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Chapter Text

AURELIA AVERY

The fire caught the drapes before the woman even screamed. Her eyes went wide, mouth opening in a sound that was cut short as my curse struck her chest. She convulsed, body jerking, before crumpling into the flames. Her skin blistered and blackened in seconds, the stench of burning flesh thick and suffocating as her hair went up like kindling. I didn't hesitate. My wand moved before my heart could argue. She dropped like the rest of them, another faceless casualty in this war. Another weight pressing against my ribs. Another ghost already tearing at the edges of my conscience.

"Clear every room. Don't leave anyone breathing."

Mattheo's voice cut through the roar of fire, sharp as broken glass, commanding and merciless. He stood at the center of the hall like a storm given flesh, shoulders squared, wand steady, dark eyes alive with a rage so sharp it bled into every word. His fury made us fast. His cruelty made us ruthless but we followed without pause, always.

Draco swept forward, pale and cold as marble, his movements precise, surgical. He didn't gloat. He didn't falter. With a flick of his wand, an old wizard's chest split open, ribs cracking apart like kindling as blood gushed down his robes. Draco didn't even flinch. He didn't look at the body slumping to the ground, throat gurgling wetly as it drowned on its own blood. When his grey eyes flicked briefly toward me, there was nothing in them. No fire or even a flicker of hesitation. Just stone.

Behind him, Lorenzo leaned lazily against the doorframe of the next corridor, wand tapping against his palm. A witch had trapped herself in the corner, her hands trembling so violently she couldn't even hold her wand steady.

"Don't tremble, sweetheart," he drawled, the corner of his mouth curving in that mocking, irresistible way of his. "You'll only make it hurt more."

His spell snapped her spine in an instant, the crack was sharp and final. She collapsed in a broken heap, limbs twisted at acute angles. Lorenzo's grin widened, teeth flashing in the light of burning sconces as he gave her corpse a casual once-over.

"Pity," he murmured, stepping over her body like discarded rubbish. "She was pretty."

Theo moved in silence, but his silence was worse than Lorenzo's cruelty. There was no flourish, no smirk, just precision. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought it might shatter, his knuckles white on his wand. A man lunged at him from the side. Theo's curse sliced through the man's throat so cleanly that his head lolled backward, nearly severed, blood spraying across the wall in a wide crimson arc. Theo didn't pause to watch him fall, he didn't even blink.

Daphne's laugh cut through the flames, sharp and manic like shattered glass. She spun through the smoke with a kind of chaotic grace, her wand an extension of her body as she set fire to curtains, chairs, walls. Sparks rained down like stars, catching on the hair of a man who screamed as it caught alight.

"Burn it all!" she shrieked, her voice fever-bright. Her hair clung wild and damp to her face, eyes glittering with delight as the man flailed, his skin melting as flames devoured him alive. She twirled her wand like a conductor, smiling wide and terrifying. None of us told her to stop. We never did.

I forced myself forward, stepping over a body still twitching faintly, its eyes wide and glassy, lips bubbling with the last shreds of air. My boots slipped slightly on the blood-slick floor. My wand was heavy in my hand, but I didn't let it waver.

"Avery," Mattheo's voice snapped me back, harsh as the crack of a whip. He was watching me, gaze sharp, searching for a flaw. My chest tightened, but I nodded once, curt, as though the flames behind me weren't whispering with all the lives I'd just ended.

"Upstairs," he ordered. "With Nott. Clear it."

Theo didn't wait for me. He was already moving, boots thudding against the stairwell. I followed close, the wood creaking under our weight. The hallway above was dim, only lit by the dull glow of fire bleeding up the stairwell. A child's toy lay abandoned in the corner, its porcelain face cracked. I swallowed hard and stepped over it.

The stairs groaned beneath our boots as Theo and I ascended, the air thick with smoke that crawled upward from the fires below. Each inhale burned my throat, tasting of charred fabric and the metallic tang of blood that already clung to my tongue. My wand was steady in my grip, but my pulse wasn't. It thundered behind my ears, and every beat felt like it might split my skull open.

Theo didn't look back, he moved like a shadow, every stride was purposeful and silent despite the chaos that roared below us. He kicked open the first door without hesitation, his wand slicing through the air in the same motion. The curse hit the Order member before he even had time to turn. A flash of green, life extinguished. The body slumped across a dresser, eyes frozen wide. Theo didn't pause, nor did he flinch.

"Next," he muttered, his voice flat.

I followed, swallowing down the bile threatening to claw up my throat. The second door opened under Theo's hand, and the witch inside shrieked, crouched low behind a desk. She hurled a hex wild with fear. It snapped past Theo's shoulder, close enough to scorch the wall, but still he did not falter.

His counter curse struck her in the chest. The crack of bone echoed in the small room as she slammed against the wall, sliding down with blood bubbling at her lips. I stepped forward before her choking breaths could become pleas and snapped my wand at her throat. The curse cut clean, severing voice and life in the same instant. Her body twitched once, then finally stilled.

I forced my wand down. My hand shook just for a heartbeat. I tightened my grip until my nails dug crescents into my palm. My mask couldn't slip, not here. Theo had already moved on.

The third room was barricaded. A wardrobe shoved across the entrance, scratching against the floorboards. Theo didn't slow, he drew back his boot and smashed it into the wood. The door cracked open, splinters flying. He shoved again, and the blockade shifted enough for him to force himself through.

Two Order recruits were huddled inside, children, barely older than me. They clutched wands that trembled so badly they could hardly aim. For half a second, my lungs froze. Their faces were wide with terror, pale with desperation.

Theo's wand flared and the boy fell before he even had time to cry out, body collapsing against the bed with a dull, painful thud. The girl screamed a raw, piercing sound that laced straight through me and flung herself toward me, a spell stuttering on her lips.

I didn't think, I reacted. My wand snapped up, curse flying. It tore straight through her chest. Her eyes went wide, then glassy, her lips parting in a final soundless gasp before she crumpled.

The silence that followed was unbearable. I could hear the crackle of fire below, the distant screams, but in this room it was just the soft patter of blood dripping onto the wooden floor. I stepped over them, every nerve in my body screaming. My face stayed composed, but inside I could feel the guilt gnawing, sharp and insistent. Theo said nothing. He didn't even glance at them. His expression didn't change as he walked into the next hallway.

The fourth door burst open, and this time the fight came to us. A man lunged from behind the frame, wand raised. Theo ducked under the first curse, slamming his shoulder into the man's ribs with brutal force. The crack was audible. He drove his elbow into the man's throat, crushing it before finishing with a curse to the chest. The body crumpled at his feet in a long, dragged out motion.

I followed him into the fifth room. A witch tried to corner herself against the far wall, hands trembling as she raised her wand. I didn't give her the chance. I struck low, curse hitting her legs. Bone splintered. She screamed, toppling forward. I moved fast, closing the distance. My boot caught her ribs as she fell, the impact jolting up my leg. She gasped, blood flecking her lips. I raised my wand and ended it with a sharp flick, forcing myself not to hear the way her body hit the ground.

Theo's face remained impassive.

The sixth room was chaos, there was a cluster of three Order members huddled together, wands ready. Spells lit the air instantly, sizzling past us. I dropped low, rolling across the floorboards, the heat of a hex burning over my head. My curse caught one in the stomach and she collapsed, shrieking helplessly.

Theo moved like water, fluid and deadly. He disarmed one, spun his wand, and drove a curse through his chest before the man even realized his weapon was gone. The third tried to run, darting toward the window, but I was faster. I grabbed her hair, yanked her back, and slammed her face against the wall with brutal force. The crunch of her nose breaking vibrated through my hand. She writhed, clawing at me, but I drove my wand under her jaw and whispered the curse. Her body went limp instantly.

I let her drop. My hands were sticky with blood. My lungs burned. Theo gave a curt nod, as though it were nothing. As though we hadn't just slaughtered three people in a heartbeat.

The hallway stank of death now, along with iron, smoke, the acrid tang of burned flesh. My chest felt heavy, my mask slipping. Each step pressed the guilt deeper into me until it felt like I was suffocating.

But I couldn't falter. Or I may as well just die right here, right now.

The seventh door slammed open before Theo could reach it. An older wizard burst out, eyes blazing, curse already on his lips. Theo twisted aside, the spell scorching the wall. He struck back, but the man was quick, deflecting with a shield charm.

I lunged forward. Physical this time. My fist cracked against his jaw before he could recover. His head snapped sideways, his wand arm faltering. Theo seized the opening, driving his boot into the man's knee with vicious force. The leg crumpled with a sickening pop.

The wizard fell to the ground, gasping in agony. I pressed my wand to his temple and cast without hesitation, forcing the strength into my arm, into my voice. His body jerked once, then fell still. I stepped back, chest heaving. My blood-slick knuckles throbbed from where they'd connected with bone. My throat was dry, my head spinning.

"Almost done," Theo muttered. His face was unreadable, his tone unchanged. As though the violent deaths hadn't even touched his soul. I envied him for a heartbeat.

The last door was at the end of the hall. Theo approached it like he had all the others, unflinching, precise. He kicked it open roughly. A young man was inside, and raised his wand too late. Theo's spell sliced his arm open, his wand clattering across the floor. He screamed, clutching the wound. I didn't let myself hesitate. I strode forward and drove my knee into his chest, knocking the breath from him. He gasped, eyes wide, pleading. I silenced him with the Killing Curse. His body stilled, the room falling quiet. It was over.

The hallway was lined with bodies now, the air thick with smoke and blood. My head pounded. My chest ached. My mask cracked, just a little. My breath hitched, shaky, my fingers trembling despite how tightly I clenched my wand.

"Avery! Move faster, for fuck's sake!" Mattheo's voice ripped through the air from below, harsh as a whip.

The sound of him snapped everything back into place. My spine straightened, my jaw tightened. Whatever weakness threatened to surface, I shoved it down, buried it behind steel. I didn't look at Theo as I stepped past him, didn't let him see how my nails dug into my palm hard enough to bleed. And if my soul felt heavier with every step back toward the flames, no one had to know.

The house didn't look like much now. When we arrived, it was just another crumbling London townhouse, brick dark with soot, windows shuttered, curtains drawn tight. But the wards had been thick, strong enough that it had taken Mattheo's temper and Draco's skill combined to tear them down. Strong enough to remind us this wasn't just a meeting point. This was a refuge. A bolt-hole for the Order of the Phoenix. Which was why Voldemort had sent us.

