James got off work early today and so did his wife, courtesy to an emergency warning from the Ministry of Magic. They knew immediately what it was about and so proceeded to bolt their doors, cast the safety charms, and wait out the night.
Nigel rushed towards them from his lego set (he had been constructing two towers) and away from their doting house elf Mimsy (who Claire inherited from her family), hugging their legs. He was shaking. "Mimsy said there's going to be trouble tonight."
"Mimsy is not wrong," Claire said as she scooped Nigel up in her arms, clutching him tightly, "But everything will be okay. I promise."
"I'm scared, mummy, daddy," the boy murmured.
"No matter what happens, mummy and daddy will do everything to protect you... and your sister," James reassured the boy.
"Sister?"
"Yes Nigel, you're going to get a sister!"
"Can we name her Elmer?" Nigel's eyes brightened instantly. 3-year-olds possess the peculiar ability to snap out of reveries of fear and dread and into states of wonderment. "Uncle Albus said Elmer is a cool name and I agree."
"For fuck's sake-"
"Language, James!" Claire chided.
"For fuck's sake!" Nigel repeated gleefully. "For fuck's sake! For fuck's sake!"
"Look at what you've done." Claire glared at him murderously.
"You know what, I still have some ice cream in the fridge and leftover brownies so I'm going to make dessert for you guys..." James suggested as he promptly scuttled away.
Gazing at his wife and son playing in the distance, James prayed to whatever higher being from above that everything would turn out alright. Even if everything wasn't, he knew that he would die protecting them.
The Minister of Magic paced around her office. She was surrounded by her closest advisers, including Harry Potter himself. (Nevertheless, her husband was at home, with Hugo and Lily.) Contemplating on this situation, bordering on crisis, she wondered just how long it would last. The Aurors had captured a couple of neo-Death Eaters already, but there were still many on the loose. And according to multiple sources one large force was headed towards the Ministry-
"Minister! They're already here! They're attacking the Department of Mysteries! We're going to need reinforcements!" An Auror, Cynthia Lang, burst into the room, panting.
"I'm on it; I'll confront them myself," Harry Potter declared. "I'll take some Aurors with me, Hermione."
"Meanwhile, I'll stay here and manage the co-ordination," Hermione concurred.
I love you.
Value yourself just as much as I do.
You're the first person I've ever loved.
I looked into my future and not a single path doesn't involve you.
Were these all lies? Rage scorching through his interior, Albus wondered. Between them, how much of it was genuine? Was she simply using him all this time, the gullible son of the vaunted Harry Potter, the cocksure Auror who assumed he could dispatch everything with ease? She - the Dark Lady, not Dark Lord - was hiding right beneath his nose, beneath his blankets, the deceptive wretch, the seemingly sweet and perfect girlfriend, the woman he thought he would share the rest of his life with - perhaps she really was a caricatural mask carved over a dangerous enigma, as Scorpius once put it long, long time ago - and someone who would drag him down with her. Falling, falling, falling...
He should have seen it coming. Love blinds, as wise men and women have asserted many times, through personal or vicarious or observational experiences. Yet humans never learn. Individuals have fallen for far less.
The sweet scent of her hair, her daring, electric blue eyes, her slender waist and dashing romanticism - it's more than he can take! Was he mad? Perhaps he had long been driven there, without his own permission or awareness. The descent, how her small words of encouragement, magical tuitions, infiltrated his psyche, poisoned his character, warped him into a different creature.
But no matter! She had to be stopped.
The Sons of Walpurgis were still in their nascent stage, held together by a charismatic leader and common grievances. The latter could be mediated through ideological deradicalisation, amelioration of marginalisation and the arrest of criminal elements. As for the former, to deal with the serpent, you need to decapitate its head, the same way Neville Longbottom dispatched Nagini. Even with a hydra, it starts with decapitation - then you burn its neck until nothing can grow out of it. If the trials and tribulations failed to neutralise the Sons, Albus planned on doing away with them himself. One by one. Perhaps it's better to start earlier.
So much for their future, so much for their love, so much for all the sweet words, romantic nights, memories. To banish the shadow and embrace the light, the terrible, bright, warped light of justice, that was the only way, to-
Scorpius.
