I whip around, my pulse now a staccato in my ears.

Avery Gaunt stands in the doorway behind me. An older man I've never met is with him. He's dark-haired, dark-eyed, clean-shaven and looks to be in his early fifties. I guess him to be the new Lord Gaunt; although Avery's significantly more blessed in the looks department, they share the same nose and jaw line.

Avery steps into the room. "You know, this is my first time in a muggle residence, and I already have so many questions. Why, for example, do they keep frozen food sealed in a container in the kitchen? I'm almost starting to regret not having taken Muggle Studies…"

I whip out my wand and move to put myself in between them and my parents, panic miraculously turning into aggression. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Isn't it obvious? We're here to celebrate." He laughs malevolently. "Didn't McGonagall give you our message?"

"This isn't funny, Gaunt. Get out. Reverse whatever you did to my parents and get out!"

The older wizard laughs too. He aims his wand over my shoulder. "Filthy Mudblood thinks she can give us orders. Don't you know who I am? Know what I can do to your filthy muggle parents?"

"Don't be crude, Uncle," says Avery, his dark eyes flashing with humour. "We must be civilised. After all, it's not like we're muggles."

His uncle cackles appreciatively and moves forward.

I take a step back. "Try anything and you'll be on your back faster than you can say Merlin marries muggles."

"You won't," Lord Gaunt says confidently. "You wouldn't dare. You're still underage. You've got the Trace on you, and they'll break your wand if you break the law." He pauses to scowl. "And Merlin never married no muggle."

"The Trace picks up on any magical activity performed in my vicinity," I say. "You won't perform magic either. You won't risk the Ministry sending someone here to check on me."

Lord Gaunt squints like he's trying to work out the problem. Beside him, Avery sighs exasperatedly. "I forgot how much of a know-it-all you are," he laments. He stashes his wand in his robe. "You really irritate me, you know."

"Good," I snarl. "Now get out."

He raises his empty hands, palms out. "Alright we'll go. But first we just want to talk."

"What-" His uncle begins to protest, but Avery turns and pins him with a look, spitting out something that sounds distinctly snake-like. The older wizard lowers his wand, looking surly.

"What was that?" I demand. My wand-hand shakes. "What did you say? What kind of language was that?"

Avery approaches slowly, eyes on mine. "Just calm down, all right? No one's doing magic here. No one's threatening anyone. You see?" He waves with both hands, exaggerating how wand-less he is. "Your parents are fine. You're fine." He's coming closer, cajoling, more tractable than I've ever seen him. "It's all right. We just want to-" In a flash he's grabbed my wand, pulling it right out of my sweating hand.

I let slip an angered yell and lunge frantically for it, but he dances out of the way. "Ah ah," he singsongs, holding my wand out of reach while his uncle cackles madly and moves towards my parents, his own wand raised again.

I vacillate, unsure whether to go for my wand or block the elder Gaunt from approaching the sofa.

I stay where I am, my hands curling into fists at my side. "Fine," I say. My voice wavers from the adrenaline. "Cast a spell. Alert the Ministry. I hope they send an Auror to investigate."

"First of all," says Avery, twirling my wand triumphantly, "The Trace is not in effect during the school year. You'd have known that if you weren't such a goody-two-shoes. Never tried to do magic outside of school, have you?" He laughs at the twisting expressions of horror and self-reproach on my face.

His uncle snorts and looks around as if afraid the walls might give him Hepatitis. "Enough gloating, Avery," he snaps. "Let's get this done so we can get out of this filthy place."

"You won't do anything," I say, like I can make it true just by saying it. "You won't do anything!"

Avery flicks my wand. "Vulnus." There is a flash of bright light, a streak of white heat travels past my cheek, and I whip around with another cry.

A long diagonal red line has appeared on mum's face, passing from her right temple through her right eye, nose, and mouth, down to her chin. A heartbeat later, bright red blood starts pouring from the long cut. But she sits unmoving, staring with her empty stare as the blood collects in her eye.

