I did two chapters this week, so if you haven't read since 56 and clicked whatever the 'latest chapter' button is, you might wanna double check and make sure this is the right chapter to read next.

BBaRtS

Some years ago

Agatha Smith beamed down at the parchment. Hand-written, with an emphasis on the first word 'Congratulations', was a letter informing her that she'd been chosen as the prefect for the Hufflepuff House. Although she didn't know it for sure; she couldn't help but assume Gregory had gotten the same letter.

His probably a lot less familiar and a lot more boilerplate.

She wasn't really sure why everyone found him so boring as to be forgettable. To her, there was no one in the entire world as fascinatingly memorable as her best friend. Greggy constantly amazed her with the way it was like he was learning every spell they were taught for a second time. His gift for prophecy was especially fascinating, it had even saved her social life at one point when he came barging into the girl's dorm while she was changing to say that her father was planning on coming to the school ball as a chaperone.

If she'd shown up wearing the original dress she'd picked, one that only came down to her knees and left more than a fair bit of her shoulders showing, the man would've eviscerated her.

It was also fun to see the way the boy had blushed when he saw her in her corset and other undergarments.

As her thoughts continued to be dominated by her blossoming love, she couldn't put off writing to him any longer. She fiddled about the various drawers on her makeup stand until she'd found a quill, a mostly-full inkpot, and a piece of parchment that she knew for certain he'd recognise as the back of as their transfigurations homework. Hopefully it would leave him tickled.

Dearest Greggy,

I hope this letter finds you well. I have so many, many questions for you. How has your summer break been? That one is a classic, and I ask and want the answer every time. How has your summer apprenticeship treated you? This one is of a similar vein, and just like before, my curiosity has not diminished. Have you been thinking of me? I'm just curious. What does the future hold for us?

I'm sure you'll answer them all in your way, even if the last one is a bit vague.

I was inspired to write you an extra letter because, as fate would have it, I have been chosen as the Hufflepuff prefect. I just know you've been chosen as well, I'll be devastated if you haven't been. Please tell me you have. You have, haven't you? I know you have.

No matter what, I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours,

Aggy

Just as Agatha was about to begin rolling up the parchment, she paused, and picked up her quill once more.

P.S.

I miss you.

With a girlish giggle, she rolled the letter up, and tied it shut with one of her rapidly diminishing supply of ribbons. She and Gregory had been writing to each other all summer, as they had done since their second summer apart, and the fact that she had only three left was a sure sign she'd be able to talk to him in person again soon. The poor fool hadn't written to her at all their first summer apart, saying that he was sure she'd somehow forget him, but she'd set him straight. Once she was sure the paper wouldn't come undone midflight, she made her way upstairs to the 'owlery'.

The owlery was what her mother called the attic, since that's where they kept Feathers. The tenacious old barn owl was no less ornery today than he had ever been, nipping at her fingers as Agatha fastened her letter to his leg. She hissed through her teeth when the awful thing actually managed to draw blood.

"Just you wait," she huffed, jerking her hand back and just hoping that the letter was secure. "They said you might be getting drafted soon. Forced to carry orders and commands for that awful new war."

The pugnacious bird practically sneered at her as it hopped on to the window sill then took off into the sunrise.

Remus threw back another glass of what was basically ethanol with the vaguest notion of a lemon having nodded in the original bottle's direction, and continued to contemplate the choice Hydrus had given him.

Peter Pettigrew.

The man had once been one of his closest friends. He still remembered the chubby traitor crying on his shoulder as Remus had helped clean his sheets after an unfortunate mid-night accident. He thought of the lone moment of bravery the child had shown when he took the fall for Marcus Nightingale's deceased parrot, a 'prank' that none of them had actually had any hand in. Like an oasis in a desert, the last 'good' memory he had of the man was the comfort he'd provided in the wake of Remus's dismissal from the auror academy.

Bastard.

Back then, when he and the other marauders were teens, they'd all dreamed of becoming magical police officers. James wanted the glory. Sirius wanted to put his abuse to good use. Remus wanted to show off his knowledge. And Peter just wanted to fit in.

As the years passed by, and as it became clearer and clearer that the rat animagus wasn't quite cut out to join the force, the weakest link between the three fell away. Peter had just smiled and said that it was fine, that everything was fine, and that he didn't really care that he'd flunked out of DADA and hadn't made it past the OWL-to-NEWT cutoff. Back then James had been just about ready to storm into their teacher's office and demand that Peter be given an exemption, and Sirius had practically plotted the man's murder.

Remus had been the voice of reason though, and maybe that was why Peter had turned a vengeful thought towards him. The bastard had waited until he was already three-fourths of the way through the governmental training program before he revealed to one of the AIs that the Lupin halfblood was a werewolf. From there it had been one demerit after another, no true rhyme or reason to any of them, until he was eventually given the boot; just another victim of the magical world's prejudice against those who weren't entirely human.

He had rebuked James's promise to arrest the man once he was an auror, talked Sirius down from the murderous ledge he once again stood on, and told Lily several times that he was fine and that she really didn't need to intervene. It had been his responsibility in the face of that unrighteous bullshit to once again be the voice of reason. And now here he was, cocked gun in hand, and being told that if he wanted the worst friend anyone could've asked for dead, he could have it. With another huffing breath, he threw back his glass and took in the environment of the Scandinavian bar once more.

