Episode One Hundred and Fourteen

Part One

Gwen left Rugar woods quickly, afraid she might just kill her biological father with a single stroke of her wand. She apparated quickly to Hogwarts finding that the weather had changed from snowy to rainy in the short time that she'd been gone. It was raining steadily pouring in fact and there was no way she could make it to the castle without getting soaked.

As she came to the doors, dripping from her cloak, her hair plastered to the sides of her face she was surprised to see that Graves was standing under the stoop covering that housed the stairs up to the great doors. He looked up at her apprehensively, but he knew that he needn't push. She would tell him what it was that she needed to say. She only required patience and a little time.

Her words came out strained, her face soaked with rain and tears. "I just hoped that one day I would wake up and be afraid of him. I just kept denying it because I wanted to wake up and be normal. But I can never be normal."

"What are you trying to say?" He prompted softly.

She closed her eyes. "Some people wish for extraordinary things to happen to them. But when it happens they wish it hadn't. Tragedy is an extraordinary thing and they don't often realize that when they make their wishes. One morning you wake up knowing you can make magic, but you regret it the next when you realize that it must be kept secret from the muggles. You find that great responsibility isn't worth the ability to fly."

Graves understood that feeling. He had felt it long ago when he found he could make things happen when he was feeling some great extreme of emotion. Yet he had found over the years that you get used to such things, they become commonplace like lost keys or arguments between siblings. You begin to see magic as a mundane thing.

And then Gwen had walked into his life and threw mundane out of the window. He hadn't had a moment of peace in his soul if she was near, but he wanted that restless tug. He wanted the feeling like the pull of the tide responding to the moon's sweet face. He wanted the ache that filled his limbs when she held him.

She had become his best friend before he even knew her. When they met she had become so much more. He looked at her now, not bothering to hide his intense longing to sweep her up in his arms and take away all her troubles.

She took a deep breath, her shoulders shuddering enough for Graves to worry that perhaps they should move inside. He slid an arm around her, intending to guide her indoors but she simply shirked his arm off her back. He stopped and remained perfectly still. It was so cold and she was so wet, but something was keeping her from joining the others.

She reached out a hand in apology, but found that they were shaking violently. She pulled them back immediately and began to pull on her fingers, trying to contain the shivers of nerves built up over nineteen and a half years.

"I found my father." She finally said as lightning arched across the sky.

Part Two

            "I think I'm going crazy Corwin." She said softly into her pillows.

            Graves, lying next to her heard her and wrapped his arm around her. She felt his touch, attempting to be gentle and sweet but she could not feel anything but angry. The rage she had taken out in her mother's study, the meeting with her father, everything was building until she felt so small, lost in the tidal wave that was close enough to shore to crash.

            They hadn't spoken about her statement out in the cold rain. Graves simply ushered her inside, helped her off with her soaked robes and wrapped her in some warm blankets. He cuddled her by the fire until she looked ready to sleep and he lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed. She lay there for the longest time without moving or speaking until it just needed to come out.

            She could no longer run from the truth and it was her own damn fault for wanting to find it so badly. She knew now, knew just about everything there was to know about her lineage and she liked it very little. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again finding no sound would come out and pulled her pillow over her face. She screamed into the goose down, and for some odd reason this release helped.

            Graves pulled her arms off the pillow and slid the pillow away from her face. He looked at her with a cocked eyebrow and said "are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"Yeah." She sighed. "Just give me a minute. God this is so fucked up. Today's just been too much."

Graves gave her an impatient huff. "How is that different from any other day in our lives?"

She shrugged and said "well, since you put it that way." She sat up straighter and took her time to arrange the pillows and blankets into a comfortable position. She was dragging her heels even now and a voice in the back of her head finally yelled: ENOUGH. She sighed and started very softly. "Jeremiah doesn't go by his father's name. It was his mother's name, Leandre. His father was… is… Oh I'm so angry…" She said, clenching her fists and trailing away from the truth already.

            "What are you trying to say?"

            "All the crap he's done to Harry. It explains everything. It explains why I'm afraid of Harry and not him. I've never been afraid of him. He tried to kill me and I almost laughed. I thought it was funny. And now I think I'm going crazy, because I still think it's terribly comical."

            "What's terribly comical?" Graves asked as patiently as he could manage. Nothing she had said so far made any sort of sense and he wasn't going to bother piecing it together until she finished telling him everything.

            "None of this crap matters." She said, throwing a pillow at the wall. "Not my father, or who I thought was my father. Not this." She said, pointing to her chest where her scar still gleamed red. "Not even all the evil things he's done. None of it matters because I have the power to stop it now. The most terrifying part is that I don't want to. I should want to kill him, to end it but it's just not in me. I think I might be one of three people on this earth who could easily dispatch of him and I don't want to do it."

