The canopy stretches above him, the branches of the trees arcing towards the sky and hiding the worn dirt path from the sun above. Dust clings to his dragonhide boots as the whispers of the trees brush against his shoulders. The aspen wand held at his side murmurs back, calling to its fellows and home.
The ground beneath Rosier's feet rumbles in recognition. Somewhere in these old woods, the ancient roots of an aspen's colony reaches out to the small piece that was taken from them less than a century ago. Taken and crafted into the wand wood that encases his soul.
Evan Rosier treks past the same trail a boy named Edgar Rosier once traveled. Foolish and young, unable to sense the presence of the old things that watched this path as he walked with his old schoolmates. His wand alive but unfelt in his hand, a trusted tool at his side and nothing more.
Now, half of that boy walks alone. The phoenix feather buried within his wand's core burns with the rising anger boiling in his blood. The desire to spread his magic and to set alight the pathway to the Nott Manor hidden within Wyre Forest strains against the wooden logic that to do so would rob him of something he desires far more.
To speak with Cantankerous Nott. To show him personally how Evan Rosier deals with those who have failed his family.
After what feels like hours, the Nott Manor finally comes into view. Evan does not concern himself with hiding his face under the shadow of his hood. Felix had done well enough in ensuring that Theodore wasn't here, leaving no risk of the boy recognizing the face of a dead man who still decorates clippings of old Daily Prophets.
It's unfortunate that Felix wasn't able to pry the boy from Lucius Malfoy's grip. Of course the two-faced traitor would want to ensure a powerful influence with what will soon be the last of the Nott's. Perhaps, when Evan is done here, he'll pay Malfoy Manor a visit. With respect to Elenore's bond with Narcissa, he won't do much. But seeing the face of a true Knight of Walpurgis, one who didn't betray their Master, should be enough to convince Lucius of his mistake.
And if it's not enough, there's always the cruciatus curse for persuasion.
The cover of the canopy falls away as Even enters the clearing surrounding the stone brick manor. The wards tease against him, tasting the wisps of his magic that leak from his body and twisting out of his way as he passes the barriers of their protections.
There is no doubt that Nott knows he's here. Only a squib would be so unaware as to fail to register when his family wards welcome in an intruder. Perhaps he's already fled, apparated away to one of his hideaways that he prepared during the war.
Or perhaps he's leaning against the entrance's stone archway. An empty squat vial dangling precariously from his loose fingers while he inspects a half-filled vial of something clear. The old man only looks up when Evan's just several paces away.
"It took you a while to walk here, Evan. I was certain you'd just apparate in."
"I know the walk's a bit long, Edgar. I promise I'd apparate us all in if I could."
The voices should be more different with how the years have worn away at the vocal cords of the man before him until his voice now rasps with age. That bleakness is just the same though as it was that day. Except, instead of a school boy leaning bonelessly against the archway of his ancestral home, so exhausted as to not even feel relief at escaping Muggle London, there's an old man. The white in his hair shears thick strands through the dark, dark brown. The bags under his sea-green eyes are worsened by the wrinkles that have long since spread across his face.
"And tear myself apart on your wards, no thanks." Evan bites out, snapping at the disconcerting sight before him. This isn't what he was expecting. Nott shouldn't be out here waiting for him.
The sharp tang of peppermint wafts through the air. Calming draught, if the two sets of Hogwarts years bent over a cauldron have taught Evan anything about potion stenches. That has to be what's in that clear liquid vial Nott's letting dangle loosely in his hand.
The bastard doesn't look like he needs the damn stuff, not with how half-dead Nott appears, eyeing Evan as if he's waiting for him to do something.
Evan's left hand, covered in the smooth skin of a man in his prime, grips the handle of his wand tight.
Nott says nothing, responding to the sight of a livid dark wizard before him by merely holding up the calming draught to his lips and sipping its contents like fine wine.
