o─-o─-o─-─-─-─ WITHOUT THORN THE ROSE ─-─-─-─o-─o-─o
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.
Notes: So, lately I've basically been writing and posting a second draft of this story. I really was finished with it before and was totally planning to just post what I had, but when I started to get lots of positive responses, and I realized how much improvement it could stand, I really couldn't resist. I hope you guys are enjoying it, but, whether you are or not, I'm very happy with this work.
o─-─-─-─-─ 8. THE AGE OF JUSTICE ─-─-─-─-─o
"So, can I see it?" Harry continued, fixing James with an expectant stare.
"Huh?" the curly-haired man grunted, shovelling food into his mouth.
James had lost weight since they had moved to Azkaban, and his golden tan had faded noticeably, but, although he still slept more than seemed healthy, Harry's father seemed to have reached an equilibrium that more or less allowed him to function. This precarious balance, however, did not leave the man much time for his son. Harry was grateful for it—he could never have gotten up to half as much mischief, otherwise—but he missed the rare moments of bonding with his father. And if it had been difficult asking James serious questions before, it was nearly impossible now.
"Your patronus. Can I see it?" Harry asked, raking his shaggy fringe back impatiently.
"Why in Merlin's name do you want to see my patronus so badly?" James questioned around a mouthful of eggs.
Harry had come prepared with excuses, several of which happened to be the truth. "I'm trying to learn to summon one wandlessly, but I'm not having any luck. I thought maybe if I could see how it's done…"
James scoffed. "Try all you like. I doubt you could do it wandless even if you were fully trained."
Harry scowled. "Can you?"
"No, and I was one of the strongest in my year at Hogwarts. Only Lily and—and one other person—were stronger."
"You mean Sirius Black?" Harry asked irritably, then winced as he thought better. James had thrown cutlery at him the last time he had mentioned their infamous cousin.
James' head whipped up and he regarded his son with a stranger's eyes for a moment. "What do you know about him?" he asked warily.
"Er," Harry replied, raking his fringe back over his face, "Uncle Remus may have told me some things."
"Did he," James muttered sarcastically, wiping up the last of his eggs with his toast. "Uncle Remus doesn't need your pestering questions making him remember things we'd all rather forget."
"I didn't pester him!" Harry defended automatically. He frowned, trying to remember. "Well, maybe I did a bit. I just wanted to know why he wouldn't go out with you."
"Harry Azrael Potter!" James snapped. "Remus' love life is none of your business."
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you came on to him while I was in the house." This comment popped out before Harry could stop it, and he was darting for the attic ladder before James even had time to redden with anger. "It's not my fault if you won't put up silencing charms," Harry called, scurrying up the ladder.
"Harry, wait," James said sharply, as he came to the foot of the ladder. "This is not negotiable. Don't go sticking your nose in like you always do."
Harry ground his teeth, irritated. "I won't—if you show me your patronus," he replied rudely.
James rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible. Harry knew he'd won when James sent his best death glare up the ladder.
"Fine," James answered, "but no more questions about that man."
Harry nodded grudgingly.
James waved his wand silently, and a silver stag burst from the tip, making a graceful leap to the floor. Harry scrambled down the ladder, watching the patronus curiously. He hadn't got a chance to examine Remus' or Bjorn's patronuses up close. Harry had read that the sight of a patronus was supposed to fill the beholder with serenity, but as he looked into the eyes of his father's stag, he felt instead a strange, alien animosity.
Harry reached out to touch the silvery creature cautiously. He wanted to sense the emotions that had fuelled the spell. But when his hand touched the stag's ear, the flickering silver energy burned like a hot coal, and Harry's fingers blistered. Harry leapt back with an involuntary shout, sucking his fingers to relieve the burning. The stag sprang back, too, but within seconds it rallied and charged, antlers down to gore its enemy. Harry, trapped in a corner of the living room, could do nothing but shout and fling his arms up defensively.
Burning strikes like a rain of magma fell on Harry's upraised arms, and waves of invisible, accidental magic poured from Harry's coral focus in response, but although his magic shook the walls and rattled the windows, the dreadful stag was undeterred. Harry, half out of his mind with terror, pain, and shock, was certain he was about to die. Baring his teeth in a rictus snarl, he balled up all of his fear and hatred for the creature, and fed it into a blast of concentrated magic.
