April 14, 1998

The Undercroft had not changed in my time away. It was still a damp, musky labyrinth of tunnels. Moreso when one came in through a back tunnel through the muggle Underground. We fumbled our way down the stairs, Lionel seeming to grow limper and heavier upon my shoulder. He made quiet groans as we walked, muttering that the spellburn was spreading and it hurt.

Passing muggles looked on curiously at the pair of us before looking away. The muggle women were wearing very short dresses that hid almost nothing, showing long legs and flushed joy of drink and exercise on their faces. The men looked seemed to wear identical brown jackets and eyed Lionel and I briefly before turning away to laugh with their girls. City life really did remove all sorts of nosy curiosities in people. After all, drinking was a national pastime and nothing of real interest to passersby unless Lionel and I fell down the stairs. Which seemed to grow more likely with each step we took.

Real shame that mechanical staircase – escapator? – was not working. Which... I mean, did those ever truly break? They're stairs?

I don't understand the nonmagical. They're so strange.

When the No-Majs cleared away for a moment as the train left the station, Lionel came back to life for a moment to point to a maintenance door.

"Through there. No one will see us."

I nodded, taking another quick look around before opened the door and taking Lionel and I through it to get into the familiar smell and cold air of the Undercroft. We walked, half staggering through the tunnel, turning when Lionel said too, he was seeing things I could not, ensuring I would never remember this path through to the Undercroft.

Any future visits would be through the front door.

I did not know how long we walked, it was a space of time that both felt very long and very short. Strange shadows leaped and moved along the wall. Some looked birdish. I knew I saw antlers and almost dropped Lionel for the terror of it.

After a time, we came to a place I vaguely recognized, it was one of the end of the roads in the main section of the Undercroft I had visited twice before. It was quieter here than it had been on my last visit a couple of days ago, quieter and I wondered what time it was. This place seemed much more active at night and I wondered exactly what time it was.

"That way. Up the stairs."

The staircase was down a small gap between a couple of shops at the edge of the row, the steps were stone and led up to the second floor of the building to a wooden door with a simple brass handle that gleamed under a nearby lamp. I gripped the stair railings tightly, feeling them shake from the lack of repair and really hoped we would not fall through them to the stone below.

Lionel reached up and knocked four quick, sharp taps with his knuckles and two loud bangs with his fist.

There was a moment of silence at the door before an answering three taps.

Lionel responded with a distinctive rhythm of seven rapid knocks.

It was an old woman who answered the door. She looked at Lionel and then looked at me through her very large glasses before swinging open the door to welcome us inside the dark room. As the door closed, lamps were being lit in the room by another woman further back in the room. The light revealed a small waiting area with a sofa and a curtain blocking off half of the room, as more lights came on more telling signs of a Healer's Office came to light, newspapers and magazines on a small table, pamphlets with art deco images of mothers and babies, or just women in various states of relaxation or stress offering information on maternal care or options for unviable or unwanted pregnancies. One even had a clear label stating in bold letters 'Sex After Assault.'

Where was I?

"Lionel, really?" I turned my attention back to the woman who had let us in. She had short white hair, cut close to the scalp and was slightly stooped with age, if she was not so, she would have been only about five feet tall. She was wearing a gray bathrobe over a long nightgown and keeping her lit wand close and ready to fire a spell if needed. She looked over at me next. "She's too pretty for you."

"I'm not interested in changelings and we both know I don't have the time." Lionel moved forward and I followed his lead, the old woman motioning us to the couch as her assistant wordlessly came forward with one of the lamps to hang it on a nearby hook. She wore a hastily adorned hijab to hide her hair. She adjusted the sleeves of her robe, tightening anything that was loose to free her hands for whatever task was at hand. The Healer quickly took Lionel's arm and examined the rapidly spreading damage of spellburn boils and blisters that had been moving up and down his arm as we moved through the tunnels. "No bed this time?"

