The wizengamot were silent, and motionless. No longer were they a pack of wolves staring down a woodland rodent, but dogs. Dogs with enough jaw power to break a spine, submitting to their master's voice.

The woman in the chair was not attractive, nor loud, nor imposing. But she sat on most of the wealth of the wizarding world, and held most of the members of the wizengamot on short chains welded to their family secrets.

She sat slumped in the chair, weakened. She was not yet sixty but once chestnut curls had become gray and wiry. Her skin was sallow, her bones brittle. But the money had remained. And the secrets.

James barely recognised her.

"Mrs Black..." Millicent Bagnold repeated. "we're waiting for an answer."

James scarcely dared to breathe. The press box was packed, each journalist leaning forward, enthralled, not moving lest they miss a word of the testimony. James was not meant to be there. One ruffle of the invisibility cloak and he would be found out.

The chamber echoed with the sound of Walburga Black's unhealthy lungs. She breathed like a sleeping dragon; a rumbling, grating congestion. The senior members looked uncomfortable the longer the noise filled the room.

Mrs Black lifted her head. "You've killed me..."

James felt a shiver down his arm. Her voice was nothing like it once was. She'd always spoken with a frosty clipped manor, but with a voice like cold running water. She was once unnervingly eloquent and composed. Loss did strange things to people, James knew this, but grief had attacked her body like a disease.

James remembered a conversation he'd had at Hogwarts with Sirius. After an altercation between the Black brothers, Regulus had told Sirius of their mother's heart-break at their estrangement. "Good," Sirius had replied. "I hope it cripples her."

"Mrs Black, I know you are unwell," Bagnold remained steely. "and we do not wish to put you under any stress. But this will finish much quicker if you answer our questions truthfully."

The sound of her breathing made James wince. He pictured her house in Grimmauld Place, with that horrible house elf, and supposed he was not surprised at her decline.

"...I've told you..." her voice was as hoarse as a man who'd smoked his entire life. "...and I've told your aurors... I do not know where Bellatrix Lestrange is hiding."

"She's your niece, is she not?" asked a man sitting beside Bagnold. "The Black family is notoriously close-knit."

Her lips stretched slowly across her face as she managed a grainy chuckle. "Close knit..? You should see the tapestry now..."

The clerk, whose quill's fluttering had been distracting, paused and looked around at the wizengamot for some confirmation of what she'd heard.

"Mrs Black..." Mrs Bagnold began. "When was the last time you saw your niece Bellatrix?"

Walburga began to cough. It was a gristly, disgusting noise. "Five years ago... my brother's funeral."

"She did not attend the funeral of your son, her cousin?"

She lowered her gaze, looking predatory. "No."

She would have been busy, James thought. I could name several people she killed that year.

"Mrs Black, after the death of your brother..." the man speaking referred to his notes, "... Cygnus Black in 1978, you obtained the rights to his property and vaults as his nominated heir- your son, Regulus Arcturus Black- was underrage. Is that correct?"

"...Do not speak his name."

The man cleared his throat. "Mrs Black, is that correct?"

"I will not have my son's name used against me..."

"Mrs Black, please answer my colleague's question," The Minister interjected. "We only want confirmation of the facts."

Walburga Black scowled at the Minister. "My son was seventeen when my brother died. I acquired the deeds."

"It seems you and your brother had a close and trusting relationship, Mrs Black, is that a fair assumption?"

"Do not speak his name."

The man rolled his eyes. "Mrs Black, please-"

The Minister held her hand up to stop him. "Cygnus Black is deceased, therefore we shall not make assumptions on his character nor his personal life in his absence. Mrs Black, please answer questions put to you simply and honestly."

James heard the journalist sitting next to him gulp.

"Mrs Black..." the interrogative man began again. "...you acquired the full rights to vault eight, and rights by-proxy to vault four hundred and three and vault four hundred and eighteen, that correct?"

Walburga leant forward in her chair. "Yessssssss" she hissed sarcastically.

The man consulted his notes again. "For the record, I am presenting Mrs Black records of the deeds to each vault in Gringotts Bank currently under ownership by the name of Mrs Walburga Black."

From the man's desk, several yellowish papers floated upwards and curled in on themselves, and began to drift through the air towards Walburga Black. When they reached her, she did not take them. They hung in the air, beside her chair, waiting for her.

