Cold Blooded by The Pretty Reckless
You can't trust a cold blooded man
Girl, don't believe in his lies
Can't trust a cold blooded man
He'll love you and leave you alive
August 23rd, 1977
Ivy,
All is well with my parents. They appreciate you asking and miss you too. Additionally, they demand that you spend Winter Holidays with us. They said it's preferable that you stay the entire time, but they understand your mother will also want to see you. I assured them that she wouldn't, and that you would stay the whole time, barring any prior commitments with your reptilian acquaintance.
And since you're being so very insistent, what happened at Slughorn's party last year was as bad as it looked. A little backstory since we weren't speaking at the time: Severus hadn't talked to or about Evans in so long that I thought he was finally over her. You know how long I'd been wanting to ask him to Hogsmeade, so I decided to just do it. I even cast a stupid beauty spell before the party and had some Firewhiskey (you know, liquid courage and all that).
Anyway, I had barely gotten the bloody words out when Evans walked through the door and he instantly forgot I existed. I guess he decided it was the perfect opportunity to apologise to her. Again. Profusely. Like he had been passing time with me until the main event arrived. He wouldn't leave her alone, so Evans got mad (she's got quite the temper, have you noticed?) and threatened to jinx him if he didn't stop. He didn't, so she left. And in typical Severus fashion, he followed her. I haven't bothered trying again since and, frankly, I'm done trying with him. It's not like he'd notice anyway.
To answer your other question, Regulus hasn't written to me either. I know his parents had planned to take him on holiday somewhere out of the country, but he could still reach us if he wanted to. Not a single bloody letter all summer and it's nearly the start of term!
Which reminds me, this weekend should do nicely for Diagon Alley. I can meet you at
"Ivy, dear," Avdima's voice sounded by her bedroom door.
"Yes?" Having recognized her mother's use of the word dear, she knew they had visitors.
Folding the letter, she placed it on the dresser beside her hazel wand. Looking up into the mirror above the wooden surface, she fixed her appearance to her mother's taste before Avdima had the chance to do it herself. Simultaneously, she began making sure that her mental barriers were secure.
"You have a friend downstairs," Avdima spoke in a pseudo motherly tone. "Mr. Frederick Avery has just appeared in my fireplace and would like to speak with you. He said you will need your cloak."
Needing a cloak was code for needing her Death Eater mask. Confused as to why he was bothering to use the code around Avdima, she snatched her wand from the dresser and grabbed a black satchel from the closet, slinging it across her body.
While a house call from a Death Eater wasn't exactly how she liked to spend her evenings, Avery was fortunately the most tolerable of the bunch. Regulus and Severus aside. He was certainly the most tolerable of his tight-knit friend group, which consisted of himself, Rosier, Wilkes, and Mulciber.
Following her mother down the hall, she slid her wand up her sleeve. They descended Selwyn Estate's absurdly grand staircase, Ivy working on her mental defences the entire way. Walking into the empty ballroom, then through the lavishly decorated dining area, they arrived in the drawing room.
Frederick Avery sat on the ink blue sofa directly across from the carved fireplace. His leg was bouncing furiously until he spotted them, at which point he stood, looking giddy.
"Lady Selwyn," he inclined his head of strawberry blonde hair respectfully to Avdima, who gave him a look of appraisal. "You have my sincerest apologies for showing up unannounced and so suddenly when I'm sure you were readying yourself for sleep. I hope you can forgive the intrusion on proper etiquette."
Thinking he was laying it on thick, Ivy cocked her head.
"I only wished to speak with your daughter," he continued pleasantly. "As it seems she's forgotten our prior engagement. See, we had previously arranged an evening excursion with a few others to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor. I received your written approval of the formal invitation a few days ago, but it appears there has been some sort of miscommunication."
One glance at Avdima told her that she was going to pay for that later.
"Anyhow," Avery laughed lightly. "I hope we can put that aside so that Ivy may join us in Diagon Alley. Of course, a few of our classmates will be there, as I wouldn't presume to take your daughter out on my lonesome."