An inky shadow limned with fire-red light exploded into being, shielding Harry with outstretched wings. Harry lifted his head, eyes streaming with pained tears, and watched with victorious satisfaction as his sinister creation savaged the stag, pecking its eyes and raking furrows in its flanks until the silver beast dissolved into ribbons of light that faded like a dying soul.
As his fear and defensive anger faded, so too did Harry's shadowy raven, until the house was still and silent once more. Only then did Harry look up and see James watching him in wide-eyed shock. The man was as white as a sheet, and his wand, clenched in one fist, was trembling. Harry's eyes fixed on the wand, then lifted, slowly, to meet his father's eyes, silently accusing. Why did you let it attack me?
Some unseen shutter closed behind James' eyes, and his gaze became abruptly distant. Without a word, he turned and entered his bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him. Harry, who was still crying from pain, slumped back against the wall and half-laughed, half-sobbed, until the hysteria passed, and he was left empty.
He went to the bathroom, raided the potions cabinet with trembling hands, and sloshed half the numbing solution into the wash basin before he managed to get it onto his blistered and peeling hands. There was plenty of healing balm, and Harry rubbed it on awkwardly, since both hands were numb now. When he tried to wrap gauze over his palms, however, he fumbled the roll. It fell into the chamber pot and was vanished instantly.
"Gods damn it!" Harry shouted, and kicked the empty pot over, sending it rolling into the wall. He leaned heavily on the vanity for a moment, trying to calm his racing heart. "It's fine," he whispered to himself. "It's fine, it's okay, it's all right. I can fix this."
Harry looked up into the mirror and saw that his lips were blue and his lashes white with frost. There was a surge of accidental magic, and the mirror shattered. Harry could not bring himself to care.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
"Did you know?" Harry asked resentfully, watching the glowing red trails that his raven left in the air above Bjorn's boat.
The one-eyed man sipped his tea calmly. "Know what? That you could produce such a magnificent spell?"
Harry huffed, annoyed. "That patronuses hate me. You dismissed yours before it could touch me, remember?"
Bjorn turned his single blue-grey eye on Harry and considered him. "I suppose I did sense something a little…unusual. But not hatred. If anything, I think they fear you."
"Why? What have I ever done to them?"
"You said you attacked one in fit of a pique. Perhaps they sense that."
Harry sighed gustily, and flopped back onto the bench outside the hold, slopping tea over his newly-healed hands. Bjorn had done his best, but the healing had been left too long, and there were flat, silvery crescents on Harry's fingers and palms now, where the curved hooves of James' stag had struck him.
"So what am I supposed to do? I can't meet a dementor without any protection. What if it tries to Kiss me?"
"Why do you assume you can't make a patronus?" Bjorn asked with puzzlement.
Harry spluttered, and gestured wordlessly at his ethereal black and red raven. It spiralled down and alit on Harry's outstretched arm.
"Is that supposed to mean something?" Bjorn asked, unimpressed. "Every man has a bit of light and a bit of dark in him. That's simply a fact of life you had best make your peace with."
"You don't think he's…I don't know—ominous? Like an anti-patronus?"
Bjorn tilted his head, and reached out to stroke the bird's head. "I think you should give him a name."
Harry huffed. "That's a bit mawkish, isn't it? It's just a spell."
"You don't care for him?" the burly, greying north-man asked, eyeing Harry speculatively.
Harry made a face. "It's not a him, it's an it. I'm not going to go 'round calling him Bob or something, like we're mates."
"He's a part of you," Bjorn replied, continued to caress the bird's evanescent black feathers. Harry lowered his head gloomily. "That's reason enough to love him. I call mine Orvar—means arrow."
"Yours isn't made from hatred."
Bjorn touched Harry's forehead gently with a large, callused finger, and flicked the boy's fringe back, revealing Harry's despondent expression.
"What? You think hatred's all you've got to work with?"
Harry scowled, embarrassed at having his emotions discussed.
Bjorn snorted. "Please. As hatred goes, this isn't even particularly potent." He lifted the raven from Harry's arm, and settled it on his own shoulder. "You haven't really known darkness until you've killed a man." Bjorn paused, watching with interest as the black raven dissolved into non-being. "You haven't, have you?"
