Theo Nott wasn't exactly the most...emotional person Gin knew. Maybe expressive was a better way to put it. He could, fairly usually, be depended on to be the quiet, sensible person in any particular group, and it was oddly relaxing to spend time around him for that reason. (Even despite the fact that most of the time they spent together was also spent trying to seriously injure each other.) He might actually be Gin's favourite person to spend time around at Hogwarts, level-headed and steady in a way literally no one else she knew was.

Well, maybe Candidus, but he didn't count. (And no, the fact that she enjoyed sitting around with Theo just hanging out even when they weren't actively practicing had nothing to do with Thom's appreciation of his pointy, blond boyfriend. No matter what Lord Black might imply.)

Anyway, the point was, Theo was hardly the sort of person who was likely to over-react to his friends being ridiculously over-dramatic teenagers, or even all the madness going on at the school right now with the representatives from the ICW and Miskatonic and the Irish muggles (and the most dangerous members of Saoirse Ghaelach) and the fucking Queen (and her guards, who were, if anything more terrifying, which was kind of saying a lot, since Michael Cavan had somehow managed to get Síomha ní Ailbhe to be his personal bodyguard) all being around. Not to mention the veela floating around being all superior and meddling with people's emotions all over the place (worse than the fucking dementors, in some ways — Gin was good enough at occlumency now it didn't really bother her, but she could see it affecting other people), and Igor Karkaroff having the nerve to show his face in Britain again (he was a Death Eater, supposedly a spy like Snape, but he'd gotten off because the Danes had wanted to punish him themselves...and then they hadn't, at all), not to mention Salazar Slytherin and someone who may or may not be Slytherin and Ravenclaw's daughter, and Black's incredibly creepy, viscerally terrifying "older sister". Gin was sure she wasn't the only one who shivered when any of those three entered a room, the power that surrounded them almost overwhelming.

So when, in the wake of one of their practice bouts — Gin had actually managed to make enough progress with her small repertoire of offensive spells over the summer they could actually have practice bouts without her immediately losing — lying in the middle of the dueling stage trying to catch their breath, Theo turned to her and asked whether she'd seen much of Luna lately, he had her attention.

Because, honestly, no, she hadn't seen much of Luna. Since summer, really. They'd sat together at lunch a few times at the beginning of the year, but, well...they didn't have all that much in common, really. Yes, they'd known each other forever, but they were both kind of preoccupied by their own shite. Luna didn't understand why Gin found it so important to...make it so no one could ever hurt her again (Lord Black had advised her to be brutally honest with herself about her motivations, which was harder than she really thought it should be), and she didn't like how working through the memories Tom had left her was changing her. She'd called Gin cynical more than once this year, which wasn't really wrong, Gin wasn't insulted, or anything, just...Luna didn't like cynicism. It made her very obviously uncomfortable.

And Gin knew there was some weird something or other going on with Luna and Theo and probably some kind of ritual magic something at Mabon, because there'd been an abrupt shift in Luna's personality around mid-September, she'd suddenly become a little happier, but also less confident around other people, which Zabini said was because someone had put her talent as an empath back to sleep. Which Gin hadn't known was possible. Silly, maybe, to think that impossible was actually a thing — she knew from Tom (and Black) that the Powers could do literally anything, if you knew how to ask and were willing to pay the price they wanted in return. But Luna refused to tell her anything about what had happened.

So they'd kind of drifted apart over the past couple of months, Luna doing her usual outsider Ravenclaw thing, spending lunch drawing imaginary (or as Black had suggested, extradimensional) creatures, and Gin letting herself get wrapped up in her own projects, meditating and taking notes on Tom's memories, and learning to fight with Theo and Lord Black. And of course turning around and teaching Harry and Rachel (and Justin, kind of, he was really bad at offensive magic) some of the things they showed her in their "dueling study group", and trying to help Cassie and Professor Flitwick get the school dueling club back together. Not that she really thought she was much help, there. It had really only taken Cassie announcing that it was going to be a thing to make it absurdly popular. Most of what Gin had done so far was nag people to keep coming after the first few meetings, when they'd realised that learning to fight was actually hard work, and no they weren't going to start throwing cutting curses and battlefield transfiguration around after a week or two practicing shield charms and stunners.

She'd probably actually spent more time — more of her free time, she meant, not classes — with Éanna than Luna this term. Yes, he was kind of a teacher, but he wasn't very good at acting like one. She knew he didn't really care that some of the idiots in her class had zero respect for him, but she'd still gotten annoyed enough about their taunting him about being a spaz, to his face, that she'd just gone ahead and hexed the shite out of them one day after class. Since apparently he wasn't going to give them detention himself, or tell Snape so he could, or something.

She had gotten detention, of course — from Snape, because three of the four little shites she started a fight with were Slytherins, but since he knew exactly why she'd done it, he'd let her spend her two hours taking notes on one of the texts in his office, her choice. The one she'd picked, at random, was almost certainly restricted, a treatise on the use of potions and bioalchemy in medical curse-breaking that was just fascinating. She almost wished she'd gotten more detention so she could finish reading it. (Almost.)