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes was extremely difficult.
"I understand how much of a surprise this must be," Avery chuckled again, shaking his head. "I would be glad to call on my parents if you would like to verify who all is going to be in attendance."
He made a move toward the Floo, but Avdima waved him off.
"That won't be necessary," her mother said. "Just be sure not to keep her out too late."
"Thank you for having grace," he inclined his head to her. "Well then, we should be off, seeing as we're already late. I hope you have a lovely night, Lady Selwyn."
Ivy didn't bother gauging how angry her mother was with her.
Anything she did that could potentially bring disgrace upon their family was considered a severe transgression. Forging Avdima's handwritten consent on a nonexistent formal invitation would rank relatively high in her mother's book nowadays. Now that Ivy was the only person left to take her anger out on, even minor indiscretions now warranted the kind of violence Avdima had once saved for special occasions.
Not giving the foul woman another glance, she grabbed her cloak from the coatrack beside the fireplace. Fastening the black velvet cloth around her shoulders with the expensive serpent pin that joined the fabric together, she stepped into the Floo.
Ivy was surprised when, after shouting Diagon Alley, she walked into what appeared to be the Avery family's mansion. She had stepped into a dimly lit room that consisted of several lavish armchairs gathered around a coffee table and an exquisite pianoforte that stood in the corner.
"How did we end up here?" She asked Avery when he stepped out.
"Don't worry about it," he told her, having dropped all formal pretence. "Come on."
He hurried into the next room, beckoning for her to follow.
"What was with the theatrics?" Ivy followed as he continued onto the next room, then the next, trailing close behind. "If the Dark Lord calls, she's happy to let me go."
"We're not meeting with the Dark Lord," Avery replied over his shoulder as he guided her out of what appeared to be the back entrance to the mansion. "And we're not going to Diagon Alley. But you're welcome in advance."
"For what?" She jogged to keep up with him as they crossed his manicured lawn in the warm dark to a well-kept shed.
"Lighten up," he shook his head in mock disappointment, whipping open the shed door when he reached it. "You're going to like what I have planned."
"I'm not going to shag you if that's what you-"
"Please," he scoffed, grabbing two brooms and passing one to her. "Like I'd even try now that Regulus has pissed all over you like you're a sacred fucking tree."
"Excuse me?" Ivy wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"You know," he rolled his blue eyes at her, leaving the door open as he took off again, in the direction opposite of the mansion. "Marked his territory. You should have seen the look on his face when Evan Rosier mentioned he'd slept with you. Looked ready to murder. And Theya too; he doesn't like people talking about her like that either."
"I didn't know he had," she said between breaths, catching up to walk next to him. "Marked his territory on me. Or Theya."
"Why do you think no one's bothered, as you so eloquently put it, trying to shag you?" He looked at her sidelong, slowing as they reached an empty field. "But if you're not bothered by Regulus having marked his territory, and seeing how he's currently dating my future wife… We could, you know… Go to Hogsmeade sometime."
"You want to take me on a date?" Ivy stopped, turning to face him fully.
"If, well," Avery shifted uncomfortably, and she could see his face reddening. "If you wanted to."
"Sure," she surprised herself by saying.
Oddly, she found his nervousness kind of cute. He was usually all charm and confidence, to see him like this was certainly a change in pace. Plus, it would be smart to keep up appearances. Not having officially dated a single pureblood may look suspicious in certain eyes. Besides, Regulus may never talk to her again.
"Yeah?" A goofy grin crossed his features.
"Yeah," she smiled. "So, are you going to tell me what we're doing out here?"
"My parents don't like me flying over the mansion," Avery sighed. "They think I'm going to ruin the lawn, so we can't take off on a broom back there. Anyhow, while not necessarily sanctioned by the Dark Lord, we're going after Potter and Regulus's brother tonight. Evan and I overheard them talking in Diagon Alley and Black was bragging about all the money he inherited from his uncle. Revolting, don't you think? The idea of those hard-earned galleons passing from one blood traitor's hands into the next."
