24
Rhysta was astounded by the sheer volume of things about Albus Potter that she had never noticed before.
For all that she had been miserably, helplessly in love with him for probably far longer than she was willing to admit, the number of details that she had previously missed was discouraging. She had never noticed the smooth consistency with which he swallowed; every fourth breath or every third sentence, whichever came first. She had never noticed that, while he crossed his arms left over right, he threaded his fingers with the left thumb on top. She had never noticed that his left leg was slightly more flexible than his right; he kept bending over to ease an ache in his back, and he could reach further to his weak side. She had never noticed that she was capable of staring him in the eye so intensely that he couldn't stand the weight of her stare, and preferred meeting the glares of suspicious Auror interrogators rather than face her.
She was pissed. She was absolutely furious with him. And it ran so contradictorily parallel with her desire to bury her face in his neck and hold on forever that it made her want to scream.
It had been twenty minutes now. She knew because the red-haired Auror who had given her his jacket, conjured up an armchair, and pressed a hot cocoa into her hands also had a wristwatch which ticked at a volume that was slowly pecking a hole in her skull. It had been twenty minutes since he had looked away. That had been after he had eventually been able to pry himself free from her grasp, which had begun its almost magical transformation from desperate to violent.
She had only landed a few hits before the crowd had moved in to separate them. She'd nearly forgotten anyone else was there. They'd let the two of them carry on for long enough that she should've been humiliated, but all she felt now was fury. Fury and exhaustion that somehow fueled more fury, a fury that she couldn't even manifest, just sheer fury and more of it. And a lot of fear, as well.
The fury hadn't made it any easier for them to separate her from him. Even as he tried to use calm words to soothe her and she'd hit him harder for it, the cautious hands of Aurors trying to take him away from her had nearly made her lash out at them, as well. That had been the second phase: unable to form words now because she was too furious to slap them together coherently, it had taken another long while for her to convince herself, under heavy persuasion of the surrounding folk, that if she released him, he would not suddenly disappear.
And now it had been twenty minutes - twenty minutes of fear, despair, hope, and fury - since they had managed to haul him away as far as she was prepared to let him go - a dozen feet, if that, and pushed him down into a conjured chair considerably less comfortable than hers to begin demanding answers she highly doubted he could provide. Twenty minutes since she had begun staring at him. Twenty minutes since he had gulped at the look in her eye and somehow found the cowardly courage to make eye contact with his interrogators and utterly avoid glancing anywhere near her direction.
They were talking. They were angry. She didn't really care. She was angry, too. A pair of Aurors, a witch and a wizard, stood in front of him, pacing back and forth, arguing with themselves as much as him, arguing with his father, who stood over his shoulder still wearing the debris of shock. They all stood around him on tiptoes - the Aurors as though he would explode, his father as though Albus would collapse at any slight disturbance. It ran contradictory to what Rhysta wanted most to do: grab him by the neck and throttle him, if only so that she could touch him and make sure he was still real. Oh, if only she had her wand… she would hex him into her seventh year, and steal a Time Turner from somewhere in this damned Ministry to do it again.
She listened for a while to their questions, but it quickly became evident to her - and, she knew, to Albus - that it was impossible to describe what had happened in this room, and that they wouldn't believe either of them even if they had been able to. Albus' answers were reluctant, but his father helped. His father was extraordinary; his father stood next to him, perfectly attentive, and absorbed every word of every answer without expressing disbelief, hearing things that most certainly were incredible. Rhysta couldn't have done it, in his shoes.
A primeval magical power attempting to fuse itself into this universe? A cosmic catastrophe if Albus didn't offer himself as a sacrifice?
They were the words of insanity, the rambling howls of lunatics that were banished to Azkaban in the old days. And the Aurors who lashed him with question after disbelieving question were clearly unconvinced, openly scoffing and accusing him of lies. Which led to the arguments with his father, and a fair bit of shouting back and forth. And Albus, all the while, watched the Aurors expressionlessly, his face a mask of exhaustion.
Utterly refusing to look at her.
She hated it. She hated him. She hated that she was still convinced she was dreaming.
She could remember the moment when he had come back. The body underneath her had been so cold, so mercilessly empty, and then a rush of warmth had burned into it as if flushed from a cloaked pipe. Warmth and breath had come as one, and she could never remember being so desperate in all of her life as when she had lifted her head in disbelieving hope.
The green flash burned into her eyes, even twenty minutes after he had looked away and all the time before that. The sound of his body slumping to the ground echoed, haunting every recess of her memory.
Yet here he sat before her, refusing to meet her eyes. And the fact that she ached more than anything in the world even now to touch him and convince herself he was real made her more angry at him than ever that he wasn't hurting the same as her.
She burned with rage, she burned with upset. It wasn't in her nature to coax the flames to death; she was built to spurn them into inferno and unleash fury until the ground around her had been razed. There was nothing but rage and she had nothing to do with it, short of stalking over to the subject of her torment and finishing the job he hadn't been able to by beating him mercilessly to death. Which was the last thing she wanted. She was so tired. She wanted to sleep, to curl up in his arms and sleep away forever.
A commotion sidelong in the crowd dragged her slowly away from her reveries. Between angry snarls and quite a few choice curses, she watched a few large-bodied Aurors get shoved out of the way to reveal Scorpius in all his disheveled, titanically irate glory. He stumbled to a halt looking as murderous as ever when he caught sight of Albus being peppered by his interrogators. Rhysta peered back at Albus in time to see his eyes glance over and quickly dart away again.