Anyway, even if Éanna didn't really care about people insulting him, he had started to gravitate toward her a bit when he didn't have anywhere else to be. Which was fine, she had equally few fucks to give about people calling her some sort of brown-noser for associating with a professor outside of class as he did about people in general, and it was super obvious any time he wasn't talking about Potions that he was just a shy, awkward teenage boy, in that sheltered kid who never spent much time with other kids way. More like Harry or Neville Longbottom than Ron or Justin, for example. (Or Tom.)

She didn't see how everyone else had such a problem with him being...well, the kindest way she'd heard it put was a total social incompetent. It wasn't like they were all sterling examples of social competency themselves. Maybe it was just the fact that she couldn't help seeing everyone's behaviour through Tom's eyes anymore, a little, but she preferred the honesty of Éanna not giving a fuck what people thought of him, rather than practically everyone else putting on some show of what they thought they should act like. Especially since, most of the time, they weren't very consistent about it.

She didn't spend much time with her yearmates if she could help it, but even the fourth-years she hung out with more, the only ones who never really broke character in public were Theo, Zabini, and Greengrass. Hermione couldn't seem to decide if she wanted to be normal or like Black (or Tom, though obviously that wasn't conscious on Maïa's part, just a convenient way to think of her occasionally being kind of scarily intense and potentially Dark Lady-ish); Black fairly frequently decided that pretending not to be tiny Bellatrix Lestrange was too much of a pain, she couldn't be arsed; Justin was just a little too conscious of how other people would look at him if he said even one slightly impolitic thing; and Harry's approach to dealing with everything from his being famous, to being a parselmouth, to being dead, to being the subject of some fucking prophecy about killing the Dark Lord, and now to being the Fourth Triwizard Champion, was to pretend (badly) that he wasn't bothered, either by public opinion or whatever ridiculous turn-up in his life everyone was talking about now, and occasionally explode when he couldn't keep his frustration to himself any longer. (Not that everyone knew about the prophecy, but it still fit the bill.)

Lord Black, she guessed, was pretty good. It was always very obvious when he was trying to be especially socially acceptable, but overdone in such a way it was almost sarcastic, if you actually knew him, which was perfectly in-character for the rest of his personality, too. Actually made him seem much more genuine than the Slytherins, even if the difference between Lord Black and seriously, kid, you can call me Sirius Black (which she tried to do, at least to his face, it was just hard to think of a teacher by his first name) was much more obvious than the difference between quiet, sardonic Theo-around-people, and quiet, thoughtful Theo-in-private. His actually showing some degree of concern for a weird little Ravenclaw he'd known for all of two months was kind of odd, though, even if it was just the two of them.

So when he'd said that maybe she should go try to talk to Luna, because she...hadn't been well, the past couple of days, she'd taken the suggestion very seriously. Partially because, until he'd pointed it out, she hadn't noticed that she hadn't noticed Luna in class this past week, either. Or meals. Or anywhere. Which was weird, because Luna's idea of unobtrusive was a bright pink hat with feathers all over it.

Once it was pointed out, it was concerning enough that she'd gone up to Ravenclaw right away. It had only taken her a couple of seconds to get its sponge riddle (what's full of holes, but still holds water), but it had taken much longer to convince Luna to let her into her bedroom (which she hadn't actually done). Most of the Ravenclaws shared with a roommate, but Luna was so very odd that her roommate had jumped ship in the middle of first year, much like Gin had last year.

Which meant there was no one around to notice that she'd gotten rid of every extraneous bit of furniture, including the bed frame (her mattress was sitting in the middle of the room, directly on the floor), covered the window, and enchanted every remaining object and surface in the room to give off a soft white light. It was kind of disorienting, really, walking in (once she finally tried the handle and realised it was unlocked, after about ten minutes arguing through the door about whether Luna was fine, Ginevra, I promise). There were no shadows anywhere, made everything look oddly flat.

Luna, sitting in the middle of her bed surrounded by sheets of glowing paper and even pencils (Who enchanted bloody pencils to glow? And why?), looked up as she did, a cross between fear and relief on her face.

"Luna. What are you doing?"

"Drawing. I told you, I'm fine."

"Drawing," Gin repeated, her eyes flicking around the room. "And remodeling, apparently. Why?"

Luna's fear grew more intense. With the utmost seriousness she said, "I'm hiding from the Dark."

"...I guess hiding from the dark explains all the light charms, sure, but... Why?"

"Not the dark, the Dark. The evil Dark, the one pretending to be Lyra's cousin."

"Er..." Honestly, Gin didn't think they were pretending, really. They were far too similar for it to be a coincidence... "I know Angel's like, hundreds of years old, but they really are related. And why are you hiding from her, anyway?"

Luna turned to look her in the eye, with an expression which was still far too frightened to be a proper glare. "Angelos Black was Lyra's cousin, but Angelos Black is gone. And I'm hiding because she knows that I know, and—"

"Have you been potioning yourself again?" Gin interrupted. Because that made no sense at all.

"No! The thing Lyra thinks is her cousin, isn't! It ate her cousin! Look!" She passed one of her sketches to Gin, the faint glow of the charm-stiffened paper making the charcoal image seem even darker and more disturbing than it already was. A shifting, ephemeral creature, all smoke and eyes and hands and mouths, a hundred twisted, tortured faces, strange, grotesque amalgamations of human and insect and alien fae, lurking in its depths or pressing outward, trying to escape, mouths open in silent screams, all centred on a small, perfectly innocent-looking image of Angel Black — the face it chose to show to the world, at least if Gin was interpreting the image correctly. "It's the Dark, Ginevra! It's evil! It's madness and suffering and deception and pain, and it's not Lyra's cousin! It ate her, and it's going to eat me too, because I know what it is, what it really is, and—"

"Luna...I think you need to go see Madam Pomfrey," Gin said, as firmly as she could, unnerving as Luna was being. "Or Cassie, or Professor Flitwick, or, hell, even Snape..."