He was far up north, so far that there wasn't much civilization to be compared negatively to. Sitting a few stools down from him, and taking up more than a few stools' worth of space, was some sort of grey troll. Spread over three booths in a corner were a posse of true dwarves that seemed to be celebrating something. In the centre of it all, snorting flames to keep the rest of the building warm, was an ice-coated wyrm whose fiery snores melted and heralded a block of ice around its nose.

"You 'nother?" the bartender asked. "Another?"

Remus nodded and slid his empty glass forward. He didn't speak a lick of whichever language was spoken here, but Frederick or whatever the man's name was had picked up enough of the werewolf's slowly-enunciated English to serve their purposes. Once his glass was topped off with whatever the liquor was, he tossed back half of it and sucked in a breath through his teeth.

What to do with the rat.

On one hand, it would be a relief to just sick the monster he called a quasi-family member on him. One word from Remus and Peter Pettigrew would cease to exist. On the other hand was a metric ton of moral ramifications that he hadn't made any headway in deciphering. How was he supposed to know whether or not it was better to rid the world of a treacherous rodent or not?

"On mind?" Frederick half-asked.

Remus grinned at the attempt "I'm fine, friend, thank you though."

Once he was done speaking he tucked his smile away where it belonged, and took another sip of his hyper-strong beverage. He knew from experience and common sense that there weren't any answers to be found at the bottom of the bottle, but that didn't make it any less tempting an avenue.

From what he'd learned, Peter had a wife and a daughter. His mother had picked out his wife, some muggle woman that came from money, but not enough money to truly impress the proper but ill-fated purebloods. Their daughter was an average student, a friend of Harry's, his Harry's, who didn't have much to show for her education besides the eventual diploma. What would they think of Remus sentencing their husband and father to death? Were they counting on whatever income the man brought in despite her wealth, or somehow genuinely held a love for him?

As he continued to contemplate, a spriggan stepped up to the bar then took the seat beside him.

"Translate," Frederick said. What he rattled off next went right over Remus's head.

"Fred say," the tree-like creature growled. "What breaks your balls?"

"Ha," Remus scoffed. He'd never have pegged the bartender for a sensitive type. "Nothing. Just gotta decide whether or not to kill someone who fucked me over in the past."

That was one of the beauties about a bar like this. Humans weren't welcome, and neither was their 'decency'. A werewolf talking about murder in broad daylight at a pub like the Leaky Cauldron could've very-well gotten him arrested, and depending on the prosecutor, perhaps even sent to Azkaban.

The spriggan began to grunt out some language that didn't make a lick of sense to Remus, and certainly wasn't any language spoken in the rest of Scandinavia. Well, it might've been some viking-era Norwegian for all he knew, but something told him it was a more magical tongue. Especially when the last word he used ended with an odd gurgling in the back of his throat.

Frederick nodded, then said something back.

"Fred say," the spriggan started. "No decision. Just kill. They fuck you, you fuck them harder. That how he meet second wife."

Remus snorted. Just like anyone brave enough to actually visit the Rikkoutunut Kynsi, the bar's owner wasn't wholly human. He wasn't sure what the man was, some kind of werebear or something, but it had definitely skewed his sensibilities. Frederick began speaking again so Remus polished off his drink.

"Fred say, you need drink more, make decision easier."

At least that was something Remus didn't mind trying.

Hydrus rolled his eyes when he realised he'd just attempted to take off glasses he didn't even wear anymore. He'd been cooped up in the library of Castle Black since breakfast, trying to find any and all references to deities, magical or otherwise. Kreacher was currently preparing the most ancient scrolls and tablets they owned to be handled and read.

"Why the fuck is it always Latin with these people," he muttered. "And would it have killed them to include some pictures?"

The book he was reading now was a research journal based on one of the sets of tablets Kreacher was preparing. The only problem was that the author was one of his ancestors, which meant it was full of dismissal and snarky undertones. Or at least, he thought it was. Tone really didn't translate well through ancient to modern transitions, let alone with phrases like 'the druidic ritual was a horse's wind', which he was fairly certain was old-timey speak for a fart, which he was more certain meant whatever the ritual was hadn't worked.

He was still trying to decide what to do with the centaurs living in the Forbidden Forest as well. In theory they weren't hurting anyone, but the 'yet' that could hang on the end of that sentence could very well literally hang some folk. He was going to have to tread cautiously around his former goddess, but that didn't mean he could allow her to tread on him. So far the best idea he'd come up with was to dig up some other rare mythical beast like that chupacabra he and Draco had hunted, and sacrifice it to her as a symbol of good faith.

"Father."

Hydrus turned and saw Apophis slithering towards him. The basilisk was dripping wet, and given the way his body was moving it seemed he was in a bad mood.

"Yes?" he replied. "Where have you been?"

"Dealing with that interloper you gave a part of my land to," the basilisk hissed. "He is infuriating!"

"Seems like it didn't go well for you," Hydrus said, grinning as he banished away the water still dripping off of his familiar before the snake got it all over him. "Just leave him be; you don't like the ocean anyways."

"I do not fear water!"

Hydrus snorted. "Never said you did."

As Apophis began to coil up and around him, Kreacher appeared. There were several dozen scrolls and no less than 8 tablets older than any mortal alive floating around him. With a delicate and graceful manoeuvring of his gnarled fingers, Kreacher sat the historical artefacts down on the table Hydrus was reading at. Once they were all settled, the house elf bowed to him.

"Per Mistress Bellatrix's instructions, the scrollses and tabletses have been prepared." The elf straightened up. "The standard handling procedure is to not touch them at all, and to instead tell Kreacher when Lord Master Hydrus is ready for another one."