"It's being aired out; we had a baby born yesterday. Imara," the healer started, the girl straightened like a soldier at the sound of her name. "Go grab the cooling potion in the blue vial, that should help with the surface damage."

The girl scampered off into another room.

The Healer looked at me next, "I'm Healer Miriam Heller, former Head of Midwifery at Saint Mungo's – what's your name?"

"Annie. It's nice to meet you."

She looked me up and down and then back at Lionel.

"No, Miriam, she's some stray I picked up, barely know her."

"Never stopped anyone before."

I felt my eyes widen.

"I'm not pregnant."

"They all say that until the test comes back." Miriam was giving Lionel the full attention of her eyes and magical power, but I knew I still needed to answer as her spell began to calm the spread of the blisters on his arm. "Imara is more than capable of checking if you're concerned."

I bit my tongue, preparing myself to utter a sentence that was very awkward to say in front of a strange man.

"My period was last week."

Miriam nodded, satisfied at the state of me even if my back was turned.

Lionel winced as Miriam continued the do the preliminary work on his arm. While disgusted at the glimpses of it I had seen from the time we had arrived in this place, I was very fascinated by the work Miriam was doing.

It was a way to distract myself from the sudden onslaught of Harrow on top of me, touching me with his sweaty hands and squeezing my breasts while wearing Alex's face in triumphant expression at this final effort to break me. The way his body pinned me down and the lust in his eyes... I knew what he wanted. He was going to rape me while wearing my brother's face.

I had not had the time to think about how horrible that was. Everything that followed had overwhelmed any sense of memory of the event until this moment, when I had a moment to stop and dwell.

No. Not today. I still did not have the time. I would bury that away, back where it was and focus on the task at hand.

My attention was recaptured by the return of Imara, carefully holding a small, blue bottle of potion. Miriam leaned away from Lionel and allowed Imara to apply the thick potion with a few quick words of advice before she did so.

Lionel saw me watching Imara apply the potion with a careful, steady hand and muttered apologies and assurances it would only be another few moments.

"So, Annie, what's your plan to try and save the world?" Lionel asked, his tone almost mocking but partially curious as he winced his way through treatment.

"I'm going to kill a Dark Lord."

Lionel's mouth gaped, the realization that I was not joking seemed to hit him like a... what was the term? A bludger? Yes, that was it! Well, I've felt like I was dancing on the knife edge of my own sanity for almost two days now, but now it had been thrown out into the world like a baby bird from the nest.

"You're going to what now?"

"Kill a Dark Lord."

"You've lost your mind!" The way Lionel's voice rose in shock, as if he were an affronted parent reminded me of Percy and would have made me laugh in any other situation, but the truth of my statement held my composure.

"No. Someone has to try."

"Hm," Lionel leaned back on the couch, making himself comfortable as the spellburn remains disappeared under the applied potion. "I really don't think you're hero material."

"I'm not out to be a hero." There was a grim sort of determination to my tone that seemed to keep Lionel quiet and made Imara visibly nervous as she bottled the potion, her large black eyes reminded me of a doe. "He needs to die. No one seems willing to do it. So, I will."

I sat down on the couch at last, my legs too tired to hold me up much longer – a sad sort of end to my initially bold pronouncement.

Miriam Heller pulled a chair out from behind the examination curtain to sit on, a little stool on wheels that I found quite fascinating. She gave me a cold, hard, stare as she rolled in front of me.

"I don't know what exactly you're thinking, but I think you have lost your mind."

I saw shifting shadows in the lamp light on the wall. They looked like antlers.

"I know what it is to hate, and I know how hard it is to turn that into a force for good. You will not find peace in this mad quest – you'll only walk into your own death." She stared into my eyes with such intensity that I was half sure she could read minds, if not for the lack of pull and push at my own mind. "If you pursue this, you will not have a future, you'll give it all up on a suicide mission that does not honor your dead."

Lionel and I were quiet, sensing she had more to say.