This time I scream a real scream. I leap forward and use my body to block my parents, arms outstretched. "Stop, stop!"

"I'll be the only one giving instructions," says Avery. He catches the glare his uncle throws him and shrugs. "My plan, my rules. Now, listen very carefully. We won't harm the muggles so long as you choose to do as told."

"Okay! Okay, I will. Don't- don't hurt them anymore."

The Gaunts grin in tandem, a disconcerting sight.

"Perfect," Avery exclaims happily. He indicates the open doorway. "Shall we begin? We don't have time to waste, we're already cutting it close." He laughs again and waves his wand. "Get it? Cutting-"

"I- What about my mum? You have to heal-" My panicked words become a ringing scream as Avery sends another cutting hex whizzing under my arm to open a line in my father's abdomen.

"Shut up and move, girl," growls Lord Gaunt, gesturing with his wand.

I stumble after him into the hallway and then into the kitchen, which they've turned into a potions lab. It's stiflingly hot and illuminated by balls of floating lights. A black portable cauldron sits on a bed of magma-red coals. A long silver stirrer clinks against its inner rim as it moves the thick liquid in languid circles.

I take in the vials of biological material sitting in a rack on the kitchen counter; dark blood and dark hair and clear nail clippings, the open tome beside it with ear-marked pages, the sheathed silver dagger, the wooden goblet, and the stoppered bottles of blood replenishers.

And I realise that I've been afraid all this time that one of them meant to marry me. But this setup looks like preparations for complex blood magic. More accurately to this context, it looks like preparations for blood magic meant to graft someone into a family line. It's better than marriage, but only marginally so.

Avery flips through the tome while Lord Gaunt keeps his wand trained on me. He signals for me to get down on the floor.

"Why would you do this?" ask as I sit down cross-legged on the cold tiles. "Why would you want me in your family? You hate muggle-borns!"

"I don't want you in my family," the elder Gaunt spits out. "You'd be a disgrace to our family name. Do you know how many would kill to have our ancestry? Do you know how many purebloods would kill to be in your place? We've never had to graft an outsider into our family in all these centuries. We should never have to. The shame! The shame of-"

"Uncle, we need dittany. Could you kindly?" Avery turns and motions lazily with one long-fingered hand. Lord Gaunt sneers and disapparates, and when he's gone, Avery sighs and leans against the counter, watching me with hard eyes. "Uncle gets worked up easily. Have to head him off early, or we'll be listening to him rant for the next hour."

I scan him. My eyes must look as hard and hateful to him. "No longer having to pretend to be a model student must be very freeing for you," I say.

He laughs and twirls my wand. "Oh, yes."

"So, you don't want me in your family, from what I gather," I say dryly. "I don't want to be in yours either. Why are you going through with this? Is someone forcing you to? Maybe we can work together-"

"Don't waste your breath." Avery's lip curls, and it's his turn to scan me, dark eyes running dispassionately down my seated form. "You're very desirable, apparently. The whys escape me. I've always found you to be an unoriginal, unimaginative, commonplace mudblood tryhard. But rich Alpha males appear to have proclivities different than the rest of us, and I'll take real power and real wealth over meaningless pureblood drivel any day."

He picks up the silver dagger. Its sheath dissolves to expose metal and sharp edges. He continues to monologue while I stare in apprehension and growing fear. "Convincing my uncle what was best for us was difficult. Convincing my grandfather, impossible. Sure, he was curious enough to meet you along with the other Lords. But his pride made him inflexible…" He looks at his handsome reflection in the dagger and smiles.

"You killed him," I whisper. "You killed your own grandfather. Just to- what? Just to adopt and then sell me?"

"To the highest bidder." He's still smiling. His uncle reappears with a pop, holding a cluster of dittany.

"Thanks, Uncle!" Avery says brightly, taking the dittany from him and placing it on the kitchen counter. "Get her ready. It's time. Chop chop." He makes chopping motions with the dagger and they both cackle.