It was enough to make Rhysta laugh, a sharp bark which had just the barest hint of actual mirth. Is there anyone who doesn't want to kill him right now?
The sound carried enough that Scorpius whirled and caught sight of her, and his face wilted. In three strides he was on her, dragging her out of the armchair and crushing her shoulders with the force of the embrace he delivered. Her empty cocoa mug clattered off onto the stone floor, chipping and shattering on the second bounce. She tried to sigh, planting her hands against his chest to shove him off, but he'd moved faster than she'd anticipated and had landed an athlete's reach around her shoulders.
"Merlin's beard," Scorpius gasped, as though he was the one being squeezed to death. "I thought you were gone."
"You're about to… finish the job," she snapped, driving a forefinger between ribs as hard as she could.
He released her and she lurched back a step, scowling up at him. He ignored her, beaming, or maybe gaping. It was a mixture of the two, not so much wonder as sheer relief. Taking a step away from her, he turned his back and bent over his knees. "Oh, fucking bloody hell. You're all right. Fucking hell. I was sick to death, Rhystara Malfoy. Do you know how worried I was about you?"
"How did you even get here?" she sniffed, annoyed at his display of emotion as much as everything else. People were staring. Of course, she was one to talk; it was all they had been able to do to keep her from sinking teeth into Albus to prevent their separation earlier.
"Same way as that prick."
Scorpius swore harder, stood up, and took a quite threatening step in Albus' direction. He drew up short after that step, perhaps noticing Albus' father looming over his mate's shoulder, arms crossed, quite completely distracted. Or maybe the interrogators, who had suddenly turned their ire on each other in loud voices rather than Albus himself. Albus himself sat perfectly still with a blank face and his eyes lowered, quite the humble sight. Now, doubtlessly, he couldn't glance forward left or right for fear of meeting either her eyes or Scorpius. Despite her anger, it pleased her a little bit that she was adding to his discomfort. He fucking well deserved it.
"Do you know what that bastard did to me?" Scorpius hissed to her under his breath. "He locked me wandless in a-" Cursing, her brother shivered and shook his head. "Merlin, never even mind where. He bloody left me behind, and I had to pound and scream for an hour, just to get attention. And then, of course, I expected whoever found me was going to be the enemy, so the first bloke through the door got a shiner and then they hit me with a stunning-"
"You came with him?" Rhysta repeated belatedly.
Scorpius swore. "He fucking wanted to come alone. I should have known he wouldn't just agree to have me along."
"Why'd you come?"
He glared at her. "What, he didn't tell you?"
She thought of the storm, of the burden, of the sheer weight of her mind, of the burning eternity and emptiness. She pulled the jacket tighter around her shoulders, wishing it was certain arms, instead. "There wasn't an opportunity for idle banter."
"We came for you, we came to rescue you."
"How did you know to come here?"
Scorpius flung an arm in Albus' direction. "That bastard just fucking knew, like he had a goddamn pixie whispering in his ear-"
She swung a fist at his ribcage, missed as he dodged, landed a decent shot in his solar plexus instead, and then used the position to haul him down to her height so she could hiss directly into his ear. "Keep your voice down!"
It hadn't been loud enough to draw attention, but she still breathed a sigh of relief that neither of the interrogating crowd had noticed her violent reaction. A few onlookers, idle Aurors, eyed them warily, but offered no undue curiosity.
Scorpius staggered backwards when released, glaring between her and Albus as he rubbed his stomach irritably. Showing enough wherewithal to include the interrogators in his cursory sweep and refrain from blurting idle thoughts, he lowered his voice. "Would you kindly like to tell me what in the name of magic is going on here?"
Ironic word choice, all things considered. And a question to which she didn't have anything to say. She didn't know what to say.
"He's alive," she blurted. Was it an answer or yet another self-expectant admission of evidence?
Scorpius evidently took it as the former. "And that's it? That's all I get."
She exhaled. A little bit of emotion dissipated. "He's alive. I'm alive. And the war is all over, Scorpius. That's all that matters." He could get the other answers later. She was too tired. She wanted Albus.
Scorpius watched her as she collapsed back into the armchair. She tried to ignore the stare, not out of spite but because she wanted him to stop asking her questions. He strode over after a while and leaned against one of the armrests, pulling the jacket higher on her near shoulder. Her own interrogation wasn't long for intermission, it seemed.
"How'd you get here?" he asked her, much gentler than before.
Rhysta thought about it, and she really didn't know. Her memory was a fog; a nonexistence. She could recall stumbling in the clearing, facing the wizards, speaking to the wizards, listening to the premonition of Albus' certain death, and giving herself over to them in order to prevent it from happening. They had opened a new path through their number for her to travel, and then her memories were blank, befuddled in lethargic tangles of dreams and nightmares much like the aether through which she'd been drifting in the interim. And then Albus had come and it was everything after. A coarse shiver shook her as the dark touch returned from her memories, and she had to fight it off.
"I honestly don't know," she told her brother. That would doubtlessly provoke more questions, so she traced back to the beginning and started the conversation she didn't want to have, for multiple reasons. "You saw me leave the Tower."
She wasn't looking at him, but she could almost hear the clenched bones in his jaw grinding together. "Yes. And we're going to talk about that, believe me. But continue."
"I was trying to find a way back into the castle. They blocked my way. I transformed-"
"Bloody hell, about that, by the way."
She bowed her head to acknowledge the sideways compliment, grinning despite herself. "-but they cast things at me. Projectiles, dangerously close. They could have downed me if they wanted to, and might have if I'd kept for the castle. But they drove me into the forest instead. I ran for a while, but there were many of them - so many of them - and I couldn't outrun a horde."