His command had been simple, final. "Every last one of them. No survivors."

The inside was already unrecognizable, furniture overturned, walls blackened by fire, blood smeared across the floorboards. The screams from upstairs had only just begun to fade in my head when Theo and I descended back into the downstairs inferno, our boots heavy with ash and death.

Downstairs, the real battle raged. Draco's voice snapped across the room like a whip.

"Nott, Avery, fucking help me out here!"

My eyes swept the chaos. Order members still alive, fighting in desperation, scattered through the smoke while the team carved through them like wolves. Lorenzo dragged another victim by the hair across the floor, pressing his wand under her chin as he tilted her face up toward him.

"Smile for me darling," he crooned, and the curse ripped her jaw apart before she could. He let her body fall, chuckling low as he turned back into the fight.

Daphne was a whirlwind in the middle of the floor, spinning with wild, ecstatic laughter. Fire licked at her heels as she sent curses crashing into anything that moved.

"Come on, dance!" she sang, shrieking with delight as her spell engulfed a wizard's robes in flame. He flailed, screaming, and she clapped her hands together. "Burn brighter!"

Mattheo was the storm's center, immovable and merciless. His wand cracked through the air with brutal precision, every curse a killing blow. A wizard lunged at him head-on, Mattheo blocked with a shield, shoved forward, and slammed his wand into the man's chest at point-blank range. The man's body convulsed, blood spattering across the stone. Mattheo shoved him aside without a glance.

Across the room, Draco moved in silence, his face carved into ice. His wandwork was relentless, shields and strikes woven together with surgical precision. He disarmed one man, cut down another, his movements so exact it was like he'd rehearsed the killings.

Draco's eyes snapped to us again. "Now!"

I surged forward, wand raised, Theo at my side. An Order fighter hurled a curse at me, red light searing through the smoke. I dove aside, rolling across the blood-slick floorboards. My counterstrike shattered his shield, tearing across his chest in a spray of gore. He staggered, gasping, I pressed my wand to his throat and finished him, forcing my face to turn cold the way Theo's was upstairs.

Beside me, Theo was merciless. He caught an opponent's wrist mid-duel, twisting until the bone snapped with a blaring crack. The man screamed, dropping his wand, but Theo waisted no time and shoved him against the wall, slamming his head against the stone until blood smeared the plaster, then broke his neck with one sharp twist. He dropped the body without second thought, eyes already moving to the next target.

"Left side!" Mattheo barked, his voice harsh over the roar of flames. "Cover Greengrass before she gets herself killed!"

"I don't need covering!" Daphne screeched back, laughter spilling from her throat as she set the stairwell ablaze, trapping three Order fighters. She hurled curses wildly, one burning a man's face until it melted, another snapping a woman's spine backward. Daphne spun, grinning at me through the smoke. "See? I'm fucking winning!"

"Focus!" Mattheo snarled.

Another fighter charged me while my guard was down. He slammed into me, tackling me to the floor. My wand skittered across the boards. His hands closed around my throat, squeezing. Black spots burst across my vision. I clawed at him, dragging my nails down his face, but his grip only tightened. Rage surged through me. I drove my knee into his stomach, once, twice, until his grip faltered. I snatched the dagger from my boot and slashed it across his face. Hot blood sprayed, blinding him. With a roar, I shoved him back and grabbed my wand, pressing it to his chest. The curse burst from me raw, tearing through him. His body convulsed, then finally stopped.

My throat burned, bruised. My hands were slick with blood. But I pushed myself up, steady, strong, as though none of it had touched me. Lorenzo passed me, moving with that lazy ravaging grace he always carried. He leaned down, bending a witch's wrist until it snapped, her scream jagged and sharp. He smirked at me, lips curling.

"Bit fiery today Avery? Didn't know you liked it that rough. I'll keep that in mind."

My jaw tightened. "Shut the fuck up and fight," I snapped, my voice hoarse from the thick smoke. My wand felt hot in my hand, slick with the residue of earlier deaths.

Lorenzo chuckled, tossing the woman aside as though she were nothing. "Gladly." He spun, unleashing a green jet that cut a man in two, splattering blood across the walls.

I lunged forward before he could return my attention, feet sliding over a slick patch of blood. My curse struck a man square in the chest. He howled, the sound tearing from his throat as his skin bubbled and split. He collapsed to the floor, twisting, convulsing. I pressed the tip of my wand to his temple and murmured the final words. His body went limp, collapsing onto the others like a sack of ragged flesh.

Draco was next to me, moving like a shadow. He caught a man's hex mid-air and redirected it into his own opponent, who jerked violently, blood spraying from his mouth. Draco's wand flashed again, and the man's skull cracked open with a wet, hollow sound. He fell in a heap, bone fragments crunching under my boot as I stepped over him. Draco's eyes flicked to mine briefly, sharp, appraising, unreadable and then he moved on.

Theo was a machine. Silent, efficient, brutal. His wand flicked twice, and a man's ribs exploded in a shower of blood and splinters of bone. Another curse and the man's kneecap shattered, his body folding over itself in a broken heap. Theo stepped over the corpse as if it were dust, moving toward the next target.

I forced myself forward, ignoring the trembling in my hands. Another Order fighter charged me, wand raised, eyes wide with fear. He lunged and I ducked, feeling the heat of the curse skim across my shoulder, burning through fabric and searing my skin. My teeth gritted against the pain. I dropped low, rolled, and struck him in the chest. His ribs cracked under my spell, his scream cut short by the final word from my wand. He collapsed, twitching.

Mattheo's voice rose, raw and ragged. "Push them back! Every last one!"

He didn't hesitate. His next curse hit a man full in the chest, slamming him against the wall, breaking ribs, cracking bone with sickening force. He raised his wand to the man's temple and muttered something low. The Cruciatus struck, and the man writhed, screaming in a way that made my stomach knot. The smell of burned flesh and hair filled the air. Mattheo didn't flinch. Only when the spell had ravaged the body did he finish it with a Killing Curse, sending the remains crashing to the floor.

The Order's numbers thinned, but desperation sharpened their attacks. Curses spat from every direction, hexes and jinxes converging on us. Theo moved like a phantom, intercepting each one with silent precision, blasting skulls open, crushing bones, ending fights before they even began. Draco's wand was a scythe. He disarmed two men at once, then struck each down in a single sweeping motion. Blood arced through the air, spraying across the ruined furniture and charred walls. He didn't flinch, didn't even exhale, his movements a cold rhythm of death.

In contrast, Daphne spun in the center of the room, arms wide, shrieking as fire roared from her wand, flames licking the floorboards and engulfing any Order member within range. A wizard screamed as his legs caught fire, clawing at his own skin in panic before collapsing, screaming and burning.

"Again! Again!" she sang, clapping her hands like a child at a show.

Lorenzo was the predator, dragging another victim across the floor. He leaned close, whispering something low and obscene into her ear before splitting her open from shoulder to hip with a single, lazy flick. Blood sprayed over his robes, streaking crimson like warpaint. He smirked at me as he tossed her aside.

"Delightful," he said, and returned to the fray.

I turned back to the wave of approaching fighters. Another man charged, wand high, spell already forming. I pivoted, stepping low, and drove my wand into his stomach. The bones cracked under the force, his yell tearing through the smoke. I caught him by the collar, shoved him against the wall, and ended him with a flick. His body collapsed in a pile of twitching limbs and blood, his head lolling to one side.

A man fired a hex from behind a chair. Draco spun, deflecting the spell into the ceiling, and returned the favor with a green bolt to the man's throat. Blood gushed, soaking his shirt, and he collapsed, clawing at the wound in futile panic. Draco didn't glance back.

I wiped sweat and ash from my brow and pressed on, wand flicking, spells tearing through the few remaining Order fighters. One man came at me, swinging a wand like a club. I sidestepped, caught his arm, twisted until it popped, then drove my knee into his chest. He gasped, struggled, and I ended it with a final curse.

Mattheo finished the last, wand pressed to a man's chest as he muttered the words, a dark fury behind his eyes. The body fell with a wet thud and then the room fell silent.

Only the crackle of fire remained, mingling with the metallic stench of blood and burning flesh. My chest heaved. My lungs burned. My hands were slick, sticky with gore. My boots were red to the ankles. I glanced around at the group.

Mattheo stood in the center, eyes dark, sharp, unsparing. Draco holstered his wand with the same surgical precision he'd used to dismember every man who came near. Theo's face was calm, his hands unshaken, though the smell of death clung to him as it did to the rest of us. Daphne laughed, still spinning, eyes glittering with feverish delight. Lorenzo smirked, flicking blood from his fingers, already searching for the next victim.

I stood among the bodies, heart hammering, shaking slightly, wand still tight in my hand. My mask held, face cold, strong. But inside, the ghosts screamed.

Mattheo stood tall in the center, his chest rising and falling, his wand still steady. His eyes swept over us, dark and merciless.

"That's what the Dark Lord asked for," he said at last, his voice like iron. "Every last one."

The fire had begun to choke itself on its own smoke, curling through the rafters in greasy black coils. The flames cast a red glow over the corpses scattered across the floorboards, turning every body into a grotesque shadow play. For a moment, none of us moved, our breathing the only sound beyond the crackle of burning wood.

Then Daphne bent down, fingers still trembling from adrenaline, and began rifling through a dead witch's cloak.

"Oooh," she hummed, drawing out a silver locket that glinted dully in the firelight. She slipped it over her head without hesitation, giggling as it dangled at her collarbone. "Pretty little trinket for me. She won't be needing it."

Lorenzo snorted, flicking blood from his knuckles. "Of course you'd treat a bloodbath like a jewelry box, Greengrass."

Daphne shot him a wild grin, her pupils blown wide. "And you wouldn't?"

She bent to another corpse before he could reply, tugging a handful of rings from stiff fingers. The flesh tore as she yanked the last one free, and she didn't even flinch.

My stomach twisted, but I forced myself forward. A man's body lay at my feet, his pockets bulging. My fingers moved almost without thought, slipping inside his coat and drawing out a handful of galleons, a cracked pocket watch, a thin chain tangled around a key. Trinkets. Symbols of lives that had mattered, once.

