So, I wanted to get this done two days ago, as that was the anniversary of when I first posted this fic, but I ended up getting sucked into the cleaning spree my roommates were in.

So, two days late, but Happy 1 Year Anniversary!

Enjoy!

Chapter 15: Of what once was

"What do you know about Horcruxes?"

After Remus pulls himself back together, after he's informed about where exactly they all are and has another freakout, after he and Dudley are more properly introduced, Evelyn gathers them all together so she can explain everything that happened. She curls up against Loki's side, remaining in her ten year old body so as to not waste the pendant's time with Dudley on her other side. Thor claims a chair all to himself, sprawling himself with a lazy ease normally only displayed by his brother, while Remus and Sirius sit together opposite her and Loki and Dudley. Thor, Loki, and Dudley already know what happened after Hogwarts, and Dudley's been learning about what occurred when she was with Loki and Thor, so all three are mostly here for moral support when the shouting starts.

At her mention of the sickly Dark magic, Sirius' spine goes ramrod straight.

"Where did you hear about those?" he demands, hands curling into fists as he starts to rise off the couch.

"Sirius!" Remus yelps, grabbing hold of his top and yanking his friend back down.

"I haven't made any myself, if that's what you're worried about," Evelyn states blandly while watching Remus fight to keep Sirius sitting without getting elbowed for his interference, "but that does answer my question of if either of you knew about them."

"Eve, why the bloody fuck do you even know about them in the first place?" Sirius snarls, having given up on fighting werewolf strength.

Evelyn bares her teeth in a vicious sneer. "Because Tom Marvolo Riddle is a sick bastard, why else?"

Sirius rears back like she'd slapped him. "He made—?"

"He did. We think he was aiming for having six Horcruxes, which would've meant seven soul pieces, but he accidentally made a Horcrux for all that he was largely unaware of it."

Sirius sputters out indignantly, "How do you accidentally make a bleeding Horcrux?" while Remus asks, "What even is a Horcrux?"

Evelyn shifts slightly so she can press herself a bit more up against her husband. While the one once lodged in her forehead is gone and can no longer affect her, it still chills her to think about it. "A Horcrux is a soul anchor made by someone splitting their soul through cold blooded murder in an attempt to cheat death. It's how Riddle managed to survive after his Killing Curse rebounded off of me when I was a baby." Remus looks properly horrified at the mere idea. "As to how one can go about accidentally making one, consider this, godfather mine. Riddle had already split his soul six ways into five Horcruxes when it happened. Now, souls are rather sturdy things. However, Riddle had fractured his beyond belief in his quest to run from his fear of death. So when his Killing Curse abruptly rebounds and hits him instead of the baby he'd been aiming at, take an educated guess as to what his soul ended up doing in response."

.A look of understanding is slowly spreading across Sirius' face, and it looks like her godfather is going to be sick as the truth dawns on him.

"His soul split all on its own," Remus says softly

"Indeed." Evelyn tips her head to him while sporting a bitter smile. "And with no proper ritual prepared ahead of time to anchor the soul fragment to a specific object, that piece of Tom Riddle sought out the only other living thing in the room."

There's a moment of silence before Sirius explodes.

"Are you fucking telling me that you've had a bleeding Horcrux in your forehead this entire time?!" he all but screams, pointing a shaking finger at her. Remus doesn't even bother trying to stop him from standing again, probably too distracted by the revelation that his friend just announced.

"I did," she corrects him. "Hela sent a Valkyrie to retrieve shortly after we used Soul Magic to send me back."

Both he and Remus falter, blinking at her stupidly.

"Pardon?"

"Evelyn is my daughter Hela's Avatar," Loki calmly interjects, squeezing Evelyn's shoulders comfortingly. "Or as your Wizarding World has taken to calling it, the Mistress of Death. She obviously did not take kindly to her Avatar having the piece of a murderer's soul stuck in her forehead."

Sirius inhales sharply through his nose, showing that for all that he portrays himself as a bit of an idiot, he's actually a frighteningly intelligent person. "And before?" he spits out through clenched teeth. "How exactly did you deal with it before?"

