "Who is this dead friend, little Parkinson?" she crooned.
"Draco Malfoy," Pansy said.
There was a moment's silence, during which Bellatrix's malicious sneer became rather fixed.
"You think my nephew's spirit was here tonight?" she jeered, though the jeer sounded flat.
"Yes," said Pansy, her stomach churning. It was true, in letter if not in essence … naturally, if Draco had been here, so had his spirit … but the Veritaserum rebelled. It wanted her to clarify, to be more forthright …
I've answered the question, she thought, battling the potion back. I've done what you want …
Bellatrix's sneer had faded. There was a burst blood vessel in her left eye like a red star. She glanced up at the Auror. "She may have been placed under the Imperius Curse. Legilimency can succeed where the potion fails."
The Auror cleared her throat, looking uncomfortable. "It is … irregular."
Bellatrix's fingers shifted upon her wand.
"But of course," the Auror added hastily, "whatever you see fit, Madam Lestrange."
Bellatrix turned back to Pansy at once and hissed, "Legilimens."
Pansy was in the foyer, throwing herself into the Christmas tree with a cry as a spell streaked past. She was stumbling back out of the boughs, pine needles catching at her hair, and as she turned, she saw her. Granger, distracted by duelling Blaise and Theo.
It was an unbeatable opportunity. Pansy didn't give a damn about helping the Death Eaters anymore, after Draco, after her parents … but she knew their currency. If she could get Granger, she would be the saviour of the night, and with the Lestranges' favour, she might be able to get her parents out of Azkaban.
She raised her wand. "Petrif—"
"Pansy, stop!"
The command struck her like a curse.
There seemed to be nothing in her veins, where just before her systems had been coursing with adrenalin. The sounds of battle seemed to dull and fade. Everything had stopped.
Pansy revolved on the spot. A stranger stood before her, tan-skinned, with a bristly black beard and curly black hair, a snub nose, irises an electric blue. He was wearing a catering uniform, and looked at first unfamiliar.
But—the shape of his eyes.
"Stop," he said.
Pansy felt as if she'd slipped over the edge of something. "Dr … Drac—"
"Descendo!" yelled Crabbe's voice, and Pansy saw an ornament plummet off the teetering tree toward her, and she dived out of the way, behind a Ministry witch. When she looked back, he was gone.
Pansy jerked as Bellatrix pulled out of her mind. Pain stabbed at her temple; the woman hadn't been gentle. But the effects of the Veritaserum were still upon her, so she could only kneel, waiting for what they might do next, dozens of vague, sick feelings clashing within her. How well had Draco's aunt known his voice? Could she identify it from four syllables the way Pansy had?
Bellatrix did nothing for a long moment, her wand still outstretched, her face unreadable.
After a long moment, she lowered her wand. "The ravings of a lunatic child," she said coldly to the Auror. "Yet her disloyalty enabled what we saw tonight."
The Auror and scribe both hastened to agree, and to recommend light charges that would nonetheless convey the severity of such a lapse. Bellatrix gave occasional, disdainful nods.
But the Death Eater's eyes remained fixed on Pansy, and there was no disdain or dismissiveness in that look. There was something far more dangerous: doubt.
#
Draco watched Hermione pull the faded bedspread up to Ollivander's chin.
"I can't think of anything else to do," she whispered. Obviously she was afraid he would die in the night, and unfortunately, Draco thought, the fear seemed rational enough. Ollivander's face was like a wax doll's, his every breath like a death rattle. They'd situated him in the guest room that had been Draco's. Hardly had the wandmaker's head dropped back against the pillows when he'd fallen into a deep sleep.
Hermione was still fussing with the bedspread. Draco touched her wrist, stilling her motions. Even now, half an hour after their escape, there was a faint tremor in her hand.
Draco didn't say anything, didn't say it's all right or let him rest, but Hermione nodded as if he had. She drew back from the bedside, and they slipped out into the hall. Murmurs crept down to them from the front room, where five Weasleys were keeping vigil: Fred, George, Ginny, Bill, and Fleur.
On Apparating to Shell Cottage after their escape, they'd found not only Bill and Fleur but also the three younger Weasleys, bags already packed. "We were all at the Burrow for Christmas," Fred had said after they'd read the secret and returned to headquarters. "And good thing, too."
"Did that clock of yours give it away?" Potter had asked. "You know—pointing to 'Mortal Peril'?"
Fred sighed. "We've all been stuck on 'Mortal Peril' for a year and a half, mate. Thing's all but useless now. No—there was a broadcast of the gala band on the Wizarding Wireless."
"It went dead just before the speeches," George went on, "and about ten minutes after that, they made an emergency announcement. Mentioned the Order and everything."
"We figured that just might constitute a family emergency," said Fred grimly. "So we set the ghoul back to normal, grabbed our bags, and scarpered."
"What about your aunt?" Hermione asked.
