"I can't." Violet shook her head. "I apologize. I… wanted to carry on, truly. But I've recently recognized I can't afford such luxuries." She gave a crooked smile. "And, I expect you'll be pleased with the reduction in, ah, incidents. My presence does seem to attract turmoil."

"Maybe so." McGonagall pursed her lips. The Order wouldn't meet for another hour at least, but its members were arriving over time in the interest of secrecy. To Violet, it seemed futile. She'd drawn tarot earlier, the deck nearly a solid stain of red and brown from the quantity of her own blood she had sacrificed to it, and the cards matched the feeling in her bones. She suspected she wasn't the only one to recently have a revelation regarding the war. Nearly a week had passed since Scrimgeour seized power and Violet burned the Death Eater's dueling hall in Knockturn. Voldemort would come sooner, not later.

Twice this Order meeting had been rescheduled at the last possible moment, as part of a strategy of Moody's design to befuddle imaginary informants in the Order. Sirius had put his foot down. There was hardly a point in having a secret society if they never met.

"But," McGonagall said, heaving a great sigh, "I also recall you resolving a great deal of 'turmoil.' I am"—she paused, tsking—"deeply uncomfortable making this request, but as Albus repeatedly pointed out, you are no ordinary student. And if nothing else, we must trust Dumbledore."

A crack shortly followed by a clatter and familiar cursing announced Tonks's presence. McGonagall glanced in that direction and flicked her gaze back to Violet.

"Please, consider returning to Hogwarts. You-Know—Voldemort—will target it regardless. And, with Albus… gone, I fear no one can hold him off but you. If not as a student, an assistant teacher. Albus had such wonderful things to say about your teaching."

"He did?" Violet's eyebrows shot up. "I, uh, had a different impression of his opinion."

A small, sad smile crossed McGonagall's face. "Albus had a gift for seeing the best in everyone."

"Fuck me," Violet groaned. "Er, sorry. Look, I'm sympathetic. But you understand I have a role to play?"

"It would be exceedingly difficult not to by this point."

"No guarantees," Violet said after a moment, tapping a fingernail against the Black dining room table. "But… I do have to sleep somewhere, I suppose."

"That," McGonagall said, "would be a relief. Much as I would prefer that such considerations were not necessary, the safety of Hogwarts is paramount." She frowned. "Whatever it may take to ensure that."

"Let's be clear, though." Violet looked aside, to Tonks and another witch entering the dining room. Sirius followed behind. "While my presence might have a deterring effect on certain problems, it will exacerbate others. Hogwarts or not, student or not, I will deal with these problems as I see fit. You may wish to ensure they do not have the chance to develop."

"Measures will be taken." She stood up, righted her chair, and nodded to Sirius. "Take care of yourself, Black."

He flashed her a grin. "Always do. Not staying for the meeting?"

"I'm afraid not. Our great Minister is eager to discuss Hogwarts's security, and if I don't meet with him we'll likely wake up with 'soldiers' lurking in the hallway armors. He is most insistent. To think, a magical army. Madness."

"I'll talk to him," Violet said. "He'll back off."

"Hmph." McGonagall took her leave, brushing past another arriving Order member.

Violet stood up as well, rolling her shoulders. "Well, we have some time yet. Fetch me from the library when the rest arrive, Nymphadora, won't you? And do mind the books; they bite."

~#~

Meetings of the Order of the Phoenix were like Winter feasts. Everyone was smiling, and it felt like someone might be stabbed at any moment.

"I zink you 'ave spent one too many years alone," Fleur said, brushing a delicate strand of hair out of her face. A thread of her Summer glamour permeated the room, but it was subtler, calculated. Enough to put someone on edge without them realizing it was there. "You 'ave gone mad with paranoia. Eet eez tragic."

"Ha!" Moody snorted. "That's cute, girl. That really is. Only you won't distract me so easily. She"—he stabbed a gnarled finger at Violet—"is a bloody menace. At this rate we'll be welcoming something worse than Voldemort by this time next year."

