O
ALETHEIA
Truth
"You can't seriously be doing this?" William was grabbing a few belongings from his room and stuffing them into a travel bag as Marietta watched him from the doorframe, shocked, hurt and bewildered, having followed him upstairs in disbelief. "You aren't really running away?"
His face was tormented as he turned to her.
"Marietta, I can't be locked up. You know this about me - you always have. I'd be as good as dead in Azkaban. The fear of it. I - I don't think you understand how it is to be so afraid of something that you would rather be dead than experience it."
She could not find a suitable reply.
"It won't be forever," William continued. "I need time to figure out a solution, one that won't hurt you or my sister. I can do that. It's our best shot - for me to get some distance and use my head. I will come back, and this will be straightened out. You'll see. But-" He met her eye. The guilt was there again. "I am sorry. I'm so sorry. To leave you and our child, without even meeting them."
The words pulled her up short. With the ridiculous events of that morning she had forgotten, for the first time, about the tragic news she had been trying to process since August. William didn't even know yet. He believed he had a healthy baby. A son or daughter.
And he still planned on leaving.
The temptation to let him keep the false belief, to try and guilt him into facing their predicament head on lingered in the air, but it would be pointless in the long run.
"There is no child," she said, mouth wobbling as she admitted the words out loud for the first time. "There never was. It was pseudocyesis. A phantom pregnancy. If I'd gone to hospital for a check up like you told me to then I would have known long ago."
For a split second, she saw relief on his face, and she despised him for it. That he should dare feel relief in her terrible, relentless pain after all she had been through. Then the relief was gone and there was only misery.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, coming forwards to hold her. "I am so, so sorry."
"You should go," she said, pulling away from him. After months of craving his affection and care, she could not bear to let him touch her now.
"Marietta, I don't want to leave you," he said, stricken by her sudden apathy. "I will come back. I'll straighten it out. I need time, that's all. Time that I don't have here. Please understand."
"I -" she tried to say I do. The words stuck in her throat. "I'll try," she amended, as a further idea occurred to her. "Take that gold, the gold you got for Flint. You'll probably need it - you don't know how long you'll be gone."
She refused to let him hug her again, even to say goodbye, merely watched as he descended the stairs and said a wordless farewell to his sister. Cynthia's face was damp with tears again as he turned. Then he was gone.
0
"You get out of here too," Flint said to Marietta. "There's nothing of yours here - Nott destroyed everything. You don't want your name dragged in now."
Marietta didn't need telling twice. The one, pitiful benefit of her tragedy would be that without a child, fewer questions would come her way. Perhaps she could go and find William in the end, once he was settled. Make an excuse to her father and build a life with him in hiding, as they tried to figure out a solution.
She wanted to despise the Flints for their part in recent events, but it was impossible to do so right now, faced with the sight of Cynthia sobbing into her hands and Marcus, ashen faced, pathetic in his inadequacy, as he watched her. He turned to her as she made for the door, with an expression akin to remorse, and Marietta wondered wildly if an apology of sorts was forthcoming.
None came. He gave her his habitual curt nod and closed his mouth again.
"Good luck, I suppose," Marietta muttered, before following the path William had traced out into his garden.
Cynthia watched the door swing shut behind her.
"They will catch him," she said tonelessly. "William. Nott is too well known for this to go unnoticed. Even if we hide his body, when they realise he's missing there will be investigations. They'll find out the truth, and William will look even more guilty for running away. He won't get out of this. I think he must know that, deep down."
Bitter reality was sinking in for Flint too, some of which Cynthia didn't even know. He had only been involved in this dangerous scheme under the threat of blackmail and with the promise of gold. But with Nott dead and Bulstrode gone but still alive, that gold would not come. With Nott dead, he stood no chance of getting fake Veritaserum into the Ministry. With Nott dead, he would reap the punishment but not the reward, and so too would his family.
"He has to die," Flint said, mouth set as he came to this grim conclusion. "They have to think he's died. The Ministry. There needs to be a - a body. There's Polyjuice here. Tons of it. With your brother's hair. Nott's been using it for months now."
Cynthia went ghostly white as she digested these words.
"You can't be suggesting we kill someone else," she stammered. "Make someone else look like William and - and kill them?"
She continued to shake her head in horror as he tried to persuade her that it was their one and only chance of escaping this mess unscathed. The Ministry would keep digging until they found answers, particularly if Bulstrode were discovered missing too, and that search would lead officials to his only remaining relatives. Their position was precarious enough as it was, he reminded her, penniless, unable to make rent and with two hungry mouths to feed.
"But you've got a job," she protested. "You've been working all month, you must be due pay any day now. That will at least give us time-"
"Nott gave me that gold," he said abruptly. "He's been giving me gold since the summer."
Utter bewilderment crashed through her expression.
"Why would Nott give you gold?"
He didn't answer her.
"More lies?" In a flash, she pulled out her wand and pointed it in his face. She had never turned her wand on him before and Marcus froze in shock, wondering what was coming, but Cynthia merely repeated her question in low, dangerous tones, labouring every syllable. "Tell me why Nott was giving you gold."
He refused to look up at her, plucking fitfully at the dirty sleeve of his jacket and talking as quietly as possible, but he did confess the final part of Nott's deception. The plan to end Bulstrode's life so that he would not be alive to speak in his own defence and so that his fortune would pass to his sister. As he finished speaking, Cynthia was backing away from him, disgusted and betrayed, as though seeing him plainly for the first time.
"But I did it for you," he finished. "I did all of this for you."
"For me?" The disbelieving, tremulous whisper pierced him like a knife. "You were going to let Nott kill my brother. And you - you think that was for me?"
