They Didn't Know We Were Seeds
Severus and Lily clutch hands as Amelia Bones, Alastor Moody, and Lewis Fenwick are brought into the lounge room one by one. Amelia is splattered with blood and frightfully pale, yet she walks into the room, albeit with help from her two scared younger brothers since she's trembling so badly. Alastor follows behind her, he looks more furious than scared and he keeps shoving at one of the Prewett twins who is trying to offer him support as Arthur Weasley stands stuck solidly to his other side, holding a handkerchief over one of his eyes. The very eye Severus knows will soon hold an odd, roving eyeball that will make many uncomfortable over the coming years and beyond.
For all of the terror that fills the once happy room, it's not quiet. People are whispering, weeping, and discussing in sharp, staccato words about what's happened and will happen now. However, that noise – all the noise – stops when into the room comes the other Prewett twin, grim faced. Behind him floats the still form of Lewis Fenwick and behind Lewis, his grandson, Benjy follows. Benjy is just as silent as the rest of the room, but his shoulders shake and his eyes are a raw red, like an open wound.
"Dad!" cries Benjy's Aunt Anne, bursting out from behind guests to be at the side of her father's prone form. "Dad," she repeats, voice jagged as she touches his face. Benjy steps up next to her and lays a hand on her shoulder, but she tosses it off in favor of lifting her father's face and pressing her cheek against his. "Dad…" she keens before breaking into sobs. Benjy turns his glossy eyes out on all of them, a searching look to his gaze, which quickly trains on Clara as she steps forward, arms open for him.
Benjy falls into her and with a loud whimper and brings them both to the floor before he begins to cry noisily into her shoulder. An older couple then appears out of the crowd, the man a brunet with a prominent cleft to his chin, and the woman a short redhead. The woman touches Benjy and Clara's heads to draw their attention. The pair look up and then begin to cry louder as she draws them into an embrace big enough for both of them. As for the man, he joins Benjy's aunt by Lewis's side. He wraps an arm around her, which instead of throwing off, she leans into. Her cries quiet a little as she hides her face in his shoulder, but the man, who's own figure now shakes, makes up for it with his own choked whimpers. Severus had his suspicions when he first saw them, but now he is certain. They are Benjy's parents. He has seen many terrible and sorrow things over the course of his life – this one and the last – but this, the breakdown of a family, will forever remain seared into his memories.
Severus is drawn to look over his shoulder shortly after just in time to see the Floo flare with life and a couple of emergency Mediwitch and wizards step out of it. Other guests, closer to the floo, help direct them towards the victims. As the Fenwick's tragedy continues to play out in front of him, Severus can't help but break his eyes away – for just a moment – to look at Lily and say, "You'll have to apologize to your sister, she wanted me to make sure you had a good time."
Lily, rips her attention away from the horrors in front of her to meet his gaze. For a moment, her eyes are full of bewilderment. Then, she shakes her head and a grimace crosses her lips. "I think that's going to be long forgotten by the time I tell her all about this."
Severus returns his attention to the mess, but unable to bear watching the mediwitch telling the Fenwicks there's nothing she can do for Lewis and he's gone from his world for good, he watches the mediwizard try to beat Moody into coming back with him to St. Mungo's with the help of Molly Weasley.
"Yes," he says, "you are right."
-o-O-o-
"Father?"
The man jumps, turning to look at her where she stands in the doorway of her room. "Priscilla, what are you still doing awake?" he asks. "I thought your mother sent you off to bed after the New Year's toast."
"She did," Priscilla answers stepping out of her room and closing the door behind her. "I wasn't feeling very tired, though, and have been reading." She brings the nail of her thumb to her lips, only to lower it when her father narrows his eyes into a glare. "I thought… Is uncle Augustus here? I swear I heard him."
He sighs. "Go to bed, Priscilla," he says reaching around her to open her the door to her room. "You're much too young to be awake at this hour."
Priscilla bites her tongue and lets herself be nudged back into her room. It enrages her to be dismissed like a little girl, but to her father, that will all she'll be— Until her family is on the verge of ruins and he realizes she can be what saves them. Then she is a woman who needs to marry before she becomes too old to interest anyone of good standing. Her father looks down at her, as he will for another year before she gets her last growth spurt that will bring her to his height, a hardness to his eyes as he says, "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Father," she echoes back to him.
He hesitates a moment, a faint wrinkle taking home between his brows. "If you hear—" he stops and shakes his head. "No more reading tonight, go straight to sleep now."
"Yes, Father," she agrees.
The wrinkle smooths and a neutral expression takes hold of her father's face. With a nod, he leaves the room.
Priscilla does go back to her bed, but not to sleep in it as her father has told her to. Instead, she gets down on her knees and reaches beneath to pull out a wired cage. In it are two big, brown-gray rats. She'd been very particular about this detail. They couldn't be anything attractive, like white. They need to be able to convince the Lord and the followers who are be with him they were the wild, that the charm on the home to keep out pests has grown weak and they've gotten in.
Priscilla has complained to her Grandma about hearing scratching in her walls just a couple of days ago and taken droppings from the rats' cage and hidden them in the corners of some of the kitchen cupboards and put holes in the sack of sugar and flour last night. No one has noticed that yet, but when it will be investigated later, it'll cement the ruse in her family's eyes that it is the truth.
One of the rats begins to squeak and Priscilla quickly hushes it. She brings a finger to her mouth and nibbles its jagged nail. She can't let them squeaking ruin her and Demitri's plan. Reaching for her wand on her bedside table, she casts a silencing charm on the rats and their cage and draws her robe closer to her. Sneaking out of her room, she slowly creeps down the corridor towards the parlor where she knows the Lord, her family, Demitri, the Lestranges, and whoever else it was that'd participated in the atrocity that would lead to Bellatrix being awarded Hufflepuff's cup are gathered.