"The first deed, to vault three hundred and ninety nine, has been under ownership of Mrs Walburga Black since 1925, the year of her birth... the second deed, to vault four hundred, has been under the ownership of Mrs Walburga Black since 1979, having been transferred to her name after the death of Regulus Black..."

The wizengamot collectively jumped in their seats as Mrs Black gave an aggressive reptilian hiss.

The man, oddly not deterred by this display, continued. "... the third deed, to vault three hundred and eighty two, has been under the ownership of Mrs Walburga Black since 1976 after the by-proxy ownership of the vault by Mr Sirius Black was redacted."

James narrowed his eyes, searching Mrs Black's face for an abhorrent expression at Sirius' mention. She did not react.

"Vault eight has been under Mrs Black's ownership since Cygnus Black's death in 1978 and Mrs Black relinquished the rights to vault four hundred and three to Mrs Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, upon her coming of age in 1974."

The Minister looked up from where she had begun to stare into space, bored by these factual ramblings, and waited for him to make a point.

"There is a deed missing."

The man pulled out a piece of paper from a pile and read it. "The ownership of vault four hundred and eighteen, acquired by Mrs Black in 1978, was passed over to Bellatrix Lestrange in 1980."

The wizengamot began to simmer with murmurs.

The Minister looked at Walburga Black. The man, empowered by the wizengamot's interest in this revelation, sat up straighter. "Mrs Black, did you or did you not relinquish a Gringotts Vault containing upwards of one hundred and sixteen thousand galleons to your niece, the fugutive, Bellatrix Lestrange?"

The wizengamot grew louder, then a loud flash and bang like that of a firecracker emitted from the Minister's wand. She waited for silence.

"Answer the question, Mrs Black."

"... That vault was intended for Cygnus' heir upon my own death. My son was dead... Narcissa bore a boy... Bellatrix would have been destitute..."

"So you admit that you financially supported Bellatrix Lestrange?"

Walburga Black growled. "I gave her what was rightfully hers."

"You knew full well that she would use your late brother's galleons to support her life of torture and murder?"

Walburga gave a tired wheezy sigh. "I am a dead woman. She had better use of it."

The man exclaimed at Walburga's words, as did several other people in the room. The Minister called for silence again.

"Mrs Black," The Minister was composed. "You just told the wizengamot that you hadn't seen your niece since 1978. When you gave the vault to her, you hadn't seen her in over two years. If you wanted to relinquish your money to someone with greater need for it, why her?"

Walburga growled like a threatened dog.

"Was it because you were lonely? You live alone, you've lost much of your family, you're sick... ?"

Walburga stared at the Minister with a sword-sharp stare.

"Or were you simply that embittered that you would give your money over to a murderer rather than let your son Sirius inherit-?"

From within Walburga came a horrific sound, a screech like old metal, and her arm raised as if to curse Bagnold.

Bagnold watched Walburga with pity while the rest of the wizengamot shook.

"You wish to dig up the past, Minister?!" shrieked Walburga at a volume James hadn't thought her capable of. "Let us dig! Whose past shall we resurrect, Milicent?! Your brother's?! Or your daughter's?!"

The Minister stood up.

The wizengamot fell silent.

"Mrs Black... you are already facing a sentence to Azkaban. It is only in my power to decide whether or not you are entitled to a Compassionate Pardon. And if you die in Azkaban... your money goes where I say it goes."

Walburga's snarling simmered down to the low rumbling of diseased lungs.

The Minister sat down again. "Mrs Black, You have publically expressed anti-muggle sentiments, calling yourself..." she peered down at her notes. "...a 'traditionalist'. Testimonies from Fidelia Lestrange, Minerva McGonagall and Jesper Goyle report that your niece used that exact word and cited you as her font of knowledge. It sounds almost as if she idolised you."

"Pathetic..." Walburga spat.

"Who is pathetic, Mrs Black? Me?"

"Her. Bellatrix."

The Minister looked intrigued. "You were not fond of your niece, Mrs Black?"

"She wanted attention. Validation. Constant, constant praise. It made me itch."

The Minister looked gravely serious. "What happened to her, Mrs Black?"

Walburga thought, and James saw a flicker of the ice queen she once was.

