"War is what happens when language fails."

-Margaret Atwood

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PART 1: Language, Failing.

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PARKINSON

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The world is not quiet here.

Darkness gathers, and the overlords cackle, as the thick pungent scent of burning flesh fills this Halloween night's air.

The wise ones – the old werewolves - secrete silently in the thick of the forbidden forest, watching with feral, amber eyes the way that the ominous grey clouds teem with young vampires.

There is a war here, brewing.

There will be blood.

This is no safe place for a pregnant girl. No shelter for her to try and hide.

But she runs to it anyway. Emerald robes billowing behind her, the gasping pureblood embraces the darkness like it was made to envelop her -- like she is a lover desperate for only death's kiss.

And she is.

She is.

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GRANGER

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She is a thief. Stealing into the shadows of the abandoned Grimmauld place, flinging nasty hexes at the ancient Black portraits that line the walls along the way. It is a cold place now. Undesirable. Though memories haunt the halls like the remembered laughter of children singing along to Christmas songs. Here is the tile gregarious Fred once knocked George over. There is the closet Ron snuck her into for a quick snog.

And everywhere is Harry.

Lost.

Never forgotten.

Still, she can appreciate the familiarity of it, despite the grief so bitter and black against the roof of her mouth. She clears her throat against the tears that always gather when she thinks of him, no matter how many months or years or birthdays it has been. This is a place best left behind, she remembers - even as Kingsley's lined, mauled face suddenly appears before her.

"What is your middle name?" he asks.

She counts the times she's seem him cast a silent Avada and decides not to tempt his ire.

"Jane."

"Not Jean?" He says, though some of the tension in his face has faded away at her admission.

"McGonagall's mistake, typing me into the Hogwarts's registry." Better the enemy she understands, she thinks uncharitably, leaving him behind as she strides into Moody's old war room. Old magic lingers against the walls. Black magic too, the kind of Spells Severus used to cast. "Not that it mattered," she adds bitterly, "Just another mudblood, right? At least, until my life was linked with Harry's."

She feels rather than sees his flinch, relishes it even. But he says nothing and watches her with eyes less expressive than she'd expected.

"Why am I here?"

"You're not going to ask me any questions?"

"You are Kingsley." Hermione says with no arrogance or uncertainty or suspicion. "Now tell me what you want."

He pauses a moment, as though to consider her request, before he makes his way to an empty chair surrounded by tattered cloths and broken china. He still has the walk of someone important. Still holds his head every bit like man who'd have been a fine minister. She finds she cannot resent that, no matter how badly she wants to.

There is a decade of exhaustion in his sigh. "I want it over."

She will not insult him by asking him what he means. It is written into every history book, this war. Even some obscure muggle ones. She has no words for him. Shocked as she is by what he is asking. "By any means necessary?"

"Yes."

The jab of her wand to his throat does not surprise him, but the fierce, almost savage blaze in her eyes jolts him out of his performed ennui. "How many of us had to die Kingsley? How many of us?" She shakes him, clutching at his robes, screaming the words into his face as he closes his eyes against the spittle.

He does not beg, and he does not shrink, and eventually she shoves his limp body away, as though the stain of him is tainting. Hermione paces, running her hand through her wild curls, looking a little bit like Lady Lestrange before she fell. "You will serve us. You will serve us down to the bone in your hands, and you will not die until I give the command. Are we clear?"

Kingsley only looks into her eyes once. It is enough.

"Crystal."

GREENGRASS

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There were many things amiss as of late.

At least, that is what Daphne permits herself to admit privately in the unnatural hours of the night, her Occlumency walls and headache dissipating. She sighs her relief, breathing deeply now that the tension charm in her corset has been broken. Only when the night elves are hard at work and the daughters of fae are charming the roses pink, are her own thoughts emancipated. Only when father and his consorts have had their fill of blood and revelry is she free.

Her hands shake as she unclips her black hair, as she rips apart the pearls at her neck, as she tears at the fabric her mother will silently mend come morning. To be pure-blooded is to cope silently. It is always soundless here – she wants to scream. To be an heiress, well… that is to never show when you have reached the point of breaking. But she is breaking, has been breaking for a very long time, and the Dark Lord… She takes a deep breath, lowers her shoulders.

The Dark Lord remains victorious.

What was it Narcissa once said?

For Draco.

What good had that ever done her?

Daphne wonders about it still – how did she find the courage to do it? Was Voldemort so deluded then, to believe so easily her lie, or had Narcissa simply been too brave and too foolish? It was then that they had all realised the cunning truth of it; that a mother could stand willingly before the rage of a madman. That a boy could fool a god from the pulpit. And yet, they had learned other things also:

That death could sting.

That Gods could retaliate.

And that martyrs didn't save a revolution.

There was no freedom. Not here. And if there were, it wasn't meant for people like her.

"Daphne?"

The young woman turns quietly to the sound of her mother's voice. Even out here, at the highest tower where not a soul can hear them, her mother whispers. The older woman walks bravely across the ledge, her black silken robes trailing gently against the cold stone wall. It must be a mother thing, Daphne realises. That willingness to die for another's life. The heat of her mother's hand against her arm is unexpected. The comfort she feels at it, alien.

Anastasia Greengrass ignores the torn robes, observing simply the hair blown gracefully in the whispered wind. "It is confirmed. You will marry Theodore Nott in the morning."

"And his mistress?" She returns dryly.

"You will learn to… endure."

Daphne is not naïve enough to laugh. She turns her eyes to observe her mother's ageing face, considering her words for a moment before speaking them. Her first instinct is to lash out, but she wishes to rise above such things. If she must pick a side, she wants to be brave. Be like Narcissa. "Does father have no objections. Senior Nott aimed the Avada that killed Ast-"

"It has been decided. The Dark Lord's orders."

Her mother does not cry for the daughter she is losing to her husband's juvenile decisions. She does not fight. She is not foolish or brave enough to stand in the way of a raving lunatic, and perhaps that is why she has not yet been killed. Somehow, she stands at the edge of a ledge in a five story Manor, ignoring Daphne's torn robes and the whispered warnings blowing like the wind about her daughter's fine hair, and she seems to feel not a thing.

Daphne steps back, watching the other woman with eyes too brutal and fierce to be docile. "I will marry him. I remain silent and ever without an opinion as he parades his deranged lover proudly for the entertainment of murders. But I will cut my own womb out with a parting knife before surrendering my own child."

Hours later, when the echoes of Daphne's furious footsteps have hollowed, the elder Greengrass's lips tilt up in a proud, triumphant smile. She turns to the lone man hiding in the shadows, her small eyes pleading. "Now do you believe me?"

"She is ready," he replies.