A/N: I am so freaking excited!
My fish just had babies. I have been trying for months to get these guys to produce with no success. But I just checked my tank and found about thirty of the little suckers swimming about.

Now, I know...they're guppies, and trying to breed guppies is sort of like trying to grow weeds. It ain't really that difficult. But I have not had any success in over a year.

I'm just so danged excited.

And as always,

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: All characters of the Harry Potter series (hereafter known as 'legal property') are the sole ownership of J.K. Rowling (hereafter known as 'owner of said legal property'). No infringement on any copyright of owner of said legal property of the legal property is knowing intended. Published by author (hereafter known as 'other') for entertainment purposes only. No monetary or personal gain was knowingly made by other with the publication of this story, which was based on ideas and characters created by owner of said legal property as they pertain to legal property. No plagiarism of legal property or of any ideas of the owner of said legal property was knowingly intended by other. This statement is fully transferable and is legally held binding for all chapters of the story Family Relations as they are presented under different chapter headings and titles for individual chapters.

CHAPTER TWENTY: ALL OF ME

A lone figure apparated outside the gates of Hogwarts castle and slowly began to make its way up to the large front doors. It wrapped its long gray cloak about dark gray robes that caught the morning breeze and whipped the material about the legs of the figure as it walked.

At the front doors the figure stopped. For several long moments it stood facing the large doors. But finally it reached up and slipped back the hood of its robes. A cascade of dark auburn hair met a brisk rush of wind as it blew past, nearly obscuring the woman's face as she stared intently at the towering doors.

"I bring no harm to this place." She said solemnly as she stared up at them. "And the only pain I offer is that of my own heart."

Katlin reached forward and tried the door handle. But it held fast.

"And still you would stand against me." She whispered to the doors as she stepped back resolutely.

"Here, Miss!" A voice called out from behind her. "Would you be needin' help?"

Katlin turned slowly to see Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper, heading towards her. But the man slowed as he recognized her, finally stopping a few yards away from her.

"Oh." He said flatly. "It would be you then. Professor Dumbledore said you'd be coming by, Ms. Griss."

"It's Mrs. Black, actually." Katlin corrected the man, giving him a small smile. It was all she could manage under the circumstances. "I was told I would be allowed admittance to the castle."

"Ay. That's what the Headmaster said you was to be given."

Just then the front doors opened.

"Ah, Mrs. Black." Dumbledore greeted her cordially. "I was expecting you."

"I've come to see my husband." Katlin stated, keeping as much emotion out of her voice as she could. But her resolve weakened on the last word. "I just want to see him." She finished in a whisper.

"Of course." Dumbledore stepped aside and let her pass.

Katlin kept her eyes firmly fixed on the emerald robes as they proceeded ahead of her. They past absolutely no one else on the entire route through the castle. But as that the school term had not yet started, it wasn't really that unusual.

Eventually Dumbledore led her to a side door and opened it, stepping back to allow her to enter first.

The inside of the room was cold to her. And as silent as one would expect any empty room to be. But what caught her attention was that the room wasn't empty. One lone figure occupied the whole of the infirmary. Katlin fixed her attention on the figure in the bed as she entered the room, quickening her pace with every step as she approached him.

"Orion!" She suddenly cried out, rushing to the bedside.

Katlin immediately grabbed one of the pale, motionless hands in her's and held it to her as she stared down at her husband.

"Orion?" She cried softly, brushing the hand lightly against her tears. "Love, please hear me. Please answer."

Dumbledore stepped up quietly behind her.

"He's been unconscious for the past two days." He informed her.

"Why?" Katlin asked softly. "What have you found out about what is wrong with him?"

"So far only that he was poisoned." Dumbledore started to explain. "In an attack." He finished strategically.

But Katlin turned sharply back to him. "By Deatheaters." She stated firmly. "That is who did this to him? Deatheaters?"

Dumbledore paused, then slowly nodded. "Yes. By Deatheaters."

"Then why haven't you cured him?" She shot back. "Most of our poisons are known to you. You have a potions master here. Can't he cure a simple poison?"

"We have tried, Katlin." Dumbledore offered kindly. "But the poison has resisted any effort to stop it."

"Stop it?" She asked. "Stop it from doing what?" She turned quickly back to her husband's pale form. "What is it doing to him?"

Dumbledore paused again before he answered. "It is killing him."

