Disclaimer: The rights to the Harry Potter series go to J.K. Rowling. All original ideas present in this belong to me.

Chapter Forty-Eight | Creature

Her stomach churned as she forced herself to not turn away from the mangled corpse that rested on the sofa.

The woman's chest had been blown open as if a bomb had rested between her lungs. Long strips of meat and chunks of pulped flesh formed a bloodied halo where her breasts once lay.

Her husband, Amelia presumed, lay next to her. His head was found under the table.

The room was absolutely permeated by whatever horrific, sickening magic Fleur and Helene seemed to use as flippantly as one would a levitation charm.

It was how they found the scene in the first place.

The Department of Mysteries had finally discovered a method to track their particularly unique brand of magic, following it around the country like a beacon.

It seemed they weren't quick enough to prevent… whatever this was.

"Her heart is missing, you said?"

Shacklebolt looked nauseated, face pale and features drawn. His cheeks were wet. "Yes."

"Why?"

Amelia couldn't tell if he was shrugging or trying to stop himself from vomiting as his shoulders rolled backwards, throat bobbing. "I couldn't tell you. A ritual?"

"What kind of fucking ritual looks like this?"

"I don't know. Neither do any of the Unspeakables." He gave her a pointed look. "They were the first on the scene."

"Good." She knelt in front of the two corpses, blood strewn about the room and the carpet dotted by what she had been told was chunks of human heart.

What really made her gut twist was the fact that they had found teeth marks on a few of the larger pieces. Human teeth.

"What the fuck is going on?"

The last few weeks of chasing after those two had begun to get to her. Creeping into her mind like a miasma, long fingers of confusion and disgust wrapped round her gut and tightening with each and every body they came across.

Helene and Fleur had been laying waste across Britain, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in their wake.

Each scene - massacre, more like - was progressively more violent. Potential Death Eater recruits so unrecognizable as to cause even her nightmares.

She could still picture the puddle of sopping meat that turned out to be a boy named Marcus Flint. They had to scoop him into a vial to figure out what that heaping mess was, let alone who. His parents were dead as well, found a few metres away with their scalps stuffed down their throats.

She didn't care that they had snakes and skulls branded onto their forearms. No one should suffer like that.

"Amelia… we have to put a stop to this."

"How?" she growled, fists clenched. "The only people those two could even possibly be scared of are Voldemort or Nicolas Flamel. I don't see either of them showing their faces any time soon."

"Isn't Nicolas dead?"

She snorted. "Fucked off, more like it. That man and his wife couldn't give less of a shit about us mere mortals."

"Do we- "

"Root for Voldemort?" Amelia interrupted him, laughing. "Starting to feel like it at this point."

He froze. "Are you… are you serious Amelia?"

She pointed at the corpses before them. "This and the rest of what we've seen is just as bad as what he did twenty years ago. You saw the skeletons in the graveyard. You were there when we tried to figure out which body those faces smeared across the grass belonged to."

He put his hands up. "So, let me get this straight. First you support the two of them, you don't like what they're doing, but you tell me it's 'necessary'," he punctuated his words with air quotes. "Now, you want to string them up. What the hell, Amelia?"

"Do you see this? This!?" She jabbed her finger at the mangled bodies. "I wanted to find out what was going on in this fucking country. I wanted to know why Helene Potter decided to execute twenty inmates when she was only fourteen years old. I wanted to know why Helene Potter seemingly died in Little Hangleton and slaughtered a handful of people we knew to be Death Eaters, damn what the Ministry said about them!

"I wanted to know why Helene Potter's family was being hunted by Voldemort, why her father - my friend - was executed in his home." Her lungs rattled, body shaking as she filled it with air. "And you know what I found, Shack? Know what I found? A goddamned prophecy in the Department of Mysteries, one they'd conveniently forgotten to tell the Ministry about. To tell me about."

"What?"

"Take a wild guess who it mentions. One fucking guess."

"Helene and Voldemort."

Amelia's hand shot into the air. "Helene Potter and Tom fucking Riddle, and I can't even touch the bloody thing unless I want my brain to turn to soup."

"What happened to that girl?" Shacklebolt wondered aloud. "I… Dumbledore and I spoke a few times last year, before he passed. He was thinking of getting the Order back together, wanted us to keep an eye on her."

"Was he watching her? He thought she was a threat?"

He shook his head. "No. He said- "

"Shack." Amelia placed her hand on his shoulder. "I don't give a damn how much you respected that man. Tell me what he said."

