Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters. This is just a fanwork made for fun and to help me develop as a writer, nothing more and nothing less.
WARNING: Angst, Drama, Mentions of War and War Crimes, PTSD, Childhood Trauma, Character Deaths, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Canon Prejuidice, Magical Plague and much more. Viewer Discretion is Advised.
PART ONE
All was Well.
Until it Wasn't.
8th June 2002
London, England
Life was a cruel teacher.
And if life had taught Aster Potter any lesson well enough, it was that time was borrowed and fleeting. A mixture of moments strung together like precious jewels and shattered glass, held together by the unreliable thread that was her memory. The cool, crisp autumn air nipped at her nose and cheeks, eliciting a rosy hue while her emerald eyes with flecks of turquoise stared unblinkingly at the thunderheads that echoed the storm inside her heart. A sickening apprehension slid down the back of her throat, heavy and sticky like molasses, and she fixed the red scarf around her throat restless fingers.
Thunder rumbled, and the world trembled, and still the city came to life like a flower that bloomed in spring. Lights flickered on through the borough, from house to business, and the sidewalks were soon filled to the brim people. The cars and trolleys rolled across the pavement, while the scent of coffee underscored by smog and exhaust saturated the air. All people caught up in their perfectly normal routines, unaware of the exist of magic and the troubles that brewed beneath the surface of the mundane society that interwoven with the magical one—though many witches and wizards would claim otherwise.
Aster strode down the street under the pretense of idleness, but the underlining tension that strummed down the length of her spine couldn't be entirely concealed. Her green eyes flickered at bystanders and the people she passed on the sidewalk with a hint of a suspicion, and her magic was coiled in her right hand while her left had a knuckle white grip on the strap of her leather satchel. She had been branded as an outlaw and been hunted for several months now, victim to the ever-changing tide of the public opinion and political machinations that went on behind closed doors.
War had a way of distinguishing the line between what was truly important and the things that did not matter, and for a time there was unity behind a cause to protect and save innocents. The end of the war had come at great cost, so many lost—too many lost, but the future upon the horizon had given her hope.
Hope, Aster mused, was a cruel word.
A trick, an illusion to keep one from accepting reality. She had done everything to keep hope burning bright to the point that had almost withered until she had become nothing more than ash and dying embers. After the war, people were swift to build up walls and barriers, desperate to reinstate a normal routine and find order after such chaos. So many were quick to ignore the fact that it was the status quo that had led to the repetitive discord, and those in powerful positions were resistant to change way things were because it would hurt their self-interests.
The bull-headed cesspool of miserable fools that she had put up with for so long when she advocated for laws that protected magical beings, trying to afford mundane born better conditions in work force and more, and update the magical education still made her blood boil to this very day. She had made no shortage of enemies by being outspoken and challenged the old traditionalists.
But all her proposals and efforts were met with derision, at that point. It hadn't spiraled out of control and her with a wanted poster plastered all the front of the Daily Prophet every single day until the fragile peace post bellum was shattered by a terrible sickness.
Aureum Faucium, or more commonly referred to as Golden Throat Disease, spread like wildfire through the magical communities. It predominantly affected pureblood witches and wizards, leaving them stricken with fever and aches that could easily be confused with the flu until the flesh of their necks turned a yellowish, golden hue. If blisters and pustules appeared on the skin after that it was a death sentence. The boils would leak toxic magic and while the fever burned out the magical core. If the person managed to survive, the chances of them every using magic again was slim to the none.
People were quarantined, often left to die. The bodies were piling up so faster than graves could be dug, and mass cremation had been implemented. A stagger thirty-five percent of the magical world had been killed in the matter of months, and those that luckily survived the illness would have life-long chronic problems. The most prominent issue was the permanent damage to magical core that left many witches and wizards unable to use magic, and the purebloods had been hit the worst by the disease.
To say that panic ensured would have been the understatement of the century. The existential crisis brought out the wickedness in the Wizarding World so swiftly that it left her head spinning with shock and disbelief.
The new Minister of Magic, Jeremiah Cromwell, quickly implemented laws under the guise of preservations of the Wizarding Society. Witches between the ages of fourteen to the thirty-five were to enter a marriage or have a marriage contract signed. Wizards were actively encouraged to take lovers, even if they had a wedding band on their fingers. Businesses were encouraged to let any females go or not to hire anyone at all, as a career would detract from any chances of successful families. Inheritance laws were tweaked and changed, heavily valuing an heir over an heiress and made it difficult for women to inherit or control family estates. Purebloods were not exempt from this oppression. If anything, they were under more pressure to continue their prominent bloodlines so that new blood did not "dilute" the population.
That wasn't everything that happened. Just the first chips away at the stone, and Aster did her best to fight it. It was much like the Irresistible Force Paradox where she, an unstoppable force meets the immovable object, the Wizarding World. The only way to end the paradox and the insanity of it was to remove herself from the equation entirely, and that is just what she intended to do.
She made her way to the London Docklands. The docks had been unused for decades and while there were plans to develop the area from the poverty ridden spec of land that it had become, it was like a ghost town right this moment. It was remote and had no magical connections that she knew of, making it the perfect place to meet up with her former fiancé.
He appeared like a phantom out the early morning fog that rolled off the Thames. Dark curly hair framed a chiseled face, and high cheek bones so sharp that it could cut glass. He was draped in an expensive suit that perfectly tailored to his strong lean frame, and his thick lips drew into a tight line when he saw her. She knew that if he weren't already neck deep into the Rebellion then he would have taken such a risk.
"Lady Potter," he greeted, with a shallow nod.
Aster smiled. "What a cold greeting for your former fiancé, Blaise."
"Former fake fiancé. Sorry if you were expecting a kiss," Blaise replied, flippantly.
A little over a year ago, she had made a deal with Blaise Zabini to be her pretend fiancé. The arrangement suited Blaise just fine, as he did not enjoy the company of the fairer sex and was ambivalent to marriage entirely due to his black widow of a mother. He got to have his male lovers without fear of persecution, and she got to not worry about the pressure of being suckered into a loveless marriage. The arrangement dissolved when the world fell apart for obvious reasons.
"I take it that you weren't followed," she said.
He stopped close to her. With one long gaze he took her in from head to toe, and then arched a coal brow. "You look like shit."
"I haven't exactly had the luxury of beauty sleep in recent weeks. The Ministry has been breathing down my neck since that incident in Bristol," she whispered out.
As she closed her eyes, she could recall the pungent smell of ash, blood, and death. The odor imprinted on her memory, haunting her every nightmare, and the things that were found at the internment camp—she couldn't speak of them. There were some horrors that could not be put into words, and it forever changed how she viewed magic.
Voldermort was dead. He was dead! There should be no more camps! There should be no more Death Eaters!
That was so naïve to believe that Voldemort was the root of all evil, and not merely a symptom of a deeper problem. It was a visceral, gut-wrenching feeling to see the world that she loved so fiercely for become the very thing that she fought so hard against. Every person who had died against Voldemort in the first war and in the second—all their sacrifices were spit on.
Her throat squeezed tight with a myriad of emotions, but she managed to hold it together at the last second. She peeled open her gaze at looked at the man who had unexpectedly become her closest confidant, and with a heavy heart asked the question that she really didn't want an answer to. "What has Minister Cromwell done in response? How bad is it? I've seen the wanted posters. They say that I am wanted for questioning, but I know that is only the tip of the iceberg."
Kingsley should have been the Minister of Magic. His bid for the political office was cut tragically short by a heart attack. With everything that followed, Aster suspected foul play. Could never find enough evidence to prove it.
In the vacuum of power, Jerimiah Cromwell stepped forth. His kept a neutral stance in the Second Wizarding World, his position in the elite of the Ministry would be secured and his aristocracy untouched by the fallout. His blackened soul filled with pestilence and tar concealed by charisma and good looks. The Cromwells were one of the most ancient families in the Wizarding World, and he had no trouble garnering enough support to gain the position of Minister of Magic.
All the plague did was give him the means in which to hide his corruption under the guise of benevolence and a helping hand.
"The Minister has called an emergency audience with the Wizengamot. He is set to bring forth witnesses to testify that you attacked the Julian Dolohov unprovoked. It will be enough to get a warrant issued to search your properties. You and I both know that Cromwell is not above having someone plant dark artifacts, and then it is only a matter of time," Blaise said upon a hearty sigh. He ran his palm down the back of his neck, and then he reached up to his breast pocket, tugging a piece of a folded back hidden behind the blue handkerchief. "The Daily Prophet has already written articles to discredit you and bring your mental stability into question."
The witch reached out to take the paper, but Blaise pulled it back. "On second thought, it isn't your most glamorous photo—"
Aster sent him a scathing look before she snatched the newspaper from his hand which he readily relinquished with a caustic smile. She unfolded the piece of paper to reveal a cut out of the frontpage article from the Daily Prophet. Her spirit jolted with a fury so cold that it turned her blood to ice, and her lungs collapsed in her chest. She couldn't scrap in a single ounce of air, eyes riveted on the picture that played on loop beneath the boldly printed headline, Potter Gone Mad?
She knew the very second that this picture was taken.
The flash of shock and denial set in a frown along her brow while she stood underneath a dark archway; the Fountain of Magical Brethren stood in the background, a silent observer to the comings and goings in the Atrium. Shock melted, until all she was burning hot rage and grief and it exploded in a magical shockwave, rocketing bystanders away violently.
Andromeda Tonks had been murdered.
Minister Cromwell had granted pardons and stay of executions to Death Eaters in Azkaban. Good blood shouldn't go to waste, is what he said to convince the Wizengamot to pass the ordinance.
But the Death Eaters had no desire to peacefully rejoin society. All they wanted was death and destruction, and Andromeda had been in Diagon Alley when the first in a long line of new raids occurred. She had tried to help—tried to save others, but it hadn't been enough. She had been killed with a cutting curse and left to bleed out in the streets while Aster was stuck in Ministry of Magic and trying to navigate her way through a bureaucratic web of subterfuge.
Her grief immortalized only an hour later with the lens of a camera, and now used as weapon to drive the knife in her heart even deeper. It was a moment that lasted only a few hearts, and without context, she did appear every inch the madwoman they claimed.
Heartbeat pounding in her skull, Aster swallowed convulsively. Guilt and loss were strapped, tied around her ankles by a rope and she was being hopelessly pulled underneath. Smoke wafted into the air a split second before the parchment burst into flames when she crushed it between her quaking fingers.
Blaise stared at her, wary and unblinking, like she was a viper about to strike. "What was tha—"
"Andromeda. It was the day—Teddy saw everything—" Her voice faltered. The words scrapped to a painful halt in the middle of her throat. Ashes flew into the wind when she curled her palms, blackened by the charred paper, and something in her felt shaky. Vulnerable and cracked, and all it would take was one last hit to shatter into a billion glittering pieces.
Blaise caught her shoulders, fingers squeezed comfortingly. "Fuck. I didn't know, Aster. If I did, I would have never shown you that newspaper."
"I know." She managed to say after a shallow breath. "I know you didn't. I didn't even know that they—they took those pictures, so how could you have known?"
Andromeda had become closest, tangible person to a mother that Aster could recall being in her life. That wasn't meant to be callous towards Lily Potter, by any means. Lily was a photograph of a pretty woman, a memory printed with faded colors on brittle and crumbling paper, though her impact and sacrifice resonated through the young witch's life still. She was more of an idea, a concept, but not something solid that Aster could hold onto. Mrs. Weasley was—had been nice and motherly, but she had too many over her own children to juggle. Adding another into the mix with as many issues as Aster just wasn't feasible.
The pair had bonded shortly after the Golden Trio sought refuge with the Tonks family in the little cottage just outside of Bramsberg. Aster was initially leery, given the striking resemblance that Andromeda bore to her sadistic and clinically insane sister, Bellatrix Lestrange, but the older witch had won her over in time. With stories about the Marauders and Lily, the foundation of trust had been laid and only grew during the one time since Andromeda had been a rock steady pillar of support. Even when Aster had been left alone to search for the horcruxes, she had never had to second guess being welcomed into the Tonks' home.
Ted Tonks. Nymphodora Tonks. Remus Lupin. The last bits of Andromeda's family tree stripped down until only her grandson remained. Remus was like her uncle and Tonks had been her friend, and their child was her godson; it was only natural that the shared bonds of grief and love would make a patchwork family out of the three. For a time, it was what Aster needed, finding a bit of solace even when she still felt so out of place.
But a place in this world had never been in the cards.
She stood straight, shoulders squared, and locked all the turmoil in her heart tightly away. With her composure ironclad, her eyes cut into Blaise just as the dawning light turned blindly bright. "Did you bring it?" she asked.
He nodded, after a moment. His hands slipped away from her, and he reached into the knapsack that was slung across his shoulder. After a moment of digging through its contents, he pulled out an item wrapped in blue velvet cloth. He unwrapped it with an unnecessary flourish and then presented it to her.
"Array Captures are hard to find outside of the Department of Mysteries. You are lucky that the late Lord Malfoy was such a collector of rare arcane objects, and you were even more fortunate that Lady Malfoy was willingly to part with it," Blaise told her, a bit of curiosity through his gaze. "I was half-tempted to ask you what you wanted with that blasted thing, but then I had the good sense to realize that anything you involved yourself resulted in trouble. I have enough of that at this moment to shoulder anymore."
His little remark was met with a mild snort and an arched brow before Aster gingerly took the Array Capture out of his hands. The array was a small and round, made from pure silver, radiating an unnatural warmth; ambient magic hummed through the metal like a bird song and shimmered in a bluish green mist around the item, barely visible to the naked eye. Her thumbs brushed the engraved runes carved into the front of the disc with master precision. A powerful magical item with the specific purpose to capture residual magic often left by wards or powerful outbursts of magics that lingered in the area like a scar. The array draws in the magic and holds it until it can be used or dispelled elsewhere.
Aster kept her expression stoic despite the trill of anticipation that pattered through her heart and covered it back over with the veil cloth. It helped dampen the radiating magic, but only just. She tucked the magical item into her satchel for safe keeping, and then pulled vellum bound by a red string.
"The Black Estate and all its entails, apart from a few…sentimental items." She smiled faintly at the flash shock and waved the rolled-up parchment in his face until he had the good sense to grab it. "All paperwork is filled and notarized, so Draco just need to do is go to Gringotts and make it official with the lordship ceremony and acceptance of signet ring. Your future mother-in-law will be tickled pink by it, I'm sure."
"Lady Malfoy isn't my—Draco and I are—" His bit off with a frustrated sigh and glared at the impish smirk aimed at him. "Why are you signing over the estate? All I was told is that you were naming Malfoy your heir to inherit, not giving it all away at the drop of a hat."
"Despite all appearances, this was not a split-second decision. I decided to sort through all my assets right before the sickness swept through London. There had been a great deal left to me by my parents, and others, and…well, the spoils of war," she added, in uneasy afterthought.
The Rite of Conquest was an archaic law written with ink and on parchment that outdated the finding of Hogwarts, it was that old. In a duel or war, the family on the losing side was stripped of titles and wealth, and all the spoils went to the victor. Aster killed Voldemort, and thus inherited more than one person could spend in a dozen lifetimes, and she had spent months sifting through all that had been bequeathed to her.