Coming to a stop next to the doorway, Priscilla presses herself against the wall beside it and listens.
"…to award you for your instrumental role in tonight's victory I shall give you this—" The Lord falls abruptly silent and she imagines he's showing the Hufflepuff cup to all in the room, preening under their wonder. It curls her lips into a sneer.
"Thank you, my Lord," a woman, Bellatrix Lestrange, Priscilla presumes, replies.
Priscilla's eyes turn wide as panic spikes through her veins. She is late, the Lord was not beginning a speech, but ending one. Putting down the cage of rats, she opens it and unceremoniously shakes them out. They of course begin to make a ruckus, but she hears nothing as they're still bespelled. Realizing she's made yet another error, Priscilla draws her wand and shoots off a hex at a bowl that sits on a sideboard a short distance down the hall. It wobbles and falls from it, shattering to pieces against the floor.
"What was that!" demands the Lord from the other room.
"I'm not sure, my Lord," she hears her uncle reply, "let us investigate."
Priscilla takes a step back, then another as she watches the Lord step into her family's hallway with her uncle and the Lestrange's following on his heels. Realizing there is no way she can run away without being caught, Priscilla crouches herself down in the shadows made by a decorative chair behind her.
Even in the darkness Priscilla can see the Lord's expression is one of fury. He does not like to be interrupted and she knows all too well it won't matter that's she a girl to him. That she's one of his follower's nieces. Or even her stammering about only wanting to get a drink of water from the kitchen won't mull his anger. He points down the hall, toward the broken dish, and commands the Lestrange couple, "Go that way!" Looking at her uncle Augustus, he orders, "And you, that way!"
Making herself as small as possible as her uncle comes her way, Priscilla sucks in a breath and holds herself completely still. Her uncles looks everywhere but at her. It tells her all she needs to know. He knows she's here. Priscilla can only hope he doesn't say anything now and asks nothing in the morning of her.
"Rats!" Bellatrix cries from down the hall. "Disgusting, bloody little—!" Priscilla watches with large eyes as the witch draws her wands and yells, "Avada Kedavra!" and as a stream of green light jets from her wand and hits one of the rats, causing it to die with a sharp squeak.
Her uncle turns around and says, "The charm to keep out those little buggers must need redoing."
"Yes," Rodolphus Lestrange agrees, "it seems so. I suggest you have your brother and father take care of it soon. Once the vermin are inside it becomes much harder to rid your home of them."
"I will," Uncle Augustus says. He then looks to the Lord, who stands stiff in the doorway, still radiating with potent rage. "My Lord?" he inquires.
"Let us return to business," he replies. "This is drawing on far too long."
The four then file back into the parlor. When she is sure it is safe, Priscilla sighs. Pushing herself off the floor with shaking hands, she slowly, carefully, makes her way back to her room. Once inside, she closes the door and goes to her bed where she once again gets on her knees to push the now empty cage beneath her bed. After she finishes, she lays herself out on the rug beside her bed and rests her head on her arms. It's childish and terribly uncouth, but she's exhausted and just wants to lay still a moment and rest.
As she breathes in and out, she wonders what the night's victory was for the Death-Eater's cause. Who did they kill (or as good as)? Fourteen was such a long time ago for Priscilla and she hadn't paid the war much mind at all, in spite of her family's involvement. She had been preoccupied with just trying to pass transfiguration and her hopeless crush on William Wilkes that year. Perhaps Demitri will be able to tell her. Surely names were spoken during the Lord's speech to the Lestranges, her family, and him?
Getting off the floor, Priscilla takes a seat on her bed and waits. She watches the minutes pass on the clock and if she wasn't so wound up from the mess in the hallway, Priscilla would have fallen asleep after the first twenty. As minutes almost come together to create an hour, she hears a soft knocking at her bedroom door. Straining her ears, she listens for the rhythm Hufflepuff's are suppose to play to get into their common room at Hogwarts. Soon, the knocking sounds just like she hoped it would. Springing to her feet, she goes to her door and throws it open.
Demitri brushes past her and into the room. Closing her door, Priscilla casts several privacy spells on it before she turns to the old man and asks, "Do you have it?"
"Your distraction worked just as planned— Even if it was late," he replied.
She flushes. "I didn't know how long it would be," she reminds him, "I tried to get there as quickly as I could without making noise."
"Yes," he replies, doubt clear in his voice. "Here it is," he tells Priscilla before she can kick up a fuss about his tone. Pulling the Hufflepuff cup from his robe, he hands it to her. "Are you going to keep it here?" he asks her.
She shakes her head. "No," she answers. "I'm owling it to Severus. He should be just getting home from the Fenwick New Years Eve party, so he will be able to receive it immediately."
"The… Fenwick party…?" Demitri croaks.
She looks up from the cup. He's infinitely paler than he had been just a moment before. "Yes?" she replies, uneasy. "Why?"
"That's who the Lord, your uncle, and the Lestranges attacked tonight," he says.
Priscilla's heart stops a moment. "Oh," she whispers. Priscilla shakes her head. Severus's fine. He has to be. "Surely he's okay," she reassures him. "I don't even remember who died from this attack," she tells Demitri. "It couldn't have been many, I would have remembered a New Years Eve massacre. It was probably just someone who was a thorn in the Lord's side right now and could become a larger problem if not dealt with."
"Yet Severus was not there before."
Looking to her window, she says, "Watch, I'll send this now. You'll see he's well."
"We shall see," he replies, coolly with a frown pulling at his lips.
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