"You didn't care about him," he shot back. "You never spoke to him. I thought I was doing - I thought - I -"
He continued to stumble through helpless protests and excuses that Cynthia could not process, too shocked his most recent retort, unable to understand how she could have given the impression that she didn't care about William all these years. Surely her love for him had been obvious, even if she was angry on the surface.
It seemed not.
"I'm not proud if it," Marcus insisted, grabbing her wrist. She kept her head resolutely turned away. "I wish I could take it back. But here we are. It's happened. Think about it. If there's a body the real William stays free. They won't look for him if his body has been found."
"But you can't kill someone else," Cynthia said. "You can't. Nott was guilty. I don't care that he's dead. You can't take an innocent life. What are you even suggesting? That we pluck some poor muggle off the street?"
"So many muggles have died already," Flint said quietly. "This would be one more, then it would end, and it would be someone we don't know."
"Someone who is a son or daughter. Possibly a mother or father," she reminded him, pulling her wrist free in disgust. "Someone who has a family who will grieve if they're gone."
"And our family?" Marcus continued, relentless in his despair. "What happens to us? Without a body, the Ministry discover the truth, I get thrown in Azkaban and so does your brother. Then what happens to you and the children?"
They would be abandoned. As would she. She would have no one to turn to, yet again. She would be alone, as she had been for so many years in her youth. Bleak fog settled in Cynthia's mind at the memory of that lonely, grey existence.
"Do what you want," she muttered at last. "Whatever you want. I - I don't... I can't... Use Nott's wand though," she added. "Don't do anything with yours."
She turned away from him.
"Cynthia," he pleaded. "I - I am sorry. So sorry."
She could tell the remorse was genuine. But believing he was sorry did not amount to forgiving him, and forgiveness did not come easily to Cynthia. It never had, and for that, she was now paying a terrible a terrible price.
o
In her husband's absence, Cynthia examined William's study area, observing the place he had worked all these years, churning out his brilliant inventions. If she had only answered one of his letters or his invitations to come and see his house, accepted his olive branch and resumed normal communication, none of this would have come to pass.
She ran a hand over the marble potion bench. It was ice cold from the mid winter chill yet pristine, not a speck of dust to be found. William was clearly as fastidious with cleaning routines as he had been as a child. Or was he? Maybe this was Nott's work from the past six months. Perhaps William now worked in mess and chaos like their late father had done.
She would never have the chance to find out.
Nott's lifeless form lay before her and she aimed a sharp kick at his ribs. His face was more repulsive than ever in death, slack and flabby even for a man so thin. Slowly and deliberately, Cynthia trod on his face, pressing down with all her strength. The sickening crunch of bone and cartilage beneath the worn black heel of her oldest boots did not stop her repeating the movement over and over again, but no pain was felt. The only pain Nott had left was for her to endure, trapped as she was in the ruins of a lethal scheme, bound to silence by a curse that did not break with the death of the caster.
On stepping away, she nearly tripped over one of the bottles that had crashed down onto the floor with Nott, and she picked it up with a trembling hand. The bottle had cracked at the top due to its fall but the liquid inside it - an acid green, viscous substance - had not leaked. It did let out an ominous hissing sound as she stared at it and, unnerved, she shoved it on a shelf at random, next to a huge vat of greyish purple liquid labelled with two bold letter Ds.
0
Marcus returned to the house within the hour, accompanied by a thin, pale teenage girl with dark hair, who had followed him placidly all the way from town under the influence of a badly cast but workable imperious curse. A badge stood out on the chest pocket of her neatly pressed white blouse. Jet black with silver writing, it bore the name Kyra.
Cynthia refused to partake in the act, all the while knowing there could be no excuse for standing aside as Marcus committed murder. He forced Kyra upstairs and into William's clothes. He made her drink the Polyjuice Potion, watching blankly as she transformed into a double of William, who in turn drank a dose of the poison Nott and Zabini had used in the Lewisham poisonings. It took hold within seconds. Flint left the empty vial on the nightstand in the vague hope the Ministry would assume William had taken his own life after a fatal altercation with a colleague. With his history of mental illness and odd, withdrawn behaviour, it may be plausible.
"Will she stay like that?" Flint had only just thought of this as he returned downstairs to the cold, unfaltering gaze of his wife. "She'll stay like William even after the hour?"
"Yes," Cynthia said dully. "Remember Barty Crouch? It was his mother who died in Azkaban, not him, under Polyjuice. He got away with it. Back then."
She stretched out a trembling hand to touch the clothes he was holding. They smelt faintly of floral perfume.
"It was quick," Marcus told her. "Very quick."
Too quick. Cynthia was already regretting letting him carry out the monstrous action, and now it was too late, and if they didn't cover their tracks perfectly they would end up in Azkaban anyway.
After brief deliberation, Kyra's clothes were put through William's recyclator and reduced to plain stretches of material. Her badge became an untarnished lump of steel, her name erased from the metal at once. There was no point trying to rid the house of evidence against William - it would be lurking in every corner - but Cynthia eyed Nott's wand with trepidation. Marcus was holding it gingerly, as though worried it may explode.
"What are we going to do with that?"
"Can it be put through that thing too?" he suggested, nodding towards the recyclator.
They tried, with limited success. The device did spit out a narrow strip of beech wood and a single unicorn tail hair, but it was clear it was not intended for such purposes as wand disposal. It groaned loudly, the lights on the side extinguishing, and issued several clouds of thick smoke.
"Come on," Marcus said, coughing on the fumes as Cynthia hid the unicorn hair in a draw at random and kicked the strip of wood into a corner of the room. "Let's get out of here."