I told myself it was practical. We needed supplies. Voldemort's missions rarely left us enough time or money to keep ourselves afloat. But when I tucked the chain into my pocket, I felt the weight of it burn like guilt against my thigh.

Mattheo's voice cracked across the room like a lash. "What the fuck are you doing?"

I froze, my hand still in the dead man's coat. His eyes pinned me through the haze of smoke, sharp and merciless.

"Raiding," I said evenly, sliding the coins into my palm before I pulled my hand free. "We need to bring something back. We both know we are all barely surviving right now Riddle."

His jaw clenched. "We're here to kill, not to play pretty thief."

Daphne laughed from the other side of the room, jangling her new collection of rings on her fingers. "Oh shut up, Riddle. The Dark Lord doesn't care what we do with the scraps."

Lorenzo smirked, tossing a bloodstained scarf over his shoulder. "She's not wrong. Might as well get some pleasure out of the mess."

Mattheo's glare hardened, but he didn't push further. Not with Daphne still twirling like a madwoman and Lorenzo egging her on. His focus was already shifting back to the task, back to control. The acrid smoke from the flames hung thick in the air, choking the corners of the ruined safehouse. The crackle of fire echoed across the splintered floors as we spread out, eyes scanning for anything still of use.

Theo moved with quiet precision, hands moving efficiently through the wreckage. He didn't linger, didn't smile, didn't gloat. He tore open cupboards and cabinets, rifling through the few supplies left behind by the fleeing or fallen Order members. Cans of food, dusty bottles of water, a first aid kit missing a few bandages. He packed them neatly into a worn satchel, tying it tight. Each item went in without hesitation. He never paused to gawk at the carnage we had left behind, he never flinched.

I followed his example but with a different purpose. My hands sifted through the pockets of bodies, extracting coins, chains, rings, anything that glittered or shone in the firelight. My mask stayed firm, but my chest tightened with each item. Guilt curled like smoke around my ribs, but I shoved it down. Trinkets could be sold, turned into leverage, or kept. They were worthless to the dead, and yet each one felt heavier than the last.

Daphne was worse. She flitted from corpse to corpse, snatching rings, brooches, small heirlooms, laughing at the tangle of hair and blood she ignored. She pressed one sparkling locket to her chest, eyes wild and gleaming.

"See? It's mine now. I earned it," she crowed, spinning in a tight circle before darting toward the next victim.

Mattheo's eyes swept the room, dark and sharp, catching the shimmer of stolen jewelry in our hands. His lips pressed into a thin line.

"Avery, Daphne, drop it," he snapped. His wand flicked toward the nearest table, sending a shattered goblet spinning.

Daphne waved him off carelessly, spinning to show him the glittering ring she had just pulled from a corpse. "Oh, lighten up. It's just a little reward for surviving, isn't it?"

Mattheo's jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing like a predator. "I said drop it. Now."

I moved the satchel closer to my side, tucking the chains under my arm. "It's practical," I said evenly. "We can use it."

"No," Mattheo growled, voice low and deadly. "We kill. We take what we need. Not toys, not shiny little reminders that we've left bodies behind."

Draco, however, lingered near the center of the hall, arms crossed, eyes scanning the ruined house like a hawk. "Too easy," he muttered, voice low, almost to himself.

Theo glanced up from his scavenging, expression neutral. "What do you mean?"

Draco's lip curled. "This doesn't add up. A fully functioning Order safehouse, barely defended. A few half-trained recruits. Why here? Why leave the rest of their defenses thin?"

Lorenzo shrugged, tossing a small dagger from a fallen man between his hands. "Maybe they ran scared. Not our problem."

Draco's eyes hardened. "The Order doesn't run." He turned to Mattheo, voice sharper now. "There's something else here. Or someone. Otherwise, why would they leave this open? Why would they let a house like this be so... empty?"

"We search," Mattheo said, cutting the silence like steel. His eyes burned as he looked between us. "Top to bottom. If anyone's hiding in this house, we drag them out screaming and kill them."

Daphne clapped her hands, her jewelry jingling like bells. "Oh, I do love a good game of hide-and-seek."

Mattheo's jaw tightened. "Shut the fuck up and move."

We obeyed. Because we always did.

The safehouse smelled of smoke, blood, and scorched wood, a tang so sharp it made my stomach twist with every breath. The fires had died down in the upper floors, leaving behind curling black smoke that clung to the rafters and seeped into every corner, but the heat still radiated off the walls, baking our skin and making the air thick and stifling. The ground beneath us was a graveyard of splintered floorboards, scorched rugs, and bodies twisted in impossible angles.

Mattheo moved first, his wand raised, eyes sharp, every motion taut with control. His voice cut across the room like steel.

"Stick together. Every corner, every room. Check everything. Nothing is too small or too hidden. We clear this house completely."

I fell into line beside him, as I always did, letting the rhythm of our group sweep me forward. Theo was next to me, silent as always, wand at the ready, eyes scanning ahead. Our movements were synchronized, unspoken understanding, instinct born from countless missions together.

Daphne darted ahead with impulsive energy, her laughter spilling over the ruins of the upper floor. She crouched to search through a fallen cupboard, tossing aside scorched books and broken furniture.

"Aha! Look at this!" she cried, holding up a golden mirror. "Mine now. Absolutely mine!"

I smirked, shaking my head, though my hands were full of coins and trinkets I had collected from the corpses. "Show me Daph!"

Mattheo's sharp voice cut across the floor. "Avery, keep your head in the mission. Eyes up. Don't get distracted by playthings."

I bit back a retort, forcing my shoulders to straighten. His tone was harsh, but I knew it wasn't only anger.

Draco moved along the far wall, silent, pale, and detached. His wand moved like a natural extension of his arm, deflecting dust and rubble that tumbled in the aftermath of fire. He didn't speak, but his presence was imposing, a constant reminder that he watched everything. I barely interacted with him, but his subtle glances when danger neared reminded me that he cared in his own cold way.

The group moved methodically through the first-floor rooms. Mattheo led, snapping orders, his eyes sweeping for anything out of place.

"Every room. Every corner. Theo and Draco, study. Daphne and Aurelia, library. Lorenzo, hallway. Move."

We obeyed, stepping through the ruined house with methodical precision. Each room told its own story, the library had shelves scorched black, books burned beyond recognition, their ash coating the floor. The study smelled of rot and smoke, cans dented and scorched. Theo moved swiftly, gathering the usable, ignoring the worthless.

The library was eerily quiet compared to the chaos we'd left behind. Smoke still lingered in the corners, curling in thin gray wisps, but the air here was cooler, still, almost peaceful. For the first time since we'd entered the house, I could hear my own heartbeat over the distant crackle of fire and the muffled shouts of Mattheo and the others as they cleared the rooms.

Daphne moved slower here, her energy settling into something more focused. She leaned against a row of charred bookshelves, eyes scanning the wreckage with a desperate sort of curiosity, but softer than before.

"Look at this mess," she murmured, brushing soot from her fingers onto the floor. "All these books... and for what? They can't protect themselves."

I moved beside her, crouching to inspect the broken shelves, scanning for anything useful, scrolls, ledgers, even a stash of supplies that might have been overlooked.

"We still need to check everything," I said, though my voice had softened. The firelight flickered across her face, highlighting the faint gleam in her eyes that made her seem less wild, and more human.

She smiled, small and almost wistful. "I know, I know. But it's nice being away from the screams for a minute."

I nodded, letting the tension in my shoulders ease fractionally. Even with all the blood and fire, there were moments like this, fleeting moments, where I could pretend the world wasn't collapsing around us.

Daphne leaned a little harder against one of the taller shelves, dust falling from the top like snow. And then, the shelf moved. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, sliding sideways with a dull, scraping sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

"Daphne..." I whispered, voice taut with alarm.

Her eyes went wide, pupils blown. "Did... did you feel that?"

I stepped closer, hand on my wand. "Yes. That shelf, it's not supposed to move."

Daphne pressed her fingers against the wood, testing it. A low rumble echoed through the library, and the shelf slowly swung open, revealing a narrow, dark passage beyond. Dust and cobwebs fell in a thin curtain, the faint musty smell of a hidden room wafting out.

"Oh, fuck," Daphne breathed, stepping back. "A secret door! I knew there was something we missed."

My pulse surged, and I felt a jolt of urgency. "We need to tell the others. Now."

Daphne nodded quickly, her usual energy returning in sharp bursts. We moved together, hurriedly but cautiously, retracing our steps through the ruined library, our satchels of collected items bumping against the debris-strewn floor. Dust choked the air, and every shadow seemed to twitch and move as though alive, but the discovery of the passage pushed all fear aside.

I felt Daphne's hand brush mine briefly as we passed a toppled chair. A tiny gesture, but enough to anchor me. We were still a team. Still alive. Still sharp.

"Do you think it's empty?" she whispered, eyes wide.

I shook my head. "I don't know. And I don't want to find out alone, or do anything like this behind Mattheo's back."

The library door creaked as we pushed it open, smoke curling behind us into the hallway. The firelight flickered against the charred walls as we moved quickly, our footsteps soft against the splintered floorboards.

I caught glimpses of the others in the hall, Mattheo had just cleared a doorway, his wand raised, eyes dark and alert. Draco and Theo lingered near the staircase, scanning, quiet and cold. Lorenzo leaned casually against a doorway, smirking, but his eyes sharpened as he noticed us moving toward him.

"Guys," I called, voice urgent. "Library. Secret door. We found something."

Mattheo's head snapped toward us, expression hard, eyes narrowing. "Show me," he demanded, his voice sharp. The rest of the group followed instinctively, forming a semi-circle around us as we led them back to the library.

Daphne bounced slightly, unable to hide her excitement. "It's over here! I swear it wasn't visible before!"

Mattheo's hand tightened on his wand as he stepped toward the moving shelf. "Stay sharp. Don't get too close until we know what we're dealing with," he barked.

Draco's eyes swept the passageway, calculating, assessing. "It's too clean. Too hidden to be random," he murmured. "Someone intended for this to remain secret."

Theo's brow furrowed. He was already moving toward the passage, glancing at the walls and floor. "Could be supplies, a safe room, or... fuck" His voice dropped. "More people."

I felt my stomach tighten at his words, and I glanced at Daphne. She bit her lip but didn't speak. We both knew the possibility was real. The safehouse hadn't been like this by accident.