"I lost my whole family to the Third Reich before I was thirteen. Cousins. Uncles. Aunts. Two sisters. My parents. My father's friend managed to get me away when they came for us – I did not know that man was a wizard, but he knew I was witch. He hid me away, and now I have to hide like a rat again because I have no magical ancestors."

Imara caressed the bottle, seemingly unwilling to leave the room while this conversation was happening, before she spoke up. "You pulled me out of Saint Mungo's when they came to arrest Muggleborn staff. If I have to live like a rat, at least I'm with you."

"Thank you. You've been a comfort and a help through this mess." Miriam sighed, "I wished I could have saved the others too."

Lionel spoke next, "Listen, Annie, if you want to hurt the regime, fine. We can't stop you, hell, I encourage it." Miriam turned to Lionel so quickly and with such ferocity she reminded me of a bird of prey on the hunt. Lionel never lost his footing as he spoke. "I've been attacking Snatchers and Death Eaters since you freed me from the Department of Mysteries. I've helped people, but I don't have your internal knowledge from whatever your Ministry department was." Lionel smiled, it was a predatory and cunning smile. "Why not use that to give those in power the fear they deserve on your way to killing the Chief Death Eater?"

I paused, the unsettling feeling of bones poking into my shoulder. The creature wanted my focus to be on Voldemort. It was reminding me not to waver. Threatening me into complicity with its wants.

Miriam stood before I could decide on how to deal with the creature's near constant presence.

"Well, I would like to go back to bed. Would you two like some tea before I do?"

Lionel nodded, "Yes please, Miriam."

The old woman hobbled away towards a room that seemed to act as a makeshift kitchen. Imara took Miriam's seat on the stool and began to fill out a few papers that were attached to a clipboard. She had steady, spidery handwriting.

"I take it I'm in my usual room?" Lionel asked Imara with a wry grin.

"Of course. We were going to use it for storage but got tired of clearing it out for you." Imara turned her large dark eyes to me next, "We have a proper guest room as well. It's small but you'll be comfortable enough."

"Thank you."

Miriam returned with Lionel's tea and kindly invited me to follow her through little makeshift kitchen – it was dark with little homemade touches of curtains of various, mismatched colors. There was a pointed lack of windows, instead there were paintings of a lush green world that could not be seen from the Undercroft. It was a way to take the edge off of being underground in a dangerous place. We took two steps down into a tiny room with a very small bed and a door for privacy. It had a small mirror on the wall and a small side table next to the bed with a lit lamp, the light reflecting off the mirror to help the room brighten.

I thanked Miriam for her hospitality and closed the door behind her. The bed was hard, a bit like sleeping on the floor of the flat when Percy was ill...

I turned off the lamp and let the darkness envelop me. I closed my eyes tightly, even if I could not tell I had done so.

I needed to stop thinking about him – Thoughts of Percy would just pull me back to him and neither of us would have any peace from the thing that followed me.

I needed to forget him, I needed to forget him to have success in my aimless mission.

Sleep came at last.

Oo0Oo0

April 15, 1998

There was no concept of time in this room and my internal clock could not tell me for sure what time it could even be. I knew I had a restful amount of sleep, but a body can have that and still be awake at four in the morning. I was not sure I could go back to sleep anyway.

My hand moved slowly under my pillow where I had put my wand before going to sleep. It seemed an easy place to put it before I went to bed last night. I lit the lamp with a muttered spell, the light filling the room and motivating me to get out of bed and stretch, wincing at the cracking of my bones and the loosening muscles in my legs before I rose from the bed.

Straightening the sheets and duvet offered me a moment of reflection for home and that nice quilt of Percy's... I missed how he would pull me closer to him in his half-asleep moments when neither of us really wanted to leave the bed. The quiet, half muttered words of affection and incomprehensible grumbles. He talked so much. It was really cute and-

I glanced into the mirror and froze.