0
Both children were awake when they returned to the flat. Unaware that their parents had left home that morning only to return as undeniable criminals, Cadmus was nevertheless whimpering and Morella glared at them from her place next to his cot. How a child so young could appear so accusatory, Cynthia didn't know, and it did nothing to ease the mingled panic and guilt swirling in the pit of her stomach.
"What if they aren't found?" Flint asked, later that afternoon, when Cynthia had fed her son and put him back to sleep. Morella had finally succumbed to exhaustion and was sleeping in their bed, snoring softly. "Nott. And William."
"They will be found," Cynthia said. "The protective enchantments will have died when Nott did, that's how charms work. Most charms, anyway." She thought bitterly again of the Unbreakable Vow. How wrong she had been, to think it could do her no harm.
"But they won't look for Nott at Bulstrode's house, will they?" Marcus said. His dark eyes were wide with apprehension. "Why would they? They have no connections."
Cynthia sat up straight, alarm erasing exhaustion. Marcus spoke the plain truth. There was no reason at all why the Minstry's first thought, on searching for a missing colleague, would be a quiet inventor living a secluded and private life up in rural Scotland.
"When they realise Nott is missing they won't go to William," Flint continued. "They're more likely to come after me. I've been meeting up with him in Knockturn Alley. People might have seen."
He expected more anger at this reminder of his broken promise, but Cynthia was now alert, focusing on their more dangerous issue, springing into the survival mode that had always been buried deep in her nature. She paced the room a couple of times, mind working in overdrive.
"So we tip them off," she said. "The Ministry. Like Nott was going to. Except we tell them about everyone involved, not only William. We'll have to tell them about William too, so that they go to his house-" She winced as she said it, knowing this would mean destroying her brother's last chance at a free return home, but there was no room in her heart for more guilt.
"You'll have to write the tip off," she reminded her husband. "If I do it will trigger the vow. But you know the names of Nott's gang, don't you?"
He confirmed this with a nod, but his eyes remained wary. "Zabini knows I got the weapons," he said. "So does Jugson. The ones that were used in the early Surge attacks."
"Then don't mention Zabini or Jugson," Cynthia snapped, impatient at his failure to grasp how serious their problem had become. "We'll deal with those two ourselves while the Ministry is preoccupied. But you're right. We need to point them in the right direction. Steer them away from asking us questions however we can."
"How?" he said. "How do we do that without them knowing it was us."
The answer sprang to her lips at once.
"Nott's fire," she said. "You said he had untraceable ink and parchment? That's how he was going to do it. So you go to his and do it from there yourself."
He still looked blank.
"What now?" she said impatiently. "We can't afford to waste time with this. Just go!"
"But I - I don't - I won't know," he said. "I won't know what the ink is. Or the parchment. He didn't show me. He just told me he had some."
With a sinking heart, Cynthia knew she would have to go with him, to help find the necessary tools for the job. If Marcus failed at this final hurdle their recent actions would have been for nothing. She cast an agonised look towards the open bedroom, where Morella lay curled up in a ball, her hand reaching out to her brother even while she slept.
"They're fast asleep," Marcus assured her. "We'll be quick. And it would be the last time. If we can make this work, we won't have to leave them alone ever again."
0
Back at Nott's house, Cynthia did not even watch Marcus writing the note to the Ministry. He laboriously wrote out all the names he knew of and the details of attacks both past and planned. Cynthia, meanwhile, paced Nott's kitchen, eyeing the gruesome bottles on the shelves with revulsion. They held not only potions, but slimy, dead animal parts, glittering powders and sinister looking leaves and herbs. Many of them might have been centuries old, and no doubt some could trigger effects far worse than poison.
Turning to the left, she froze. One concoction sat on a corner shelf and it was all too familiar; a clear substance with a metallic sheen to it, bottled in a crystal vial with a golden stopper. The potion Nott had threatened her with twenty-four hours previously.
A mad but not unworkable idea began to form in her mind. Knowing this would be her one chance to get her hands on such a potion, she snatched up the bottle and stuffed it in her pocket.
"It's done," Marcus told her, coming through from the living room, and she whirled round and tried to wipe the guilt ridden expression from her face. "Sent through the fire to the Ministry. What now?"
"We return home to our children," Cynthia said, resolute. "And -" her fingers brushed the tiny bottle of memory potion in her jacket. "-and we try to forget this ever happened."
0
The commotion in the Ministry was already rife as Tonks arrived on the scene, having kissed her sleeping children and a furious but resigned husband goodbye minutes after the black alert reached her in the safe confines of their home. Harry and Ron, both standing at the centre of the Auror office and talking in low, urgent whispers, looked up with identical expressions of horror as she entered, but Tonks held up a warning finger.
"I don't want to hear it," she said. "Whatever you're about to say, I can assure you Remus has already said it. It won't change my mind. A black alert is a black alert."
"Tonks!" Ron exclaimed, disregarding this entirely. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you at home with Hope?"
She glowered at him. "What did I just say?"
"This isn't the same as last time," Ron persisted. "It's not the Battle of Hogwarts. We're not at war anymore."
"We're Aurors," she retorted. "Our job is always war."
Ron's responding double take told her he had never seen his profession in such stark terms before, but she did not have the headspace to dwell on his reaction. The mention of the Battle of Hogwarts had stirred up an awful, familiar feeling. That same guilt she had experienced on a warm, dark, spring night seven years ago, after leaving her baby son in the care of his grandmother. She had been lucky to survive that night, luckier still to have a second child in its aftermath. Yet here she was, repeating her actions as though they had come with no consequences.
Harry's expression was thunderous and she knew his thoughts were following a similar line.
"Go home," he told her. His jaw was set but there was an odd tremor to his voice. "You are not coming with us."