Sirius, ever spoiling for a fight, immediately rose to her defense. "And what exactly would you suggest? Leave the Ministry like a fattened pig offered up for Voldemort's pleasure? At least Scrimgeour's doing something. And as for my goddaughter, if Dumbledore trusted her I don't see any reason—"

"And Dumbledore's dead, isn't he?" Moody's false eye jerked and spun, and he banged his hand against the table, eliciting a shriek from Molly and the clatter of dropped china. "Funny how the timing worked out, isn't it? She disappears for weeks on end, doing Merlin knows what, and Dumbledore just happens to bite it. A remarkable coincidence, that."

Violet laughed, a cold knife through the air. "I'm sure I don't know what you're implying. After all, surely no respected Auror could be so inept as to believe that I killed him."

The tension that immediately settled was palpable. Jon, lurking in a corner of the room away from the table, subtly moved for his wand. Moody grinned. It wasn't pretty.

"See, I think you know exactly what I'm implying. The guilty mind always knows, always gives itself away. The more they shout about how they couldn't hurt a fly, how they loved the victim, how they can't stop crying—if you knew how many weeping housewives turned out to have slipped a bit of Ridgeback venom into the tea…"

"Imbecile."

Violet glanced back, eyebrow raised. Snape, swathed in his raised hood even indoors and standing away from the table, wore an even more contemptuous expression than usual. "She's not saying she didn't kill him because of some absurd moral contrivance. She's saying that if she had decided to kill him, and improbably succeeded, she would have done so as publicly as possible to assert her power."

The discussion broke down into vitriol after that. Amusingly, Sirius appeared to be torn; normally he would support her, but even vaguely agreeing with Snape was to be avoided like plague. Violet, though, was thinking.

She pushed away from the table, smirking at Molly's vain attempts to restore some semblance of order. Without Dumbledore, the Order was unwinding like half-finished knitting. She nodded to Snape, who regarded her impassively.

"You're right," she said in an undertone. "I didn't kill him. But if I did, I would either make sure the world watched him fall or see that he vanished without a trace."

"Thank you for confirming my analysis. Truly, I depend on the reassurances of mentally disturbed teenagers."

"Do you talk to the Dark Lord that way too?"

Something almost mistakable as a smile crossed his face before he forced his sneer slightly deeper. "What do you think?"

Violet laughed lightly. "But you know him, the Dark Lord. And I like to think I do too, a little. So why wouldn't he do the same?"

"The same?"

"If he believed he could defeat Dumbledore, wouldn't he want to do it in front of as many eyes as possible? No one even knows where or how Dumbledore died, not for certain. Did the Dark Lord defeat him in a duel? Did he trick him? Had Dumbledore slowed with age, or had the Dark Lord's power grown? This way, people will wonder, and more so once the Ministry's propaganda has its way. He would have known this."

Snape nodded. "He would."

"So why, then?"

"I suppose," Snape said, quietly, "one might conclude that he felt he had something to hide."

Violet raised an eyebrow. "Such as if he did not defeat Dumbledore alone?"

"Most certainly. But even Bellatrix would have been unable to provide a meaningful advantage versus a wizard of Dumbledore's genius. I can only assume the Dark Lord used some other ruse that would not reflect well on his image. What, I cannot imagine, but I am certain that no Death Eater was present at the time of Dumbledore's death."

He broke off and folded his fingers together. "Ultimately," he said, "attempting to discern greater purpose in the Dark Lord's actions is a futile endeavor. His intellect so exceeds the feeble mind of the average wizard that few can even understand him well enough to fall into his traps. Add to that a healthy dose of insanity, real or feigned, and you have a waste of time as great as searching for the universal solvent."

Violet patted Snape's arm, making him twitch away. "Fascinating," she said. "You're not nearly so useless as Sirius would have me think."

Snape made a coarse sound that might, possibly, have been amusement and stalked off. He took a pinch of Floo powder and departed Grimmauld Place, leaving behind the unabated discordance of the Order of the Phoenix. Violet watched the shifting light of the fireplace for a few seconds, then followed his example and left the din behind, up a flight of stairs to the pristine stillness of the upper floors and her bedroom. She settled into a curved, upholstered chair, and closed her eyes. Crystalline ice formed in her palm. With a thought, she made it divide. Two. Four. Eight. More.

