Hi, so here is the penultimate chapter. This takes place during the Order of the Phoenix and the final chapter will take place in Deathly Hallows. So there is some cannon and some fiction.
Cyrus Greengrass is Nataylia's brother, he is also the father of Daphne and Astoria Greengrass the latter of who features in my story Beat Your Heart Out and who as we all know goes onto marry Draco Malfoy. There is no correlation between these stories other than the name of Astoria's father and some background history-my cannon is Cyrus did not tell his daughters that they had an aunt who was a Death Eater.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine in this wonderful fandom, i just get to play around with some characters.
Please Read and Review.
Face-To-Faceless
Chapter 6-No One Mourns The Wicked.
Fourteen years have passed since Antonin was free. But the tide is turning, and the Second War is about to begin. But before the Dark Lord's work can continue there are a few trips down memory lane that his faithful servant has to take.
It had been a long fourteen years and until he had gotten himself outside and smelt the sea and the salt and the air he had not realised how much time had passed. One second he had been sat in his cell waiting for the dementors (and the visions that often accompanied them) and then Bellatrix here just as long as he had been her face illuminated in an insane cackle was waving a wand in his face.
Antonin had stared at her and then mark on his arm burned for the second time. It had burned once before last summer and he had not known nor cared why. The Dark Lord was gone everyone knew that but Bellatrix had took it as a sign that her leader was restored to her (naturally not to them) and had delighted in telling the guards their time would come.
"He's back" she whispered through the bars. She waved the wand without looking at whomever it was and Antonin knew by the flash of green light that she had just killed a wizard. She danced around cackling and he watched wondering where the dementors were before his brain tired and muddled and half mad caught up with him and he realised that the dementors had gone back to what they did best and were supporting them.
The doors blasted open, the bars disintegrated and he stood up on shaky legs that had been disused for so long. His nails caught against the stone of the cell.
He did not look back.
They arrived in a dishevelled mess. Ten of them had gotten out him amongst them, the worst of them nothing like that blood traitor who had escaped a year earlier. Had he still been able to Antonin would have laughed. He had long ago lost the ability to that. Actually he was not sure if he could smile anymore. He was not sure he could do anything anymore.
It had been Bellatrix who had commanded her sister. In fairness Narcissa had been waiting for them. Time had done wonders for the Black sisters in very different ways Antonin thought blandly staring around. He was in rags, his ribs showing he had not bathed in years. His brain felt disconnected, his thoughts disconnected and he was in no mood to deal with the Death Eaters milling around the foyer watching as Narcissa Malfoy her blonde hair tied in an elegant knot directing them towards rooms, clearly with the foreknowledge of what came next. She had been warned and he watched as she greeted her older sister cool in the knowledge that life would have been a lot easier for the beauty of the family if the manic had died behind prison walls.
Antonin dragged himself up to the room she had directed him to. It was bright and it took his eyes a second to adjust to the glare after Azkaban but it was clean. There was a bed and a bathroom and a bath filled with steaming clean water.
He was tired, oh how he was tired and he was delaying the inevitable but he chose the bath. It had been the first bath he had had in fourteen years and the first touch of anything hot. The water was scolding as he stepped in it and he leaned back closing his eyes and feeling the steam hit his face. He had never known that such a simple thing as a bath could make you feel emotional but it did. He had never known during the long years of his imprisonment that he had any emotions left.
He washed methodically, the mud and the grime and the shit sticking to his skin (the bath had to refill three times before he was clean) he remembered with a pang of something a laugh in his head as someone he didn't want to think about told him what a body scrub was and he found that buffing away all the dead skin the way—the way he had been shown.
He cut his hair in the bathroom sink with scissors and the beard and finally he got a look of himself in the mirror and Antonin who was not a vain man anymore (that had gone with his wand) looked at himself and thought that he might at last succumb to tears.
He had lost the beauty that he had one had. The arrogant line of his jaw and the high cheekbones had sank into the flesh of his face that had become gaunt in the time he had been in his cell. His hands and his nails now clean and cut where like spiders, his eyes were dark and dull and underneath them were huge dark circles. His hair now cut was still the same shade but there was grey in the dark strands now and his nose was twisted, his face was twisted and he thought that his whole mind was twisted.
He had lost the body that his—that she—had once adored. His ribs were showing, his stomach wasted. The muscles wasted. All of it gone.
He climbed into the bed not bothering with the mass of rags that had once been his clothes and staggered under the sheets. A bed. Merlin what a novelty that was after so many years sleeping on rock. A warm blankets, several in fact and a view that was something other than rock and cold air.