It was Scorpius, the mope of messy blond hair, dead in the centre circle surrounded by foul ancient runes.
And Delphi chanting, flickering her wand back and forth, engrossed in her rituals, too immersed in it all to notice him.
Scorpius' lifeless grey eyes, stormy as tumultuous oceans, met his.
Scorpius was dead.
Dead.
It was his own fault.
His own damned fault!
She must have somehow leveraged him to get to Scorpius.
And the locket. That was his fault too. It was being charmed as whisks of spells swirled around it.
Forcing himself to remember the gruesome details, Albus hurled his mind back to the afternoon when they exchanged illicit information about Horcruxes and when he - bless his curious mind - perused through the pages in an attempt to understand the foul craft of magic. She was charming the object to receive her split soul - and the ritual was nearing its end. Any moment now, it would be too late for him to stop her. He had to do it now.
What to do?
With dread, he knew there was only one way.
So long, farewell. Duplicitousness needed to meet its end and there was no way she would have accepted another life with him, where they were both normal people and unconcerned with the turmoils of this world. Like that would ever happen.
"Avada Kedavra," Albus whispered, pointing his wand at her. At that moment, he loved her and hated her, but he hated himself even more. Yet he did not regret what was done. The green struck her just as a silvery whisk emerged from the tip of her wand, just before she would permanently encase her soul within the Locket of Merlin. She had just enough time to turn around and discover the source of the attack. There was no other way.
Albus thought he may have seen her mouth something. Why. She seemed to be asking him, why.
Her heart stopped beating, Albus could feel her being ripped away from the mortal world as she fell to the ground, sleeping so peacefully. Perhaps in death, she would be able to find the peace she never could in lif-
A tug. Sharp pain coursing through his veins, he was being lifted in the air and gravitating towards the Locket. It was hungry, it was greedy, it was furious. Promised a portion of a soul, it was denied. Yet the charmed object, steeped with curses, needed to receive something, needed to satiate its demands. And it had the perfect target.
The ensuing sensation was worse than the Cruciatus Curse ten times over. Every bone and fiber and sinew of his bodies felt torn, ripped apart, mutilated. He felt his entire being disintegrate. Unable to resist, unable to hold the agony inside, Albus screamed and screeched, then fell on to the ground, twisting and turning like a harpooned whale. Helplessly, he saw a silvery whisk leave his body and lodge itself right into the Locket of Merlin, which proceeded to shake furiously, causing the whole atrium to reverberate. A hollowness spread through him, he felt strangely light and numb after the passing of the sharp pain - or maybe it was the mere fact that he could no longer sense it.
Panting, sweating, palpitating, he crawled towards the corpse of Scorpius Malfoy.
It was not a face he would ever forget, so lifeless, so dead, so blank and soulless. His former best friend, his first friend in Hogwarts, the boy he had shared so many joyful memories with. Their first time on the Hogwarts Express with Scorpius. All the chocolate frogs, jelly beans, pumpkin tarts, and just listening to Scorpius talk, being the ginormous geek he is, about his favourite array of muggle literature. Treasure Island, the Little Prince, the Secret Garden, A Thousand And One Nights... The smell of candy and innocence brimming in the air, the feeling of excitement, Scorpius's completely unwarranted optimism, Scorpius being a dork, Scorpius laughing... That time when they first got drunk together and failed spectacularly to evade the survey of the Bloody Baron. That time when he cheered so hard for Scorpius when the guy finally caught the snitch during Quidditch, fourth-year.
Tears inundated his face as he wept, wept for what a pathetic, terrible friend he has been, what a terribly blind person he was and what a failure of an Auror he was.
Just how could he face Rose after this? And the rest of his family?
The sound of footsteps approaching cut his mourning short. He grabbed the Locket, wearing it around his neck and donned his Invisibility Cloak. Now he was truly undetectable.
There were stunned faces as the Sons gathered and faltered around their deceased leader. The possibility that she may not succeeded never quite occurred to them. They began panicking, unsure of what to do. Combined with the fact that there was no easy way for him to die thanks to the accursed manipulations of Delphi on the Locket, it was the perfect time for him to strike.