Deep calm crept over her, the impression of a vast ocean of a magic suffusing her with every breath. A mist of suspended ice surrounded her, the particles as fine as wind. Time took on a loose, shifting quality, as if a second and a minute could be one and the same. She breathed out.

"Are you there?"

ALWAYS.

Shuddering power shook Violet, her pale skin washed out in eerie blue by an infinitely small point of light in the haze. Sensations, emotions assailed her, as vast and overwhelming as the night sky. This time, she was expecting it. She slid her tongue between the razor points points of her canine teeth and bit down, pain and salty iron centering her. She rolled her head, awash in the tide. Her eyes snapped open.

"Winter."

YES.

"I have questions."

COMPLEXITY. DISTANCE. There was a pause. DANGER. CROWN; THIRD; IRON.

"Merlin—" Violet wiped at her eyes, which were burning and watering, tremoring in the rhythm of Winter's presence. The back of her hand was streaked red. "Esrid—"

THE THIRD. DANGER.

"Yes," Violet snapped. Given the cost of just a few words, she would prefer if Winter would refrain from finishing her sentences. "Has he really made a deal with Voldemort?"

The wait was excruciating. The corners of her vision were darkening, and her hand had developed an uncontrollable twitch. She forced herself deeper into Occlumency, until nothing remained but the presence that was as much within her as around her. Finally, Winter responded.

COMPLEXITY. DISTANCE.

"Fuck," Violet hissed. Someone had most unwelcomely driven a heated knife into her temple—or so she imagined. "Explain, maybe?"

A surge of irritation shot through her chest, and though she felt it as her own, it originated from Winter. A barrage of concepts and images flashed through her mind, dizzyingly fast and impossible to decipher.

EXPLANATION IS DIFFICULT. COMMUNICATION IS COMPLEX. DISTANCE. PATIENT?

Violet grit her teeth, her fingers clenched around the chair's armrest. Wood splintered. "Yeah, yeah, I'm patient. Bloody picture of tranquility here."

AH. Triumph blossomed in her thoughts. TRANSLATION. ALLIANCE OF IRON LORD AND THIRD NOT—

"Ah, there you are! I could feel zat you were doing something—ah, quite cold, eezn't it?"

The sultry, melodic, and, above all, loud voice of Fleur Delacour affected the incredibly precarious mental dance of Violet's communication with Winter in roughly the same way as a bowling ball thrown into an alchemist's shop. Her concentration shattered, Winter's presence vanished mid-phrase, and the suspended magic—which had steadily grown throughout their conversation, held deftly in check only by her will—dispersed in the most efficient way possible. That was to say, it exploded.

Fleur yelped, shielding her face as frost bit at her exposed skin—of which there was quite a bit. A silent eruption of light filled the room, extinguishing every candle and tossing furniture randomly. Violet let out a heartfelt groan from her position on the floor, her chair having collapsed into decaying splinters from the uncontrolled release. Bloody fucking stupid Summery French—

"Are you all right?" Fleur asked, peering down at Violet with what looked like genuine concern. "I believe you are weeping blood. Did you know zat?"

"Oh, I'm just lovely." Violet rolled to her feet, exuding aggravation. Just when she was about to learn something useful—why in Merlin's name hadn't she thought to lock the door? "I simply adore it when people startle me in the middle of obviously sensitive and dangerous magic. Thank you, O brilliant and thoughtful one."

"I am sorry. I seemply sensed your magic and was… excited. I wanted to show you zat I 'ave been practicing." She hung her head, a pout on her lips so picturesque that it would have made Snape hesitate. Violet rolled her eyes.

"It's fine. Well, not really, but don't worry about it." She clicked her fingers, and the accumulated ice about the room melted to nothing, not even dampening the carpet. Fleur watched intently. "I notice you were a bit more controlled earlier. Such improvement is… not unimpressive."

"Thank you," Fleur said brightly. "It eez thanks only to you. See?"