"I think you'll find I give the orders around here, Potter." Savage had appeared behind them in a sweep of his robes. "And I disagree. Auror Lupin will be coming with us - we need everyone we can get. Even the Minister is resuming his Auror position for the night. Ah, Cornelia-" A witch in bright green and yellow robes had appeared at the door. Tonks and Harry glared at each other a final time but Harry said nothing more. Savage's orders outranked his own, loath as he was to accept it.
"Could you please report to the Minister we will be departing for Bulstrode's house imminently," Savage asked Jugson pleasantly. "He may need to catch up with us if he is otherwise engaged but we can't delay any further."
"Of course Sir." Jugson flashed him a sickly sweet grimace and retreated up the corridor. The second she was out of sight, the smile vanished from her rat like features, to be replaced with smouldering rage. The London attack should have been airtight. Yet somehow the Aurors had discovered not only the plan but its perpetrator. What was Bulstrode playing at? And where the hell had Nott been all day?
She did not deliver Savage's message to the Minister, making instead for the deserted entrance hall and disapparating at once, reappearing outside Bulstrode's house with a crack a moment later. It looked the same as it had on her previous visit, but there was a light on in the kitchen and the front door was ajar. Jugson did not even pause to contemplate why, so great was her indignation.
"BULSTRODE!" she roared, flinging open the door with a crash. "THEY KNOW. THE AURORS KNOW ABOUT YOUR ATTACK. I THOUGHT YOUR PLAN WAS AIRTIGHT."
She stormed through the house, ranting and raging. He must be in. He never went anywhere, sitting up here in his hidey-hole planning and scheming while others did the dirty work on the ground. Not this time. This time, he was going to face their problem head on.
"I KNOW YOU'RE IN HERE!" she continued, voice elevating to a high pitched screech. "YOU CAN'T HIDE AWAY THIS TIME. YOU'RE GOING TO GET US OUT OF THIS MESS IF IT'S THE LAST THING YOU-"
As she reached the top of the house, her shouts faded to nothing. She had found her quarry, but he would not be taking action against the Ministry. He was lying motionless on his own bed, eyes open but blank, with an empty vial of poison sitting on his night stand.
0
Downstairs, the bottle of manticore venom that Cynthia had unknowingly picked up and replaced on the shelf hours before was no longer acid green. Air had seeped through the crack in the bottle and over the course of the past hours it had turned yellow, then orange and now burned dark red, a sign, should anyone have been watching, that it was seconds away from igniting.
0
Outside the cottage, the group of Aurors had congregated soundlessly and were now concealed in the trees and shrubbery that encircled Bulstrode's garden.
"There's movement on the top floor," Savage told those closest to him. "Saw it through the window. Proudfoot, Marston, Lupin, Weasley, you're to enter via the front. Potter, Bentley, this way - we'll cover the back in case they try to make an escape. The rest of you, stay back for now."
Proudfoot and Marston did as instructed, and Tonks moved to follow them, eyes fixed on the illuminated doorway. Then she let out an involuntary cry. Her foot had caught in a dense tangle of thorns and she stumbled and fell while trying to wrench it free, crashing down onto the icy ground with a grunt of pain.
"Tonks!" Ron, who had been on her left, was kneeling at her side in an instant. "You alright?"
"Course," she said. Her hands had taken the brunt of the fall, and she flexed her fingers to get some sensation back to them. "Just my two stupid left feet as always. Where's my wand?"
Ron shone a light on the ground, searching for several moments before finding it two metres away. Proudfoot and Marston had now reached the open front door.
"Come on," Tonks said, wiping the smarting hands on her robes to dry them, furious with herself, as Ron handed her back the wand. "We need to-"
And then it happened. A ball of fire detonated somewhere beneath the ground, before crashing up through all three floors of the cottage and turning it molten red. Ron, acting on instinct, threw Tonks to the ground again, shielding her with his own body as many of their colleagues shrank back into the trees, horror struck. Harry, Savage and Bentley, half blinded by the flash of light and deafened by the noise, had nevertheless avoided the worst of the impact, further away and with the back section of the house offering some protection against the blast. Proudfoot and Marston were not so fortunate. They were rocketed backwards from the fiery doorway, dead before they hit the ground again.
Ears ringing, Tonks could not even process the sharp turn of events as Ron helped her sit up and they stared at the blazing building for several seconds, aware of one fact and one fact alone. That a well-placed patch of thorns may have just saved both their lives.
0
Many hours later, with most of their colleagues back home for a brief rest before proceedings resumed at sunrise, Harry and Kinglsey remained at the Ministry, soberly mourning their fallen colleagues but pressing on with their duty as they were accustomed to doing. Bulstrode's body had been discovered among the wreckage of the house, as had Cornelia Jugson's, which had been an unpleasant shock to them all. A third body, too mangled for recognition, would be transported to St Mungo's for formal identification and the house would be scoured further over the coming days.
Kingsley Shacklebolt's face, for once in his life, was showing his age. Deep creases were visible under his eyes and on his forehead as he thought of William Bulstrode, in particular. He had met the man and liked him. A more pleasant and mild mannered wizard he would be hard pushed to find. Yet the evidence they had found tonight was ten fold and there was no doubt more to come. Muggle weapons and dark artefacts tucked away in corners. Some documents had survived the damage and confirmed the London attack the tip off had warned of. There was a long and gruelling investigation on the horizon, but for now there could be little doubt. William Bulstrode was not the man he had appeared to be.
Harry was rereading the tip off as they spoke. Completely untraceable, its sender had clearly known what they were doing.
