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The Ward

Part Two

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What Harry Knew

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Rarely was it quiet in the great hall of the Keep in the evenings. Just over fifty people lived in the Keep, the only sound structure within the Ward, and though they barely filled a quarter of the Keep's rooms, there were enough of them to crowd the hall itself. Unlike breakfast and lunch, which were light meals taken quickly or eaten on the go, dinner was a long affair in the Keep, and one of the best parts of the day, in Harry's opinion.

The fabric of the evenings was patterned by the residents' habits: when they weren't on duty or discussing it, Dedalus and Elphias exchanged clever riddles and jokes in the corner, Elpha played requests on her flute or old harp, and Sturgis worked on his map of the Ward. Caradoc taught Harry and the others to throw knives into the board he'd set against the far wall, and Hagrid whittled miniature monsters from leftover timber. Harry's parents cleaned their weapons or joked around with Sirius and Remus, and they often let themselves be drawn into stories about the Ward, or about the creatures of the first days.

At present, if only for a moment, the entire hall was both crowded and silent, all eyes having fallen onto the now unconscious woman that Sirius set down on the table.

And then everything exploded into sound and movement all at once.

"Bloody hell," Moody was growling, "is that who I think it is?"

"They weren't supposed to come here. No one was supposed to come here—"

Emmeline's arms were folded over her stomach, as though warding off nausea. Or a headache. "We're dead to them, remember? They have no reason—"

"That's what I thought too until a minute ago!" Sturgis protested. He ran a hand anxiously through straw-colored hair.

"What does that mean, if they've found us?"

"They haven't found us, because they never lost us—"

"Sirius, what has Lestrange said, has she said anything?"

But Sirius could hardly get a word in edgewise over the clamor.

"I don't understand," Harry said quietly. At his side, Ginny was shaking her head.

"It means there are people outside the Ward," Neville replied, his words coming slowly as if they had only just settled into his mind. "It means...maybe when everyone first left to come here, some people they left behind are still alive."

"At least one of them," Harry agreed, staring.

He could not remember ever seeing them all like this, everyone so fraught with anger and worry that they could hardly let each other speak. Well, he amended, maybe at times when there was some obvious threat. But the woman, Bellatrix, lay stone still on the table, as if dead.

"Who is she really?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Nev, what's happened?" Alba, at nine, looked awfully small amidst the shouting adults. She sidled up next to her brother, bouncing anxiously on thin, coltish legs.

"It'll be alright," Neville replied, wincing as someone who sounded like Moody shouted fiercely that they'd have to learn what Bellatrix knew and then dump her body somewhere. "They're just talking," he added.

"For Merlin's sake, let's wake her up, then," Remus shouted. It was unusual for the werewolf to raise his voice for any reason, and that's why, Harry thought, so many people paused to listen. Remus's amber eyes flashed in the firelight. "You're forgetting that we're meant to be the adults here," he added in the relative quiet that followed, jerking his head toward Harry and the others. As one, the room looked in their direction, read the uncertainty in their faces.

Molly pushed through the crowd, having gone to fetch a bucket of water from the kitchen. "You lot should go upstairs," she said to them, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Still, Ginny and Harry both opened their mouths to say something before Arthur interrupted. "Maybe just Alba and the little ones," he said apologetically before turning back to his wife. "As for the rest...we might as well. They'll know now anyway, and I think it's time."

After a moment, Molly nodded. Alba made a face but knew better than to protest. Emmeline drew the short straw and took her and Benjy and the toddlers upstairs. Once they had all gone, Molly heaved the bucket up to her chest. "Alright, then," she said, and splashed it across the unconscious woman's face.

Bellatrix sputtered and coughed, again clutching her ribs where the blood had dried into her dress. As the woman drunkenly rubbed at her head and got her bearings, the room seemed to become aware of whatever danger she presented. Alice placed herself in front of Neville, and as Harry crept over to the table where his parents stood, he noted many hands falling to rest on weapons. James and Lily said nothing to him as he came to stand between them, but James gave him a wry kind of grimace and draped an arm across his shoulders.