She cupped her hands, a bright yellow flame flickering within. Nibbling her lower lip, she stared at it, fixated. Slowly the flame began to stretch, smoothing and calming and twisting about itself. It branched off, unfolding into the shape of a rose. The shape was stable, but it was unmistakably still alight, oranges and reds shifting within it as if the fire's chaos had been turned inward. "Pretty," Violet admitted.

"Touch it," Fleur said, a little breathy. "Eet will not burn you."

Violet gave her a dubious look—in general, Summer and Winter did not come together without some sort of violent consequence—but she reached out all the same. Fleur was right; it did not burn. Nor was it insubstantial as flame should be. It was like warmed velvet, and the contact sent a shiver—not unpleasant—through Violet's arm to her heart.

How fascinating.

Fleur giggled. "I can feel you like it eez part of me. I deed not think zat would 'appen. I 'ave wanted to show someone for weeks. I don't think Bill would understand."

"You can feel through it?" This certainly was nothing like Winter magic. "So if I do this—"

Fleur made a high-pitched sound of surprise and pulled back, laughing. The fire rose vanished. Violet winked. "Maybe another thing we don't tell Bill—"

An immense sound like shattering glass shook the air. Violet was on her feet, wand in hand, before the last echo faded. Fleur looked around, confused. "What was zat?"

"I don't kn—Inviolatus!"

Violet's uncanny forewarning had come not a fraction too soon. The mighty shield hardened around her, pressed up against Fleur so that it would cover them both, seemingly in the same moment as the exterior facing wall exploded as if struck by explosive shot. Dust and smoke filled the room, and chunks of broken brick redoubled the cacophony as they cracked the air. Shock and shrapnel broke alike against the shield, and when Violet lowered it, their ears did not even ring. She arched an eyebrow at Fleur, just inches away yet partially obscured by dust. A feather had landed in her golden hair, thrown into the air by the demise of a most comfortable pillow.

"In light of recent information, I would hazard a guess that it was the sound of the catastrophic failure of the wards."

A massive rent was torn in the wall, opening out onto the dark streets of London. A flash of light streaked toward them, but Violet sensed no immediate danger and merely flexed her legs to absorb the house's tremble as the curse struck somewhere away from them.

Moody had been right. The very heart of the Order of the Phoenix was under attack. A more direct challenge from Voldemort could not be imagined, short of strolling into the Ministry Atrium. But the wards, Violet wondered, extricating herself from a vaguely disoriented Fleur and spinning the Elder wand in her hand, what of them?

The Blacks were an ancient family with a habit of making enemies and a truly legendary depth of paranoia. The wards of Number 12 Grimmauld Place were an arcane mystery wrapped in pure malice and dripping contempt so profound as to nearly live themselves. Even Voldemort could not have brought them down swiftly. Unless, she thought, the swirling dust settling under the weight of her gathering magic, they were broken from the inside.

"We are under attack," she said, a symphony of cracks from the lower floors reinforcing her statement. A moment later the heavy burden of an anti-Apparition Jinx that could only be Voldemort's settled. "The enemy's back will be broken over their own blade."

With that, she leapt like a cat from the gaping wound in the wall, plunging three stories yet landing as lightly as stepping off a carriage. Curses lit up the street, mostly coming from inside the house. Violet Disillusioned herself and began to stalk down the street, her gaze easily parting the night. There would be time to join the melee before long, but first she would find the pitiable fool who cast a curse through her bedroom.

She saw him in the yard of a neighboring property, stepping out from a tree to flick another glowing streak that ripped a hole in Grimmauld Place's roof and hurled skittering fragments of slate tiles into the street, screeching strangely as they careened and ricocheted.

"Avada Kedavra!" Violet snapped, following the curse with two more as the Death Eater ducked back behind the tree. It splintered and cracked in two, collapsing into green fire. She strode forward.

"Mistake," she said. "I hope you love your cause, because you're about to die for it."

"Malleus!" the Death Eater snapped. "Lacero! Scinditur Corde!"

