Marcy tugged at the hem of her tee shirt, which was far too large and hung limply on her frame. It was humid; the air stuck to her clothes and caused beads of sweat to form all along the small of her back just seconds after wiping them off. The house, which was old and falling to bits as it was, would not accept Aunt Hermione's cooling spells and only paused momentarily in its blinding heat to make the air even more stifling.
Her room at Grimmauld Place (better known as headquarters, to whom she was not entirely sure) was way too small. She shared the one bed with Lillian Potter and her things were crumpled into a pile against the far corner. Her Hogwarts trunk was full of random odds and ends; the dress robes she had been wearing the night of the Ball balled into a disjointed mess on the very top.
She had not bothered to put them away when Tonks had their things sent from Hogwarts. She had not bothered to look at her things at all really. A pile of her used schoolbooks were set on the side of the trunk with a spilled bottle of ink she had yet to pick up. Lillian had knocked it over in one of her many tantrums. Marcy did not care.
It was August 31st, she remembered sadly, as her gaze scanned the calendar she had sloppily written on the far wall in crayon and red highlighter. They would be going back to Hogwarts tomorrow, back to the world they had so quickly and casually left behind. She wondered if things had changed. She wondered about Abbie and Charlie, both of whom she had been forbidden to talk to that summer. They wrote her occasionally, but the letters had teetered off towards the end of the holiday.
The exchange from a boarding student to a home student had gone off without a hitch for her, Andrew, Michael, and Julian, she reckoned. With Grimmauld Place being the location of "the headquarters", it had not been difficult to keep in touch with her teachers and get their daily assignments done. Headmistress McGonagall visited almost daily to ensure that they were keeping up with their activities; she had full expectations of replacing all four of them in their respective years the following term. Actually, she chortled to herself, it seemed as if many of her professors had become more diligent in their assignments following the death of the Minister of Magic.
Marcy sighed loudly then, pulling the tee shirt up and over her head and throwing it to the floor. The months that followed Arthur Weasley's death had been some of the hardest she had ever had to live through. Everyone seemed to have developed their own set of bubbles, retreating far into the mourning stages and enveloping themselves in the sadness that always came after untimely passing. She had tried, at first, to make herself available to the people in her family that were hurting most. She helped Aunt Hermione bake Uncle Ron's favorite treats and had Lillian make a nice collage for her father. But, none of it really helped. Her family had fallen into despair around her, and there had been nothing for her to do about it. She had not known him well enough to cry over his death. While many of them had come out of the depression as it became closer to the school year, she wondered if things would ever return to the fun loving nature it had had when they once lived at the Burrow
The door to her bedroom flew open as Lillian, pulling a very disgruntled Julian Malfoy, stomped inside.
"Make him give it back Marcy!" the girl yelled, her cheeks blushing a bright purple color. Julian was wearing the sheepish face he often sported whenever he did something he knew would get him in trouble.
"Give what back?" she asked lazily and without much care.
"My Hogwarts letter! They came in the mail today and he nipped mine before I could read it!" Marcy sighed. It would be the first year that Lillian would be entering Hogwarts, as she had been a few months too young to make the cutoff the year before, and she had been bustling about all week waiting for the letter announcing her arrival to come in the mail. Marcy was just glad the annoyance would stop.
"Did all the letters come in?" Marcy asked.
"Yes but what does that have anything to do with it?" the girl squealed, shaking Julian's arm with a force she should not have possessed, "I just want mine! He's your brother."
"Yeah. Well uhm…" Marcy started, standing up and heading out of the room, "you deal with it."
She took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the squabbles that came behind her as Lillian's voice filled with girlish rage and Julian muttered something about a top. The kitchen, which laid just to the right of the stairs, was a bustle with people as she made her way towards the entrance. The portrait of Mrs. Black, which hung on the stairs above her head, began to let out shrill slurs about mudbloods and traitors as she entered, slamming the noise out behind her.
The commotion, which had been boisterous, silenced the minute she reached the table. Andrew Potter, her cousin Michael, and a boy she did not recognize had been huddled in excited whispers but were now staring at her with what looked like amusement etched over their faces. Michael was trying to hide back a laugh with a cough and Andrew's cheeks had turned the color of roses.