"Thank you, Kreacher." Hydrus shut the tome he'd been reading. "Let's start with the tablets I was just learning about."

"As you wish, Lord Master Hydrus."

Again with a master painter's smoothness, Kreacher's fingers swam through the air until a trio of the archaic bits of stone were sitting in front of Hydrus. He began to look over the first one.

Unlike the book, which had been sorely lacking in illustrations, the tablet was nothing but pictures. Series of what looked like hieroglyphs were laid out in a triangular fashion, a looping and spiralling knot that belied its Celtic origins. Hydrus leaned in close to get a better look at the top point of the triangle, hoping that would be the best place to start, and wasn't quite sure what he was looking at.

There was either a deer or an elk, its limbs splayed out, a line running down its centre. The two symbols on either side seemed unrelated, one was a spiralling circle while the other was either a man with a rather large penis, or a sword plunging up his ass and out his groin.

"Shit…" Hydrus muttered. "What was that spell again?"

It was some fancy bit of charmwork Remus had made so he'd quit getting stuck with scouting duty. Hydrus had no idea how it worked, but it let his soldiers enhance their eyesight well enough that they could count the hairs on a fly a mile away. Back then he'd needed to wear glasses, which meant that the adjustable charm was more of a hassle than it was worth to get to work in conjunction with his mild handicap.

Now he wished he'd spent more time studying it.

His eyes grew even more sore as he continued to squint at the strange deer. It felt like the pain of going cross-eyed for too long, but it wasn't enough to deter him. Not until a drop of blood fell from his eye and nearly landed on the tablet, being stopped by a snap of Kreacher's fingers.

"Thank you, Kreacher…" Hydrus said, pulling back and blinking. "The hell was that?"

"You're trying to see again, Father," Apophis hissed. "Like with the treacherous gods."

Fuck.

He wasn't sure if he should be delighted that he found something that might hold a true connection to the godly beings, or terrified that not only was he tapping in to the bullshit they tried to sell him on, but that his familiar was so… Familiar with it. Had the creature been practising on his own or something?

"Damn it," Hydrus muttered. "Kreacher, bring me Bella."

The elf froze up. "Kreacher would never disobey Lord Master Hydrus, but Kreacher would feel like bad elf if Kreacher did not say, Mistress Bellatrix is with Master Cygnus meeting Misses and Mister Ashworth, in Australia."

"Was that happening today?" Hydrus muttered. "Alright, don't disturb her."

The Australian couple were the son and daughter-in-law of a 'dragon baron', a fancy title that more or less just meant the family had survived long enough in the magical outback that the rest of the world bothered remembering their names. Even if they hadn't been, though, their family was the richest one in the continent. An already reared and butchered hog was no sound investment, but the family would have contacts that the House of Black could use to spread their own influence throughout Oceania, and from there begin making headway into Asia.

"Go get me Remus, then," he said. "Unlike her, I know he's not busy with anything too important."

Especially since everything on the man's plate had been slopped onto it by Hydrus himself.

After a few minutes more of futilely trying to rub the new exhaustion out of his eyes, Remus arrived. Hydrus squinted at him, and the werewolf squinted back. He was looking about the library like he'd never seen a book before in his life, and he would've fallen onto the table with his first step had Kreacher not 'caught' him with a magical jerk that pulled the man into one of the other chairs.

"Are you drunk?" Hydrus asked. "It's one in the afternoon; who do you think you are, Sirius?"

"I'm not that drunk," Remus said, his voice steady and clear despite the fact that it smelled like the inside of a bottle of disinfectant. "Just have a hyper-sensitive sense of balance."

"Right…" Hydrus said. "I've never seen you drunk before."

Alcohol was a rare thing in war, though not so rare as to be missing off their 'shopping lists'. He had put an unbreakable 'lock' on the actual opening of any bottles they found, and used it as a carrot to get to his people to various goals he set. Remus rarely ever participated, and even when he did it never seemed to phase him much.

"I've never been told to decide whether or not to have someone killed before," the werewolf said with a scoff. "Not in this considerably less-hellish timeline, anyways."

Hydrus winced. "Fair enough."

"What do you need?" Remus asked. "Other than a death warrant or a pardon."

"Just need you to keep an eye on me," Hydrus muttered, not sure if he liked this much more candid version of his former advisor. "These tablets are older than everyone in Hogwarts put together, including Dumbeldore, so Kreacher will be making sure they stay clean. Your job is to make sure if my eyeballs pop, you get me away from them."

"Great," Remus said. "Now we're dealing with malcontent stoneware."

Deciding he very much did not like this Remus, Hydrus chose not to respond and instead looked back at the tablet, back at the odd deer on top of it. After a breath to settle himself, he began to really look at it. He tried doing what the gods' game board had done for him automatically, and winced when already he could feel blood running down his cheeks. As he continued to stare though, the rest of the world began to fade away, and soon he wasn't looking at just a hieroglyphic deer.

In fact, it wasn't a deer at all.

It was a massive elk, with antlers so large it would've left a moose feeling insecure. The proportions didn't even make sense with how large they were. The potentially magic creature was strung up in some sort of odd series of ropes hanging from the branches of an oak tree, its back legs just barely touching the ground, and it was hanging above a horse. The horse was much more mundane, though the positioning left Hydrus horrified at just what sort of bestial nastiness he was about to witness.

Finally he was able to take note of the rest of his surroundings, mostly a normal forest, but most importantly a circle of druids all standing around the elk and horse. They were each wielding a staff and dressed in cloaks of fur, with nothing else underneath the hides. Then Hydrus stepped forward, for some reason.