Lorenzo tilted his head, smirking despite the tension. "Well, whatever's in there, it's hiding something."

Mattheo's jaw clenched. "No guessing. We clear it carefully. Theo, you and Draco take the lead. Aurelia, flank us. Daphne and Lorenzo, cover the rear. Keep your eyes open. Fucking move it."

I swallowed hard, nodding, heart hammering. Theo's hand brushed mine again, just for a moment. His calm presence steadied me, and I felt a surge of focus rush back through my veins.

Together we approached the hidden passage, the library behind us eerily quiet in contrast to the chaos we'd left in the rest of the house. Dust fell from the edges of the shelf as we pushed it fully aside, revealing a narrow, shadowed corridor leading downward. The smell of damp earth and old wood rolled out at us, thick and musty.

Mattheo's wand cut a sharp line of light into the darkness, smoke curling around it. "Stay close and watch every step. Do not get separated."

The six of us moved as one, slipping into the secret passage, our shadows stretching long and thin in the flickering light, each step cautious, each breath held. I knew somewhere in the darkness beyond that hidden door, the real danger might be waiting.

The passage was narrower than I expected, low-ceilinged and lined with damp, rough-hewn stone. The musty smell of old wood and earth was so strong it made me gag at first, but I forced myself to breathe through my nose and focus. Theo was ahead, moving silently, his steps soft against the uneven floor, hands brushing along the wall to keep balance. I fell in beside him, wand raised, every nerve alert.

Daphne bounced a little behind me, her usual manic energy restrained only by the tight corridor. "It's so... dark," she whispered, voice hushed but thrilled. "I love it. Feels secretive and alive."

I glanced at her, forcing a small smile. "Yeah. Alive. But we need to stay alive, don't get distracted."

Lorenzo came after her, leaning against the wall as if the darkness didn't bother him at all. "Alive is good," he murmured, voice low and teasing. "Alive is very good. Keeps the blood pumping." He glanced at me and winked. "You feeling alive yet, Avery?"

I ignored the jab, tightening my grip on my wand. "Focus, Lorenzo. We're not playing."

Mattheo moved at the front, eyes sharp in the flickering light of his wand, every movement taut with control. He glanced back at me briefly, expression unreadable, then forward again. I caught a flash of something, but he gave no indication. "Eyes open. Check every corner and every shadow."

Draco stayed at the front, silent as ever, his pale face just visible in the wandlight. He scanned the walls with those calculating gray eyes, always alert for traps or signs of movement. I felt the faintest brush of reassurance, knowing he was there watching over the group, even if he didn't speak.

The stone walls pressed in on us as we descended. The floor beneath was uneven, damp in patches, slick with something that smelled faintly of mildew and iron. Each step made a soft scraping sound that seemed impossibly loud in the narrow corridor. My pulse quickened. The closer we moved toward the unknown, the sharper every sound became, the drip of water from a cracked ceiling, the rustle of loose stones, the faint echo of the others' boots behind me.

Theo moved with unerring calm, checking each alcove and nook before we passed. He paused at a corner, glancing at me. A small nod, silent, and I understood, he trusted me to cover him if anything came from behind. I felt the same certainty about him, we were a unit, wordless and precise. Daphne skipped lightly behind us, barely noticing the shadows at first. Then she froze.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered, clutching my sleeve. Her voice was half thrill, half fear.

I strained to listen. The corridor was quiet, almost unnaturally so, but there was a faint scuff, the sound of stone scraping against stone. My heart jumped. "Yes," I whispered back. "Stay calm. Don't panic. Whatever it is, we'll handle it."

Mattheo's voice cut sharply. "Stay together. Move slow. Wands at the ready."

We continued, each step measured. My fingers itched against my wand, ready to cast at the first sign of movement. The corridor twisted slightly, narrowing further until the walls nearly brushed our shoulders. The shadows seemed to shift with every flicker of our wandlight, making it impossible to tell what was real.

Draco was silent at the rear, but his presence was a shield. I felt it like a tangible weight, keeping me steady as the tension coiled tighter around my chest. The corridor twisted again, and I caught the faint glint of something in the stone, too sharp, too precise to be natural. My stomach dropped.

"Everyone stop," Theo hissed.

Mattheo raised an eyebrow, stepping forward, wand sweeping. "What is it?"

Theo crouched slightly, motioning for him and the others to lean closer. "There's something here," he said quietly. "Look at the wall, see that line? Someone carved it. Could be a trap or a hidden latch."

Draco moved silently beside me, eyes scanning the surface. "Yes," he muttered, voice low. "Intentional. Not natural. Could be an entrance or a trip mechanism."

Lorenzo let out a low whistle. "Well, we've been waiting for surprises, haven't we?"

Daphne bit her lip but didn't step back. "Let's find out," she whispered, eyes shining with manic excitement.

Mattheo's jaw tightened. "We proceed carefully. Avery, Theo, you check first. Everyone else, cover us."

I felt the familiar surge of adrenaline, the pulse of tension that always preceded danger. Theo moved forward, hands brushing along the stone, testing for pressure points or traps. I stayed close, wand ready, ready to react instantly.

Theo pressed against a small indentation in the stone. With a soft click, the wall shifted slightly, revealing a narrow opening beyond. Dust tumbled down like gray sand, curling in the faint light of our wands. Daphne gasped, and I felt my own pulse spike.

"There it is," I whispered. "Finally."

Mattheo stepped forward, eyes sharp. "Everyone stay ready. Malfoy and Greengrass, rear. Berkshire, flank. Nott, Avery, go first."

We slipped into the hidden corridor, shadows swallowing us. The air was cooler here, damp and musty, filled with the faintest echo of dripping water. Every step was careful, deliberate. I kept my wand raised, senses straining.

The corridor ended abruptly, spilling us into a large, dark room that smelled of damp and iron. Torches flickered along the walls, barely illuminating the space. It was almost prison-like with rows of narrow beds along one side, a small kitchen tucked into the corner, and wide open floor between them. The silence pressed heavy, almost too quiet after the chaotic march down the corridor.

And then we saw them.

Order members, dozens, scattered, but alert. Eyes wide with the shock of seeing us, wands raised, ready.

Mattheo didn't hesitate. His wand lashed out in a green arc, slamming one man into a bed frame with a crack of splintering wood. The man let out a scream that ripped through the room, then fell silent as the Killing Curse struck moments later.

I barely had time to adjust before a fighter lunged at me from the far side of the room. I sidestepped, catching his wrist mid-strike, twisting it until I heard the satisfying pop. Blood spurted across the floor as I shoved him into a wall, then drove my wand into his chest. He convulsed violently before collapsing, chest shattered.

Theo was near the center, moving with machine-like efficiency. His wand split a man's skull with a single precise strike, stepping over the twitching body without a flicker of hesitation. Another fighter charged him, Theo pivoted, elbowing the man's jaw into pieces before finishing him with a Curse that exploded across the chest.

Daphne shrieked with glee, spinning in place, fire erupting from her wand. A man's screams cut short as the flames licked his robes, peeling flesh from bone. She clapped her hands, eyes wild. "Yes! Yes!"

Lorenzo grinned as he pulled another man to him, whispering something vile in his ear before driving his wand through the man's ribs. Blood sprayed across the floor and walls, red streaks marking his path as he stepped over the twitching corpse. He winked at me, eyes glinting, then spun toward another opponent.

Draco moved with lethal precision, intercepting fighters as they came. He deflected a spell aimed at Theo with a flick of his wand, redirecting it into a man's chest. Bone splintered, ribs collapsing inward, as the man screamed and fell. Another curse, and a second fighter's skull shattered against the floor.

Mattheo drove another man into the kitchen wall, fist colliding with bone, hearing the wet crack of ribs breaking. Without hesitation, he pressed his wand to the man's temple, muttering a dark curse that ended his heart instantly. Another fighter swung at him. He caught the arm mid-air, snapping it back until it tore from the shoulder, and the man collapsed, screaming wordlessly into the floor.

I moved through the chaos, wand flashing, fists driving, feet kicking as necessary. Another man came at me with a knife. I caught it on my wrist, twisting sharply until I heard cartilage snap, then drove my elbow into his chest. Blood spattered, warm and sticky, as he crumpled.

Daphne spun again, fire erupting, filling the open space with a heat that seared skin. Another Order member stumbled into the flames, screaming as the heat devoured him. She twirled, joy radiating, and I had to remind myself not to be distracted by her and to stay focused. But it shattered for a moment as I watched Lorenzo drag a rather large man across the room, laughing as he split him from shoulder to hip, crimson arcing across the floor. He flicked blood from his fingers and caught another opponent in a precise curse that knocked the man into the bed, collapsing it under his weight.

Theo's had now stepped between two fighters, elbowing one to the ground, twisting the other's wrist until it shattered. He didn't speak, didn't flinch, didn't even breathe heavily. Only the wet thuds of bodies hitting floorboards broke the silence. I caught a movement from the corner of the room. Another man lunged at me, wand raised. I sidestepped, catching his neck and twisting. Bones popped under my grip. He screamed, blood spattering across my cheek as I drove my wand into his temple. The taste of iron filled my mouth.

Draco moved like a shadow, intercepting fighters before they could reach the others. He disarmed two men simultaneously, killing them both with a precise curse that left nothing but bloodied corpses. His face remained pale and unreadable, but every motion was lethal. Daphne ignited another blaze, laughing, spinning in delight as fire consumed her targets. Flames licked the beds, smoke curling toward the ceiling. A man screamed as his flesh blistered, collapsing in the open space.

I moved alongside Theo, covering the left flank, striking down anyone who dared approach. My arms ached from the combination of wand strikes and physical blows. Another fighter lunged at me, and I caught his wrist, twisting until a sickening snap echoed through the room. He stumbled, blood pouring from his mouth, and I drove my wand into his chest.

Mattheo's voice cut across the room, sharp and commanding. "Push them back! No mercy!"

He grabbed a man by the collar, smashing his head into the wall repeatedly until the wall splintered. Blood ran in rivulets down the stone, and the man went limp. Mattheo muttered a dark curse under his breath and pressed his wand to the man's eye, finishing him.

Theo disarmed another man, then used the flat of his wand to smash his skull against the floor. Draco stepped over the body without looking. Lorenzo sliced through a man's shoulder in a single motion, watching the shock on his face as he crumpled. Daphne ignited another set of flames, her laughter echoing off the walls.

