Chapter Four:
A Tale of Two Potters
Draco Black's P.O.V
"Pass us the sugar pot will you, auntie?"
Sitting in the sunroom of Tonks Manor, Draco Black dusted his hands free of the powdered sugar from the crème cake he had polished off with the napkin draped over his lap, and smiled at his aunt across the table. Andromeda Tonks rolled her eyes, and skirted the porcelain pot closer to the boy who grabbed an extra two sugar cubes for his already syrupy-sweet cup of tea.
"I wonder wherever you get that terrible sweet tooth from? Definitely not your father."
Narcissus smiled indulgently from beside his sister, ignoring his own too saccharine crème cake left to deflate on his plate.
"His mother, clearly."
Draco nodded down between them.
"You going to eat that?"
And yet, before he had even finished asking, Narcissus was already pushing the crockery over after he spied his son eyeing the treat.
"What's got you two in such a good mood this morning anyway? I've never seen father smile earlier than midday before."
The blond man in question merely grinned broader, brighter, wilder.
"Today's the day."
The crème cake lingered halfway to Draco's mouth; fork abandoned at the platters side.
"Are you sure?"
It was a tentative question, cautious and timid in a way Draco typically wasn't, and perhaps that was why it came out so poignant and, maybe, if one looked close enough, a little nostalgic. His father nodded.
"She says so, even if she won't give me the details in case… In her words, I bloody muck it up."
The cake lowered back to plate, all but forgotten, though Draco's fingers trembled as they slipped from the table to grasp at the napkin in his lap, wringing into lace lined linen.
"Do you think she'll understand when she finds out-"
Whatever was going to slip free from Draco's mouth would never be heard over the sudden boom of the hallway door to the sunroom, a viciously cursed Bombarda Draco would later suppose, dust and wood splintering into the room in a cloud of smoke and fury.
Along with it came the distinctive sense of magic in the atmosphere, seeping out from a container too incensed to control it, sizzling in the air with the sensation of hisses and howls and… Angry.
Very angry, very reckless, very feral magic.
Draco only knew of one person with a magic so untamed when let out inadvertently that felt like a thunderstorm in a teacup.
Hemlock Potter stalked in through the haze of the battered down door, spiced tresses knotted around her shoulders, a twig caught in a curl there, a fern leaf in another, clothes wrinkled and bloodstained in patches, muddied and dirty as if she had just crawled out of her own grave, cuts on cheeks like scratches and-
And the worst state Draco had ever seen the witch be in, despite having seen said witch very clearly at the Battle of Hogwarts, twice dead and once victor.
It was peculiar and terrifying, if Draco were honest, of which he would never be if asked. Sometimes the lion with a paw chewed off, and yet still limping on, muzzle bloody and teeth snarling was more terrifying than the lion that roared.
Before wands could be drawn, before Andromeda could so much as finish 'Hemlock-', before Draco's father could stand from the table and he, himself, could do much more than blink at the sudden arrival, the incensed witch was descending upon his father, faster than a flash, quicker than a hex, pinning Narcissus back into his chair with an unforgiving hand around his neck, wand point pressed cruelly under his tilted chin.
"Where is he?!"
Narcissus blinked, calm and organized despite his, plainly, precarious situation. In fact, if Draco were to have an opinion, the older male might look a little… Amused with the situation.
Clearly he was quite as mad as Potter.
"I'm afraid you will have to be slightly more specific on who exactly-"
The wand pushed harder, forcing his father's chin up, neck bared, fingers tightening on pale flesh. His father would be lucky if he came out of this without any bruises.
His father would be lucky, by the desperate glint in Potter's eye, if he came out of this at all.
"Cut the bullshit you blond myopic despot! I'm done playing your games! Where is he? Where is Alphard Black?"
His father stiffened in his chair, fingers coiling on armrests.
"Ah."
The glass of orange juice on the table exploded in a hale of glass and glitter as Potter's magic lashed out viciously, and, with it, whatever slight grasp Hemlock outwardly had on her composure went shattering with it.
Draco stood stock-still in his seat, unexpectedly convinced that if he did not move, not so much as breathe, the irate Potter might overlook him completely.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps he should make a run for it, out into the hallway or conservatory door to the back, try and find-
"Ah? Ah? That's all you have to bloody say? Ah?! Where is he, then? Is he here lurking about in the shadows you Black's are so found of prowling around in? What about fuckin' Belenos? His grave was empty too! Let me guess, you have Cygnus and Orion stashed in Tonk's attic too? Is there a single bloody Black that has stayed dead in the last fifty years?!"
Andromeda, finally, appeared to gain some composure from her momentary shock as she, slowly, deliberately, came to a stand at the far end of the dinner table.