"He…" Shacklebolt swallowed, looking more lost than Amelia had ever seen him. Not since they were both recruits. "He said she's the only one who can win this for us. Only Helene can beat Voldemort."

Amelia had never been so horrified.

-::-

It happened.

I had to take her back home, if Salazar's old quarters could be called that. Cold walls and the smell of mildew and sex didn't much make for a sense of relief away from the war.

She knows, now. She knows what it means to truly be, to see these creatures in the dark - the light - and speak to them in broken tones of a language long dead yet still to be born.

Fingers of pearlescent gray blood lap at her ankles as she rests on the couch, an impossible light shining at the knuckles and casting a warm glow across the room.

I have to admit, the creatures of Above are quite a bit nicer on the eyes than the ones of Below.

More human-like, with hands and feet and flesh. Real flesh, a kind that doesn't seem to be made of mangled stars and dripping time.

Maybe it has something to do with Death, the end of all things. Life is all bright colours and love, feathery white and a thousand flavours of perfection. Death is the end, a pit of filth fashioned solely to hold the dregs and leftovers of creation.

It makes sense, to be honest. Where else would the remnants of all things go when entropy has wrested them from existence itself?

It's not a heaven, no, and neither is it any sort of hell. It just… is. An incomprehensible soup of chaos unbound and the memory of what once was, what these things - creatures - used to be.

Fleur walks with the First. The predecessors of the beings that make up my domain; their past selves still trapped in coffins of flesh and blood and bone, still held to the laws of the living universe.

"You're thinking too loud."

"Oh." I shoot a glare at the eyes that peek out of a crack in the ground, millions of them blinking apologetically. The creature's language is not one of sound, but instead rhythm.

Her… beings, are quite a bit kinder than my own as well. To the best of my knowledge Fleur has never had to crush the jaw of a screaming corpse just to get a good night's rest.

Fleur has mentioned that. 'Mine,' she said. 'You call them 'mine.''

I agreed.

They are mine, these beings of ethereal muck and fading fire, a long cold ember resting in their bellies and ashen coins upon their eyes - ferrying themselves across the void to be in my presence. Mine. To come from a land that cannot even be defined as such, containing nothing to walk on, let alone breathe. To come from that nothingness to a world antithetical to their own, so horribly alive, just to be with me?

They are mine.

I cradle them in my arms, creatures of such immense size as to bleed through the walls and planet and stars beyond, whispering words of love.

I wonder if Death feels the same for the nightmares that walk his home.

Does he speak kindly when he passes by an infant god on his way to carry yet another soul to his abode? Would he walk with them hand in hand before the light of a dying sun?

Death is… I can't seem to tell how I feel about him or Life at this point.

How they've pushed the two of us into becoming what we are, into what we do? Yes, we chose to do those things, to slaughter those people, but we didn't have to mutilate them.

I didn't have to bludgeon a man to death with nothing but my fists, grinning as his skull caved in and spattered my face in blood and bits of his mind.

Fleur didn't have to plant a seed in the chest of a young woman and force it grow, its roots snaking through her veins and bursting from her fingertips and mouth like a chick breaking from its egg.

But we did, and we enjoyed it.

It makes me wonder.

The feeling isn't something that could be described as such. Not pleasure, not enjoyment, nor fun. It's a cold feeling, something so horribly natural that it seems to slink beneath my skin and curl round my spine like an old friend.

It's almost akin to complacency. It just is.

"What's on your mind?"

"I want to find my family," I say, perching on the arm of the couch. "I'm afraid."

"That they're dead?"

"No." I fiddle with my hand, cold and of the void itself. "I'm afraid that they're afraid."

"Oh." Fleur takes that same hand and presses a kiss to my palm, the sensation muted. Distant. "I understand."

I nod. "I know."

She drags me down to her, resting in her lap, nose brushing against my cheek. "They love you."

"Do they love this?" I ask, gesturing to myself and what I've become.

Scars purposefully unhealed litter my arm, accompanied by a ragged cut - still fresh - stretching from chin to collarbone.

A Death Eater had nearly taken my head off, the spell glancing past my throat and shearing off a chunk of hair in its path.

I tore out his fingernails and used them to scoop out his eyes.

"They love you," she stated emphatically, cradling my face in her hands. "They know who you are, what you are."

"But what about your own family? Your parents? Gabrielle?"