"Her mother was sour..." Walburga began, low and sneering. "... never smiled. Nothing the girls did could please her. She groomed them for power, and Bellatrix soaked it up. Narcissa was a runt. Andromeda was a weed. It all fell on Bellatrix's shoulders... and she became impossible. Druella knew her daughters, just like she, would amount to nothing... so she sold them. Betrothed them to rich boys. Auctioned them like farm animals. And when Andromeda betrayed them... Bellatrix went insane."

James looked beside him. None of the journalists were writing anything at all.

"The Dark Lord. He saw her desperation and exploited it. She was his pet."

"That sounds upsetting..." The Minister folded her arms. "Your own niece, an impressionable young girl, being used by a man for his own gain... if it were my niece, I'd be very worried about her."

Walburga snorted. "An anarchist... she was an embarrassment. Unhinged. Disturbed."

"Disturbed?"

"She killed her mother."

Jaws dropped. The wizengamot stirred. The journalists scribbled for the first time in minutes.

The man beside the Minister stood up suddenly. "Druella Black died of natural causes! It was confirmed!"

Walburga gave a cruel snigger. "By who?"

The man hurriedly scanned his notes. "By... by the coroner... who was, er..."

"What was their family name? Crabbe? Burke? Black?"

Around James, people had their hands clasped to their mouths. They looked around at each other.

"You people..." Walburga smirked. "You think you have control, you think you have the wizarding world under your thumb. You do not. One man with enough of a spine to lead an opposition against you is dead. But this is not the end."

The man shook his head, horrified. "No. You are wrong. The Death Eaters are over. The entire purist movement is dead. This is the new world now!"

The Minister brought her hand up to silence him again. She looked at Walburga with disappointed concern.

"Mrs Black, are you testifying that Druella Black was murdered by her own daughter, Bellatrix Lestrange?"

Walburga smiled with contentment. "It was a mercy killing. She hated being alive."

James could tell the Minister many things about Walburga Black that he'd always thought made her a monster. He was glad Sirius was absent for this.

"You knew about this? And didn't think to report it?"

"It seemed unimportant."

James almost joined in with the congregation's shouting.

"Well!" said The Minister with a dramatic sigh. "We'll add matricide to Mrs Lestrange's list of charges!"

The wizengamot gave a bleat of approval and applause. Walburga looked around at them, uneasy.

"I hereby charge Mrs Walburga Black with aiding and abetting a serial killer. All those in favour of passing sentence, raise your hand."

A sea of hands flew up, and a flurry of loud support.

"Walburga Black, you have been found guilty of aiding and abetting a serial killer. You have knowingly provided financial support to a murderer, you have failed to report a murder and in doing so have allowed a disturbed witch to remain exposed to wizarding society. Is there anything you wish to say before I pass sentence?"

Walburga Black leaned forward, almost until she fell, and stood up.

"I stand by my earlier remarks, Minister..." she clutched the arm of the chair for support. "You have murdered me."

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Lily's current spiritual paradise was the small back garden of her neighbour, Heli Norberg. Heli's cabin had a porch and a postage stamp-sized patch of lawn bordered by flower beds and low rickety fence. The fence seemed a pointless barrier between Heli's house and the forest. There was nobody around to protect the house from. Fox and moose could easily jump the fence, as could her dog. But the enclosed garden space, filled with colour and ornaments and whimsy, made Lily feel like she had spent her childhood in this cabin, as though Heli were a great-aunt she visited often.

Heli's garden was bordered by lavender and fox gloves and brightly-coloured flowers that showed the telltale signs of magical enhancement. Dotted around the lawn were statues of pixies and cats. A huge statue of a lynx in the corner of the garden hissed at Harry whenever he tried to approach it, frightening him. Lily had deduced that the purpose of the statue was to deter Heli's cat and dog for urinating on the strawberry plant in the corner. In a tiny green-house the size of a telephone box, Heli was growing tomatoes. She sent Lily home with a basket of them each time she visited.

Lily's favourite part of Heli's garden was her collection of wind chimes. They hung from the drainpipe edging the porch roof, each with a pretty motif hanging above the chimes. Heli had an oak leaf, a crescent moon, a cauldron, a fish, a sea shell, a dragon, a black cat and Lily's favourite, a sunflower. They were stained glass and made the porch glow with such bright colours that the kitchen indoors was awash with colour too. Lily wanted to start her own collection, and when she saw Harry gaze at them when the sun shone sealed the deal.