"I think it must have come from someone already involved in The Surge," he concluded. "To be that detailed. Jugson isn't mentioned on it, so I did wonder..." he tailed off and shook his head. "But surely even Cornelia Jugson isn't idiotic enough to sell out fifteen dangerous colleagues then go to the scene of the crime knowing the Aurors were on her heels?"
"We can't rule out anything at this stage," Kingsley sighed. "But yes, that does seem unlikely. There were probably others involved, unknown to the informant. It is the nature of such crimes for instigators to preserve their anonymity."
He read the note himself before filing it away with many other pieces of evidence to be examined in detail.
"Call it a night," he told Harry. "We have a string of arrests to make in a couple of hours and we can't do much else until we've cleared Bulstrode's house. The answers will come to light eventually, I'm sure."
But the Minister remained in his office for a long time once Harry had gone home, recognising the emptiness of his recent words. If the past twenty years working in the Ministry had taught him anything, it was that sometimes, the answers didn't come to light. The truth could remain buried until all attempts to find it were abandoned, just as mysteries could outlive those trying to solve them.
0
The reported deaths of William Bulstrode and Cornelia Jugson were among the many sensationalist headlines to break the following day. And while it was a small relief for the Flints to discover their own role in events may slip through the net if they could only deal with Blaise Zabini, it did not ease the continued fear that the Ministry would catch up with them eventually.
Marcus had to retreat to the bedroom early afternoon with a splitting headache, but Cynthia could not contemplate resting for a second. If the Ministry succeeded in forcing the truth out of her she would be dead in an instant. As for her husband, he may not have the same fate resting on his shoulders, but he was easily coerced, as the past days had proven. If the Aurors received the slightest hint of suspicious behaviour on his part, it was game over for them both.
Cynthia wrestled with the idea that had been nagging at her for hours. The Mnemosynic Nott had tried to force on her, which she had taken from his potion shelf, now sat before her on her own kitchen table.
Marcus had explained that a key part of Nott's plan was memory removal. That removing memories would allow the drinker to evade the effects of Veritaserum if they were summoned to the Ministry. And if Nott thought it would work, why shouldn't it? Cynthia abhorred the man, but there could be no doubting his intelligence and cunning.
Her hand shook as she ran a glass of tepid water and removed the golden stopper from the bottle. She didn't know the exact dosage but she knew it needed to be diluted in water. If one drop was enough to erase a week, then a third of the bottle must be enough to wipe out the events of the past six months. Marcus would forget Nott's plan. He would forget William's accidental killing. Most importantly, he would forget the murder he had committed himself. He may remember procuring guns and knives, but he hadn't actually used them, hadn't even possessed them. She could give Marcus a new version of events and make sure his alibis were solid so that if and when the Ministry came calling, he would escape the worst of their punishment.
Yes. Yes, it was the best way forward. The only way forward.
The bottle tipped to a ninety degree angle. The liquid came within millimetres of succumbing to gravity.
Cynthia put the bottle down again. She couldn't do it. Cadmus was six months old. If she miscalculated then Marcus may not even remember the birth of his son. Betrayed though she was by his recent actions, but she couldn't do that to him, not when his children meant so much.
"Mummy, what are you doing?"
Her daughter had come in silently while she was agonising and Cynthia jumped as she spoke.
"I'm - just ... making some medicine, Morella. Your dad isn't feeling well."
Worry clouded Morella's dark eyes, but in that moment Cadmus's sleepy cries echoed from the living room and she turned, ready to care for him without being asked. Cynthia could have wept again at the sight of her slumped shoulders and resigned expression.
"I'll go," she said softly, reaching out to stroke Morella's soft curls. "You've done enough, my sweet. You always do so much. I am grateful. So grateful. And so sorry," she added in a whisper.
Morella patted her mother on the leg as she passed.
"It will be OK, Mum," she said. Cynthia tried to hold onto these innocent words of wisdom as tended to her son.
"Will it be OK?" she asked him. "Will it? I believed that once. I'm not sure, now. Not anymore."
Her baby's eyes held neither answer nor solace.
In the kitchen, Morella was up on the chair her mother had vacated, contemplating the tiny, unstoppered bottle, prodding it with a stubby finger.
Mum said Dad was ill. That must be why he shouted so much and why he was out all the time. Why he was currently lying down in their bedroom with the lights off. But the bottle was full, and the glass of water clear, which meant that Mum hadn't finished making the medicine, and now she was busy with Cadmus.
Morella sighed to herself. She would have to do it for her. She always had to do things for her. Shaking the bottle hard over the glass of water, she watched in some consternation as the droplets turned crystal clear on hitting the surface. It didn't look like medicine. What if it didn't work? In the end, she voided it completely, to be sure that it would do its job then, carrying the water carefully in both hands, she padded through to the dimly lit bedroom.
"Dad?"
Marcus grunted and raised his head.
"Oh. Hello kid."
She held out the water.
"For you."
"Hm. Ta." He took it from her and put it on the nightstand before slumping back down on the bed and staring up at the dark ceiling.
"Drink it, Dad," Morella protested. "To make you better."
Flint let out a low, bitter laugh.
"Make me better," he repeated sarcastically. "A glass of water. Yes, I'm sure that will fix everything."
Morella blinked up at him, eyes wide, dimples in her cheeks despite the malnourishment that was all she had ever known in her three short years. And, looking sideways at her, Flint did manage a smile.
"You are a cute little thing," he sighed, as she climbed up onto the bed to sit on his lap. "Maybe I'll be a better Dad to you, now this is over. If it is really over."