"No, Ginevra! I can't go out there, not with— She's out there!"

"Look, Luna, I know Angel's creepy—" It made Gin's skin crawl to be in the same room as her, even if that room was as big as the Great Hall, "—but I talked to her for a little bit at the feast, you know when they first got here, and I'm pretty sure she's not going to eat anyone." Actually, Gin wasn't entirely certain the Miskatonite needed to eat at all. She'd said something to Black that first night about food being a petty, human concern (which was apparently hilarious, for some reason — could you have an inside joke with someone you'd never met before?) so... "Besides," she added, over Luna's objections, "you can't just stay in your bedroom forever. How are you getting food?" Anyone, practically, could make a vanishing toilet, and cleaning charms weren't great for your hair, but they'd stop you getting to smell too bad, even cooped up in one little room indefinitely. You could maybe even use aguamenti to condense enough water out of the air to avoid dying of thirst, but food was a problem.

"Light doesn't stop elves, just shadows."

So, the house elves were making sure she didn't starve? She guessed that was something, but... "Er..."

"She can't see me if there's no shadows to watch from, she can't get in, and—"

"Your door wasn't even locked, you know that, right?" Honestly, Gin had expected it to be, too. She'd just stood outside like an idiot for minutes before actually thinking to check.

"Evil doesn't need doors, Ginevra, no more than Lyra Bellatrix does."

"Yeah, okay, but I'm pretty sure it can use doors, so—"

Luna inhaled sharply. "You're right. I need to get rid of the door."

"No, you need to get out of the castle!"

"But...but... I can't," Luna protested, in a very small voice.

Maybe she could convince Cassie or Professor Flitwick to come up here... Except it was Sunday, she thought Cassie was out in the Forest somewhere with Black, and she had even less idea where Flitwick would be. Also, she recalled, realising the day... Fuck, what time was it? She was going to be late for her lesson with Lord Black!

Oh, fuck it, he'd understand. And there was a solid chance he wasn't even awake yet, anyway. It was Sunday, and barely half-past twelve.

Lord Black was very, very good at battlemagic. Probably not as good as Cassie, but they were both so much better than everyone else Gin had ever seen fight, she kind of figured most people wouldn't see much difference, comparing either of them to themselves, unless they were Aurors or international dueling champions like Flitwick. Lord Black said the difference between him and Cassie, compared to most people she'd seen fighting at the World Cup, was kind of the difference between someone who could hold their own in a pub brawl, and someone who'd been trained to end a pub brawl. Except unlike Cassie, Lord Black had been trained by the fucking Blackheart before going into the Aurors, so in his case, it was more like he'd just been trained to kill anyone who tried to kill him before they could finish the job.

Quite a lot of their lessons devolved, at one point or another, into talking about why people did things, and specifically why they — she and Lord Black — did things. He outright admitted that he liked fighting. (Lord Black talking about fighting sounded eerily similar to some of the things Lyra had said about the riot on the train back to school, it was kind of creepy.) Keeping the Death Eaters and rioters from hurting anyone innocent and maybe sparking off a civil war between the Brits and the Gaels (which no one else was talking about, but Lord Black seemed to think was definitely a thing that could happen, and that was terrifying), yeah, he'd been all for that, but he wouldn't necessarily have gone for the throat and ended it the same way Cassie would, if there weren't innocent bystanders caught in the middle of it.

Theo, who went over to Ancient House all the time because Lyra had given him free access to their library, but tended to get dragged into their lessons kind of a lot, said the Blacks had a reputation for playing with people in life-or-death situations. Lord Black didn't deny it, either. Kind of the opposite, actually — just gave them a wolfish grin and asked whether Gin had really thought they weren't all bloody mad. (Which, no, she hadn't.)

Also unlike Cassie, Lord Black used both light and dark magic. He'd gritted his teeth and tried casting a couple dark curses for comparison, one of the days Theo hadn't been around to be dragged in to do it. He'd been shocked to realise that casting dark magic didn't hurt him like it had when he was dedicated to the Dark, that it was just more difficult than casting an equivalent light curse. (And it wasn't like Lord Black didn't have the channelling capacity to just power through the extra resistance if he wanted to, so.)

Of course Gin had had to ask about that — why would dark magic hurt someone who was dedicated to the Dark? — completely derailing the lesson. Instead, they'd gotten into a long talk about magical polarisation and what it actually meant to be a light or dark mage, and why Lord Black had chosen to dedicate himself to the Light and become a blood traitor when he was just a couple years older than Gin was, now. (It was...not a happy story. But if all the Blacks' childhoods were as fucked up as Lord Black's, it did kind of go a long way toward explaining why, exactly, they were all so fucked in the head. His mum made hers sound positively reasonable.)

He was definitely qualified to teach her, just...kind of insane, and maybe a little too honest about being raised Dark, and how that had affected him. Which...might actually be a good thing? Was it weird that the fact that Lord Black so very obviously had his own issues made her more willing to be honest with herself about...everything that had happened with Tom, and the fact that she might not really be a good person herself?