He was holding a staff too, and he lifted it up into the air. The others followed. The words coming out of his mouth were a twisting and twirling series of manoeuvres for his tongue to pull off, some sort of Gaelic that was so ancient the only hint the languages were related was the general tone of it. When he was apparently finished, he brought his staff down to the ground in time with the others who were also chanting, and internally Hydrus winced. He hoped for all that was right in the world he wasn't about to witness an elk fuck a—

The elk split open.

From the base of its throat all the way to just below its tail, a laceration as thick as Hydrus's wrist appeared. The elk's entrails and other organs just spilled out of it like the most demented pinata imaginable. The air must've been cold, because steam began to pour out of what was now a corpse and off of what was now a very uncomfortable stallion. Hydrus was beginning to notice that the second animal was paralysed in some fashion, its eyes were wide and darting about wildly but the rest of it was stock still.

He said something else in the ancient Gaelic, and from the trees a group of boys emerged. Like their elder counterparts, they were wearing fur cloaks, but unlike them they were blindfolded and carried no staves. He watched as they fumbled about with the series of ropes until the elk was released and they had drug away what was still in one piece, including a trailing line of intestines still attached somewhere inside the beast.

Once they were gone, he clapped his staff dirt once more, and the horse came to life. It immediately shrieked out a neighing scream, its front half rising up into the air. And it didn't stop. The horse was bucking and tossing about as it rose off the ground, literally rising above himself and the other druids, but eventually it found its footing on nothing and began to gallop around the treetops.

"Well done," Hydrus said, immensely pleased. "When we bring this to King Tallcastle, we will never again worry for our fires."

"What should we do with the horse?" his brother asked. "The mudborn might see it."

Ceusithbragain scratched at the patchy spot of his beard, the reminder of an axe blow that had broken his face bone in his youth. "Let one of the fledglings take it down. Whosoever has an arrow that strikes true, shall be given the right of passage."

A cheer rang out around the circle. New blood meant many barrels would be opened, and that meant—

"Father."

Hydrus blinked. Where was he?

"Come back, Father."

And somehow he did. The forest and his 'brothers' all faded away, and he was back in the library once more, an impressed looking Remus sitting beside him. He felt at his face and found his cheeks sopping wet and sticky with blood.

"You wanna know something weird?" Remus asked. "I have no idea what language you were just speaking, but it was not my first time hearing it today."

"That's nice," Hydrus replied. "I'm gonna lie down."

And so he did, right then and there.

Apophis watched as Uncle Remus dragged his father away, complaining under his very foul smelling breath, and then turned his attention back to the tablet. Each one of the little drawings was like a gateway into another world, another life, another glimpse at power. He had already made it to the fifth one, where the hairy and naked humans were mating in a pile, when his father had gotten lost in the first.

So far there hadn't been anything actually useful to him, but it was obvious that the forces those humans were working with were different from what his father could do. It was much more like the way Apophis could summon the dead humans, or turn invisible. He'd seen them make the 'horse' fly, shrink a tree back into a sprout, even split a tiny goat's head into two smaller heads, both of which bleated at the working.

The closest he'd come to seeing something useful might've been the way they split the big-horned thing open. Maybe since that wasn't magic, he could find a way to use it against the ancient queen.

He hissed at Kreacher when the ugly thing tried taking the tablets away, and the elf winced.

"Kreacher is sorry, Master Apophis." He bowed. "Kreacher will leave you to work."

"See that you do." Apophis turned his attention back to his work. "Or else."

Like a deranged and gender-reversed fairy tale, Hydrus was woken with a kiss. Something told him Sleeping Beauty had gotten a lot less tongue in her wake up call, and she almost definitely didn't have as beautiful an alarm clock.

"Good morning to you, too," Hydrus said. He sat up with a yawn. "What time is it?"

"Nearly nine in the evening," she said. "My father and I only just left Australia an hour ago."

He grunted an acknowledgement. "I didn't have any nightmares."

"Oh," Bella said, blinking at the sudden change in subject. "That's… Good."

"Instead I was…" Hydrus shook his head as he tried to recall. "I was in an orgy. It smelled awful. No one was shaved or bathed or…" He shook his head. "Fuck. I'm gonna need to figure out a way to obliviate myself after the next time I study that tablet."

It was like he still had an echo of that druid inside of him, or like he was still inside of him. The feeling was the same as the sight he'd seen when he caught a glimpse at Fate's true form, though the scales were eons and sky-length's apart.

'Sky-lengths?' he thought. 'The fuck is a 'sky-length'?'

As he continued to try and purge the alien feeling out of his skin, another voice spoke up.

"Sounds like something your father would dream about."

Hydrus jumped. Sitting in the corner of the bedroom, probably some spare space in the lower floors of Castle Black, was Remus. The werewolf had a book in his lap which was mostly closed but his spot saved thanks to one finger intruding into the pages. Hydrus nodded at him.

"Remus, thanks for being here," he said. "Would've done a number on my back if I'd slept on the floor."

"Please," Remus said. "You're fifteen again. You'd've been fine."

"Fair enough."

He slid his legs out from underneath the silk sheets and stood, stretching and realising how much smaller the room was than it had seemed. No… No it was him who was bigger. He was a giant, how had—

'No, no, no,' he thought. 'You're Hydrus Black, and not some malnourished old druid with just the one ball left.'