He thought bitterly of his actions over the past few days. Then his secret longing for the twenty million galleons that may be coming their way, even though he knew it to be wrong. His fear for their family, whose world may yet come crashing down. His children, so young. So innocent. And his wife, who he hoped would one day forgive him for his failure to protect her and her only remaining relative. He had wanted to protect Cynthia since their first meeting at school, when he had noticed her as a tiny second year falling prey to Millicent Bulstrode. Never would he be able to forget the terror in Cynthia's face as the bigger girl approached her deliberately and stealthily, her cruel actions premeditated. Anger had coursed through him with such force he felt he might have killed her, in that moment.
The following day, a different emotion had overtaken him.
Pucey and Ravencroft were howling with cruel delight as the first year tried to dodge round them, but they pushed him back against the wall as though he were made of paper. He crumpled on the floor and Pucey nudged him with his toe, again and again, tormenting him, while Ravencroft shook his bag upside down and emptied the contents. And as his books and homework littered the floor, the boy locked eyes with Flint, radiating a silent plea that someone come to his rescue. About to laugh himself, Flint faltered. He knew that look. He had seen an identical expression of fear the previous morning, on a young girl with a mouse blond ponytail and huge brown eyes that welled up with tears as ink splattered her hands and robes.
These eyes were no different, really. They held the same terror, the same powerless outrage and innocent disbelief that another student could be so cruel for no reason.
"Come on Flint," Ravencroft jeered, gesturing to him. "Your turn. Show little Dereky what a real punch looks like."
Flint barely heard him. He couldn't even move. In the end, before the disbelieving eyes of his two classmates, he turned in silence and walked away.
The emotions had been somewhat confusing, after a lifetime of gaining savage pleasure from picking on those smaller and weaker than himself, but he had tried, from then on, never to bully anyone again. He hadn't always been successful, as Nott had been swift to remind him, but he had done his best. He had tried to put the image of Marcus the bully behind him. For Cynthia. And now for his family.
His head was pounding to the point of inducing nausea. Perhaps his three-year-old was the most sensible one of them all. With a large glass of water and a decent night's sleep, the morning may bring clarity and a path out of the mess they were in. He took up the water and drained the glass in one. The liquid, warmer than he had expected but still refreshing, washed away the bitter taste that had been in his mouth ever since he had watched Kyra Ross, as Bulstrode, succumb to poison up in the man's bedroom.
On the kitchen table, the empty bottle sat glinting in the light, treacherous in its depleted state. The oily appearance to the dregs in the bottle was green rather than blue, evidence to the expert potion brewer only that it had never held Mnemosynic at all, but Elixir of Oblivion. Cynthia, unskilled and disinterested in potions, had not known to look for a difference, had not understood there to be a second, similar potion at play when she had made her split decision to steal the bottle from Nott's shelves.
Sat on the bed, eyes wide, Morella watched anxiously, waiting for the medicine to take effect and for her father to start feeling better, even as Cynthia's strangled gasp of horror issued from the next room.
OOO
April
M,
This is the only letter I will write and I trust I have done enough to get it to you safely.
News of recent events have now reached me. I am not sure how this came to pass and will continue to try and think of a way to reverse the tangled web I find myself in, but for now, I believe my decision was for the best.
I'm sorry I didn't have the courage to wait it out and see if the truth could prevail. My fear of being locked up and trapped in is too great. I have found a place I can stay, safe from prying eyes and unwanted questions. Please do not worry about me. Please live your life to the full, and know I will never forget you nor forgive myself for the devastation I brought to your life in the end.
I ask two things of you. Please destroy this letter. And, while I recognise I have no right to expect it, I hope you can find it in your heart to understand my decision and keep quiet about the events of that day, for the sake of my freedom, my sanity and for the only remaining members of my family.
All my love,
There was no signature, merely a tiny bee constructed of hexagons. The wings fluttered as though the bee were about to take flight.
Marietta read the words for what felt like the ten thousandth time in her life.
She had kept her silence. Mostly for William, and for the confusing feelings that lingered even though the love had faded over time. She could no longer love the man who had abandoned her so readily. But with the knowledge that William remained alive, and knowing what might have been had he never set foot in his sister's flat that fateful summer's day, nor had Marietta Edgecombe been able to move on.
Then there were the Flint children, to whom Marietta had always felt a sense of loyalty without knowing why, unwilling to blow apart their family by revealing the truth about their parents. But the Flint children were grown up now. She had watched them grow up, and from what she had seen and heard in recent years, Morella did not need protection. Cadmus, she felt, did not deserve it.
Marietta studied her reflection in the mirror, her resolve forming slowly and steadily in her mind. She was unwilling to betray William, even now, but Hope Lupin had somehow guessed parts of the truth and her mother was an Auror and a close friend of Harry Potter's. If an investigation escalated, the truth may be revealed. Worse, parts of the truth may come to light without the Ministry understanding the full story, and William would be imprisoned for crimes he hadn't committed at all.
On impulse, she waved her wand in a circular motion around her face and the thin layer of foundation she wore every day melted away. They were still visible. Very faint, but unmistakably present on her skin. Tiny scars spelling out the word Sneak.
Marietta had not been a sneak for a long time.
"If you only knew," she murmured, wondering who on earth she was speaking to. "The secrets I have kept these past twenty years."
Perhaps it was time, finally, to break her silence. The Flints were past the point of needing or deserving her help and she didn't care what information came to light about them. She still, grudgingly, cared about William, but she was so tired of living a lie. There must be a way she could push an investigation in the right direction, without openly betraying the man she had once loved. Force the truth to come to light without going against the last words he had ever written to her.
Marietta ran a single finger over her tiny scars. Nothing she had tried had permitted their removal, but she didn't hate Hermione Granger - now Weasley - for it anymore. She understood the value of loyalty now, and the price she had paid for her silence was far greater than the price she had paid as a teenager for being a sneak.