She suppressed what would have been a hearty laugh. The wealth amassed by the Sacred Twenty-Eight and other pureblood families had more often than not been earned by house elves and goblins, only for it to slip into wizarding pockets.
"I tried to get Regulus, but no one was home, so I grabbed you instead." He retrieved a small handheld mirror from somewhere beneath his cloak, gazing into it intently. "Anyhow, Evan is tailing their motorbike at the moment. The goal is to follow them to the new place Black bought and do as much damage as we can. We thought Regulus would appreciate it."
Ivy's anxiety spiked.
If she was involved in a situation where Regulus's brother got hurt or died, he would never forgive her. Even though he swore up and down that he hated Sirius, she knew better than to believe him.
"Hopefully," Avery spoke absently, not noticing her silence. "Evan doesn't do anything stupid before we get there. You know how impulsive he is… Aha! They're in Mayfair. Let's go."
He stuffed the mirror back into his robes and withdrew his Death Eater mask.
Ivy followed suit, placing the mask securely over her face and drawing her hood over her hair as he mounted his broom. She could little else except hop onto her own broom.
Avery winked at her before they shot off into the night.
Ivy had never flown this quickly in her life. She didn't think she would have enough time to work out a plan because of it. This proved true since, after roughly a half hour of flying, the best solution she'd come up with was to mitigate the casualties.
The only thing she was thankful for was that her mask and hood had been charmed to stay on while riding a broom. She'd learned that lesson the hard way when she left the site of her Dark Mark initiation ritual by broom.
Ivy still considered herself lucky.
That was, until she heard the distant sound of blaring sirens. As she and Avery drew closer, the sirens grew louder, drowning out all other sound. Catching sight of Rosier, she watched him soar above a motorbike being chased by two police cars, the lights of which were flashing.
Not only that, but spells were firing rapidly between the Death Eater and two Gryffindors. Sirius was driving, swerving when he managed to toss back the occasional spell, while Potter had turned in his seat, taking the brunt of the attack.
Cursing, she slid her wand out of her sleeve and descended alongside Avery.
Ivy could hardly think beyond the screeching sirens and the wind whipping through her clothes. She was having a hard time staying on her broom as they sped round corners and through stop lights, the continuous and never-ending jets of light disorienting her further. On top of it all, she had to deflect and dodge spells that narrowly missed her, while trying to deal out her own curses.
Fortunately, her aim was so bad that she didn't have to bother making sure her spells missed the bike. Unfortunately, the spells that missed were occasionally blowing chunks out of the buildings they flew alongside.
Ivy didn't know how long this went on before they reached the countryside, but by the time they did, she knew she couldn't keep it up much longer. Luckily, the countryside provided far less distractions and far straighter roads, so she was able to regain her thoughts somewhat.
The three of them were starting to close in on the motorbike, which was swerving from an Avada Kedavra Rosier had cast. Avery unleashed an emerald copycat curse, which was barely repelled by Potter, who had begun shouting.
It was becoming clearer to her by the second that she, Rosier, and Avery had the advantage.
Ivy could see a bend in the road coming up, but she needed to do something, and she needed to do it soon, as Rosier and Avery were slamming out spell after spell, one after the other, so quickly that they were bound to land sooner or later.
And they were both aiming to kill.
Wand at the ready, she focused in on the police cars below them, sending the occasional half-hearted spell at the motorbike. Thankfully, Avery and Rosier weren't paying her any attention.
When Potter sent red light over his shoulder, she saw her opportunity.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Her Levitation Charm hit one of the police cars at the same time as Potter's spell, and Ivy began manoeuvring the car directly into their path of flight.
At the last moment, just before they were about to make contact, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that the bend had arrived. Her broom swerved to take the curve, and with it, her wand hand.
The police car went flying to the right, over a fence and into a spread of farmland where it rolled in a spiral of light. On its fourth rotation, when the windshield shattered completely against the earth, she felt it happen again.
