"Megan sort of got what she wanted," Christiana said to a hovering, silvery Helena, who was watching her mother being put into the ground, her wand on her breast.
Helena's ghost had not arrived at Hogwarts in time to say goodbye to her mother, and Ernald's ghost had arrived a day later. He had sliced himself bloody out of remorse for what he had done and carried chains around to atone for what he had done to Helena, and she thought it was quite right of him to do so. Even in her ghostly form the wound from his sword remained on her body.
"Nathan had to marry her," Christiana continued, turning away as they covered the grave. "She was pregnant. She got the Wyrmthorn fortune, and when she and the unborn child were designated heirs, he...mysteriously died."
Helena frowned.
Megan had killed him. No one would ask the right questions, even if they knew the answers, because they wouldn't want to cross her father, but everyone knew she'd killed him.
"And she just had a miscarriage the other day," Christiana said with a wistful shrug. "I'd bet my ring she forced it somehow. She knew her new beau wouldn't want to raise another man's child. It was what kept him from proposing."
He had proposed, and Megan's wedding would be in three months. Helena glided across the grounds beside Christiana, whose own engagement ring shone brightly on her finger. Helga had married some upstart named Smith and Christiana had ironically chosen, as her brother had, a wealthy husband of remarkably pure blood. He had actually been Megan's first choice to court after Nathan's death, but Megan found that even when she got what she wanted, she rarely got what she wanted.
"So there will be no future Baron Wyrmthorn," Helena mused. "How deliciously ironic."
Christiana's walking slowed and Helena turned to look at her as she paused her own progress back to the castle.
"Is something wrong?" Helena asked.
"I'm leaving tomorrow," Christiana said softly, frowning slightly. "Helena... What did you do with the diadem? Where is it?"
Helena thought for a moment on how to answer, if she should answer at all. Christiana was still moderately friendly with Megan, if only for the sake of propriety. She had a life ahead of her, children to raise someday... What did Helena have, besides this secret, this terrible secret?
"No," she said slowly. "No, I have nothing to say to you, Christiana. That diadem is a Ravenclaw heirloom and should have been buried with my mother. Since it was not, it remains where I put it."
Christiana just stared at her for a moment with that utterly impassive Gryffindor face of hers before she nodded to acquiesce.
And Helena thought, naively, that there would be no more questions about the diadem. In her mind, in that moment, it would remain in the hollowed tree in the east forever, lost in a forest somewhere. Even if she wanted to return and look for it, it wasn't as if she could take it anyway. Perhaps it was selfishness that kept her from telling Christiana, but she knew her friend was not as innocent in all of this as she claimed to be. If she had really wanted to stop everything, she could have used her power for Legilimency and told her father what Megan was planning, she could have told Helena about Nathan and Megan.
Instead, she either looked and didn't say, or didn't look when she suspected things would go badly.
She was just as guilty as everyone else, if in a different way.
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Christiana's funeral was just as well-attended as Rowena Ravenclaw's. Her father and brother were there, as well as her husband and their daughter, Felicia. Felicia was already the very picture of her mother, dark hair and bright green eyes. She was being kicked by Flint's son, Jesse, and was doing a very good job of ignoring him while his mother tried to keep him in line. Jesse's mother was holding Felicia's baby sister, Hanna, as she cried for her dead mother. Helena watched from the edges. Megan was hiding her smile behind a black veil and Golda was blubbering into a handkerchief.
Godric Gryffindor covered her tomb and kissed the stone they'd set up, tears in his eyes.
It was strange to think that Christiana Gryffindor, such a force of nature, was gone forever.
They laid her in the ground and Helena floated away, seeing Ernald making his way toward her slowly. She didn't want to hear what he had to say. She didn't want to hear anything. She blocked out the sounds of Golda and Hanna crying as she returned to the castle.
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Felicia died young as well, with two daughters in her wake and no sons. Helena was not the only one who noticed the unbreaking trend developing in Christiana's posterity. Each eldest daughter then had two daughters and proceeded to die young, usually violently, although not always. And the circle began again.
It took several hundred years for the meaning of it all to be revealed, and it was revealed at a funeral of one of the descendants, a young woman named Sophie who had left behind daughters by the names of Bethany and Molly. The girls were seven and five at the time of their mother's death, and it was Molly, the younger of the two, who was overcome with a vision during the funeral.
Helena watched as Molly began to tremble in her seat, drawing the eyes of all of the funeral-goers. At first they must have thought that the small child was overcome with grief, but Helena had seen this before, and when Molly's mouth began to speak words not in her voice Helena's suspicions were confirmed.
The small child was prophesying.
"THE CHILD WILL COME IN CENTURIES," Molly's unnaturally low voice said urgently. "A CHILD MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY BEFORE OR AFTER. THE CHILD WILL BE OF THE SEED OF THE LIONNESS, DOWN THE FEMALE LINE, UNBROKEN AND UNTAINTED BY MALE CHILDREN. THROUGH EYES OF GREEN THE LINE IS KEPT. THE CHILD WILL BE BORN IN A TIME OF GREAT PAIN FOR THE MOTHER, AND THE MOTHER LIKE HER MOTHERS BEORE HER WILL DIE WHILE THE CHILD IS STILL UNABLE TO COMPREHEND HER POWER. THE CHILD WILL LIVE IN A TIME OF GREAT TRIAL AND PAIN AND HER PAIN WILL BE PART OF HER GREAT STRENGTH. THE FATE OF THE WIZARDING WORLD SHALL DEPEND UPON THE POWER OF THE CHILD. HER HAPPINESS MUST BE FORFEIT TO THE GOOD OF THE WORLD."
Molly shook violently again, passing out from the exertion. Her father picked her up into his arms, clearly horrified by what had just happened at his late wife's funeral. Bethany watched her unconscious sister with confusion and terror.
Helena's eyes narrowed and she glanced at the Ministry official, who quickly pushed something into his pocket.
It was a record, she knew, of the prophecy. The collection of prophecy records was a rumor that was among the Ministry's worst kept secrets. People who guessed all but knew, and only those who didn't care didn't know.
Several guests had begun to glance at Sophie's daughter with interest. Not Molly, but Bethany. The funeral proceeded as planned while Molly was unconscious, but Helena etched those words onto her memory forever, knowing that she would be the only one present at the funeral who would see this child the prophecy spoke of, coming in centuries.
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There were corollaries to the main prophecy over the centuries, ones that pointed more clearly to the child who would come, and to her mother. Still, Helena had no inkling as she watched the descendants of Christiana follow the pattern of the prophecy carefully in their lives and deaths, that they were nearing the child prophesied.
Nearly three centuries later, she was hovering at the back of another funeral in that same line. This one had married a man named Rovigatti, and had given her daughters the unusual names of Aindora and Eoladra. Aindora was still very small, but her eyes flashed the vibrant green her mother had possessed. Eoladra's eyes were a sort of blue-green.
It didn't matter that Aindora was the oldest, really. Helena could always tell who would be the next in the line of the prophecy by the eye color, and even as young as they were it was obvious that Aindora would be the one to have the two daughters to continue the line.
There was something else Helena knew just by looking at the girls, not from any prophecy but from personal experience: both Aindora and Eoladra Rovigatti would ask Helena about the diadem. It wasn't anything to do with them specifically and she did not have the faintest idea why they would ask. Every one was different, but every single descendant of Christiana Gryffindor had asked thus far, for one reason or another. These two would be no different.
And the cycle continued….
A/N: And this is the final chapter! For the next set of shenanigans, check out Don't Let Go of Me, which is Aindora's story!
-C