            "You're talking about the Dark Lord." Graves said.

            "Well yeah. You know. Or you did know. Unless they totally screwed you up with that memory charm. My father took his mother's name, Leandre. But his real name was Jeremiah Thomas Riddle. The Dark Lord is my grandfather Graves."

            Graves inhaled sharply. He had known for some time, but hearing it from her mouth had hit it home. "You believe it then?"

            "There's nothing to believe, it's the truth plain and simple. I've known, here, inside all the time. I just couldn't put it together because the whole thing was too terrible. I couldn't talk about it until now, I couldn't piece it all together and be ok with it."

"You're going to take it upon yourself to end this aren't you?"

            She looked at him, sitting there amongst the scarlet bedding and pristine white sheets. "I would imagine that it's my responsibility as the last member of his line. I have to clear my name."

Part Three

Gwen played with her pasta at lunch the following day. She had been thinking heavily on the things her father told her and the things that the Dark Lord had said. She had been thinking of a strategy, a plan of action.

Draco had noticed and in a moment of misjudgment said something snidely to the point. "What, did Lord Voldemort give you something to think about?" He teased.

She stood up and walked past him without uttering an answer. She was so angry she wouldn't speak to him. She was certain the words would come out wrong and Draco would end up crumpled on the floor in a tiny ball.

Graves looked to where Gwen turned the corner out of the Great Hall and looked back at Draco. "Don't." He said. "I think you may have hit a little closer to home than you'd think. I think the Dark Lord did give her something to think about, but she won't discuss. She'll never tell anyone." He said, looking faraway into the future, hoping there would be a day when no secrets existed between them.

"I didn't mean to." Draco said, sighing.

"I'll speak to her." He offered, rising from his bench and finding Gwen gazing at herself in the mirror she had mounted on the dresser in her room. She had pulled up the chair from her desk and was straddling it, leaning her arms on the back of the chair and staring at her reflection.

"I used to have this dream." She said to Graves. "I would just look at myself in the mirror for ages. I haven't had that dream since I learned my fey name."

Graves waited, his arms crossing his chest.

She turned to face him. "Why does he do that?" She asked of Draco.

"I think he just reverts back to his old self because he doesn't feel worthy enough to be good. He can't even believe that you can see the good in him, so he tries to cover it up by being bad old Draco Malfoy, instead of the nice guy that you see when you look at him."

"He's such a bastard."

"Please forgive him. I know that's a hard thing to ask, but you forgave him before he'd ever done anything really terrible. If anyone could, you should be able to forgive him now."

She pursed her lips. She could forgive Draco. He had proved a strong ally for the Order and she wouldn't like to alienate him now. Not now that he was actually starting to trust her and become her friend. She nodded, rose and forgave her friend. He hoped, as well as she that it would be the last time she would have to forgive him.

Part Four

Gwen gazed over at Graves in the early morning light. The way the sun's rays curled around the curve of his body. How his hair, still prickly short was nestled into the pillows. There was a soft smile turning up the edges of his mouth and she knew he was dreaming about her.

            But she knew she couldn't be free and happy if he was still alive.

            She knew very well that Harry Potter felt the same way.

            The main difference between them was that Harry Potter wasn't completely capable of carrying through with it and Gwen knew that she could.

            Whether or not she wanted to believe it completely, she knew that she had a power surging inside of her. This was part of her fey self, the part of the dark and sometimes very evil unsellie royal court teeming in her blood. She could raise a wand to his chest, speak her spell and kill him on the spot. But she didn't want to admit that to herself yet. She didn't want to realize her potential as the cold-blooded killer of her own grandfather. She didn't want to realize that he was her own grandfather and so she kept these thoughts bottled up and clearly labeled in a dusty corner of her mind.

            Yet, at the same time she was formulating her plan to come once again face to face with him. She knew now where he was at this very moment and she knew how to get there, but she needed to think this through. The reckless and impatient Gwen of the past had learned her lesson in this instance and she wasn't going to run in with gun's smoking, cat-calling and making a general poor show of things. She was going to have a game plan at the very least and as of right now she was considering whether or not she needed help.

            She figured she could take him single-handedly, but she felt that was some of the arrogance she had inherited from her mother. She also realized that asking someone along was knowingly putting them in a great deal of danger, perhaps more than she was prepared to accept the blame for along with the guilt. She frowned as Graves stirred quietly in his sleep.

            She wasn't going to do this to him. She wasn't going to endanger his life again. She crawled out of bed, went through her morning toiletries and dressed quickly. She grabbed her outdoor cloak and secured her wand into the front pocket of her dark blue jeans. She cast one long look over Graves sleeping form and rushed over to give him one last impulsive kiss.

            She walked away from Hogwarts that morning absurdly confidant and thoroughly jaded.