Ginny tried for a light scoff, though she was still pale. "Muriel owled Mum and Dad last week to say she's taking Christmas in a chateau in the South of France. She'll have the sense not to come back to Britain after this."
Draco had noticed that Ginny, like Pansy, seemed to have suffered a recent series of cuts.
Soon thereafter, Harry and Luna had gone to retrieve Luna's father, leaving Draco and Hermione with the Weasleys and Ollivander. Now that they'd removed their disguises and situated the wandmaker, Draco knew they should return to the Weasleys, but the thought filled him with reluctance. They'd already spent fifteen minutes answering questions about the battle, about Ron's disappearance, about Percy and the Weasley parents. Draco was exhausted, and their guests' clear suspicion of him only exhausted him more.
He could still smell the manor burning. He could see it like a white-hot crown at the top of the hill.
A crack came from the front room, and he and Hermione both leapt. They traded a look and hurried down the hallway. When they reached the front room, Potter had returned with Luna. Her father was nowhere to be seen.
"He wasn't there," Luna whispered. Even in the cell at Malfoy Manor she hadn't sounded so frightened.
Potter looked hollow. "He's been gone a couple of days. We found a letter from Bellatrix on the counter saying they had Luna, and to meet Travers and Selwyn in Diagon Alley for 'instructions.' They must've taken him then."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the den. It seemed none of the others could think of anything to say to reassure Luna, knowing what Bellatrix had done to her for little more than sport. Draco privately thought that the outlook for the dotty old man was grim.
There was one lifeline to cling to, though. "The Death Eaters still want something from your father," he said.
Draco had hung back near the threshold to the hall, several paces away from everybody else. When he spoke, all eight of the others turned around to look at him, and he fought the instinct to flinch. Headquarters suddenly seemed so cramped.
"That's what'll keep him safe," he said to Luna, leaning against the wall, trying to sound confident. "They want him to print their stories in that magazine. So, they can't hurt him so badly that he can't go back to work."
"Is that your expert opinion, Malfoy?" said Ginny coolly.
Draco's face flooded with heat. There it was. Confirmation that the other Weasleys, just like Ron, would only ever see a Death Eater when they looked at him. He opened his mouth, but before he could find words, Hermione said hotly,
"Draco's part of the Order, Ginny. He nearly died helping us tonight."
The Weasleys all looked at Hermione, startled. Ash was tangled in her hair, her lips a nearly invisible line.
Ginny glanced at Potter, who nodded. "Draco's been on our side for a while now, so …" He looked from Ginny to the twins, at whom he raised his eyebrows. "Leave it, all right?"
Ginny and the twins exchanged dubious looks, then all shrugged in reluctant unison.
Potter turned back to Luna. "I reckon he's right. As long as they need your dad, he'll be okay."
Luna considered. "It's true that keeping a magazine at such high circulation is very difficult. Much more than most people would think." And as she went on about The Quibbler's humble beginnings, the tension eased.
Hermione met Draco's eyes and gave him a faint but encouraging smile. The heat faded from his face, and he felt stabilised again.
Her words lingered in his mind. Draco's part of the Order. It had been true for a while, he supposed. But he hadn't yet thought of it in those terms.
The night had wrung him out so completely that for a while the fact just looped through Draco's mind: I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He'd helped establish a new headquarters, helped retrieve two Horcruxes. … He'd been here, part of the underground resistance, before any of these five Weasleys. For months, successfully, he'd been working to undermine Lord Voldemort.
Draco's thoughts agitated, like choppy water before a storm, and for a moment he didn't understand why. Then he realised he'd thought the Dark Lord's name.
He rolled the name through his mind again, testing it. Something about the battle had numbed him to it. He'd fought against the forces of Voldemort, which had been bent on his destruction, and he'd survived.
As he mulled over all these facts, he felt something he hadn't felt since the start of the dark year. It was a small, quiet pulse of pride. Draco looked around the front room at the new Order and could almost see lines drawn between them all. The Weasleys, suspicious and reluctant though they'd been, had housed Draco. He'd made the first move to rescue Luna. Luna had helped Ginny, Harry, and Hermione in the Department of Mysteries. Hermione had saved him. He'd saved her. They were all inextricably linked.
The only thing to do was wait for news about the others—the people who had planted themselves in front of Draco to protect him in the heat of battle, the way the Death Eaters never had.
#
SEVEN DEAD, DOZENS INJURED
IN CHRISTMAS CATASTROPHE
Arson Attack Leaves Malfoy Manor in Ruins
A joyful Yuletide celebration disintegrated into a nightmare on Tuesday, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent, when anti-Ministry radicals staged a ruthless attack on the Ministry of Magic's First Annual Christmas Gala for the Celebration of Magical Unity.
"It was supposed to be an evening of holiday cheer," said the Office of Domestic Affairs' Algernon Wolflaw, speaking from his bed at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, where he and 37 others are currently being treated for burns and injuries sustained during the attack. "I don't understand what kind of person could do this to a party full of innocent people."