I reached up to touch my head where the mirror showed antlers. My hands grasped my hair and clawed at my scalp it to find any sign of nubs or growth. My hands moved faster, messing my hair in my panic. The antlers reached high into the air and even as I lacked the sensation of them under my hands, my mirror hands grasped and yanked them in an unspoken terror.

My hands came down and one of my hands reached out for the mirror, resting it against the cool glass to try and center myself to know what I was seeing was in my head, not my reality. This creature was unsatisfied with me.

I left the room, grabbing my bag and putting my hair in a bun at the nape of my neck through pure muscle memory. I could not look in the mirror any longer after what I had seen. It was a horrible, unspoken sort of reminder that the creature was still with me, dogging my footsteps as I traveled through the world on my quest for revenge.

The clock in the kitchen said seven, but then I noticed that it had stopped ticking and the hands seemed frozen in place. The clock was broken. Excellent.

With no one else being awake, I found myself pulling out Alex's journal and the Graves' Family Grimoire. I looked between both – debating which was more worth my attention under the circumstances I now found myself in as I dropped down onto the ragged couch in this mockery of a sitting room. I knew I needed to leave, but there was no point if it was as early as I suspected it to be.

I chose the Grimoire; I was not sure I could face more readings of my brother right now and this creeping sensation of being watched and hounded by a monster was clearly of supernatural origin. Finding the truth of it could be in this book – I was now in a place mentally where I could give this the time and attention it deserved. Or perhaps I was just in desperate need of a distraction. I curled my feet up on the couch and opened the book – scanning through the pages and reading the interesting or relevant passages.

I stopped on a page that had been signed by Cadal Graves, Cadal had an interest in the stories of the Native American tribes he encountered during his Auror career – often acting as a trader and negotiator with a few of the tribes near his settlement station for things he or the community needed. He kept some records and often brought his eldest daughter Eloise along with him, even as the large native tribes in the region became remnants of what they were after they were removed from their ancestral lands. Those who remained often had white ancestry and were able to avoid being deported for it. The sketches, while rough, were signed by Eloise and depicted a couple of different settlements from before and after the forced removal by the No-Maj government.

Eloise had also been doing art of the creatures and myths described in the old stories she heard during these visits.

I had never paid much attention to this section of the Grimoire during my previous readings of the text, but Eloise had a real understanding of the lands and cultures that surrounded her family homestead and had carefully recorded the stories her mother had told her.

There were a lot of stories about spirits – mythos of the creation of the world interpreted through the sketches Eloise had included in her part of the Grimoire.

'I am a woman without a people, torn in two between two worlds. My mother's people are long gone – forced to lands that are not their own. My father's people see my sisters and I as one of them, homesteader daughters in family with no sons where the girls must work like men to hold the land. The magical community offers me a weary scorn – seeing me as an interloper and practitioner of forbidden arts because they do not understand how my mother's people work magic. Perhaps I am torn between three, but the color of my skin has marked me as other in both when people look too closely.

I will follow in my father's footsteps and become an Auror, my final exam is next week and I am sure wherever I end up being assigned, I will continue to be viewed and an exotic oddity and relic from a 'less civilized' time.

I did not imagine Eloise had an easy life – it would depend on if Rebekah was a full-blooded Native – making the family much more viable and suspicious or if she had a settler parent to make it harder to tell what Rebekah was without knowing her personally.

There was information on these pages, but while my eyes could see it, the mind could not grasp it. It was floating out of my reach and stayed out of reach no matter how many times I would return to read the passage laid out before me.

It was like...

Like something did not want me to read any further.

"You take away my books now?" I snapped into the dark, knowing what had befuddled my mind as my shadow on the wall twisted itself to reveal a pair of antlers. "You hide knowledge from me? That's not a fair fight. It's not a partnership either!"