Person after person perished in the pandemonium, flocks of headless chicken, the lot of them became.
It was almost too easy.
It made him feel a little better, like their deaths were compensating for Scorpius' death and his own self-hatred.
His Aurors had finally managed to bind Rodolphus Lestrange and the neo-Death Eaters that accompanied the man. Wands confiscated, they were tied up and ready to be shipped straight to Azkaban.
Harry Potter sighed.
"No more attackers in sight," a colleague of his - Marsha - had informed him via their communicators.
It was finally ending.
Out of the blue, Thomas MacLaggen came rushing towards him on a broomstick. The guy came straight from the path that lead to the Atrium. "Sir, I believe you need to see what happened down there!"
Stepping on the cobbled streets, Albus let the cool air of an ordinary London night calm his raging mind. Needless to say, success eluded him. It was still too much for him process, the pain, the guilt, the twists and turns. He needed to be somewhere, to see someone, anyone that can make him feel less wretched.
Rose was out of the question; he did not want to elaborate what happened to Scorpius. Shame and guilt would have overwhelmed him. Lily was with Hugo and Uncle Ron, the latter of which would definitely sniff out something wrong. Not Thomas, not Cynthia, not Isadora, not Don, not any of his Auror colleagues. Most definitely not his father - or mother, or Aunt Hermione.
That left only James and Claire, hence why he stood outside their door. They had casted an array of protective spells around it for security purposes, but the doorbell was still functioning.
He rang.
James huddled close with his wife and son, as they read bedtime stories together. Their son had insisted on Winnie the Pooh, for some inexplicable reason, and they had begrudgingly complied. As the began narrating about Heffalumps and Woozles, however, the doorbell started ringing.
"Dad? Is it a good or bad person?" Nigel whispered quietly.
"We don't know," Claire answered. "I'll answer it. James, hide with Nigel in the kitchen and await my instructions-"
"No, I'll answer it. You're pregnant, remember?" James rebuffed her.
Normally, this would have been cause for another minor bickering incident but the potential graveness of the scenario induced a seriousness in them that little could have predicted. Wand drawn, Claire ushered little Nigel into the kitchen James headed towards the door.
"Albus?!"
His little brother's eyes were bloodshot, hair completely tussled, skin almost ghastly pale and face suffused in sweat.
Before James could say anything else, Albus crashed into him in a tight hug, shaking.
Claire thanked the heavens that it was her brother-in-law, who informed them that most of the threat has already been taken care of.
As they sat on the sofa, catching up to hot chocolate and marshmallows, little Nigel crawled into Albus's lap, being the most excitable inquisitor ever. Uncle, did you beat up the bad guys? How many bad guys? Are we safe now? Can I name my sister Elmer? Can you convince my parents to name her Elmer? What's your favourite colour? Why are you so tired? Do you want to stay with us tomorrow?
There were two things she noticed, for she had always been the more perceptive person in the relationship. One was that Albus was very good at evading questions. Two was that he kept reaching for the Locket around his neck, surreptitiously, unconsciously, reflexively. It seemed like a plain locket, perhaps the twitching was out of simple nervousness. It was a stressful night for the Aurors after all.
They invited Albus to stay at the guest room and use the shower and the man gratefully took the offer.
That night, she kissed goodnight to her son and cuddled to sleep with James.
After all these months, they could finally sleep soundly.
Albus did not bother to wake his brother and sister-in-law up as he was about to leave. He had left a note on his folded bedsheets thanking them for his hospitality, as well as informing them that his Auror days were at an end, asking James to pass the news to their father, and that he would no longer be in England.
Except his little nephew was up early.
"Uncle Alby?" The boy's eyes brightened.
"Nigel," he walked towards the boy and lifted him up, then proceeded to pat him on the head - rather awkwardly.
"Where you going?" The kid asked.
"Away, around the world, perhaps."
"Are you going to save the world?"
"Perhaps. We'll see."
"Ah! Okay! Will you send me postcards? I love postcards. Also, if you're ever in Lebanon, can you bring back some sweets there? I love Lebanese sweets. Dad brought them back once."