"Riddle hit me with another Killing Curse," she says flatly. "Only instead of killing me, he killed the Horcrux in me. Not that I was aware that would happen. I'd gone to him thinking I would die."

Remus moans and buries his face in his hands. "How soon after—?"

"Shortly." Her laughter is brittle. "I was raised essencially as a sacrifice, because Albus fucking Dumbledore thought he knew all. Because, as far as I'm aware, he never went to the goblins, when the first fucking thing they did upon learning I had a Horcrux in my forehead was demand I see their Healers."

The werewolf scrubs wearily at his face before looking back up. "Cub, Dumbledore—"

She immediately cuts him off. "If you even think of saying something about 'the greater good', Remus, I will personally throw you off the Rainbow Bridge. Doing something for a 'greater good' doesn't fucking excuse leaving a child on a doorstep in the early hours of a fall morning with no protection beyond a blanket! It doesn't excuse leaving a child with people who hate them just because they fucking exist, who eventually resort to practically trying to beat the freakishness out of said child to make it normal! It doesn't excuse testing a child, to mold them into a warrior only to send them to die in the end!" She's standing by the end of her tirade, screaming at her parents' two friends.

"Evie," Sirius chokes out. "No, you must've heard wrong. Dumbledore wouldn't—"

She bares her teeth at him in a wordless snarl, effectively shutting him up, before snapping her fingers and drawing up the relevant memory like she had back in the Healing Hall. The room they're sitting in fades away and reveals the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts. Dumbledore is rising from behind his desk while Severus is paused in his march towards the door.

"There will come a time when Evelyn Potter must be told something. But you must wait until Voldemort is at his most vulnerable," Dumbledore says calmly.

Severus turns back to face the Headmaster. "Must be told what?"

Dumbledore rounds his desk and walks towards Severus as he speaks. "On the night Lord Voldemort went to Godric Hollow to kill Evelyn, and Lily Potter cast herself between them, the curse rebounded. When that happened, a part of Voldemort's soul latched itself onto the only living thing it could find. Evelyn herself. There's a reason Evelyn can speak with snakes. There's a reason she can look into Lord Voldemort's mind. A part of Voldemort lives inside her."

Severus stares at Dumbledore with a carefully crafted blank expression. "So, when the time comes, the girl must die?"

"Yes." Dumbledore nods. "Yes. She must die."

Evelyn figures that Remus and Sirius don't hear the tremble in Severus' voice as he accusingly says, "You've kept her alive so that she can die at the proper moment. You've been raising her like a pig for slaughter."

She cuts the memory off there, not willing to bare Severus' more personal thoughts to people who would only mock and ridicule him for them. Also, she has no desire to see Dumbledore patronizingly ask if Severus' cares for 'the girl' again. It made her skin crawl then, and it'll still do it now.

"Where did you get that?" Remus immediately asks, as she knew he would. And she doesn't blame him, given that she absolutely hated Severus' guts last he knew. It took her a while, and quite a bit of screaming and crying, but she'd made her peace with Severus and his actions. She would never forget them, would always use them as a basis on how not to act, but she did understand. Caught between two masters with no viable way out save death, she's not particularly surprised he went bitter.

But he loved her mother.

Loved her enough to be willing to protect her daughter, for all that Evelyn knows she looked more like her father in her youth than her mother. Especially considering Aunt Petunia forced her to keep her hair short.

And love is a precious gift.

She jerks her chin up defiantly. "Severus gave me his memories as he was dying in the boathouse. Voldemort killed him because he thought that Severus was the Elder Wand's master. He wasn't, but neither of them knew that."

"Snape killed Dumbledore!" Remus protests.

"On Dumbledore's orders!" she throws back before Sirius can launch into the rant she sees building in his eyes, because stars know that he loves having a go at Severus. "And only because the idiot went after a Horcrux by himself, and what do you know, Riddle was a paranoid enough bastard that he had booby traps in place where he left the pieces of his soul! He was going to die by the year's end anyways!"