Readers need not wonder the same. The Daily Prophet can here reveal, based on hundreds of eyewitness accounts—including this reporter's—that the attack was executed by Hermione Granger, the Mudblood who ranks at Number Two on the Ministry's Undesirables list.
"We believe," said Minister for Magic Pius Thicknesse in an address to a terrified nation early Wednesday morning, "that Granger was acting under the orders of Harry Potter, the disturbed individual now most widely known as the murderer of Albus Dumbledore."
While Granger is best known for her association with Potter, she has a history of ruthlessness in her own right, only sixteen when she cursed a fellow student at Hogwarts School with semi-permanent disfigurement. Her assault on Malfoy Manor was aided by a dozen members of the subversive organisation known as the Order of the Phoenix. (For full profiles of the attackers, see page 2.) Together, the assailants burned celebratory banners and used defenceless members of a crowd of nearly one thousand to shield themselves from the Greengrass Guard, who had been hired as event security.
Aurors attempted to aid the Guard, but while extinguishing fires, evacuating guests, and reviving unconscious victims, they were unable to prevent the evening's horrifying coup de grâce: the burning of Malfoy Manor, a 17th-century dwelling of untold historical importance to Wizarding Britain. Survivors report that Granger cast the Fiendfyre curse ultimately responsible for the irreparable damage. Official estimates place the value of the destroyed home and its many hundreds of historic artifacts at upward of 6.5 million Galleons.
However, the greatest cost lies in the deaths of seven courageous fighters who dared challenge the attack. Three Aurors and four members of the Greengrass Guard, ranging in age from 24 to 58, tragically lost their lives in the fire. Mediwizards expect the death toll to climb, as nine other victims remain in critical condition at St. Mungo's. Most of the dead are survived by children and spouses. (For full obituaries, see page 4.)
While Granger and four accomplices escaped the scene, readers will breathe more easily to know that eight others were captured and interrogated under Veritaserum, to partial success. Some of the attackers had placed Memory Charms upon each other prior to their capture, presumably concealing dangerous plots yet to come. Aurors suspect this was the doing of attacker Sturgis Podmore, a veteran of decades with the Obliviation Squads. However, experts in Legilimency and memory cracking are scheduled to interrogate the assailants over the coming weeks.
The attack has also exposed a shocking web of deceit within one of the oldest pure-blood families in the country. Molly, Percy, and Arthur Weasley number among the captured, the latter two of whom are former Ministry employees. When Aurors called on the Weasleys' relations within an hour of the incident, they found that the family had fled, doubtless already aware of their relatives' heinous plans.
Now wanted for immediate questioning—and believed to be dangerous—are: Muriel Weasley, former Mudblood-rights activist; Bill and Fleur Weasley, known goblin-group affiliates; Ginevra and Ronald Weasley, the latter of whom was last seen highly contagious with spattergroit; and joke shop owners Fred and George Weasley (for an investigation into the unknown sources of Mr. and Mr. Weasley's funding, see pg. 12). The Auror Office urges the public to Stun any of these individuals on sight and contact the authorities immediately.
The Wizengamot voted unanimously in a night-time session, hours after the attack, to convict all but one of the accused on seven counts of accessory to murder, 38 counts of magical injury, one count of aggravated arson, and associated charges of premeditated assault. Each of these convicts earned multiple life sentences in Azkaban. The remaining defendant—Ms. Parkinson, 17—was convicted of the more minor charge of accessory to mayhem, and is to serve six months, due to a combination of factors: her young age, accounts that her only aid to the attackers was a water conjuration spell, and an apparently deranged mental state.
"Young pure-bloods like Ms. Parkinson must band together in times like these," commented the Minister at a press conference following his speech, "to keep from going astray. As we know, Mudbloods have been manipulating pure-bloods for centuries to position themselves as legitimate users of magic. If tonight shows us one thing, it's that Potter and his ilk will manipulate, slaughter, and stop at nothing to destroy the society we hold dear."
As the press conference turned to the subject of Harry Potter, the Minister went on to reveal information more shocking, perhaps, than any other.
As has been covered extensively in these pages, Potter broke into the Department of Mysteries two years ago, where he destroyed crucial information about his past in the form of a Prophecy. This lost Prophecy was also sought by the wizard known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Famous for his prodigious magical ability, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was also responsible for scattered attacks decades ago—though none so destructive or senseless as Tuesday's events.
Ministry archivists, the Daily Prophet can now report, have discovered that the lost Prophecy was not, as was assumed for years, about the supposed "downfall" of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Rather, it foretold the rise of a terrifying new power who would come of age to bring about the destruction of the Wizarding World. Experts now fear that Harry James Potter may be the subject of this doomsday forecast. As such, they suspect that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wished to show the Prophecy to the public to clear his name, proving why he tried to kill the madman once so affectionately nicknamed 'The Boy Who Lived.'