Harry looked at Bjorn askance. "What, offed someone? Of course not. Have you?"
Bjorn sank down next to Harry and looked out to sea, saying nothing for a moment. Harry filed away that exchange for future pestering.
"You're overthinking this," Bjorn said finally. "Just because you haven't succeeded in a spell yet is no reason to think you never will."
The grizzled north-man drained his tea and set the cup aside. Then he pulled his large knife from his belt, holding it aloft.
"Look. It's not a difficult spell—not with our kind of magic, anyway. Gather your happiest memories, and hold them in mind while you focus on what you want: a protector from dark creatures. Then just…set it free."
Bjorn flicked the knife's tip forward, and his great silver sea-eagle burst into being. Harry jumped, flattening himself backward against the hold, but the creature did not seem to notice him, and merely contented itself with a mockery of hunting amongst the waves.
"You think I haven't tried that a hundred times?" Harry asked, sharply, glaring at the silver bird.
"I think you don't really want to succeed."
"Now you're just insulting me," Harry snapped, acidly.
"I think you see yourself as a dark creature."
Harry said nothing, staring fixedly at the planks of the deck and fidgeting with his tea-cup.
"Am I right?" Bjorn asked gently.
Harry shrugged stiffly.
"You're not," Bjorn pronounced, and poked Harry in the side of the head without warning.
Harry slapped the man's bear-like hand away. "You don't know that," he growled. "My real father could be a dementor, for all I know."
Bjorn's face convulsed in an odd way, as Harry watched from the corner of his eye, and for a moment Harry's stomach fluttered with trepidation. Then Bjorn broke into peels of laughter that had him wiping helpless tears from his eyes.
Harry edged away and gawked at the man. "There's something wrong with you, you know that?"
Bjorn just nodded agreeably, still chuckling.
"I really could be half dementor. You don't know."
Bjorn made a murmur of acknowledgement, between a couple of lingering chuckles.
"You think that's funny?" Harry demanded, leaping to his feet. "My Mum could have been raped by a dementor."
Bjorn doubled over and stuffed his fist against his mouth, fighting back another surge of hilarity.
"That's not funny!" Harry shouted, and hurled his tea-cup, still half-full of tepid liquid, at the man's scar-split face. Bjorn vanished the cup in mid-air with a lackadaisical wave of his knife, and tried without much success to adopt a penitent look.
Harry stamped his foot, and went to the rail, trying to ignore the man. After a moment, when his laughter had faded, Bjorn came and joined him, resting a heavy hand on Harry's shoulder. Harry grudgingly allowed it to remain there a moment before shrugging it off.
"Ah, fugleunge. I don't mean to say I don't sympathize with you, or your mother," Bjorn explained apologetically. "It's just—how can I say it? If the gods are having a laugh at your expense, the best thing you can do is laugh along. It hurts less that way."
Harry glowered. "You're mad. And kind of an arse-hole."
"I'm sorry. Please don't hold it against me."
Harry harrumphed.
"Look. A peace offering," Bjorn said, holding his arm out toward his patronus.
"No!" Harry yelped, backing up as the creature swooped toward them. "Really, don't!"
"It's all right," Bjorn answered soothingly, as the eagle landed on Bjorn's wrist with a flap of wings that spread as wide as the north-man was tall. "He won't hurt you."
Harry paused warily on the verge of jumping off the boat. "Then why did you dismiss it—him—before?"
Bjorn pursed his lips. "Instinct, I suppose. But he's a part of me. He can't do anything that I don't let him."
Harry remembered, briefly, the sight of James standing, white-faced, clutching his wand. A lump formed in his throat.
"Here," Bjorn said, holding out his hand. Harry approached, cautiously, and put his small, white hand into Bjorn's large, tan one.
An echo of something passed through Harry then, making him gasp. It was the tranquillity that he had once known, floating in swaying green light. Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head. Bjorn lifted Harry's hand, and pressed it against something that flickered like strong currents in water. It was hot against Harry's palm, but it was not a burning heat. It was the heat of a tight embrace, the heat of strong tea offered in friendship, the heat of tears shed for love.
Harry opened his eyes and gazed, wonderingly, at the sight of Bjorn's patronus rubbing its head against his palm. A smile spread slowly across his face, and some deep-seated tension seemed to ease within him.
"Now you do it," Bjorn prompted.