Scorpius' eyes had clouded. "How did they get onto the grounds?"
She shrugged with one shoulder. "I doubt Hogwarts had the defenses necessary to protect itself against them."
"But it's Hogwarts."
Very timidly, she nudged her chin in Albus' direction. His eyes flickered in her direction as thought he felt the attention, but he managed to keep them off of her, to her disappointment. "They got to him when he was in Hogwarts, and they didn't even need to touch him to do it. Some evils are just too evil to completely block out, I guess."
Scorpius shifted uncomfortably on the chair's arm. "They kidnapped you? Did they hurt you?"
"I don't think so."
"You don't think so?"
She patted his arm with a sigh that was meant to convey she was untraumatized by the experience. That end of the experience, at least. Or, simply put, any trauma had been stripped from her memories along with everything else. "The last thing I remember was agreeing to go with them, and then I don't know anything that happened until he came."
"You agreed to go with them?" Scorpius repeated, anger rising in his voice. "You agreed to go with them! Are you bloody insane, Rhysta?"
"It was the only way to save him."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"They were… so terrible," she said, remembering flames dancing from palms, hurled between trees of the forest, their horrific stillness as they stood taut in a circle surrounding her. "But they said that it was the only way to save him, and they had no reason to lie." She shook her head. "They could have stormed into the castle and dragged him out, murdering half the students in the process. But then he never would've cooperated, and his migraines would've killed him. This was the only way to save him. And the only way to get him to save himself was to make him come for me."
Scorpius listened in silence, and she was mildly afraid to check the expressions on his face. For several moments, they stewed in their own thoughts. The interrogators had stepped away from Albus for the moment, arguing amongst themselves in whispers. His father had moved to stand at his back, one firm hand placed on Albus' shoulder. They two sat in some silent understanding, watching the interrogators together. They looked most resolute, if not particularly intimidating. Rhysta was quietly struck by how similar they held themselves in that moment: shoulders hunched as though they had just witnessed unspeakable tragedy, faces blank as if they had nothing to fear from what lay before them, and the quiet loneliness that only came with having represented the only obstacle behind the entire world and oblivion.
It was that exact moment that Albus' resolve finally broke, and his eyes flickered to Rhysta, and though he immediately realized his mistake and turned his chin away forcefully, the momentary glimpse of emotion in his eye brought a surge of relief racing through her. He was just afraid, her stupid sweet Gryffindor boy. Afraid that she would hate him for what he did.
Well, she did. She grinned in her own amusement, and relaxed just a little bit. Just wait until they're done with you, you arse. You're never leaving my sight again, and you're damned well going to know that.
Scorpius cleared his throat, as ominous as the midnight tome of a clocktower in werewolf country. "I have… only ever seen him as blinded by something as getting here tonight… when we were trying to make the team second year. He went days without eating properly or sleeping, and he was completely unaffected. He had the same look in his eye the entire time he knew you were here."
She wasn't quite sure whether comparing her to a quaffle was intended as a compliment or a warning, so in the end she said nothing and braced for a shouting match with her brother over dating his best mate behind his back.
The next words were long in coming. "Not that we didn't know, though."
Rhysta turned to glare at him. "Excuse me?"
Scorpius shrugged. He looked like he was trying not to grin. He also looked angry enough to stalk over and punch Albus in the face. "You spent a lot of time together. In the library. In class." He scratched his face, and the mirth disappeared. "But you never brought it up otherwise. I suppose I figured you were just on better terms, though. You were just casual around each other. Except for that time in Hogsmeade…"
She remembered. She blushed.
Scorpius cursed under his breath, running his hands through his hair. He was watching Albus, suddenly furious again. "I'm gonna kill him, though."
"For the right reason?"
"Hard to say," Scorpius snapped honestly.
She sighed. "This is why we didn't tell you."
"Huh?"
She shook her head. "Honestly, Scorpius, I thought you'd be better than this."
"Than what?"
"Than being a whiny little bitch when you find out your sister and best mate are a thing."
"Hey," he barked. "I'm not mad that you like each other. I'm mad that you liked each other and you apparently dated each other behind my back and neither one of you said a word to me about it this entire time. How long's this been going on without anyone telling me about it? Weeks? Months? When exactly was I going to find out, when I show up as best man to his wedding just to find out who's walking down the aisle, eh?"
She rolled her eyes. "For the love of Merlin, Scorpius, we were going to tell you. You just get so bloody high and mighty sometimes that we really didn't know what you were going to say about it."
"What was I going to do, forbid it from happening?"
"He didn't want to lose you," she replied quietly. It was the most truthful reason they had, and yet it had taken up until now for her to find it. "You don't even know… for all that you've seen in the last two days, you really don't even know how hard it's been for him, this year. He lost everything he ever wanted in that moment, and you still had it. And you don't even know what he's been through the rest of the time, what I've been through the rest of the time. Did you know that he pulled Sidney Acres off of me in a dark corridor when he could barely keep standing for his headaches? Did you know that, Scorpius? Where were you?"
The words flew out of her mouth without conscious attempt to vet them. And they were harshly unfair. And she regretted most of it once it was out but she didn't regret the look of shock that crossed Scorpius' face momentarily, and the fact that he really hadn't had any idea of what was going on around him. She had possessed every opportunity to tell him, of course, as had Albus, and hadn't; which was far more their fault than his.
But that wasn't even the point.