She signed a good portion away to Gringotts to make peace with the Goblins. It had been a necessary evil to break into the bank, and get the horcrux from Bellatrix's vault, but she understood that the soil in which Gringotts stood was part of the Goblin Nation. The Goblins were a branch of the Fae Kingdom, where hospitality and harmony were an integral part of everything they did. And the Goblin King was known to be ruthless when those had taken advantaged of his subjects. It had only been sensible to nip that in the bud before it could take roots and grow into another problem to add to her impressive list of woes.
"I let Narcissa assume what she wanted because I needed her assistance secured in full, but I've intended on giving the estate back to Draco for a long time now. Now that I have what I want, there is no reason to keep up the pretense," she stated, with a shrug.
Blaise stared at her slack jawed for a several moments, until comprehension twisted across his features with a dash of frustration. "You—you—how did you end up a Gryffindor?" he demanded.
She smirked. "Well, the Sorting Hat did want to put me in Slytherin."
His eyes narrowed. "Then why were you put in Gryffindor?"
That question made her grow somber in a space of a single heartbeat. An old shame swelled up rosy in her face, at how cruel and oblivious children could be to one another and to the world, just caring about their own little bubbles. Before Hogwarts, Dudley had bullied and drove away anyone who tried to be her friend. Ron Weasley had wanted to be her friend in a longtime, and she clung to little bit of kindness with all her might.
When Ron told her that everyone in Slytherin turned out bad, Aster had stupidly believed him. It was an unfair lie that many like Ron had been conditioned to believe, but she hadn't been thinking with her head in that moment. She had been so desperate to be liked, to make friends that when the Sorting Hat had said she would do great in Slytherin that she had rejected the idea in completely horror.
Only as the years drew onward that she realized how incredibly foolish that was. At the ages of eleven and twelve, children had barely scratched the surface of who they could be as a person. A toe dipped in the shallow edge of an ocean, unable to ascertain what kind of ripples would occur when they took the plunge; humans were too complex to be sorted into simple categories. People changed, learned, and grew, and it was in adolescence that greatest and arguable the most important metamorphosis occurred.
A single word from a hat should not pre-determine anyone's destiny. The stigma of being sorted into the "wrong" house should not be a life-long brand, but the hearts of the British Wizarding Society were fickle and cruel. All too eager were people to place labels of good and evil and omit the responsibility of deeper thinking to see that the world was shades of grey. She had experienced such vacillation first-hand, enduring against the constant change in the tides when the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and so on and so forth.
Are you a good witch or are you a bad witch? The hazy recollection of words printed on yellowed pages came to her from a darkened corner of her mind. The Wizard of Oz had been one of the first books that she had ever checked out of the library when she was in primary school, delighting in the small rebellion against her aunt and uncle's no freakishness rule. How could she have known that those printed words would come to haunt her many years later?
"We all make stupid choices, especially when we are kids. I didn't understand how big of a choice I was making then, or that it would be considered so set in stone. I should have known how unfair it was to judge someone based on something out of their control because—" Her sentence abruptly collapsed beneath a gusty sigh, unable to open the can of worms that was the abuse and neglect that the Dursleys had put her through. "I should have known better, but I was desperate. I didn't want people to hate me. I had already been hated enough, and I just wanted…I just wanted a place to belong."
"And you thought that being a Gryffindor could give you that."
She nodded. "For a time, it did. It just wasn't enough. I am sure that says something unfortunate about me, but the past cannot be changed. All I have now is moving forward."
His mouth curved into a small frown, viewing her through the thick of his lashes. "And what does moving forward look like to you?"
Her fingers ghosted across the bracelet adorned on her right wrist, and the black opals stones held so delicately by the silver weaved into a leaf pattern. Cold and remote, her green eyes became dark like the forest at night. Thoughts concealed deeply within, and a mysterious tilt to her smile. "I am not entirely sure. I just know that it won't be anywhere near here," she responded. "You and the Resistance need to be prepared. I don't intend to leave without a parting gift, but time will be of the essence. Take advantage of the chaos and confusion, don't allow those bastards a moment's reprieve."
"You are being deliberately vague."
"And…?"
"It makes me worry that you are about to get yourself in over your head."
"I was dropped into the deep end when I was a baby, so getting in over my head is nothing new to me. In fact, it is probably the closest thing I have to a functioning normal. Besides, a secret plan isn't much of a plan if I tell it to someone, now is it?" she asked, rhetorically. The hard lines of her face softened, and a fleeting smile tugged at her lips. "Goodbye, Blaise. You were the best fake fiancé a girl could have hoped for."
"Stop it. You are going to make me blush," he said, deadpanned. His finger twitched, restlessly and then he shook his head side to side. "Po—Aster, I know that you are set on your path. Just remember one thing for me, please?"
"And what do you want me to remember?" she asked.
"Any fool can die. It's living that is the hard part. Don't be so caught in the running, that you forget to live along the way."
Ah, but wasn't that the crux of a lot of her problems? She didn't know how to live without fighting death every step of the way. She didn't know how to be content in one place, didn't know how to let her roots settle deep into the earth long enough to grow, but she didn't tell Blaise that. Instead, she gave him a thin-lipped smile before she apparated from the docks.
The pressurized sensation of apparition always made her ears pop, and stomach roil unpleasantly. It compounded the shaky panic that fluttered in her chest and crushed her composure into dust. When her feet touched ground in the playground, she ducked behind an overgrown shrub and the dry heaves pitched her forward on her hands and knees. Stomach acid was spat onto the ground, between sputtering lips and it took her a couple of minutes to regain control of her body.
She gasped roughly, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her mouth with a grimace. Beads of sweat dropped her forehead and that coldness ached in her bones, but she pushed herself up off the ground. One step, then two, and then she walked across the park.
The place was abandoned and untouched, a phantom of a place that was once filled with childish joy and laughter. The merry-go-round was a piece of twisted metal upended several yards from where it supposed to be. The slide stood crooked on three legs, and one good breeze would take it down. The swing set stood relatively untouched, and the chains creaked and groaned by the slight breeze. A tree and a powerline had been knocked over to the ground, dividing the playground in two. The mess left untouched by authorities, left to rot like an inconvenient truth.
She recalled the place, hidden behind the holly bushes and hydrangeas, where she would sneak away to daydream, as if some magical means would come and make her life all the better. Her mind had been her refuge, against the torment by her family and the horcrux that ravaged her mind with nightmares. If only I had known wishing for a magical way out would come true, and how wonderful and how terrible it would have been, would I still have made it? she thought.
Aster made her way to the sidewalk and started up the long path towards Number Four Privet Drive. The houses that stood neatly, identical and in rows of ten, had fallen into disrepair. Windows shutters that hung on by a single screw, concaved rooftops on the verge of collapse, all the paint faded and worn. An assortment of graffiti had been branded onto a several homes, from thoughtful and time-consuming works to the simplest crude word sprayed in haste. The plant had grown wild and free; nature swiftly reclaimed what was taken, with no gardener to keep it immaculate.
No one rebuilt or repaired the houses here; the residual magic leaving an uncomfortable feel of death in the air. Privet Drive had become abandoned, an old relic or forgotten corpse left to wear down over time. Jagged and spider web cracks spread through the asphalt, growing larger and larger the closer that Aster walked to the epicenter of destruction. There were overturned cars, tossed about like a child's discarded toys, scorched down to the metal frames. The grass and plants thinned out, as if some unnatural force kept them from growing further into the suburb. The houses were little more than blackened rubble at this point.
Forty-eight.
Forty-eight people died that night she had turned seventeen. All those lives lost just because they simply lived near the place that she grew up, and the gut-wrenching guilt still burned bright in her soul.
The wards that had protected her in Privet Drive had been null and void when she turned an adult in the eyes of the Wizarding World, and the Death Eaters swiftly descended upon the quiet little suburb. Aster had been snuck away from the chaos by the Order of the Phoenix, put on the back of a broomstick with Remus and fled up into the skies away from the world that burnt below. She recalled the empty, helpless ache that carved out her insides when she realized there was nothing that she could do to stop it.
It had been Dumbledore's dying wish that she hunted solely hunted the horcruxes and to stay hidden during the duration of the war until a final confrontation was forced between her and Voldemort. The night of her seventeenth birthday had changed something within her. A naïve part of her heart calloused and hardened into a cynical shell, disillusioned by the innocents left to die in Privet Drive. She had been pig-headed, brash, and uncompromising when the Order tried to keep her from the front lines. She had worked tooth and nail to build up her mental shields, unwilling to let another disaster like the Department of Mysteries to happen again. She spent hours with anyone who would spare the time to learn the art of magical battle, and when she wasn't doing that, her time was split between the war and the horcruxes.
She couldn't prevent every tragedy, but she did her best to avenge them.
There was a part of her that feels she should stay now.
To stay and avenge those that had been wronged now by Cromwell and by the Ministry. If it were just her that then perhaps, she would stay and fight until the very last, but that wasn't the way it was. She was the only family her godson had left. She had come to the decision to take a page out of Narcissa Malfoy's book, and protect her family by any means necessary.
And that is why she was here, picking over old bones.
There were a lot of ghosts here in Privet Drive, but none terrified her more than the ones that resided in Number Four. The house that she grew up in had never been a home. Unwanted and barely tolerated, her childhood had been miserable and dismal. She had been a rambunctious child, wild and teeming with life. That spark had been smothered, until she held herself with a forlorn air, lost and out of place in the very normal and ordinary streets. If the vicious rumors that her aunt, uncle and cousin spewed had not driven other kids and adults to scorn her, her mannerisms would have labeled her too odd to associate with to the small minded people who lived in the England suburbs. A lot of people didn't like what they perceived as different; the unknown was too scary for them to contemplate. Still she thrived in the face of the cruel attacks—the cruel rumors hissed out by her aunt, her cousin's "Aster Hunting", and her uncle's beating—by withdrawing inside of herself and being quiet as a mouse.
When her Hogwarts letter arrived, it was confirmation of the freakishness that Petunia and Vernon always feared. The abuse didn't stop so much as it changed, from being starved and beaten, to increased verbal beratement and chores that worked her to the bone so that she had little time to concentrate on anything else. The darker part of her heart wondered if that is why Dumbledore refused to change her living circumstances, that she would be more malleable and receptive to the kindness of strangers in the Wizarding World.
At Privet Drive, she was a live-in servant and outcast. At Hogwarts, she was idolized or vilified for being the Girl-Who-Lived and caught up in the latest of dangers. Her carefree moments were few and far between and standing here in the shadow of a burnt empty shell that remained of Number Four, she felt her resolve strengthen.
She never did ever get to be just a child.
She stepped across the blackened door that laid face door in the threshold and entered house that was completely leveled except for the staircase. It stood there, hauntingly, and solemn. Ambient magic weaved through the air unseen by the naked eye, and it was the strongest there in the cupboard. The faint words written in crayon, Aster's Room, barely visible in the smoke damage.
Aster took in a deep, cleansing breath. "Let's get this over with."
She retrieved the Array Capture from her bag and walked towards the stairs and unwrapped the cloth from the magical item. She set it down on the floor, just in front of the cupboard, trying to squelch the childish fear of being so close to the tiny room that had been a prison.
The runes flared with a purplish glow. There was a crackle of electricity and the faintest trace of ozone, and she rose to her feet to stalk around the ruined home. Her hand twisted upward slowly wreathed by greenish blue energy, and the burnt lumber lifted from the ground at her command, fusing together to create a makeshift wall. She repeated the process until she had a decent amount of cover from plain sight, and then went about to carve runes outside. She had gotten good at subterfuge and traps during the war.
When her work was done, Aster made her way back into Number Four. She couldn't contain the disdain that swept through her the longer she stood on the fracture foundation of the house. It made her physically ill to have to return to this godforsaken place, but necessity was a powerful motivator. The blood wards were why she returned.
Every witch and wizard had a magical signature that was unique as a snowflake. The blood wards had been set by Dumbledore and the residual magic that had been imprinted on this place held a trace of his magical aura. The Array Capture would draw in that energy, pulling it out of the bones of the decaying house and seal into the runes to be used elsewhere. It was the only hope to undo one of the deceased Headmaster's greatest sins.
But all magic had its draw backs. As an influx of magical energy could trigger sensors at the Ministry of Magic, the sudden absence of it would be equally as alarming. The Ministry would send Aurors to investigate before long, and there would be a fight on her hands. She was prepared for the fight and the fallout, but there was a part of her that mourned that this is what it had all came to.
Aster wondered if it was a punishment. That she, and the world, was paying to the wrongs of a man who was cold and buried in the ground.
It had been a year ago when she received the letter from Gringotts about journal that had been left to her by Albus Dumbledore, and to be given to her three years after the war ended. She was confused, initially as to why he stipulated a time frame, but once she read the contents of the journal, the truth had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
In the journal, he penned shortly before his death, Albus Dumbledore confessed a terrible truth. That the end of magic had been prophesized and he had foolishly believed that Voldemort was the evil that would bring that doom upon the Wizarding World. He had enacted a very ancient and dark spell to pull a savoir from another world, by sacrificing that which he loved most. (There was no explicit mention of what he sacrificed. Only a photo of him and Grindelwald in their younger days hidden between the pages.) He did not care to learn the baby girl's origins, or the future that he had stolen.
He offered the infant a home with the Potters who had been troubling conceiving, knowing that the child would be raised in love and kindness. Lily and James were never told where she came from, only told she had been orphaned in the war. A little blood adoption spell and no one would question her origins, and Dumbledore had the child that he could easily mold into the weapon he needed to save the Wizarding World.
The cheer and jubilance did not last long when another prophecy was made.
Sybil Trelawney wasn't a witch of great renown by any stretch of the imagination, clinging to the diluted seeress blood that ran through her veins with an iron fist and let it consume her entire identity. She had never had a vision in her entire life, but one dark day, some entity guided words out of her mouth. That day placed a target on the Potters and the Longbottoms, and Dumbledore might as well had placed it himself.
Voldemort chose to mark the little half-blood girl an equal, seeing a parallel to himself, and the rest was history.
"You raised her a pig for the slaughter."
Aster never cared for Snape. His sacrifice to end the war was commendable, but it could not undo all the wrongs that he committed. She knew enough about his abusive childhood, his friendship with Lily and that his better angels had abandoned him to no longer harbor resentment towards him. Her stance was one of apathy for the late Potions Master. In the end, she does not think Snape wanted to be redeem. He wanted to do enough to be able to die peacefully.
But the Potions Master had been right about Dumbledore. Snape had the unique position to see through the Headmaster's mask better than anyone else and could see that he was just teaching Aster how to die. Dumbledore expected her to embrace death, and to let Voldemort kill her.
And she had.
She had gone to the slaughter even after the memory that Snape's tear had unveiled. Dumbledore may have cared for in his own grandfatherly way, but he kept his gaze fixated on the greater good. His greater good, and the ends justified the means.
Aster wondered if the Potters would have loved her any less if they had known that she was the catalyst that sealed their deaths. Would they have still sacrificed themselves to protect her? Would that love still pure and protected her from Voldemort? Or would the knowing have changed so much? Would they have lived a long life if she had never been brought into theirs? Those thoughts had kept her up many nights, sick with guilt and sorrow.