"Certainly," the Minister said in a concluding statement, "the days of the First Wizarding War were troubled, and You-Know-Who's methods were rightfully seen as extreme. However, given researchers' recent discoveries of the insidious nature of Mudbloods, we must consider the possibility that You-Know-Who acted out of protectiveness for the future of magic itself. Now, in the wake of Potter's horrifying attack on hundreds of innocents, the contents of the Prophecy seem more and more foreboding. The Ministry, and Wizarding Britain at large, must re-evaluate what always seemed so certain about You-Know-Who's role in these famous events."
The Minister for Magic left the stage shortly thereafter, assuring reporters that we would remain apprised of the situation, but questions abound in the wake of this bombshell. Could it be that, for decades, the Wizarding World has shunned and feared its only chance at survival? Could it be that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is destined to defeat the Boy Who Lived, ensuring the end of attacks like tonight's?
Only time will tell, but for now, the Wizarding World must mourn its losses and pray that none of the victims in St. Mungo's succumb to their injuries. Well-wishers may find addresses to owl cards and sympathies on pg. 11.
(For full transcripts of the Minister for Magic's speech and press conference, see pgs. 6-7. For never-before-seen coverage of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's ground-breaking research in Experimental Transfiguration in the 1960s, see pgs. 8-9.)
It was a mark of the severity of the situation that no one gathered in the front room made any sound of protest during Hermione's reading of the article. Rather, the silence seemed to deepen as she read. By the end, her every word trembled with rage and disgust.
Finally Hermione threw the newspaper down, revealing the others' stunned faces: Fred and George in their armchairs, Luna at the opposite end of the sofa, Ginny and Harry standing by the empty hearth, Bill and Fleur in a pair of uncomfortable chairs pilfered from the dining room, Draco leaning against the wall, still apart from the rest.
It was Christmas Eve, though dawn hadn't yet risen. None of them had slept a wink, staying in the front room and tuning the Wireless all night, waiting for one of the others to appear by some miracle. Instead, they'd had to wait for the Prophet, delivered ever-faithfully to the house across the village.
Hermione still couldn't process everything she'd read. Seven people were dead because of Crabbe's Fiendfyre, and the whole Wizarding World thought it was their doing. Her doing. Mass-murderer Hermione Granger, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. It was how she would be known, the way Sirius had been.
She reread the words multiple life sentences in Azkaban. She thought of Wood's motionless form, and Mrs. Weasley, whose arm had been slashed open by a Cutting Hex, soaking red through her patched dress robes, and Angelina, who wasn't even in the Order, turning to tell them to run, to go, to save themselves.
The black text blurred and twitched as her eyes filled with tears.
"Percy," Fred said with a dead-sounding laugh. "Percy, sentenced to life in Azkaban. I can't believe it."
"Yeah," George mumbled. "Picked a real moment to stop being the biggest prat in the known universe, didn't he?"
"At least Mum and Dad got to see him pick the right side," Ginny whispered. Her long red hair was tied back in a ponytail, one arm laid along the mantel, fingers tapping arrhythmically on the old wood.
There was a long pause. Then Luna said, somewhat absently, "The Memory Charms were a very good idea."
Harry nodded. "That's true. Looks like it's kept the last of the Order safe so far. McGonagall or Hagrid getting identified would be big news."
"Bad influence on the sprogs," George added.
Weak smiles went around the room. They looked more like facial cramps than anything, but Hermione's spirits still lifted. "I'll do some reading on Memory Charms," she said faintly. "I'm sure it will give us all some peace of mind to know more."
"What is it you 'ope to know?" asked Fleur. "In France we 'ave developed many varieties of Memory Charm. At Beauxbatons we learn about zem from young ages."
Her gaze was forceful and lofty as always. Hermione had never much liked Fleur, had always thought she was full of herself, but after tonight, she was reconsidering. Fleur hadn't drawn a moment's attention to herself, nor even complained of tiredness. She'd spoken words of reassurance to the Weasleys, and had somehow maintained perfect posture in that uncomfortable chair all night, as if resolved to be some bastion of order in the room.
Also, around four a.m., Hermione had made a batch of tea that she'd known full well was terrible, and Fleur hadn't even grimaced when she'd tasted it.
"Well," Hermione said, "they said everyone would be interrogated over the coming weeks. Will it really be weeks before the Death Eaters get through the Memory Charms?"
"Zat will depend on ze charm," Fleur said. "Zis Sturgis—if 'e is a professional, if 'e has done a good job … yes, it may take a long time to tease out ze entire truth. It will come in leetle pieces first. … If 'e removed Order meetings from Molly's mind, let us say, ze first part to reappear can be ze colour of ze carpet in Grimmauld Place, or a stroke of paint in zat 'ideous painting of ze screaming woman. Vairy small details, meaningless."
Fleur paused. "It will be like untying a knot. After zat, it will be faster and faster, more and more, until …" She snapped her fingers. "It will all unravel like zat, at ze end."