My shadow moved of its own independence, gliding smoothly along the wall. Small parts of it falling away like the feathers did form the monster in its solid form, the bits of shadow fading like they had been set aflame to become wisps of smoke. The creature stayed in sight of me, clearly pacing like an irate housecat who wanted to go outside.

This creature was telling me to leave.

"What happens if I don't leave?" I paused, a revolutionary sort of thought of a woman who saw a glimpse of a potential future. "What if I stay here and learn healing from Miriam?"

The sudden burning under my skin gave me the answer. I clawed at my flesh with such vigor I drew blood on my arms and my cheek. It burned!

The thin trails of blood moved down my face as the burning slowly dampened.

Yes. I understood. There was no room for doubt – I had no doubts about what needed to be done and that I would have to have to do this task.

It took a brief moment to heal myself from the inflicted wounds, leaving me shaky and I left the little underground clinic quietly. A note the only real proof that I had ever been there at all. The note thanked them all for their kindness and hospitality, but I needed to see this through.

Leaving the little clinic was not a difficult choice, but the safety of it kept beckoning me back, away from the uncertainty that loomed before me. I did not know what time it was. It could have been the earliest hours of the morning; it could have been late afternoon. I did not know and I did not care. I just knew I needed to leave.

This creature frightened me. It could exert it's will over me and I was beginning to fear how far that reach could extend into the physical world. Could it affect others as it had me? Touch them? Compel them away from knowledge it did not want them to know? That was a dangerous thing to have around a clinic if it could do such things.

This was a matter of protecting others now.

I was capable of that sort of sacrifice.

There was life coming to this street, the people were coming out of their strange homes, makeshift, temporary accommodations or more permanent ones located behind shops with outdoor stairs like the one that led to either businesses or other apartments of some sort. All of them were stone crafted, some over ramshackle flats. Some small market stalls had opened, selling random items like plants, fruits, other foods mixed in with dark art repelling charms all at the same stalls so one would have to stop at each one to find exactly what they were looking for. I saw a more vibrant community than the hamlet beyond the Malfoy Manor, it seemed vivid and fearless in a way. They had no choice in that, but being so far removed from the threat above seemed to have emboldened many of the people to live rich lives beyond the average sight of the war above.

Unless one knew to look here, they may never be found.

There was a sort of early morning rustle to this place, despite the absence of time and the rotation of the sun. A sort of perpetual nightlife, entrapped in a sort of deranged cycle of attempted time and scheduling. Life without the sun, how fascinating.

There was a growing sense of something, a kind of detectable unease in the air as the world shrunk down to just the Undercroft and the rapid growth it had experienced in the last year or so. I wondered how many Muggleborns had found their way down here to hide from the Ministry and Snatchers out collecting bounties. If I was a roguish sort a person, perhaps I could find comfort in this sort of life. Alex had. It felt dangerous and interesting, but I loved my ideas of conventionality to live this way for long. I enjoyed the comforts of sunlight and coffee too much.

I had no coffee for two days, maybe that's why I had such a pounding headache.

Moving off the main street was easy, I wanted to find a way out of here, but I was not sure I was ready to leave yet. There was something in this sort of isolation from the world above and the war that I found enticing. The walk I took was a slow one, I enjoyed the cobbled together architecture, attempts at color in the few places that had windows, the horticulturalists who were creating gardens on rooftops and putting planters outside of windows, giving life to plants that only grew in the darkness.

I turned a small corner to an empty street. It was full of empty shop stalls, broken and abandoned when the businesses moved outward to the larger main street closer to the Diagon Alley entrance. I would walk down this way and go afterwards.

"There is death here..."

I turned towards the croaking voice from the nearby wall. The old man was pressed against a small corner for balance as he sat. He looked so cold and lonely it felt natural to go see if he was alright. He did not need to be down here in the damp, even as the force that followed me tried to yank me away from this despairing figure cloaked in shadow and clutching his staff as he stared at me through cloudy eyes.

"Bodies entombed in stone and earth..."