Fuck that had hurt. Part of the initiation ceremony when he was a boy, when he became a brother, when—

"Damn it!" he snapped. "The stupid tablet's driven me insane."

"More insane," Remus said. "You are a Black, after all."

"You know," Hydrus started. "I've heard of happy drunks, sad drunks, horny drunks; but I have never in my life met a stoic, cynical drunk."

"I'm sober now, Hydrus." The werewolf stood, and true to his word he didn't even wobble. "And I've come to a decision."

'Finally.' He nodded. "And that is?"

"That it's not my decision." Remus shrugged. "I'm sorry, but you and only you can make the call. Kill him, don't kill him, either way you need to own the choice.

"Otherwise you'll just be left spinning as to whether or not you deserve whatever guilt or lack thereof comes from it."

Hydrus sighed. He was already dealing with one consequences-to-his-actions drama, he did not need, let alone want, another.

"Bella, go put on a dress appropriate for a funeral." He shrugged at Remus. "Kill him it is."

Bellatrix bit her lip in anticipation as Hydrus finished powering the slate-sheet rune stone he'd made. They had dozens of the things lying around, and with Giannis out of the house he couldn't ask any prying questions about why they needed one of them. The network he'd carved into it was a simple thing, unlike their child's work it was easy to understand and exceptionally succinct. Muggles wouldn't see anything that he was about to do, the magic they used wouldn't get past a few dozen feet away from where he sat the slate down on the doorstep, and any sounds they caused would fade to the whistling of a gust of wind.

"Here we go," her little water snake said. "Three, two, one…"

When he was finished, to her jolting surprise, he kicked open the door instead of doing it magically. She wasn't sure what was more surprising, the muggle methods he was apparently going to be using, or that the trousers she'd picked out for him hadn't torn. They were very tight.

He stepped past the threshold and she followed after, just in time to see a rather ugly woman step in from another room. The woman was dressed like she was ready for a fight, with rolled up sleeves and trousers, but if she remembered right the Pettigrew bastard was a blood traitor. The muggle held up her arms in the air.

"T-, Take whatever you want!" she pleaded. "I don't—"

Hydrus flicked his wrist, and the muggle fell silent. He gestured her towards a hideous orange sofa, and she floated over to it with her toes dragging along the ground until she was gently deposited on it. He walked over until he was standing just a step away from her, then leaned down so they were on a more similar level, though he was still far above her.

"Your daughter home?" he asked. "Your husband?"

The muggle's mouth opened and shut silently, and her head moved back and forth like she couldn't make up her mind.

"Start with your daughter," Hydrus said. "She home?"

She shook her head no.

"Husband?"

She nodded.

"Good, perfect in fact." He turned towards Bellatrix, and the quiet storm behind his eyes made her weak in the knees. "Would you mind fetching the rat, my love?"

"Of course, my love." She giggled at the repetition, then began to sing. "Heeeeere Ratty, Ratty, Rattyyyy"

As she explored the filthy shack the muggle and blood traitor called home, her madness grew. The ever-flowing stream was widening into a river by the time she made it up the stairs, and eventually she found the not-so-little rodent. He was sat in front of half a dozen of those odd muggle boxes that glowed with images. There were countless numbers and lines dancing across their surfaces, and he was wearing an oversized pair of hard earmuffs.

"Raattyyyyyyy…" Bellatrix crooned as she stepped up behind him. "You shouldn't ignore meeeeee…"

When she was within arm's reach of the man, she jerked the earmuffs off with her free hand and stabbed her wand deep into the back of his neck.

"Don't move," she hissed. "Move and you die, wretch."

"Wh-, wh-, wh-, wh-, wh—"

"Whuh whuh whuh whuh," she mocked back, then giggled at herself. "Wittle Petey's been a baaaad boooooy…"

"Pl-, please don't hurt me," he whimpered. "Please, I, I, I, I—"

She jabbed her wand harder into his neck and he gasped, then began to cry. With a cackle, she finally pulled her trusted weapon back. This was so much fun. She suspected that if she kept pressing, he might've even wet himself. But then she'd have to deal with potentially stepping in the mess, so she did the rational thing and contented herself with what little torture she'd gotten thus far.

"Come along, Petey," she said. "Come, come, come."

"What?"

Bellatrix slapped him so hard it left a stinging ring in her palm, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from moaning.

"I said march, you filthy little rat." She raised her hand again but he stood. "One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four!"

Like a good little rat he moved to the tune of her cadence, and tripped, stumbled, and fell slightly less than half of the way back down the stairs. She may or may not have pushed him to speed things along. When he landed, there wasn't much time before, just like with his wife, he was silenced and lifted up into the air.

"There you are," Hydrus said, like he'd just found the quill he'd dropped beneath his desk. "Do you remember what I told you, Rat?"

"Hydrus?" the traitor said, voice freed and stuffy from where he'd broken his nose in the fall. "Why are you here?! What have I do—"

Once more his voice was stolen from him with a tweak of Hydrus's fingers.

"I told you that you may not be the first person whose name fell off of the list, but that it someday would." Her love sighed. "I even gave you the time to come tell me yourself, to admit to your sins and offer an explanation. But you didn't."

Again Hydrus heaved a dramatic sigh, and Bellatrix tutted and shook her head. "Naughty."

"Mm," Hydrus agreed. "Tell me, um…" He moved his fingers again. "I'm sorry, what is your name, ma'am?"

"Ashly," the muggle said. "Please, what's—"

"Tell me, Ashly, if a man promises, under penalty of death, not to share your secrets but then turns around and does so anyway, doesn't he deserve to die?" He cocked his head to the side. "Isn't that exactly what he signed up for?"