"That doesn't excuse—"

"It was either Severus kill him, thus earning him Riddle's full trust, or have a child do it as punishment for his failure of a father," she retorts. "While I most certainly would've preferred not to have seen it happen myself, I am eternally grateful that Severus saved Draco from that particular trama. Working through all the other tramas he'd accumulated throughout his life was hard enough without that added on top of it all. Especially considering he'd sooner curse Lucius to Helheim and back before speaking to him. The knowledge that he'd killed for the man's mistakes would've been a shit storm to weather."

Remus stares at her flatly while Sirius still seems to be trying to wrap his head around the idea of Severus being on their side. "Draco? I was of the assumption that the two of you couldn't be in the same room without cursing each other."

Evelyn sighs and drops back down onto the edge of the couch she'd been sitting on. "Draco Regulus Black is one of two people who I would say saved my sanity after the war ended. I was floundering, as Dumbledore hadn't expected me to live and thus hadn't prepared me at all for the role of Lady of what ended up being two Noble and Most Ancient Houses. I was scared and overwhelmed and just about ready to flee Magical Britain and possibly Britain all together when Draco bullied his way into my life. Hermione, while I love her dearly, wasn't raised in the traditions I needed to learn, and while Neville was already in the process of teaching her himself, we do not learn the same way at all and I wasn't about to overwhelm him by asking him to teach me as well."

Remus exhales sharply. "Would he be the man you were referring to when discussing Teddy's father?"

"He was. He saved my life while I was on the run, and then his mother saved my life after Riddle hit me with the Killing Curse by proclaiming me dead." She fixes Remus with a stern look. "If I thought for one moment that he was a threat to my son, I'd've killed him where he stood."

Dudley snorts, drawing everyone's attention. "Instead, he dueled multiple wizards and witches for that child," her cousin points out. "Given how cute that rascal was, I don't blame him. He told me, once, what it was those he ultimately killed wanted to do. I say he was completely justified."

"Yes, your protective male bonding was rather unnerving," Evelyn drawls, smirking when Dudley flushes upon realizing he's the center of attention, "and I dealt with a fair number of people myself for the same reasons. Especially once we started the Lunae Lumen Foundation." Her grin is vicious. "We had so much fun after that."

Remus looks like he's about to start crying. "You started a foundation for werewolves?"

"Entirely funded by House Black to start with," Evelyn states, right proud of herself. "Draco and I both got many a laugh out of the thought that the House of 'Toujours Pur' was what founded it. We employed quite a few potions masters from across the globe to brew the Wolfsbane Potion for our clients. Anything that they wanted to dabble into in their free time we also funded, but our main focus was ensuring the safety of both our werewolf clients and their families."

"Out of curiosity, what happened to Luci?" Sirius asks, having settled himself somewhat from all that she's thrown at him so far.

"As I was Lady Black, I ended his marriage to Narcissa and brought both her and Draco back into House Black. He'd broken a few of the marriage clauses written into the contract, so I was able to do it in a way that landed all the other Houses on my side of the argument. That's when Draco requested the name change. Narcissa just wanted to escape, so I funded her global travels and we never really saw each other again. Of course, Lucius was rather furious, as I'd robbed him of his only Heir, but Draco dueled that man to a stand still and swore he'd kill him if he ever went after his mother."

Sirius lets out a low, impressed whistle. "Didn't think the kid had that in him. Guess he was more Black than I thought."

Evelyn shrugs gracefully. "He was my Heir. If he hadn't done it, I would've. Neither of us particularly cared for Lucius and we weren't about to let him hurt Narcissa. There was also the added bonus that it made most of Lucius' friends rather leery of crossing us."

"Gotta say, pup, that's some rather impressive pureblood wrangling you did," Sirius comments.

Evelyn laughs gayly. "Hermione and I had loads of fun flaunting our ability to run pureblood Lords in circles while Draco and Neville fondly watched. Drove the old men absolutely bonkers."

"Hermione married Neville, then?"

"Yeah." A fond smile spreads across her lips. "He was nuts over her since she petrified him first year, actually, but never worked up his Gryffindor courage until after the whole debadicale fifth year." Of course, then she has to go and remember the two darling children her best friends had had together. "Fucking hell."

