In mid June, of nineteen seventy-nine, there was a death in the Fawley family. Not the first, not last, but one of the series of deaths that accompanied the unnamed civil unrest of that era.

Eric Fawley, the younger brother of Hector, who has been killed two years ago, was nearly alone in life - except with a child that was (gracefully) still sleeping. There was no reason for the Aurors to be here any longer, but they still linger - like dejected dogs. Looking for a scent long since taken with the wind.

Taken as Mrs. Fawley was; swiftly.

They didn't clean the blood up. Of course, he could do that now himself. After all, there was nothing more to be gleaned from his wife's nonsensical death. He'd been a good boy. He'd done as told. She still died.

She was gone, and he stood on a marble foyer smeared with her last presence in this house - this house he'd bought for them after the inheritance fell to him, the second son. It was all for nothing, if not for their baby lain in her crib above. Without her, Eric would have demanded answers and screamed and begged and pleaded for an explanation, retribution, something.

But he did not. He did as told, accepted the lack of answers from the Aurors, and tended to his child.

The only change after Mrs. Fawley's small funeral in Eric was that it was the last time he held pure faith in Lord Voldemort. It was a quiet sort of dissension, but there all the same.

The ceiling was a very pale shade of blue. Blythe Fawley was alive. She promptly threw up on the first Healer that came to her bedside.

"Shush, it's alright," another woman in dark orange robes told her. Her breaths didn't come in any gentler, and eventually a potion was tilted into her gasping mouth. As the warm haze of a calming draught overtook her senses, a pleasant buzz travelled her veins in the aftermath of panic.

"What happened?" She asked. As if she didn't remember - drinking and celebrating, a quick hello and goodbye to her father as hordes of World Cup watchers took to running... as they realised something was amiss. Her father had known to warn her, wait for her, and then left her to run back into it. The man who tried to save her, who might've actually saved her - the wizard who had attacked them. The woman and her child wounded, made away with the portkey her father had intended for her. The Death Eaters. The Dark Mark. A man gleaming under the green skies.

"You were at the World Cup," the Healer told her. Maybe it was a mediwitch, she couldn't tell the difference as the woman pet her arm. It was strange, but Blythe didn't tell her to stop. "There was a terrible... someone individuals drank a little too much, maybe. Either way the Death Eaters were used as a symbol of a begone era. They destroyed the encampment."

"Were they caught?"

"No," she said, as calmly as she had said all else. "Not at all." With a small smile, she asked her, "Would you like to see your father? He's been waiting for you."

How could she not want to see him? When naught else was making sense?

She felt very small in her hospital bed as her father stood at the foot of it, looking for all the world like he'd died thrice over.

"I can't feel my leg," she told him.

"I know," he says. "That's normal. Do you remember everything?"

She nodded, and played with the thread of the thin cotton blanket she had for decency. "You didn't... catch anyone."

He came around to sit at her side, the bed dipping around his weight. "No," he said offhandedly. "Do you remember how you got hurt?" He asked.

"A man," she said. "A- a man cursed me, and someone else tried to warn me... I didn't see him before that. I was trying to avoid the Death Eaters by the trees... they were waiting there, playing with people... I had to go around somewhere else to get to the woods. I was scared," she choked, the feeling in her throat hard to swallow.

He grabbed her hand. "It was very scary," he said. "It's okay to be scared. You didn't see who cursed you?"

"No," she said quietly. "He came really close to me - " Her father's grip on her hand tightened, " but he had something charmed around his hood... I couldn't see anything, and anyways the pain... I couldn't even... it hurt..." Her father looked away to floor, as if in great pain himself. Blythe felt grounded by his hand around hers, and squeezed back.

"It's not your fault," she said quietly. "I should've been faster."

"You should've used the Portkey," he hissed.

She winced. "I know, but I hadn't even got past the woods when I was cursed. Even if I'd had it - "

"The wards fell - "

"Which I only knew because the man Apparated away!" They both fell quiet and though her father was tense she knew he wasn't really angry with her, but likely just everything. "He fled because of the Mark, didn't he?" Blythe said quietly. "They were afraid. Afraid that he was really back."

"No one thinks that," he told her sternly. "They would... they would know if he was there. But to cast the Mark - it's different. It wasn't something they did after the Dark Lord's fall... only his most loyal continued to do so, until captured. They were afraid that the true faithful had come."

"That man ran from the caster," Blythe said. A vision of hair lit up by green filled her eyes, a narrow nose and wild eyes. Mad eyes. "I... I saw him."

"I wish only you'd seen his face," her father said. "I wish, actually, none of this had happened at all but if you had some description to go off of perhaps this..." He gritted his teeth. "This attacker could be found."

"Not him," Blythe said. "I mean I saw the man who cast the Dark Mark. He came right up to me. I thought he would k-kill me, like the other man likely would've. But I don't remember anything else. Just that man standing over me, and waking here. But father..." She squeezed his hand. "I remember his face."

He looked at her for a long moment. "Tell me," he said. "Please, what you can."

"He was maybe brown-haired, or even blond... I couldn't tell in the dark and with the Mark glowing in the sky, but his hair is lighter. He wore a long black cloak - but it looked funny. The material looked strange and shiny. He looked mad. Not angry, I mean - I mean proper mad. He was happy, too. I think. I could see all his teeth..." Blythe trailed off.

"Anything else?" He asked. "Anything at all?"

"He was young," she said. "I think. But I saw him, father, does that help? I'd know him if I saw him again."

"Have you seen him before?" He pressed. "Just possibly, anywhere?"

"No," she shook her head. "I know that I haven't. Dad - are you alright? I hadn't even asked -"

"I'm fine," he said. "Not barely a scratch."

The silence returned.

"How long have I been here?"

"A few hours. It's nearly eight in the morning."

"It feels like I've been out for weeks, and yet I've not even had a full night's sleep."

He began to rub soothing circles on her palm.

"Dad," she asked hesitantly. "Are the Aurors going to ask me anything?"

He frowned and looked at the floor again, as if it held some mysterious answers. "No. After all, you didn't see anything of your attacker to help their search. They have plenty of other eyewitnesses to bother."

Blythe wasn't surprised by her father's answer. She surmised he had already told Aurors where to stuff it, and intended for her to do the same (by courtesy of not having any information, at least). But the illuminated figure of the man who cast the Dark Mark into the sky haunted her. She wondered if her poor description could be identifying to anyone at all.

The most she had was a probable hair colour and 'looking quite mad'.

"Can we go home?" She asked quietly.

"Yes," her father said, mind still lost in the floor. "Yes, of course. And next time I give you a Portkey, you do not give it to the first person you see. That is our home. You don't know who those people could've been."

"Oh - is she alright, and the child -"

"Yes, both straight to, well, here. Mungo's. They visited you around five in the morning."

"That's nice," she said quietly as her father stood.

"All the same," he said wearily. "It's our home. Be more wary."

"Yes, I will," she promised. And they went home, and for the first time in nearly fifteen years Eric Fawley could see again the blood smears on the foyer as he ushered his teen daughter inside, limping.

Not this one, he said to no one at all. I shall be the last Fawley to die for this, if any more of us at all. Not my baby. Our baby.

After settling her into room, and she wrangled him into promising to acquire a new house elf, he retired to his study and gently tucked away his own silver mask. If only he could so neatly pack away all his regrets, mistakes, successes, and choices into a drawer like so.