Harry bit his lip, uncertain. But, after a moment, he lifted his coral-pierced palm, and fed his memories of his mother into his magic, simultaneously concentrating on his desire for a creature to stave off the darkness. His memories were more wistful than joyful, but it was the best he could do, and it must have been enough, because a silver form burst from Harry's hand. It circled the deck once before returning to perch on Harry's wrist. Like Bjorn's patronus, its touch was hot, but not blistering.
"What is it?" Harry asked breathlessly.
"Pigeon," Bjorn answered, blithely.
"Pigeon!" Harry cried indignantly.
"Or a dove," Bjorn added, shrugging.
Harry glared. "It's a dove, and I'll hear no more on the subject."
"If you say so," Bjorn chuckled. "Rats with wings, that's what you south-landers call them, isn't it?"
Harry huffed, but after a moment, even he laughed a little. "Peace and war—Pax and Bello. That's what I'll call them," he announced.
Bjorn nodded approvingly.
"Can you show me how to send messages with them?" Harry asked. "Silent ones, if possible."
"I can try," Bjorn answered, with a roguish grin that made his scar-split face ripple and stretch gruesomely.
"And then I need to know everything you can tell me about the security measures at Azkaban," Harry continued.
Bjorn stared stone-faced at Harry for a moment, before tipping his head back and rumbling with laughter once more.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
Harry waited on the little scrap of strand where he had received his coral, trying to calm his anxiety. The waves were rougher than usual, and the salty foam licked at his ankles when the breakers scrabbled up the sand. He had sent the message an hour ago with his anti-patronus raven, Bello, and had been waiting here ever since. He didn't know whether they would even understand the message, but he hoped. Harry had practiced the necessary spells with Bjorn, who seemed to find Harry's devious plans amusing, until he was more than ready, and then waited weeks longer, for the time to be right. Wary of sneaking out at night and of being seen during daylight, Harry had awaited the arrival of winter, when the sun made only a token appearance each day.
The perpetual night seemed to have depressed the already gloomy wizenguards further, but Harry felt more at home than ever. The sky was nearly always overcast, and this absence of moon and starlight allowed Harry to prowl the village as well as the island without being noticed. Lady, on the other hand, had taken to cuddling the heating stones that James had enchanted to keep the house cosy. She slept, mostly, and cursed Harry nonstop whenever she was awake. Rats and mice had become harder to find as the weather grew colder, and this did Harry no favours where his familiar was concerned.
Although it was only mid-afternoon, the sky was as dark as full midnight, and Harry had left the wan glow of the village far behind. Now he stood on the beach where he had been given a gift by the sea, and waited for the tide to turn. Above him, the clouds began to drift apart, revealing a moonless sky scattered with glittering pinpricks of light, and, in the centre of the sky, a swath so dense with them that it seemed to emit an undifferentiated glow.
Harry stared, and felt the tension flowing out of him. How many millennia had the light of those stars travelled, only to spend itself on his eyes? How many of those stars were gone now, existing only as memories carried by light? He toyed with the idea that perhaps the stars were actually great souls, massive as worlds, as galaxies, each on its own lonely orbit, beaming out the message of their existence into the uncaring void.
The ancients had believed the constellations were gods and heroes rendered undying¹, and Harry entertained the idea. Had they ascended as though the heavens were a throne, or had they been chased there? Had they fled the wickedness of men, hiding far from any human voices? Or had they simply lain down to sleep in the sky until they were needed once more?
Harry's breath began to frost, and he felt a chill at his back. The spell of the stars was broken, and his mind focused like a hawk on the here and now. He turned swiftly, and found himself a metre from a dark, looming figure, whose pitch black robes blotted out the stars.
Harry fisted his hands nervously, and felt his coral focus tingle with a little accidental magic brought on by nerves. He had decided not to summon his dove patronus, Pax, however, unless the dementor threatened him. The dementor was silent, and, although Harry knew it had no eyes, it seemed to watch him. Harry examined it closely in return, though he could not make out much with only the light of the stars.
The dementor itself was about the size of a human, but its sweeping robes and habitual levitation made it seem half again as tall. Its robes appeared to be made of cloth about its head and shoulders, yet the material faded to wisps of fluttering dark energy near the ground. It floated a metre above the sand, and its cowl was so deep that Harry could not see inside. All he could see of the body beneath the robe were two emaciated hands, white as a fish's belly. The thin layer of flesh clinging to those bones was emaciated and pocked with sores, and a stench wafted from the thing, as of rotting meat.