"Hemlock, love, why don't you sit down, and we can all talk this over like-"
The wand swivelled, levelled at Andromeda, the point of it quivering in the air. Potter didn't let up her grip on his father's neck, and if there was any time to run and find-
It was now.
Draco braced readying to push off from his seat and-
Draco found his legs unable to move. Glued to the chair almost.
Binding charm.
Potter must have hit him with one as soon as she had entered in her rather dramatic showcase of rage and resentment, wandless and unspoken and-
Impressive.
"Don't you fuckin' dare, Andy. These two… These two I could have expected, but you? You… You lied to me. You lied right to my face… How could you?"
The shot hit its mark, lodging in Andromeda's chest, collapsing her shoulders under a heavy weight of hurt.
"Hemlock, it isn't… It's not what you think, and if you just give us a moment I'm sure you'll understand-"
The quivering stopped, the anger flattened out like a sea abruptly, and horribly, calm in a hurricane, replaced by something cold and hard and brutal.
"No. I'll give you this one chance to tell me where Alphard is before I start collecting Black heads to mount on my mantel back home."
Andromeda wavered where she stood.
Narcissus remained stoically pinned to his chair.
Draco opened his mouth and-
A voice, not his own, spoke up from the back door to the conservatory.
"Would that include mine, prongslet? I hope it would take pride of place if so."
Silence, hush, mute. That was the sunroom suddenly.
A cool quiet place with a wand frozen in position, and an unexpectedly deathly still witch lost in the centre of-… Of everything all at once.
Hemlock turned sluggishly as if she were swiftly dunked in frigid waters, so slowly, to the conservatory door, and when she spotted the man standing in the entryway, the man she must of known it to be but still had to look to, hair windswept and cheeks flushed, grinning and achingly alive, the noise that left her mouth was positively wounded.
Maimed.
Draco's heart could not but break a little for her.
"Padfoot? I-… What… You were… The Veil-"
Her wand clattered to the floor, the hand around neck flopped useless to her side, and the only noise in the deafeningly still and silent room was Narcissus's croak of a hastily sucked in breath now that there was no bind constricting his airway.
Sirius Black sauntered into the room; arms open invitingly.
Hemlock backtracked from every step he took, keeping their distance wide, leaving her open in the room.
That was her first mistake that morning.
Leaving her back open.
"In the flesh and blood, looking quite good if I say so myself."
As Sirius moved from the door, the figures behind him came into view. Tonks and Remus leaning on door frame, haloed in the sunshine, very much alive as Sirius appeared to be.
Draco watched as Hemlock perilously stumbled backwards another step, hip striking table corner, as if the ground beneath her feet had suddenly been pulled out from underneath her.
She was close to the door she had came barrelling through now.
"I-… I'm dead. I'm already dead. I'm-"
Draco suddenly understood the plan.
The plan that had worked.
Perhaps the only plan wild and reckless enough to unseat the wild and reckless Potter, to make her unbalanced enough not to see the dangers creeping in.
The dangers creeping in two by two.
Facing the conservatory door as she was, transfixed by ghosts not quite ghosts any longer, Hemlock Potter had her back to the blown door she had stormed through, missing the two figures edging in through the now gaping hole in the wall, closer, nearer.
She only had the span of time between two heartbeats to react as the newcomers got at her back, the taller of the two snatching at hands and elbows, twisting, pinning, as the smaller pointed wand tip right at the back of her neck through her riotous curls.
The skin seared to a small black spot where the wand tip touched flesh.
Hemlock howled, folded as the wand pulled back, only held up by the arms trapping her own behind her.
"Yeah, sorry about that. Hurts like a bloody bitch, doesn't it? We're not meant to touch. Creates a nexus in the time stream and-"
Hemlock reeled to glare over her shoulder, as far as her pinned arms allowed her to, glaring, snarling, spitting like an alley cat.
"I should have known it was you. When there's trouble you're always in the middle of it-…It's always you."
Hemlock Potter grinned brilliantly at Hemlock Potter.
"What can I say? We're our own worst enemy. Now, Belenos."
It happened in quick succession then.
Hemlock, the one covered in mud and blood, heaved, lashing out with a backward kick that barely missed Belenos's leg, but it was too late. Belenos had the time-turner up and over her head before she could shake him off, rolled to the side, right into the line of fire from the other Hemlock's wand.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The room bleached to a sickening green, a flash, a bloom, a disgusting roll and lurch in a putrid glare.
When Draco could see again, the younger Hemlock was already falling down as she had in that clearing, plummeting to the floor, glassy-eyed and-
The time-turner span as it rose in the fall, struck by the killing curse, and Hemlock disappeared into a pop of gold and green glow before she ever struck the ground.
And just as she had in the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco knew she would gasp back to throbbing life in about… Twenty minutes.
Perhaps even less.
Potter was getting better at shaking off death with each blow.
Sirius Black sighed heavily by the door in the ensuing quiet, and Draco, with an experimental tug, found he could move his legs once more.