Fleur's jaw sets in a familiar, stubborn push. "They… they're sure to have heard about what we've been doing. I don't think- I… I don't think they love me. Not anymore. Not who I am now"

I press her head against my shoulder, my turn to comfort. "We're saving them. We're saving everyone."

"At what cost, Helene? I can't keep it down anymore. This… this bloodlust. It's like there's poison in my veins, burning me from the inside out."

"You think I don't feel the same?" I hold her forehead to my own. "Do you feel how cold I am? I'm more than half-dead Fleur, every day I get closer to the real thing."

"But you won't die."

"No, not truly, but I'll never know what it is to live. Not anymore."

A cruel, grating laugh slips from her throat. "Neither of us will. We're not human."

I can't find it in myself to argue with her.

"No, we aren't."

A centipede with legs of rotting bone voices its agreement. No, you're not, it cries, it's voice more a colour on the air than any sound recognizable by human ears. I can taste the truth on my lips and feel it thick in my throat.

"We're something more and so much less."

"Why us?"

"I don't know."

-::-

We arrive at the bolthole in Germany to find it empty. If my heart still beat it would be thundering angrily against my rib cage.

It's a simple place, nestled in the middle of a muggle village and looking no different than the others lining the street.

And it's empty.

"Where are they?" I ask aloud, panicked, glancing through the windows for any sign of movement.

Fleur grabs me by the arm. "Stop, let's look inside. They could be out."

"Why would they be out? Voldemort is looking for them!"

Her grip tightens. "Helene," she utters, cold. "You'll tear the whole place down if you don't calm down."

I look down to see spindly legs of shadow jutting from my belly and scraping at the ground, eager to rip and tear.

Swallowing, I yank them back in.

"Okay."

She leads me by the hand, opening the door with a quiet "Hello?"

No answer.

I do my best to not break free and turn the house over, scouring every corner for a sign of them. "Where are they?"

"Helene, your mirror."

"What?"

"Call them."

I stare at her for a moment before rummaging through my coat pocket, drawing out the mirror and taking it out of its leather wrapping.

"Sirius."

The mirror rumbles in my hand, sending shocks down my wrist.

Once.

Twice.

"Helene?"

"Oh thank god," I mutter, relief flooding through me as I stare into Sirius' face. Weathered, but no worse for wear. "You're okay."

"What's going on, where are- " He pauses, recognizing the little home. "You need to get out of there Helene, it's not safe."

"What are you talking about? How is it not safe?"

"Helene. Every country across western Europe has your wanted poster and ours in their cities. Half the bloody continent, Helene."

"What?" I turn to Fleur. "Since when are we wanted outside of Britain?"

She shrugs. "How long has your family been wanted?"

I open my mouth to reply when a cacophony of pops meets my ears. "Fuck."

"Aurors."

"I know." I draw out my wand. "Sirius, where should I meet you?"

"London, Hackney - near the big park."

"Hackney?"

The call ends and I stuff the mirror back in my pocket. "Let's get out of here."

I grab Fleur's hand just as a group of Aurors burst through the door, shouting angrily.

"Sheiße," one gasps as we disappear.

"Fucking Hackney?" We touch down, looking around at one of the most rundown boroughs of London. "Makes Wool's look downright pretty."

"It's not that bad…"

"Chavs, Fleur. It's all chavs."

She looks more confused than anything as I drag her towards Clissold park. "What's a chav?"

"Shitty teenagers," I say, still feeling somewhat hysterical.

Seems I've still got a touch of real fear in me.

Not afraid of asbos, no, but scared for my family's life? That's a real, terrible feeling.

"Where the hell is- Sirius!" I shout, the man shushing me in annoyance as he strides down the path.

"What's got you so- "

I throw my arms around him, chest tight. "Christ, you guys had me worried."

He pats me on the back, sighing. "We're alright kid, we're… we're doing okay. Come, everyone's waiting for you."

Fleur and I follow him through streets littered with rubbish and broken bottles, a few people casting glances at from along the footpath.

We ignore them as we trudge deeper into the city, a line of terraced homes flanking us.

They grow more and more destitute as Sirius leads us along before we stop in front of one that's horribly familiar and standing in magnificent disrepair - windows shuttered with planks and reeking of dark magic.

"You're staying at Grimmauld place?" I ask, aghast.

I never knew it was in Hackney of all places.

"Yup," he replies, sarcastic cheer in his voice. "Home sweet home."

He lets us inside, keying us into the wards as we enter through the front door.