"Alskling?" Loki curls himself around her immediately when her breath hitches.

"I want Mi and Nev to remember," she whispers, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes, "but hell, love, I cost them their children. Those kids won't ever be born again."

And stars had she loved them. Nicholos and Lucy had been spitfires, and she'd probably indugled them more than she should've before Hela snatched her away. Teddy had adored them as well, and Draco had taken to spoiling them rotten right along with her. That's not even going into the brood of children the Weasley siblings produced. She rather feels like sobbing now, having thought of all of them for the first time in years.

"I know, love, I know," Loki murmurs, "and I would give them all back to you if I could, but I cannot, so you must let it go. You'll only torture yourself otherwise."

"I would suggest, then, brother, that you take your own advice," Thor interjects for the first time. "Cherish all of their memories, but do not drown yourself in what you cannot change."

Evelyn feels Loki's sigh rattle through him, pressed as close as she is. "I do despise how bloody observant you've gotten, Thor."

"What, exactly, do you blame yourself for?" Evelyn wants to know. She pulls back to fix her husband with an exasperated look. "Is this still about Teddy? Because I never blamed you for my not being with him."

Loki gives her an exasperated look of his own. "Alskling, I had plans in place to recover the boy once all was said and done. I made no mention of them simply because you'd asked me to not bring him up again the day he graduated from Hogwarts. I knew ever since that day how much you missed your family back in Britain for all that you made it seem like you were fine with the separation."

Evelyn pulls a face. She'd honestly thought she'd hidden that better than she apparently did. "Did the others notice at all?"

"Natasha did, and perhaps Tony as well, but none of the others did as far as I'm aware."

"I will admit, I did not," Thor says calmly. "However, now that it's been brought to my attention, I recognize the few signs I noticed and simply dismissed in my ignorance."

"You stayed away to keep us safe, Eve," Dudley softly reminds her. "You had no way of knowing if you'd be followed back to even try and explain things." He sighs. "And they could've gone to you, anyways. We knew where you could be for all that you guys weren't often on Earth near the end. Avengers Tower was not subtle in the slightest. If they'd wanted, any one of your magical friends could've marched over to America and confronted you themselves, but they didn't and that's on them. I stayed away because I saw what the Avengers were dealing with and figured you had your reasons for both staying with them and not contacting us, and I was right."

Evelyn huffs out a watery chuckle. "You're far too forgiving, cousin."

"No, I just have a healthy respect for your temper and I'm not stupid enough to even try and tell you what you can and can't do."

"You mentioned Soul Magic back in the hospital wing," Remus murmurs.

"Horcruxes are a bastardized version of it," Evelyn explains. "It uses the strength of the castor's soul to power whatever spell is being used. Loki only used Soul Magic because there was nothing left for us. The only other Realm that hadn't fallen was Niflhelm, and that was simply because there wasn't anyone there to fight. Midgard was going to fall soon."

"People were scared," Dudley whispers, shivering. "It was bloody terrifying, just having to sit around and wait for something to happen."

"We tried our best," Evelyn says hoarsely. "Stars, Loki and I searched as much as we could, but the Realms kept collapsing and we weren't even sure there'd be an answer that could do anything after the first fell. Of course, we never let onto that particular fact, but it wouldn't surprise me if Tony knew for all that we didn't explicitly say it."

"He was a terrifyingly sharp man," Loki agrees. "I do hope the Soul Magic is kind enough to give him back to us."

"You've started the search for Steve, right?" she all but demands.

"Aye, we have Heimdall scouring the Arctic in what time he can spare. Thor and I will retrieve him once located." Loki runs a soothing hand up and down her back. "We will have our family again, one way or another."

"I'm worried that people they might consider family I don't, so they won't remember," Evelyn practically whimpers. "I feel like they might hate me for that."

"Soul Magic is not something you can command," Loki sneers. "We were lucky enough to get this second chance as it is. I half expected us to die in that bunker, wife, so should anyone protest if memories are not able to be returned to any certain person, they will be educated about their misguided thoughts."

She sighs, leaning into him. "Just don't kill them, please. Tempers are probably going to be running high for quite some time once everyone first remembers."