I ducked under a swinging fist, elbowing my opponent in the ribs. He howled, collapsing to the floor as I pressed the wand against his temple. The metallic tang of blood and fire choked the air.

Within minutes, the room was littered with bodies. Blood pooled in dark rivulets across the stone floor, smoke rising from the occasional scorched clothing. We stood among the carnage, panting, wands at the ready, eyes dark and shining.

Mattheo's chest heaved, rage still burning, but there was a flicker of something else, satisfaction, relief, perhaps care for the group standing behind him. He glanced at me, eyes sharp, voice low.

"Avery... stay with us. Don't let up yet."

I swallowed, nodding, wiping sweat and blood from my face. My hands were sticky, boots soaked, heart hammering. I could feel the weight of every life taken, but I couldn't falter. Not while the Six were alive, not while we still had to move forward.

Daphne clapped her hands, laughing, though her eyes sparkled with chaotic energy. "Isn't this fun? I've never seen so much chaos in one room!"

Lorenzo flicked a streak of blood from his fingers at her, smirking. "Fun and profitable. My kind of raid."

Draco didn't speak, just observed, wand ready, cold and calculating, ensuring nothing remained to ambush us further. Theo methodically collected the fallen's supplies stacking them efficiently in his satchel.

The air grew hotter, thicker, the stink of fire and iron choking my lungs. Smoke clung to the rafters, blurring shapes into shadows, but the Order wasn't finished, not yet. From the back of the prison-like hall, more fighters poured in, eyes blazing with fury.

They were desperate. Cornered animals. Which made them more dangerous.

Mattheo roared, wand flashing. The Cruciatus ripped across the room, catching a woman square in the chest. Her shrieks pierced the chaos, her limbs spasming violently against the stone floor. He didn't let go until blood foamed at her lips. Only then did he flick his wand and silence her forever.

Theo barely shifted as a man lunged at him with a knife. He sidestepped, gripped the man's wrist, and drove his head straight into the stone wall. Skull met rock with a sickening crack. The man dropped bonelessly, and Theo didn't even spare him a glance, his wand was already swinging toward the next attacker.

Daphne danced like she was at a ball, twirling, fire bursting from her fingertips. Her laughter was bright, echoing off the walls. Flames consumed another bed, another body, skin bubbling and peeling away in molten sheets. She clapped delightedly as though it were a firework display.

Lorenzo ripped a man toward him, whispering vile things into his ear as his blade carved through flesh. He shoved the body away, blood slicking his hands, and turned to wink at me.

"Don't look so pale, Avery. You're all the more beautiful when you're bloody."

I tried to keep pace. My wand arm burned, my lungs screamed, my legs trembled, but I forced myself forward. Each step felt heavier than the last, my body like it was moving through thick mud, weighted with blood and exhaustion. Sparks erupted around me as a man swung his wand. I ducked low, slamming my shoulder into his gut, the impact sending him reeling into the bed frame.

The wood splintered with a sharp crack, ribs following in a wet, sickening echo. My hand trembled as I pressed my wand to his throat, the curse spilling from my lips, violent and precise. His body convulsed violently, then stilled. I barely registered it.

But then, my focus shattered.

A shadow moved too fast in the smoke, a blur with eyes full of intent and anger. Another Order fighter, silent as a predator. My arms were too slow. My feet were too heavy. My head felt thick and leaden. Before I could even raise my wand, his curse slammed into my chest, a brutal explosion that knocked the wind out of me.

I hit the stone wall hard, the world spinning. My lungs seized. My ribs screamed, my vision blurred with pain and panic. My wand skidded across the floor, a lifeline just out of reach. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I could barely even think.

The man loomed over me, wand raised, eyes glinting with the intent to kill. Every instinct screamed at me to flee, to scramble, to claw for life. My body refused. Fear clenched me in a vise so tight I thought I might collapse from the pressure alone. My heartbeat pounded in my ears like war drums, echoing the chaos of the room, of the screams, of my own failing self. But out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Mattheo.

He was a storm incarnate, crashing through the smoke with the force of raw, unleashed fury. His fist hit the man's nose with a wet, brutal smack, blood spraying in a fine arc. He didn't pause. Skull slammed into stone, once, twice, again, with a sickening, wet crunch that left the man's body sliding down the wall in a smear of pulp and blood. The air stank of copper and iron.

I blinked through the blur of tears, lungs heaving. Relief should have hit me. Gratitude should have risen, but it didn't. Mattheo didn't look at me with relief. His eyes were fire, black and piercing, blazing with something far harsher than fury.

He seized my shoulders, lifting me, slamming me hard against the wall. My teeth rattled. Pain flared across my jaw and skull. His face was inches from mine, hot breath tangling with mine, words jagged as knives.

"What the fuck was that?" His snarl cut through me, sharp as a whip.

"I—" My chest heaved. My throat felt raw, my voice barely audible. "I... slipped—"

"You slipped?" His fingers dug into my shoulders, bruising. "We're not here to play duels in a classroom! You hesitate here, you fucking die, and worse, you get me killed."

"I didn't—"

He slammed me again. My head banged against the wall. Pain and panic collided, and I almost whimpered. His eyes burned into me, black flames of fury intertwined with something darker. Fear, maybe, something he'd never admit.

"You don't get to falter here Avery," he spat, venomous and low. "Not ever. Not when I'm the one who has to deal with your fucking mistakes."

His words shredded me from the inside out, carving guilt into my chest, twisting my stomach. I could feel my knees buckle beneath me, trembling, my fingers digging into the wall to keep from collapsing. I wanted to scream. I wanted to curl into myself. I wanted to vanish from the world, far from this suffocating fire, far from his eyes, but the moment was merciless.

Another Order fighter emerged from the smoke, silent and deadly. Mattheo's wand moved before I could even blink, murmuring the Killing Curse with effortless precision. The man's body crumpled mid-step, skull cracking against the stone with a sound that made my stomach twist.

Mattheo turned back to me, his eyes narrowing into icy daggers. "Next time, I won't fucking save you. You understand? There's no place for weakness here."

I forced a nod, dry and trembling. My throat was raw, lungs rasping, my chest aching from panic and exertion. My entire body shook from adrenaline and terror, from the weight of knowing I had almost died, not to the Order fighter, not to the chaos around us, but from my own hesitation.

Mattheo's smirk flickered, sharp and cutting. There was no warmth, no relief that I was alive. Just expectation. Mocking cruelty. The kind that pressed into my bones and left me hollow. My vision swam with sweat and blood, my hands shaking, still tingling with the phantom motion of the wand I had dropped.

I couldn't speak. Couldn't argue. Could barely even breathe. I was a mess of fear, fury at myself, and shame, standing in the shadow of someone who would have punished me for that falter if the world allowed it. I swallowed hard, forcing my tears down, tasting copper and bile on my tongue, gripping the edges of my robes to anchor myself to the floor.

Satisfied he shoved me away, spinning back into the chaos. His curses rained mercilessly, each strike faster, harder, angrier than the last. His fury was no longer for the Order alone, it was for me, too, and I felt the weight of it in my bones.

I forced myself back into the fray, even as my chest burned and my head rang. Another fighter came for me, I deflected his curse with trembling arms, then drove my wand into his chest. His body convulsed, blood flooding from his mouth, staining my robes.

Minutes stretched like hours. Bodies piled. Blood turned the floor slick, sticky under our boots. Screams echoed, then faded into silence. The room was a slaughterhouse. Blood painted the stone, pooled under beds, dripped from walls. Smoke curled upward from charred bodies, the air heavy with the stench of burned flesh and iron.

Every Order member lay dead. Every last one.

The six of us stood alone, bloodied and heaving, shadows cast long by the flickering torches. Mattheo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes still burning. He didn't look at me again. But I could feel his words etched into my bones, the bruise of his grip still hot on my shoulders.

The silence after the slaughter was deafening.

Smoke still curled from charred bodies, torches guttered in their brackets, and the heavy stink of blood and fire clung to the back of my throat. My boots squelched in the crimson puddles as I shifted, looking down at the ruin we had made. Dozens of bodies, twisted, burned, broken, stacked almost like discarded dolls.

Draco moved among us with his usual cold efficiency, wand weaving sharp, quick movements. Healing charms sparked across torn flesh, burns, cuts, bruises. He didn't linger on anyone, just enough to keep us standing, keep us useful to Mattheo.

When he reached me, his gaze flicked up, meeting mine briefly. The spell cooled the bruises blooming along my ribs, the ache in my lungs easing. He didn't speak, the sharpness of his eyes said enough: I had disappointed him.

But it wasn't Draco's voice that cut me.

It was Mattheo's.

He turned on me like a storm, his chest still heaving from the fight, hair damp with sweat and blood. His eyes burned black with fury, and his voice cracked the silence like a whip.

"You nearly got yourself killed in there, Avery." His tone was venomous, louder now that the battle was done. "Do you think this is a fucking game?"

I stiffened, opening my mouth, but he didn't let me. He surged closer, his voice sharp enough to cut.

"You froze. You hesitated. Do you have any fucking idea what would've happened if I hadn't been there? If I hadn't dragged your pathetic arse off the floor? You'd be lying with the rest of them—" he jabbed a bloodied finger toward the pile of corpses, "—and worse, you would've put me at risk."

Heat rose in my throat, stinging behind my eyes, but I forced it down. "I didn't freeze—"

"You did." His voice was savage. "Weakness gets you killed. Weakness gets all of us killed."

"That's enough," Lorenzo snapped. He stepped forward, his usual grin gone, jaw tight. He placed himself between us, his hand half-raised as though daring Mattheo to keep going. "She fought and she bled the same as the rest of us. Don't stand there acting like you're the only one who matters."

Mattheo's eyes flicked to him, dark and murderous. "Stay out of this, Berkshire."

"Fuck off Riddle." Lorenzo's voice was sharp, protective. "You don't get to tear her apart because you're too much of a coward to admit you care whether she dies."

The air crackled between them, electric and intense. For a moment, I thought Mattheo would strike him. Then Draco's voice cut through, low and firm, colder than ice.

"He's right about one thing."

I looked at him, my chest tightening.