He slept and slept and slept and then when he woke he attacked the food that was in front of him. It was like a dream and he ate the warm bread, the eggs, the bacon all of it shoving it into his mouth and eating without dignity. He was running from it he knew even as he went back to bed. He would know he theorised when the Dark Lord would come. He would know then but for now he wanted to sleep. The last sleep was one of exhaustion, perhaps this would be too.
Perhaps he thought to himself as he curled under the warm sheets and watched the sunrise. Perhaps this was the night that he would not dream of Nataylia.
He was wrong naturally but it was not the dream of her dying that had plagued him in Azkaban which he supposed was some kind of change. Instead it was the night before when the world had seemed golden and she had clutched at him as he had thrusted himself up within her and thought that they were invincible, that the Dark Lord was invincible and the brat of the Potters hadn't even been on the radar of the Death Eaters.
He woke up staring at the ceiling gritting his teeth. Merlin it hurt to think of her. It had been perhaps the only memory the Dementors could ever use against him and they had revelled in the delight that came with the misery that bled out of him almost instantaneously. Nataylia had died and died and died again and now he understood her desire to have died that day. To never be taken alive and he understood it in a way that he had not before. If they came for him again—and he was sure that they would—they would not get him alive.
He dressed in the robes that were provided in silence. Someone had thought to give him a wand. He picked it up and examined it. Ash he thought looking at the wood. Unicorn hair too a far cry from the dragon heartstring and dogwood one he had always used. But it was a wand and the magic within him rejoiced as something that simple gave him pleasure.
Narcissa had not told them weather or not they could leave and Antonin knew where he had to apparate to. He caught the headline of the Prophet and scanned it eyes wincing at the words and grinned feeling dangerous. They didn't know. Merlin's balls they didn't know. He used his shaky hands to inform Narcissa in his note that he was seeking out temporary lodgings and then he was gone to the one place he had thought he would never go again.
Home.
He apparated and as he did his knees sunk to the carpet. It was still the same colour, there was no dust, no cobwebs nothing and he could feel the heat of the fire even without seeing and hearing it crackle and spark up. There was someone here.
He gripped the wand and snarled. He pushed open the door and then stopped.
It was not Dumbledore, not a hoard of auror's waiting for him. Neither was it his wife to whom his traitorous heart would always long for sitting there in his shirt on the table with her legs spread darkly glamourous, arrogant, confident and determined to see the world burn to her demands, to kneel at her feet Antonin the first to kneel for her, always the first to kneel for her.
Merlin knew she was the only woman who could have ever gotten him to do that.
No it was not Nataylia. It was someone else more surprising.
It was Cyrus.
For a moment Antonin stood still in shock as Nataylia's little brother sat there in the armchair as if pleasantly surprised to see him glass of firewhiskey in one hand.
"Wondered when you would turn up" he said finally. "Drink?"
He poured him one anyway and Antonin took it though he suspected nothing would ever warm him up again after Azkaban. He looked into the face of his wife's little brother and stared at her. He had to admit that he was staring at Cyrus with an intensity that he knew could be off putting. He was looking for her and Cyrus knew it.
There were remnants of the woman that he had loved in her little brother's face. They had the same eyes, the same arrogantly dark Greengrass eyes but Cyrus had the look of a man who knew that he had done well in life.
"You look like shit" was what he said next cutting across Antonin's thinking.
"Azkaban does that to a man"
Cyrus said nothing. "I want your word that you will leave my wife and children alone" he said finally.
Antonin stared at him in mounting disbelief. This was a man that had done fuck all for the cause in which his sister had given her life too and here he was demanding favours?
"I would not" Cyrus said casually "Have you destroy them as you did my sister."
The words were like daggers to him but he would be damned if he didn't show it.
"What I did?" he demanded hoarsely surging forwards. Cyrus to his own credit and Antonin's disgust didn't so much as flinch.
"I did NOTHING!" he bellowed. "I did not brand her with that mark that she took because you were too much of a coward"
"Please" Cyrus said his tone steady. "She didn't do it because of me. She believed in the cause I'll give you that much but she did it because of you too. And you took chunks out of her. Don't deny it Dolohov I saw you, looking at her as if she was a hard glittering diamond that should be taken and polished. If she's remembered now it's going to be as a Death Eater it will not be because of my sister. It will be as a monster and not as the girl who slipped into my bed and held me when I had a nightmare and who told me stories or beat up my bullies. Don't come at me and tell me that I did nothing to help your girlfriend"
"Wife" Antonin said quietly. It might as well as been a bellow for the words descended as if a curse had gone off in the room plunging them both into silence.