"I'm not… he doesn't blame you, Scorpius, for anything that's happened. It's not your fault for anything. But you were up and up and he was just trying to survive, and he was hiding that from you because he didn't want you to see how weak he was. But I saw it. I saw it and for the most part, I was the only one. And from the bottom up we built a friendship that could've been there six years ago but we were too fucking proud for it. He was there for me and I was there for him when you couldn't be. And we were afraid, Scorpius, we were both afraid, that if we brought it out to you then trying to make you comfortable with the situation would suddenly be a wedge between us just when we needed each other the most.
"So no, Scorpius, we weren't afraid that you were going to make it about you. We were afraid that we loved you so much that we would make it about you and because of that not be there for each other when we needed it."
It was incredibly uplifting to finally speak out loud words that she had never been able to unsnarl from her own emotions. Rhysta had never been good at emotions, as evidenced by the six-year shouting match which had turned out merely to be a brilliantly disguised love story. When young, she had displayed a raised chin and a hard face against embarrassment and dismay, forgoing the maturity of feeling in favor of the petty politics children play with the tools of toughness and confidence. Years later, it had been hard to untangle crushes from kindness, friendly conversation from worthless chitchat, and a stinging fear of lost pride from the burning ache of loneliness.
Having so exhaustively burned through every emotion she had since she'd dragged her feet up to the library for her first study session with Albus Potter, it was quite a new world to wake up in where she occasionally actually knew what she was feeling. Nevertheless, the new world of searing thrills and sharp fears brought with itself the new challenge of putting into words those feelings that she could finally recognize. And both she and Albus had danced around the root cause of their hesitancy for so long.
To finally manage to say it out loud, for lack of a better word, almost broke the spell. Her fear of it washed away. Part of that was that the look of astonishment on Scorpius' face told her that he would never stand in her way again. Part of that was just relief that they didn't need to worry about it anymore.
Or maybe she just didn't have the fear anymore. For a few eternal moments, she thought that he had been gone forever. But he wasn't. And there was time.
Scorpius, to his credit, looked suitably humbled by the tirade, whether or not he actually deserved it. Rhysta huffed a breath as she returned from her thoughts, and patted him on the arm. "So I don't think either of us is going to say sorry for not telling you until you found out. But I'm glad we don't have to hide it anymore."
Her brother shifted awkwardly on his feet. "I really don't have a problem with it. A little weird, maybe, but you sure couldn't do better than him."
"I know."
He winced, and she grinned.
"Is he…" Scorpius trailed off, taking obvious care with his words. "What are they arguing with him about?"
She exhaled again. "Probably something to do with whether he's himself or whether he's turned."
"Turned?" She nodded. He was silent for a moment, watching Albus. Also to his credit, and her gratitude, he didn't ask her if Albus succumbing to evil was within the realm of possibility. He knew better. "Is he hurt?"
He died, and came back. "I would imagine so."
"Are you hurt?"
"Took you long enough to ask that, but no, I'm fine, thank you. Sore. That's all. Ready for a nap."
"It's the middle of the night."
"Well, I'm ready to sleep for a long damn time." She really hoped the Aurors wouldn't insist on hauling Albus away, too, because she would be forced to go with him, whether the authorities were onboard with that idea or not. She wished she had her wand.
Which reminded her.
"Here."
Scorpius blinked and snatched his wand out of her hands. "That's another thing he did, bloody bastard. He give this to you?"
She remembered the green flash. She would never be able to look at the wand the same way again. "He dropped it, I picked it up."
Scorpius grunted and shoved the thing in his pocket, crossing his arms. It was just as well. Judging from the antics interluding the interrogation, the Aurors still hadn't deduced that the Killing Curse had been used that evening, and it would only take a simple test on Scorpius' wand to reveal all. And it would be harder to explain how Albus had used it on himself and survived than it would be to explain how he got into the position of using it in the first place. So far, they'd been treating her like a victim - of the evil, at least, and not Albus - but perhaps it was quickly becoming time to interject on his behalf.
Another commotion at the end of the crowd, in the direction of the door leading into the atrium of the Department of Mysteries, drew her from that speculation. A flurry of muffled, shouted voices sounded off, and camera flashes flitted through the open door - Merlin, was the Daily Prophet still hurling itself into the midst of a hostile Ministry in the middle of a war? - and a few Aurors were nervously shuffling over. They fought a losing battle, and lose it they did. The final few bodies were physically flung aside to clear the way for the source of the ruckus.
"ALBUS SEVERUS POTTER!"
Ginny Potter stormed from the crowd as though hurtling on a premium broomstick. Multiple Aurors lunged to grab her and whiffed cleanly on thin air as she rushed forward. Rhysta's eyes happened to dart to Albus, and so she had plain view of his face paling starkly in the candlelight as he lurched to his feet. The ensuing scene almost made her laugh: the peripheral Aurors fled, one of them rolling his eyes as though she'd seen the entire scene before; one of the two interrogators likewise cleanly stepped aside to give her a free pass; the other turned to try to reason with Albus' mother and hardly got a single word out before she barreled past, completely ignoring him.
Which left only Albus and his father in her path. And Harry Potter cleared tried to step into his wife's way with placating hands. Rhysta more or less missed what came next, but the next thing she knew Ginny stood on Harry's opposite side as though she'd apparated clean right through him, where she seized Albus by the shirt and yanked him down to her height so that she could yell straight into his ear.
A howler would have done the job, but wouldn't have been nearly so amusing.