It took me a moment to recognize Bran the Seer. He looked older and more wizened than he had during previous sightings – even if my most recent sighting of him was only a couple of days ago. His hands shook and the bones of his wrinkled hands were barely visible over the wrinkles. Bran was almost scruffy in his upkeep, but it gave him some form of character in his appearance than a prim appearance would. His eyes gazed off into space, focusing on something beyond me.

"Why are so many children dead?"

It was like he was frozen in place.

There was fear and disquiet in his expression and he stared at the shadows behind me and made a sign against evil across his chest.

"Bran?" I started quietly, "Do you need help?"

"No," Bran stroked his beard as he examined me with sightless eyes, there was something in his air that was distracted, he was looking at something over my head as if he could see something I could not. "I am unsure why…"

He looked like a starved man; he was thin with large dark shadows under his eyes. Bran's robes seemed loose around him and he looked every part the mad seer that people believed him to be. True seers were rare, but those elderly losing their attachment to the present were far more common.

"Bran, you should go home to your daughter." He frightened me. Bran's offbeat tones, rising and falling in an uncomfortable pattern that was half in the Undercroft and half in another place I could not follow. My words seemed to bring him back from the otherworld for a moment, a comprehension in his eyes. "It's not safe here."

"Yes... My Bridget..." He reached up to try and find the corner of the wall or help orient himself and I mindlessly reached down mindlessly to help him to his feet, but as he grabbed my hand, the vacant call of the void took hold of him once more. Bran's grip tightened, keeping me rooted firmly to the spot as he stared beyond me with his unfocused, sightless eyes. There was terror in them as he looked at something in the dark.

"You smell of grave dirt."

I wondered if that was my natural stench at this point.

"Hm?"

"We met too soon when we last spoke. I was confused."

I blinked slowly, a wave of confusion and irritation coming over me. "What?"

Bran ignored me, tilting his head from side to side like Hermes did when Percy and I would talk in the kitchen… best to get off that train of thought.

"Yes…" Bran's voice dropped as some force beyond me seemed to grasp hold of him. "The future was set in stone long ago... I see both the past and future."

I was not sure I liked this. Bran clearly had one foot in the beyond or the grave and had elected to speak with me about it.

"I see death. Not a true death, for there is no peace. I see... Something beyond..."

"I don't believe in prophets." It was all I could think to say to try and shake him out of this grip of this delusion.

Bran looked up at me with a pitying expression, but continued because he was too far in the other side to stop. His eyes were large and pale, seeming to see all. His grip on my hand tightened. "Peace never comes to one who desecrates the shroud."

The memory of the Grim in the Ainsley Family Kirk came back to me.

His grip on my hand tightened, Bran's attention moved to something behind me. It was like he was no longer just speaking to me. "You opened a door. It made you vulnerable. You are protected, but this protection, this spirit, will lead to the death of your soul."

My stomach flipped and twisted

"I had no choice!" My breath was quick and panicked, fluttering like a bird in my chest. "I saved a man's life! He's saved others!"

Bran's gaze moved back towards me for a moment, pitying and frightened. "This spirit has known you for months. This spirit tortured another in their nightmares and came to your dreams in an act of violence."

There was something in my memories. A thing twisting and turning to come to front of my jumbled mind. Harrow. It was in his dreams, I remembered seeing the creature there. I had seen it before then... In my own dreams. When had that begun...? The elevator! Harrow slapped me in the elevator! That was when the dreams began!

The shadows on the wall behind Bran began to twist and enlarge themselves. No. This monster was not going to harm someone who could not fight back! I willed it away. It had no right! It slunk away into darkness once more.

"Why do I see it? Why has it left my dreams?"

Bran took a deep breath. "Your discovery of its earthly shell has bound it to you until its earthly quest is finished."

"Earthly quest..." The image of Alex's corpse flooded my mind and a stomach-turning sensation came upon me as Bran released my hand.