"Please," 'Ashly' said. "Please, I don't know what this is about, but please don't kill my husband."

"I'm kinda already committed here, Ashly," Hydrus said. "Do you know what kind of a piece of shit you're married to?"

"Yes!" the muggle cried. "But please, please don't kill him."

"I don't know anything about you, Ashly, but I can still tell you that you could do way better than him." He scoffed. "I could, quite literally, buy you a better husband. He doesn't deserve you, Ashly."

Bellatrix really wasn't sure why he kept repeating the ugly thing's name.

"I know, I know, but please!" She was crying, and Bellatrix snorted at the hurt in the rat's eyes. "He's the father of my child, she—"

"No, don't put this on her, Ashly," Hydrus said. "I go to school with your daughter, and believe me when I say she could use a better role model."

"What?" Ashly said. "You go to… How old are you?"

"It's up for debate," Bellatrix's little water snake said. "But your daughter, uh…"

He looked back at Bellatrix, and she frowned in confusion for a moment. "Deidra? Debra? Dianna?"

"Dianne!" Hydrus completed. "There we go. Your daughter, Dianne, she really isn't growing up to be much, is she?"

"How dare you." Bellatrix had to give the woman credit, she was showing more bravery now than the rat probably had his entire life. "My daughter—!"

"Dianne," Hydrus hissed. "Her name is Dianne."

"Dear?" Bellatrix asked. "Why are you so… Insistent, with the names today?"

"Because names have power." She blinked at the way he rolled his R at the end of his last word. "And yet you all give them away so easileh."

'Easi-leh?' Bellatrix thought. "Hydrus…"

"See." He pointed at her without looking. "Brother Hydrus understands. He uses a false name. He is a wise one, whoever he is."

Without thinking, she slapped her love much the same way she'd done to the rat just a short while earlier. The crack seemed to echo for a moment while Hydrus shook his head.

"God fucking damn it," he muttered. "I swear if it turns out we're related to this asshole I'm going to burn him off the tree, even if I have to dig up enough bodies to trace us back to him."

"Okay, dear," Bellatrix offered gently. "Perhaps we should wrap this up?"

"Yeah, yeah." Hydrus rubbed at his forehead with the stub of his crippled arm. "Wrap it up. Look, lady, I want your husband dead. He betrayed me, he betrayed his best friend, he's a piece of shit with no chance at redemption."

"Please," the woman repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. "Do whatever you want, just don't kill my daughter's father."

"Hear that, Rat?" Hydrus asked. "She was calling you her husband at the start of this little chit-chat, now you're just the father of her child."

Tears were slipping down the rat's cheeks.

"Ashl—, no, lady," Hydrus said. "Or ma'am, or Miss, or anything besides your fucking name since the druid's apparently got a hard on for those…"

Bellatrix wasn't entirely sure what he was talking about, she still hadn't gotten the full breakdown of why she'd found him lying in bed with blood stained cheeks and a drunken werewolf sitting beside him, but she knew he'd explain later.

Or else.

"Peter Pettigrew signed his name in big, bold letters on a piece of paper that said in less yet more than words that if he divulged my secrets, he would die." Hydrus turned to the man. "But… Maybe the rat can live. Tell me, Rat, why should I let the pest who's been shitting in my pantry live?"

He made his hand into a fist, and the rat gasped. Bellatrix snorted at how undignified the wastrel was.

"Just kill me."

Bellatrix blinked. Really? He was already giving up? Where was the fun of it if he didn't even nibble on the bait Hydrus had placed, and instead shoved his whole fist into the bear trap's pressure plate. How boring.

Ashly frowned at him. "Peter…"

"The only person I told was… My daughter's mother," the rat said with a scowl. "I just wanted her to be proud of me."

"Right, I should probably check that." Hydrus leaned forward and grabbed the few whisps of hair still surviving atop the rat's head, pulling back the eyelids with them. "Legilimens!"

She wondered how long it would take for her love to finish. Right now it just looked like he was in a staring contest with the traitor.

"What's going on?" Ashly asked. "What's he doing to him?"

"He's reading his mind," Bellatrix answered, not minding her lesser speaking to her given that the alternative was even more boring. "Tearing through any shoddy defenses he has, and laying bare his darkest secrets."

"You… You can do that?"

"Oh, sweetie," she started. "We could do things that could leave you questioning everything from the ground you stand on to whatever shred of sanity we leave you with."

Before her imagination could truly explore what that would look like, Hydrus pulled away from the rat. He took a shivering breath that spluttered back out of him as he shook out his shoulders.

"I hate that shit," he said. "Alright, but seriously, why don't you want him dead? I saw—"

"Because it's not fair," Ashly said, this time interrupting him. "It wouldn't be fair for it to all just end for him, when I've…"

She trailed off, but Hydrus gave an appreciative frown. "Now you're saying something that I can understand.

"Rat, I think I'm going to put you where you belong," Hydrus said. "In a box, a cage, where you'll spend the rest of your life."

"What?" the rat asked, almost wheezing. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to put you in a box, with all those fancy computers of yours, and you're going to just… Keep doing what you've been doing," Hydrus said. "You put all your wife's money in the stock market, and never took out more than what you needed to keep food on your table and clothes on your back.

"So, from now on, you'll be fed according to how much money you make me. You don't make me money, you don't eat." Hydrus was nodding to himself. "And considering the only face you'll see for the rest of your life is my house elf's, we won't bother with the clothes. Think of all the money that'll save you."

