My thanks have to go to Just Silver, without whom I never would have bothered finishing A Serpent Born, let alone beginning this. But first and foremost to Incitatus, who is not only Beta Reader extrodinaire, but created
Sanguine Gloria
Prelude
The walled garden was a tiny haven of tranquillity. The winter snows that blanketed the grounds of the school had not touched it. A perfect English summer was preserved inside, roses climbed the walls, a mass of conflicting colours harmonised by nature. Mixed in with the deep green of holly bushes jasmine flowers, starry white, waiting for the night air to release their perfume. Lavender ran riot through the borders; it was a haven for the senses.
Midsummer on a winters day.
And yet the calm still perfection had been violated. Violence, magical and mundane hung in the air like a cloud. Students and professors alike stood on the greensward watching the tableau that had appeared out of nowhere.
There were witnesses to Miriam Salezars unprecedented act of blood magic, Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter who saw the blade slice into her flesh, saw the air crackle as the fabric of reality was ripped asunder, confusion erupting as three Death Eaters apparated and let loose their spells disapparating instantly.
But one remained; his eyes fixed on the unconscious redhead, who's appearance out of nothingness had been equally strange, but opportune, for she had taken the bolt of magic meant for Miriam at the climax of her spell.
***
The garden was still. The presence of Death Eaters at Hogwarts must have been the first silencing shocker for those around him, and then the appearance of the redhead who was now lying like something dead at his feet. It was a good analogy; she should have been dead. She was dead. It was in the journals neatly recorded:
DECEASED
Yet she still looked exactly the same as the last time he had seen her.
Breathing was suddenly difficult behind the mask, he removed it and let it fall unnoticed to the grass; like any good chess player he knew when he was caught, now that the wards were back up apparition on the Hogwarts grounds would be impossible as would its opposite.
The figure at his feet remained the same though, as if hope and prayer would have changed that. He could see the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Despite aiming to kill she was still alive, back from the dead. He shook his head finally managing to tear his attention away from her prone figure, raising his gaze his eyes clashed with Dumbledore's.
The deep blue twinkle was still there shining out from behind the half moon spectacles, but within the calm gaze was a look of something like pity that the man didn't like, but right now he was finding concentration difficult.
He moved. His eyes scanned the faces of Draco and the woman beside him that could only be Amaris. Sirius Black, the Potter boy, and there kneeling half slumped on the floor, Miriam Salazar. The prophesied heir to Slytherin that he had been sent to stop.
He had failed.
Kneeling by her side, his robes liberally splashed with a dark shade that could only be blood was Severus. He glanced up too concerned about the dark haired girl cradled in his arms girl to worry about any sort of courtesy.
And the other girl lying at his feet…the one who had appeared from nowhere.
The sight of this one who he thought was gone was what had kept him here… he shook his head and knelt beside her and gently shifted her shoulder, the hair slipped over the backs of his fingers the action triggering a memory.
'You can't, its not right, you just can't do it!' his hand lashed out impacting on her cheek, the faint hiss of soft skin registering across his knuckles in a flash of sensation. He had misjudged the point of impact and caught her across the temple with his ring. She had been falling towards the floor before he could say anything, but he could move fast when the occasion warranted and had caught her, she had been too light in his arms, as if she had bird bones instead of the normal. Then he had placed her on the window seat and left her, letting her hair brush over his hands as he put her down and spending the entire afternoon trying to forget the sensation.
Shaking his head he gently placed his fingers in front of her mouth, she was breathing, slow and rhythmic, the memories that conjured had to be ignored. He brushed the same finger over her cheek before beginning to stand.
The moment his fingers shifted across her face the long dark eyelashes fluttered open, revealing dazed eyes so dark a blue as to be classed as indigo with a ring of gold around the pupils, for a moment she focused.
"Luce?"
And then her eyes closed again, but it was enough.
All around him people moved spurred into action by that little sign a sudden burst of life after winter. In a flurry of robes he straightened and saw three wands levelled at his torso. His raised his eyes moved over each face absorbing the loathing in their eyes.
Black … Potter … and Draco. He raised his hands palms up away from his body and turned slowly to give them no excuse. He met Dumbledore's eyes and nodded at what he found there.
"I'll come quietly of course." He said.
The Headmaster of Hogwarts nodded in reply before adjusting his glasses with one finger.
"My thanks Lucius"
Lucius Malfoy smiled in return, Draco's smile, but poisonous.
"And my pleasure"