Bill slipped his hand casually into Fleur's. "It's like most mind magic, Hermione. Do too much too fast, and you compromise the contents."
A lump rose in Hermione's throat, and she tried not to think of her parents. She wished they were here right now, her father gruff and awkward but always willing to distract with an interesting article, her mother ready to analyse her problems as if they were problematic molars. She hated the thought of Wendell and Monica Wilkins compromising the contents of Dominic and Celia Granger. She hated what she'd done.
Now Bill was taking his long hair down from its ponytail and running his fingers through it. "Sturgis knows what he's doing. And if he's made Tonks's fake history look unsuspicious enough, they might pass her by to focus on our parents and Sturgis, who they know are deep in with the Order."
"That's supposed to be good, is it?" said George, firing up.
"Yeah, it is," Bill said evenly, "because Mum and Dad don't actually know that much. The Order's hardly been operating since summer, and the less useful they are, the safer they are. … Sturgis did this to buy us time on the outside. Now we're all here, and you can bet Remus and Kingsley will be on the move again, and McGonagall and Hagrid will be able to jump ship before the charms do break."
"So," said Ginny, her voice hard, "you're saying it's all fine that eight people have been thrown in Azkaban?"
Bill looked at his sister, affection and sadness warring in his scarred face. "Gin, Mum and Dad knew what they were signing up for."
"Angelina and Oliver didn't sign up for this," Harry said quietly. "Neither did Pansy Parkinson, for that matter. … I still can't figure out why she helped us."
"Yeah," said Fred, "and what was that about her being 'deranged'?"
Hermione glanced at Draco. She had an inkling.
"I said something to her," Draco muttered. "Only a couple of words, but … yeah, she knew it was me."
Hermione's heart sank at the confirmation. She'd expected it, but she couldn't understand why he'd done it. If Draco hadn't revealed himself, Pansy would never have helped them—would never have been incriminated.
Hermione could tell that Draco was thinking the same thing. His shoulders were tense, and when he frowned this way, his features looked sharp enough to cut.
"What," said George, looking baffled, "she saw you, and the Aurors just chose not to believe that?"
"Even though they gave her Veritaserum?" said Fred.
Hermione cleared her throat. "Well, Veritaserum forces you to say what you believe is the truth, not necessarily the truth itself. Clearly they thought she was mad to believe she'd seen the dead walking around in another body, and thank goodness."
They all lapsed back into silence. Hermione had tried to speak with authority, but her own nerves hadn't settled. She hoped no one would look too deeply into Pansy's supposed hallucination. Even more worryingly, would Sturgis have known to erase the Malfoys from Tonks's and the Weasleys' minds?
Either way, his secrecy couldn't last much longer.
Luna broke the silence. "All that about You-Know-Who, in the article," she said with a light frown, chin propped on her hand. "That was very odd."
Harry sighed. "I suppose they had to start polishing up his reputation at some point. He won't want to hide forever, and this is as good a reason as any for why we should suddenly trust Lord Voldemort."
Hermione waited for the room to flinch at the name. Fred and George's expressions twitched, but that was it. Even Draco was absolutely still.
Somehow their resolve in the face of the name bolstered Hermione. She sat up straighter. "It's all such rubbish, anyway," she said through gritted teeth. "Trying to act as if everything Voldemort did was for some noble cause, like he's been some misunderstood hero the whole time … no one with any sense will believe it."
"That's not even the stupidest part," Fred added with a snort. "It's like the Chamber of Secrets all over again. Who's going to buy Harry being the real Dark Lord?"
"Pathetic, really," said George, shaking his head. "If he were going to be the single-handed downfall of the Wizarding World, he would've gotten way better marks on his O.W.L.s."
A surprised laugh broke across the room, and for a split second, a weight lifted from Hermione's shoulders. She felt a rush of guilt in the wake of the sound, and in the awkward hush, she knew the others felt it too. For Merlin's sake, how could they laugh? Even as they sat here, safe and whole, the others might be in chains in Azkaban, or under the Death Eaters' wands.
"Zey are alive," Fleur said.
She didn't look guilty at all. Her eyes were still bright.
"Zey are alive," she repeated more sharply. "Your parents, and Tonks, Sturgis, zese classmates of yours—we must fight for zem out 'ere. It will do nothing to mourn as if zey have been killed."
"She's right," Harry said, his back straightening. "We've got—" His eyes darted to Hermione, and she knew he was thinking of the Horcrux locked upstairs in his bedside table. "We've got ten of us here, now," he amended. "We're in touch with McGonagall, Hagrid, and Aberforth. We're going to start putting up a real fight."
"Hear, hear," said Fred, rising to his feet with a groan. "Maybe after some shut-eye, though. Anyone else absolutely knackered?"
"I 'ave not been zis tired in months." The fire in Fleur's lovely face had faded, and she yawned, standing too. "Will Bill and I set our tent in ze front garden?"