Hermione, in the end, had been there for her during a dark time. The woman had listened in sympathy as Marietta confided in her and confessed that William Bulstrode had been her partner, her love, her friend. Hermione had offered words of consolation and support, entirely free of judgment, and had said that she would be happy to listen again, should Marietta have need of it. Today, if there was one person who may be able to figure out the full story from the fragments of truth Marietta was willing to divulge, it was surely going to be the woman capable of creating a curse so powerful at the age of fifteen that the remnants of it were still visible twenty-five years later.
Marietta touched her wand to William's letter and it curled into ash, finally fulfilling the first part of his last request. As for his second wish... she would refrain from mentioning the events of the sixteenth of December. But staying silent about the rest was no longer a possibility. It was time for the world to know the truth.
oOo
May
Nearly two decades after the horrendous chain of events, the memories were fresh and vivid in Cynthia's mind and she had little difficulty recounting them to Harry, Hermione and Tonks, who sat in stunned silence as piece after piece of the recent puzzle thudded into place.
"I know I'm going to Azkaban," she murmured, as her tale finally drew to a close. "I accept it. I even welcome it. No punishment could be worse than the nightmare I have lived through these past eighteen years. And I know Marcus will be arrested too. But I beg of you, if you find him, don't hurt my brother. He didn't ask for this. He never did anything wrong, except accidentally kill the man who did everything wrong. He doesn't deserve a punishment that is, for him, worse than death."
At long last, Cynthia fell silent. There were no tears now, simply blank acceptance of her fate.
Harry, Tonks and Hermione looked at each other, at a loss to know what to say. Finally Hermione spoke.
"Thank you for telling us," she said, tapping the wand on the device in front of her so it stopped recording. Her voice was calm. "We will question you in official capacity after we have examined your memories. Can I ask if your children are aware of these events?"
"No," Cynthia whispered. "Morella never knew what she had done, and I couldn't tell her. Quite apart from the Unbreakable Vow, would you be able to explain to your child that the father who once loved her dearly no longer recognised her, and never would? He once killed an innocent girl in the belief it would give his children a brighter future and even without this knowledge Morella has grown up despising him, never knowing the man he once was, nor what might have been if I had only shown her more care and attention when she was three years old."
"And Marietta?" Hermione asked, after a sensitive pause. "Did she ever know her pregnancy wasn't false as she believed? Did she find out what Nott had done?"
"I don't think so," Cynthia murmured. "I am the only one who could have told her and I'd be dead if I had."
There was another painful silence. Hermione nodded and sat back, to confirm this was the end of her questions for now. Tonks shook her head to indicate she had none of her own. Harry stood up. There could be no other way forward, but never had he felt such pity and reluctance on doing his duty as he said the words out loud.
"Cynthia Flint, I am arresting you in connection with the events of The Surge and the falsely recorded death of your brother William Bulstrode in December 2005. You will be charged with perverting the course of justice, dangerous neglect of your two children, the fraudulent claim to an inheritance, complicity in the murder of Kyra Ross, and the murder of Blaise Zabini. Anything you say can be used in evidence, and it may hurt your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in a trial."
The final sentence sounded ridiculous to say, in light of the recent confession, but Cynthia made no comment nor any attempt at resistance as he escorted her to her feet.
"Take her down to level two," he said in an undertone to Cragg and Bentley, who were waiting outside the door as back up. "Please leave her with whoever is in charge and return here. A red alert will be issued shortly. But treat her kindly," he added. "That's an order. Those on duty down in the holding cells are to do the same."
He turned back to his two friends. Tonks looked as though she may vomit. Hermione, who had been so composed while Cynthia recounted her tale, now had tears glistening on her cheeks.
oOo
June
Hope reeled as the impact of her mother's tale hit home.
"Flint - Mr Flint - he lost his memory?"
"By the time Cynthia realised, nothing could be done," Tonks sighed. "That potion is irreversible and incredibly dangerous. It's a wonder he survived at all, the amount he drank. He did lose consciousness for several hours, and by the time he awoke, Cynthia had worked out a plan of what to tell him."
"But-" Hope was still struggling to comprehend. "But - could he not remember anything?"
"Oh no," Tonks countered. "He remembered a lot. If he had taken Mnemosynic, as Cynthia believed, it would have been a different story. That would have wiped out years of his life in their entirety and the Ministry likely would have been far more suspicious. But Elixir of Oblivion is selective in the memories it claims. Takes only those with the strongest emotional ties. When Flint woke up he knew who he was. He could remember many events that had happened all the way from his childhood through to the present day. But he knew nothing of The Surge nor his role in it and worst of all, almost nothing of his family. He recognised, on some level, that Cynthia was his wife - they had been together for so long - but not in the same way as before. Cynthia said the love was gone from their relationship after that day."
Hope had always believed that love transcended the effects of magic, that it held strong against even the most powerful of curses and spells. She tried to articulate this, and Tonks nodded in reply.
"In a way, you're right," she said. "Love can't be magically created, so magic can't destroy love in itself. But love and memory are so intrinsically linked that in this case it amounted to the same thing. Love is born through connection, but it endures because of the compilation of memories we create with another person. With those gone-"
There were tears in Hope's eyes now.
"So - So if he'd never drunk the potion..."
"Remember that Flint is not innocent," Tonks said, reaching out to take her hand. "Neither is his wife. The crimes they committed are appalling, even before you stack them up. But yes. If nothing else, it is apparent that Flint cared deeply about his wife and children. Before."
"And after?"
She asked the question already knowing the answer.