Lord Gaunt waves his wand, immobilising me. "Petrificus Totalus." Then he bends down and rearranges my arms so that my hands rest on my knees, wrists turned up. Avery hands him the naked dagger and shows him where to make the cuts, and then I'm watching helplessly as the deadly edge bites into my skin and opens my arteries. Pain makes its home in my body while warm blood spill down my wrists and into my fingers and the creases of my knees.

Lord Gaunt sticks his face in mine. "We'll try not to bleed you to death. You are our golden goose, after all."

They move off to the cauldron. Lord Gaunt hands the dagger to Avery who helps him open his wrists over the potion. He bleeds freely into the simmering liquid all the while swearing with gritted teeth. Avery watches the potion, looking for signs of change, and when he's satisfied, seals his uncle's wounds and stops the flow. Then he drops the dagger into the potion. It makes a sizzling sound, and the concoction flares with bright green light.

"Perfect," Avery declares. They sit down cross-legged on the floor near the cauldron.

Lord Gaunt points with his wand at the bed of glowing coals. "Why are you using embers?"

"Because it emits a far more consistent heat. Don't touch it. You know, there's no harm in having them appraised and catalogued, even if…"

"Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot. Why would I touch it?" Lord Gaunt switches into hissing and spitting, like he's trying to swear but his mouth won't let him.

His nephew is unfazed; he responds in kind. It sounds like I'm in a snake hole.

Lord Gaunt shakes his head. "I don't need some wet behind the ears cursebreaker dying in our vault. If you want to do it yourself, go. It's open to you, you don't need me. And while you're there…" He switches back into angry incomprehensible rasping.

They talk like that while they wait, jumping between strange hisses and normal speech as quickly as they jump topics. I transfer my attention to the stirrer clinking hypnotically in the cauldron and try to calm myself by counting each slow counter-clockwise round: One, two, three…

"…Well? So what if he reneges? The list is long. But he won't anyway. He's being pressured by his Lord Father…"

"…arrowroot powder and doxy saliva, I'm thinking. If you mix it into the base potion, it really kills that brussels sprouts smell, and, yeah, I know it's all aesthetic, but…"

…thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven…

"… and a career there is pointless, the Malfoys practically own the Ministry, why…"

I'm beginning to feel dizzy. My heart thumps with rapidly increasing speed in its cavity. The fabric of my robes knee-down is soaked through, and the metallic smell of blood hangs around me.

…forty-two, forty-three…

Suddenly, there is a loud ding like an oven timer going off. Moving quickly, Avery gets up, lifts the rack of vials containing blood and hair and nails off the counter and tips the contents of each vial successively into the blazing potion. "This is Grandfather's hair," he says, at the fifth vial. He turns his head in my direction and winks. "Took it off his corpse myself."

"Don't talk about the deceased like that," Lord Gaunt growls. "He's your ancestor. Show some respect. Your mother never taught you proper pietas. If I had raised you, you-"

"Here, Uncle." Avery hands him one of the bottles of blood replenishers. "Drink this. You look like you need it." Then he turns to me and winks again.

All the vials have now been emptied into the cauldron and it looks like they're just waiting for the brew to finish. I continue to count the rounds the stirrer makes.

Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine…

"She looks pale," the elder Gaunt comments, fixing me with a concerned eye. He spits out something in that strange hissing language. Avery responds with more hissing, before switching abruptly back to English. "Besides, I did communicate to him the risks involved," he says with a shrug. "He wants her blood as pure as possible. I told him we'll have it so pure the sorting hat will think she's Slytherin's heir. Ha ha ha."

And seventy-four, and seventy-five, and who? Who wants my blood as pure as possible?

Another ding vibrates loudly through the air. Avery collects some potion in the wooden goblet while his uncle heals my wrists and lifts the body-bind curse. I sway and slump and almost collapse but am dragged upright by Lord Gaunt who has me by a fistful of robes.

Who wants my blood as pure as possible?