"Sure," Harry said. "Fred, George, we've still got your tent. Luna, er, and Ginny—you can stay there too."
Everyone else in the room began to move except Hermione and Draco. Bill and Fleur left through the front door with a rush of freezing air, and Harry led the other Weasleys and Luna down the hall toward the back garden, Hermione's beaded bag in hand. Then they were alone.
Hermione glanced up at Draco, who was already watching her. During the night, they'd showered the fire off themselves, but the shell-shocked look still hadn't fully faded from his expression.
"I suppose I'm sleeping top-to-toe with Ollivander, am I?" he said. His voice, usually butter-smooth, was raspy from all the smoke they'd breathed in, like the brush of long grass.
She laughed and rose to her feet, swaying with sleeplessness. Draco approached her, and she closed her eyes as he reached her. She leaned forward into him, resting her head against his chest. His hand settled over the back of her head, stroking her hair, and his heart thumped slowly, steadily. Was it only hours ago they'd fled down the manor drive, his hand feverish and sweaty in hers? He was clean and cool now, though the faint scent of smoke still hung over them both.
"Why did you do it?" Hermione murmured. "Speak to Pansy? You must have known she'd recognise your voice."
"Right into it, Granger? Thought we were supposed to sleep."
She smiled faintly and drew back. "We are. We can talk about it later."
"It's fine." He seemed to be calculating something. Hermione felt a flutter of anxiety. They hadn't really spoken about his past with Pansy, the same way they hadn't really spoken about her past feelings for Ron.
Now that she thought about it, though, she could identify the tug of insecurity. Draco and Pansy had always seemed such a matched set, as if they'd been designed in a laboratory for each other. Pansy had certainly looked glamourous at the gala. … Had Draco been unable to resist? Had he seen Pansy and realised he still had unresolved feelings for her?
Then Draco muttered, "She was about to hex you. I told her to stop, that's all."
Hermione looked up at him, unable to believe her ears for a moment. He looked almost embarrassed, a pink tinge at the top of his cheeks. As the words sank in, a confused tingling flowed out from the centre of Hermione's body.
They both knew what would happen if Draco's secrecy broke. They knew who and what he would become in the public eye: a top target for the Death Eaters, a blood traitor, defector, and Undesirable. Yet he wasn't even trusted by most of the people in headquarters. Already caught between two worlds, he would be loathed, soon, by both.
And after seven months of doing everything to avoid that fate, he'd cracked his secrecy open to protect her.
The thought overwhelmed Hermione. It scared her a little. … It was something he might have done for his family.
It reminded her of what she still had left to tell him.
"Let's get some sleep," Hermione said, and she led him upstairs.
#
Draco had followed Hermione without questioning. Once her bedroom door was shut, however, he hesitated, and he saw her pause, too. All through December, despite having spent many late-night hours together, they'd never actually slept in the same bed. Their eyes met for a furtive moment, and even in his exhaustion Draco felt himself tense. Then they both busied themselves, Draco taking his wand from his pocket to set it on the bedside table and Hermione pulling the bedcovers back.
They extinguished the lamps and settled onto her bed with a creak of the old springs. They were both already in pyjamas, soft cheap ones in cotton bought from a Muggle department store in a nearby town a few months ago. The moon was still glowing between the blinds, and they pulled the covers up over their shoulders, facing each other in the darkness, a foot or so apart. After a moment, their warmth built and mingled beneath the quilt, and Draco felt himself relax for the first time in what felt like a week. Hermione was all shadow, her hair splayed across the ivory pillowcase like loose cotton dyed dark.
"I have to tell you something," she whispered. "I'm sorry I didn't earlier. It won't really be relevant for a few days, but …"
"What is it?"
"Your mother made contact with Mr. Weasley."
Draco's tension returned little by little, tautening his shoulders, making his voice strain. "When? … Where have they been?"
"They left Cathcove Cottage in mid-August. After that, they went to London, and …" Hermione hesitated, looking reluctant.
Draco felt a pang of unease. "What?"
She let out a small sigh. "They spelled a Muggle businessman into believing they were best friends of his who were tragically bankrupted. He's rented them a townhouse in one of the most expensive parts of the city and … and waits on them. Does whatever they ask."
Draco looked blankly back at her. An unfamiliar sensation was pulling downward at his insides, making the back of his neck feel hot.
He'd never in his life felt embarrassed of his parents. He didn't even really know how to feel it. The instant he realised it was embarrassment, a defensive voice hissed in his head, They're just trying to survive … it's smart, really, what they did … and they had to do it, they didn't have a choice …
Except that Draco knew exactly why they'd chosen to do it this way, rather than finding an empty flat or house and Transfiguring furnishings for themselves. He could almost hear his parents' amusement as they spoke to the Muggle, who would be under Imperius as well as Obliviation, describing what they wanted and watching him bend over backward, dull-eyed, to acquiesce. In their state of exile, it would comfort them to use a Muggle that way, to know that no matter how low they'd fallen, they still hovered miles above the Muggle masses.