But the fact that he was a really good teacher aside (and he was, she'd already learned a lot about what it meant to be a warrior for the Light, which was kind of scary, but in a good way), Lord Black was kind of...borderline incompetent, as a responsible adult. He stayed up all night and liked to sleep until at least noon and it wasn't at all unusual for him to be obviously hung-over when she showed up for lessons. Or occasionally still in bed. She'd stood around awkwardly for about half an hour the first time before she'd given up and gone to hang out with Theo in the library. Lord Black had shown up about an hour after that, looking awfully rough and full of apologies, told her if it happened again she could hex him awake however she liked, he totally deserved it. Which she had, because he'd said he would teach her, damn it!

Granted, she'd been horribly embarrassed — what kind of grown-up told a thirteen-year-old girl to just come into his room and hex him to wake him up when he slept in the nude?! (not that she really felt like a thirteen-year-old girl most of the time, but that wasn't the point) — but she'd done it, and managed to dodge his barely-conscious retaliatory curse, too. (Knowing that a fucking blasting curse was his response to a sudden, painful wake-up call was the only reason she'd managed to avoid Lyra taking her head off for waking her up the other day.)

So now he knew better. He'd ordered the elves to wake him up as soon as she floo'd over, instead. And judging by how sleep-tousled and out of it he occasionally looked when he managed to drag himself into the dueling ring, she was sure they'd had to do so more than once.

Which was ridiculous, their lessons were always after lunch, he had plenty of time to be up and— Whatever.

Point was, he probably wouldn't notice she was late, and if he did, he'd understand. He'd better understand. Dealing with one of your friends going fucking bonkers and hiding from a Miskatonic Researcher (who probably didn't even know she existed) by charming her entire fucking bedroom to glow was a lot more important than getting drunk and partying and shagging strangers until the sun came up, and then oversleeping.

And she was going to deal with it, because friends didn't let friends lose their minds without at least trying to stop it. Which in this case meant finding someone else to deal with it, because she had no idea what she was doing, dealing with this sort of madness. (Tom might be insane, but not like, paranoid, the Dark is in Hogwarts disguised as a Miskatonic Researcher, and it's out to get me insane. More like people who annoy me deserve to die, and if I'm killing them anyway, why not have fun with it insane. ...Or possibly the Dark is in Hogwarts disguised as a Miskatonic Researcher, I should apply to be her apprentice insane.)

"Luna, which elf has been bringing you food?"

Luna, apparently rather taken aback by her forcefulness, startled slightly. "Her name is Winky. But, I just told you, Ginevra, I can't go out, I—"

She was interrupted by a pop as the elf appeared beside her, her own look of concern nearly as grave as the one Gin could feel on her own face. "Hi there, Winky, is it?"

"Yes, Miss," the elf said, somewhat startled, she thought, to find a second person in Luna's room. "And what should Winky be calling Miss?"

"Gin Weasley. Well met. You've been taking care of Luna?"

"Yes, Miss Gin. Miss Luna is being...unwell."

"Yeah, I've noticed. Thank you, for taking care of her. Can the elves find people out on the grounds, as well as in the school?"

"Of course we can, the wards of Hogwarts shelter them as well."

"What about the Forbidden Forest?"

The elf frowned. "To find a person outside of the wards is more difficult. Who is Miss Gin trying to find?"

"Er, Cassie. Professor Lovegood."

"Oh, yes, Winky knows Professor Cassie, she can be finding her now, inside or outside of wards."

"Oh, good. Then, may I ask a favour?" she asked cautiously. The Hogwarts elves weren't under orders to obey the students, and when that one elf, Rose, had come up to their room to talk the Castle into giving them a bloody balcony, she'd made it very clear that she was not under any obligation to do just any favour Lyra (or any of them) asked of her. So, better more polite than necessary than not polite enough, Gin figured.

"Of course Missy may ask."

"Could you please find Cassie and bring her here?"

Winky beamed at her. "Yes, Miss Gin, Winky will do it now."

She popped out of the room before Gin could warn her to be careful, in case Cassie and Lyra were in the middle of a fight or something, ignoring Luna's protests that she didn't want to endanger Cassie by drawing the Dark's attention to her as well. Which was bloody hilarious, really. If Angel Black really was some evil demonic god thing, she'd probably already heard about Cassie, and her hobby of hunting down and killing evil people. Plus, "I think Cassie can take care of herself. A lot better than either of us, anyway."

"Not against this!" Gin didn't think she'd ever heard Luna sound so...hysterical. Even right after her mum died. Maybe when Black poisoned her with that babbling potion, but... "Ginevra, you don't understand, it's going to— Why couldn't you just leave me alone?!"

Because, Luna, that's exactly what I would've said if someone had tried to take Tom's diary away from me, before I knew what it was, what it was doing to me. If anyone had suggested that I was unwell, that I needed help, if anyone had seen, I would've said the exact same as you. I did, actually — I'm fine, Percy, just tired, still getting used to school and everything... — I would have fought tooth and nail against their help, but that doesn't change the fact that I needed it. I can't not help you, when I see you needing it, now...

"Because you can't just hide in your room all year, Luna! Someone will notice, eventually, and drag you out to talk to Pomfrey, or something. You need help!"