Violet batted the curses aside, striding inexorably forward. Crimson ribbons streamed from the Elder Wand, writhing like snakes as they darted toward him. They crashed against a shield, shaking the earth with the strength of the blow. She followed it by throwing her free hand into the air and pulling, a great invisible weight descending and shattering the remnants of his shield. Inches of ice formed over the ground, encasing his legs from the ankles down.

Expelliarmus!

His wand arced off into the night and she approached, finding easy purchase on the slick ice.

She swept forward in a heartbeat, sliding her fingers under the trapped man's mask, lifting it away. He recoiled from her presence, frost covering his skin and clothes. Violet smiled at him.

"I liked my room."

"Lunatic."

"We're all a little mad, aren't we?" Splotchy purple discolorations were beginning to spread across the man's face under the thickening ice, his breath growing ragged. She leaned closer, until she was whispering in his ear. "Say, where's Voldemort? Shouldn't he be here to protect his loyal followers from little old me?"

"H-ha," he gasped. "What do you think my L-Lord is doing while you occupy yourself with me?"

Damn it.

About to strike him down, she hesitated—perhaps he would be more useful alive; Scrimgeour could make a show of his trial. She stunned the man and he collapsed, bones snapping as his full weight fell on his imprisoned ankles.

Without another look at the man, Violet swept back across the street, dark and flickering power clinging to her like a second cloak. Smooth, black ice formed in her left hand, a narrow blade. Stray red light splashed beside her, deflected by a gesture, and rot spread across a manicured lawn. Shouts and verbal courses rang out from inside Grimmauld Place, along with roars of flame and other, stranger, sounds.

Breaking into a run, she burst through the front door, turning the motion into a roll as a silvery curse flashed over head. "Fucking friendly," she snapped at the man who had cast it, an elderly Order member named something like Doggle or Dibble. Horror was in his eyes, those of a man who had believed in righteous duty and was utterly disillusioned with its reality. She got an excellent look at them, because they were the last thing to be reduced to ash by the flames that tore through his body after a curse took him from behind.

"Violet Potter," Voldemort said, stepping through the smoke and char. "I wondered if perhaps you had fled."

"Afraid not. Just cleaning up outside." Violet winked. "You should keep a closer eye on your toys. Otherwise, who knows what might happen to them?"

"I see. Viscera Expulso!"

The Winter magic gathered around her rushed out in a terrible fury, swallowing Voldemort's curse and going on to break against a shield of cursed flame. He flicked his wand and the flame became crows, diving at her with talons trailing an acid green venom. They fell dead three meters away from her, feathers shriveling and decaying as the seconds raced by.

Cruel female laughter drifted down from a floor above. A man screamed. A conspiratorial smile stretched across Voldemort's face. "Oh, Bella. Who do you think she caught? Your godfather, perhaps?"

"She'd best hope not," Violet replied, casually waving her dagger at the corridor wall. The old house groaned, but its magic was failing, and it faltered, the wall collapsing backward five meters or more. Finally, a little space to dance in.

"Because you would kill her, I suppose? Hardly a compelling threat when you would already do the same," Voldemort said, making a halfhearted attempt to turn the air to toxin while she was distracted. She shrugged, drawing away the poison in a quickly accelerating whirlwind.

"I wouldn't get the chance. She won't like what comes out if she pushes Sirius too far."

"Truly? Avada Kedavra!"

"Crucio!"

Violet twisted away from Voldemort's curse while he brought down a chunk of the ceiling to absorb hers, the ruined plaster abruptly flying at her as the fragments turned sharp and shiny. They faltered at the will of the Elder Wand and became a lash of liquid metal, cleaving through solid oak furniture without slowing. Voldemort ducked beneath it, attempting to wrest control of it on the backstroke, but the Elder Wand's transfigurations were absolute and the silver's noble nature eluded his grasp. He conjured a floating steel shield instead, anger she could feel in his wand movements, but even as the whip came around she snapped her left arm forward. The ice blade flew like an arrow for Voldemort's eyes, and his shield rose to meet it only an instant before it would have struck him. Winter's ice shattered against steel, but the Elder's silver was on its way. The thick tendril split at its tip to a dozen gasping tongues, spreading too widely for the shield to possibly stop.