The interior is as dingy as I remember. Mouldy wallpaper, splintered crown mouldings, and that damnable trolls foot standing at attention at the bottom of the stairs.

"I forgot how awful this place was," Fleur mumbles.

Sirius laughs quietly, trying his best to not alert his sleeping mother's portrait. "It's definitely a sight, isn't it? How do you two know about it? Time travel?"

"You lived here in our last lives. You were wanted by the Ministry, you never were let out of prison. This was the base of the Order."

"I forgot about that." He scratched his jaw, nails scraping against his beard. "I escaped, you said?"

"Popped into your animagus form and slipped through the bars."

He nods. "Makes sense. C'mon, everyone's waiting for you in the kitchen."

Sirius opens the door to happy shouts, Terra - Mum - sweeping me up into her arms and squeezing me tight.

"Oh, it's so good to see you," she gasps, fingers digging into my back. "We've been keeping up with the news, I keep thinking I'll- " she pulls away from me, looking into my eyes. "I keep thinking I'll hear you've been captured, or- or dead."

"Not a chance." I grip her arms tightly. "Are you… is everyone okay? After… I heard about- "

"We're doing our best." Tears shine in her eyes. "We're... not well, but we're as good as can be considering the state of things."

She smiles at me, forlorn, before letting go. "Hello Fleur."

"Terra."

"You've been keeping my daughter safe?"

"Of course."

Another smile, a smidge brighter, less that of a funeral mask. "That's all I can ask. Come, your sisters are eager to see you."

I peek over her shoulder, catching my sister's eyes. "Hey."

Daphne practically pushes Mum aside, wrapping her arms around my waist and nearly crushing my ribs. She shrieks as my hand brushes her neck.

"Why are you so cold?" She freezes, noticing my lack of a material hand. "What happened?"

"I… uh- " I scratch the back of my neck. "Kind of lost it?"

"How the fu- nevermind that, thank god you're alive. We've been following the news, and… god, it's a miracle you're even standing here."

I blanche. "You've been following the news?" I ask, looking about the room. "Er- all of it? Details?"

Mum looks somewhat sick as she nods her head. "We have. You've been… busy."

"Yeah, I guess I have."

Daphne ignores her, taking my hand and dragging me to the table where Astoria and Tracey sit. Astoria leaps from her seat and practically wraps herself around me, legs curled around my waist and arms hanging over my shoulders.

"Hey, hey, I'm alright," I say, patting her on the back. "I'm not going anywhere."

Her grip tightens, and I can feel the wet of tears on my neck. "You've been fighting."

I slowly detach her from my body, setting her down. I crouch, looking her in the eyes. "I have, and I will keep fighting. Know why?"

"Because you have to?"

"Because I want there to be a world for you, and everyone else here to live in. One that's worth living in. I don't want you to see the future Fleur has lived through. It's…" I turn to her, stomach falling at just the thought of it. "It's awful."

Astoria sniffles loudly, but acquiesces, tucking her arm around mine and forcefully setting me down in the chair next to her.

"Don't worry, I'm not the hugging type," Tracey adds, offering a faint smile. "Good to see you still kicking."

I grin. "Thanks."

Fleur grabs the seat across from me, resting on her elbows, chin propped up in her hands. "You all came here from the hideaway?"

"We had to leave a short week after arriving," Sirius explains. "Within a few days of us showing up there were already posters hung up all over the town."

"But it's a tiny little village, certainly they wouldn't look for you there?"

"That's exactly why." He sighs, gesturing at the home around us. "This is the best we can do. The wards are strong, Bellatrix is dead, and Narcissa is no longer able to access this home since I struck her from the tapestry."

"Sirius!" I chide. "Isn't that a dead giveaway?"

He snorts. "That's the only Black tapestry remaining, ever since the Manor was burnt down in the last war. No, Narcissa can't come here, and she probably expected to be disowned as soon as I was released from prison. We're as safe as can be."

"Just… be safe, okay?"

"We're doing our best, trust us. We trust you."

"Are you sure?" I can feel the tension in the room, worse than the last time I'd seen my family. "I've done… horrific things."

"Yes, you've killed. You think I haven't?" He points at Mum. "You think she hasn't? We lived through a war, Helene. We've seen it all. The only difference is that you two are the only ones fighting for us this time."

Fleur and I lock eyes.

They don't know.