An image of a handsome wizard with pale blonde hair and stern grey eyes enters my mind. He holds a live metal dragon and he smiles encouragingly at me. Just feed it our blood...

I shake my head. No, no, that's not it. That's- "That's the man that was going to help me," I mumble woozily. "He's good, he's nice. It's his cousin. He's the bad one…"

"What?" says Lord Gaunt loudly. "What did you say?"

The blonde wizard in my memory is replaced by a dark haired, dark eyed one, face so close to mine, closer in memory. When do you turn seventeen? he asks. Families like mine only marry purebloods… Behind him, on a shelf in that apothecary, there had been a beaker full of assorted silver stirrers. I remember that. I remember shifting my attention between Lestrange's oily gaze and that collection of stirrers.

I stare at the stirrer I'm supposed to be counting now. "Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-"

Avery comes close. "She's probably confused. Gross blood loss will do that. I've seen it happen many times." The goblet is pushed under my nose. "Old blood out, new blood in. Bottoms up, Granger!"

I drink. It tastes like blood. Not that I'm intimately familiar with the taste of blood, but it certainly smells like blood and it tastes of rust and salt. Then, Lord Gaunt helpfully hands me a bottle of blood replenisher and I chug that down too.

He leans back on his elbows while his nephew cleans up behind him. "How long did you say it should take?" he calls, as he watches me greedily emptying a second bottle.

"Mm, five to ten minutes," Avery answers. All around I hear the whoosh of magic and the clinking of tools being tidied.

I clumsily set the empty bottle down on to the floor and put my head in my hands. The blood is rushing straight into my face and brain, but I'm still drowsy and I think I may fall asleep sitting up like this.

It seems that I do fall asleep, because I'm awoken by Lord Gaunt's angry voice. "It's been at least twenty minutes! We're almost out of time!"

The cool has leaked slightly out of Avery's voice. "It's certainly been a while. Let's have a look at her." Someone taps on my arm. "Hey. Wake up."

I look up blearily, only to find myself almost eyeball to eyeball with Lord Gaunt. I yell and scoot backwards, my feet sliding and slipping in the puddle of blood.

"It didn't work," he spits. "She hasn't changed at all! She looks like her filthy mudblood self. You said you could do it, Avery. You said this would work!"

I pat my face with bloody hands. "How would you know it hasn't worked?" I ask. "What- what's supposed to happen?"

Lord Gaunt's mouth twists into a sneer. He's not even looking at me anymore. He's looking off to the side as though the sight of me offends him. "Try not to open your mouth in proper wizarding society, will you? You'll make your dirty heritage obvious."

"I brewed it accurately, down to the last gram of salt," Avery hisses. He summons his tome over and flips impatiently through it until he finds the place he's looking for. His finger moves down the page. He turns to the next one and reads that too. "The recipe is fine. Even he's looked through it. He agreed with my proposed amendments. He approved everything!"

"Lestrange is an idiot," I offer. Actually, I don't know that he is. But it feels good to insult him.

I'm politely ignored. Lord Gaunt paces angrily. Avery slams the tome shut. "Well at least it didn't kill her," he muses to himself. "What went wrong then?"

"It must be her dirty blood," says Lord Gaunt decisively. "We didn't bleed her enough. Never mind. We have time to attempt a second brew. We'll use the traditional recipe, it worked just fine with you. I don't know why you have to constantly re-invent the wheel, Avery. If you prepare the ingredients fast enough, we can-"

"No." Avery looks chagrined. "No, we don't. I cleared the base potion."

"You- you-" His uncle looks positively enraged. "I've always said your over-confidence will one day come to bite you in the-" He stops talking, distracted by my sudden bout of laughing. The two wizards turn to look at me.

I'm really laughing. I'm laughing full-body laughs. The relief adds a slightly crazed flavour to my belly-shaking guffaws. "Oh, that was funny," I say, wiping beads of laughter from the corners of my eyes. "The two of you quarrelling, just- Oh, it's too funny. You won't believe how scared I was until then. Well, you yourself said it: It's obviously too late to attempt another brew. I'll be seventeen in less than an hour. So, why don't we all just-"

The two recoil, identical dark eyes widening.