"Who the bloody hell do you think you are, gallivanting into the middle of a war like a thick moron? Do you have any idea what you've done, how much danger you've put yourself in, that you've put everyone in? I thought James was a handful because I'd get called up to the school every other month to hear he'd been hexing the clothes off of portrait figures, but IN ALL HIS YEARS OF SCREWING OFF HE NEVER MARCHED INTO A WAR ZONE!"
Albus just took it. Perhaps he'd seen his brother on the receiving end enough times to know better. He held her eye, absorbing every word. Rhysta took notes.
His stoicism didn't help him. His mother scoffed, a furious cackle. "What, too proud of yourself to say anything? Do you know that your hand on your grandmother's clock swung past mortal peril and back again this evening? You just wait until she gets her hands on you! And you wait until you hear what she says to me about letting you in here! Bad enough already that I'm up the whole night pacing worrying about your father in this madness, only for you to go off gallivanting after him like he's some bloody role model!"
She found a new target, and pivoted hard on Albus' father. Harry Potter, who had been in the process of laying his hands on his wife's arms in an attempt to pry her away from their son, launched himself backwards defensively at the turn, unable to dodge the vicious finger thrown at his chest.
"And you, you brainless, reckless deathwisher! 'Slipped past our guard', did he? Doesn't matter that there's a damned hundred of you watching the Ministry night and day anymore, the troll-footed son that can't roll over in his sleep without announcing it to the entire house just tiptoed past you, did he? Aren't you just proud of him, hmmmm, that he can just march himself into mortal danger as a child the same way you and Ron did for seven fucking years?!"
Harry Potter clearly wanted to retort. Multiple times during his quite startling undressing at the hands of his wife had he parted his lips as if to snap a comeback. Each time he had failed to follow through. Ginny Potter paused for breath and gave him an opening.
And with a brief glance over her shoulder at Albus, Harry Potter very obviously made the identical, conscious decision to close his mouth and endure it in silence.
"Merlin," Scorpius cursed.
"I know," Rhysta whispered, in sheer glee.
"No, I meant-"
"Rhystara!"
Her joy vanished, swept away by dread. So enrapturing had been the entrance of Albus' mother that Rhysta had been entirely distracted from who followed the woman through the gap in the crowd, albeit at a much less frantic pace. Swallowing, she now turned to face the newcomers: the both of her parents, shock written across their faces as they stumbled up to her.
"Mum. Dad."
Her parents rarely shouted at her. She'd seen her father give her brother a few too many dressings-down that he didn't deserve in his time, but she could count on one hand the number of times in her life where either of them had raised their voices at her.
It seemed like a great opportunity for that tally to increment, if only spurred on by the raging energy of the senior Potter mother continuing to lambast her husband and son in the background. Rhysta even tensed up as her mother seized her by the arms. But the woman only glanced her up and down as if expecting to find mortal wounds, an expression of something which could only aptly be described as motherly concern on her face.
"Are you hurt?" She didn't get the chance to answer. Her mother dragged her into an embrace, cramming Rhysta's temple against a particular bony collarbone as if to exacerbate the discomfort of the moment. "Oh, Rhysta, we were scared half to death. When they said you were in the Ministry…"
"'M fine, Mum…"
"Such horrid stories coming out of here, I was so worried…"
"You're killing her, Astoria," her father mentioned from behind the wall of obstruction crushing her.
Blessedly, she was released, only to find herself once more at arm's length from her now glowering mother. "What on earth were you doing here? How did you get here? What happened? Did they hurt you? Did you hurt them?"
Rhysta's head buzzed, weighed down by the emotion of the night. Her mother was still in a nightdress, a robe and coat pulled over the top. Her father was empty of the sudden fervor displayed by his wife, looking completely relieved and resigned and hopelessly exhausted, as though he hadn't slept in days. He was fully dressed. She only then realized that he was gripping her by the shoulder, too, a grip both desperate and grateful. They held her in time, eyes bearing completely naked souls, regarding her in a manner freed from expectation that she had not received from them in a long time. Their basest reaction, an instinct between parents and child, still alive after so long.
She had shed more than enough tears for one night, so she refrained from an emotional scene, but tender feelings still inspired her to reach and take one of each parent's hands in both of hers, and squeeze them tight. "I'm okay, really."
"How can you say that, look at you?" Her mother picked at her hair, matted and greasy, brushing it back from her forehead to inspect what must have been bruises from some time in the maelstrom. "Oh, my love… we got an owl from the school only a few hours ago saying they couldn't find you, and then an owl just now that you were in the Ministry. We were so afraid." Astoria Malfoy's gaze slipped to her son, who hovered awkwardly over Rhysta's shoulder. "And you, we just got the owl that they found you locked in a broom closet! What on earth do you think you were doing in there, you fool? In the Ministry!"
Astoria lunged for Scorpius, too, but rather than throw hands at his arms, she dragged him into the embrace as well, leaving him looking quite sheepishly over her shoulder at their father as a sob escaped their mother. Scorpius attempted to dislodge her, unsuccessfully. "We're both fine, Mum."
"What are you doing, bringing her here?" their mother demanded as she withdrew. "A foolish thing, you two did, I can't believe you! Do you have any idea what happened in this place? My father would've strung me up by the ankles in the basement for weeks if I ever tried to pull something like this!"
"Why do you assume it was me that dragged her here?" Scorpius said, rubbing the back of his neck in a pointed attempt to avoid the glare of their father.
"What?" their mother snapped, whirling around in confusion. Next to her, Rhysta watched her father's eyes drift over towards the commotion and harden ever so slightly.