It made her feel small and insignificant. It was something that she could never forgive him for, and she wasn't about to stay in a world that was not hers—a world that didn't want her. She would not allow Teddy to grow up surrounded by war and death like she had been. She would do what Lily and James tried to do for her, and give him the best chance in life, regardless of the cost.
Aster had already sacrificed so much for the Wizarding World. She had died for it, but that wasn't enough. The world would demand her soul and everything else until she was a withered and hollowed husk. That was a price that she wasn't willing to pay, and so when she discovered a way to re-engineer the spell that Dumbledore used to bring her here, she saw her way out.
And damn her for being selfish, she was taking it.
There was three cracks that echoed off the paved roadway, loud and sharp like gunfire. The length of her spine tensed up, and she expanded her magic to sense the magical signatures just out of her view. The air rushed out of her body when she immediately recognized the third signature.
"Aster Potter," Ron Weasley called out, in a magical enhanced shout, "come out, with wand not drawn and surrender yourself to the authorities!"
The sound of his voice rang louder than a church bell, feeling like a physical smack to the face. That hollow space carved between her lungs filled with fury, sadness and disappointment like water poured into an empty well. She was suspended, capture in that moment of time, underneath the crushing weight that told her there was no turning back now.
She removed a small diamond shaped apparatus from her breast pocket and held it on eye level for a moment to inspect it before she decided to entertain her guests. The witch flowed across the ashen floor with purpose, and she stepped out from the safety of her makeshift cover to loiter in the entryway. Her green eyes flickered from the three men, so serious and tense, dressed up in uniforms made from black brocade; unadulterated wool would have been far more appropriate attire.
Aster inclined her head mockingly, but the line of her mouth was grim. "Gentlemen. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Potter, if you come along quietly, we can promise that no harm will come to you."
Aster's eyes lazily slid to her left to assess the man that spoke. He had the harried, hawk-eyed looked of a war veteran, and his fingers around his wand twitched uneasily. Auror Antonio Holder if she recalled his name correctly. Auror Ignatius Greengrass stood to his life, deep-set silver eyes set far within their sockets and staring unblinkingly at Aster while he stroked the long-jagged scar that slashed down across his cheek. Greengrass had never been caught as a Death Eater, but Aster knew he was one because of that scar.
She was the one that gave it to him.
Holder and Greengrass were experienced in battle. Ron was relatively green, in comparison, having been kept out of the most gruesome parts of the war by his mother and father. He was here only here to have her drop her guard, but it only increased her paranoia tenfold.
"That is a kind invitation," she replied, conversationally. "I am afraid that I will have to decline."
Greengrass snorted, amused. "I told you that she wouldn't."
"Silence, Greengrass," Holder snapped. "Minister Cromwell wants Lady Potter to be brought in alive."
"Does he? That news to me," Aster said.
Holder sighed deeply. "Lady Potter, the Minister wants to clear up any and all misunderstandings. There is no need to let imaged slights fester in such trying times as these."
Flaring her eyes dramatically wide, Aster tilted her head to the side, and it took everything not to knock them off their feet right then and there. "Imagined slights? Is that what it is called nowadays? I still remember a time when it was called oppression and genocide."
"Outlandish lies," Greengrass interjected, hotly. "I told you—"
"Shut your trap, Greengrass. Don't think I have forgotten your former bedfellows," Holder argued, pointing a stern finger at the man. "The Minister wants protocol followed to the bloody letter, neither you nor that half-wit over there is going muddle things up."
Ron sputtered for a moment, ears turning red and any moment she swore that steam would come out of them like a tea kettle. "I am not a half-wit!"
Aster cleared her throat, rolling the Array Capture lazily from one hand to the other. The glint of metal drew Holder's gaze like a heat seeker missile.
"An Array Capture? Why on earth would you—" The old man's eyes sharpened, and the length of his jaw grew taut. "The wards on this place. I heard rumors that Dumbledore used forbidden blood magics here to protect you, and the Ministry never sent anyone to cleanse the area—it was deemed too dangerous and volatile. What the bloody hell are you playing at Potter?"
"Bl—blood magics? Blimey, Aster what have you done?" Ron went so pale that she could count the number of freckles on his cheeks from where she stood fifteen feet away. His features contorted with disbelief and fear, with quaking hands enclosed into fists at his side. "I didn't want to believe it…"
Her eyes wrestled with his. "Tell me, do you feel it? Do you feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand? The smell of smoke of the fire that circles all around, giving you no way out? Or do you sit there, with an oblivious smile and pretend that everything is fine?"
"Don't—don't play mind games with me!" Ron hissed.
"You would have to a mind for me to play with," Aster told him, scathingly.
Red-hot indignation spread across his face. "You—you are not the Aster I knew. The friend that I knew was never so cold and heartless. Maybe Hermione was right. Maybe Aster never really came home from the war," he responded, fiercely.
Aster didn't say anything. She could try to defend herself, but what was the use of words on deaf ears? She could try to show him the truth, but he was blind—so desperately and hopelessly blind that it broke her heart. She held the Array Capture aloft, thumb flicked across the runes.
"No one ever really comes home from war, now do they?" she asked, rhetorically.
Her response only served to make his scowl darkened.
There was a flash of regret. A brief, phantom pain that echoed from the ruins of broken trust, and wished that time had not grown so unyielding, that a simple apologize could sooth wounds. It was a nice thought, impossible but nice. All apologizing had done was buy them extra time, but never fixed the foundation of their friendship.
She was not heartless. Her heart had been too forgiving, so filled with light and love, and now that love was the knife that dug into her breastbone with each breath. Ron had been her first friend, held dearly in her memory even as he now stared her down like she was evil incarnate.
Ron lived in the shadows of his insecurities and had built his identity of being the Girl-Who-Lived's best friend to stand apart from his many older siblings. There were times that he had grown resentful and bitter, and she would try to make herself small to temporarily appease him. The outbursts grew more frequent when the years rolled onward, and his better angels had all but abandoned him. He could not see his own worth, judging himself not by a scale of his own but by using others to measure himself by. He would never be satisfied with who he saw in the mirror until he realized his own virtues and strengths.
"The Array Capture—the runes do not shine. Whatever she has attempted, she had not been successful," Greengrass pointed out. "We need to apprehend her and take the Array before she can do irreparable damage."
Aster smiled faintly. "You can certainly try."
Holder stepped forward when there was an audible rumble, and then his eyes jerked downward to his feet. A rune trap flared to life on the pavement in shapes and symbols, and then magic exploded! Chunks of concrete and asphalt spewed into the air while the Aurors were thrown backwards.
The witch took advantage of the chaos and sprinted as fast as she could down the sidewalk. She needed to have their full attention and lead them on a merry chase until all the residual was completely absorbed.
Greengrass was the first to recover from the attack, and leapt to his feet, rushing after her. His long legs helped him close the distance between them almost immediately, and Aster was forced to throw herself across the backseat of the vehicle to get cover from a nasty curse. The hex slammed into the car door with a sickening pop, and the mutinous sludge ate through the metal like acid.
She climbed across the upholstery that fell apart under her touch unsteadily, until she blasted the passenger side open wide, and crawled out of the vehicle. When he came around the hood of the car, she had her wand out and ready. "Relashio Maxima!"
It was satisfying to watch him flying into the air and then land in a crumple heap on the other side of the road. His bellow of pain and the sound of a bone breaking was music to her ears. She pushed herself up to her feet only to have a reddish streak of magic zoom right past her ear, and her head whipped around to see Ron charging towards her.
"I don't want to hurt you, Ron—" She dodged the fist that swung at her head, and then flicked her wand to send a mild shockwave to cause him to stumble backwards unsteady on his feet. "Don't make me do this! Please!"
It was her last plea. It was her last attempt to reach through to him.
For a moment, Ron paused. His face was a blank canvas, eyes locked onto her face, and there was a glimmer of the boy that had befriended her that day on the train all those years ago. The wide-eyed expression melted and twisted faster than a blink of eye, and he raised his wand with a spell formed on his lips.
"Eat slugs!" she yelled.
The green-yellow flare of light flew out of her wand and hit him square in the chest, slamming him back onto the hood of the car. He rolled off with a miserable groan and fell face first into the ground.
Aster staggered blindly backwards on her heels, bitter tears burned at the corners of her eyes, and her pulse battered at her eardrums. She found herself speaking, words being torn up out of her and spat in anger. "Why? Why? You were supposed to be better than this!"
"Don't—uggh!" His retort was cut short when his body pitched forward on instinct, and he threw up a bunch of slugs onto the ground. He was the picture of misery; eyes screwed shut and a green tinged to his face.
The raw lump in the back of her throat swelled. "You were my friend, but that wasn't enough for you! You wanted to be important so badly, to matter so badly that you turn a blind eye to the suffering of others just you can stand a smidge higher out of the gutter than they do. You will let yourself be led by any master just for the sake of feeling special, and while you might be the prized hound in the lot, you are still a slave to your leash."
He tried to get to his feet to lunge at her, but his strength faltered. He sprawled out on the ground, puking his guts up as the hex raged through his body.
She covered her mouth with her hand, but she didn't have time to sift through the maelstrom of emotions when a cutting curse sliced her upper thigh. Her teeth latched onto her bottom lip to smother the cry of pain, and she whirled around to see Auror Holder.
"It is nothing personal, Potter," Holder stated, steely eyed. "They have my granddaughter. I have no choice here."
The strand of pity that she felt for the man wasn't enough for her to go down without a fight. The spells clashed in midair with thunderous cracks, bursting in a shower of light and sparks. Aster dodged, swift as a jungle cat, and closed the distance between them.
He twisted his torso out of the way of her interfodio spell. The bolt of orange slammed into his shoulders, and blood spluttered into the air. Holder half collapsed on the backside of a vehicle, and his free hand went to put pressure to stop the blood flow. Despite his injury, Holder threw a vicious stunner at Aster.
Aster blocked with a protego shield. The shield cracked and sent her skidding backwards, and nearly lost her balance. Her blood rushed through her veins like quicksilver, heated and molten with the need to survive. A shadow darted out of the corner of her head, and the witch turned to see enraged Greengrass barreling towards her.
Stars burst across the back of her eyelids when his fist drove into the back of her skull, driving her to her knees. Her wand clattered to the ground, and she went to scramble after it when he seized her by the hair of her head. The pain seared across her scalp and dragged a ragged noise up out of her lungs, and she scored his wrist with her nails.
His grip tightened punishingly. "How does that feel, bitch?"
Holder scowled. "Greengrass, stop!"
"Shut up, old man. You are not in charge here," Greengrass retorted on a snarl.
His beady eyes return to Aster, and his lips parted in a nasty smile that revealed his yellow, crooked teeth. Pain burst along her scalp and driving into her skull, hot as firecrackers when he hauled her up to her tippy toes until their faces were only inches apart. Her gaze sharpened, and she held herself completely still when he used a levitating charm to take the item out of her pocket. She watched the trajectory of the silvery orb until it disappeared into his pocket, and she would have smiled if it wouldn't have given her away.
The bastard was entirely too smug and confident. He drew the tip of his wand upward along the apple of her cheek, and then along her forehead until he could jab it painfully into her temple. "I knew a friend of yours during the war. Silvery hair, a little bit loony—that was girl that knew how to scream. I wonder what it will take for you to scream for me."
Something dark and ugly unfurled in her soul, blooming rapidly until the vines choked her lungs and heart; the thorns bit sharply, the poison sinking deep and her vision turned red. The dagger hidden up her sleeve slid down into the palm of her hand, and in a swift motion buried it into his jugular.
His eyes went wide with shock and made a choked noise, blood cascading down the front of his robes in a red river. She grabbed him by the ascot wrapped around his throat and spun him around to use him as a human shield against the onslaught of spells from Holder.
Ron was curled into a ball, too lost in his own misery to notice what had happened.
Blood like petals stained Greengrass's lips. "Y—you…!"
Aster shoved the knife deeper into his throat and twisted to make sure that she cut through his most vital arteries. Blood cascaded down her hand and soaked into the fabric of her sleeve. "How does that feel, bitch?"
The Death Eater held his wand up towards her face. Unfinished spells sparked when he mouthed words, but he lacked the ability to cast wandless. Arrogance and pride had doomed him.
Aster leaned forward to hiss at him in a quick whisper. "Luna was worth a thousand of you. She will be remembered fondly and be loved, held dear in the afterlife. You—you will be forgotten, washed away like scum. You will rot until there isn't a soul that is left to recall you, a husk that will forever wander in misery and pain. That will be your afterlife!"
She released him abruptly, shoving him backwards with all his might straight into Holder. With a hand cast out, her wand rolled across the pavement before it flew into her hand. "Caligo!"
A dark cloud erupted from her wand, spreading through the street in a thick sheet of purple miasma. It blotted out the light of day, until nothing but darkness existed. Encased by the gloom, she ran her wand along her bracelet, and it shuddered to life. It detached from her wrist, growing large and molded into the form of a raven, before it shot into the air. It flew swiftly back towards Number Four, unseen by the Aurors.
Aster turned on heel and bolted. The streets were mapped into her mind from the many times she had fled from her cousin and his buddies when they went Aster Hunting. She ducked behind the overgrown hydrangeas that Missus Herbert of Number Twenty-Four had never got to grow healthy when she occupied the residence, and then slipped into the house through the front door that wasn't locked. She shut it quietly behind her and took a moment to breathe.
Just a few more minutes, she thought, high on adrenaline. Just a few more minutes.
Several more thundercracks shattered the silence, heralding the arrival of more Aurors. Her heart slammed into the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down with fierce resolve. She crept through the house towards the back entrance when she felt a spine-chilling sensation grip her, and the temperature plummeted rapidly.
When her breath came off her lips in a vapor, Aster felt like the truth sledgehammer straight in her gut. Her eyes snapped to the nearest window, and she watched mesmerized by horrified fascination the ice branch out across by the sudden windchill. The imperfect in the glass causing the ice crystal to spread in feather-like patterns that were so beautiful in comparison to the cause.
Dementors.
One of the greatest victories of the war was the amount of Dementors that they had been able to destroy. Dementors were Dark Fae that had been chained and twisted by Morgana Le Fey a thousand years ago into empty husks that had an insatiable hunger that could never been filled. Merlin was able to conceive a way to coexist with the creatures, because Dementors were at the mercy of that hunger and would be loyal to whomever kept them well-fed.
For a long time the Wizarding World kept this skeleton in the closest, until Grindelwald and his ilk started to cause chaos. The Dementors had been used as a deterrent, and then eventually as a weapon. Aster felt a swell of pity for them because there had been no way to restore them. She had poured over ancient texts with Bill Weasley and Hermione in hope that it wouldn't have to end in death, but nothing had been found.
The Wizarding World was built on bones, blood, and despair. Perhaps, that it why it should come to an end.
A hazy silhouette loomed at the window, with decayed fingertips pressed against the glass, and Aster ducked out of sight with her back pressed against the wall. She coiled her magical aura tightly, to mute it down to escape notice and time ticked onward slowly.