"Alright, I'll see what I can do." He smiled at the boy because what else was he supposed to do to a sweet, innocent kid? "Now, be a good kid, don't wake your parents and goodbye."
"I'll see you!" Nigel piped.
"See you." Albus waved as he passed through the threshold, out into the world, the cold and open world.
"I'm sorry Rosie," her father had awoken her with a call, "but I need you in your mother's office, right now."
Rose had cried herself to sleep that night, plagued with emptiness and unease. She had seen the news - muggle news - of explosions around London, presumed to be terrorist attacks by the BBC, but, reality, she already knew it was the Sons of Walpurgis. She was alone, without her husband by her side.
When she reached there, she was greeted by similarly silent and stoney faces. The once greatly vaunted Harry Potter looked so pale and so visibly shaken that she thought he might collapse. Thomas MacLaggen, serial arrogant jackass from Hogwarts, looked befuddled and about to puke. Her mother's brows were furrowed, thinking hard. James and Claire were virtually in tears.
"We're so sorry Rose," Hermione said as she pulled her daughter into a hug.
"It's Scorpius isn't it?" A quiet whisper.
Hermione nodded.
"I'm so sorry to tell you this Rose, but Scorpius... your husband... he's a casualty..." Hermione tried to steady herself but could not quite finish the sentence.
"i know, I know..." Rose felt a lump on her throat. There were no tears left to cry anymore. Her hands wandered their way to her belly, unwittingly, she began cradling it. "There's also something else I need to tell you guys, I'm..."
"I hate inform you of this, Harry, but your son is - as of now - a wanted criminal -"
Harry dreaded these words. He knew it would happen since yesterday evening, when in the atrium of the Department of Mysteries lay more than a dozen dead bodies that were otherwise in perfect disposition, something that can only be achieved by that one Unforgivable Curse. Added to that were the corpses of his fiancee and best friend, lying prostrate in an ominous circle surrounded by ancient runes, rune that, as further inspection confirmed, were needed to initiate something foul.
There was one very obvious suspect.
And the fact that James rang him, panicking in the morning, informing him of Albus's decision to leave the Aurors and England, did not reassure him.
And yet - yet - Albus was still his son. The real circumstances of what happened remain shrouded in mystery. No one knew who was who, who was involved, who was guilty... All that remained were deaths - so many of them - and a trail of obscure clues rife to misinterpretation. The Ministry had declared confidentiality on the specifics that occurred at the heart of yesterday. The public knew that the core of the Sons of Walpurgis were neutralised, their supporters arrested and the threat largely eliminated, but they knew little else. Truth to be told, neither did Harry and he was the head of the Auror Department. All he could do was speculate alongside the Minister of Magic.
"-what happened yesterday, Harry, was - and I do not say this without any evidence, you must know - an attempt at making a Horcrux. And by the looks of it, a successful one-"
Harry's blood went cold. But there was no way, it could not have been-
"-Albus Potter is the prime suspect. I'm-"
"This doesn't make any sense! Hermione, be reasonable, there's no way he would have-"
"Harry, I'd hate it for this to be true as much as you but there are indeed clues-"
"He's-"
"Remember when he told us the new Dark Lord plans to make a Horcrux-"
"My son is not a Dar-"
"I'm not saying he is!"
"Well you implied he was!"
"That's what the evidence suggested, but for all we know-"
A knock from Thomas MacLaggen interrupted the emerging shouting match between them, who felt extremely disorientation for intruding upon what seemed a sensitive moment. "Head Auror Potter, Minister Granger, I... your divisions have uncovered invaluable detail."
"Go on," Hermione gestured.
"Delphi Riddle, Albus' fiance, was the daughter of You-Know-Who and Bellatrix Lestrange. Rodolphus Lestrange very willingly told us. He was spiteful, gleeful... We've put him through veritaserum and repeatedly questioned him that. His answer was always the same. And subsequently, the medical investigations team ran a blood test for her. There were traces in her genes leading back to the now extinct House of Gaunt. It appears that Albus' whole love life was a lie."
He was no longer whole; half of his soul was ripped from his body. Not quite a shell of a man, but no longer fully mortal. The irony was that it was never his intention. This was not something he sought for himself but a curse he took for someone else. He was probably the only man in the history of the Wizarding World to land himself with an accidental Horcrux.