"It's nobody's fault," Rhysta blurted quickly, endeavoring successfully to draw her parents' attention back to her. "Scorpius didn't do anything. He was just following me here."
"What? You came on your own? Were you trying to get killed? Have you been reading the papers? There's been a coup going on here for the last month on!"
She sighed. "I know, Mum, that's not-"
"People have been dying, Rhysta, do you understand? It feels exactly like it felt back in the last war, do you understand?"
"Yeah, probably more than you," Rhysta tried, but her mother took no notice.
"This isn't the old days, students can't just go running around thinking they're heroes and storming into trouble left and right and hoping they'll be fine knowing fifth-year hexes! You should know better, you know what happened to your father back in those days-"
Her father laid a hand on her mother's arm, firmly. Draco Malfoy rarely interrupted his wife, but the hard look on his face, directed variably between Rhysta and Scorpius, ground her to a halt with a soft gasp. "What happened?"
"She was taken captive by the insurrectionists."
The entire Malfoy family pivoted as Harry Potter arrived, falling into line as if it were just another greeting on just another excursion, the pampered pureblood family slapping on masks to greet the outsiders. The Auror, Albus' father, the Boy Who Lived turned into an exhausted-looking father, nodded in greeting as he walked up. Her father squared up across from him, imperceptibly taking a sidestep in front of her mother - almost in front of her - and adopting a position of equals opposite the Auror.
Harry Potter lowered his head minimally in acknowledgment. "They kidnapped her off of the Hogwarts grounds early this morning, and took her directly here. They must've used one of the tunneling passages they've been digging in, one we haven't found yet, because we never saw them bring her in."
Her father swung to glare at her. "They took you off the Hogwarts grounds?"
Swallowing, she nodded.
Draco swung back to his schoolboy counterpart. "And they just slipped in under your nose, Potter? Do the Aurors have any security left to them, or are we all just waiting to be whisked off to the Ministry to be obliviated and branded?"
Harry Potter glanced off to one side. Rhysta had mastered that move when dealing with Albus in fifth year Potions: tricks to avoid an insatiable urge to roll one's eyes. "There was a reason we were losing the war up until tonight, Draco. They had tools we never understood. We were always a step behind."
"Up until tonight?" her father repeated.
"Yes," Harry Potter answered. He hesitated.
Rhysta lunged for the opening. She remembered the shadows of the figures dancing between the Forbidden Forest trees, their empty stances, their silent masks. "Is that what's been happening? They've been wiping people's memories? That's how they've been recruiting?"
Her mother leveled a sharp glare at her father, who shifted his feet uncomfortably as he glanced away. Harry Potter paused gravely and then answered, "We don't know. We don't know how they've been recruiting. There's no pattern. There have been many attacks, but they're never the same. Sometimes the survivors… when there were survivors…" The gravity of his words landed appropriately. "...joined their cause. Sometimes not. A lot of people we thought were good people went over, as well."
"And they came back?" Rhysta pressed, ignoring a look of warning from her father. "They came back and fought as if they had no idea what they were doing? Just freakishly powerful? Maybe they didn't need wands to attack?"
The Head Auror regarded her very carefully. "What we know… is that a source of great power had embedded itself in the Ministry, and that it was building an army through means that we could neither track nor explain."
"And they came all the way to Hogwarts to take her prisoner?" her father snapped in disbelief.
Rhysta's eyes must have widened. Harry Potter glanced between her and her father, lingered a moment on her, and then noticeably meandered away from the familial commotion he had been fortunate enough to escape. "We're still working to ascertain that."
"They just waltzed through the ground gates," Draco snarled, "marched into the castle, dragged her out of bed, and nobody bloody noticed until twelve hours later? And you don't even know why they targeted my daughter, of all the people in the castle, to throw into a dungeon in the dark until what-" Her father's glare swung between Scorpius and Albus. "-two eighteen-year-old boys decided to come do what you haven't been able to do for months?"
As though enduring an encounter had many times before, Harry Potter steadied himself with a tight breath and said, "What's important, Draco, is that she's safe. Scorpius is safe. They're both safe, and whatever they managed to do - which so far none of them have been able to explain to us, or to each other - it broke the spell."
"What spell?"
"Whatever had been holding the army together." Albus' father glanced at his watch. "About an hour ago, every flare we'd been watching just died. Every gate opened. Every defense abandoned. They all started stumbling out, the insurrectionists. The ones that we have in custody shook themselves and almost seemed to wake up, like they'd been asleep for years. They had no memory of anything they'd done. When we came in and got down here we found the three of them all alone. Whatever they did, Draco, they saved us all."
Her father chewed on that one for a while. They all did, her mother's grip on her arm tightening as the words landed. Scorpius shuffled his feet awkwardly, no doubt uncomfortable to be given credit for having gotten himself locked in with the soaps and buckets. Rhysta wished that she could catch a glimpse of Albus, but his father blocked the way and his mother had finally stopped hollering to mark his position. She waited in patience, instead, fully aware that it would take time for the impact of what had occurred to fully register with her.
It took measured restraint for her father to level his voice. "I wouldn't believe that possible."
She thought it was a challenge. On the other hand and to her very great surprise, Albus' father's mask cracked, baring a hint of a grin. "If you hadn't seen it all before?"
Her father turned away crossly, finding her gaze. His eyes were hard, unusually intense. Rhysta had never considered Draco Malfoy to be a particularly strong man, and certainly not a courageous one. The rare emotion in his eyes struck a chord she hadn't remembered since the days when he'd swept her up in his arms and twirled her little body around his shoulders. She found that she had missed it a great deal.