That shocked him Antonin could tell. Cyrus kept his composure (he was too much like his sister to ever lose his cool) but he had to swallow and look away. Antonin waited but Cyrus worked his jaw, the same jaw as his sister in a movement that reminded him of Nataylia—with a painful thudding heartbeat—and then the cool look was back in place. He took a gulp of firewhiskey and poured himself another measure. It took Antonin a moment to realise he was composing himself for the loss of his big sister and despite his hatred for this man he sat down on the sofa and took a sip suddenly exhausted.
"I take it he is back? The Dark Lord?"
"Yes"
Cyrus nodded.
"I thought as much. Didn't think Dumbledore the type to stir—well—Fudge will make it easy for you I suppose. Do you know of a Umbridge by any chance?"
Antonin shook his head.
"Making the kids lives tough at Hogwarts. I usually wouldn't mind but she's making comments about—well—let's just say she has no place to judge. And I have a daughter in her OWL year"
Antonin didn't care. He didn't care about anything but the one question.
"Did you get the body?"
Cyrus closed his eyes and then opened them again. He nodded.
"Where?" he croaked. Cyrus didn't prolong the misery.
"At the Greengrass vault. Simple ceremony, obviously didn't want the Ministry finding out—Dumbledore got me the body. It went from there and…well…wasn't the ceremony she would have wanted with the eyes of the whole world on her but it was better than an unmarked grave outside of Azkaban. Might want to avoid it for a bit though, Ministry's gonna be crawling all over this like files. Even if they didn't know about you too then Dumbledore did."
Antonin took a gulp of firewhiskey. He didn't even notice the burn. It was nothing to the burning within in his veins and his heart and his lungs consuming him with a passion that he didn't want to name.
"She loved you" was all he said. Cyrus nodded putting his glass down. "Aye" he said heavily. "And she loved you too. For better or what I fear was always going to end up for worse"
He stood up. "I have your word, that the two girls I call my own who have their aunt's dark eyes wont be harmed. That I can take my path without seeing The Dark Lord on my doorstep?"
Antonin wanted to say no. He wanted to bring the Dark Lord down on him and he wanted to watch him burn. Cyrus for all his words had done nothing when his sister had gone into the service of the Dark Lord and had lived comfortably no doubt when the woman who had been better than him in every way had rotted in the cold ground and Antonin had been condemned to a fate worse than death.
But he couldn't. He couldn't look at this man who had been the only other thing that Nataylia had cared about in the eye and say he was condemning his wife's nieces, her dark eyed, glamourous, arrogant nieces who were probably dominating the corridors of Hogwarts with several dark eyed Slytherin's watching them. He thought about what the Dark Lord would do with this small piece of mercy and he thought that he would bury it down deep within him alongside his love, alongside the dark eyed girl who had once been his wife.
He nodded.
Cyrus inhaled and then exhaled and then nodded. There was very little to say left between them.
"She did love you" he conceded.
"And she loved you" Antonin replied back repeating his words. Cyrus looked away and Antonin felt that unexplained emotion rise within him. Merlin knew they both missed her.
"I should go" Cyrus said finally. "I hope I never have cause to see you again Dolohov"
Antonin nodded and then he was gone. And he was left in a room that had once been so happy staring into a grate and wondering if the pillow upstairs had retained it's scent even after fourteen years.
The mark burned eventually and Antonin left the warm little apartment and apparated back the wand still untested in his hand. He spoke to follows old and new and when he sat down at the table, at the allotted seat like he had done fourteen years ago he knew that if he turned right he would not see her sat at his side.
He banished the thought of her and turned his attention to the mission, the explanation, the plan. He was not Antonin now. Somewhere between Azkaban and the flat that was waiting for him he had changed. He was now Dolohov, the murderer of the Prewitt brothers, one of the most feared Death Eaters, one of the inner sanctum, one of the very few who had survived Azkaban for their master regardless of what their sanity was like.
He was Dolohov now and Dolohov until he was dead and not the boy, the man and the wizard Antonin who was buried somewhere between Azkaban and the Greengrass crypt, and all remained was the shadow of the man who must pretend that he was not still in love with the dark eyed, dark hearted, glitteringly arrogant girl who had had born the name of Greengrass.
And there it is the penultimate chapter, I really hope you enjoy this chapter and thank you so much for your kind words. Stay tuned for the final chapter.
Next Chapter-The Final Chapter-As the Second World War comes to an end Antonin Dolohov rises high and then falls low. When the battle commences he knows one thing and one thing only. Never be taken alive.