Over the sprawling lawn, Edgar paces as Cantankerous watches, sipping the stolen firewhiskey slowly. The sky above them is so, so clear, yet the crowded trees block Edgar's view of the horizon. He won't be able to see them coming, not from far enough away to actually do anything.
Evan's doesn't give a damn about what's in the sky today, yet the anger rattling between his ribs tears through him just the same as that day.
"I suppose the mudblood is dead then. If you've already decided to show up here," says Nott, sipping from the vial yet again.
"What?" The word escapes Evan in a hiss. The sun beats down on his head. Even with the cooling weather, his skin burns under it.
"The aurors will probably be coming shortly," Nott murmurs, his eyes sharper than they should be with a calming draught and who knows what else sludging through his veins, "There aren't many of us who would be so bold as to strike in broad daylight…A grieving widower though…"
He hums, unconcerned, slowly draining the vial down as Evan gapes.
"Why would I waste my time before coming here?" The demand strikes as hard and quick as a spell. "You're the one who's failed his family. Left my–" grandson, nephew– "Theodore to fend for himself!"
The lax expression in Nott's face stiffens. It's not fear or sorrow that hardens it, just a terrible blankness as unreadable as stone.
"So that's it then?" Nott's voice is soft enough that the rasp is near gone. "You know, I'm not the one who left a horcrux in the home of his own children." The old Death Eater straightens, staring deep past the concealing rage that boils through Evan.
"I didn't nibble away at her life, sap the strength from the very structure of her body until her heart was too hollowed out to ever beat strong enough on its own. I didn't leave her with no choice but to trust her life in others' unreliable hands."
Those cold words wash the world away. Leaving only the sensation of being curled up and featherly light inside a never ending darkness. The only light being something trusting and innocent. A girl whose father let her wield his wand, used it to train her as purebloods are meant to do at the first promising signs of magic.
The body he wears is strong, a majority of the magic that created it from the muggles that Edgar had quickly slaughtered so as to feed the growing, hungry thing inside his own wand. So as to sever the bond that ate and ate away at his own daughter.
It was too late though, to put back what he had taken. To fix a child, not even six, who slept with blue-tinged lips as her father–
Edgar was weeping openly, clutching the sheets of his daughter's bed as she slumbered. The man who had sworn himself to his Lord, who would burn Muggles from the world with a hardened heart, shook and shook as Evan watched from the corner of the dark room. His small form buzzed with the life force of those they had harvested, yet his hair was the same dark shade of brown as the girl lying still on that bed. His height matched hers precisely.
The very flesh of his body constructed from the bits he stole from her. Pieces he could never put back.
A cold breeze runs through as Nott stares at Evan with an expression that looks too much like pity
The glass of firewhiskey rests coldly in his hand. Filled to the brim with a liquid that will spark down his throat and burn numbness through his chest if he would only take a drink, the hard glass resists the strength of his grip as Evan stares at the red fluid inside. Streams of orange swirl into existence as he watches, disappearing and reappearing quickly under his gaze.
"I suppose Edgar doesn't know." Nott's voice comes from across the parlor, drawing Evan's focus back up. They're inside now, the sky blocked from sight by the dead wood of the ceiling.
He can't quite remember how he came to be seated on the worn brown leather of an armchair, yet Evan finds he doesn't really care.
"No." Evan states. At the sight of Nott's arched eyebrow, he continues, "We haven't written to each other in months. Last I knew, he was going to start searching Mongolia." Evan himself had bought tickets to the Americas. Was only a few days from heading out over the seas when he happened to catch a glimpse of the headlines of the Daily Prophet.
They spent years. Used the disguise of death, one from supposed old age and another from an auror's wand to tear through country after country for wherever their Lord was hiding. If there had at least been some hint, anything to show for it…Instead there's a dead girl who neither of them have seen for years, haven't even written to her except for a handful of times.
Nott sighs, the weight of it leaning heavily upon the room. On the end table next to him, a bubbling, yellow potion sits in a refilled vial. A cheering potion and a calming draught, probably taken every day since the death of his wife.