A pregnant silence came and went, broken by Bran's voice echoing through the stone as something beyond us seemed to quietly encircle him and a multitude of voices and old powers gave him gravitas. "It is a wraith that follows you. It wants vengeance and justice with you as its avatar."

There was something disturbing in that word. Wraith. Ominous. Foreboding. I could feel the creature over my shoulder.

It took me far too long to speak. "What is a wraith?"

Bran's head shifted to follow the presence I knew was behind me, making a sign against evil once more before turning his attention to me.

"They are spirits held to the earth by their own rage," Bran moved his hand delicately up and down his staff, tracing the knots in the wood. "A sense of justice and purpose unfulfilled."

Yes... That sounded like Alex.

I listened to three drips from the stone ceiling above fall into a puddle below. My knees felt weak and my breath was shortened as the horror set in.

"My brother wouldn't choose to be a ghost!" I was going to be sick. This was too much! It was madness! "He was too brave!" This made no sense. "He would never choose that!"

"Not a ghost. A wraith. These spirits are different... I've never seen one like yours."

That did not make me feel better.

"I don't understand. Ghosts stay behind because they're souls scared to cross the veil, how is a wraith different from that?"

There was a sick chill up my back. I could feel a pair of eyes boring into me and I knew I was getting into something that the monster behind me did not like me knowing.

"Wraiths have time to prepare for their deaths, they are a magic of the soul that is foul and desperate." Bran leaned back against the wall, continuing to caress his staff. He tilted his head owlishly. "There is power in knowing one is soon to die. There is power in acceptance of the inevitability of death. To twist the laws of nature this way is no gift. Your brother died alone and angry, now you must deal with the burden of it."

I did not know what to feel. I was disgusted at the action that Alex had taken, I was horrified at what his last hours on earth were like and how he could come to this decision. The image of the mummified corpse and the bloodied wooden boards would haunt me for the rest of my life.

But... I was also so comforted that Alex was with me.

He wanted to be with me the way he was not in life.

I... I finally had my brother in my life in the most twisted of ways and... I was happy! Damn the consequences. I had some version of my brother in my life and my eyes were wet with the unshed, joyful tears of it!

"The wraith desires the blood of its kin-"

He's not an 'it', he's my brother!

"And the completion of its quest."

Yes. The end of Voldemort.

This meant that I could see Alex again. The last time I saw his living face would not be during an act of sexual violence.

"What happens if I succeed in doing what he wants?"

There was apprehension in Bran's face. "I do not know. I know only of wraiths who have tortured the living into madness – not bound as this one is to you. These spirits are not human any longer."

"But he'll stay with me? Alex will stay for once?" My voice shook and my body trembled in excitement and fear for what Bran would say next. "I get to have my brother in my life, even if he's... not physical?"

Bran's voice dropped, a clear anger and fear seeping into his tones. "This is dark magic! A perversion of death and the natural order. This monster is crafted of hate and once haunted your dreams! Now it lives in your shadow!" His voice lowered. "This was no act of love. Your brother has condemned you both to a horrible fate..."

The laugh that escaped me was not one of humor, but one of nervousness and a release of stress I had never understood until now. I was going to be okay. I was not alone and Alex would never hurt me! I was safe. Alex was with me and I would be okay. I could figure out how to manage this.

"You are hurting and angry at this loss in your life. You have lost a family and I pity you for the way you clutch your grief like a lifeline, you deserve peace and joy but you must understand!" The prophet's face turned to horror and shifted to a look of sympathy, his voice was soft and enraged me for it felt as if he were speaking to a child. "The dead will not crawl from the grave for you."

I was not sure what to do next. I was less burdened by the creature. It was Alex. My stubborn, stupid, obtuse brother! Oh, how I could weep for the joy of it!

Then came the sudden horrible screams from the busy street of the Undercroft.