Look at that, Lucius, he could practically hear his mother saying, cool and clear and light. They are good for something, after all.
Draco found he could no longer look at Hermione. She rushed on, sounding uncomfortable herself: "So—they spent six weeks or so looking through the Wizarding spots in London under Transfiguration. Not anywhere as central as Diagon Alley or King's Cross, obviously, but all those dozens of little outposts—like Circe & Clíodhna and the Office of Magical Postal Receipts, that sort of thing, looking for traces of you."
"They didn't contact the Order for six weeks?"
"No. Apparently they didn't want to risk it, with the only Order members left under such high surveillance. … But then Tonks and Lupin went on the run, and I suppose they thought it was their final chance to take advantage of the Order's infrastructure, or what was left of it. So, in early October, your mum caught Mr. Weasley outside the entrance to the Ministry. She said to tell you that they'll be at a place called Halfhold Hill every Sunday morning between 8 and 9 a.m."
Draco must have let something show, because Hermione scrutinised him and said, "What?"
"Nothing," Draco muttered. "Just … we used to have picnics there when I was six or seven."
"Oh." Her gaze softened. "Was it nice?"
He hesitated. "Yeah. It's really remote, so I'd ride this junior broom and my dad would let out a kids' Snitch for me. Those slow ones that are basically the size of Bludgers."
Hermione didn't quite manage the smile, and her expression was a bit too knowing. Of course she could intuit the collisions that were taking place inside him—the golden childhood memories grating like a striker against the flint of what he felt now.
His father, who had laughed and clapped when a six-year-old Draco caught that comically large Snitch, would have slaughtered the girl across from him in the Department of Mysteries.
His mother, who had lovingly packaged gifts to him every week for his first two years at Hogwarts, had called Hermione scum last year in Madam Malkin's.
Draco's embarrassment deepened into bitter shame. For seventeen years, he'd wanted nothing more than to emulate his parents: to be as poised as his mother, as influential as his father. He'd always striven to make them proud, and for the most part he'd succeeded, but now he wondered what they'd prided in him. All along, had they really been proud of what they'd shaped, like an artist to a sculpture—proud that they'd done such a good job of raising a pure-blood with pure-blood ideals?
Looking back, he could see how meticulously they'd planned his childhood so that he never interacted with Muggles. He'd never even had half-blood friends growing up. By age eight he was already talking about how only real wizards should be allowed to have wands, how witchcraft really belonged to certain families when you thought about it. Everything about him pruned perfectly into place.
Draco wondered if they would still be proud of him now that he was a blood traitor. He wondered if they would even love him. In that moment it certainly seemed they'd never trusted him, not really—not in the way Hermione or even Potter had. They'd trusted him to ask his own questions, to find his own way—and this was the way he'd found.
He thought of the manor burning away, exposing its dark skeleton, withering piece by piece into the night.
"You don't want to bring them here," Hermione said quietly.
Draco's answer stuck in his throat. Of course I do, he wanted to say. They're my parents.
He found he couldn't speak the words. She was right. He was dreading their arrival.
He felt a stab of guilt. He hadn't seen his parents for nearly half a year, and he was dreading taking them to a safe haven? No matter what he felt, no matter his feelings of anger or resentment, he still knew they would have done anything for him. They would have died for him. What kind of a son was he?
But there was so much he wasn't ready for them to know: the role he'd played in the manor's burning, his participation in the Order, and most of all, his feelings for Hermione.
They held each other's eyes, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.
"When they get here," she said quietly, "well … obviously they won't like the idea of us being …" She let out a slow breath. "It might be easier to stop."
"Easier," Draco repeated, not understanding. Since when did Hermione care what was easy? She cared what was right, she cared what was just, she cared herself into knots and never stopped to worry about exertion.
Then he recognised the guarded look on her face. It was the same self-preservation that had led her to wall him off in November.
This wasn't about ease at all. It was about the expectation of pain—and she was right to expect it. Obviously his parents' reactions wouldn't only extend to Draco when they found out.
"They're not going to say anything to you," he said, voice strained. "I won't …"
A pause. "You won't let them?" Hermione said, raising her eyebrows.
It sounded ridiculous when she said it. Draco's cheeks grew warm. He didn't know what he could do to stop them. Yell, cast a Tongue-Tying Hex, he didn't know, but—
"Yeah," he said. "I won't let them."
One corner of her mouth lifted. "How, exactly?"
"You got the Weasleys to keep quiet about me, didn't you?"
She was smiling now. "Yes, well, that was nothing."
"It didn't feel like nothing." He brushed his palm to her jaw, and she tilted her face in that way he liked, so that his palm fit perfectly to the contour of her cheek. Her eyes were dark and dilated, and he felt an odd, yawning feeling in his centre, like yearning or disbelief or some midpoint between the two. Hermione was here. She'd protected him, and he would do the same. At this moment it seemed like all he cared about anymore, that they both made it through, just like this, this close.