"I'm just trying my best in all this. Are… is everyone coping, doing okay? I'm so sorry I wasn't there the night- "

"Helene," Mum interrupts. "You are the last person who should be apologizing. The reason we're still here, all of us, is because you made it so. You're the one who made us plan ahead, you're the one who got us portkeys. You saved us."

I start to cry.

"But it wasn't enough! Dad is dead because of me. If I wasn't- if I wasn't who I was? If I didn't bring the fight to Voldemort?" I grip the table. "This wouldn't have happened in the first place. I know it wouldn't have. I've seen that future. It's fact."

"He died for you. He always would have, I would." Mum points at Sirius. "He would as well. No, that doesn't change things, but god dammit Helene stop putting the weight of the entire world on your shoulders."

"It is, whether I like it or not. It's been ordained by fucking Gods, Mum. Primordial beings so powerful that I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. They can stop time on a whim, break galaxies in two with a single step. Do you understand what that means?" I choke on my own words, having never let the true gravity of my situation spill from my lips. "They are cosmic. Immortal. There will never be a moment of reality where they don't exist, and when it all comes crumbling down they'll live on. Those are the creatures that forced this on me, allowed this to happen. They're the ones who put things in motion long before I was born that turned me into a- "

I grit my teeth, unable to let the word psychopath taint the air. "I'm not a good person. I haven't been for a long time. Maybe I was lying to myself, maybe I was ignoring it, maybe I was well and truly convinced that my actions were justified - but I'm not… I'm not the person you thought I was. Not anymore."

I owe it to them to say that much.

"Helene. We've killed- "

"You haven't tortured. You haven't willingly inflicted pain upon someone just because you wanted to."

The last shreds of sanity I have cling to my mind like a needy child, waves of homicidal rage slamming against it like the ocean against the shore.

Little by little, its grip begins to slip, and it's been slipping for a long time.

Fleur was spot on. Bloodthirst is right.

"I changed… have been changing. Azkaban was just the beginning."

Sirius lets out a heavy, drawn out sigh. "Kreacher?"

A pop signals the arrival of the geriatric house elf, skin sagging like damp cloth around the bones of his ankles and ears scraping his shoulder blades. "Yes, filthy master?"

"Scotch, the good kind. Please."

Kreacher is familiar to me, having had to deal with the bitter old thing previously, but something about him is different. I can practically taste it.

A strange, unearthly magic sticks to his pocked skin and tattered clothing like a sickness. In-fact, it fills the entire house.

I can't tell if it's the wards and I've just now come to recognize how truly awful they are, or if it's something different. Something new.

A snap of his fingers and Kreacher has summoned a bottle of what looks to be a fine Ogdens scotch, the wax seal upon the neck cracked with age.

Sirius doesn't deign to offer so much as a thank you to the elf as he pours four drinks. He hesitates before pouring another two, sliding the extras over to Daphne and Tracey - the two of them looking incredibly unsettled.

"So." He hands Fleur and I our own drinks, twisting his own in his hand as he stares into the amber liquor. "It's true? What they've been saying on the wireless?"

Yet again I find myself frustrated at having forever locked away my chances of ever becoming drunk.

"Yes."

Mum lets out a choked sob, eyes locked on the table. Sirius just looks defeated.

"Why?"

I fiddle with my glass, jaw popping as it clenches tight. "Because I- " I pause, looking at Fleur, who nods at me. "We... wanted to. We did it because we could."

Sirius takes a sip, eyes hardening. "That doesn't answer my question."

"What the fuck do you want me to say, Sirius?" I shout, slamming my glass on the table, alcohol spilling over my fingers. "That I'm a fucking basket case? That we both are? That we worked rituals so awful and terrifying that we're no longer human? Is that what you want me to say?"

I hiss through my teeth, the sound grating, as if two rusted sheets of metal were drawn against each other. "There's a reason Necromancers and Albumancers are so feared throughout history. It's because… whatever magic we use, whatever magic we're capable of changes us. It makes us…"

"Bloodthirsty, murderous," Fleur interrupts. "The magic inside of us, it- it's so terribly powerful. Dark Magic is considered to be awful by all accounts, the way it twists the mind over time. But this is pure. The onset is… rapid."

"That's not an excuse," I add. "We… I know that we can't stop what we're doing, it's just a matter of time before Fleur and I find ourselves out there again lost to whatever is inside us. I can feel it already, tapping against its cage."

Mum, with tears running down her cheeks, throws back her drink in one smooth gulp, setting the glass back down with delicate, trembling fingers. "But you said you like it."

I don't have it in me to lie to her. Anyone but her.