At last, Bellatrix propped herself up on her elbows as best she could, finally seeing the dense ring of faces before her. For the first time, Harry saw something like fear in her gaze. "Hecate's tits," she rasped quietly, though the words carried in the silent room. Then: "All of you fuckers are still alive?"

"Not all," Alice said, her eyes cold. Beside her, Neville stared. "And no thanks to you and yours."

Harry turned to his mother, shaking his head and letting the confusion show in his shook her head and squeezed his arm. "Not now," she whispered. "We'll explain. Just...later."

"In my defence," Bellatrix said, recovering quickly from the shock to school her face into what Harry was quickly coming to recognize as her resting expression of haughty amusement, "we hardly thought the suffering would take so long. Even the Dark Lord expected you'd all be dead within the week. And here we are, decades later…" She grinned, and her teeth were stained brown with her blood.

"Glad to have proven him wrong," Moody said gruffly. There were rumblings of agreement from the room at large.

"And without your bloody wands to boot. And your magic's been bound, anyway," Bellatrix continued, lazing backward a bit. "How the fuck did you manage? There must have been a hundred damn creatures in here, not to mention the bloodthirsty plants. I think even a quintaped or two. And I got a graphorn in here myself."

Sirius said nothing, but his hand fell once again to the hollow horn that lay at his waist. Bellatrix's eyes fell upon it, and then flitted to the handful of other bright horns adorning belts around the room, hanging on the hooks at the door or lying beside weapons on the tables.

"Bloody hell," she said at last. "You killed the thing. And you've even raised chickies here, I see."

For a moment, Harry had no idea what she meant, except he realized she was staring straight at him again.

Harry's father didn't move, but he spoke in such a dark tone that Harry could only imagine his expression. "Lestrange, why have you come here after all this time?"

The mirth fell from Bellatrix's face. She looked suddenly tired. "The Dark Lord and I have gone our separate ways," she said at last, something wry in her tone.

Harry was still trying to make heads or tails of the conversation—who on earth was the Dark Lord they kept mentioning?—as Sirius gave a bark of laughter. "Do you really expect us to believe that? You're Voldemort's closest follower. What could you possibly have done—"

"I betrayed him."

More disbelieving sounds. Harry looked about to see his mother's scowl. Sturgis and Elphias exchanged mistrustful looks, eyebrows raised.

"A lot's changed in fifteen years," Bellatrix said. "I can't expect you to understand, but things are different now. He's different now."

"Oh, poor you," Sirius replied.

"You asked me about—"

"Sirius," Remus snapped, and Sirius at least had the sense to sit back in his seat, though his glare was no less fierce. The werewolf turned back to Bellatrix. "What did you do? What's happened?"

"What I did was, I'd planned to smuggle myself out of Europe. Me, Narcissa, her family. It's a capital crime nowadays, if you hadn't heard, to even look like you disagree with Dark Lord over what to eat for breakfast. As for the last decade and a half...well, quite a lot's happened but I think I can safely say the most important thing is the power's got to his bloody head. And...it was all well and good at first. Things were as they always should have been. Purebloods were at the top, as we were meant to be. Our magic was bloody strong. And mudbloods and blood traitors, they groveled at our feet. Muggles were taken for amusement, and we…" her expression grew cruel. She was grinning again, that same awful grin. "Well. First just in England, then in the north, then across Wizarding Europe. He had it all. We had it all. Even the Muggles knew us then, they knew what we were and who we were, but there was nothing they could do but shit themselves and hide. There was no one left to stop us, because we'd killed anyone who tried, or put the worst of them here."

Her face took on a pensive look, ignoring the scattered oaths that filled the room, some under the breath and some half-shouted. "Honestly, I expect the only reason you lot've never been meddled with here is because he doesn't need this place anymore...he doesn't pretend be some benevolent ruler anymore, as if he'll exile people to certain death to keep the blood off his hands.