"He didn't know them," Tonks said simply. "Not his children, at least. And his love for Cynthia was damaged beyond repair. From then on their home was a destructive, toxic environment. Cadmus and Morella were bullied by a father with no affection for children he didn't recognise as his own. Cynthia did fill him in as best she could, but she couldn't tell him the truth because of the Unbreakable Vow. She invented her own story; told him he had been in an accident, and that questions would be raised about recent events but that it was a misunderstanding, that he needed to answer any questions simply and honestly and then it would all blow over. It worked in a way - enough to keep him out of jail, at least. But he never understood the full picture and he was never the same again."
"He bought all that?" Hope tried to imagine waking up with no memory of the people closest to her. "He was with a woman he barely knew and a family he didn't recognise, and all this stuff was going on, but he stayed with her?"
"I suspect the inheritance was influential there," Remus said grimly. He too was pale. "Twenty million galleons is an astronomical amount of money. He was probably willing to do whatever it took to secure a more prosperous place for himself in society. Remember the Flints had no money at all, prior to this."
Hope recalled of the grand stone walls of the Flints' mansion. Little Tilda sweeping the fireplaces and making her cakes. The polished banisters and cavernous entrance hall. The acres of land. The lake that lay beyond and the tragedy that had once happened there, under the invisible gaze of a poor, bullied, six-year-old boy and his indifferent father.
"Can they not fix his memory?" she asked. It came out as a plea. "Not even now?"
Tonks shook her head sadly.
"There is no reversal for Elixir of Oblivion to date. Cynthia has tried, over the years. It turns out the Novakine Morella found in their house last year was hers. She had read a study that indicated it could help retrieve lost memories - a theory, nothing concrete. Morella found the Novakine and tipped off the Ministry. Astoria Malfoy heard about it and warned Cynthia, as they were old friends. Cynthia panicked and hid the drugs in a secret hiding place at the end of their garden, and the Ministry didn't find them. Her father's wand was hidden in the same location. She had kept it all these years but she turned it into the Ministry along with her confession. The last spell it performed was the murder of Blaise Zabini, the only other living person who could link Flint to The Surge. She tracked him down on the outskirts of London two days after Flint took the potion and fired a killing curse at his back, before dumping his body in the river."
Sickening images swirled through Hope's mind. Despite her mother's warning that this was a highly unpleasant tale, nothing could have prepared her for this. She ran her hands over the polished wood of the table in front of her. Something she could feel...
"What will happen to them now?" she asked in a small voice.
"The official trial will be held in October," Tonks explained. "But there can be little doubt of the outcome, and because The Surge is such a high profile event it has been ruled the details be made public. The Flints are facing life in Azkaban. No spell or potion can excuse what they did. Bulstrode's trial will be more complicated. He is not innocent either, but he was also a victim, and years of being alone in hiding have not improved his health. We have located him and he is receiving intensive treatment for the time being, while they decide how to proceed."
Hope had thought from reading the man's letters that Bulstrode had seemed a gentle soul, unlikely to wish harm on anyone, muggle or otherwise. There, at least, she had been right.
"What about the baby?" she said suddenly, remembering what was, for her, the most nauseating revelation. "Edgecombe and Bulstrode's child? They would - they would have been my age-"
She tailed off, doing the maths. Perhaps she had been at school with them, never knowing. But Tonks now had tears in her own eyes.
"The baby was born a wizard," she said. "To a muggle woman in Northern Ireland. His parents didn't want him to attend Hogwarts and he went to muggle school. You may already know there is a dark history of changeling children suffering mentally, and this was no exception. The boy," she swallowed, "took his own life when he was fifteen."
Hope, unable to take anymore, burst into tears and Remus came closer at once and pulled her into a fierce hug. She could tell he was exchanging worried looks with his wife, and, knowing they may already be regretting telling her the story, she hastened to reassure them through the tears.
"I'm glad you told me," she said, scrubbing her eyes. "I am. I had to know. And I know you warned me, but I still didn't expect it to be so... horrible... and - and -
It was the question she didn't want answered but the one she had to ask. It came out in a rush as she straightened up and looked her mother directly in the eye.
"Would it have been better if the truth had stayed hidden? If no one had ever found out?"
Tonks grabbed her hand again, eyes now dry, expression fierce. "No, my love. No. The truth is always better, Hope. Never, for a second, think that you did wrong here. You did right, and you were brave to do it. Please, please remember that."
Hope let the tears fall, knowing that holding them back could only do more damage.
"I'll... try," she said. "Thank you for telling me. I'll be fine. Honestly. And I won't tell other people about it."
Tonks and Remus exchanged another worried look in response.
"It might be best if you did," Tonks said gently. "Not gossip, of course, and given that Roxanne is close to Morella, she may not be comfortable discussing the case in depth. But the truth will be out for the world to see in the morning, and staying silent about your role in it may do more harm than good. If you wanted to talk about it with someone else you trust, someone safe - Teddy, perhaps? Or Dom or Lily - I think it would be a good idea."
Hope accepted this as a valid point, but said no more. She let the conversation drift to more practical discussions of proceedings she had no headspace for, knowing it was time to go home. Her mother was exhausted and would no doubt need to be up early tomorrow for another busy day. She politely refused her parents offer that she stay the night and made preparations to return to her flat.
About to head back through the Floo, however, Hope hesitated, contemplating what her mother had said. That it may help to talk about what she had learnt. With someone she trusted. Someone safe. One person came to mind immediately, but it wasn't Lily or Teddy, nor even Dom.
She pulled out her Wiznote, found the page she needed, and scribbled a message.
"Are you still at the party?"
For a minute or two there was no reply. Then the Wiznote glowed brightly.
"Just about to leave. Swash is doing my head in."
"Can I come over to yours? Just to hang out for a bit?"
There was another short delay in reply, then,
"Sure. X"
OOO