Draco's gaze was unreadable, his tone level but sharp. "You did falter. That can't happen again. Weakness won't be tolerated. Not here. Not ever."

The words landed heavier than Mattheo's rage. Draco's voice wasn't cruel, it was final. I knew better than to argue.

The silence stretched. Daphne stood off to the side, her expression uncharacteristically subdued, her fingers fiddling with a silver ring she'd stolen from one of the corpses. Theo, as always, said nothing, his eyes on me but his face unreadable. I swallowed hard, the weight of their stares pressing into me, until movement flickered at the edge of my vision.

"Wait," Theo said suddenly, his voice soft but sharp. His wand twitched toward the far wall.

We all turned as one. From the shadows at the back of the blood-slick chamber, a figure emerged. Not a man, not one of the hardened fighters we had cut down.

A young boy.

His clothes were simple, muggle-like, his face pale and streaked with grime. His eyes were wide, terrified, glinting in the torchlight. He clutched the wall like it might swallow him back into the dark, but he stepped forward, trembling, blood dripping from somewhere near his hairline.

For a heartbeat, the six of us froze. We had killed everyone. Everyone.

Or so we thought.

My breath hitched, cold crawling down my spine as the boy's eyes swept over the bodies, over the ruin, before locking on us. On me.

The air was thick, silent, heavy with the stench of death and the weight of what came next. The boy's chest heaved in shallow bursts, eyes darting between us like a rabbit cornered by wolves. His lips trembled, trying to form words, but nothing came out, only a rasping breath.

Draco's wand rose, precise, already aimed at the center of the boy's forehead. Theo mirrored him silently. Lorenzo tilted his head with that snake-charming smile, Daphne actually giggled under her breath, bouncing on her heels as if eager for another round of slaughter. I raised my wand too, out of instinct, out of habit. But before I could even utter a word, a sharp hand darted across my vision.

Mattheo.

He wrenched my wand from my grip, so sudden and violent that my knuckles cracked.

"What the—" I snapped, but the words broke off as he spun the wand between his fingers, smirking down at me like I was nothing.

The others froze, watching.

"Not this time," Mattheo drawled, his voice low but carrying. His eyes glittered like shards of obsidian as he turned back to the boy, then to me. "This one's on her."

My breath stuttered. "What?"

He stepped closer, shoving my wand into his own belt. His smile widened, cruel. "Prove it, Avery. Prove you're not weak. Prove you can stand with us."

The boy whimpered, pressing back against the damp stone wall.

I stared at Mattheo, my pulse slamming through my throat. "Are you fucking serious? There's nothing to prove. Just kill him and let's be done with it."

He laughed, sharp and cutting. "No. That's too easy." His grin bared his teeth. "You froze earlier. Almost got yourself killed. You want us to believe you're worth keeping alive? Then you finish this. No wand. Just you."

My stomach dropped. Behind him, Daphne's eyes widened with something like excitement, her lips quirking in a wide grin.

"Oh, I like this."

Lorenzo frowned, his voice dipping. "Mattheo—"

"Shut it," Mattheo snapped, his tone biting enough to cut steel. "She wants to stand with us, she earns it. Right here. Right now."

"I don't have the fucking choice to leave or not and you know that Riddle."

The boy whimpered again. His knees buckled, his hands raised like he thought begging might do him any good. Rage surged up my throat, tangled with something uglier, shame, fear, a sick twist in my stomach. My fists clenched so tight my nails drew blood against my palms.

Mattheo only smirked, tilting his head, eyes glittering with dark amusement. "Show us you're not pathetic, show me."

The boy's breath came in short, ragged bursts, his wide eyes glistening with terror as he pressed back into the shadows. He was maybe around fourteen, far to young to be caught up in any of this mess. For one fleeting second, the thought twisted inside my chest, but I forced it down. Mercy didn't exist here. Not with Mattheo watching at least.

I rolled my shoulders back, cracking my knuckles. If he wanted a show, fine. I'd give him one.

The boy lunged first weakly. Desperation made him clumsy. His fist swung wide, and I caught it in my palm with a smack of bone on bone. Pain shot up my arm, but I didn't let go, I twisted, yanking him forward, and slammed my knee into his gut. His breath whooshed out of him in a choking groan.

I shoved him back, the force sending him stumbling into one of the wooden support beams. The crack of his skull against the post was sickening, but he stayed upright, staggering toward me again, snarling now.

He charged, and this time I let him come. I ducked low, driving my elbow into his ribs. I felt them give beneath the blow, sharp, brittle cracks that sang beneath my skin. He screamed, spittle spraying across my face, but I didn't stop. I slammed my fist into his jaw, once, twice, three times, until his teeth cut into his lips and blood poured down his chin.

The others watched in silence. No one moved to help. Not even Daphne, but she was smiling widely from the sidelines.

The boy fought back. His fist connected with my cheek, snapping my head sideways, stars bursting in my vision. My knees nearly buckled, but rage snapped me upright again. I caught his wrist before he could strike again, wrenched it hard, and brought my forehead down against his nose.

The crunch was deafening. Hot blood gushed over my face, metallic and thick. He screamed, staggered, but still swung wildly with his free hand. His nails tore at my throat, scraping skin. I hissed, driving my boot into his knee. There was a sharp pop and he collapsed, shrieking as his leg curved at an inhumane angle.

He tried crawling away, but I didn't let him.

I grabbed the back of his collar, yanked him upright, and smashed him face-first into the stone wall. His teeth left red smears on the rock. He sagged, half-conscious, but I wasn't done. I slammed him again and again. Until his screams broke into gargled sobs. Until the stone was streaked crimson. Until my arms shook with the effort of holding him upright.

Finally, I let him drop. He hit the ground like a sack of meat, twitching, broken, barely breathing. His face was unrecognizable, his body mangled, his chest heaving in ragged, shallow bursts. I staggered back, panting, chest heaving, my fists still slick with his blood. My eyes snapped to Mattheo.

"Enough," I rasped, voice raw. "He's finished."

For a moment, silence stretched between us. My hair stuck to my blood-smeared cheeks, my breath sawed loud in the stillness.

Mattheo's gaze locked on me, his expression unreadable. And then he scoffed. Low, dismissive.

"Pathetic."

He took a slow step toward me, his smirk curving sharp. "You think that's strength? You think leaving him crawling on the floor makes you the same as any of us?" He gestured at the boy's twitching body with his chin. "Finish it, or you are weak."

The room spun, my fists clenched and my stomach turned. I stared at the young boy, blood pooling beneath him, his breaths wet and shallow, his broken eyes still blinking up at me, clinging to life like it meant something. Mattheo's voice sliced through me again, venomous and commanding.

"Do it."

My breath was ragged, echoing in the blood-soaked silence. The boy wheezed, broken and twitching, his chest struggling with each shallow inhale. I thought Mattheo was going to tell me to use the Killing Curse. Instead, his ruthless command cut through the air like a blade.

"Jump on him."

I blinked. "What?"

Mattheo's grin was sharp, humorless. His dark eyes burned with command.

"You heard me. Jump. On his ribcage."

A pit opened in my stomach. My gaze dropped to the boy, his chest rising and falling in frantic bursts. He was barely clinging to life as it was. Jumping would crush him, split him apart.

"I—" The word stuck, weak, pathetic in my throat.

Mattheo's smirk widened. He took a step closer, closing the distance, his presence heavy, suffocating.

"Don't play innocent now, love. You've already painted the walls with his blood. What's a little more?"

I shook my head, lips parting, but before I could answer, another voice slid in, smooth, and detached.

Draco.

"She can't do it," he drawled, stepping forward, wand twirling idly in his pale fingers. His grey eyes flicked from me to the boy on the ground with quiet disdain. "Too soft. She doesn't have it in her."

Mattheo's gaze never left me. "Prove him wrong. Now."

My throat tightened. I wanted to scream, to curse them both, but my body wouldn't move. My knees locked, my chest caved. Horror gnawed at me, but so did fear. Fear of what they'd think. Fear of what they'd do if I failed them.

Mattheo's patience snapped like glass. He shoved me forward, hard enough that I stumbled, my boots splashing into a pool of blood. The boy beneath me whimpered, a choked, desperate sound.

"Do it," Mattheo hissed. "Fucking jump."

I shook my head again, trembling, and that was when Draco joined in. He moved behind me, his voice low, mocking in my ear.

"Maybe if we help her. She needs... encouragement."

His hand pressed against my back firmly. Mattheo stepped in front of me, his smirk cruel, his eyes glinting. Together, they closed me in.

Mattheo's fingers gripped my arm, nails digging into my skin. "Up," he snarled, yanking me like a puppet. "Come on, Avery. One good jump. That's all it takes."

I tried to pull back, but Draco's hand shoved me forward again, guiding me like I was nothing but a pawn.

"She's hesitating too much," Draco said flatly. "Maybe we give her the same fate."

Mattheo leaned closer, lips curling by my ear. "You don't deserve to breathe alongside us."

Their taunts tangled inside me, fear, anger, shame burning hot. My body shook as I looked down at the boy. His chest rose and fell, shallow, rattling, each inhale bubbling with blood. His eyes locked on mine, wide and pleading, full of something I couldn't bear to name.

And then Mattheo snapped.

His hands slammed into my shoulders, forcing me down. I landed with a jolt against the boy's torso. There was a sickening crack beneath me. He screamed, high, piercing, inhuman. Blood spurted from his lips, spraying across my face. I froze, gagging and horrified.

But Mattheo wasn't done. He pulled me back up by my arm, harsh and unrelenting, then shoved me down again. My boots slammed into his ribcage this time, splitting bone, shattering cartilage. His body convulsed, another scream tearing from his throat.

"Again!" Mattheo barked.

I shook my head, tears pricking my eyes, but Draco's voice hissed like poison.

"Pathetic." His hand pressed harder against my back, forcing me down. "You think he'll let you walk away if you don't finish it? Mattheo's right. You are weak."

Something in me snapped.

I jumped. My boots landed with a wet, cracking crunch. The boy screamed, choked, gargling, then coughed blood across the stone floor. Each jump, the cracks grew louder. Bones splintered. His body writhed beneath me, then jerked, then sagged. His chest caved inward, ribs puncturing lungs, his blood spurting hot and sticky across my legs.

By the fifth jump, the screams had stopped and the boy was still.