It's another detail that Evan couldn't care less for but tucks away regardless.
"That may be for the best," Nott says, eyeing the cheering potion before deciding against it, "you've always been better at being discreet than he is. Edgar would have picked the mudblood's house first, you know. Wouldn't have bothered to even hide his face from the entire neighborhood."
Ignoring the fact that Evan would have struck him dead in his own entrance, Nott continues. "At least this way, I have some time to set up an appointment with Felix. Hog's Head is as good as any place to catch up, let the boy work out some of his frustrations." At the questioning glare Evan fixes on him, Nott looks briefly amused.
"Both you and I know that you'll murder someone before the end of the night. The boy needs an alibi if you don't want the ministry blaming him for the death of a poor muggleborn." The curl in Nott's lip pulls a question from Evan's.
"Why didn't you do it?" The accusation in Evan's tone isn't as sharp as he wants it to be. The memories of what he did to his own daughter weigh too heavily for him to muster enough energy to hone his voice into the blade it should be.
The exasperated look Nott gives him matches the same one he's given him again and again during their school years, when Evan was just another seamless part of Edgar.
"I'm old, and will only get older by the day." The unlike you goes unsaid. "My aim slips more often than not these days. And besides, you need to do this more than I do." Nott finishes.
"Elenore was your wife." There's the accusation, the anger finally reigniting.
"And she was your daughter. If, years from now, Theodore's wife didn't stand aside while I avenged my fallen son, or if she decided to do so first, I would…" the cold in Nott's voice chills the anger in Evan's chest, "...be very cross with her."
There's nothing to say to that admission. So Evan remains silent, refusing to fill the air like Abraxas would have, always did whenever their meetings had descended into silence.
Abraxas is dead now, as is Lestrange and so many others, lost to time or the war.
Evan takes a drink, the firewhiskey burning his throat with embers of magic. The energy drains right into his system, leaving the magic stripped from the alcohol that settles in his stomach. A buzz fills his blood that has nothing to do with intoxication. It fades soon enough, the magic of a simple drink lacking the potency of even a muggle's life force.
He pours himself another shot from the bottle Nott, oh so thoughtfully, left sitting by Evan's chair.
It's almost hilarious, to be back in Nott's parlor, gulping down firewhiskey like Evan did that first time as a scared schoolboy. Or maybe, it's pathetic, at least back then he had a real excuse besides self-pity. Barely fifteen and confronted with the real reason why wizards hid themself from the muggles so long ago, Edgar had nearly drunken himself into a stupor.
Abraxas hadn't lasted long. Curled up and passed out on the rug sprawled across the floor, the idiot's hand rests by Edgar's shoe. His long blonde hair sticks in sweaty strands over his closed eyes. Nott's slumped against the side of Edgar's arm chair, his measured breaths the only sign that he's still awake even as his head hangs low.
It should have been annoying, his friends certainly hadn't been this clingy even when they were first years. But Edgar doesn't mind. It's better that he can see them. That there's no smoke obscuring them from view, no wide streets with loose stones from fallen buildings carving out too much space between them as the muggle air siren's screamed and they ran.
An intake of breath draws Edgar's focus back. Riddle watches from across the room, his eyes nearly black in the shadows of the dying flames in the fireplace. Leaning against the wall under the portrait of Nott's grandfather, Tom Riddle looks too calm for a boy who hasn't even had a taste of firewhiskey, for a boy who grew up in that hell where muggles tore their own cities apart in their bloodlust.
Riddle says nothing, absolutely nothing as he watches with what Edgar could swear was a smile ghosting on the edge of his lips. But it can't be, it must be the shadows playing tricks on Edgar's sight. Just like the buzz of firewhiskey in his head plays tricks on his ears, dragging Tom Riddle's voice from smoke-tinged memory as the real boy stands watching.
"So, how are you liking Muggle London?"