Was it ever real, what happened between him and Delphi? Was it ever love? Searching through his memory, Albus strove to recall even a thread of genuine emotion, a thread of real romance. Nothing was spared from doubt, from the seemingly earnest confessions to the sweet kisses and words of comfort, from the passionate love-making to the hearty laughs. Was it ever real?
It had been a week since he fled England. With his Locket and Invisibility Cloak, he was practically untraceable through conventional means and that gave him some breathing space. There were a few rough encounters, he would not deny that, for a couple of French Aurors tried to corner him a few days ago occasion and yet they failed miserably. Their memories regarding him were delicately erased because he was delicate with this sort of stuff.
He could no longer manage sleep without any potions. The nightmares, the agonising dreams, they were all too much to bear. It wasn't just Delphi. There were times when it was a figure with ice blond hair. Not silver. Not Delphi. Grey stormy eyes, lifeless and accusatory. The shadow of Scorpius Malfoy would hang over him for eternity. Could things have been different? Could he have discovered Delphi's true nature in time and prevented Scorpius' death? Could he have induced a change of heart in Delphi and stirred her away from a life of crime? No - too unlikely. Speculations were all too painful. He did not want to dwell on how he could have prevented all of this, so all that was left was to run, run, run...
And the question on how to fix his soul.
He woke up in rage, his head boiling, his skin perspiring and his chest pounding. He felt himself shaking and hoisted himself out of bed.
Another day, another nameless motel in Eastern Europe.
He stood bare in front of the mirror and a familiar face glanced back. The green eyes - the ones that reminded him of his father - stared at him listlessly, devoid of purpose and desire. All that was left was the mechanistic shell of a man, powered on by adrenaline and rage and fear and grief. For weeks, he had shunned all news sources, not wanting to gain any insight whatsoever on how the rest of his family - particularly, Rose and Mum and Dad - were doing, what they thought about his disappearance, but words and whispers have a way of worming their way into his mind, courtesy to his accursed ability to read minds.
Potter's son gone rogue. The most dangerous man in England. The most dangerous man in Europe. The most wanted criminal in more than a decade. The mad second son of the Boy-Who-Lived.
If only those insipid voices could see him now: pathetic, alone and dithering on the brink of insanity, talking to himself, talking to imagined dead people. Hollow, magically and ... mortally unstoppable, but hollow. A useless puppet whose strings had been cut. Free from his master (or lover), he knew not what to do, not that he ever possessed the ability to operate autonomously anyway.
There was a knock on his door; he reached for his wand.
"Room service," a cheery voice called from the outside.
"Come in," he shouted at her.
The maid appeared rather flustered to see him topless. Frowning, he closed his eyes and strove to confirm the identity of the speaker. Nothing of note, no one of threat... - hang on, there was something.
"Nice try, Cynthia," he noted drily. "Almost had me fooled."
Yawning, he walked towards the coffee machine.
"We have this place surrounded, Albus," she warned, transfiguring back to her self, brown her tied into a tight bun and wand out.
"And?"
"Thomas, Isadora and Don are all outside, our old team. We're all here-"
"Presumably to capture me and throw me into Azkaban? No thank you. And don't lie to me, you guys brought more than 4 people... Romanian Aurors, is that it?" He questioned as he sipped coffee.
"Look Albus, it doesn't have to be this way. You'll get a free trial and-"
"How much do you know?"
"Enough."
"Define enough. What? That I killed Delphi, who, by the way, was my fiance because it's fucked up like that, Euphemia Rowle and many of the neo-Death Eaters. Is that enough to warrant an arrest? Perhaps. Though there's technically an argument of self-defense-"
"Albus, you were meant to incapacitate them so they could be trialed and sent to Azkaban, you know, like what we were taught in Auror training," Thomas said as he walked in the room.
Albus shrugged. What would once have bothered him no longer seemed to make him bat an eye. "So what? You tell me how easily it is to incapacitate a crowd of dark wizards and witches hell bent on murdering you."
"You have issues."
"I agree with Thomas."
"I'm thrilled at all of your realisations but leave a man in peace. It's 8 am in the morning."