Half clattered harmlessly against the steel. The rest bit into his pale flesh, carving thin red lines that immediately began to weep. Violet brought the whip around again.

"Enough." Voldemort spread his arms, and the wrecked corridor was filled with a hurricane's wind, silverware flung like daggers. Violet staggered backward, bracing herself against the torrent, and the whip struck low, carving through the floorboards. Voldemort watched her, a slash across his forehead slowly staining his face red.

"Enjoy your unearned power while you can," he hissed, his tongue flicking out to wipe away a bead of blood from his lips. "You will never destroy me, and you must falter only once."

He raised his wand, and the anti-Apparition Jinx dissolved. A blur of cracks followed a second later as the Death Eaters disengaged. Violet immediately began raising her own jinx, her lips drawing back at the certainty that this could be it, that it could end here—but Voldemort snapped his arm down, and her half-formed spell shattered. He shook his head.

"I leave you with dust and the dead. The true war begins today. You are strong. I am eternal."

He vanished.

In the restless lull that followed there was only the murmur of low flames and creaking of warming ice. Then the screaming started.

The ancestral home of the Blacks, the survivor of Merlin knew how many disastrously failed rituals, blood feuds, and outright wars, was a write-off. Savage gouges carved into the walls wept caustic black ichor, like a dragon overcome by a thousand arrows. Shattered glass ground into powder beneath Violet's boots. The fighting had started in the dining room, it seemed. She could imagine the scene—the Order, still consumed in their own internal debates, not reacting to the fall of the wards until it was too late. Then the Dark Lord's most loyal, materializing among them and striking in every direction. Her nostrils flared; blood was in the air.

Bodies, most dead, lay across the room: slumped in their chairs, sprawled on the floor, skewered to the wall, in pieces. A few wore gleaming masks that marked them as Death Eaters. Most did not.

The carnage continued beyond the room, up the nearby staircase. There wasn't quite a waterfall of blood streaming down it, but the reality wasn't far either. The screams—a tortured, miserable sound—had faded, but Violet could just pick out sobbing, along with murmuring voices. It had not been a good day for the Order of the Phoenix.

She took a step up the stairs, hesitated, and turned back to the dining room. Like Death itself, she ghosted from one still form to another, gently turning their faces upward. One, a Death Eater, still lived, though with his lower half attached to his torso only by strands of sinew, that would soon change. A needle of ice slid into his neck ensured it.

Despite herself, a pang of relief announced itself as Violet turned over the last body, revealing it as neither Sirius, Jon, or Tonks. A man who looked scarcely older than a seventh-year stared up at her with the incongruous serenity sometimes found in the most mortally injured. He looked up at her and choked, gurgling blood and a mangled word that might have been Savior.

"Shh," she whispered, twining her fingers with his. "Seconds and centuries, one and the same. Savor this moment of glory."

A minute later, he too was dead.

An irregular clomping heralded Moody descending down the staircase, his peg leg slamming against the stairs like hollow drums. He slowly gazed over the scene, his scarred face set like stone, before settling on Violet. He growled and jerked his head back up the stairs. Then he turned and began his own ponderous climb.

There was nothing to do but obey, though Violet found she would really prefer not to. She followed him upstairs, amid smoke and ruin. The second floor was worse.

"Voldemort," Moody said, unnecessarily. "Here's what happened when he decided to show up. Downstairs was mostly Bellatrix."

It was like bowling.

She had engaged in the activity precisely once by Dumbledore, after being maliciously misled into thinking it constituted a magical ritual. After realizing the joke had been on her, she'd spent the rest of the evening convincing him that sharing that particular anecdote wouldn't be wise. She'd almost forgotten about that night.

Voldemort had been the ball, a tumbling, unstoppable force that cleaved through anything in his way. The Order, scattered across a hallway with its walls blown out and ceiling crumbling, were pins, some leaning unsteadily against each other while others piled on the floor. Bowling, as she recalled, involved less blood.

One of the unmoving, red-painted pins was Remus Lupin. Tonks cried over his body. He, and she, weren't the only ones.