He huffs rather indignantly. "I will not kill them."

Sirius wrinkles his nose. "You were in America?"

Evelyn rolls her eyes in return, wiping away the few tears that managed to start rolling down her cheeks. "Yes, I went to America, Padfoot. That's where Thor and his teammates were based out of, as Dudley said. Although I do admit, their fish and chips were usually horrid, and their tea the stuff of nightmares. I just started drinking coffee to survive."

"And the MACUSA didn't try and rein hell down on your head for blatantly using magic in front of Muggles?" Remus wants to know.

"I got lucky on that front. Everyone just thought I was either like Loki or Wanda who were both stylized as magic users as well. I did, however, manage to rally the magical community in Sokovia when their capital was destroyed by an insane robot."

The werewolf makes an exasperated sound that Evelyn feels down to the depths of her bones. "Insane robot? Really Eve?"

"He truly was a marvel to behold," Thor comments almost blandly. "But indeed, quite insane. Stark had built him in an attempt to help aid us, as we were stretched thin already, but Ultron deemed humanity as the greatest threat to peace on Midgard. He sought to destroy all mankind in his crusade to protect the planet, but we stopped him when he attempted to turn the capital of Sokovia into a meteor."

"It was scary as shit," Dudley pipes up. "It was all over the telly for weeks. That's what first clued me into where you were, Eve, and part of the reason I stayed away. I figured you didn't need anymore attention drawn to you."

Remus stares at them before roughly running a hand through his hair. "Bloody hell."

Evelyn barks out shaky laughter. "Yeah, I thought similar even when I was in the midst of it all. And that, unfortunately, only touches the tip of what we went through."

Both men exhale explosively, glance briefly at one another, and then focus back on her.

"Tell us."

A grim but pleased smile spreads across Evelyn's lips. "I was hoping you'd say that."

Loki calmly walks down the Rainbow Bridge to the Observatory to do his daily check in with Heimdall. It's been eighteen days since Remus Lupin was brought to Asgard from Midgard, and the hunt for Steve Rogers has been frustratingly unsuccessful. Still, that doesn't deter him from checking every day, and while he knows Heimdall would contact him if he found Steve, it gets him out of the palace on a daily basis. He generally does it when Evelyn is occupied by Frigga for magic lessons, if only to spare her the disappointing walk back. She gets disappointed enough when he returns solemn and without news.

If they don't find Steve soon, they're going to have to return to Midgard, specifically England, without him, as they have to be there for Evelyn to receive her Hogwarts letter. After that, they have plans to go to America to seek out Tony. He'll be easier to find than Clint or Natasha at any rate.

Heimdall, as ever, stands at the edge of the Observatory, gazing out into the cosmos that stretch beyond Asgard. He says nothing as Loki approaches, yet Loki knows the Gatekeeper is aware of him. Especially considering Loki isn't even bothering to try and hide his presence.

"Prince Loki." Heimdall inclines his head as Loki comes to a stop right beside him.

"Heimdall," Loki returns solemnly. "Is there any progress?"

Instead of his usual dismissal, signifying that Steve has not yet been found, Heimdall instead turns to face him. "The warrior has been found. However, he is solidly encased in ice deep in the sea."

Loki exhales sharply, relief flooding him at the news. "Yes, we were prepared for that. My thanks, Heimdall. I will be returning shortly with my brother. You will be able to send us down as closely as you can to the exact location?"

"Indeed." There's a knowing look in Heimdall's eyes, like he knows the truth of Loki's heritage and thus what he plans to do to retrieve Steve Rogers, but he says nothing further.

For that, Loki is grateful. He is nowhere near ready to reveal that particular piece of information to anyone not already aware. Evelyn is bound and determined to learn all she can of his heritage, though, and has been raiding the palace library with Remus almost daily. They've delved into some of the dustiest parts of it and have surprisingly been somewhat successful.

"Until you return, my prince."

Loki gives him a jerky nod before turning on his heel and marching away.

"Again, you have to touch him if you want the Soul Magic to work, alskling."

Whack.

"I know that, you prat, now shut up!"

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