"W-, what?" Rat squeaked. "Hydr—"

The traitor's voice caught in his throat, and Bellatrix grinned when she realised he wasn't silenced, he was being strangled.

"You'll be miserable, just like your family has been. You'll be working a job I know for a fact that you hate, just like your best friend had to." Hydrus took a breath. "You're going to wind up dead at my hands eventually, just like…" He laughed, and Bellatrix giggled along with him. "Just like fate intended."

Bellatrix's mirth vanished. He hadn't meant that other goddess… Right? The last thing she needed was for her little water snake to switch his allegiance to some other whorish trollop that didn't deserve it nearly as much as she herself clearly and obviously did.

"Kreacher!" Hydrus called. "I have a job for you."

Bellatrix frowned when the family house elf arrived. Sirius had rambled to her about how the elf was different lately, and she'd dismissed it out of hand. When the being had appeared though, it did so with a gentle snapping sound, nothing at all like its usual whip crack, and she wondered why that was. As she inspected the elf closer, she began to wonder if maybe his disgustingly filthy loincloth really was cleaner than it had once been.

"Yes, Lord Master Hydrus?"

"Go with Mrs. Pettigrew to collect everything our new pet rat needs to do what I told him to do," Hydrus said. "Once you've gathered everything she thinks he'll need, put him in a box just big enough to do the job. I don't care where it is, don't care what it's like, just make sure he can never leave and that all of his equipment works. If you think he's lying about anything, go to my adopted sister, Hermione Granger. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lord Master Hydrus."

"Good." Her love yawned. "Thank you, Kreacher." He reached out his weaker arm and Bellatrix took it, pulling him in close and pressing a kiss against his head. "I'm starving, let's go get some food."

"Of course, dear."

Just as Bellatrix was about to apparate them away, however, the woman spoke up. "Wait!

"That's… That's it? You're just taking Peter and…" She shook her head. "And leaving?"

"Don't worry," Hydrus said. "The money he earns will still go to you and yours, and in a much higher quantity. Need to keep things sisyphean for him, after all."

"But…"

The woman trailed off, and Bellatrix's desire to make sure her love didn't go hungry more than outweighed any sense of patience she had, so she apparated them away.

Ashly stared at the telly, which was currently off, and absolutely nothing was on her mind. She was just sitting. Just relaxing. Just… Just being. At several points throughout the night, throughout which she'd only gotten up once to go to the loo and a second time to get a drink of water, she'd been worried. Her heart would begin to race and her muscles clenched as she waited for Peter to scream down the stairs that he was hungry or thirsty or anything else.

But it never came.

So she had just sat, relaxed, and did absolutely nothing.

"Mum, I'm home." Ashly glanced over to see Dianne standing a few feet away, knapsack on over her shoulders from the sleepover, and cautiously glancing up the stairs. "Is dad awake?"

"I… I don't know," she answered honestly. "Someone… Someone from your world came and took him."

"What?" Dianne asked, stepping closer and raising her voice now that she knew she didn't have to worry about disturbing Peter. "What do you mean someone took him?"

"It was some boy, and a woman." Ashly shrugged. "They said that he'd betrayed them."

"What?" her daughter repeated. "Mum, that's—"

"He's not coming back," she said. "They said he's never going to be allowed to leave."

"Leave where?"

Her daughter was getting impatient, and she was looking at Ashly like she was crazy, but she wasn't upset. Some odd part of the woman had thought… Maybe somehow her daughter would be upset by what had happened. But of course not. Why would she be?

"I'm sorry, Dianne, I really don't know." She shook her head. "It all just happened so fast. The boy picked me up and put me down here and… I pretty much haven't moved since they left."

"Did they at least give you a name?" Dianne asked, finally taking off her bag and sitting down beside her. "Did they say what he did?"

"Um." She tried to recall, but it felt like everything had happened in a blur. "Something about giving away secrets? And his name, his name…" God, she needed to sleep. It was like seeing her daughter had brought her back to reality, and in reality she was very tired. "It was like that thing from the Hercules movie we watched, the snake with all the heads."

"The hydra?" Dianne's eyes snapped wide open. "Oh god, please tell me it wasn't Hydrus."

"That sounds right." Ashly blinked back at her. "Why?"

Her daughter just groaned and sank deeper into the couch. The cushions hadn't quite returned to form since that old Dumblingdoor fellow showed up and squished Peter into them.

"Great," Dianne said. "There goes my school life."

"What do you mean?" Ashly asked, suddenly very curious as to just who it was that had scooped up her now-former husband. "Why?"

"Because that's Hydrus Black!" her daughter exclaimed, like that explained everything. "Everyone at school practically worships him, even Harry!"

She remembered Harry, he was the boy Peter had angrily shooed her away from at the school function they'd gone to, and Dianne seemed very enamoured with him. Ashly had tried asking her if she liked him, liked him, but it had seemed like she might be more 'enamoured' with girls since the look she got didn't promise much. It made her miss when she was still her little girl and told her everything.

"You don't get it," Dianne continued. "He's rich, he's famous, he's powerful, he's… I mean, I thought he was a nice guy, but if he was involved with Dad…"

"Doesn't seem like they were too involved," Ashly said, hoping to erase some of her daughter's doubts. "The only times your father left the house were when he was helping Mr. Dumplingdoor with their little project."

"Professor Dumbledore was here?!"

Ashly winced at her daughter's squeal, and sighed.