Another piece of her soul split off from the whole.
It latched onto the serpent pin of her cloak at the same moment.
There was no time to look forward again before she crashed into something impossibly unmovable, then dropped through thin air, slamming onto the pavement with a resounding crack.
The only thing Ivy could see was a mirror.
There was nothing else around her, as though she was hovering in a colourless, foggy void. She couldn't even feel ground beneath her feet. In fact, she wasn't sure that she had feet since she had no sensation whatsoever, aside from sight.
But even her sight didn't seem to be a sensation.
It seemed to be more of an ability, and not a controllable one.
The only way she was certain she had a body was because she was staring at her unblinking reflection. Even so, when she willed the head she supposed she had to look down where her feet might be, her sight stayed on the mirror.
"Perhaps I should have been clearer," her reflection said.
She could hear, but there was no sensation of doing so. It was more of a thought than an action. At least she could think, which was identifiable.
Her reflection vanished and the images began.
Ivy watched, unable to look away, as they died. One by one, through various means, she saw them all perish. There were thousands. Some faces were familiar, like she had known them, currently did, or eventually would. She couldn't tell which, if any.
When the images stopped, her reflection reappeared.
"Prevent it," the reflection said gently.
She distinguished that there was something vaguely unfamiliar about her reflection, that it was hers and yet someone else's. There was a quality about it that hadn't registered with her previously. That was, if previously existed. She understood the concept of time, but she also understood that time had been somewhat, if not entirely, removed from her situation.
Perhaps the lack of familiarity in her reflection was due to her appearance.
The reflected Ivy was a sort of clean and serene that Ivy found abnormal. She wore long white robes, her equally white hair loose and curled. The silver eyes that watched her relayed kindness and wisdom.
"Focus," her reflection said softly. "Let your senses guide you and you can prevent it all."
"Who are you?" Ivy asked, though there was no sensation of speaking.
"You may call me Could."
"But who are you?"
"You will know who I am," Could told her. "Do not seek me out. I will find you when you need me. Prevent what you been shown."
Ivy let out a deep gasp, like she hadn't breathed in a long time. Pain came rushing back to her, like she hadn't felt anything in a long time either. Heaving desperately for readily available air, there was a blinding pain in her back like her spine had snapped. It was mind-numbing to the point that she couldn't think past her next breath.
However, the severity of the pain was lessening by the second, as though she was being healed. Within what she thought was a few minutes, the excruciating pain in her back had gone entirely.
It gave her the capacity to notice that a duller, far more tolerable pain had localised in her right arm. While she knew it was broken, she would take it any day over what she had just felt.
Opening her eyes as she regained her breath, she found the world lopsided.
She also found Avery next to her, gazing down at her with wide eyes.
"I cannot believe that worked," he breathed, lowering his wand.
Head now relatively clear, Ivy sat up with a wince. She was lying beside a crumpled police car whose lights were still flashing, though the sirens had stopped. Her mask was beside her, surprisingly undamaged. This was more than she could say for the splintered pieces of her broom lying nearby.
"I thought you were dead," Rosier had his hands in his dark hair like he'd been pulling at it in distress.
"She was breathing the whole time," Avery said absently, gaze still focused on her.
"You know what I mean," Rosier dropped his hands into his lap, seemingly awestruck. "I thought she was going to die."
"Lucky for you, I'm still here." Her voice came out harsh like a cough. "My mother would've had your heads for getting the sole heir to the Selywn fortune bloody killed. What happened?"
"After you killed that Muggle," Rosier looked to the right where a crashed car occasionally blinked in the distance. "Brilliant work by the way – they levitated the car in front of us and we crashed. They circled back to nick some stuff off us. Didn't notice until we woke up and they'd gone. At least Frederick and I's brooms are still flyable, else we'd be stuck here."
"You two look fine," Ivy remarked.
"I'm an excellent healer," Avery smirked. "Apparently. Just brought you back from the brink of death after all."