"No. To him, it's a waste if he can't watch them go, screaming themselves hoarse to the last. He wants to see the suffering now. This place means nothing to him anymore." She scrabbled up a bit more on her elbows for a better viewpoint. "Suppose you ought to be thanking him for changing his mind, then? Otherwise you'd've had loads more company, and maybe not the kinds of company you'd like."

Harry had to admire, if nothing else, the woman's complete lack of self-preservation. She was either too indifferent or too out of it to notice the tightening of fists and jaws across the room. Or maybe, given her apparent history with everyone here, she knew as well as Harry did that no serious harm would befall her here. Or at least I would have said that an hour ago, Harry amended. But I also didn't know a lot of stuff an hour ago, apparently.

"What changed, then?" Remus asked loudly, over several growled profanities and unfinished questions. "Why have you come?"

"He's gone mad now," Bellatrix continued at last. "I don't know where it started, maybe when he started encouraging us to turn each other in for stupid shit, even for maybe fucking up the pureblood lines by not using magic as he thinks we ought. He'll kill you for blinking at him wrong, no matter the sacrifices you've made for him. And he'll enjoy it, the way he's got everyone on eggshells...Yeah, fuck, I don't know if you've noticed, but he stopped using this place as a dumping ground for beasts a while ago. Used to be the garbage dump for magical filth, but now he keeps whatever beasts he finds locked up and close at hand in case he wants a messy and creative execution."

The crowd sobered at this. Bellatrix stared at them flatly. "So. I'm done. There's nowhere in Europe that's safe. Not since he let the Muggles find out about us. And the Americas cut off all contact with us ages ago, but if there's somewhere out there to lie low, I'll find it. Been at this game too bloody long to go out like some stupid bitch under his wand."

The room was again silent, but this time it was a considering one. Harry, still barely following, turned to his mother, giving her a hard look, but Lily shook her head again.

"And so he found that you betrayed him. And he sent you here," Moody said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Bellatrix echoed without any shred of irony. "But it was more than that. I knew the execution was coming; I'd been caught—it was bloody Rodolphus who turned me in—"

"That's rich," Sirius muttered under his breath.

"For fuck's sake," Bellatrix spat at him. She calmed herself. "Cissy, at least, I kept out of it. He never knew she was planning to go, too. So the only thing left was for the Dark Lord to kill me. I learned some Occlumency a while back, thanks to your dear Severus—" another wild grin "—but the trick was more that I needed to push an idea into his head. With magic, I can't. Not skilled enough to best him. With words, I thought I could. I've been dropping hints for ages to his stupider goons, reminding them that this place even existed, that Merlin forbid they put me here—and I'm sure they brought it straight to him like the fucking lapdogs they are. He must have thought it over and realized what a fitting punishment it would be—"

"It was your idea to come here?" This was Arthur, aghast.

"Why in Merlin's name would you want to be here?" Elphias added after a beat of silence. "Especially if you thought everyone else you'd sent here had all died?"

"Hm. There's a question." Bellatrix had finally managed to sit up proper, though she leaned to one side as if balance was a bit too difficult at the moment. "And you're right, I wasn't expecting the honor of your company. But as for why...well. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm very good at stable spellwork." Bellatrix was grinning again. "Top of my class in Ancient Runes, way back when Hogwarts taught something that wasn't dark and...bloody. I helped make this place, and all the protections around it back when the war was raging still. I helped with the main ward, at the very least. Muralis obscura was the framework for all of the runes, the basic incantation. It was me."

Alice was shaking her head. "What does that have to do with anything?" she asked slowly. "So then you know you're trapped here, with all the trash Voldemort has cast 's no way to get beyond the Ward."

"I don't know that at all," Bellatrix replied flippantly.

Harry knew he wasn't the only one staring openly. "Say what you mean," Moody growled.

"I'm lazy as fuck," Bellatrix crowed, throwing her head back in laughter. This got her too off-balance, and she fell back on her elbows against the table again. "I wasn't going to pull the ward up and down every bloody time I came to work on it. Do you know how fucking exhausting that is? It's a massive bit of work, both magically and physically, if you get me. Stretches on for miles, wickedly complicated rune work. No, it would take ages. And so...I made a back door to let myself in and out as I worked."