She also found herself reaching out and taking his hand. "It's true, Dad. He did it."
"Who did it?" her father demanded.
"Albus," Scorpius answered for her.
Draco's stern gaze found his son. "And you?"
"Mostly him." Rhysta bit her lip hard to keep from smirking.
"Then what happened?"
Rhysta squeezed his hand in a silent plea. Either Harry Potter noticed her trepidation or he was well aware that no one had any desire to recount anything of the last few hours anytime soon, for he saved her the need to beg him off. "There will be plenty of time for explanations, Draco. For now, we're content that they're not in any danger because of anything in the Ministry. They're safe, and so are we all. Anything they can tell us can wait until the morning." The auror himself delivered a stern glance her way as if to convey that they would eventually need answers, but Rhysta only wanly smiled her gratitude in response. "For now, let's let them get some rest."
"You're really fine?" Astoria Malfoy demanded, taking Rhysta's face in her hands again and bumping her father out of the way to fret over her. "We should see you to healers. St Mungo's, of course, well, hmmmm… perhaps not the best of places at the moment, but Daphne knows a fellow, doesn't she, dear-"
Her father, surprising her again, laid a hand on her mother's arm and drew her away measuredly. "Potter's right, darling." He brushed some hair off of Rhysta's forehead, smiling gently. "They've been through enough for one night." He drew her close to plant a light kiss against her temple, sighing shakily into the embrace. "We're just glad you're both okay."
It was the most normal family moment they had experienced, she thought, perhaps since the days before Scorpius had preceded her off to Hogwarts. Public displays of affection were very un-Malfoy-like, especially to be said of her father, yet here they were, just about when she and her brother were old enough to embark into adulthood on their own. Out of the most bizarre, violent circumstances and all the emotion that had come with it, somehow it had delivered to them this displaced moment of peace. Rhysta found herself smiling under the cover of her parents' hug, where no one could see her; after all, if public displays of affection were out of bounds for them, letting someone else see that you were enjoying them was quite base, indeed. One couldn't forgo all proprieties.
"MALFOY!"
And just like a curse hitting class, they shattered apart in alarm, each of them, she was sure, expecting to be on the receiving end of the roar.
Most of them need not have worried. As if the night needed any more drama, Rhysta hardly had an opportunity to leap out of the path of the next swirling disaster before a mass of bushy red hair swathed in bedclothes hurtled past her. She loosely heard Scorpius open his mouth to offer a quite petrified greeting before Rose reached him.
And promptly decked him with a single right hook to the jaw.
Things turned a slight bit wild after that. Scorpius landed on his back, for a moment looking more shocked than anything else. Then he clapped a hand to the place where Rose had punched him, whimpering. Rhysta's parents had leaped back a step, and could only stare. Her father, in particular, looked as though he were staring his own ghost in the face. Cowering on the ground, one pathetic hand raised up at the furious witch looming over him, Scorpius mumbled, "Wha' you do tha' for?"
Rose swung again, and Scorpius dodged. Then there came a shocked squeal of "Rose Granger Weasley!" as a witch Rhysta vaguely recognized from King's Cross platforms past hurtled into the mix, trying quite unsuccessfully to haul Rose clear of the melee. Ambling after her came the Auror who had offered her his jacket and a hot cocoa - a man she realized that she had met the day she had gone to interview for her Animagus license. Unlike his frantic wife, Ronald Weasley wore an expression verging on gleeful as he sauntered up almost reluctantly. He rolled his eyes with a sigh and then meandered in to help his wife detach the human bludger of his daughter from the howling sack of most likely deserved pain that was her brother. The snarled obscenities - quite vicious from a Head Girl, Rhysta had to admit - suggested that neither he nor Albus had elected to inform Rose of their intentions, and that if Scorpius didn't place a nominal number of bodies in between himself and her then he would be informing just how much she approved of that decision for the rest of the night. With her fists.
"A simple hex would've sufficed," Rhysta found herself muttering, utterly astounded.
"That's the difference between Slytherins and Gryffindors," her father growled next to her, and then offered a sigh to rival Weasley's before he embarked to wade into the mix. Rhysta broke into giggles before she could help herself.
And that fruckus became the scene of the evening, and it seemed like everyone was fine leaving it as such, after everything else that had happened. Removed from half of the spotlight at last, Rhysta drifted away from the scene, having a moment to herself to catch her breath and stuff her emotions away for a different day. Fatigue had been wearing her down slowly ever since she'd calmed down enough to loosen her grip on Albus when they'd been separated, but now it sank into her heavier, making her yearn for a four-poster in, of all places, Gryffindor Tower. That place wasn't as bad as she'd thought it was, in the end…
Her daydreams, in her weariness, momentarily distracted her from her surroundings, which was how she found herself helpless in the path of the entire Potter Family as it dislodged itself, parents and son, from the mess now surrounding Scorpius and his murderous girlfriend. Rhysta froze as though stunned, grateful at first that Ginny Potter was far too busy scolding the others to notice her at first.
But from the casually-steered hand guiding his son's path, Harry Potter was clearly aware of her presence. Judging from the sudden widening of eyes when Albus looked up and found her standing a pace in front of him, he had been the only one.
"And if you think this has been bad, just wait until your grandmother gets ahold of you…" His mother teetered off and leaned back in surprise when she nearly ran straight over Rhysta.
It suddenly occurred to Rhysta exactly what was happening. These were his parents. She was meeting his parents. She was barefoot, covered in dirt to the knee, wearing an oversized, herb-smelling jacket slung over a days-old nightdress, hair, face, and hands absolutely filthy. And she was meeting his parents. Set aside that she'd been introduced to his father before; he clearly wasn't the one she needed to be worried about.