"No! Anyone who tries to help is just going to– to get dragged down with me! It knows that I know, and it will know that they know, that you do, and—"

The elf reappeared with a pop, her hand holding that of a very naked, blue-speckled Cassie (apparently she had been hunting spiders), cutting off Luna's hysterical tirade. "Luna? Luna, love, what's wrong?" she asked, even as Winky bowed and silently excused herself.

"It's— I—" Luna stuttered apparently having trouble forming words. "I can't lie to you, I won't, but I'm not telling you! If you know, it will come for you, and—"

"Angel Black," Gin interrupted, passing the drawing to Cassie. "Luna thinks she's evil and possessed, and going to eat her, or something, because she knows that Luna knows she's evil and possessed."

"Ginevra! Why would you do that?! You're a terrible friend, how could you– you—"

"Luna, love, calm down," Cassie said, drawing her niece over to sit on the mattress with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "I know you're scared, but you shouldn't be angry with Gin, she was right to tell me." Thank you! "I already knew about Angelos, but—"

"You knew?!"

"Yes, love. I know what she is. But I didn't know that you were so upset... Did she do something to you, or say something?"

Luna shook her head, burying her face in her aunt's shoulder. "No, I just saw it and I knew. It's evil and everywhere, and it's not Angelos Black, I tried to tell Ginevra, but she didn't believe me— It ate her, Angelos. She's not there, it's just...just pretending to be her! It's horrible!"

"I know, Luna," Cassie said, still with that same soothing tone. "I know."

Wait, what? Luna was actually right about that? Gin had kind of thought she'd lost the plot, there.

"You don't know, if you knew, you'd try to do something about it, and it would kill you!"

"I wouldn't, actually," Angel said, smirking at them from the doorway, doing whatever she did to stop her magic from overwhelming them, but all the little hairs on the back of Gin's neck stood up anyway. Even when she wasn't trying to be obviously terrifying, like when she and Selwyn had made their entrance, Black's "sister" was still really fucking scary. Like, visiting Charlie and having a dragon swoop down on you out of nowhere, an instinctive, this thing could kill you without blinking scary. Luna made a frightened little eep sound. "And I doubt she would, either. I'm being a diplomat at the moment, remember? And sadly no one else seems to think starting a war between the C.I.S. and the University would be much fun at all, so. For a little soothsayer, you're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions, on very little information."

Cassie glared at the intruder, light magic burning hot on the air, pushing back the tide of fear. "Angelos, you're scaring my niece. You're not welcome here."

"No shit? All the light charms did kind of give it away, you know. But Persephone has this thing about enforcing vows sworn on the Styx, and I don't like dying. Even if I don't stay dead, it's boring, and kind of hurts. A lot. And I promised— Well, Sarah made me promise a lot of things before agreeing I could come here, but the important one is, I'm not supposed to cause any deaths while I'm here. And while I would argue that it's not my fault your niece is a nosey Parker, if I let her spiral into paranoid madness and eventual suicide, Alethia will probably convince Persephone that it counts. Especially now that I actually know about it."

That was...disturbing. Probably not as disturbing as it should be, she'd been spending too much time around Lyra. Or as disturbing as the look Angel gave her when she asked, "...How did you know?"

It wasn't really a...negative look, just...very intense. Fascinated. "Gelach may have kept Alethia's little pet sheltered enough to harbour little darkness in her soul, but you, Ginevra... I've been watching you."

Gin swallowed hard. "Why?"

The look only grew more disturbing as the evil witch — the Dark, whatever — grinned at her, showing altogether too many teeth. "You stole one of my marshmallows." What? "And then you choked on it, and for a while I thought maybe the marshmallow would win, and I'd get a whole new bag of marshmallows-—

"Marshmallows? What the hell are you talking about?" Gin snapped. She might not know anything about high ritual, but even she knew that gods thinking you'd stolen something from them was not the sort of thing you wanted to be unclear about! Especially when you were pretty fucking sure you hadn't.

"Okay, you're right, I over-extended the metaphor. Tom. He was mine. Granted, you didn't really take a piece of him, just a copy, but he was mine long before he made that copy, so it was mine, too. Do you not remember meeting me at Yule? I mean, I wouldn't have looked like this, but—"

A jolt of ice ran down Gin's spine.

No, she hadn't looked like that. She — the Dark, the power Tom had invited to join him in celebrating the solstice, even more horrifying and overwhelming than he was — hadn't looked like anything. It was just the urge to kill, to defile. To ruin something innocent for her own — his own — selfish pleasure.

The attacks she'd made on the students of Hogwarts weren't nearly the worst thing she'd done under Tom's control. He'd made her watch as he snuck out to the village, lured a child away with her smile, her laugh, like something out of a dark fae tale. He tortured the boy with her hands, then healed him and stole the memories from his mind, leaving a bone-deep fear of the night, of the dark, with no idea why...

And he'd presented her horror, the rape of her innocence which was forcing her to watch, to feel skin parting under the blade of her knife, to the Dark. As a gift. A horrible, horrible gift. A gift she hadn't remembered herself until she was sorting through his memories over the summer — he'd taken her version of it, leaving behind self-loathing and disgust and horror, but no idea why...