Katlin jerked back around to face him. "Killing him?" Katlin stopped unexpectedly as a thought seemed to come to her. "Voldemort." She said hopefully. "Voldemort is here. Ask him for the cure."

"We have."

"And? Does he know it?"

"He wasn't very forthcoming with that information." Dumbledore explained carefully.

"He either does or he doesn't."

"He said he might be able to help. Nothing more."

"And?"

"It comes with a price."

"Price? What price?"

"One I can not pay."

"Why not?"

"It isn't mine to give, Katlin. What Voldemort wants is another's consent. And I can not give him that. It has to come from that person."

Katlin's eyes narrowed slowly. "What person?"

Dumbledore met her gaze without the slightest hesitation. "Harry Potter."

"Harry? What in the name of black magic does he want from Harry Potter? Except his life."

"It would seem Voldemort needs Harry's help to find another wizard..."

But Katlin suddenly cut him off.

"The wizard in the north." She stated, fitting the pieces together as fast as they were handed to her. "That is who Voldemort is trying to find. I know this. Why does he need Harry for this?"

"Harry seems to be a key of some sort to finding this man. A type of secretkeeper who has no knowledge himself of his role. But just the same, without Harry's cooperation, Voldemort can never locate this wizard."

"Then tell the boy to cooperate!"

"It has to be Harry's choice, Katlin." Dumbledore told her calmly. "He has to do it of his own free will."

"You have control over that boy, old man!" Katlin hissed at him. "Tell him to do it! Tell him to give Voldemort what he wants!"

"I have very little control over Harry's actions, Katlin." Dumbledore answered as calmly as ever. "And the one who does has already made his wishes known quite clearly."

"The one who does?"

"Sirius told Harry he was not to help Voldemort...under any circumstances." He added, glancing briefly at the still form on the bed.

Katlin looked startled, then angry. "He would let his own brother die because of this!"

Dumbledore said nothing.

"How can you stand by and let this happen? Voldemort I could see. Even understand. But you? You stand so righteously for your high ideals. Until when? Until they no longer suit you? Until they are inconvenient? And then you throw them aside in favor of your own grand plans for the world?"

Dumbledore stood silently for a moment before the Deatheater. "Harry must do this of his own free will, Katlin." He reiterated. "No one and nothing can influence him."

Katlin had turned back to Orion, taking her seat in the chair at his bedside.

"If my husband dies," she said quietly, "I promise you that someone will pay."

"Then I suggest you think very carefully on who that someone should be." Dumbledore replied.

For the rest of the day Katlin sat by Orion's bed, holding tightly onto his hand as she gently stroked his forehead. As many ways as she tried to look at the situation, she kept coming back to the same conclusion. In Voldemort's absence she had been in control of the majority of the Deatheaters. Only she could order such an attack. One on as high ranking a member of the Unspeakables as Orion was. But she had heard nothing of any such attack. Not even a whisper of one being planned. So it had to have happened quickly. A direct order given to those who carried it out.

Only one person could have given such an order and had it obeyed. Only one person could have superceded her authority.

Voldemort.

Katlin shuddered at the thought. If Voldemort had indeed ordered the attack, he had done it with the same single-mindedness that he did most things these days. Regardless of who was involved, of who might get hurt, of who his actions effected, the man did whatever suited his newfound grand schemes.

But what had he wanted from this? Surely not to kill her husband. Orion had been staying very low-key. Playing his part of the spy for the Deatheaters as well as could be expected. Voldemort could not have suspected anything was amiss.

Katlin continue to talked to Orion almost constantly. Trying to think of anything she could say that would get a response out of him. But most of her words came back to telling him how sorry she was for what had happened. An event she saw now almost solely as her fault.

"I'm so sorry, my Love." She whispered pleadingly to him as the evening began to settle in. "I didn't know. I swear that to you. I didn't know." A fresh stream of tears rolled down her cheeks as she pressed his hand against her chest and folded her arms across it. "I just didn't know. If I had...I would never have spoken to the others for him. I...I would have laughed at him. Trapped him in his own cleverness. In a body no one would recognize him in, or suspect..., or believe. I'd have left him. Left him to live out his days like that." Her tears came faster now even as she tried to fight them back. "But I didn't. And I helped him." She whispered in a sorrowful voice. "I helped him do this to you."

"Katlin, you didn't know." A soft voice interrupted her from behind.

Katlin stopped short. Her head snapping up at the sound of Dumbledore's voice. She pulled herself up until she was sitting straight-backed in the chair. Her hand still wrapped protectively about her husband's

"Go away, old man." She stated in a low, choked voice that was filled with her anger nonetheless. "You have nothing to say that I want to hear."