Harry was not repulsed, however, by the sight or smell, and he did not experience any of the misery or despair that dementors were supposed to radiate. On the contrary, he was elated that his plan had succeeded. And he was riveted by what he saw with his secret sense. Inside the skull, where the souls of all creatures normally reside, there was only a miniscule wisp of pulsing light.
There was another soul inside the dementor, however, a fully-sized one, for a wizard, located in the abdominal region. This soul was brilliant white and drifted gently as souls do just before they pass on, yet it remained in place, not dissolving. A dark excitement quivered in Harry's belly at the eerie sight. This was undoubtedly a soul that the dementor had snatched from the lips of a prisoner.
Harry cleared his throat roughly, tearing his eyes away and fixing them back on the cowl. "Thank you for coming," he forced out. "I wasn't sure if you would understand the message. Or if you would care."
The dementor was silent, its robe fluttering gently in the salty sea breeze.
"Can you understand human language?" Harry asked hopefully. He wasn't particularly skilful at communicating via patronus or anti-patronus.
The dementor shifted a little, and drew a rattling breath. Harry tensed, half-lifting his coral-pierced hand. Then the dementor spoke, in a voice that sounded as though it were being forced through a throat bloated and swollen with rot.
"We he-e-ear the call of the hu-u-ungry…" it croaked.
A delighted grin spread across Harry's face. He hadn't a clue what the words meant, but it didn't matter. They were words, and English ones, at that. He was speaking with a dementor.
"Thank you for coming," he repeated. "I have so many questions. I don't know what I can give you in return, but I need your help…" Harry trailed off, biting his lip. He was a fool, he knew, relying on the charity of despair-sucking leeches, but he had nowhere else to turn.
"Tra-a-ade," the creature rasped.
"Trade what?" Harry asked eagerly. "What do you want? I'll give it if I can."
"Ta-a-aste."
Harry's head jerked back a little. "Er…did you say taste? What does that mean?"
The dementor shifted restlessly, and swooped suddenly closer. Harry inhaled sharply and stepped back as the cowl brushed his forehead. He could see inside it now. The creature's face was as emaciated and scarred as its hands. Where its eyes should have been, there was only smooth flesh, and its mouth was a gaping, hungry maw. Harry stared, fascinated. What was this thing? Was it born? Created? What was its purpose?
"What do you mean?" he repeated forcefully, staring not at its no-eyes but at the wisp of soul behind its forehead. "How do you taste? What do you taste?"
"Not fee-e-ed," it croaked agitatedly. "Only ta-a-aste…"
The dementor inhaled with a rattling, wet gasp, and Harry saw, to his shock and horror, tiny wisps of white light float from his mouth to the dementor's. His head spun, and grey fuzz intruded on the edges of his sight.
"No!" Harry bellowed in fear and anger. "Give it back!"
The dementor exhaled, and the specks of light flew back into Harry's mouth. The dizziness faded, but, for a moment, all he could do was blink and stare, so shocked was he.
"Don't ever do that!" he shouted furiously, forgetting that he was not so far from the village, and that voices carried oddly in the fog.
"Only ta-a-aste…" the dementor said in its harsh, wet voice. "Not swa-a-allow…"
"You tasted without asking," Harry answered furiously. "So I reckon you owe me some answers now."
The dementor bowed its head slowly.
Harry licked his lips, the gears of his mind clicking and whirring. "How could a human have the powers of a dementor?" he demanded. "How is it that I can make people cold and suck away their joy and hope like a dementor?"
The dementor bobbed gently, its cloak rippling. "You hu-u-unger," it croaked. "You hu-u-unger for the lost half of your so-o-oul."
Harry felt the blood drain from his face. "What? My soul…what?"
"Half your so-o-oul is missing."
Harry put a trembling hand to his forehead, above where his soul should have been, though he could not sense it. Even in a mirror, he had never been able to see his own soul. They were not literally made of light, after all; it only seemed that way to him. Harry had always known he was different, even dark, but to think that all this time he had been missing something so fundamental…he almost wished he had never found out, and, at the same time, he was furious that he hadn't known sooner. He swallowed thickly, but pressed on despite his horror.