There was a pregnant pause. Alice shook her head again, but her eyes had grown round. Even from where he stood, Harry could see the bright hazel of them. "That's not possible. We've swept every inch of the Ward, the entire circle. Miles around. There's nothing. We don't have magic, not anymore, but rune work is basic. One of us would have seen a flaw."

"There's something," Bellatrix fired back, though she looked more tired now, as though all the talking had finally rung her dry. "But you wouldn't have known it. I couldn't chance anyone else seeing the weak point as I worked—I've a reputation to uphold, after all—and I especially couldn't chance any naughty convicts escaping," she winked. "I protected my own back, as I always have. Fidelius Charm."

"That means…" Sturgis began.

"That means there's a way out. And I know how to find it."

A few heartbeats more of silence. Whatever Harry couldn't understand from their conversation, he could certainly understand this. Or—well, it couldn't possibly mean what he thought it meant. He glanced toward Ginny, standing behind her parents, her mouth agape.

"Bullshit." It was Caradoc who spoke now. His voice was sullen. "That's awfully convenient."

"I'll say," Hagrid grumbled from somewhere behind.

"It is convenient for me not to die at your hands from some act of vengeance. But...it's also convenient for me to get out of this bloody place." Bellatrix's attention had begun to flag, her eyes slightly out of focus, and she rested her head back against the table. "This is not the way I plan to go out."

She lay there motionless, maybe fighting off sleep or unconsciousness, though she turned her head to stare. For some time, no one spoke. "I think we should still kill her," Moody said after a moment, though Harry thought he didn't really mean it anymore.

"We aren't killing her," Alice replied slowly. "Not yet. Not tonight."

"We don't know that this isn't a trap," Remus cautioned. "She could be telling us what we want to hear. But at the same time…"

Interruptions began to pick up, and the hall erupted into clamor once more.

"If it's real…"

"Bloody hell. Bloody hell."

"I don't believe it…"

"I thought we were finished. I thought we were finished with all of this." The last was Lily, quiet, speaking only to James, and maybe to Harry as well. "I thought we were safe here."

"Me too," James said, stretching his arm behind Harry's shoulders to rub her back. His face looked frozen, his eyes glued to Bellatrix's unmoving form. Bellatrix's eyes were closed now, but there was something like amusement in the curve of her mouth. "No. No, we'll be alright."

Harry felt somehow worn out, like clothes washed and left on the line for too long. There was so much he hadn't understood, so much beyond him, and yet the gist of what he had caught was so absurd that it may as well have been a fairytale. A fairytale that everyone, everyone in the whole Keep, even his parents, seemed to have believed as truth for a very long time.

"Great," Harry said, giving both of them a moment to stare bleakly into the arguing crowd. "Now that that's sorted, maybe you can explain to me what the hell just happened."

Lily didn't even pretend to scold him for the language. She just turned away from the spectacle to run a shaky hand through her hair and send grimace at James. Then, for a moment, she searched the room until her eyes caught on something; Harry turned to see Molly facing their way. Something unspoken passed between the two of them, and then Lily stood. "James, get him upstairs. Best to talk to each of them individually, I think, instead of muddling everything up between all of us. Give me a few minutes to make sure they don't actually kill her, and I'll be right up."

James rose obediently, tugging Harry's cloak. "Come on, then." They left the great hall and turned toward the twisting staircase that wound its way to the very top of the Keep some twenty stories overhead. Harry took the stairs two at a time behind his father. James swore softly under his breath.

"You know, I..." he paused on the second floor landing, hands on his hips. "I never thought we'd be having this conversation. I used to, but it's been so long…" he laughed. "I thought we'd all grow old here, just as things are, without ever…"

Harry watched him rub the back of his neck. It was so odd to see nerves, or anxiety, or whatever it was from his father of all people that Harry felt very out of place. "Why didn't you tell me before?" he blurted.

James blew out a long sigh, resuming the trek upstairs. "It's...complicated. It isn't that we thought you couldn't take it, it's just that—we thought there was no point. There was no way out of the Ward—"

"You told me you went into the Ward to get away from stuff."