"Albus, stop dithering around!"
"Thomas, I don't care what our instructions were, we're capturing him by any means necessary-"
She fired a disarming spell, which was blocked by him. Rapid firings of spells ensued. The room became a whirlwind of coloured beams. The sounds of shattered glass were everywhere.
Thomas was panicking. "No disturbances, no attracting too much attention from muggles, no buildings collapsing-"
"Too late," Albus uttered, wand pointing upwards.
And the ceiling shattered among them.
Head Auror Harry Potter was examined the most recent mission report. It was not good news. It was a remote mission in Ireland, the usual deal with organised gangs. Cynthia Lang, a rising star in the Auror department, someone who served alongside Albus... She had indirectly resulted in the deaths of 100 muggles by rushing to save one muggle child. Now he was perusing recommendation after recommendation, all advising on her temporary suspension.
It had really gotten her, her failure to retrieve Albus Potter. It had gotten to all of them. Ever since the incident in Romania, when Albus had escaped the collapsed building, going undetected again, Cynthia seemed bent on a redemptive mission. It seemed that her failure to save her collegue had translated into a fierce desire to do no wrong at all.
The rest of the old team, it appeared, was no better. Thomas would not speak of their older days and, after a promotion, cut off ties with the rest of them. Isadora, after a long period of contemplation, resigned and joined the Department of Mysteries as a researcher. Don had resigned too, having decided to work in retail in Diagon Alley - a change of environment. Loris had requested a transfer to the foreign service and was now located in the British Ministry's diplomatic office in South Korea. The full details of Albus's acts, the full scope of the Sons of Walpurgis' activities, were kept from public record, sealed away into the past.
And Harry Potter himself, for a brief moment, withdrew from public life, teetering on the brink of becoming a recluse. He could not bear, his heart pained, to contemplate about his second son. Albus Severus Potter, named after two of the bravest wizards he had known, his - as much as he would never admit it - dearest son, who had been so close to him, so eager to follow his footsteps, who had so much potential to do so much good. What had happened?
Perhaps one can say that it all started with her, but it did not fully explain the subsequent events, the mass killings, the (reported) insanity, the - the... Horcrux. Hermione had a theory that Delphi intended to make a Horcrux and Albus had halted her through an act of murder, which, in the process, involved the transferral of his onto the object instead, an aberration to the usual ritual. But still, something had inexplicably changed in the boy... man. It was palpable, everyone could see it. She had moulded him to her own image, he had (subconsciously) resisted and in so doing, became deformed in the mind, screwing himself, perverting himself. Perhaps it was shame, shame that caused him to flee, not merely desire to avoid jail time.
Guilt coursed through him: what if he could have stopped his son? Pulled him back from the abyss?
It took a long time for him to smile again, even if the pain would never go away. Ginny, though initially just as downcast as him, started recovering after the birth of James' daughter, whom they decided to name Andromeda. She had the cheekiest giggles, without a single worry in the world. Her smile was so wide that it made Ginny smile too.
In time, things would recover.
Rose cradled her infant son Terrence to sleep, watching his unperturbed expressions with a sense of serenity. She felt an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness.
He would never get to know his father; she winced with a tinge of sadness. But he would get the love of two parents combined in her. And the help of her extended family.
Draco Malfoy had been unexpectedly helpful, offering to look after little Terrence whenever Rose went to work as the editor of a sports magazine. It was some form of company and consolation for a man who had lost so much already. James and Claire were offering her parenting tips and suggesting playdates between Terrence and Andromeda already. Her parents were there emotionally for her all the time. And her brother, bless him, was trying so hard to knit his own onesie for her baby son.
She could never forgive Albus. As much as her mind told her that it was not his fault, her heart, the same heart that beats with love for her deceased husband, could never forgive him for his blindness. It was his blindness that cost Terrence his father, his own best friend.
Lily shook her head as she slammed the door.