"Do you fear my words so much, Katlin?" Dumbledore addressed her back.

"I do not fear them at all."

"Then what is the harm in hearing me out?"

Katlin turned sharply to him in her chair. "Because you have talent, old man, for twisting words. For feeding back to someone what they, or you believe in, and making it sound however you want it to. And I will have none of it. Do you hear? Not now."

Katlin turned back to Orion. Expecting Dumbledore to say something in reply, for he usually did, she eventually grew uncomfortable enough under the silence to turn back to see if he was there.

Which he was.

"Well?" She asked.

"You had nothing to do with what happened, Katlin." Dumbledore repeated his statement from that morning. "Nor could you have stopped it. If not you, he would have found another."

"So I was convenient?"

"As you have always been." Dumbledore replied kindly.

Katlin narrowed her eyes at the man. "What do you mean?"

Dumbledore pulled himself up. "You are a woman of great loyalties, Katlin Griss. Once you decide a person is worthy of it, you will defend them to the very end. Voldemort knew that." He said, pausing briefly as his expression soften a bit. "And took advantage of it."

Katlin suddenly got to her feet in a blaze of anger. She may have her doubts about the man Voldemort was now, but she would defend her memory of who he was to her to the end. "Silence!" She stated. "How dare you stand there and accuse him of such a thing. You know nothing! Voldemort has always been beside me. He has been the one who has shown loyalty. Loyalty and trust and caring. More than I have ever known. More than I deserved at times. And I will not betray that by sitting here and listening to your lies!"

"And you haven't betrayed him, Katlin. But you have been questioning his reasoning as of late. As has it seemed you have had good reason to."

"Enough!" Katlin shouted as she pulled her robes tightly about her and headed for the door to the infirmary. The old fool was far too close too the truth for her to comfortable with hearing it, and the only recourse she could see, as much as she hated it, was to leave. But Dumbledore stepped in front of her in a blur of movement, stopping her retreat.

"I'm sorry." He said gently, giving her a kind smile that she refused to look up to see. "I've upset you. I didn't mean for my words to do that. Please," he added, directing her back to the chair by Orion's bed, "I am sure Orion would want you to stay."

Katlin slowly turned back around and allowed her feet to direct her back to her husband's bedside.

"Would you like anything?" She heard Dumbledore asked as she slowly seated herself in the chair. "Some tea, perhaps?"

Katlin only shook her head in response, not trusting herself to speak just yet.

"Very well, Katlin. I'll leave you then. But you only need call if you need anything."

"Please just go." She whispered. "Please leave me alone. I'm just not in the mood for semantics right now."

"Of course, child." The old wizard replied kindly. "And I will see that you are not disturbed further."

Katlin only nodded her response as she took hold of Orion's hand again, listening to the soft sound of the door as it closed.

Q&A

Skahducky:

I liked how there was more of Harry in this chapter.

Why was Arabella so angry at Snape at the end of the chapter? He wasn't saying anything to deliberately get her mad; he was just giving the facts.

Anyway, this is a great chapter. Please update soon!

Always glad to please my readers, Dear. And although Harry was not in this chapter, he will be back in the next.

A very good question. But you have to understand what Snape was saying in a sort of underhanded way. As a matter of fact, he was taking so many pot-shots at the man, I think he set a record of some sort. Being a former Deatheater, Snape would, of course, have had run-ins with Orion. And as such, has a bit of a chip on his shoulder with not only Orion as an Unspeakable, but he's not too keen on him as Sirius' older brother either. The overall encompassing comment Snape is making here is, "You lie down with dogs...".

Keeping in mind what he and Arabella were discussing, and that Arabella had just explained to Harry that once someone is touched by dark magic, it almost always stays a part of them forever, Snape is simply expounding on the subject at Orion's expense. What is implied is that being touched by dark magic is not a desirable thing to any decent wizard or witch. Whether or not that is true I think depends solely on who you ask. Snape's comment is implying (rather heavily) is that Orion is no stranger to dark magic. That not only does he know about it, but has been touched by it at some point, and seems to get along with it just fine, implying he is not a decent sort of person.

See, lots of low-blows in one not-so-innocent statement.

Arabella, knowing what Snape was implying, was none to pleased with him. Hence, the dirty look.

All reviews are as of 04/30/2006.

And remember;

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?