"Lily, take Aster and run—" A flare of green light, and high-pitch hellish laugh—The sting of her cheek when the loud lady hit her. "You worthless bastard!"—A castle that sits in the distant sunset with pillars of smoke sky high—Luna's lifeless eyes stare at her accusingly—the skeletal figures of prisoners that shied away from the sunlight they hadn't seen in ages— The dark memories cascaded through her with all the kindness of a monsoon, and she bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood to shake of the despair that ensnared her mind.
The Dementor let out a low-pitched whine before it parted with a flutter of tattered fabric, and Aster lingered for a minute longer before she crept to the backdoor through the kitchen. Most of the houses in Privet Drive had the same layout, so it was no difficult to navigate.
It would not be long until the Aurors fanned out to chase the leads that their Dementors blood hounds sniffed out. Her hand clutched the dagger in a knuckle white grip that was dripping red with blood and knew a sensible person would flee right then and there.
But Aster couldn't leave, not yet. This all couldn't be for nothing.
She darted out the door into the backyard, and she kept crouched low, using the bushes to block her from immediate sight. The privacy fence that sectioned off the yard had greyed and become warped until blown over.
Wispy strands darkness appeared at the edges of her visions, and her pulse throbbed agonizingly through her entire body. Everything felt muted, muffled, wrapped in layers of sadness and misery, thick as cotton. The Dementor glided past on the other side of the greenery and let out a low guttural noise that made all the hair on her neck stand on end. An patronus spell would repel it and stop the effects of being near to the creatures, but the brightness of the spell would attract too much attention. Fighting an entire squadron of Aurors would be suicidal.
A door creaked open on rusty hinges, and her head snapped to the neighboring house on the left. The door that led out to the patio opened wide, and Auror Seamus Finnegan walked out, standing rigid and eyes hard.
There was no time to cast a concealment spell. She abandoned her hiding spot and sprinted down the garden path. She flung herself over the tarps and stones from the unfinished patio.
"There! I have my sight on Potter!" Seamus shouted, over the Dementor's ear piercing shriek.
Spells of all colors flew sailed past when she dodged and weaved, and the gaze of the creature was locked on her back. It pierced through her like ice picks, and her thoughts scattered to the wind.
The Dementors' power hammered at her memories and tore at the seams that held her together—the shock that blanked out Sirius eyes when Bellatrix's spell struck him, and he fell into the veil's embrace—all the dead laid out in the Great Hall, and the choking silence that none dared break—her son that trembled in her arms while she glared up at the Aurors and the Weasleys that stood behind, betrayal cut deeply—but her fears ran deeper than death. A weak patronus spell erupted out of her wand, a ball of silvery light that slammed into the Dementor's chest.
It bought her a few precious moments.
"Chwirk!"
The hoarse screech carried her attention upward, and she nearly went weak with relief when she saw the raven in sky. It was a sign, a port in the storm, and she ran towards with all her might. It was like a nightmare where the world slowed, crawling to a snail's pace. Her breath held tight in her lungs when the raven swooped down, and her arms wrapped around it, sheltering it and the prize it carried near her chest.
A foul, soul-sucking mouth with hell at the back of its throat was enveloped her vision and was only scant inches from her face when the portkey activated. She disappeared in a swirl of colors with the enraged screech of a Dementor still ringing in her ears.
And then the world went dark.
As the sea tide crashed against the cliffside, the Cromwell Manor stood there high above, built up high of neatly cut gray stone and turrets that had watched the surrounding hamlet flourish into a city over the last couple of centuries. The Cromwell Family had gained wealth and prestige, gained in spilling the blood of their neighbors in the witch trials, selling innocents down the river to hide their own magic. Jerimiah did not fall from that ugly, gnarled family tree and took pride in being calculating and ruthless. He had watched his father spend an entire lifetime playing it up to fools like Dumbledore, while forced to hide the effort of keeping the Wizarding World's traditions pure and thriving against those that would dishonor it.
Jerimiah made a vow as a young boy to see a day when traditionalists did not have to hide in the shadows. The problem with Grindelwald and Voldemort was that they thought grand displays of power and fear could mold the world, but molding the world was far easier by tricking people into believing that you held the key to everything that they wanted.
People wanted easy answers. People wanted simple solutions. In times of crisis, this need reached a feverish pitch. It was all too easy to exploit people when all reason seemed lost and give them a target to blame all their woes on. The Resistance was a temporary thorn in his side, and once he brought Potter to heel then they would crumble. He refused to make a martyr out of Aster Potter by killing the woman.
A broken spirit would be much more effective. He intended to strip the light from her eyes, to pull her down from the pedestal and tarnish her halo in the eyes of the public, and he had already planted the seeds there. He would allow the people to water them with their own suspicious minds and arrive at the inevitable conclusion that Lady Potter would have to be locked away for her own good. He would offer her marriage through an unbreakable oath and give her a gilded cage where he could use her status to bend London to its knees. If she spurred his mercy, then he would see her placed in the darkest cell in the deepest corner of Azakaban.
The door to the dimly lit study burst open.
Jerimiah launched up out his desk chair, cursing when he spilt expensive cognac on his suit. He set the glass aside, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbed it up, while he cast a loathsome glare at the house elf that trembled in the doorway. "What is the meaning of this interruption?" he thundered.
Aurors Seamus Finnegan and Demelza Robins stepped past the fearful elf. He was pale-faced and stricken, eyes wide as saucers. "Minister Cromwell, I apologize but there has been a development."
He assessed the young man with a stern-faced expression. "What kind of development?"
"There was a surge of activity, a vacuum of magical energy in Surrey. The address was the childhood home of Aster Potter. Aurors Holder, Greengrass and Weasley went to apprehend, but—" Seamus stopped midsentence, and shared an apprehensive glance with Demelza.
"But what?" asked Cromwell, frostily.
Demelza spoke up, voice even. "Sir, she managed to escape even when the backup Aurors arrived on scene with Dementors. Weasley and Holder are at St. Mungo being treated. Greengrass is dead. Exsanguination from a stab wound made by a hex blade, from what we can tell."
The glass on his desk shattered into a million glittering pieces, but the small burst of magic little to quell his rage. His expression darkened with each step that he stalked around the desk towards the Aurors. "You mean to tell me that my best trained couldn't even capture one woman?"
"She isn't just one woman. She's the—"
"The Girl-Who-Lived. The Girl-Who-Conquered. The Girl-Of-Sheer-Dumb-Luck!" Jerimiah bellowed, causing Seamus and Demelza to shrink back from him. "A single woman with allies that are scattered to the winds or have all but disavowed her! And yet she manages to confound you all!"
He paced the length of the floor with an agitated gait while he sorted through his anger and thoughts. There would have to be a bounty placed on her head for the death of Greengrass; the girl foolishly gave him more ammunition to use against her in the public. A new Dark Lady on the rise would capture the attention and imagination, allowing him more time to implement laws to weed out the undesirables from society.
Yes, he thought to himself. This was still salvageable.
"Do we know why Potter was at Privet Drive? From all my sources, she holds nothing but contempt for that place."
"She used an Array Capture on the wards."
Jerimiah whipped around, alarmed. "Are you certain?"
Seamus nodded shakily. "Yes. We—We have the Array Capture. It was recovered from Greengrass's body."
The Minister felt his inside turned cold. He had read the reports on the blood ward on Number Four Privet Drive, and the sheer power that resonated there still. "Was the Array Capture turned over to the Department of Mysteries?" he asked in a deceptively light tone of voice.
"That was our next stop, Minister."
Jerimiah tapped his fingers on his chin thoughtfully. A wicked thought cut through his mind, sharp and intense. There were a dozen rituals that immediately came to mind that power of that magnitude could be used for, and now it had conveniently fell into his lap. "Leave the Array Capture and return to your posts."
"But—but it has to be logged into evidence—"
Minister Cromwell drew up to his full height to tower over Auror Finnegan. His eyes were hard like ice chip, and magic crackled in the air. "Did I stutter, Auror Finnegan? Was there something unclear in my order?" he snapped.
Auror Finnegan shook his head after a long moment.
Jerimiah watched the young Auror pull out the artifact and set in on the desk with haste, and then dismissed the pair with a wave of his hand. The house elf ushered them out of his study and shut the door quickly. His dark gaze slid hungrily over the Array Capture, and he felt a smile stretch across his face from ear to ear. His fingertips ghosted over the magical item with a plan hatching in his mind when something unexpected happened.
The silvery sphere contorted, twisted until it was a small diamond shaped. The runes flared on sides, and it cracked open at the center. A beam of blinding light filled up the room, and then there was screaming. Ear-splitting, blood-curdling screaming that reverberated through the room and rattled off the walls, until his throat was cracked, and the taste of copper stained the back of his tongue. There were fingernails—scratching, clawing at his skin and tearing deeply. His legs folded beneath him with his insides felt scorched and boiled, and he was barely aware of the rush of footsteps outside of the study.
Aurors Finnegan and Robins found the Minister of Magic a mad and writhing on his study floor. He babbled incoherently, tearing deep gouges in his face until it was nothing but a bloody mess. By the time he was transported to St. Mungo's, Jerimiah Cromwell was catatonic, and his magic was gone.
Awareness came swift and brutal, dragged out of the dark recesses of her mind and thrusted unceremoniously back into the waking world. A sheen of sweat coated her brow, feeling disoriented and thoughts muddled. Her scalp was searing with pain and swollen from abuse. She was laid out on a hardwood in a heap of tangled limbs, and after a moment's difficulty, she cracked her eyes open a sliver. The darkened room was mesh of blurry colors and shapes, like a photo just a hair out of focus. A groan started in her chest, working its way up, but no sound emerged out of her throat. Her magical core ached and pulsated with every heartbeat, frostbitten by the Dementor's presence and the kiss that came way too close for comfort.
The image of that decomposed mouth intent of devouring her soul scant inches from her face would not be one she ever forgot.
Her fingertips inched across the carpet while she worked up the energy to push herself up off the floor when her pinky finger touched something metallic. She lifted her head and blinked until her vision fixated on the Array Capture and black opal bracelet that laid innocuously on the floor next to her. Memories crashed through her skull with all the force of a tidal wave, sweeping her through a myriad of emotions that caused the air to squeeze out of her lungs.
The dizzy high of relief marred by the sorrow that lined her heart and the blistering anger that pooled in her belly. She had expected—she had known that Ron would be one of the first to be assigned on an Auror team to apprehend her, but part of her had hoped that he wouldn't have agreed to it. It was a naïve thing to have ever given thought considering how things had been left between the Golden Trio.
Aster wasn't really crying. Her tears went unshed while she laid there in the yawning silence, washed in anguish, and choking on despair. It took her a couple of minutes to smother the grief that was expelled with each breath. Laying palms flat on the hardwood floor, she pushed herself off the ground despite the protest of her limbs and got on her feet because she couldn't afford to wallow in self-pity. She had made her choices, and she couldn't take them back. They had made theirs, and they wouldn't take them even if they could.
"Is Aster Potter alright? Dobby had heard from Winky that Aster Potter went back to Privet Drive, but the Ministry and all the terrible wizards—we were all worried!"
The sound of Dobby's voice strikes against her spine and jolted her out of her ruminations. The house elf lingered in the doorway, fingers wrapped around the handle, with concern pouring off him in waves. He was short with a long nose, bat-like ears and large, bulging green eyes. He wore a nice suit tailored to his rail-thin frame, inspired by the old movies that he liked so dearly with Fred Astaire and Laurence Olivier.
"I'm—I'm fine, Dobby. Just a…it was stupid really. I have been making a lot of stupid decisions lately, but this was probably the worst of the lot." The shaky smile she sent him was less than reassuring. Her eyes flickered down to her hand that was coated in a layer of dried blood and couldn't fight the grimace that swept across her face. "And it is just Aster. You don't need to keep calling me by my full name every time."
She understood that it was a verbal tick, the speaking in third person and calling people by their full name had been engrained into him during his years of enslavement to the Malfoy Family. Dobby had taken it upon himself to learn other languages, and proper diction, but personally she thought his speech pattern was endearing in a way. It was one of things that was wholly and unique Dobby.
Dobby blushed slightly. "Miss Aster is too kind."
Now it was her turn to be embarrassed. She never knew how to handle praise or compliments, especially one so genuine and heartful. Her cheeks burned hot, and her expression sheepish. "You are a good person, Dobby," she told him, earnestly. "Thank you for coming back, you know. I know how important it was for you to work alongside of Bill to help other elves, and you decided to come back to help me—I just wanted you to know that I appreciate it."
House Elves were descendants of the Light Fae folk and had been tricked into servitude by a wizard who had taken advantage of their hospitality just after the Fall of Avalon. They were bred and sold and treated with so little dignity. This history was disturbing and the traditions even more so, (i.e. the house elves heads mounted at Grimmauld Place). The House Elves Rights movement had been stalled in wake of the sickness and the Wizengamot stated, verbatim, "Wizarding families need loyal servants, especially now with the current crisis."
Hospitality and the Power of Names was the deeply hinted at in Sidhe lore, and Bill Weasley theorized that this could be the key to unlock the chains that the House Elves had endured for so long. Bill and Fleur worked tirelessly on this endeavor, trying to find a way to sever the magical contracts that kept elves in perpetual servitude and in such limited forms. There were seldom few witches or wizards that would part willingly with the enslaved elves, and not everyone could be tricked with a sock and a book, like Mr. Malfoy had been.
In his last letter, Bill mentioned that he was chasing the legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann in the Emerald Isle, and that he felt that he was close to a breakthrough. She had given every scrap of lore and tomes that she had discover of the good people to Bill in hopes that it would one day help.
Dobby had travelled with Bill for many months before he returned to London to be with Winky. He had been injured badly during the war thanks to Bellatrix, and his old bones needed a good rest every now and again. He had really come a far away from the skittish elf that appeared to her when she was been only twelve, and he was her dearest and most loyal friend.
"Of course, Dobby came back! Aster Pot—Aster is his friend!"
She blinked her suspiciously wet eyes and cleared her throat roughly. Her smile wobbled just a fraction, overcome with emotions that pierced to the most vulnerable places in her soul. She walked over to the basin in the corner along with her apothecary supplies were set. An aguamenti spell filled it up with fresh clean water, and she started to set about washing the blood off her hand.
"I keep telling myself that this is all necessary, but there is this fear—oh, the fear claws up the length of my throat, tasting bitter and bloody. I can cause chaos and destruction, but I can't protect the people that I love. I can kill a man in a dozen way, but I can't keep the world from falling apart," she spoke, the words tumbled out of her mouth. Her voice was a little too high and reedy, and she watched the blood plume out, staining the clean water red. "I—I used a dark artifact. I found it the LeStrange Vaults when I was going through all of that. It was a device that was used on witches and wizards that broke the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy back when it had first been written. It can strip a magic user of their power, ripping the magic right out of them," she confessed, squeezing her eyes shut. "It was said to be a very cruel and painful punishment. That it had only been used a half dozen times before it was banned."
"Why did Aster use the artifact?" Dobby asked, voice gentle. Gentle as one would talk to a wounded and scared animal.
They said that confession was good for the soul, but the sin stuck to her insides like tar. It bubbled, boiling up in her chest flaming hot, and the justifications for all that she had done couldn't contain it. The blood was cleaned off her skin, but the afterimage pulsated in her mind, flaring behind her eyelids every time she closed her eyes. She removed her hand out of the lukewarm water and conjured up a rag to dry it off before she turned to look at Dobby with a world-weary gleam expression.