"Oh. Erm."
The change in expression from when she glared at her son to when softened eyes fell on Rhysta's face was astounding. The witch took one look at her, then at her hair. Then at her wide-eyed, swallowing son. Then over their shoulders at the skirmish between families Malfoy and Weasley. Then she turned back to Rhysta.
And smirked. "Ah."
Say something, Rhysta begged herself. Your name. It's nice to meet you.
Ginny Potter, without needing a word, reached out and rubbed her arm through the jacket. "Rough night?"
Rhysta struggled not to gape. Her horror turned inward. Say something!
Before she could, the woman glanced back at her son with a sigh. "All right. I'm not finished with you. You can count yourself lucky it was all for a good cause."
Albus' jaw stiffened. From experience, Rhysta knew that he wanted quite badly to snap a retort. Dealing with her had taught him how to hold it in. Despite herself, the sight almost made her giggle.
His mother grinned and nodded to her husband. In silent communication, the two stepped around their son. Rhysta felt a light, reassuring squeeze on her arm before they withdrew. His mother chuckled as they stepped away.
"What?" his father asked.
Ginny Potter's laughter grew. "Oh, the parallels."
Albus' father scoffed. "I did it when I was twelve."
And whatever that meant, it didn't really matter. Three steps later and the ever-present din of the other reunion in the room drowned out that conversation. Rhysta stopped listening anyway. Albus was in front of her now. And in a room with what must have been dozens of people, they were suddenly alone.
It was incredible how things shifted depending on perspective. Depending on the moment. Depending on how long you've have to simmer in your emotions. For what seemed like the better part of an hour Rhysta had sat and needed him and ached to touch him and thought of a million things to say, a million questions to demand he answer. There had been relief, there had been joy, there had been fury, there had been a countless array of feelings splintered across the spectrum. She had wanted to shout, laugh, hurt, and hug him all at once.
She had wanted him to know how deeply he had cut her, that he could so easily leave her to the world by his own volition, no matter the goodness behind his intention - those were righteous thoughts, and she could give a single damn about righteousness when it came to his life. She had concocted a thousand schemes in her head of ways to retaliate, clever plots to wear him down by a thousand subtle hexes, slowly prod him with his own brainlessness until he was subdued to an appropriately repentant cauldron of goo that would never so easily walk into danger for her again. The scheming had almost lessened the pain of separation; the inevitable knowledge that she would make sure that he understood what he had done to her, what would have become of her, and that being willing to accept that would probably leave a scar even though on the outside they were both walking away from it unscathed.
In those moments, inflicting that pain in knowledge and guilt had felt like the most important thing in the world, when she had been unable to speak to him, unable to listen to him, unable to be with him.
Now was different. He stood in front of her, his exhausted expression blank, his raging eyes stuffed to the brim with their own hurt and relief. The fire that had burned her before didn't seem as important. The rage, the torment, the need… they melted away, as easily as she could reach and brush the back of his hand with her fingertips.
She watched him swallow, several times. Empty of what to say. Perhaps he'd been drawing up similar plans the entire time.
With a heavy breath, she steadied herself. "If you ever do that again, I'll kill you."
He could have laughed. Under normal circumstances, he would've. This time, he just held her gaze and nodded very slowly.
The second time, her voice emerged far softer. And more vulnerable than she intended. "Don't ever leave me again."
The plea, rather than the threat, softened his expression. Very carefully, nervously - as though he didn't know what to expect - he offered his hand.
She took it immediately, a sigh of profound emotion escaping her as their fingers threaded together. It was enough, she realized, to chase away demons that had been hounding her for months, since dark corridors and burning storms. And quite enough, as she looked him in the eye and held onto her heart for dear life, to release everything that had been hurtling around her mind.
They two stood like that, silently, holding hands, for an amount of time that escaped her, lost to the world, lost to everything but each other, enjoying conversations without words that were altogether nonsensical and entirely meaningful, and most importantly theirs and theirs alone. It was the type of moment that not even the strongest magic could disrupt; the type of connection strung invisibly between them that the strongest curse could never break. The thing that deflects killing curses, the feeling that heals as much as it aches. Altogether nonsensical.
And altogether theirs.
They stood like that in peace, and they stood like that until a commotion of an entirely different sort yanked them back into the present. A frantic flurry of gasps rose from the center of attention, tearing Rhysta's eyes away from Albus at last.
In the midst of a crowd, of whom Rhysta only recognized the assembled parents Rhysta, Rose stood beaming, her anger somehow evaporated, arms tightly threaded around one of Scorpius' as he stood stock still at her side, his face providing the implication that he was staring down his own death. Whatever Rose's last words, they had utterly silenced the crowd. The mothers at hand wore entirely opposite expressions: Astoria Malfoy teetered on her feet, blinking rapidly as though digesting what she'd heard without much success; Rose's mother, on the other hand, had one hand clapped to her mouth in obvious restraint, her eyes gleaming with poorly-concealed glee.
But the fathers wore the same expression. Both Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley, their faces' having respectively adopted the colors of their hair, stood absolutely rigid opposite each other, fists flexing rapidly at their sides. The stark display of shock with which they regard their respective children could only be described as betrayal.
Albus dropped Rhysta's hand as though branded by fire.
When she leveled an upset glare at him, he raised his hands in innocence and gestured. "I just don't think tonight's a good night for your dad to find out about us, eh?"