I stood over him, trembling, drenched in blood. My breath tore from my throat, ragged, broken, my vision blurred with tears I refused to let fall.

Mattheo smirked, finally releasing me. His voice was low, satisfied, cruel.

"There she is."

Draco's gaze swept over me, unreadable, though there was a flicker, approval, perhaps. Cold and unyielding all the same.

"Maybe she's not as soft as I thought."

But I didn't feel strong.

I felt hollow.

I looked down at what was left of the boy, his chest caved in, his face unrecognizable, his blood seeping into my boots, and bile rose scorching hot in my throat, but I swallowed it back.

For a moment, the room was heavy with the stench of death, thick, cloying, unescapable. My chest heaved, my ribs aching from the force of Mattheo's hands, from the violence of my own unwilling movements. The body at my feet was a ruin, unrecognizable, and my tears burned hot trails down my blood-streaked cheeks.

Daphne was the first to move. Her wand lowered, her face, usually alight with psychotic delight in moments like these, was tight, unsettled. She edged closer, brushing a stray lock of my hair back from my damp face, her hand shaking almost imperceptibly.

"Lia..." Her voice was hushed, hesitant, the sharp edges of her usual bravado softened. "You don't have to let them—"

"Enough," Draco cut her off sharply, his voice slicing the air like glass. He didn't even look at me as he spoke, his gaze fixed on the gore-streaked floor instead. His robes swayed faintly as he stepped back from the carnage, expression unreadable. "She has to learn. If she doesn't, she'll get us all killed."

Lorenzo barked a laugh, but it was brittle, empty of any real humor. He tilted his head toward me, his grin painted on like a mask. "She doesn't need to learn by being turned into a puppet, Malfoy." His eyes cut toward Mattheo, narrowing. "You enjoyed that a little too much, didn't you?"

"Again."

I blinked, blood stinging my lashes. "He's—he's done—"

"Again!" he snapped, louder now, a vicious edge to his tone. Mattheo's hand clamped around my arm like iron, yanking me forward until I almost lost balance.

Draco's voice was cool, steady, merciless. "She'll never learn if she stops when it's easy. Make her finish it properly."

My stomach churned. The body beneath me twitched faintly, but it was enough to send a shiver of horror crawling up my spine. Tears burned in my eyes, hot and humiliating. I didn't want them to see me break.

But Mattheo saw. Of course he saw.

"Cry later," he hissed. "Do it now."

His shove drove me down again, hard, and I landed on the boy's ribcage with a thunderous crack. The bones splintered further, sharp edges tearing through flesh. Blood gurgled out of his mouth, black in the torchlight, pooling around his head.

My knees buckled. I tried to stagger back, but Draco's hand was at my shoulder, shoving me forward again, his voice low, cutting.

"You think they'll spare you if you hesitate like this? You'll die choking on your own blood one day if you don't learn."

Mattheo's grip twisted in my robes, hauling me upright, then slamming me down again, making me land with all my weight.

"Harder."

"Please—" My voice broke, strangled with sobs I couldn't contain.

"Do it!" he roared.

I jumped.

My boots landed on the boy's sternum. The crunch was deafening, wet and sharp, bones snapping into jagged shards. His body convulsed violently, and for a heartbeat, I swore he was alive again, but it was only nerves, twitching in the aftermath of ruin.

I covered my mouth with my blood-slick hands, sobs spilling free now, shaking so hard my teeth rattled. My whole body screamed to stop, to run, to vomit.

But Mattheo wasn't finished.

He forced me down once more. My boots slammed onto the shattered cage of the boy's torso. I felt the last of his ribs splinter and collapse, sharp edges tearing straight through skin and muscle. The sound was worse than the screams had ever been, a grotesque mix of crunch and squelch, like meat ground into bone.

I screamed with it.

Tears streamed hot down my cheeks, blurring my vision, dripping into the blood that covered me. I could taste salt and iron, my lips wet with both. My knees ached, my stomach lurched, but Mattheo held me there, forcing me down again and again, until the only thing beneath me was a mangled ruin of bone, flesh, and gore.

Finally he stopped.

His hands caught my waist, pulling me off the broken body like a doll discarded from play. My legs gave way, shaking too hard to hold me, but Mattheo steadied me, rough yet firm, holding me up when I thought I'd collapse.

I couldn't look at the boy, I couldn't even call it a boy anymore. He was just... parts.

Tears blurred everything, hot rivers streaking through the blood on my face. I tried to wipe them away, but my hands shook too much, smeared with gore that wouldn't wash off, no matter how hard I rubbed. My chest heaved, lungs rasping, and every muscle in my body felt raw and hollowed from the fight, from the weight of nearly dying.

Mattheo's hand suddenly closed around my chin. Rough, but not violent, just enough to force my gaze to meet his. His thumb swiped under my eye, dragging away some of the tears, leaving a streak of blood across my cheek. My vision swarmed with it, his proximity, the sharp smell of sweat and smoke and iron, the heat of him so close I could feel it like a living thing against my skin.

I wanted to pull back. My body wanted to retreat. And yet, somehow, I couldn't. His eyes were different now. Not the blazing fury I had known for years. Not the cruel, mocking glint that made my stomach knot. This was darker, heavier, something almost careful.

"You're stronger than this," he said, his voice low, so quiet that only I could hear it. The words wrapped around me like a tether. "Don't make me break you again."

I couldn't speak. My throat had gone dry, my lips trembling. I wanted to argue, to deny it, to tell him I wasn't weak, but the words stuck somewhere between panic and awe. His gaze held me, unrelenting, and I felt the room shrink until it was only him and me, the chaos of smoke and blood fading to a dull roar at the edges of my mind.

His eyes flicked to Draco, a flash of something unspoken passing between them; caution, calculation, a quiet acknowledgment. Then back to me. That look made my heart stutter in a way that had nothing to do with fear, nothing to do with the fight.

And just like that, the edge returned. The warning, the cold, the brutality that made him who he was slammed back in like a wave. His hand released me, shoving me gently back a step. The warmth, the closeness, the intimacy vanished, leaving only the sharp, hard reality of who he was, of what I had just survived.

"Let's go," he barked to the others, his voice slicing the silence. He strode toward the exit, shoulders stiff, stride sharp, like none of this, none of the blood, none of the fear, none of me had mattered at all.

I stood there, trembling, chest rising and falling unevenly, still tasting copper and sweat, still smelling smoke and iron. My fingers twitched where he had touched me, the ghost of his hand burning against my skin. My mind reeled, torn between relief and anger, fear and fascination.

The corridor ahead seemed impossibly long. I trailed behind the others, dragging my legs like lead, my hands sticky, my vision blurred. But in the back of my mind, that moment lingered, the weight of his gaze, the roughness of his fingers, the dark warmth in his voice.

I stood trembling, blood and tears dripping from me, my body hollow, my soul clawing for air. But my boots were still slick with the boy's blood, and there was no way to wash it off. Not now. Not ever.

The corridor swallowed us whole. The others moved quickly, their boots clicking against the damp stone, their shadows lurching and stretching long across the walls as the torches guttered in their sconces. They kept close together, Mattheo at the front, Draco just behind him with that clipped, aristocratic stride. Daphne stayed nearer to Lorenzo, her spark dulled into something simmering and silent. Theo trailed just a fraction behind, as if waiting for me to catch up.

I stayed back. I couldn't force myself to close the distance. My legs carried me, but my body felt leaden, every step heavy with blood still tacky against my boots. The corridor seemed endless, each echo of their strides ahead of me like a reminder that I didn't belong at their pace. That I wasn't like them, not yet.

My throat burned. The tears pressed harder with every step, my chest rising and falling too quickly, uneven, shallow. I clenched my jaw until it ached, until I thought my teeth might splinter, just to keep the sob from breaking loose.

Not here. Not in front of them.

The shadows of their backs wavered ahead. Mattheo's shoulders squared like iron, as if he carried no weight at all from what he'd just done, or from what he'd forced me to do. Draco's head tilted slightly, cool and detached, like he was already a hundred steps ahead in his mind, already planning, already moved on.

I forced my eyes down, staring at the ground instead of their silhouettes. The floor was slick in patches, a faint smear of blood trailing where one of us must have dragged a boot. My stomach lurched, bile rising, but I swallowed it back so hard it burned.

Daphne glanced back once. Just once. Her eyes flicked to mine, dark and unreadable in the flickering light. For the briefest heartbeat, there was softness there, a question she didn't voice. Then she looked away again, quick, before Mattheo could notice.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted copper. The sting grounded me, gave me something to hold onto.

The silence was unbearable. No one spoke, no one breathed more than they had to. It was the kind of silence that rang in your ears, where the only sound was the thud of boots, the soft rasp of fabric against stone, and my own uneven heartbeat hammering too loudly inside my chest.

My eyes blurred again. I blinked furiously, swiping at them with the back of my sleeve before the tears could fall. The gesture was frantic, too sharp, as though the movement alone might cut off the flood before it spilled.

But the pressure didn't ease. It built higher, tighter, until my chest hurt with the effort of keeping it down. Each step was a battle in itself, forcing my body forward, forcing my expression to stay blank when all I wanted to do was collapse against the wall and let it out.

I tried to match their pace, tried to keep up, but my boots dragged. Every time the distance stretched further, it felt like a chasm was opening between us, me, lagging, broken, trailing behind like dead weight they tolerated but didn't want.

Mattheo didn't look back. He didn't have to. Somehow I knew he knew exactly where I was, knew exactly how far behind I'd fallen. He didn't care. Or maybe he wanted me to feel it. I gripped my wand tighter, my knuckles bone-white, as if the pressure alone might keep me from shaking. My breath came shallow, hitching once when I thought I couldn't stop it anymore. I bit down harder, swallowed until my throat burned.

No.

Not here. Not now.

By the time the tunnel began to curve, my vision was swimming. The tears were still trapped, burning hot against the rims of my eyes, but I held them there, suspended, unshed, a trembling dam ready to burst.

Still, I dragged myself on. Trying not to cry, trying not to break, trying not to give them one more reason to call me weak.

The silence followed us, thick and suffocating, as though the stone itself was listening and I kept walking, my body shaking, my heart raw, forcing the tears to stay inside where they hurt worse.