"If this is how people come down to lunch all the time, I should really stop in with my dad more often," the boy laughed to himself, pointing towards her. Marcy looked down at herself and let out an audible gasp as the meaning behind Julian's muted words finally made sense. She was wearing a very old sports bra which left nothing to the imagination about the ways she had grown in the last year. It was very obvious which spots had developed over the summer and which had not.
"Bollocks," she muttered, pulling out her wand and transfiguring herself a nice muggle wrap top from a pile of discarded letters. The house allowed all the underage children taking lessons to use magic as long as it was for practical and safe uses. This, she reckoned, was definitely practical.
"That was sadly, anticlimactic," the boy muttered under his breath before extending a hand, "Jacob. Jacob Jordan. My father was friends with Michael's back before the war." Marcy shook his hand and took a place at the table.
"You're here…"
"Just celebrating with the boys!" he mocked, smiling a large toothy grin. He had no hair, which caused his coffee and cream colored skin to flicker in the incoming sunlight. He had extremely white teeth and lips that seemed to take up his entire face, "No really, my father is here on Order business, but Andrew didn't you tell her?"
"I'm…I'm Head Boy," he murmured quietly. He did not seem nearly as happy about it as Jacob seemed to be.
"Well…that…that's fantastic isn't it?" Marcy responded truthfully, placing a hand over his, "I'm real proud of you." She attempted to squeeze his hand but he pulled away quickly. While the interchange went unnoticed by Michael and Jacob (who had launched into a discussion about Quidditch), she felt her heart drop just slightly by his rudeness.
Things between her and Andrew had taken a dramatically negative turn after the death of her grandfather. Andrew, who had once been bright and outgoing with her, had turned inward upon himself. At their lessons (which were usually done in a communal structure to give the professors more time) he barely ever spoke and retreated to his room the minute they were finished. Michael had even turned more charismatic during their time in Grimmauld Place while Andrew continued to dig himself farther and farther away. It startled Marcy in ways she really did not understand. The one time she had attempted to bring the matter up while cleaning the attic of the old house had sparked an argument that left her angry for weeks. They had not spoken more words than necessary since.
She did not have many friends; that she knew. Abbie and Charlie Lawson were some of the only people she talked to in her own year, she was not that close with the others on the Quidditch team, and although her and Michael had grown closer in the years, Julian was rarely if ever around to talk to. Andrew had always been one of those people for her.
"OY!" yelped Jacob loudly as a figure materialized behind Marcy, pulling her from her daydreams. She recognized his smell immediately; musky and yet almost freshly polished, with a touch of peppermint from his shampoo and old ink from the office.
"DAD!" she yelled just as loudly as she jumped out of her seat into her father's awaiting arms.
Draco Malfoy hugged his daughter lovingly, not surprised by the looks of shock and confusion on the other young boy's faces. Draco had made it a habit of staying out of London in the months following the death of Arthur. It had been best in the long run. The Aurors were still looking for the man responsible and all eyes and ears were pointed in his direction.
While the heads of the Auror team, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Tonks, did not suspect Draco in the slightest, the general consensus of the public did not give him credit for the fighting he had done against his father in Russia and Romania. 'Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater' an old beggar in the street had once told him. Funny, he did not remember ever actually serving Voldemort. It had been no use though. He had left his company behind as they too, found it slightly uncomfortable to be in his presence after the Minister's passing. He had gone looking for answer and had come back with something he was not prepared to deal with.
"Dad what are you doing here?" Marcy asked from a space against his chest. He laughed slightly as he felt the heat of her breath melt into the leather of his overcoat, "and what on earth are you wearing? Muggle clothes don't suit you," she murmured.
"Yes well, I was on business," he fibbed, pressing her close and breathing in her scent.
He knew fairly well that Hermione and Ron blamed him in part for the things that had happened in the last four years. Hermione had always been a loving person and had always, almost nauseatingly, possessed this habit of taking in things that she felt were being cared for improperly. Ron, on the other hand, was just a family-kind-of-tosser. He was one of those blokes who loved well rounded and unnecessarily large broods. While both of those things appealed to Draco, he had not expected the things that befell him to give Hermione and Ron either of those things at the same time, or to make him the object of their grievances. He had not expected things with Ginny to go so sourly.
Draco sighed then against his daughter's strawberry blonde hair. Things with Ginny had melted away so fast after his return from Murmansk. He had hoped that, with time, things would have been able to heal. She would have realized that he loved her in a way he was not quite sure about and with a heart he had never known he had when he was younger. But, some things just did not work out like that. She had gotten strange and had left. Had said something about it being for the better, and he had not heard from her in almost two years.