Lily sat on one of the chairs on the porch, mint tea on the table, feeding Matilda while she read a letter. It was one that Nymphador had written to Andromeda, who'd thrust it into her face proudly upon her arrival in Sweden. It was a long piece of parchment, neat cursive disintegrating into excited scribble as Dora told her stories.

Andromeda stepped out onto the porch and put a plate of sandwiches and cheese on the table. "These are from Heli. She's making more... aren't you freezing?" Andromeda asked her. Lily looked up, and saw Andromeda staring at her feet, which were bare.

"Nope. Warmed by the loving arms of Mother Nature."

"This is Sweden."

"It's unseasonably warm! You're just used to a warmer climate."

"You're right. Tropical Austria has completely altered my perceptions of temperature."

Andromeda's arrival in Sweden felt like Christmas. When Lily's edition of Tiger Eye was published and their potential for anonymity was extinguished, the Potters' guard came down. When they learned that Ted would be discharged from St Mungos in a matter of days, they saw no reason why he should not recover in the country air, with Andromeda, in a house significantly larger than the third-storey apartment Andromeda had inhabited in Vienna, with the Potters able to take care of him as well as his wife. They proposed the idea to Andromeda with trepidation. She may have felt patronised by their offer of extra care. But she moved in to their house the following morning.

"She's used the word 'splendid' twice in that letter. I'm worried she's making friends with the snooty sort."

"She writes very well," Lily commented with a smile.

Andromeda pondered Lily's remark, then returned to the game she had been playing with Harry. She and the boy had been sat on the grass for some time, sitting spread-legged like teddy bears, rolling a ball to-and-fro. Harry wasn't very good at it, and seemed more interested in his own babbling. But Andromeda missed children, and any engagement with Harry was more than she now received at home.

"Nymphadora couldn't spell her own name until she was nine."

Lily studied her own daughter's face as she responded. "I don't blame her. It's a long name. Beautiful, obviously! Just... long for a child."

"I was a shitty teacher. Ted's mum begged me to let her tutor her instead. I gave up in the end."

Lily looked up. "Dora was home-schooled?"

Andromeda stared at her. "As opposed to what?"

Lily frowned. All of her friends at Hogwarts had been muggle-born, with the exception of Alice, whose position as the only magic-born girl in the dormitory meant that she didn't like to talk about life at home. Students from rich wizarding families, like James and Sirius, talked of tutors. It had always sounded beyond dull.

"I know muggles send their kids to school the moment they exit the womb," said Andromeda. "My mother used to go on and on about it. She loved to tell people how uncaring and incompetent muggle mothers were, which is a bloody laugh because she wouldn't know what a loving mother was if she sat on one. Merlin, I would've loved to spend all day in school as a child if it got me away from that cow."

Suddenly Lily recalled a conversation at Hogwarts in which James and Sirius were sharing horror stories about their tutors, saying that Peter and Remus were 'lucky' to have never endured such torture.

"What do other families do?"

"Hmm?"

"If parents can't afford a tutor, where do they send their kids?"

Andromeda twisted round with an arrogant smile. "'Send'? Oh, my poor muggle-born friend, we magic folk suffer through the agony of teaching our children by ourselves."

Lily cringed.

"Years of tantrums, boredom, mess, judgment, cabin fever and the painful confrontation of your own stupidity. Truly, it is a character-builder."

Lily had awful visions of Harry and Matilda, older children, slumped over the dining table with post-rage fatigue, surrounded by parchment and books, their resentment towards Lily radiating from them like heat from an iron. She tried to focus on a silver-lining. She would have many more full days to spend with her children than muggle mothers. She dreaded to think of her sister's weeping on Dudley's first day of school. Lily would cry too, on Harry's first day, but at least he would not pine for his mother in the way that Dudley would.

"Don't look so terrified," Andromeda berated her. "You can afford a tutor, can't you?"

Lily nodded slowly. She knew that James had hated his tutor, and had attributed his adolescent aversion to focus and authority to him. It was extremely unlikely James would want his own children to suffer the same way.

"James will help you," Andromeda assured her. "He'll have to."

"James is an auror-in-training," Lily reminded her. "And stop reading my mind!"

"And you're a writer!" Andromeda argued. "Your career is just as important as his."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Lily asked, not looking for a genuine answer but merely highlighting the impracticality of the system that all families apparently used.