"Oh, you do, don't you." The evil creature smirked. "I don't begrudge you the marshmallow, honestly. For a while, even after little Harry ripped it to pieces, I thought it might manage to twist you around to serve me, anyway. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment to realise that you've decided to take all that you stole from him and turn it against me, protecting where you could destroy, doing your best to help where it would be so, so easy to cause harm and suffering." She clicked her tongue and shook her head like shame on you, but that smirk was still firmly in place. "But he didn't sacrifice your future, only your innocence, and if no one ever fought back against the tide, life would be too boring for words, so." She shrugged. "You still have my attention, though."

She had Gin's attention, too. She couldn't seem to look away, trying not to remember Tom's delight with his clever little work of "art", the sick, twisted adoration he held for the Dark; his reveling in Gin's pain, her suffering, her helplessness, as much as that of the boy he'd forced her to torture — no! forced me to watch, I didn't do it! — trying to not remember the disgusting thrill he got out of it, and the pleasure — the sense of belonging — it had brought him, to win the approval of this– this—

NO!

She ripped her attention away from the memories, forcing herself to blink, to look at Luna, staring at her with terrified, too-wide eyes, forcing herself to remember that this isn't about me!

"I'm sure you can imagine my delight," she said drily, her best imitation of Tom standing up to, well, anyone who had any degree of power over him, all sarcastic and unimpressed, even if her words were completely inoffensive. (Her voice only shook a little bit.) The Dark — Angel, it was easier to think of her as Angel — probably knew exactly what she was doing. She (it) giggled at her. Creepily. She did her level best to ignore it. Focus, Weasley. This is about Luna! "But now that you know, you'll stop doing whatever you're doing to Luna, right? Because I don't know anything about high ritual, but even I know that no one crosses Death, and you said you swore on the Styx..."

"I did, yes. Unfortunately, I'm not actually doing anything. This is just what happens when mortals look on the true face of something like me."

"I don't believe you! You always lie, you are a lie!" Luna protested. Gin was a little surprised, but even with how little time they'd spent together lately, she was still aware that the little blonde had kind of gotten obsessed with people lying around her lately.

"I deceive, little moon-child. I don't always lie. If I did, you'd know I was lying, wouldn't you."

Luna was practically shaking in her aunt's arms, but she still glared bravely at the evil witch. "You are always lying! You aren't Angel Black, you ate her, you're just in her, like– like a puppet!"

"That's who Angel Black is, silly girl." Wait, what?! She wasn't denying it? "An Avatar of the Dark. It's not a secret. And I don't know why you think I'm not her. She gave herself to me. She's part of me. Mine, forever. What is hers is mine, including this body, this life, because her consciousness is one with mine. I never said I was only the mortal, human Angelos Melini. It's not my fault even those of you who can perceive all of what I am can't comprehend it. Doesn't mean I have it out for you."

"You're not helping, Angelos," Cassie snapped at her. "How do we fix this?"

"We don't. A certain annoying little twit made it impossible for your precious niece to lie to herself, and, well, I think the truth is pretty, in a stark, razor blade made out of ice sort of way, but it's not kind or soft, and definitely not inherently light. Why do you think wisdom is associated with experience rather than ignorance? If you just reach out and grab it, it will cut you. Sure you'll know better next time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and it's going to leave a mark.

"Even if Sarah — or Albus's little paramenon, I suppose you might trust him better — breaks little Luna here out of this particular paranoid spiral and makes her forget or overlook me, returns her to a state of blissful ignorance, this is just going to happen again the next time she runs into someone or something bigger than its incarnation here and now. All I can do is tell you what's happening, and swear on the Styx that I have no intention to hurt her. She has to come to terms with the fact that I exist, that selfishness and destruction and the ability to cause pain in others, intentionally or otherwise, are a part of human nature. You can't do it for her. Good job, by the way," she said, casting a smirk over her shoulder at someone standing in the corridor. "There aren't many things that will hurt a child who's been keeping herself deliberately innocent more deeply than forcing her to see the world as it is."

"Um, thanks? I guess? She wasn't really innocent before, either, though. And I wasn't trying to hurt her. Gelach's just a creepy bitch." Black came to lean beside her "sister" in the doorway, though like the older witch, she avoided actually coming into the overly-lit room. She had obviously been out in the Forest with Cassie, but she'd gone to the trouble of cleaning herself up a bit, getting dressed and washing (most of) the blood off her face. "So, are we having a party up here, or what? And what the hell is with the light charms, Luna? If you really don't want me to walk in here, you could've just said so."

"Not everything is about you, Lyra Bellatrix," Luna snapped.

Angel smirked. "Yes, she's hiding from me, Little Sister, not you. And no, actually, I think we're almost done, here."

Black pouted at her. "What did I miss? Why is Luna hiding from you?"

"You missed a spot here," she said, reaching out to wipe a stray drop of blue off Black's cheek, and licked it from her finger before adding with a grin, "And apparently I'm scary."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Black lied, far too amused.

"Liar."

Black rolled her eyes at Luna's almost-inaudible comment. "Fine, I have noticed, but I don't get why you're acting so silly over it. From where I'm standing, you're being ridiculous. Unless I've really missed something, Angel hasn't done anything to you, or Maïa, or Harry, or anyone else who gets all jumpy when she walks into the room. Well, maybe Sirius, but that's just House business."

"She's not Angelos, Lyra! She's the Dark! She's evil, she wants to hurt us, all of us—"

"Well, yeah? Obviously? That doesn't mean she's going to, though."