But he was back, he remembered with a bit of trepidation. He was back to turn everyone's worlds upside down in typical Malfoy function.
"Marcy, darling, I need to see your Aunt and Uncle."
"THIS IS SOME KIND OF BLOODY JOKE!" Ron Weasley bellowed loudly in Draco's general direction. Hermione was gripping his arm tightly as Melinda Potter tried to comfort her equally flabbergasted husband. Molly Weasley, Minerva, and several other order members were sitting with them as well, staring at Draco as he cupped a tiny golden sphere between his hands.
"Not a joke Weasley, now please just calm yourself," Draco said with a bit of stern composure. He had already played every bit of this meeting out in his head and, as far as he was concerned, things were unfolding completely according to his predictions.
"Mr. Malfoy, what you are proposing…"
"Minerva, I'm not your student anymore, please," Draco interrupted.
"Yes…right…but what you are saying, what you are telling us is completely…"
"Incredulous," muttered Melinda Potter.
"Quite possibly," Draco replied, waving his free hand in the air, "But you see, I found it. Stole it right from under their stupid noses when they weren't paying attention. And it is here. So why don't we listen to it?" He asked, "I sure want to know what it says."
"That doesn't look like the one we found does it?" Hermione mentioned, "It's…smaller. And a funny color."
"That's cause it wasn't made by a good wizard Hermione," Draco muttered, "Yours was recorded by Albus Dumbledore. This one…let's just say someone a bit higher up heard this one. You can't find these kinds in the Ministry of Magic."
"I've had to listen to one of those things before," a witch from the Department of Mysteries chimed in, "it's rather ghastly. Besides, what if it's all just a hoax, some way to make us think that things have rekindled when they really haven't?"
"Would they have killed the Minister of Magic over 'just nothing'?" Draco asked, causing them all to gasp collectively and Molly Weasley to sob just loud enough to hear. He patted her lightly on the shoulder and continued, "Look, I'm not happy with this either. But there is one, and we might as well hear it. It's got to involve one of the kids and I damn well want to know what they're up against…"
"Then we're all fucked," Harry finally said, "It was too hard the first time around. The wizarding world can't handle another evil like this or another prophesized fucking hero."
"I don't believe this shite Malfoy," Ron contested angrily, slamming his fist into the table, "We would have heard about this."
"You don't have the connections I have," Draco muttered.
"THAT'S BECAUSE I'M NOT A FORMER DEATH EATER," he yelled again. Hermione grabbed his arm again and Draco could not help but chuckle to himself. What was with that association?
"Weasley, listen up. The rest of you too. This is life. You take the good, and you take the bad. Right now, I'm telling you that there is a new prophecy, and we probably shouldn't take it lightly. The fate of the world is in my hands folks. The most we can do is listen to it and see where to go from there. Agreed?"
The wizards and witches around the table, one by one, nodded at Draco. As the circle reached Harry he too shook his head up and down.
"Ron?" Hermione asked.
"I…what does Ginny think?" Ron asked suddenly.
"Does it matter?" Draco asked, starting to get defensive, "She isn't here, is she?" Ron finally nodded his head then, looking more defeated than agreeable.
Draco opened his left hand and allowed the golden orb to float itself into a slight hover above his palm. There was something inscribed across its surface in fine detailed lettering but he could not read it just right and really, it did not matter. What mattered would be inside. He lifted his right hand then and, with a sudden motion, cracked the sphere between his two palms with a sickening crunch.
A wailing voice lifted out of the mess between his fingers, unfolding in long ooh's and ahh's that surrounded the small living room as a weird smoke began to raise up. Draco could see the form of an older man pulling out of the mist, his mouth opening widely to black nothingness as the voice inside bellowed out. Draco recognized him but refused to speak his name as unearthly shrills formed into words…
Born from the roots of both good and evil, a power unbeknownst to the world will be brought forth to tilt the balance of the Great Path, bringing with it the doorway for the greatest evil of all time, shall it be allowed. To move left, to move right, to choose one's path and to choose for all. Upon the passing of 18 birthing days, the power must choose which side of the balance to accumulate and will become the multiplicity of the Great Path. Forever good. Forever the greatest evil. The power must choose a side.
Born from the roots of both good and evil…