Bran perked up, finally being fully pulled back to the waking world, he did not seem confused, but his sight into the beyond had been shattered by the deep, primal chill that suddenly came through the corridor. I could see flashes of silver light beyond as the magelights were snuffed out by a black writhing mass of shrouds. The black tidal wave moved closer, carrying feelings of terror and unspoken horror that I had grown familiar with in the Ministry over the last several months.

Images of my never seeing Percy again flooded my mind as the dementors floated through the corridors of the Undercroft, pursuing the fleeing patrons and shopkeepers. I helped Bran to his feet as he looked on in terror, he did not need to see to know what was closing in around us. I lost sight of the wraith on the wall the dementors came down, empty voids shroud in black cloaks. Wispy and haggard, hunger pulling them forward, even as they seemed to thin and frail to exist. They seemed like figments of my imagination as they moved forward.

Closer.

Starving.

I laughed the high, insane laugh of someone at the edge of death – I learned the truth of my brother's desperate final moments and now his vengeance would never be accomplished.

Surely, I have lost my mind and comprehension of the world, but Alex is with me. He trusted me at the end of it all!

Percy, Alex and I at the dinner table not getting along, but being together! Alex sniping at Percy for his party lining tendencies, Thalia was there talking to me and ignoring the trouble her husband was trying to cause and Todd was off in the corner watching over children I knew to be mine. Daughters of indistinguishable age, but old enough to be amused by a boy who could make silly faces. Lucinda and Tavish were observing the chaos with loving expressions, happy to see a whole, intact patchwork of a family.

I must be insane.

The joy of the image filled me as the dementors swarmed down around us. The image was of an impossible reality. That world could never exist. But Alex was with me now. I was not alone in this... and I understood everything.

"Expecto Patronum!"

What burst from my wand was no sad mist. No pathetic reflection of my own lack of joy in my life but the opposite – a reflection of the life that I wanted that I would no longer have. The bittersweet joy mixed with the overpowering fantasy in my heart had at last called forth a corporeal patronus.

The crow beat its silvery wings and dived down upon the dementors from above before flying circles around me to keep the rest away before expanding the assault. Disintegrating dementors with every direct hit and chasing away the ones intelligent enough to flee. It landed on the hooded heads of the monsters in the thick of the writhing mass, a mocking, almost playful gesture that sent them fleeing far away from the emitted light of a purely happy soul at the dementor beneath it exploded in rush of light.

The room was still cold, but it was no longer oppressive. I held out my arm for my patronus, allowing it to land on my arm with a silent cry. I took in its messy head feathers and intelligent expression. A carrion bird that picked the bones when the battle was done.

Yes.

"You are perfect." I leaned towards the glowing patronus on my arm, feeling the warmth of light like the sun on my face, I closed my eyes against the force of it as the crow matched my movement. It was like a piece of my soul had wandered free of me for a time. My skin tingled where the patronus pressed against me. My eyes were wet with either the sudden brightness or the torrent of emotions within me. I sniffled loudly. "I'm so happy to finally meet you."

Oo0Oo0

Author's Note: Americans view patronuses as a spiritual totem animal, it's a part of their soul set free into the world that reflects who they are. It's why many Americans get something personal to reflect their patronus form, like a tattoo (Auror Jenkins - Horse) or a wand decoration (Alex – Vulture / Aldridge – Bald Eagle). Many will emblazon wand holsters with leather carvings (Jack – Puma / Cougar), some get unique jewellery like earrings (Annette – Buzzard). All four of the Graves children have (or will have) bird patronuses that eat readymade corpses.

Eloise's thoughts on her heritage are from some intriguing family documents I found while doing some ancestry research on my dad's adoptive mother's family to a Cherokee branch tribe and the Creek further south. I had a clear shot back to this part of history and always found these mixed white/native communities really fascinating, but I'm sure there was a very interesting prospective from the people who had that background and how tightly they were clinging together.

Saudade – a Portuguese term meaning 'an intimate feeling and mood for something or someone that is missed; melancholic longing or yearning.'