Her mother had always told her to just wait until she had a teenage daughter of her own, but something told her the woman had no idea just how… Magical the experience would be for her own daughter.

Draco pulled back at the sight of the two letters the servant delivered beside his plate at breakfast. He hadn't been expecting any mail, he still needed to write Luna back after all and Hydrus had told him that if he had something to say to just come visit, so he wasn't sure what they could be. He ignored his food for now and grabbed the first one, which held the Hogwarts insignia pressed into its waxen seal.

"What are those?" his mother asked.

"I'm assuming this one's my supply list, though it's a touch late." They'd already purchased everything they'd need, his father helped write the list after all. "Wonder where it's been."

He opened it with his knife, he always carried one now at Hydrus's recommendation, and was surprised when a badge fell out of the envelope. A prefect badge. He opened the letter proper after staring at it for a moment, and his jaw dropped ever so slightly as he confirmed that he had been chosen as Slytherin's prefect. Before he could tell his parents what it was, his mother had already wrapped him up in a hug.

"Congratulations!" she said. "I can't believe it!"

"Neither can I," Draco said. He looked up from the letter at his father who was staring at the badge sitting on the table. "Did you know about this?"

"No," the older Malfoy shook his head. "I was under the impression that Hydrus was to receive the honour."

As Draco turned his gaze back to the badge, he quickly pictured how that conversation would've went. Hydrus had probably flooed straight to Dumbledore's office and, knowing his 'cousin', thrown the badge in his face and told him he couldn't be bothered. He snorted as the visual of that played out in his mind, and he shook his head as he sat the letter down.

"Guess he didn't want it," Draco said. "Now what's this…"

He grabbed the second letter, which wasn't sealed with any wax at all somehow, and tore it open. Inside read:

Mr. Malfoy,

My name is Remus Lupin. I'm a friend of Hydrus's. He has asked me to guide you along on a venture to free the mother of your former house elf, Dobby, from her breeders. Please write me back as soon as you can regarding when you can join me.

Yours,

Professor Remus Lupin

"And what's that?" Draco's father asked.

"I…" Draco started. "I guess Hydrus has some work for me to do."

BBaRtS

Chapter 58. Y'ALL THOUGHT. Y'all thought I was just dropping a chapter late without any notes in a drunken flurry. You were correct, but, I did have more to write/post.

We're wrapping up the summer business and preparing for the new school year, where Hydrus and the others will be dealing with shenanigans of all sorts. The pattern of starting then ending POV sections from Gregory and the newly-named Agatha Herschel. Next chapter we'll see how the Remus Lupin & Draco Malfoy tag team goes, finish up the other business that needs finishing up during this break, and maybe end with the return to Hogwarts.

On to reviews!

"lol Lily shockingly being the one uniformed on something is a fun new thing" - Like with this chapter, I enjoy getting to explore the muggle/muggleborn vs wizarding-raised dichotomy in a more positive way. No harm in her not knowing about some old fairy tail, isn't 'offensive' at all, but shows the difference in how she was raised even compared to her own children.

"He probably shouldn't have mentioned the possibility of his lad getting a boost from the cloak when he was right there to hear it" - Idk what you're talking about, Apophis is a good boy who would do nothing wrong ever 😤

"Cashback is Irish you stupid fuck, not "British" " - Normally I don't respond to troll reviews, but this one had me rolling. Like, the sheer audacity of being so sanctimoniously self-righteous over the fact that a POMPOUS, ARROGANT, BRITISH, character doesn't differentiate Irish folklore from British, only to get hoisted upon your own autocorrected petard. ..

" 'Am I humble, darling?' BAHAHAAHA. " - Hydrus knows exactly how to talk to the woman he loves lololol

" "I'm Gregory Herschel." YOU'RE JUST DICKING WITH ME AT THIS POINT AREN'T YOU?! " - Listen, Greggy and Aggy's story has a long way to go, and they will NOT be rushed lololol

"Oh hell. Elf breeders. Something tells me Draco is about to get an eye-opening experience..." - I'm looking forward to this. Remus and Draco is such an odd-couple dynamic that my, let's be frank, 95th percentile HP Fanfiction experience hasn't seen it before, and I think that'd be a fun avenue to go down. We've got a Draco who's receptive to change, a Remus who's definitely different than the book version, and I wonder how they'll interact.

"Did have a question I don't thinks been asked before, but do you plan on releasing another longfic during/after this one?" - I've got a side project I'm currently working on but it's not my main priority so it hasn't gotten much love. It's a post-war fic where things didn't end happily-ever-after for Harry, he broke up with Ginny and became exactly the sort of person Snape said he was, and is being done in individual story sections throughout its duration. The first section, the one we're still currently in, is about him vs Dracula lol. It's a lot more light-hearted and actiony than this fic. As for future projects, I have two main ideas. One is a Fleur x Harry time travel fic, where he's sent back after dying to Voldemort either at the end of fourth or seventh year, and is tutored by a cooky old wizard in the middle of nowhere (the goat-obsessed OC from this story, Quinn) until he returns to Hogwarts to try again. The other is one where accidental magic sends him to Grindelwald as a young boy, and he's raised and accidentally magically-weakened by the man and his prison respectively.

And that's all! See you all this weekend, love you all, thank you all so much for the reviews and comments and everything else. We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of me writing this fic, which was first posted on FF on January 10th, 2023, so that's fun. Technically I started writing it on, according to Google Doc's history, November 30th of 2022, but only I can know that for sure so who cares about that date. Either which way, thank you all so much, lessthanthree!