"Was it a dementor that—that—tore my soul?" It required a force of will to get the words out.
"There are other wa-a-ays, and other pla-a-aces a so-o-oul may hide."
"All right," Harry answered tremulously. "But why does that give me powers?"
"We-e-e are the torn so-o-ouls…the Ki-i-issed ones…we hu-u-unger…hu-u-unger…"
"The kissed… Do you mean that you are someone who was Kissed by a dementor?"
The dementor bowed its head in agreement.
Harry hissed through his teeth, appalled. What the Prophet would make of this…but of course he could never tell them.
"You were once human?" he confirmed.
It bowed its head again.
"But how do you become…whatever you are? How do you have a mind, with only that little scrap of soul? Even dogs have more than that."
"So-o-oul is not mi-i-ind."
Harry pondered this, but stowed it away for later. He wanted to ask as much as he could while he had the dementor's attention.
"This Hunger—" Harry put a special emphasis on the word—"you're saying that it gives you powers? Like freezing things, and making people feel despair?"
"We fe-e-east on the so-o-ouls of men, and the so-o-ouls of objects alike," the dementor croaked.
"Objects? What do you mean?"
"We do not fre-e-eeze, only ste-e-eal warmth."
"But warmth isn't the same as a soul." Harry frowned, perplexed. "Is it?"
"Ta-a-astes the sa-a-ame."
Harry's teeth worried at his lip. Every answer only produced more questions.
"Is it because I died once? Is that when I lost part of my soul, and gained the Hunger?" But even before the dementor answered, Harry corrected himself. "No, that doesn't make sense. If dying was all it took, everyone would turn into a dementor. There must be something else…"
The dementor shifted side to side with a ripple of shadowy black robes. "Only tho-o-ose whose so-o-ouls are to-o-orn feel the hu-u-unger. Your so-o-oul bears ma-a-arks of violence."
Harry stared into space pensively, distantly noticing the tide rising around them. The breakers came halfway to his knees, now.
"I see. Can you ask your brothers? Ask if any of them tore my soul, and where the rest of it is?"
"For a ta-a-aste, I will a-a-ask."
Harry scowled. "Will it drive me mad, like a prisoner of Azkaban?"
The dementor made a gurgling, sticky noise. Harry wasn't sure if the sound was laughter or lip-smacking, nor which of those two would be more disturbing. "Only after ma-a-any hu-u-undreds of tastes."
Harry glared suspiciously, but nodded, once. "All right, then. One taste, but make it quick."
The dementor leaned forward, wrapping its cold, skeletal arms around Harry, and bent him backwards.
"Hey!" Harry yelped, shoving at its chest, which felt like nothing more than a cage of ribs. "Not like that!"
"Be sti-i-ill," the dementor croaked, and opened its mouth just above Harry's.
The dementor gasped in that death rattle again. Harry saw grey and black spots and went limp in the thing's arms. He was floating, not in green light, but in grey fog. His head spun, and a flickering vision appeared before him, oddly colourless, like a faded photograph projected against the bank of fog. Yet despite its threadbare quality, the vision engulfed Harry, until he forgot where he was, who he was, until the vision was all Harry knew or had ever known.
She sat on her mother's lap, warm and comfortable, but she was hungry, and her frilly white dress was too hot. She whimpered and began to cry when her mother bounced her, until finally she squalled in futile protest. Her mother grew more and more agitated, and at last she pointed a stick at her and spoke unintelligible words. As though someone had cut the cords of a marionette, she could no longer scream, cry, or kick, and all of her thoughts drifted away like paper boats on a river. She felt her mother's kiss and heard her praise, but the sensations were muffled, far away.
Grey fog swirled, the vision changed, and Harry changed with it.
She lifted each limb in turn for the clothing, but without any conscious thought of doing so. Thoughts drifted just out of reach, and it was only happenstance that she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: a small, blonde, rosy-cheeked girl with glazed and vacuous blue eyes. For a moment, fear penetrated the muffling blanket that prevented thought, and she jerked her arm away from her mother with a cry. A sharp slap stung her cheek, and the spell returned double-fold, forcing her thoughts and emotions to dissolve once more.
Grey fog.