"I wanted to help the Resistance in some small way. Cromwell has an insatiable hunger for power. I knew that if he caught wind of the Array Capture then he wouldn't be able to help himself. There will be an outcry for justice and the Ministry will answer by hunting me down. They'll be desperate and sloppy," she responded. The slightest tremor underscored every word, a breathy rattled wrapped in every syllable. "It'll give the Resistance the chance that they need. I—I had to do this. I had to. There was no other way."
Her breathes were too quick, too fast. Red-hot needles prickled across her skin from head to toes, and there was a tension that pulled her spine taut like a bowstring. She tried to arrest control over her body, but her mind felt such a fragile thing; thoughts cracked with the force of a cannonball, and sanity splintered until it hung on by a single thread. The oncoming of a panic attack had her pulling open the cabinet, in search of a nerve potion with hasty and jerky motions. The glass vial held in a shaky hand, she pulled the cork out with her teeth and spat it on the floor before she downed the purple glowing liquid. The chalky taste made her balk, but she choked the potion down.
A ragged breath scrapped out of her lungs, and her legs folded underneath her. There was a finger snap that she dimly heard behind her, and a chair appeared just beneath her just before she hit the ground. She murmured a winded thanks to Dobby who appeared at her side swiftly, a severe frown twisted on his mouth.
The added fire seeds in the potion made it work swiftly, and an invigorating warmth consumed every inch of her skin. The icy fist that held her heart clasped tight, loosened finger by finger until she could breathe easy. Her eyes were swollen, seeped with scalding hot tears that trickled freely down her cheeks. She slumped down into the chair, boneless and eyes glazed over in deep thought.
"But there are other ways, aren't there? To tell myself otherwise is just a happy little lie that makes the bitter pill easier to swallow." A morose frown knotted between her brows, her green eyes peered out into the room without seeing it, and she tunneled her fingers through her hair jadedly. The artificial calm that washed over her helped her to sort through the thoughts that rampaged through her skull like tapdancing elephants. "I could stay. I could fight. I could try to hold on to it all so tightly, cling to the friendships both broken and whole, but…but the cost would be so damn high. Every time I pay the price, someone I love is bound to die and I am expecting to just bury my grief like I bury my friends. I have tried so hard to do the right thing, and it still isn't enough."
She wished that the future with all her family and friends, the one before the world had gone made, was still alive and thriving. That things hadn't fallen apart, and that this wasn't her reality. Denial, however, was an unhealthy and dangerous thing. She had learned that from watching the best around her fall prey to its snare, eagerly embracing the ignorance and bliss with each hand, like a child with sweets at the confectionery.
"I can't stay here and be a part of this battle. I already look in the mirror and see the fractures in my soul, a di cast in favor of lunacy and unable to see the difference between vengeance and justice. All it takes is a slippery slope and I will become a monster," Aster whispered, voicing her secret fear.
Her life ran in eerie parallel with that of Tom Riddle. Both were orphaned. Both grew up in cold and abusive environments, but their paths couldn't be more contrasting. Tom was a malignant narcissist, thriving off the pain and misfortune of others. He had an insatiable hunger to stand above all others and craved power with every breath he took. He feared aging and death; his handsome looks something he prized, and if he could conquer death, he would become a god.
Aster did not thrive on pain, unwillingly to inflict the hurt that she endured onto others. She lived of the fumes of hope, holding onto a hunger to prove herself worthy of love and friendship. She loved and she loved deeply, even for those that had betrayed her. Her fears ran deeper than death, and death was a familiar constant in her life. A friendly observer that was more trustworthy than half the people she had known.
Aster did not fall prey to her darker instincts, even when the horcrux was tethered to her soul. That did not mean that they did not exist. She had many unkind thoughts, but few ever acted upon. Viciousness came too easy, and all it would take was just the tiniest of slips. A person was a sum of all their choices, and she didn't want her story to be one so dark.
"I deserve a better fate than that. My godson deserves better from me than that."
Her eyes fluttered close, brushing her hair out of her face, and leaned back in the chair with a deep breath. She rubbed her eyes, hoping the images and tears would just disappear. The guilt sat, a stone on her chest.
"I let Teddy down that day. I let Andromeda down that day. I told Andromeda and him that I would meet them at the shops, that I wouldn't be late. My godson was alone and terrified, and ended up watching his grandmother die—I failed him. I wasn't there when he needed me," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't—I can't lose him. I don't have faith to find a reason in all of this, a meaning. I don't have faith that everything will be alright."
"Dobby thinks that Aster Potter is too hard on herself."
"That's sweet of you to say, Dobby."
Dobby mustered up all the disapproval he could and leveled it at her with a sharp look. "Aster needs to stop."
Her eyebrows shot upward, surprised by his vehemence.
"Aster needs to stop tearing herself apart. Dobby knows that Aster has been forced to choose between two evils. Dobby knows and sees how much it hurts, but to not choose at all is the worst kind of evil. Aster chooses her family, and that is not a bad choice," the house elf told her, empathetically.
"It's not a bad choice," Aster whispered hoarsely. "I just wish there was a better one."
Dobby patted her hand comfortingly. "Not all choices get to be good ones, Miss Aster."
She gave a shallow nod of her head.
A silence hovered in the air with deafening intensity, only broken up the staccato beat of rain upon the tin roof. It mingled with the worries that she couldn't bring herself to voice out loud, keeping them like little dirty secrets that she swept under the rug. She scrubbed her hands down her face, and then got up out of the chair to walk over to the window. The rain pattered against the windowpane, spilt like a cup runneth over; the sky held more tears than it needed, so it poured them down over the countryside that was just south of East Anglia. The safe house was in a spec of grasslands, concealed with old, longstanding wards. It belonged to the Delacour family and was built in the mid-19th century.
"Okay. Okay. I can do this. I must leave the United Kingdom, because if I am outside of the British Ministry of Magic's jurisdiction, it will give them a bit of pause on how to proceed in trying to capture me. France, Bulgaria, and Italy have outright disavowed Britain, but Germany, Poland, Romania are clinging to fragile alliances," she said, mostly to herself. A heart placed over her heart, she listened to the distant thunder while she gathered her thoughts. "That doesn't mean they will want British Aurors stomping all over high heaven searching for me. There are treaties that Cromwell's successor won't be so quick to risk, but they will come after me in due time. I'll have to be gone before they can catch me."
Terry Boot and Parvati Patil were the evac team that would come take the House Elves to Romania. Romania was a country that still held high respect for spirits of nature and the like and had been offered sanctuary with the Roma tribes that thrived in the hidden corners of the country. They were scheduled to arrive within in the next couple of days, and then safe house would be emptied and abandoned shortly after.
"Dobby has been wanting to speak to Aster about a few things. That is to say, a few of the others wished for Dobby to speak with you on their behalf," Dobby said in a whisper. He shifted on his feet and hands wrung together nervously. "Not everyone wants to go to Romania. There are a few that wish to travel with you."
"What? Why?" Aster whipped around to peer down at him with a bewildered expression. Her pulse hit quick and deep at her neck like a hammer-stroke, and her finger clawed into the fabric of her jumper. "What I am doing—what I will do, it will not be easy. The path is dangerous, and I am being hunted. Anyone near me will be considered a target. I can't—that's more people depending on me—"
"It is their choice, Miss Aster," Dobby interjected. "They choose to trust you."
And how could she argue with that?
The clammy sweat broke out along her skin accompanied by a panic that sat heavily in her gut. A deep breath later, she drew herself up to her full height and pinned Dobby underneath a gimlet-eyed stare. "I want you to tell them about the war, about what is happening now down to every gruesome detail. You will not sugarcoat it. They need to be fully aware of the risks of travelling with me. If they are still determined to follow through with this decision after that, then I will not stop them. I just hope that I prove worthy of such trust," she added in afterthought, softly to herself.
The elf nodded. "Dobby understands."
"Good. Good. Now…" The ticking of the hands of the old grandfather clock was the slightest noise that punctured the sudden silence, and it lasted a little too long in her hesitation. She cleared her throat roughly, and asked, "Did—did you managed to borrow the portrait?"
"Dobby found it. The Headmistress will notice it missing soon though," he warned, with a grave nod. His head cocked to the side, ears flopping slightly. "But…what does Aster intend to with it?"
She snorted. "I'm not going to burn it if that is your concern."
He gave her an unconvinced look.
A grim chuckle escaped her before she could contain it. "I won't deny that I have thought about it, but I'm not going to set fire to the portrait. It is a waste of effort and time. Besides, he should have to live on some way with his sins," she responded. "Now where is the portrait?"
Aster descended into the dark, cold cellar with a candelabra grasped in a knuckle white grip. The wooden stairs rasped and groaned, ghastly noises that set her teeth on edge. The underground room was rustic in design, impressed deep into the earth and circular shape held by deftly stacked brown stone. A place of ancient rituals where magic still buzzed and teased her senses, and in the center of the room was a chair. The portrait was propped in the seat and wrapped in a curtain of green and gold, enchanted to muffle the shouts.
She moseyed across the stone floor with near soundless footsteps and came to a halt in front of the imprisoned portrait. Her hand lifted, poised to undo the tassels that held the layered fabric in place, when indecision seized her abruptly. It was an invisible fist that closed around her throat, strangling the breaths she drew. What good did it do to confront a dead man for his sins? He would never pay for them, she thought. Was closure worth picking a wound that had barely scabbed over?
The tassel came undone with the slightest of pulls. The curtain fell to the ground with a slight whoosh of fabric, stirring up a cloud of dust and caused the candle flames to flicker. The pigments of the oil paint were beautiful and bright in their clarity; the magical portrait brought to life by the most skilled hand and imbued with magic to capture the likeness of the soul. It was the closest thing to immortality that wizards and witches were capable of unless they wished to fashion themselves into ghosts. A grizzly and painful ritual that.
Albus Dumbledore was a tall and thin man, with silver hair and long beard. His outlandish robes were purple with ruffles and ornate golden buttons and matching pointed hat that sat atop his head. His blue eyes sparkled behind his half-moon spectacles. His nose was long and crooked, broken at least twice in his lifetime. The anger that had been on his face melted into an astonished, slack-jawed look. It would have been comical if it were not for the black mood that circled over her head like a vulture.
"My dear girl," Dumbledore collected himself in the span of a half-second, "what is the meaning of this? Where have you taken me? Is that blood? Are you hurt?"
"Depends on what you mean by hurt. Physically? I couldn't be better. Mentally? There isn't enough time in the world to get into that." She viewed him with an almost detached expression. "It's not my blood. I murdered Ignatius Greengrass."
She knew that Greengrass was dead. The hex blade made it difficult for healing spells or charms to work, which is why she always kept one on hand. A lot of witches and wizards relied too heavily upon their wands, and long-range fighting which left them vulnerable when it came to close quarters conflict. It was a weakness that Aster had exploited to the fullest, and while she might not be the most dangerous with a blade, she could be lethal when need be.
"I see," Dumbledore replied, softly.
"Yes, I'm sure," she murmured, with a cutting tone. She looked down at her bloodstained cuff, a slight furrow to her brow. "Ron probably will believe that I am fully dark now, and the Ministry will use him to push that narrative. Regardless, I don't regret killing Greengrass. He would have been able to hurt more people if left unchecked." Hurt more people like Luna, went left unsaid.
There was no twinge of guilt for killing Greengrass. She abhorred killing in general, but this one—this particular one, she felt in the worst parts of her soul. It caused a dark satisfaction to swarm through her veins at the fact that Luna had finally been avenged. Most people immediately thought of Ron and Hermione in conjecture to just who were Aster Potter's friends, but Luna was the best friend she had ever had. She had loved Luna, the younger sibling she had never had, and it was the single friendship where Aster had been able to be completely herself. There was no front, or mask, just Aster.
Luna's death would be one of the greatest wrongs that she could never right.
Aster gave a small shake of her head to dispel those dark thoughts. "But we both know that I haven't brought you here for a confessional, don't we, Dumbledore?"
And suddenly, he looked all his hundred-and-fifteen-years old. His heavily lined face crumpled underneath the weight of her icy glare, a potent despair settled around him. The crows' feet crinkled at the corners of his gaze, and the twinkle there was extinguished. This was a conversation he had hoped to escape, she knew. A lie that he did not wish to confront and a crime that he wished to forget.
"I have the journal," she said. "I know what you did."
Dumbledore sighed deeply. "Then you know my reasons."
The Headmaster had penned the impassioned confessional in hopes of alleviating the lingering regrets and guilt that plagued him shortly before his death. He had lived over a century and had seen his fair share of tragedies. In his youth, he was hot-headed and misguided, driven by his own selfish ambition and lust for glory until it had culminated into a duel that ended his sister's life. It had also separated from his dearest and oldest friend, Grindelwald.
He had spent the next few years in higher education to better himself as a wizard and a man, before he was ultimately offered the position of Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts. He was powerful and charismatic, but ultimately sought a peaceful life for his own. His life was upended with Grindelwald's uprising, and because of his long personal history with the man, Dumbledore found himself at the heart of the conflict. It was here that the legends and tales were weaved that culminated in with Dumbledore being a figurehead for the Light when he managed to defeat and capture Grindelwald.
For a time, the Wizarding World rested, but ideals did not die so easily. The philosophies that Grindelwald had not died with his imprisonment, but only fed the fevered demographic of staunch fundamentalists that clung to old traditions and customs. He was made a martyr that they praised behind closed doors, until Tom Riddle made his debut as the Dark Lord Voldemort. He took everything that Grindelwald had aspired to and built upon it with his own sadistic brand of madness, turning the hatred in his heart against those that he deemed useless and weak. He had a taste for causing others pain, reveled in the chaos that he caused. Voldemort wanted to burn the world down, to build it up anew and into a world that would see him as a god, and only those pure of blood would be worthy of attending him.
Dumbledore was quite powerful. He had clashed with Voldemort on more than one occasion, but a painful truth had been made clear during the First Wizarding War. Voldemort had reached the peak of his power where Dumbledore had reached the decline of his. (The Voldemort after his resurrection in the Gaunt Family cemetery had been a mere shade of what he had once been, both in mind and spirit. His power was still terrible and great, but he was reduced by splitting his soul. The folly of chasing immortality is that it often comes at the cost of a person's soul.) The prophesized End of Magic had only made Dumbledore all that more desperate. He had abandoned what was right for what was easy, and in doing so may have very well destroyed the world.
"Aster, you must understand. Everything I have done was in the interest of greater good—"
The Greater Good—the former Headmaster might have turned against Grindelwald, but his philosophy was one that Dumbledore still adhered to. His methods differed greatly from his old friend, but that didn't make them morally acceptable. Dumbledore might not have been a ruthless killer or derived amusement from others' suffering, but he was prepared to make sacrifices. He was prepared to let people suffer if it was in alignment with his vision of the greater good.
"Crimes for a greater good are still crimes. The people hurt for the greater good are still hurt. You once said that it matters not what someone is born as, but what they grow to be," she interrupted, coldly. Her green eyes stared daggers at the man in the portrait, and the candles flames flickered dangerously. "Are you proud of what you grew into, Headmaster?"