"How angry do you think she's going to be when she wakes up?"
Hemlock, the one left in the sunroom, was older than the one sent careening through time and space. Older and changed. There was something… Harder in her features-
Not harder.
Sleeker. Cattish. A series of lines that were keen and sharp, softened only by her freckles and now hardly visible head scar. Darker too, a duskiness where peach once bloomed.
Perhaps it was her black robes that made it seem a harsher shift, perhaps it was how she carried herself now, taller, straighter, more confident, maybe, in the end, that was what time did to people.
Made blades out of butter knives.
Hemlock slipped her wand home in the hidden holster on above her wrist. The barest flash of the Basilisk scar looking like a supernova burst.
"She'll get over it eventually. It was the only way to get a jump on her-… On me, without me living up to my threats and shooting of spells left and right. Someone would have been caught in the crossfire."
Draco coughed and stashed the napkin onto the table from his lap.
"So it's over now? It's all done?"
Hemlock grinned.
"Not even close. She has a hellish and confusing seven months ahead of her, and now… Well, now I have a war to divert and a world to save. Someone better call Cygnus and Orion back from France, and see how far Alphard has got sneaking into the Ministry. We need to get the jump on them before they get the jump on us."
Remus slunk through the conservatory door, followed closely by Tonks.
"So it begins."
Alphard Black's P.O.V
February 14th, 1978
Alphard Black had not foreseen that he would be spending this years Saint Valentine's day locked down in the kitchens of Grimmauld place surrounded by his, quite frankly, panicking family.
"Perhaps if we hire a curse breaker, they might be able to unstitch whatever hex has befallen the Tree and-"
"You're not on about this being a trap again are you, Cygnus? By Merlin man, you were there when we ran the diagnostic spells and they all came up blank. Whatever this is, it isn't a trick and-"
"Has anyone contacted the Potters? Possibly they have their own Tree, or at the very least they might be able to explain how and why a member of one of their House has appeared on ours years before they were born-"
"Yes, quite right, uncle Orion. Let me go and pop over and start ranting about impossible Potter's marring up our home's wall. We can all sit down and have a cup of tea as we talk over dowries and wedding robes and-"
"There's no need to be so confrontational, Narcissus. You need to-"
"Oh, don't you start Belenos. You've found this whole thing entirely too enjoyable. Where's the distaste that you showed your betrothal to the Lestrange girl gone? You-"
"Rodelphina Lestrange is a complete bore. This Potter however, is turning out quite… Unpredictable. I mean she isn't even born yet and look at the state of you lot. That's something I can enjoy-"
"Naturally you're simply happy about the chaos-"
"If we strip the wall down, dismantle the Tree, perhaps the turn in magic will relinquish its hold and-"
"We need to inform the Potters and begin discussions on-"
"Don't just sit there smiling, go get a curse breaker, a goblin, anything-"
Through the raucous arguments going on all at once around the kitchen table, where everyone was speaking but no one was listening, where everything was being said but nothing done, Alphard Black sat back and merely watched.
They were getting no where fast.
Orion, typically the one to keep their head level in even the most trying of times, sat at the head of the table the most dishevelled of them all. Waistcoat lost somewhere in the house, shirt buttons undone, hair dishevelled from running his fingers through the locks one too many times. A bruise was blooming on the line of his jaw, likely the result of a bitter slap from Walburga when she came home yesterday from an extended shopping trip in Diagon with Gloria Goyle and found her portrait on the Tree nothing but a wasted, grey mark.
Belenos sat to his right, feet kicked up on the table, something that would have ordinarily earned a swift reproach from the manner-manic Head of House, leaning back in his chair carelessly by two of it's legs. Narcissus had been correct, evidently, by the grin splitting his face in two. The Wizard was enjoying the madness far too much. The reality, when the novelty of the chaos wore off, would soon sink in.
Narcissus sat opposite his brother, green sleeping robe loose around his broad shoulders, blond hair unusually untidy. He was glaring at his brother, priming for a fight, any fight, he could make, that could be raged and won. Morgana knew this precipitous Bond was quickly being found inescapable, and perhaps the young man was merely trying to divert himself, and his mind, from this encroaching thought.
Cygnus was pacing by the wall at the back of the kitchen, a sharp clack, clack, clack of his dress shoes hitting tile, shirt sleeves rolled to elbow, curls unruly and heedlessly wild, mind whirling dangerously fast, searching for an out. He may not be on the… Best of terms with his current-… Ex-wife, Druella, but that did not mean he wished to jump headfirst into another, especially one as complex as this one.
Alphard-
Alphard was simply tired.
Tired and confused, and weary of talking in circles for hours at a time.
He slapped his hands down on the table, a thunderous ringing smack, cutting off the many voices as he stood from his seat, shoulders squared, back rigid.