"Want to fix this, then?" Ivy gestured to the broken arm she'd tucked against her torso.
"Sure. Brackium Emendo!"
Disgustingly enough, she felt her bones reattach in her arm. The pain stopped immediately, and she flexed her arm carefully, making sure that it was indeed fully healed. Once it passed her inspection, she realised that she was fine, aside from a few cuts and bruises.
"Alright?" Avery handed her the hazel wand she'd completely forgotten to look for.
"Yeah," Ivy confirmed, relieved to find that her wand was merely scratched.
Rosier got to his feet and headed over to two brooms that had chunks of wood missing from them. Avery rose as well, holding out a hand to help her up. Grabbing her mask, she accepted his hand, shoes crunching on broken glass as she stood. Avery gave her a smile before going to join Rosier near the edge of the road.
Fixing her satchel, which was about a centimetre away from strangling her, she secured it as it had previously been. Then, she rightened her cloak, as it had also twisted around her body during the crash.
With a start, she found that the piece of her soul in the pin had gone.
September 7th, 1977
Regulus was already buried in homework.
Although his time in Italy had been wonderful despite being with his parents, he now knew that he should have spent at least some of the time studying. Instead, his summer had been filled with Negronis, copious amounts of sugo all'amatriciana, and the hot sun.
It was exactly what he had needed. Even his parents were more tolerable in Scilla.
Smiling dreamily, he tapped the feathered end of his quill against the History of Magic textbook lying unread in front of him. He was supposed to be working on two rolls of parchment about the Witch Trials of 1692, but his mind kept wandering back to the summertime.
"Stop fidgeting," Ariadne said from beside him as she dipped her quill in ink.
Hearing muffled laughter, he looked up to see Frederick Avery at the next table, smirking at him. His study partner, Evan Rosier, had a similar glint in his eye, though they both tucked their heads as the Library's borderline tyrannical host, Madam Pince, swept between their tables to descend upon some third years playing Exploding Snap.
Clenching his jaw, he scowled down at his textbook.
He had always gotten on well with Avery, but since the start of term, Frederick had become frosty with him, making the occasional joke at his expense. Whatever problem Avery had with him, it didn't seem to bother Mulciber or Wilkes. Rosier, on the other hand, had started giving Regulus sympathetic smiles that he found acutely condescending.
"Stop it," Ariadne snapped.
Regulus continued tapping his quill defiantly.
"Poor lad," Avery whispered loudly to Rosier. "Got dumped by Ivy only to get stuck with Ariadne."
Regulus wanted to remind him that he was the one with a marriage contract to Ivy, while Avery was the one destined to get stuck with Ariadne. His mood only worsened when the nagging question of how Avery had managed to get on a first name basis with Ivy popped into his head.
But he couldn't think like that anymore.
Feeling Ariadne's stare, he looked up to find her glowering at him.
"You're driving me crazy," she hissed. "Knock it off or I'm leaving."
And what a shame that would be, he thought resentfully.
Ceasing the quill tapping, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. His girlfriend had become even more nitpicky than the year before, correcting his posture when he slouched and straightening his tie whenever he moved like Regulus was her bloody lapdog.
Taking a breath, he reminded himself of the promise he'd made to himself over the summer; try harder.
It wasn't just about Ariadne, but about everything related to pureblood society.
After his conversation with Ivy and Theya last May, he realised that he had been dangerously close to agreeing with them. He hadn't come to the same conclusion -at the time, he hadn't really come to any conclusion- but he knew he had started down a treacherous path. Backtracking was the only option, as the implications of their conversation could be devastating.
Being around his parents all summer had reminded him of that. Not to mention, the idea that Sirius may be right about any of it made him livid.
So, he grudgingly smiled at Ariadne and took her free hand in his under the table.
"Thanks for reminding me," he whispered.
"Oh," she looked up at him, surprised, before breaking into a happy grin. "Anytime. On that note, you're slouching."
Regulus felt his eye twitch.