In that moment, Dumbledore's regrets were carefully concealed behind an apathetic mask. He met her gaze, resolutely, determined to accept whatever sentence she deemed fit.
"I used to be so proud to be your little soldier. I wore it like it was a badge of honor," she whispered hollowly. "Dumbledore's most trusted, that is what they called me. We both know how little truth lives in those words, don't we?"
"There are few that I have trusted more," Dumbledore argued, albeit weakly. "In the effort to protect the Wizarding World, I had to make a most grievous decision and one that cost me dearly. It was a sacrifice that felt worth making, at the time. I may have not disclosed all the truth, but I only did so in the interests of making certain that good would prevail at the end."
She hated him for it. She hated him for his calm composure, hated him for his self-assured righteousness, and how in death that he had escaped all the impact that his actions had built up to for over two decades.
Aster choked down that hatred, buried it deep within her bones to not allow it to bleed across her expression like a gaping wound. She ambled over with at an unhurried pace and sat the candleholder down on the table. The three tiny flames illuminated the wealthy assortment of wines and spirits that were arranged in ornate liquor cabinet next to the whiskey barrels stacked halfway high to the ceiling. She needed space to swallow down the chunk of burning rage that was lodged in the back of her throat and compose her thoughts that were ticking time bombs.
"You wanted to give everything to stop the End of Magic," she said.
"Yes," he whispered back.
Aster honestly wasn't quite sure what to say. She couldn't help but think of her own choices. She knew that she was no paragon of virtue with all that she had done. Her choices had been desperate and even selfish, and all the reasons in the world couldn't erase that. She wished that understanding lessened the hurt or the pain, but all it did was make it sharper the bite.
"Did you ever think that your choices amounted to a self-fulfilling prophecy? You stole from another world. You broke the barriers of reality and pierced a hole through the universe, toying with forces that even you struggled to comprehend," she stated, in a rushed breath. Her face was ashen with exhaustion and strain. "What if all that you sacrificed to enact the ritual was merely a toll, and the full price had still yet to be paid? What if this world's magic was the price all along?"
That caused his mask to crack, hints of despair flecked through his eyes.
"The ends don't always justify the means," she told him, voice deceptively quiet. Her eyes dripped with tears, the dam that held them at bay collapsed. Her features were contorted with sorrow and resentment, eyes pierced sharp like daggers. "Your choices have shown who you are. A pretty portrait can't hide the ugly stain on your soul. How many lies did you have to tell yourself to silence your conscious? How many lives have you destroyed because you were a coward?"
His gaze turned flinty when he stroked his beard, a nervous tell. "There is no war that happens without casualty. There is no victory that does not require sacrifice," Dumbledore responded, shortly. "Losses are tragic and painful but to be expected."
How many losses is it becomes too much? Where is the line drawn? she thought, her eyes narrowed.
"Well, I don't accept the losses. I don't just chalk up peoples' lives into numbers that can be managed and moved and equated until a certain number becomes acceptable. I hold onto the memory of those who died, and I hold them close," she responded, voice trembling in anger. "I hold them close, but I won't drown in a past that I cannot redeem or save. I am moving towards my future, come what may."
Her words seemed innocuous, but she saw the impact of them. She watched the horror dawn in his eyes, and he looked at her—really looked at her for the first time in this whole conversation, instead of looking through her.
"You can't mean to—Aster, you mustn't!" His usual eloquence had failed him, leaving him tumbled over his words. His swept his hand down in his beard in a short and agitated motion, and concerned eyes locked onto his former student. "The ritual—the price to be paid…it is the thing that you love most that must be sacrificed."
When she read his journal, it had jostled something lose in her soul. Her heart bled, torn apart by each paragraph, and it had soured her view on the man. He had built himself a fine pedestal as the Leader of the Light, pretending to have virtues that he did not. He crafted an image that he was above such dark and unseemly methods to further his own goals and gains, but it wasn't true in the slightest.
"I know about Grindelwald's fate."
The Headmaster had always seemed otherworldly, powerful and in a caliber of his own. In this moment, he was stripped bare of all pretense; the old man framed in mahogany was dominated by a profound sadness. The grief tore the color of his cheeks and left him ashen pale. His lips parted, but no sound came. His blue eyes watered with shame and regret, and the signature twinkle was absent. He slumped back in the chair with a gush forced out of his lungs. He was hollowed out by dedicating himself so wholly to an ideal and greater good that he lost himself in the spaces between, having sold himself and others down the river in vain to save a dying world. All his sins draped upon the line of his shoulders.
He looked so sad and human.
Her stomach burned with pain like she had downed a vial of acid. She felt horrible for prodding a painful memory, probably one of the most defining moments of the Headmaster's life. An apologize was on the tip of her tongue, but she knew that it wouldn't help. She choked down the impulse and released the breath that she had been holding.
"Do not think that my anger blinds me to all that you sacrificed and gave for this world. You did everything that you could, and it was unfair that you shoulder a whole world's burden. Everyone expected so much of you and put you so high on the pedestal that it must have felt impossible to be even a little human and ask for help to find a better way," Aster told him softly. "I understand that feeling more than I care to."
Dumbledore rubbed his eyes tiredly. "My dear girl, do not do this. This is not a path you can take lightly."
"I am not you, Dumbledore. I won't sacrifice what I love most to undo the ritual. I have more to bargain with than you ever did."
"It was my hope that your friends and family here would be enough for you to not make such a foolish choice such as the one that you are considering," Dumbledore said disapprovingly. "Do not throw away all that you have here for a false hope."
She had suspected that his journal was held from her for a couple of years after the war so that she would become further engrained into the Wizarding World. That her losing her life here would be unthinkable and deter her from being overly curious about her mysterious origins. The confirmation was only salt in the wound.
"What about Ron and Hermione? They have been with you through so much—"
"Don't. Just don't."
It hadn't been one single thing that caused most of her relationships to fall apart. It had been a gradual decline over the years; issues that were never addressed, things that had been set aside in favor of the newest danger and ultimately, they had passed the point of no return for mending it. She had known that people would come and go throughout her life, and that not everyone was meant to stay forever. She had just thought that Ron and Hermione were the ones that were going be there at the end.
Hermione Granger had built a wall around her heart with books and knowledge, and had a superiority-inferiority complex, where she needed to be the best or do the best to validate herself. A coping mechanism to deal with the lonely childhood and the bullying she endured for being the bookworm. While she was exceedingly book smart—arguably the smartest witch of their age—she didn't always do well when it came to putting her knowledge to practical use, and if Aster did better than her, Hermione would go into inquisition-mode to question. This caused Aster to fall into the old pattern of doing her bare minimum on her school work (like Aunt Petunia had forced her to do so she wouldn't outshine Dudley), using the tests to keep her grades afloat and to keep Hermione off of her back and to not strain their fledging friendship.
Slowly over the years, Hermione grew less rigid and more confident, no longer measuring herself by another person's yard stick. She was a good friend, but time changes all things. The death of her parents and baby sister, and the terrible things done to her during the war had left a void inside of her soul, black and cancerous that had numbed her completely.
Hermione let go of the war, stowing it like a box of dusty mementos in the bottom of a closet and moved on with her life like everything was fine. She got a job at the Ministry, rushed headlong into a relationship with Ron, and tried to build up a safe world. She was so desperate to avoid conflict, paralyzed in fear by the mere thought of it that she chose to ignore the world that was burning down around her. All that goals that she had once strived so hard for fell to the wayside, in favor of complacency.
Aster never blame her. She couldn't blame Hermione when the guilt weighed so heavily on her chest. The things stolen from Hermione were things that she could never get back.
Ron had a good heart, was a brilliant strategist, but grew up in the shadow of his older siblings. He did not lack love from his family, never questioned that he was loved, but did question often if he could ever be his own person. He didn't want to be forever caught in a hand-me-down life and compared to his brothers constantly. He was a staunch and loyal friend when not overcome with jealously, but the ups and downs caused by his recurrent envy had caused the foundation of their friendship to fracture over time. The apologizes became weaker, more out of habit than really felt, and the good times never lasted as they had used to.
His fear for his family turned in anger towards her, and his resentment built at for her being out in the frontlines while he was held back had been left their friendship hanging on by a mere thread by the end of the war. To his credit, he tried to not let himself be consumed by his darker emotions and had tried to communicate his frustration in more healthy ways, but the circular pattern had been fixed in his life. His emotions careened from highs to lows, in the blink of an eye, and eventually he just stopped trying to do better.
Eager to prove himself, Ron threw himself into training for being an Auror. He wanted to carve out his own place and legacy, to stand apart from the other red headed Weasleys and be noticed on his own merits. This allowed the Ministry to pull the wool over his eyes, in many ways.
Aster fought tooth and nail, trying to get through to him. She thought he needed time, and that he would eventually come around, but he never did. Eventually, she burned her bridges and that was that.
The Girl-Who-Conquered was a symbol of hope to many, but to others, she was a sign of everything that had gone wrong. Ron and Hermione saw her as everything that had gone wrong. After all, placing blame was sometimes easier than confronting grief and loss.
The Golden Trio tried to play pretend, but an illusion was nothing against the sands of time. The trick was eventually revealed, and there was no friendship left to save. Her path in life diverged from theirs to the point that they were virtual strangers; the awkward dinners and holidays couldn't bridge that distance. The Sickness and Jerimiah Cromwell's rise to power had only found the cracks that already in all those relationships and exploited every single one of them to the fullest. It had harvested every doubt and dark thought in their hearts, and the first concrete signs of the shift allegiances had been when the Weasleys had approached her with a marriage contract. Witches were expected to take on a more traditional family role in wake of the tragedy, but Aster had no interest in marriage that would do more than just earn her a husband; with the new laws, it would tie her hands politically and more.
She declined the marriage contract to George Weasley. He hadn't known about the contract and had no interest in any romantic pursuits of any kind, so was appropriately horrified when they had both been cornered on the Hunter Moon feast. This had obviously hurt Mrs. Weasley's feelings, and there was a clear divide between the Weasley brood on whether to give Aster sympathy or the cold shoulder in the months that followed.
If the proposal had happened earlier, she might have asked George to be her fake fiancé to spare herself the drama, but her lie with Blaise had been put into motion by that point. Besides, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. She might have bought herself a few extra months of time before her world imploded, but when the dust settled, she would still be here in this safe house with all life packed up or stowed away.
Ron…didn't take the news her engagement of Blaise Zabini well. He had been outraged that she would choose a slimy snake over his brother and family, and Hermione had been so suspicious to the point of crossing so many boundaries and constant invasions of privacy. There was a time that she bore the brunt of the questions and outrage, still clinging to that belief that her relationship with everyone could be salvaged.
It had all spiraled past the point of no return after Andromeda had been murdered. The woman had been a protector, a pillar of strength that had been taken away, leaving Teddy and Aster vulnerable to those who smelt fresh blood. The day she had stared into the faces of those who claimed to have her best interest at heart and knew her best, and realized that not a single one of them had her back had put a sliver of ice in her heart.
Tears fell softly from the corner of her eyes; she knew she was crying. She didn't have the energy to care. Her emotions were scattered from high altitudes to lowest of depths before after a long and lengthy silence, they plateaued into numbness.
"They abandoned me first."
The accusation pierced like a white-hot needle through her tongue. It was the simple truth, but at the same time it did such a disservice to all of them. It hadn't been intentional or evil, or vindictive. At least, not in the beginning. It had just been three people that had fallen apart, crushed under the aftermath of war, and it was like they were trapped inside of a maze. Hermione and Ron had turned their backs, walking away in a direction that was a brick wall to her, and she tried to hold so tightly. It created this vortex that pulled all of them and everyone around them down, a black hole that was leading them to the edge of ruin. A place where fear and suspicion and anger trumped love, and Aster was forced to let go.
They had abandoned her, but she let go. She didn't know which was worse.
"And the ones—ones that did care enough, they understand."
Neville, Bill, Fleur, and the handful of others that were close enough to her to be called friends—they had all understood where her motivations came from, even if they wished that she would stay.
"This isn't not who you are. You are not so cold and remote, but kind and compassion. I have seen the generosity of your heart, in how you protect and defended those that you love. My dear girl—"
"Stop calling me that!" she thundered.
The portrait grew silent at the harshness of her features, and the way magic rippled off her in violent waves that caused the candlelight to flicker and the stone walls to shudder and fracture. The shadows elongated, writhing up and out of the corners of the room, and the temperature plummeted. The anger loomed in her eyes, bright and acidic.
"You never really knew me, old man. You just saw the aftermath." There was a harsh tremor to her words, a thing so horrible and fundamentally broken that she hardly recognized her own voice. "I was not always the quiet, malleable child that entered Hogwarts so eager to belong. I once was a wild child, loud and free. I loved to run through the trees, play in the mud, pick flowers, and make paper crowns. I used to play pranks and tried to make friends. Those moment—they were taken from me.
"Did you know…that for the longest time I blamed myself for the abuse?" she asked, tears clinging to her lashes.
The words were hurtled at the portrait like an accusation. The Headmaster flinched, and his eyes slid closed in misery.
She pivoted sharply on her heel away from the portrait and stalked over to the liquor cabinet. Her thumb brushed across the rune that acted as a childproof lock, and then pulled open the door to the treasure trove of spirits inside. She picked her poison in the form of a Firedrake Scotch carefully contained in a crystal decanter. Popping off the lid, she poured two fingers into a tumbler with no ice or added flourishment.
"It was a simple case of mathematic and deduction, really. I didn't have all the facts, or perhaps I would have known better, but I was a child," she said, in a too blasé tone. "All I knew was that my family did not love me. I was treated like Dudley, or any of the other child with a loving family. There was a clear and visible divide between me and everyone else. Not everyone could be wrong, now could they? I was the common factor, so it must have been that there was something wrong with me, you see."
She returned the bottle back to itself rightful shelf, and then shut the cabinet with a soft click. Her glass in hand, she swirled the reddish, amber liquid and pondered her next words thoughtful, before she turned to the living painting. Her lips curved into a smile and sharp like the serrated edge of a knife.
"When I received my Hogwarts letter, it felt like a miracle—a dream come true. I had dreamt for as long as I could remember for someone or something that whisk me away from that awful place…something that would pluck me out of that tiny, little space underneath the stairs and grant me freedom from my small corner of the world," she continued. A flood of ice shot through her veins, as she unveiled words that had never had the courage to say. "It took me far too long to realize that beauty is often a mask for horrors. That the most dangerous things that enter our lives come in the form of a smile and a helping hand. Which is exactly what you counted on, now isn't it?"
Dumbledore wavered, for a second, before his expression hardened and lips set into a stubborn line. "The Dursleys—it was for your protection."
Aster tapped her nails against her glass. "There is a truth in that. You did—you did want to protect me in your own way, but that doesn't change the fact that you set me up to be the sacrificial lamb. And I wanted family and a home so badly that I let you lead me to the slaughter."
The witch often wondered what kind of person she would have been without war. If she hadn't been raised for duty and sacrifice, what kind life would she have lived? It was the thought haunting her—chasing her every waking moment, and while she has gained much in this life, there is a sense of loss that she can't quite shake.