She ran—her legs were long and graceful now that she was a woman—ran through the forest like a gazelle, leaping fallen logs and rocks, not slowing despite the branches scratching her face and ripping at her sheet of rippling blonde hair. She could not stop; she would die first.
"Get back here!" her mother's voice screamed, and a curse narrowly missed her. She sobbed with terror, but panic spurred her faster. "I'm your mother! You do as I say, Astraea²!"
Pain like nothing she had ever felt pierced her, and Astraea fell to the ground, writhing and shuddering involuntarily. A blood-curdling scream ripped its way from her throat. Dimly, she saw her mother holding a wand on her, and in that moment she would happily have ripped the woman's throat out with her bare hands.
"You will do as I say," Astraea's mother panted, "if I have to hold my wand to your head while you say the vows."
Grey fog.
Astraea cradled her baby's head as he suckled at her breast, and let herself relax as the familiar lethargy of breast-feeding came over her. Her little girl was playing with blocks in the corner, piling up towers and then knocking them over gleefully. It was a tranquil moment, but Astraea did not let her guard down.
Her husband entered the room and slammed the door behind himself. Astraea went rigid at once, and pulled her baby away from her breast, but she was not quick enough. Her husband cast a stinging hex at her, just missing his own child. She kept her face blank, trying not to show the protective rage that bubbled up inside.
"Put those udders away, you disgusting creature," the man commanded coldly. "Are you a witch, or a barnyard animal?"
She buttoned up her blouse wordlessly, though her baby clutched at her breast and wailed.
"And keep those bloody things quiet!" her husband shouted. He cast silencing spells at both children in quick succession.
Grey fog.
Astraea wrestled for control of her wand, with the desperation of a cornered animal. There was no thought, no judgement, only terrified instinct, and pain. She bit, kicked, scratched, and then, somehow, the wand was hers.
"Avada Kedavra!" she screamed, barely remembering to aim.
No time for his face to register surprise—he simply collapsed, dead. Astraea collapsed, too, panting. She stared in shock at her husband's body, unable to comprehend the sudden turn of events. Her body shook like a leaf in a high wind. Then the tension drained from her, replaced with surety. It was over, at last. Slowly, she gripped her wand in a trembling fist, and raised it to her own chin.
"Avada Kedavra," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. The spell failed. Again and again, it failed. That was how the Aurors found her when they burst in a moment later.
Grey fog.
Astraea sat bound in chains before an arena of frowning men and women who sat in judgement upon her. A young man paced back and forth before her, asking questions. Her thoughts drifted just beyond her reach again, but her tongue obediently spoke the truth.
"Did you murder your husband, Chester Bartholomew Crouch?"
"Yes," she answered in a monotone, swaying slightly.
An angry murmuring rose from the arena.
Grey fog.
Astraea huddled in the corner of a grimy stone cell, wearing rags. She was skin and bones under a curtain of filthy, matted hair, but she scarcely registered her hunger or cold. Nothing mattered anymore. When she could manage to gather her thoughts enough to think anything coherent, she prayed for the only true freedom of death. The bars of the cell clattered back, and two men and a dementor entered. One of the men began to speak in an officious tone. Astraea did not bother looking up.
"Astraea Violet Crouch, for the crimes of—"
"Oh, just get on with it," the other man interrupted. He was wearing a bowler hat. "She'll be a drooling animal in a minute anyway."
The first man shrugged, and gestured at the dementor, who swept forward and pressed its mouth to Astraea's. She welcomed it with open arms.
Grey fog again, and then everything faded to black.
─-─-─-─-─o─-─-─-─-─
¹ Numerous constellations are associated with mythological figures and gods from various regions, the most well-known example being Orion, a giant huntsman in Greek myth who was placed amongst the stars by Zeus, and Andromeda, the chained princess who was rescued by Perseus (also a constellation) and placed in the sky by Athena after her death. The Babylonians, in particular, who are responsible for most of the Western groupings of stars, associated each constellation with gods and mythical symbols such as sacred animals, which gave rise to the zodiac.
² An epithet of the goddess Dike/Justitia, better known as Lady Justice, whose statue often appears on courthouses. A celestial virgin associated with innocence and purity, who fled the evils of humanity and become the constellation Virgo. Her scales are the constellation Libra. Legend says she will someday return from the stars to usher in a new golden age of justice.