"Enough… Enough! We've been talking about this for the last four hours, and none of us have gotten anywhere remotely helpful. We should take a step back and have a rest. We are in no rush. According to the portrait on the wall, the girl won't be-… Born for another three years."
At this Alphard winced, lurching over the word born, a churning in his gut slinging bile up his throat at the thought. He was not the only one to flinch at the notion either, the action echoed in the dark, candlelit kitchen.
Strengthening himself, he marched on.
"And we have a further, at the minimum, two decades before the girl would be of age. We have plenty of time to figure this out. Now-"
Of course this was the part where the universe laughed at him. It always did when someone gave a hearty absolute in an erratic and volatile cosmos.
The joke did not come slowly. There was no build-up for the punchline. No hesitation or sign. One moment the room was as it was, dark and dim and normal, and the next-
A flash of bright green light, blinding in the intensity, nauseating in its hue.
The Killing Curse.
Alphard knew it before the room dimmed anew, the only spell with such a rancid flavour, the flash fizzling out to a pop and a drop. Alphard stumbled back from the table, wide-eyed and alert, glancing around him-
The family was safe. Orion stood from the table, blinking away the white-spots in his vision. Belenos had fallen from his chair, heaving himself back to a stand. Cygnus had backed up against the wall, wand now in hand, aiming, ready. Narcissus had screeched his chair back, away from the point of the flash in the centre of the Kitchen. The girl on the table-
The girl on the table?
Alphard's gaze locked in place.
Yes, there was a girl on the table.
A young woman, in truth. An injured young women, bloody and dirty and-
And with a crown of wild-red curls fanned about her head, a time-turner, hourglass smouldering with wisps of green smoke surrounded by gilt circles, resting on a still breast.
She was young, perhaps in her early twenties as far as Alphard could see. She was a pale thing underneath the grime, lithe form swathed in torn shirt and what the Muggles called jeans, with a constellation of taupe freckles charting a map across a small nose. Her brows were sealed in a furrow, pained perhaps, by the down-curve of her full lips.
Her eyes were wide open and staring up to the ceiling. A curious and distinctive shade, nearly implausible, impossible fusion of greens. A tinge of new spring growth, vivid and soft all at once. There were flecks there, moss flushed, splashes of strength, the flurry of summer advancement. In the heart of it all was a buried grit, a green only seen in the most tenacious of flowers, those that clung still to the frosted ground of winter or broke through concrete pavement to reach the sunshine.
They didn't blink, and the chest did not rise.
Nothing about the girl moved.
It took two hours for eyes to haze over after death with that terrible milky-sheen. Alphard, as an Unspeakable, knew that one personally. She must have died just now and-
Alphard lunged, shouldering past a still dazed Orion.
"Move."
He got to the tables edge, reached out, placed fingers on neck and-
No beat.
Nothing.
The young women really was-
"Dead. She's… Dead."
Belenos, uncharacteristically severe, brokered back.
"Isn't that the girl from the…"
He cut himself off. There was no need to elaborate. They could all see with their own eyes what laid before them bent and broken and empty. The scar like a lightning bolt down her forehead, a soft pink still slightly irritated looking, was proof enough.
The girl from the Tree portrait. The impossible Potter with, now Alphard could see, the impossible eyes.
Dead.
Cygnus's wand lowered inch by inch until it dropped to his hip.
"She has grandfather's time-turner around her neck. How did she-"
The body on the table lurched up with a great, gasping breath, hands flailing, clawing at her chest to rip off the time-turner, puffing as Alphard Black slipped back so hard he fell on his arse with a muted thud.
"Morgana's tits! That never gets any easier."
The impossible Potter came too, spluttering and cursing, with impossible eyes and impossibly alive, and-
And spotted the Black packed kitchen. More crucially, she spied Belenos at her side, quite clearly stunned from the girl who just came back to life from a curse there was no coming back from.
That was about when her leg drew back and struck out, the resounding crunch of Belenos's nose breaking under boot clad heel.
"You! You bloody bastard! I'm going to fuckin' kill you!"
Boo or Woo?
A.N: Because, of course, the only person Hemlock didn't suspect of causing this ungodly mess, who was clearly the most obvious choice really, was herself lol. Don't worry, now that we're in 1978 as the primary point of view things start to make sense as we follow Hemlock along in patching all the pieces together with the rest of the Blacks. There's plenty of hints though littered along already, and I'm really looking forward to hearing some of your theories!
I know I haven't updated this fic for a while, but I've been working on my other stories, and it all just got away from me. I have been working on this one too, though, as I went along, and I hope you all didn't only just enjoy this chapter, but are looking forward to what I have cooked up in the back wings.
Thank you for the reviews, follows and favourites. If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a few words in a review, and I hope you all liked this chapter, even if it was only one line or two!