Draco kissed her. She tasted like toothpaste, and she pressed against him, her arm slipping over his waist, pulling him closer in the dark. Their legs tangled, and she fit so perfectly to him, and Draco's heart was beating harder; he was realising that he didn't know what he would have done if she'd wanted to end this. He couldn't go back to the way things had been before. It had taken so much for him to get here, to feel the way he felt right now—not just the elation but all the pain and confusion of it. He took no pleasure in feeling ashamed of his parents, and the crush of guilt and self-loathing at the manor still lapped at the edges of his mind even now, and he held Hermione so tightly because there was so much he wanted to say, so much that he still couldn't articulate, a build-up that felt halfway to asphyxiation.
But he'd struggled and fought to feel these things. He couldn't retreat down this path—not now, when he was finally starting to feel that he knew the way.
#
Bellatrix set the Daily Prophet upon an end table and gazed into the fire. She was alone in the Lestrange home. Rodolphus was in St. Mungo's; he had congenitally weak lungs, and the smoke had weakened them further. Another inconvenience.
All in all, however, Bella remained pleased with the day's events. The burning of the manor and the escape of the Mudblood girl had enraged her at first, and Bella privately suspected one of her accomplices had been Potter in disguise … but the Dark Lord didn't need to know that particular suspicion. With some time to mull over what had happened, she realised it was all to the Dark Lord's gain, in the end.
Presumably the Mudblood and her accomplices had broken into the manor to free the wandmaker and the Lovegood girl. Neither hostage was such a great loss. The Dark Lord had taken what he'd needed from the wandmaker, and the Lovegood man would do their bidding, after Selwyn and Travers's persuasion.
Yes—that idiot boy who had burned the manor and killed those people had given them a gift. A few unimportant lives were a small price to pay for this: the first step toward the remaking of the Dark Lord's image, a step they had been planning for months. Soon enough he would be able to step out into the sunlight, both feared and awed, like a god. Once Potter was dead and the nation in hand, the Wizarding World would finally see the glory of the new age. With the Dark Lord at its helm and she, his most loyal servant, ready to execute his every plan, Wizardkind could finally unite together in the next, greater mission: the conquest of Muggles.
Bella had been basking in satisfaction all day. The Skeeter woman had done well. She would be rewarded.
Only one thing still niggled at her thoughts … one small flaw.
The Parkinson girl's memories had been suffused with emotion, possibly skewed by that emotion, but Bella could still hear the voice cutting through the whizz and strike of spells. It had sounded like her nephew … something about the eyes, too …
She had respected the boy's zeal the previous year. Narcissa's son had been loyal. Driven by fear and cowardice rather than real devotion, that was true … she'd felt it in his mind when she had taught him Occlumency. Still, though, he had infiltrated Hogwarts in a way that no other Death Eater had managed. Bella could always appreciate ingenuity in the Dark Lord's service.
The suspicion felt like madness. She had seen the body herself at the funeral. And yet … the boy had supposedly died in the company of Albus Dumbledore, one of only a handful of wizards who may have been capable of such an exact act of Transfiguration, and the spell would have held as long as the old fool lived.
Bella had not enumerated her doubts even to her husband. If, by some freak occurrence, her nephew was alive, his deception would tarnish her by association.
Rage reared in her. Her blood was pure, her intent was pure, and yet she had already lost one sister as a blood traitor. How was she meant to stand the shame of another betrayal within her immediate family? She knew the Dark Lord would judge her for the faults of her bloodline. So would they all. … No, better to keep her suspicions to herself, to investigate them alone.
Bellatrix stood, and with a whirl of her cloak, she Disapparated. Now she was walking through a graveyard, crunching down a path of pebbles that shone in the starlight. No need to worry, she told herself. The Parkinson girl's memory was affected by her feelings, that was all. She had convinced herself of something.
Yet Bella's footsteps quickened as she approached the Malfoys' grey marble crypt.
She entered. The small chamber was immaculately clean. The prowling dragons and chimaeras cut into the high ceiling shone as if they had just been cut from their blocks of marble. The floor shone underfoot as Bella moved to the farthest corner.
DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY
Beloved son
Born 5 June 1980
Died 30 June 1997
Bella flicked her wand, and a fissure cracked down the centre of the marble façade. The two halves swung forward like double doors. Another flick, and the coffin levitated out, long and dark, its lacquered surface gleaming.
She realised her palms were covered with a thin sheen of sweat.
Her eyes slid onto Lucius's crypt, and then Narcissa's. Yes—best to check all three, best to set her mind at ease entirely. She split one façade, then the next, and soon the three coffins were lined before her.
Bellatrix flicked her wand. The coffins' lids rose.
Outside, a murder of crows took flight as a scream of fury split the night in two.
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ahh... the aesthetic.
thanks for reading! reviews keep me cool in the blistering summer!
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