"I know, I know," James replied. Even from behind, Harry could almost sense his father's frown. "It was just...easier."

"Easier."

"Don't say it like that. Bloody hell. Why Lily sent me first to talk to you…she'll be better at this."

They had reached the fourth floor. Like all the other floors but the ground floor, it was composed of one long hallway with a series of identical rooms on each side, all of them in the grey stone that ran throughout the rest of the Keep. As James led the way to his and Lily's room, he looked so miserable that Harry couldn't help but add, "I'm not upset. Or—not yet. I don't get it, what happened, but I'm just...confused. Right now."

"You and me both," James muttered, but he clapped Harry on the back and strode inside. Hesitating for only a moment, Harry followed.

.

Beyond the Ward was nothing at all.

That had been the gist of things, as far as Harry had understood. There was nothing for them out there. There was nothing that mattered at all except the hundred or so square miles of rolling hills and forest within the Ward itself, and the Keep at its very heart.

What Harry knew was this: once upon a time, the Ward had been empty. His parents and everyone else Harry knew had lived elsewhere, out in the world beyond. There had been a magical land there once, called London, or England—Harry couldn't keep them straight. And there had been millions of witches and wizards together, and other human-like magical beings as well.

Millions and millions. In the summers here in the Ward, when the dragonflies molted and were on the wing, Harry thought of that sometimes. Here and there amid the green thickets hundreds of the insects buzzed in the mid-afternoon air. To have so many humans, or more, really—Harry couldn't picture more than the few dozen people he knew in the Keep.

It didn't seem to matter that he couldn't picture it, not back then. After all, those people were dead.

Back when his parents were younger, the people of the wizarding world had lived in relative peace. Not a monster to be seen, James had once told him—and they wouldn't have known what to do if they had faced one back then, even with their magic. It had happened slowly, but soon, in England, there were creatures worse than what roamed here in the woods, fierce beasts that required at least a hundred men to kill. There had been too many of them, too many people dying, and that's why James and Lily and anyone else smart enough had left when they could. Between them, they found this safe place, behind the Ward, where the monsters were just enough to deal with. Where life was possible again.

Beyond the Ward was only chaos and death. Except that wasn't true, was it?

Had it ever been?

The truth was different, but somehow more real. More solid. Now that Harry heard it, he could recognize the rest of his life before as the fairy tale, the story that was too neatly packaged to be real.

The truth was this: his parents had not come here of their own free will. They'd been exiled here. A man had taken control of London, bound their magic, and thrown them here. The world that lay beyond the Ward still existed, and though it might be chaos and death still, there was much more to the story than Harry had ever known.

"I don't understand," Harry said slowly, frowning down at his hands. He sat on the bed in his parents' room. A lighted series of candles lay along the dresser and windowsill. Over the years, Caradoc and Hagrid had teamed up to make tiny cast-iron balconies for those who wanted them, usually for special occasions like birthdays or Christmas. Harry's mother had gotten one ages ago, separated from the room by a glass door reinforced by Neville's runes. Adorned with a little wooden chair for reading, it was one of Lily's favorite places to be. At present, she leaned against the jamb in the doorway, as though seeking that comfort still, and frowned out into the night.

Ever energetic, James paced back and forth before their wooden desk, occasionally glancing at its contents: a few hunting knives of various lengths that he'd probably been in the midst of sharpening. Harry thought his father's fingers probably itched to do something—which was a sentiment Harry keenly felt himself. "Which parts don't you understand?" his father said at last, settling on the bed near Harry.

"I mean...all of it. But I guess first is that a man, this Dark Lord...he caught all of you? Made you leave?" Harry shook his head. "Wanted to kill you?"

Lily turned to him at this, half-smiling. "No, I expect you wouldn't understand that, would you? Here, it's…" she trailed off. With one hand, she toyed with a sprig of foxglove flowers. James habitually picked wildflowers for her on his way back from wherever he hunted in the woods. "Here, it's different. The only things that tries to kill you are monsters. Not people."