"Tutor," said Andromeda with a shrug. "Tutor or bust."

Lily winced. Even the idea of a tutor was boring.

She had several years before any of that worry was needed. She watched Harry re-engage with Andromeda's game, failing to catch the ball when rolled to him, and while she thought he'd looked so much more like a grown child since his sister was born, he still looked like a baby.

Lily watched as Harry finally did catch the ball, and held onto it despite Andromeda's awaiting arms.

Andromeda sighed, unimpressed. "Hasn't quite grasped the concept of back-and-forth yet, has he..."

Harry did throw the ball then, but aimlessly into the air instead of towards his playing mate.

Lily narrowed her eyes at him with concern. "Or hand-eye coordination. That'll be his first lesson topic, I suppose."

Andromeda studied him. "Do you think he might need glasses?"

Lily sat upright. "No..." she watched Harry's face sharply. "He has my eyes."

Giving up on him, Andromeda stood and brushed grass and dirt from her trousers. "You'd better find out soon. You'll never teach him how to read if he's blind. Ooh..." She bent back down sharply and picked up her rucksack. "That reminds me..." She opened the bag and dug around, and pulled out a handful of magazines.

"You have to sign these for me later."

She handed four copies of Tiger Eye to Lily, who stared darkly at her.

"Why?"

"One for me, one for Dora, and two for me to auction."

Lily smiled sarcastically. "That's the only reason you're my friend. I'm your money-making scheme."

Andromeda sat on the chair across from Lily and rested her feet on top of the table. "Sadly, it's all I've got."

Lily frowned. "Is Ted still unwell?"

Andromeda looked down at her hands. "He's never going to be well again. His tremors are permanent. They make him stutter."

"Oh my God, Annie..."

"It's not the end of the world," Andromeda shrugged. "Mr Vance says it probably won't stop him from doing his job, but I'm trying to find a job so that he doesn't have to go back at all..."

"Who's Mr Vance?"

Andromeda gave a sly smile. "The Head Healer. Cornelius Peck. Ted and I call him Mr Vance on account of his not-remotely-secret affair with little miss Emmeline."

Lily couldn't resist giving a chuckle. "They're a weird match, aren't they?"

"She's always there," Andromeda smiled. "always whining about the ugly bed covers or the food or her own boredom..."

"Poor Mr Peck... he seems like a decent man. Emmeline doesn't get in the way too much, does she?"

"Not really. She doesn't talk to Peck much at all, actually. She mostly keeps the Longbottoms company."

Lily grimaced. She disliked being confronted by her own failings, especially ones so opaque as neglecting her friends.

"I'll visit them tomorrow," Lily promised aloud.

"I'd go with you, but it's not a good idea..." Andromeda looked at her. "The Prophet will report my aunt's interrogation tomorrow. Merlin knows what sort of shit she's spewing right now..."

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Dear Padfoot,

I think that every time I write to you for the rest of my life, I will be reminded of the war, and the weeks we spent apart. To be thrown from spending every hour of every day together to planning missions by way of ink and owl was tough. Your mother's interrogation reminded me of why we did it.

Your mother is worse, Padfoot. Not a monster anymore, but a creature. She is barely human, partly decomposing, sickly and barely recognisable. She was always awful, but she was crafty and manipulative in her cruelty. Now, she is sour. She was clever once, and thought herself to be intimidating. She spits and grunts and swears. Fortunately, this means that her transformation is so shocking that the Prophet will be able to report on little else. I saw the journalists' faces. This also means that neither the press nor the Wizengamot took her very seriously. She barely mentioned you, but if she ever does in the future, it will be taken with a pinch of salt. Or a pound of it.

Josephina Burke punched Lily in the face recently. I know that tensions are high in the Alleys these days but Lily was holding the baby, so this was not a simple rage reaction from a casual blood-purist but an attack from somebody who would not care if she harmed a baby while exacting revenge. There was a witness to this incident, Isaiah Zabini, who suggests that Mrs Burke's sons are a human force field around her. Use your contacts in the Alleys to find out what you can about these people. They run Borgin and Burke's. When you have the time, we must meet.

Bellatrix survived the war on your mother's monetary donations. Those are finite resources and have probably run out. She does not have long.

Prongs.

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A/N: Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a favourite character in this story?

The next chapter is going to be lit.

N x