"Focus."
With her eyes tightly shut, Dea pointed the wand at the creature in the cage. She knew even without peeking that it did no good; she could hear the damnable thing squeaking and chewing on its bars.
"Focus," Remus repeated, stepping behind her and watching her as she extended the wand with a steady hand.
"That would be much easier," she said through clenched teeth, "If you weren't such a bloody hoverer." She could feel him behind her, the subtle heat that spoke of his nearness.
The time for action was drawing nearer, and Dea wondered daily if she was capable of the small task she'd assigned herself. Remus's lessons in magic—or rather on tapping into unused potential—were supposed to set her mind at ease.
So why did he make her feel so damned uneasy? Rolling her shoulders, she thought perhaps the better word would be itchy.
"Let's try something," he said, stepping in front of her and placing his hands on her shoulders. "Open your eyes."
Bad idea, she retorted in her head, but she opened her eyes to find herself staring into his.
Then he did something that nearly made her heart stop.
"Punctum," he said casually, rolling up his sleeve and then pointing his wand at his arm. Immediately a wound opened up in his arm, spilling blood down it.
"Jesus!" she hissed, pointing her wand and healing his arm instantly, her eyes wide and disbelieving. He stepped aside and gestured to the creature in the cage. Angrily spouting the banishing spell he'd given her earlier, she flicked her wand at the dark creature and it instantly showered into ashes.
She was out of her seat in an instant, the creature forgotten as she grasped his arm, wrapping her fingers around it as though to assure herself she'd left no marks. Feeling muscles and tendons bunch and flex at her touch, she let out a small noise of disgust and pushed him away from her. "What was that? Are you completely insane?"
"Not last I checked," he said pleasantly. He really was pleased with himself. There had been no sign of progress before his rash action. "I was only helping you focus, Amadea. And it worked."
"Helping? Helping me? In what twisted world is it okay for you to hurt yourself? What if I couldn't heal you?" She was frantic with it, frantic with the thought that her healing might be depended on. She'd been too late, by far, to help her parents and siblings. Had they depended on her?
"I trust you," he said simply.
She looked up at him then, the anger snuffed from her eyes, immediately replaced by the faintest shimmer. No tears, not yet. She'd learned more about holding back her tears in the last months than ever before. "Don't," she returned simply. "Because you shouldn't." But even as the fear coursed through her, there was a simple joy intermingled with it. To be trusted so implicitly had been a thing of the past for her—a thing associated only with family.
When he said nothing, only continued to smile at her in that maddeningly gentle but self-satisfied way, she shook her head. "This is so messed up," she said sadly.
"I know."
"No," she stressed, standing so she was toe to toe with him, her eyes boring into his. Denials only worked for so long, and she was too smart not to see at least a little of what was starting to happen, not only to him but to her, as well. "This is messed up." To illustrate her point, she touched a hand to his chest, and then to hers.
And though her statement took the smile from his face, it only faded away into a soft look of understanding.
"I know," he repeated. "Hasn't it always been?"
Below them, on the bottom floor of the house, the door slammed open and shut, and people started arriving.
The time for action was drawing near.
~~~
She got there as a Muggle would have, walking up to the front door so as to avoid the numerous magic detectors the rampantly paranoid Lucius Malfoy had charmed his mansion with. With a grimace of distaste, she lifted the snake's head door knocker, then thought better of it and let it rest silently on the heavy wooden door. Taking a deep breath, she turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, finding no resistance.
It's an arrogant fool who would only proof his house against magic.
"Can I be helping you, Miss?" A house-elf, filthy and cowering in the corner, eyed her.
"I'm family," she said simply. "I'm here to see your master, but I've a feeling he's already coming." And even before the words had left her mouth, she heard his footsteps. Careful to watch around her, taking note of the exits and hallways, she walked briskly down the great hall of the mansion, her own footsteps sounding confidently across the stone floors.
"Is there someone you wished to see?" His voice hadn't changed in a great while, the silkiness only refined, the cruelty less concealed. His walking stick was poised at his side, and his fingers slid over it suggestively.
Dea looked up then, letting her marked hair fall away from her face, and she smiled charmingly. "Hello, Cousin," she said sweetly, making the most of the accent she knew he would despise. "Ready to welcome a poor relation?"
She had the satisfaction of seeing him stumble back, quicksilver eyes wide and quite possibly frightened. She could only hope that was the case.
He composed his face quickly; she had to admire him for that. The cold disgust was fixed as firmly in place as it had been upon his approach, and he looked down his nose at her. "The Middlemarches are no relation of mine." After a moment's thought, he added, "Especially since they're all stone-cold dead, too stupid and untalented to defend themselves."
"Oh, not all of us," she said, refusing to rise to his bait. "It seems they missed one." Casually, she buffed her fingernails on the front of her robe with a nonchalance so fake she was sure he could sense it. "I thought I'd find you celebrating the death of a common relative—dear Sirius." She shook her head, clucking her tongue. "Though I must say, very poor showing of your kind," she stressed the two words nastily. "Since he more or less died accidentally, and not directly at the hands of one of you fantastical masked superheroes. Or is it antiheroes? I can never keep it straight." She felt herself shaking with a mixture of fury and fear, and the fury was a great deal stronger than she'd expected.
He was shaking as well, his lips compressed into a thin, stiff line. No one insulted the Death Eaters as though it were a commonplace thing. No one insulted them with laughter in their voice.
But still she continued to talk.
"Hey, look, no hard feelings, cous. I know how these things are. You all ought to check out a few movies, take a few lessons from The Godfather. In the meanwhile, in the several years it'll take you to figure out how to use a VCR, why don't you let your overdramatic, cartoonish 'Dark Lord' know that he failed. Again. How must it feel to have not only The Boy Who Lived, but The Woman as well?"
She'd baited him well; he grabbed his wand but seemed at a loss as to which particular curse to start with. Before he could take good aim, she'd drawn herself into the lark, the body resplendent in the gloom of the mansion. She streaked past him toward a window, drooping dangerously low as she tried to keep her concentration—and animal form—intact. It was just low enough.
Instead of aiming again with his wand, Lucius struck out in pure, thoughtless rage, striking the bird with his walking stick. She felt fragile skin tear, air-filled bones snap, and though her brain was swarming with black pellets of pain, she made it out the window and back toward Grimmauld Place.