"Just because you didn't agree with him?"

James was rubbing the back of his head again. "That's sort of the gist of it, I suppose, but a lot went into it. None of us here agreed with him, nor did a lot of other people, but we were the ones who were the most...in his face about it. And if he wanted to be a leader and show how strong he was, how powerful, he had to make an example of us. Had to make sure no one would ever fight him again."

"So he sent you here."

"So he sent us here."

"And the monsters…?"

"Those came around the time we did. He used this place to dump his rubbish, throwing in whatever he didn't want. And that was mostly monsters. Lethifolds, nundus, manticores, boggarts, dementors. You know those. We were out of the way, and—well, he bound our magic. You know that, too. Your magic is stronger than ours will ever be now. For us, here and without our magic, he must have thought it was certain death. That we'd die fast and bloody and afraid."

"But you didn't."

"No," James smiled. It was the kind of smile Harry had seen a few times when James had taken him hunting, an almost predatory grin. Something in it always reminded Harry of the crooked way a hidebehind would bare its teeth before it pounced. "There was a lot he hadn't counted on." Harry nodded slowly, but his father must have seen doubt in his eyes. "The first days happened like we've always told you," he reassured his son. "I just mean that Voldemort couldn't have predicted any of it."

Harry slowly nodded his head. "He sounds...mental."

"He was." Lily agreed. "Thinking back on it now, on what we lived through, all of it was mental. I know it sounds impossible, but because of how mad he was, he, Voldemort...I think he's the worst monster we ever faced."

It was such a precise echo of what Sirius had said earlier, about Bellatrix, that Harry stared. "But he was just a man. Why didn't you just kill him?"

James snorted. "I dunno, it...sitting here right now, it seems like that should have been easy, right? We've killed other monsters. But your mother's right. He's a monster of his own kind. We couldn't reach him easily; he never came to confront us in person. We only fought with others on his side. Besides, we were fighters of a different kind then. We didn't know the things we know now."

"Do you think you could do it now?"

His parents exchanged a look. Lily slid from the window and closed it behind her, arranging the flowers in her hand. "Now?" James said, blinking. "If what Bellatrix is saying is right...no. Now, we don't know anything. We've been out of the game for the last fifteen years…"

"Well, I guess I meant if you were like you are now back then—"

"Oh. Maybe," James said. He had pushed himself up to sit on the desk, and he leaned back to look at his wife.

"Definitely," Lily contradicted, setting the flowers down beside James on the desk. "We're different now. Stronger. He thought binding our magic and sending us here would weaken us, but if we—all of us, as close as we are—if we'd been like this then, there would have been no one to stop us."

At this, his parents looked a little distant, and Harry wondered if they had ever voiced these ideas aloud before. James took Lily's hand and stroked it with his thumb. "It would have been different," he confirmed.

"And…" Harry hesitated. They turned to him, so he continued, in a smaller voice than he meant to: "If there really is a way out...are we leaving the Keep?"

"No," they both replied at once, and then looked at each other. To Harry's exasperation, there was another of those moments in which some meaning passed silently between them.

"This is our home now," Lily said firmly. "In the first years, yes, we would have tried to leave. Merlin, we sent half a dozen scouting parties to the edge of the Ward. With the hills and trees—and all the things lurking in those woods, half of which we hadn't even seen yet—it took over a week there and back. It was so dangerous, but we kept trying. Remus, Marlene, and Sturgis went every time, being the ones who knew the most about runes and warding spells, but there was nothing they could figure out. And even if we'd figured it out, we didn't know if we could actually use that knowledge, given our lack of magic...

"And we lost people out there on the way to get those three there and back safely. Good people. Edgar Bones, I don't think you were old enough to really remember him. Benjy Fenwick, and of course that's where Caradoc's little Benjy got his name. And then Frank. A rogue quintaped...You were six, I think, and when we had to come back and tell Alice what had happened." Lily blinked a few times, quickly. "Well, that was the last time. After that, we all decided we were done trying to leave."