"I turned myself inside out, sheared pieces away and hid the scars. The ugly parts that I couldn't get rid of…those I kept those under lock and key," she further divulged. "I had to sacrifice who I was to try and make others happy, so I would be accepted. That I was too much to love otherwise."
Aster was stitched all together, a patchwork human—a living kintsugi held together by willpower instead of gold. It had taken her years to put all the pieces back together. "Did you ever stop to think about what you were doing to me?" she asked. "These trials—these tribulations, did you ever stop to think that it was too much?"
Dumbledore sighed. "You needed to be strong."
"I didn't want to be strong!" she shouted. "I deserved to be safe!"
The burst of rage had been instant and boiling hot. The shatter of liquor bottles was sharp, unexpected sound and the air was filled with shards of glass, glittering like diamonds and falling to the ground in cacophony of clinks; a few bigger pieces glanced by her, cutting her arm and hand, but Aster was too fixated on the object of her rage to even notice. The pungent odor of alcohols filled the room when the liquid spread out across the stone floor and slipped into the cracks, in the silence that followed.
Aster glared at the shame-faced headmaster, and then turned away from him in disgust. She tossed back the drink in hand in one gulp. The keen burn stung her tongue and trickled down the back of her throat, the kind of sharp burst of heat that made her recoil. A shudder racked her body, and a breath was dragged down her throat. She set the glass down next to the candleholder and ran her fingers through her messy hair.
"You were right when you said that I am capable of compassion, generosity and kindness, but there is also a darkness in my heart that runs deep. I am a vengeful person. I can be so harsh and ruthless, and while there might be a part of me that holds guilt for the lengths that I am forced to go, I will not apologize for it." Wrath burned her cheeks a hot shade of pink. It took everything in her to not unleash the magic that boiled in her blood because all her rage and frustration was not directed at the man in the picture. "I will not apologize to a world that would use me and would continue to use me until I am nothing, but an empty husk. How quickly, I wonder, would I be discarded when I no longer serve a purpose?"
Dumbledore had nothing to say to that.
Aster always wondered where monsters and darkness and evil were born. She learned later in life that monsters were rarely born, but more often made; crafted by the apathy and shifting morals of a society that let those deemed unimportant fall into the cracks, leaving them to struggle and suffer. Dumbledore protected the society over the individuals to the world's detriment and had contributed to the maddening pattern. The argument could be made that morals did not have a place in war and battle, but the Headmaster's choices extended far beyond the call for the greater good.
"You want to think me horrible person, fine. You want to call me a monster, fine. But you had damn well better say it to my face, and remember that you had a hand in making me what I am. I refuse to bleed myself to death for people that continually toss me aside, and for what? For what?" she demanded, in a heartbreaking tone.
Her body shook, her face hot and fresh tears blurred her vision. She buried her face into her hands, feeling a headache throb at her temples, and hated that her waterworks that came all too easy.
Dumbledore's eyes gleamed with tears of his own, and his hand made a motion as if he wished to reach out to her. He aborted the motion and rested his hand on the armrest of his chair. "You are not a monster, and you are not horrible person. You are in a lot of pain, sick with guilt and trying to find reasons to make the leaving hurt less. I grieve deeply that you would turn your back on the Wizarding World. You will come to regret it if you leave."
Aster thought about all that she was leaving behind. She thought of Ron, Hermione, and the Weasleys. She thought of Neville and Blaise. She thought of all the terrible deeds that she had committed in the name of survival, and the many more that would undoubtedly follow. Her memory filled with ghosts, too many and it overflowed into her every thought. A flame seemed to leap inside her chest, scorching her throat.
"I'll regret it more if I stay," she whispered, with absolute certainty.
There was the twinge of remorse in her heart at that truth. The longer she stared at Dumbledore, the more she started to question on why she had sought closure when talking with him would provide her none. He was manipulative and ruthless to a point, but the term evil was not one she would associate him with. He was a deeply flawed man, who fought for his greater good, with questionable means and sacrifices. When she had witnessed Snape's memory in the Pensieve, Aster could only imagine the look on her face when she fully realized that Dumbledore had been prepared to let her die.
The shock of her death had rattled something loose in her, a piece of that had already been hanging on by a single thread. He had only a myth to base the slimmest chance of her survival on, and he gambled with her life as he had with so many others. And once she understood that…she could not forgive him.
"Your portrait will be returned undamaged to Hogwarts once I have secured my path."
"Wait—"
"Goodbye, Headmaster," she said, with a flick of her hand.
The curtains rose off the ground and embraced the portrait, smothering out all protests.
Bathed in candlelight, Aster was greeted by the intolerable silence. An old friend. An unwelcomed intruder. It was lingered long enough to stew in her thoughts for too long, and venture into territory where all her doubts and fear grew by unchecked. She extinguished the flames, and darkness enveloped the cellar.
After showering and a fresh change clothes, Aster could breathe a little bit easier and was able to push back the unwanted memories. She made her way down to the kitchen at the bidding of her growling stomach and found a sight that brought a smile to her lips.
Edward "Teddy" Lupin was the most unexpected and undeniably good thing that every came into her life. He had made it to the tender age of five through many trials and tribulations, most that were nothing more than a foggy impression in his memory. The sickness had left him weak and frail, unable to perform a lick of magic beyond his metamorphmagus ability that he inherited from his late mother. And then the loss of Andromeda—well, needless to say that Aster had done everything within her power to help restore his smile and give him a bit of happiness in such darkness.
His eyes shined like polished stone and was the color of honey in sunlight. Freckles dotted his upper cheeks, and his shaggy, sandy blond hair cradled his cherub features. He had an impish grin that spelled mischief and mayhem. Around his shoulders was his favorite blanket, worn as a cape might be, and he sat at the dining room table. He was in an animated discussion with his friend about a book of dragons, if the pictures were any indication.
Flutterby was the youngest of the house elves that resided in the safe house. Her parents, Waldy and Vipney, had been in the service of the Carrows until the end of the war. (The Ministry had attempted to round up any house elves that were no longer beholden to a witch or a wizard to "reassign" them to a new family. They were some of the few that managed to escape before that could come to pass.) She was a tiny, rail thin little elf with a beautiful blue dress and a shock of red curls sat atop her head. Her eyes so big that they encompassed half of her face, a little button nose and a shy smile curled on her lips. She swayed in her chair, and her left hand swishing the skirt of her dress idly.
"And what are you two up to?" she asked jovially.
"Just eating lunch," Teddy chirped.
"And reading about dragons!" added Flutterby helpfully.
Teddy popped a few grapes into his mouth from his plate, and then flipped to the next page in the book. A Norwegian Ridgeback embossed in shimmering paint to capture the vibrance of its scales, leapt of the parchment and the enchanted illustration let out a roar that elicited peals of laughter from the children. It flew upward in a wide arc before it delved back into the parchment and settled back into place.
Aster felt warmth blossom in her chest. The love she held for her godson was a ray of sunshine in her life, bright as a beacon and it was the only thing that she was certain of in these uncertain times. His parents had left her primary custody of their son, in the event the worst should happen. The worst did happen, and it had changed everything. There was this child orphaned and alone in the world, with only his grieving grandmother to care for him. She had been so afraid to be responsible in any way, shape, and form for a baby.
She had grown up an orphan, unloved and unhappy. Joy and gladness were so foreign in her orbit that she handled them so awkwardly, and she feared that she would only be a weight around his feet; she feared dragging him down and making his world so bleak. Her life was so troubled and filled with danger, what right did she have to bring a child into it?
And then Aster held him for the first time. He had been red-faced and squalling, at first, which had left her petrified. His little whines smoothed out after a half a minute, and his eyes peeled open to look up at her with this wide-eyed stare. He was so tiny and fragile that she feared if she held on too tightly that he would break, and her heart grew infinitely wide, all glowing and full to the brim. She never knew how much she could love until she had held him in her arms.
The little boy had become one of the most important parts of her world, and all it took was a little spit up on her shirt and then that mischievous grin as if that had been plan the whole time. There was nothing in this world or the next that she wouldn't do for this boy.
"He is a squib, dear, wouldn't it be better for him to live elsewhere?—You're so young. You should be starting your own life and own family—It would be cruel to keep him in a world where he can't really belong."
Aster put up with a lot from her so-called friends and family. She had to bite her tongue in face of veiled insults or attempts to set her up with other wizards, up until at a Yule party when Mrs. Weasley brought up the subject of Teddy. Mrs. Weasley had saw fit to get paperwork for Aster to put up Teddy for adoption. She had wroth with rage and still any time she thought about the Weasley matriarch, the same dark anger would burn through her from head to toe.
The presumption that she would eventually dissolve her custodial rights to her godson because he was a squib firmly shut the door on her relationship with the Weasley family.
"Hey, mommy,"—yeah, it had taken Aster by surprise when Teddy started calling her that, but in a good way—"which dragon is the most dangerous?"
"Dragons are creatures of chaos and power, Teddy," she replied, filling the kettle with water. "They are all very dangerous and should be treated with a cautious respect."
Teddy just looked at her with his head cocked to the side. "Yeah, but which one is the most dangerous?" he asked.
The burner lit with a flick of her hand, and she set the kettle down. She turned around to face the children, hair swinging wildly her shoulders, and walked over to peer down at the book with a thoughtful expression. She had learned a fair bit of dragonology when they had to rob Gringotts, in preparation for the dragons that guarded the bowels of the bank; the goblins were great innovators and mathematicians, but trying to tame dragons had not been one of their brightest ideas.
"The Hungarian Horntail would be what most people would say, with its notorious temper and the fact that it is the largest of its species," she answered, mulling it over and turned over a couple pages in the book, "but that doesn't mean it is the most dangerous. Rage and mass can only take you so far…" Her fingers stilled when she turned to the next page, and the picture of a bloodied maw greeted her. Iridescent silvery scales that glowed against the parchment, and eyes of purple fire filled with a hellish wrath. "This one—the Winter Wyvern is what I would consider the most dangerous. Small and swift, barely bigger than a horse, but can easily overpower dragons twice their size. Most dragons have a bone between their larynx and trachea that ignites the methane-like gas that resides in their lungs, turning into dragon's fire, but this dragon doesn't have that. It spits out a highly corrosive acid that can melt through virtually anything. It is a creature that has adapted and flourished underneath the harshest conditions—cold, isolation and existential threats."
"Why would it attack other dragons?" squeaked Flutterby.
The enchanted illustration of the dragon reached up out of the page and wrapped its talons around Aster's fingers that were still pressed against the parchment. Her heartbeat pounded in the middle of her throat, and she needed a moment before she could muster up a reply. "Dragons are notoriously territorial and protect what is theirs fiercely, almost jealously, and few Winter Wyvern younglings hatch…the mothers protect their young with a fury unmatched, even from others of its own kind."
"Cool," Teddy proclaimed with eyes wide.
By the time Teddy and Flutterby had finished the book and peppered Aster with every question that they could think of about dragons, the midday meal had already been prepared and eaten. Vipney came to collect Flutterby, much to the kids' chagrin, and Aster had finished cleaning the dishes when her son decided to hit her with the hardest question of all.
"Why are we moving again?"
Aster's thoughts grounded to a halt. There was a pinch of panic in her chest while he sat there with an expectant look on his face, and she released the breath that she had gathered tight in her lungs. She hadn't lied about why they had left England because he needed truth and stability, and even if she couldn't tell him everything that was going, she had to be as honest as she could.
She took a long drink of her hot tea and looked appraisingly at her son. She knew that the decision to leave England would be a big upheaval for him. It was the only home that he had known, and it hadn't helped that they had been forced to leave so soon after his grandmother's death.
"I made choices today. It upset a lot of people," she replied, mindful of her answer. She rested the teacup in the saucer with a slight clink. "It is not safe for us to stay in England. It hasn't been safe for a long time."
"But…" the boy struggled for words to express his thoughts. "But what if things get better? Can't we go back if things get better?"
"Oh, honey. I wish that were possible, but things…things aren't going to get better."
It was adorable how his brows furrowed, so serious in thought. "We really aren't going back?" he asked, tone haltingly.
"It is…" She cleared her throat roughly. "It is unlikely that we will get to go back to the London that we know."
The season of magic and spells had come to its end. No more witches and wizards would be born, and a new unrest would take over the magical world. There was no need to imagine the chaos and fear that the fear of extinction would bring because the Golden Throat illness had shown the worst parts of the Wizarding World in crystal clear view. People would look for something—someone to blame, a scapegoat that would buy them the illusion of time that they did not have.
Aster refused to be anyone's sacrifice.
"I just want to keep us safe. Just know that I am trying to do my best here, for you and me. I want us to have a good and happy life that isn't ruled by fear. I want us to have a home that won't ever be taken from us again," she asked softly.
Teddy sighed through his nose and eyes lowered to the floor, disheartened. "Okay."
Aster felt a sensation of grim déjà vu sweep over her where she had been just a child, a slip of a girl that had been at the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wasn't allowed a voice. She wasn't allowed to ask questions. She was made to be so small and backed into a corner. There had been so many choices that had been made for her, and the taste of resentment simmered in the back of her throat from the memories.
A knot jammed tight in her throat because she struggled with her words. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, until she blew out a hard breath. She reached across the table and clasped his hands into hers, feeling her heart break for him. "Okay…okay, look. I am going to let you in on a secret, alright? Most adults act like they have it all together and know everything there is to know, but the truth is that we don't," she said. "I don't know what is going to happen, and I don't have all the answers. We can try to plan and prepare, do our best to avert the worst, but…but the future will always be an unknown.
"I know that it feels like things are moving so fast, and that everything is changing, and you don't know up from down. Don't ever be afraid to talk to me or ask me questions about anything," said Aster. "Even if you can't put a name to what you are feeling, or have trouble putting your thoughts into words—I want you to know that you can come to me. Everything that is happening affects you, too."
Despite her best attempts, there was a sorrow and pain in her voice, in the set of her mouth. The memories of him so small and frail, struggling for every breath and face red with an endless fever would forever haunt her recollection. The long nights and hard days that she and Andromeda faced, standing vigil while so many assumed that her godson was on his death bed. Her good nature shattered when the medwitch in charge of his health gave her a brochure for child sized coffins.
Aster started to search high and low, for any tonic or cure to save her godson. She had gone through the more traditional routes, visiting potion masters and healers, and then she had ventured down into the darker corners of the Wizarding World. There were forbidden magics that were not dark and unforgivable but viewed in a negative light by the Ministry of Magic. Blood and Spiritual Magics were considered too dangerous as the slightest of errors could create monstrous damage. It was rumored that a botched blood ritual is how one of the most famous vampiric bloodlines came into existence. Despite the obvious risk, Aster had been ready to risk life and limb to see Teddy healthy again.
After what felt like a lifetime, the sickness lifted. He steadily recovered though scars would remain. It had ravaged his magical core and immune system, and there were times that a crippling fatigue would take hold of her godson. Fits of fever and aches, the longest lasting two weeks, and it was gut-wrenching each time. And then only a few days after her godson was finally up and out of his bed, he took a trip to Diagon Alley with Andromeda…
Another breath, she strove to overcome dark memories to focus on the child in front of her. Her lips pulled into a genuine, if a bit shaky smile, and she got up to walk around the table to pull him into a tight hug. His tiny arms wrapped her waist after a moment, and he whispered out, "Okay."