"Fuck," Violet breathed, moving closer. Without even thinking about it she searched for familiar faces, dead and alive. Shacklebolt, dead. Moody, alive, obviously. The man's hatred sustained him like a necromantic magic. One of the Weasleys, not Bill or the twins, alive. Fletcher, dead, of all people. He'd been a slippery as a cockroach. No sign of Jon—if he'd been here for the fight, he must've bolted the moment the last body dropped. No way of telling who might have betrayed them, brought down the wards from the inside. Perhaps they were already dead, one way or another.

Sirius leaned against a wall, something sharp and shifting in his eyes as he watched Tonks and Lupin without a hint of emotion. A flame walked between his fingers, curling and twisting to an unconscious song. He looked at her, shrugged, and Disapparated. The ceiling sagged another inch. The last Black had left number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

She should go too. There was nothing she could do here, unless she could travel back in time and warn herself to deal with Voldemort immediately, not the bombarding Death Eater. Of course, that might have just meant the entire building coming down on their heads. Even now, her thoughts turned to tactics, to sharpening the blade for the next chapter of war. The grief surrounding her was so palpable it could nearly be grasped, but it washed over her like air. Yes, she was useless here.

"Violet!" A wall of delicate warmth and floral scent collided with her, wrapping its arms around her and planting a tingling kiss on each cheek before pulling back, looking slightly pink. "Ze fall—you aren't 'urt?"

"Of course not. I always land on my feet."

Fleur nodded very quickly. She swallowed. "Bill eez at our cottage, thank 'eavens. 'E wanted to come, but with 'is wound—" she shuddered. "Eez he safe there, you think? Could they attack there too?"

"Likely not," Violet said, seizing on the distraction. "But it's best to be sure. I'll come with you. Side-along? I don't believe I've had the pleasure of visiting."

"Certainly," Fleur said quietly, taking Violet's arm. "There eez nuzzing you must do here?"

Violet glanced across the room. Moody, stomping about in an irregular patrol, said, "Aurors'll be on their way. I'll talk to them if the rest of you want to get out of here." He sneered. "Unless you want to put your spin on things, your eminence."

"That will not be necessary. Tomorrow we will discuss reprisals. Agreed?"

Moody slowly nodded. "Agreed," he said and smiled, pearly teeth glittering between leather lips. "And someone find Snape. I'd like to have a chat."

"Good. Fleur?" Violet smirked. "Take me away."

A weightless laugh slipped from Fleur's lips despite the circumstances, before she clapped a hand over them and gave Violet a glare. Then they both turned, like dancers, and were lost to the wind.

~#~

"You contribution to our alliance is… lacking."

"Choose your words carefully, Dark Lord. Were you to suggest that I am forsworn, I would be bound to offer a suitable rebuttal."

"Hardly. Your species's slavish dedication to finding new ways to violate the spirit of an agreement while toeing its precise wording is almost impressive, in the same piteous manner as the meaningless formulations of a muggle solicitor. I merely suggest that such a mockery is, in my case, inadvisable. I require your blessing once more."

"Ah, a jest. No. Would you be so willing to part with your own power?"

"The girl is a menace, growing more dangerous by the day. You plot and scheme and boast of your genius machinations, but how long has it been since you saw her truly fight? Even by her own talents, she would be a devil with a wand, but it is the combination of foreign magics that makes her an unacceptable threat. Dueling her is like grappling with a two-headed wolf. With one head she pins you, while the other rips out your throat."

"It must be a great frustration to see your own power falter before the might of Winter."

"Shortsighted fool—can't you see? She is mighty because of the combination of power, mortal and Sidhe. We must do the same. Not some trinket of a ring. True union, as she has, so that we might both benefit. And reaffirm our… mutual trust."

"Fascinating. What do you propose?"

"Give me the ring, but unfettered. Allow me to master its power and take it for myself."

"I would as soon tear out my own heart."

"Then do so. I will make you greater than your whole. I vow it."

"Do you mean to offer me a ring, too? How romantic."

"Not a ring."