"This is our home now." James said, once his wife had remained quiet for a few moments. "The people here in the Ward, we owe them everything. We've built a life here, different from what we used to know. But it's ours. Once, we might have owed the rest of the world something, but then they threw us here. They forgot us. To leave what we've built and return to whatever's left in the ashes...I think we'd be mad."

The pair of them fell silent. "Good," Harry said at last. "I don't want to go. I don't understand that other place, and it's not home. Not really." He paused. "What do you think will happen? With Bellatrix?"

"I don't know, love," Lily sighed. "It's hard to know if she's telling the truth. For now, she'll be locked in the top of the Keep, away from everyone. Aside from that...let's just take things one step at a time. She'll have to survive that wound before anything can be done one way or another. Beyond that, I really don't know."

Harry nodded slowly. For a few moments, the room was silent as they all let everything sink in, the sheer impossibility of the night's events. To Harry, it seemed incredible that just this morning, the Ward had been the same unchanging sanctuary it had been for the entirety of his life, complete and whole, its routines clear, its boundaries firm, its exterior virtually nonexistent. And now, so soon afterward, everything had changed.

It was still hard to wrap his head around it, and the idea that there was more beyond the Ward kept slipping in and out of his thoughts, loose and undefined, like the unfamiliar hilt of a new blade, not yet familiar to the touch.

His parents, though, were another story.

Harry couldn't read the message that had passed between them, but he knew what it looked like when they were afraid, when they were hiding something from him. It had happened less and less as he'd grown older and more sure of himself, as they'd seen his power begin to take shape, his growing cleverness with magic. But there had been times when he was younger when they shifted uneasily in his presence, their faces tight with the knowledge of some danger they wouldn't explain. Usually, this meant something out beyond the wall, menacing the woods nearby, and, for Harry, being restricted to the Keep itself until things were sorted. But more recently, they had always told him the source of their worries, named the creature itself that stalked their thoughts. Never in the past few years had Harry needed to press them for answers, and he found himself almost apprehensive at their silence.

"What else is there?" he asked. At some point, James had rested his head in his hands, and he didn't look up at the question. Lily was toying with the flowers again. "There's more, isn't there?"

"We're just worried about her, Harry," his mother told him. "She means a danger to us all, Harry. I know that's hard for you to understand, being—well, raised here, and only here. This is all you know. But for us, it's that it's so hard to tell what this means. There are so many things that could change now."

"And that's all?"

Lily looked up, as if surprised by the question. "Yes. Of course."

It wasn't all. He knew it. And after a moment, she seemed to realize this, for she stared away.

"Sorry," she said, but it wasn't clear what she was apologizing for. "You'd best get to bed, Harry. It's been a long day, and I've no idea what tomorrow will bring."

He bristled at being sent away to bed like a small child, and his mother's smile wasn't quite enough to mollify him. "You don't have to tell me the truth. But just...don't pretend everything's fine, ok?" Harry replied irritably.

Before anything else could be said, he bade them goodnight and closed the heavy wooden door behind him. It's not that they're hiding something, not really, Harry thought. Just that they're lying about it. To me.

The corridors of the Keep were dark at night, the tallow and beeswax candles conserved for areas where people were around. His parents and most of the others would have needed to bring a candle with them, but Harry cast a Lumos charm, and a small pearl of light hovered just above his shoulder to light the way.

For the first time in a long time, he felt truly conscious of his own magic, a gift that had been taken away from his parents and every adult in the Keep. To him, it was who he was. To them, it was an old friend they'd lost. Looking at the bead of light in the air beside him, he wondered if the others ever watched him and Neville and Ginny perform magical spells with envy, sadness, regret.

The light bobbed in the air currents as he walked. He was going to sleep soon anyway, so there was no need to conserve his energy, but as he opened the door to his room, he let the spell fade all the same.

Or at least he went to bed. Sleep was another matter, and it was a long time in coming.

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A/N: Man, I love writing Bellatrix. And if she's ditching Voldemort, you know things have really gone to shit for the rest of the wizarding world.

Hopefully this chapter started answering some questions, although there's more of that to come...