It had been a very bad breakup. She had seem it coming in ages and yet it still hurt. He had been drinking heavily and began consuming a strange array of addictive substances. It was bad. He had been on a downward spiral ever since he quit his job as an Auror. His stint in retail lasted only a few months, when the drugs slowly eroded his ability to work properly, resulting in his firing. The string of abusive expletives and volatile behavior towards her became more and more commonplace. He was clearly in a state of depression and yet she, being no professional psychiatrist, merely an apperentice healer at St. Mungo's, knew little on how to help. She tried to recommend therapy to him and yet he eventually lost the willpower to go regularly. Then one day, after a particularly nasty row, both of them called it quits.
These were the times when she kind of wished her other brother was still around. He always knew how to cheer her up like that - and on how to terrorise her exes shitless. James had his humor, but he was far too (justifiably) invested in fatherhood at this point.
Oh Albus...
She had no idea where her brother went, only that one mission to retrieve him turned out to be an abject failure. She didn't even know the specific details of what exactly happened that night at the Department of Mysteries. Don, in one of his sober and less volatile moments, insisted he didn't know much either, only that Albus committed more than two dozen homicides and broken 16 magical laws. The whole affair was hushed up and, with the threat of the Sons of Walpurgis eradicated, England was mostly at peace again.
A peace that her brother would have no part in.
It had been three years. He had traversed across the sands of the Sahara, interacted with clandestine djinns; forayed into Japan, aiding elderly witches and wizards on curse-breaking; saved the daughter of a Siberian aristocrat, earning a ton of cash at the same time; paid a quick, albeit secretive, visit to Lawrence in America, with the two smoking joint under the night sky near Ilvermorny before he bade goodbye (perhaps forever); aided the Amazonian natives in banishing a demon; delved into the secretive lair of the Parisian underground network. And now in Marrakesh, after another session of gambling, he felt so exhausted, overwhelmed. All these years, he tried to banish the pain, shame and remorse of the past to the back of his mind. All these years, they haunted his dreams.
To diffuse them, he had tried to keep himself as occupied as possible. The results varied, but it was good money. If Scorpius were here now, he would have snorted and called Albus out for basically being a mercenary, which was probably true.
All the time, the Locket of Merlin weighed heavily around his neck. It was a dead-end; there was no way out. The only way to fix his soul was to repent. He had poured over thousands of pages of literature and that was the only solution that seemed to work. And yet could he? Could he ever regret ending her life?
Perhaps he could. It was still all too confusing. It pained him to think about her, it shamed him that he had once so nakedly prostrated himself and his feelings in front of the woman who was the daughter of his father's worst nemesis - and who was, in all fairness, probably no better. Did he event want to feel remorse? He loved her back then; a part of him would still love the woman he thought she was, the one coated by all the sweet lies and deceptions. He even - in his more delirious moments now - entertained the notion that he could have changed her mind through their. But there was no way she would have longed him back. Not even a single second.
Killing was always his wrong, his mother would chastise him. Killing solves nothing, Scorpius would lecture him. Killing ruins your own soul, his father would gravely warn him.
The sound of cards shuffling seemed like the heavens above deciding his fate. His opponent had hummed nonchalantly when he received his selection of cards. Albus smirked. This was something he had gotten used to.
"10 Galleons." The man uttered shortly after the flop.
Albus obliged and did the same.
The man added another 10 upon the revelation of the first card. And another 10 for the second.
He looked positively enraged when he was bested. Still, he suppressed his temper and betted another 5 Galleons. Not used to losing, Albus concluded with amusement. His displeasure rose even further when Albus's bluffing succeeded in robbing him of another 40 Galleons. The psychological tactics, the way people responded to things in situations such as these, it was all too predictable by now.
When Albus received a poor round of cards, he folded and left the table. The crucial lesson in life was to know when to fold, when to retreat and back off from a fight you cannot win. That much his past experiences have taught him.
After all, what was his affair with Delphi destined to be anything but doomed? It dragged him down into the depths of hell, deformed him, ruined him, wasted away his capacity for love. To fall, falling, fallen... and then what next?
And then what next?
Yup! Consider it done! The ending is depressing as hell. It's listed as a tragedy. I told you so.
BUT, I might write a sequel haha ... who knows?
Please let me know what you thought of this chapter - and this short fic in general! - in the reviews!
UPDATE: Sequel is here. It's called "Pandemonium." Updates will be slower and more sporadic but hopefully just as enjoyable!