"You're-" stutters the older Gaunt. "Y-you're… you're…"

I stop mocking them, genuinely alarmed now. What could possibly have happened to make my assaulters react like that? Nothing good, that's what!

"What? I'm what?" I'm imagining spell damage or potion damage; I'm imagining hair sprouting out of my face.

Even Avery is gaping wordlessly.

"What?" I wail, patting my face again. It doesn't feel like anything has changed, so- "What is it?"

Lord Gaunt shakes his head slightly. "You're- you're speaking parseltongue!"

Now I'm confused. "I'm what?"

"You're speaking parseltongue. Our family language."

"No, I'm not!" I look at them, at their partly affronted, partly awed expressions. They look far too shocked to be lying to me, but I can hear that I'm speaking English.

Avery walks around me. "No other change," he observes. "Just the Parseltongue then. He'll accept this, you think?"

"Accept this?" Lord Gaunt chokes out. "Accept a Parselmouth bride? Accept the possibility that she might pass Parseltongue down to his children? Their line has never seen a single Parselmouth, not one! He'll owe me more than-"

"I'm not marrying anyone!" I exclaim angrily. I scramble up to a stand and sway woozily again. "I'm not marrying anyone!"

Lord Gaunt folds his arms. "You're a legitimate pureblood daughter of House Gaunt now. You'll do your duty and marry a pureblood and bring honour to us. Now go and clean yourself up and take care of your business. I have a lot of owls to send, I don't have time to stay here and drill sense into you. You'll return to school tomorrow and await our instructions. And don't even think about running away. You'll have appeared on our family wall by now. You're trackable. And if you give us any problems-" He points in the direction of the living room. "-then the next time you come back here, it will be to an empty house!"

He disapparates.

Avery shakes his head. "I suppose it wasn't the worst, as far as rants go. He really can go for an hour. You should have heard him when-"

"I'm not a part of your family," I say as clearly as I can. My voice shakes. "No amount of blood magic can change that."

"I could believe that if you weren't right now hissing at me like a viper." He indicates the cluster of dittany still sitting on the kitchen counter. My wand is beside it. "Happy Birthday, cousin."

He disapparates, and I walk automatically to the counter and pick up my wand. My brain feels like cotton wool. I pick up the dittany, getting blood all over the velvety leaves, and turn around. There's a dark puddle of blood where I was seated, reflecting the light thrown out by the floating globes. There's really a lot of it, and I've tracked some around the kitchen.

I'm still very nauseous, but I wave my wand and begin cleaning up; I vanish the blood off the tiles, sterilise all the surfaces, and clean my robes. I wash the dittany in the sink and clean that again.

Then, directing the floating lights to follow me, I move through the dark hallway and into the living room. My parents are in the same seated position on the couch. They've stopped bleeding, but half of mum's face is now red and there's also blood on their clothes and on the seat and carpet.

Hands shaking, I siphon the blood from their cuts and clean them. The dittany I crush and smear over their wounds. Then I heal them and fix what I can fix. Mum's right eye looks irritated, but I don't dare do any more than apply dittany and heal the cut.

When that's all done, I slump onto the carpet in front of them, resting my forehead on the low table. Even after casting multiple scent removal charms, the metallic smell of my own blood still pollutes the air around me.

I can't cry. I want to, but I can't. And I don't even know what to do with my parents. I can't leave them like this, but if I cast a counter-spell and revive them, how will I explain what's happened?

I need help. I need to get help. I can't return to Hogwarts until the morning, and I need help now. There's only one person I can think of powerful enough to help me against the combined machinations of the Gaunts and the Lestranges.

I stand and make my way to the entrance hallway, pick up the portkey, cast a disillusionment spell on myself, and make for the Malfoys' offices.