"You don't understand! Show her, please, the— That's what I see when I look at her!" she said, even as Cassie held out the sketch. She apparently wasn't willing to stand up and leave Luna, so Black actually had to come into the room to take it, making a face at the steady, even glow surrounding her.

"This much light can't be good for you," she muttered, examining the drawing. Then she blinked at Luna, Cassie, and Gin before turning to the embodiment of evil itself. "Do normal people not see the Dark in you?"

The Dark giggled. "No, of course not."

"Well, that's fucking weird. But yeah, Luna, I know what Angel is. But you can't possibly think that she's a danger to you just because she is dangerous. I mean, you're not scared of me. Um...are you? I mean, I guess I've never really asked, but...?"

"You don't want to hurt me! She does! I can feel it!"

"Well, I don't want to hurt you personally, and I...don't think Angel does either?" The Dark gave her an impassive shrug. "Whatever. Even if she does want to, that doesn't mean she's going to. I mean, I don't go around starting battles to the death with people for fun."

Her "sister" giggled again. "Really? You were out playing with the Huntress, weren't you?" she asked, head tilting toward the blood-splattered professor.

"Yeah, that elf just popped in and said Luna needed her, then popped away with her. Rude. But acromantulae don't count, apparently."

"Since when?"

Black shrugged. "Since they're giant spiders and humans are kind of ridiculously species-ist when it comes to non-anthropoid beings?"

Angelos just smirked at her, raising an eyebrow like, really?

"Shut up, you're ruining my argument."

"Doesn't matter, I already swore I don't have any intention of hurting the little truth-teller, so—"

"You didn't, actually," Cassie pointed out. "You said you could swear it. That's not the same thing."

Ooh, good catch! Gin hadn't noticed, and that was the sort of thing that got people killed horribly in stories about the fae. Not that shite in faerie stories was exactly applicable to real life, most of the time, but when you were trying to keep the Dark Itself from fucking eating you, they were probably as good a guide as anything.

Angel rolled her eyes. "Well, I have sworn it to Sarah."

"Then it shouldn't be any imposition to swear it to me as well." There was enough iron in Cassie's tone, if the dark witch really was fae, Gin thought she would've flinched.

As it was, she just smirked. "I'm not telling you everything I swore to Sarah. But I will swear not to kill or harm or deliberately cause emotional distress to, or even manipulate little Luna Xenadora with malicious intent, including by causing harm or death or emotional distress to those she cares for in order to cause injury to her. I will hold to this promise for a year and a day, beginning at today's sunrise, and further promise not to retaliate against either of you for extracting this vow after that period has ended, that I will abide by its spirit rather than the letter of it, and make no attempt to circumvent it." That was...really comprehensive. The vow of someone who had to make a lot of vows, to a lot of very paranoid people, Gin was betting. "And in exchange, you will acknowledge that I've done everything in my power to assure Luna I have no intention of harming her, which is all I can do to prevent her succumbing to her paranoia about me."

Cassie's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Is it all you can do?"

"I don't fix people, Lovegood. Surely Artemis has told you as much." Wait, Artemis?! Was Cassie fucking Lovegood a white mage?! "I could place her under a geas not to kill herself, but that would probably be counterproductive and cause her more pain in the long run than killing her right now, and do you know how hard it is to drive someone insane in just the right way to compensate for their own inherent instabilities and let them act relatively normal? And even if you get it right, it's not exactly a painless process for the subject. Ask Mirabella Zabini, if you don't believe me."

"Wait, what about Zee?"

The Miskatonite scowled. "A bunch of paternalistic arses broke her legs, then forced her to dance on them anyway until she learned to fly and fake it for the crowd." In response to Black's obvious confusion, she added, "Ask her why she hates mind-healers sometime, and how people deal with dark children outside of the House of Black. Do we have an accord, Lovegood?"

"Yes, fine," Cassie agreed, though she still looked awfully suspicious. More so, now that the embodiment of evil itself had just implied that she held some sympathy for children whose minds got fucked with by healers. (Even if they were probably children like Tom, which Gin didn't think should count.)

Black clearly had no idea what would have happened to her if she'd been born into a sane family. From what Lord Black had told her, the Blacks used a combination of brainwashing and torture to force their kids to conform to the standards of the House, but Gin had looked into it, what mind-healers actually did (back when Mum suggested that maybe she ought to talk to one right after, well, everything, at the end of first year), and she thought that might be worse.

Gin didn't know what Lady Zabini's deal was, but given that she was the kind of person who was still friends with Bellatrix Lestrange at the end of the war, and that was after a childhood intervention, it wasn't at all out of the question that someone had decided she was a hopeless case and just compelled her to follow the rules. (Because it wasn't like forcing someone to act normal wouldn't build massive amounts of resentment, or anything.) If Black — or, well, say Bellatrix, because Gin still didn't know who'd raised Black — had been born a Weasley instead of a Black, that was probably what would've happened to her. Granted, that sort of thing was...less common now than it was fifty or even thirty years ago (supposedly), but even the idea that something like that could be done was enough to make Gin wary of talking to them at all. Who knew what they'd do to someone who had Tom Riddle's memories floating around her fucked up head? (She fucking hated legilimency.)

"Then it is so sworn, by my soul, on the Styx, with Death and Magic as witnesses."