I wish I could tell you everything, but there are some things that a child shouldn't have to worry about, she thought.
She released her son with her heart tight. Her fingers carded through his hair, and she suggested, "Why don't you go and make sure you have everything packed, and I will get out all your favorite movies so we can watch them tonight? One last movie night before we hit the road? How does that sound?"
A decidedly shrewd expression for a child crossed his face. "That depends," he said with a light lisp, "will there be chocolate chip cookies and popcorn?"
"A movie night without chocolate chip cookies and popcorn?" she emitted, with a mock gasp and dramatic hand folded over her heart. "Perish the thought!"
It was enough to bring back her godson's smile and laughter, dispelling the sad mood that hung over their heads. It was a stolen bit of time, just a moment where the future was still around the corner, and all the fear that came with it.
"Pinky promise?" said Teddy, holding out his pinky.
Aster looped her pinky through his. "Pinky promise."
He hopped out of the chair and ran at a neck breaking speed out of the kitchen in excitement. It was such a relief to see him on the good days—to see him get the joy of being a child and reveling in the boundless freedom that came with it.
"For all the wrongs that I have done in this world," she whispered to herself, "please let Teddy be the one person that I do right by."
The nightmare started in the form a tranquil dream.
Sunlight gleamed through the sheer curtains of the open window, where the scent of honeysuckles and freshly cut grass wafted in on a warm breeze. The tea kettle whistled for a hot second before Hermione swooped to pull it off the flame and turned off the burner. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of freshly baked goods, and a three-tier tea tray set in the center of the table. The savories on the bottom row consisted of lemon-lime scallop canapés, mini quiches, and a variety of tea sandwiches. The middle level was filled with scones, jams and clotted cream, and the very top sat the confectionary to satisfy every single sweet tooth. Berry charlottes, tiny cupcakes, and shortbread cookies shaped like leaves. There had been no expense spared for this meal, and everything looked picture perfect.
And yet Aster felt such bone-deep dread.
Her eyes flickered to the window. Outside Teddy was playing in the yard, happy and free, on the swing set. He kicked his legs back and forth, trying to go as high as he could go. It should bring her such joy to see up and about, but all it did was compound the sense of wrongness. There was something too perfect about this vision, but she couldn't put her finger on just what.
"Shall I play mother?" Aster offered.
"If you insist," Hermione replied, passing the tea kettle over.
Aster carefully poured the hot water into the cup in front of her friend with a well-practiced hand. It had been trial by error learning the ways of hosting and tea pouring when Aunt Petunia required her to serve the tea and snacks when she had been older enough to walk. She lost track of how many burns she received on her arms and hands, and there were a few scars that remained to remind her. She quietly wondered how much her magic subconsciously worked to heal and protect her from the abuse she had suffered from her family.
"I am glad that you invited me over," Hermione said, with a smile. She settled into her seat with ease, picking up a sprig of mint and lemon wedge to add to her tea. "It has been a while since we had time to sit down and chat."
"It has been ages," she agreed, quietly. "It been a long morning. Well, a really long year. I'm just finally glad we can finally breathe easily."
Aster placed the kettle onto the tray, and then settled back into her seat. The chair was hard and uncomfortable, a poor fit though she tried to keep the smile fixed on her face.
"You've made some difficult choices." Hermione scooped up a teaspoon full of sugar and poured into her tea, before swirling around gently. "You never really get over losing a future, you know? You try to put all the maybes and possibilities that are lost into the back of your mind, and you try not to think about it, but the grief is always there."
"That's…a bit of a morose way to start the conversation," Aster responded, puzzled.
Hermione tilted her head to the side. "I feel it is best to get the unsavory conversation out of the way first, don't you think?"
There was something wrong about this picture. Hermione was composed and perfectly poised, but her eyes were blank and smile a bit too forced. The teacup remained on the saucer, untouched despite the added sugar and fixings to taste.
A fissure of alarm cracked down her spine like a whip, but Aster couldn't figure out just what was putting her so on edge. "Good news does seem a bit better after bad news, I suppose," she said, haltingly. "What is on your mind?"
"Aster, you never—never really get over losing a future, you know? You try to put all the maybes and possibilities that are lost into the back of your mind, and you try not to think about it, but the grief is always there," Hermione stated, matter-of-factly. She tried to keep her emotions locked tight and compartmentalized everything so her grief wouldn't show.
"I remember having this—this dream about returning home to my family, and everything was so perfect. I saw my whole world, safe and sound. It was so real. I took one step into the house and it all came crashing down. I saw my parents die. I saw my little sister gutted and strung by her entrails. I saw it, over and over again until it was all that I could see."
Aster felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach. Guilt had opened jaws wide and clamped its teeth at her throat, and her eyes fell to the teacup that she cradled between her two hands. A coldness permeated her insides, and she felt her blood turn to ice. The room was no longer comforting and bright; a grey sieve dulled the colors and sharpened the shadows.
Death Eaters had captured them during the war. It had been one of the few missions that Hermione and Ron had been on, and it had gone unbelievably wrong. It was Hermione's quick wit to use a hex to disguise her features just enough to cast doubt on her identity. No one wished to risk Voldemort's wrath by bringing him the wrong quarry.
Bellatrix LeStrange tried to have Draco Malfoy confirm who she was, thus placing the blame on his shoulders should he prove wrong. He had refused and his uncertainty infuriated his deranged aunt, so the witch turned to a different tactic. She had Aster locked in the dungeon, but well within earshot as she tortured Hermione and had made Ron watch.
Bellatrix had a repertoire of nasty spells designed to inflict pain and had taken perverse pleasure in torturing Hermione. The Crutais Curse was her signature spell, but it was a darker spell that had the most impact on Hermione. Somnum Exterreri was a spell that invaded the mind, tangling a person's consciousness in an unending nightmare. It was devised to be a method of torture on the worst kind of criminals and outlawed in many countries because it was a magic most foul.
The blood curdling screams still haunted Aster. She had been forced fed mage's bane, a plant that diluted a witch or wizard's ability to harness their magic and her wand had been taken away. The paramount sense of helpless while she banged on the bars and tried to tear it off its hinges until her fingernails were broken and bloody. She will never forget the shattered look in Hermione's eyes once they had escaped; it was as if a piece of her soul that had already been so shaken loose by her parents' death had been gouged out. Ron was stricken, and stuck to Hermione's side like glue, completely traumatized.
After their escape, Hermione and Ron had decided to leave the front lines. Aster had never blamed them, only blamed herself. If they hadn't been her friends, then they wouldn't have been at the epicenter of the war and prime targets for the Death Eaters. She gave them space to heal and hoped that one day they would confide in her when they were ready.
They never did speak about it.
"But the thing about dreams?" said Hermione, with a bitter laugh. "They eventually have to come to an end. Just like this one."
"Wh—what?" asked Aster.
"It is a feeling that you know personally, isn't it? You did lose Andromeda and Teddy."
Aster recoiled as if burnt. "Teddy isn't gone! He is still here."
Hermione looked at her with pity. "You gave him away. Don't you remember?"
The angry denial twisted upon her lips, but never erupted. Her gaze was drawn downward by a magnetic force, and there on the table was a stack of papers. It was the papers relinquishing guardianship of custody of her godson. Her name was signed in blood red ink at the bottom.
Her gasp of horror and the teacup that shattered on the floor happened synchronized. The chair skid across the chair floor with a shrill and piercing sound, and she shot to her feet, racing to the open window. The swing set was rotted and falling apart.
And Teddy had vanished.
"Teddy!" she screamed petrified. "Teddy!"
The sunny day darkened with storm clouds and thunder. The door banged open and she charged out of the house, into unrelenting gale. Cold wind and rain whipped across Aster's face, wrenching into the collar of her jacket, and burrowed deep into her skin, leaving her a trembling mess. Her heart cracked against her ribcage with all the force of canon fire, and she stood there in the yard, feeling her mind tear apart with fear. For a single she took forward, the wind knocked her back two.
"Teddy! Teddy!"
Her voice evaporated. Strangled out by an invisible hand, until her vocal cords refused to let her speak more than a whisper. The fear drowned out everything around her, her voice and her thoughts and the light from the world. An inky blackness eroded away her vision until she is swimming in it, and a voice came from the corner of her mind. A memory taken off a shelf and dusted off, an old song that holds a much deeper and potent meaning to her now.
"But past an hour—the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."
Aster awoke with a jolt of panic.
The world was an indecipherable blur until she blinked her heavy eyes and looked around the living room; the movie had been ejected from the VCR, and the static on the television cast the room in an eerily glow. Her godson was nestled into her side, heavily asleep and she wasn't surprised to find Flutterby curled up with her parents in the recliner. Popcorn containers sat around the table, with cookie crumbs and candy wrappers.
It seemed like a peaceful night, but there was this hum—this energy that crackled along her nerve-endings. A pressure that buzzed against her eardrums incessantly, setting her teeth on edge. It was a split second later that the realization came crashing down on her twofold. There was someone nosing around her wards.
The cold burst of panic drove away the sleep daze in an instant. Mindful not to jostle her godson awake, Aster carefully placed a pillow underneath his head to not wake him up before she made her way to the entrance of the home. Her magic pooled to her hands, manifesting as strings of little lightning bolts that flowed up to her fingertips.
The intrusion wasn't outwardly aggressive. It was careful and calculate, like gentle fingers that molded clay until it was a satisfying shape and slipped past the wards in a whisper. The only reason that Aster hadn't raised hell was because there was no ill intent, that much she could tell, but it was unsettling to have something uninvited stir on the boarders of her safe little world.
After a flicker of hesitation, Aster opened the front door and made her way out onto the porch. Her eyes scanned the dense darkness warily. It was nostalgic in a dark humor kind of way, reminding her all the times that her uncle would tell her that if she misbehaved the boogeyman would take her away, and the many nights she lived in fear of the darkness. The few times that her aunt and uncle would dare mention monsters or magic was to frighten her, maybe in a sick way to make her fear herself when the truth about her own magic came out.
The air was thick and crackling with power in a way that she hadn't ever felt before. It was potent, nearly knocking her right off her feet. Not even Dumbledore or Voldemort had sent a spike of awe and fear so deeply into her soul. This power—this power was otherworldly, and not some witch or wizard. She waited a heartbeat, and then another, for something to happen. And when it did, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
The figure of Death appeared just along the tree line, cradled by the mist and shadows, and the blade of his scythe scraped across the bark of tree with a hiss. It left an angry red mark that blazed like a beacon in the night. There were dark gemstones, like sapphire and black opals, held on to black tattered robes by invisible strings; a display of his ever-growing wealth, for each second that passed, another soul was collected and added to his assembly. His face was barely more than a skull with a few strips of putrid flesh held together by greyish tendons and muscle.
Impossibly tall, he stood over seven-foot-tall, and his milky colored eyes peered out from the cowl. She only had seen him once before when she had died and been at the crossroads between life and death; he had been an inky black blotch on the white train station. His appearance had not been so gruesome and nightmarish, like a zombie, but that of a world-weary man back then. She wasn't sure why his appearance had changed, but she recognized him all the same. His power now explicably entwined with hers.
Her fingers curled into her palms, with her fight or flight instincts going haywire.
And just that, Death vanished.
Aster stood there, feeling flummoxed and unnerved. The air softened and became more breathable, and the fog lifted away just as the first bit of light hinted along the edge of the horizon. There was a temptation to dismiss it all as a horrid nightmare—an illusion or trick of her mind brought on by stress. But she couldn't bring herself to even pretend.
Now all she could think was…had that been a warning? Or an invitation?
END OF PART ONE
The Second Wizarding War—I know that I am adding some darker elements that the book didn't have about the war. I believe this was a choice done simply because the Harry Potter series are children's novels. Older readers can read between the lines, but the war was heavily sanitized. It was a choice on my part to use history to flesh out the war, and the long-lasting impact that war has on all characters. The "And All Was Well" works for a child's novel to wrap it up, but it is hardly realistic. I am actively building the worst world state for the Wizarding World where everything fell apart. Cromwell and Greengrass the evil end of the spectrum. I do not see Hermione, Ron, even Dumbledore as evil. Dumbledore was so desperate to protect the world that he allowed himself to sacrifice his morals to do it. Hermione and Ron are people who bent until they were broken. The Weasleys, that were background, we see a difference in ideology that splits the family. We had a hint in the first book that Molly had a squib cousin that she didn't speak to so it shows that the family had possibly their own prejudices, and wrong ideals, so I've just expanded upon that.
SPELLS:
Interfodio (latin)—pierce, to bore
Caligo (latin)—darkness, mist, dark, fog, gloom, vapor. A spell that I invented that is a means for a stratagem. It covered the surrounding area in a dense, thick mist that is hard to see through. Only the caster is able to see through it if it is casted correctly. (Caligo Ingens is a stronger version of the spell. Ingens is latin for great, huge, large. Can be countered with Lumos Maxima.)
Somnum Exterreri was a spell that invaded the mind, tangling a person's consciousness in an unending nightmare. It was devised to be a method of torture on the worst kind of criminals and outlawed in many countries because it was a magic most foul.
Tuatha Dé Danann—means the "fold of the goddess Danu." They are the enchanted, mythical fairies of Irish folklore. There are a great different types of sidhe, a whole pantheon of deities worshiped in the pre-Christian Gaelic era. I only know the surface of these legends, having done a little research here and there, and look forward to doing more. (The reason I chose this lore to expand upon the House Elves is because of the Law of Hospitality that is heavily engrained into many Sidhe legends. The Fall of Avalon had the Good People—another term for fairies—to look for shelter and safety with their long time allies, witches and wizards. Unfortunately, humans do not abide by the same natural laws as the fae do and took advantage of the fair folk, eventually twisting them into a weaker and limited version of what they once were. This imbalance of power is partially responsible for the prophesized fall of the magic that Dumbledore feared. The further transgression of Dumbledore exploiting another world to protect the Wizarding World was just the final nail in the coffin.)
Major Changes from the Original Story:
1.) Aster's Love Life: In the original, Blaise was Aster's lover and tried to trick her into a pregnancy, committing line theft. I opted to change this because I don't think Aster is in a place emotionally to accept love from anyone (male, female, non-binary, etc)—platonically or romantically. That doesn't mean she hasn't tried to be intimate, only that the experiences weren't ideal. Her abusive childhood and always caught up in danger at Hogwarts, there wasn't a consistent positive reinforcement for touching to equal good in her head. I wanted to leave her love life ambiguous at this stage, so when I do sequels that I have a lot more freedom with her pairings.
2.) The Beginning: I initially had it where it just started with Aster getting the artifact, and at Privat Drive. I explained why the world was gone dark, but I didn't really feel what was on the line. I wanted to change up the beginning to where we see just why Aster wants to leave, and what prompts her to become so greatly hunted. It also shows that Aster did help the Rebellion, but ultimately chose her family first. (Also gave us a likeable version of Blaise Zabini.)
3.) Battles: I wanted Aster to not just leave without doing something for the Resistance, but also to establish her as a serious threat. This isn't a woman who skated by on dumb luck, but someone who actively fights the odds.