"We do."

She shoots up from her chair, not even bothering to cast a backwards glance as she leaves the room.

Sirius, poor fucking Sirius, just pours himself another drink. "You two should finish those, I'm not putting it back in the bottle," he says.

Daphne and Tracey sit stock still, faces blank. Astoria seems to be… confused, more than anything. She's looking at me like-

No.

Anything but a stranger.

"We should go."

"Kreacher, could you please show them out?"

The house elf appears again, whatever magic that clings to him striking me full force.

I nearly reel back against the onslaught of that sickening, twisted substance. "Kreacher," I mutter, kneeling in front of the Elf and spying a thin golden chain that rests around his neck. "What's under that pillowcase you're wearing?"

His already comically large eyes widen even further, clutching at the jewelry. "Nothing, mudblood. You must go."

I lash out, gripping him by the neck. "Show me."

"Helene!"

I ignore Sirius as Kreacher thrashes, nails scraping against my hand and ripping thin bloody lines through the skin. "No! No! Master gave it to me!"

My grip tightens and I can feel his spine creak. "Tell me now before I snap your neck."

Kreacher hisses and snarls, desperately trying to wriggle from my grip.

Fleur knocks him across the head with the back of her hand, a pained gasp escaping slipping from his throat.

"Now, Kreacher. Any more and we'll start taking fingers."

Tentatively, he reaches into his greasy pillowcase and draws out a locket, a very recognizable 'S' emblazoned across the front in gold filigree, studded with emeralds.

Fleur clicks her tongue. "Horcrux. The real thing."

I wrench the locket from his neck, the chain snapping and scattering slivers of gold across the floor.

The magic in it is… horrific. I can feel the tainted, twisted bit of once was a human soul trapped within confines of gold and silver.

I agree. "R.A.B. We found it."

"Do you want me to- "

"No." I put my hand up. "Let me."

I flip the clasp, a mass of black smoke erupting from the locket and flooding the room, skirting across the floor like a thick, acrid fog.

It coils together, forming into a remnant of what looks to be-

"Dad?"

The apparition can't even be bothered to look at me, nose turned up and a sneer stretched across it's - Dads face. "You wretched, wretched creature. Look at what you've done to yourself."

"But I- "

"Did this for us? Keep telling yourself that Helene. You've always been sick, you've always been wrong. A freak. Wasn't that what the Dursley's called you? Who knew they could be so prophetic."

"Please, you don't mean that!"

He snorts. "You killed me."

"You sacrificed yourself to save Mum, everyone. I didn't- "

"You did," he snarls. "You brought this on us. We took you into our home, gave you our name, and what did we get in return? Nothing but pain."

"Damn you! I did everything for you! Everything! I've spent the last four years trying to keep you safe!"

"And you failed."

I grab the smoke with my left hand, yanking it towards me. The apparition - Voldemort - howls as I crush its wrist.

"Fuck you."

Biting down on its shoulder, I rip, tearing out a strip of that twisted, blackened soul and forcing it down my throat.

The horcrux screams as I place both hands against its shoulder and pull, splitting it open from collar to waist. I grab another handful, sickening shrieks bursting from its smoky lips as I continue to feast, liquid shadow spilling from its wounds.

That centipede, the same one of rotten bone and whispered nightmares climbs across my back, lacing round my neck and joining me as I crush and rip bloodied chunks of pure magic with my bare hands.

I offer it a piece, the creature trilling happily in response as a thousand hooked mandibles gnash at the substance, body pulsing and squirming in delight.

"Helene!"

The ethereal substance drips from my lips, disappearing just before striking the ground. Slowly, I turn around, my family aghast.

Tracey vomits in the corner. Sirius' face is pale beyond imagining. Astoria is turned away, clutching at her belly. Daphne just looks furious.

Thank god Mum didn't see that.

Without a word I tuck the now destroyed horcrux into my pocket, veins brimming with unrestrained magic.

I steady my breath as the pots hung above the stove begin to rattle, the very ground shaking as I try to wrest control over that terrible, unearthly power.

Fleur places her hand on my shoulder. Comfort.

"We should go. You need to let off some steam."

The two of us disappear in a flash of light.

Hope everyone is staying safe during these wacky times! Wash your goddamn hands and stay at home!

If you want another downright delicious fic to read, check out Black Ink, Red Rose or the Downward Spiral series written by my very good friend BolshevikMuppet99. Giving my best bud a little love ❤️