"And so acknowledged. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to my niece in private."

"You say, as though I wasn't in the middle of something when you started talking about me in front of Ginevra," the Dark said sarcastically. "Luna, love? Evil is a matter of perspective. Do yourself a favour and ditch the absolutist approach to morality. It'll save you a lot of pain in the long run."

She vanished before Luna could do more than give her a startled, still-terrified blink. "Why would she say that?" she asked, sounding terribly uncertain.

"Er...it's true?" Black suggested, obviously trying not to laugh.

"But why would she say something to...help me?"

"The most evil people aren't consistently evil, Luna." Tom certainly wasn't. "That would be too predictable. If you know they're always out to hurt you, they can give you good advice and know you're not going to take it, tell you the truth and you think it's a lie. They think it's funny." Like they thought torturing children was art... Gin swallowed hard, pushing the memories away again.

"It is funny, Red. And if she's being nice with no intent to actually hurt you, but you twist yourself up overthinking it, well, that's not her fault, is it."

"Piss off, Lyra, you're not helping."

Black shrugged. "I think that's a matter of opinion. I mean, Angel wasn't wrong, evil is a matter of perspective, so—"

Cassie's eyes tipped toward the ceiling. Gin fancied she was working very hard not to shout at Black. "Gin, thank you for sending that elf for me. Would you mind...?"

She nodded. "On it. Come on, Black."

It really was easy to forget how tiny Black was. Grabbing her elbow and jerking her off balance, it was much easier to get her to start moving toward the door than Gin would've guessed. Of course, it helped that Lord Black had given her a few pointers on grappling, just in case she was ever disarmed and physically assaulted. (And also because physical fitness was important, and tumbling and grappling were more fun than running in circles for an hour or so — though she did still go running in the morning, anyway. It helped her wake up, and there wasn't really space to practice tumbling in their room.) Gin would be shocked if Black didn't know more than she did about that sort of thing — Harry had mentioned she and Lord Black had gotten into a brawl with a bunch of muggle hoodlums over the summer, totally kicked arse with no magic at all — but she probably wasn't expecting it, and Gin knew enough to figure out exactly which direction to yank to break her casual, not-expecting-a-fight stance.

"Hey!"

"I'm late for my lesson with Lord Black. You're coming with me," she said, dragging the insensitive little madwoman out of the room.

Black laughed. "Oh, I am, am I?"

Yes, she was, because keeping an eye on her was the only way to make sure she wouldn't just go back to bug Luna and Cassie as soon as Gin left. Plus, if Black was there they'd be much less likely to end up talking about the first time Gin met the Dark, which was good, because she really, really didn't want to think about that. Yes, they might end up talking about Bellatrix — Lord Black was convinced that Black and the Blackheart were practically the same person, so she tended to come up when they were in the same room, and especially when they were talking about fighting, because, come on — but she wasn't nearly as terrifying as Tom. The worst she'd ever done was torture people to death. Tom had made Gin attack all those people, torture that boy, and then keep living. And turned Bellatrix into his mind-slave when she was a little kid, so at least some of the horrible things Bellatrix had done were his fault, too.

"What, did you have other plans?" she asked. Surely she wasn't planning on going back out to the Forest, the spiders would already have retreated into their own territory, and she had probably been planning on hunting them for at least a couple more hours before Winky had grabbed Cassie.

Black shrugged. "No, not really." She started skipping along beside Gin, probably just to make it annoying to keep hold of her arm, because she stopped as soon as she let go. "So, what've you been working on, lately? He's not still making you practice variations on the stunning charm, is he?"

Gin smirked to herself. Too easy.

So, in case anyone has been wondering, yes, Angel's presence does make it more obvious to everyone around her that Lyra is actually insane and arguably evil, rather than just kind of eccentric and entertainingly sociopathic. Not enough (yet) to make any real impact on the way they're acting around her, but it has only been a week.

Also, I'm not sure if we've clarified this in-story at any point (I'm leaning toward no? Perenelle might've said something at some point...) but Angel's primary motivation, much like Lyra's, is to entertain herself. The hold Sarah has over her is not unlike Hermione's influence on Lyra — she's entertaining, so Angel wants her to want to stick around. Which means she's in a position to get Angel to swear to restrain herself to petty mischief while they're in Britain, by a Power much more powerful than the Dark. (Angel might be able to break reality and summon eldritch abominations to destroy large swaths of New England, but she can't really wipe Britain off the map by herself.) There's always a bigger fish out there.

(Unless you're Death.)

Angel's Dark has only been "personified" as long as the Blacks have been dedicated to it. They did have some idea what they were dedicating themselves to (ie, the very spirit of the chaos, madness, and destruction they wished to unleash on the enemies who had destroyed their House), but it wasn't a strictly defined deity before they formed the Covenant with it, and it's changed quite a lot over the centuries, as the Blacks' understanding of it has shifted. It's a comparatively young Aspect, for all its area of influence is incredibly broad. Both Flamel and Sarah are older than it, and no matter how dangerous it might be, they can't help thinking of it as mostly being annoying as hell, following them around like a bored little cousin or something and making trouble for the lulz. And a few beings like Death and the Morrigan are just as threatening to Angel as they are to anyone else.

(There's always a bigger fish, and all that. —Lysandra)

Also, Gin and Sirius are really very good for each other. Consider Sev very smug about this.

— Leigha