Chapter Text

The smell of fried bread clung to the walls, oil smoke curling against the ceiling beams that had long ago lost their whitewash. The safehouse was a husk of a place, all peeling wallpaper and warped floorboards, the kind of home that looked like it had given up long before we ever arrived, but we lived on its bones anyway.

The kitchen bled into the dining room, a single sagging table with six mismatched chairs surrounding it. The wood was stained, carved with initials from a family that no longer existed, splinters raised along the edges where Lorenzo liked to drag his knife while he talked. The cupboards were bare except for what we stole or what was dropped off in crates under cover of night, mostly filled with bread that had gone hard at the edges, bruised apples or meat wrapped in paper that smelled faintly of rust.

Breakfast was silence broken by scrape and clatter. Daphne perched cross-legged on her chair, her blonde hair a wild tangle around her face, chewing noisily as though daring someone to tell her to stop. Draco sat opposite her, posture perfect, movements precise, even with the chipped plate and dull knife in his hands. He cut his food like he was performing surgery, each slice clean and proper, and ate without looking at anyone in the eye.

Theo leaned against the wall instead of sitting, arms folded, a piece of bread dangling forgotten in his hand. He didn't eat much, but he never did. His eyes were far away, shadowed, always somewhere else. Lorenzo sprawled in his chair like a cat, shirt half-buttoned, smirk firmly in place. He stole bites off Daphne's plate until she stabbed his hand with her fork, and even then, he just laughed, mouth full, crumbs on his lips.

Mattheo had claimed the seat at the head of the table, shoulders tense, jaw tight. He didn't say a word, but his presence filled the room anyway, heavy as the smoke that lingered in the rafters. His knuckles were still scabbed from last night. I sat beside Daphne, hands wrapped around a chipped mug of tea that had long since gone cold.

The routine was simple. We had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a couch that smelled nauseatingly damp. Daphne and I shared the smaller room at the back while the boys rotated between the other bedroom and the couch, though half the time Lorenzo didn't even bother and just collapsed wherever he fell asleep. Privacy was a luxury none of us had, and neither was comfort.

It was always loud in the mornings, cutlery against plates, pipes groaning in the walls when someone dared to run the tap, Daphne humming under her breath. But today, the silence pressed harder than usual. I could feel it sitting in my chest, heavy and sour, like smoke that refused to clear. I kept my eyes on the table. The grain of the wood, the scratch of my thumbnail against it, the way the stains looked like old blood. I avoided the gaze of the people around me, especially Mattheo.

If I looked at him, I'd remember the way his hands had held me against the wall, the way his voice had cut me open, the way he'd smeared away my tears with blood. But worse, I'd remember that some part of me had clung to his words, desperate, starving, needing him to keep looking at me even when it hurt, because he was our leader.

"Merlin, you'd think for people fighting a war, we'd at least get better food." Daphne wrinkled her nose at the fried bread, tearing it apart with her fingers anyway. "If I see another crate of root vegetables I'm going to hex someone."

"Careful," Lorenzo drawled, leaning back in his chair until it creaked. "That might be the only thing keeping us alive. Can't hex potatoes into being edible." He stole another chunk of dry toast from her plate.

"Touch it again and I'll feed your ass the fucking fork," Daphne shot back, but there was a smile tugging at her lips.

Theo snorted faintly, the closest he ever got to laughter. Draco glanced at him, then back to his food, expression unreadable. Mattheo didn't laugh, He just tore a piece of bread with his teeth, chewing like it was a battle he was determined to win. I forced myself to breathe evenly, to push the stiffness from my shoulders. It would do no good if they saw me rattled. They all knew me too well, too long, too deep.

We'd grown up together, all of us, tangled in the same legacy of masks and meetings and whispered conversations overheard behind locked doors. Our parents had raised us in the shadow of the Dark Lord long before any of us had the Mark on our arms. We'd been children playing at friendship in the gilded cages of our families' homes.

I remembered those days sometimes. Our summers spent in manor gardens, snowball fights outside Malfoy Manor, sneaking firewhisky from Draco's cabinet. Mattheo had once pushed me into a fountain and then pulled me out again, laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Draco used to chase Daphne with frogs just to hear her scream. Lorenzo was always the loudest, always the one daring us to go higher, faster, further, while Theo watched, quiet, steady, making sure we didn't go too far.

But then came the Mark. I could still feel the sear of it burning into my skin, branding me to Him forever. We'd all taken it, one by one and everything shifted. Draco had turned sharp, precise, colder than ever before, all the softness burned out of him. Mattheo had gone the other way, he was wild, unpredictable and cruel in ways that hadn't existed in the boy who used to laugh until dawn.

Sometimes, I still caught glimpses of the people they'd been. In a joke half-whispered, in the way Draco's hand lingered on Theo's shoulder, in the shadow of a smile on Mattheo's face when Daphne needled him too much. But it was less and less now, like chasing smoke with my bare hands. Daphne kicked my shin under the table, breaking my thoughts.

"You're brooding again Auri," she said, sing-song, but her eyes were sharp.

The scrape of Mattheo's chair cut through her voice like a blade. The sound was sharp, deliberate. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and suddenly all of us went still without even thinking about it.

"Interrogation day," he said flatly, setting his bread down and leaning forward on his elbows. His eyes moved over all of us, one by one, pinning us to our chairs. "Riddle Manor. This afternoon."

The word sat heavy on the table, souring the remnants of morning lightness.

Daphne was the first to speak, practically bouncing in her seat. "Let me do it." Her grin was sharp, her eyes bright with that sparkling edge that never seemed to leave her anymore. "You know I'm better at it than any of you. They scream louder when it's me anyway ."

"Not a fucking chance," Lorenzo cut in, sitting up straighter. His grin mirrored hers, but his was careless, dangerous in a different way. "You want him broken? Let me have it alone."

"Oh, please." Daphne rolled her eyes, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "You'd fuck the prisoners to death before you got anything useful out of them. I think it's my turn anyway, you lot always hog the fun."

"Fun?" Theo muttered, not looking up from his plate. His jaw was taut. "That's not what this is."

"It's exactly what it is," Daphne shot back. "You'd rather I waste my energy torching furniture? At least this way I can be useful."

"Useful," Draco repeated, tone smooth and cutting, "would be getting information, not turning a prisoner into ash before they can talk."

"Oh, and you're such a master interrogator?" she snapped, eyes narrowing. "You think they open up because you fucking scowl at them?"

Lorenzo stretched his arms behind his head, smirking. "Please. All of you overcomplicate it. Give me ten minutes alone, a blade, and the poor bastard will be singing ballads. No wand required."

"Or he'll bleed out before he says a word," Theo said, voice flat, still not lifting his eyes.

Lorenzo leaned toward him with a grin. "Not if you know what you're doing."

"That's exactly the problem." Draco's tone sharpened, final, brooking no argument. "We're not meant to indulge ourselves. We're meant to extract. That means control. Discipline. It should be done as a team."

"A team?" Daphne's laugh was brittle, grating. "Tell me, Draco, when has that ever worked? You want five people waving wands over one half-blood, tripping over each other's curses? Spare me."

"You have no patience," Draco said coldly.

"And you have no spine," she shot back.

"Enough." Mattheo's voice cracked across the table.

Everyone froze.

He sat back now, but his eyes were locked on Daphne, dark but steady. "It'll be me. And Daphne."

Her mouth opened like she was about to argue, but the edge in his tone stopped her. For a heartbeat, she actually looked pleased. Her lips curled into a dangerous little smile. Theo finally lifted his gaze, something unreadable flickering in his eyes before he looked away again. Draco's jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Lorenzo whistled low, amused, and leaned back in his chair.

Mattheo leaned down to tear another bite of bread, calm again, as if the decision had been obvious from the start. "The rest of you stay sharp. There'll be more after this. Aurelia, you are also coming with us."

My stomach sank. A hush followed his words. Even Daphne stilled, her grin twitching wider as her gaze darted to me.

"Why?" My voice was smaller than I wanted it to be. I cleared my throat, tried again. "Why me?"

Mattheo didn't blink. "Because you need it."

My pulse kicked hard against my ribs. I opened my mouth, but he didn't give me the chance.

"You'll watch and you'll see how shit is done properly." His eyes flicked toward Daphne, who was practically glowing under the attention. "From me. And from her."

Daphne's smirk curved like a blade. Heat crawled up my throat, shame mixing with something else, something twisted and restless. My fists curled in my lap under the table. Theo's fork scraped quietly against his plate, but he didn't speak. Draco's eyes slid to me for the briefest second, unreadable, before he looked back at his food. Lorenzo only chuckled under his breath, like this was all entertainment.

I forced myself to nod, jaw tight, because what else could I do?

"Good," Mattheo said simply, leaning back again, as though nothing had passed between us. As though he hadn't just shoved me onto a ledge with only one way down.

The others tried to slide back into easy chatter, but it sounded thin, like fabric stretched too tight. Daphne hummed under her breath as she picked crumbs from her plate. Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, boots on the table, twirling his wand between his fingers like he was already bored of the whole conversation. Theo's silence pressed like ice.

It should've ended there. But it never did.

Draco's voice broke through, sharp as a blade. "We're running low again."

Mattheo glanced up, slow, unbothered. "On what?"

"Everything," Draco snapped. His hands curled around his mug, knuckles pale. "Bread's gone after this morning. Any fruit won't last another few days. We've got maybe two more bottles of healing potion left, and no one's got the ingredients to brew more."

"We'll manage," Mattheo said.

Draco's jaw tightened. "Manage how, exactly? You think shit's going to fall from the sky because you glare at it hard enough?"

Mattheo leaned back, folding his arms. "Supply drop's due in three days."

"Three days won't feed six of us now, will it?" Draco shot back, eyes sparking. "Unless you'd like Daphne to start chewing on floorboards. We'll have to raid again. Muggles, wizards, doesn't matter. We don't have a fucking choice."

Mattheo tilted his head, lips twitching into a smirk that wasn't remotely amused. "You always did like making plans, Draco. Pity you can't stomach the execution."

"Execution?" Draco spat. "This isn't strategy, it's desperation. And if you'd think with your head instead of your—"

"Careful," Mattheo's voice dropped, low and warning, "before you say something you'll regret."

The room stiffened. Even Lorenzo lowered his boots, eyes darting between the group with hungry amusement. My stomach turned. The fire had burned itself out in the grate, leaving only a husk of ash and embers. The air tasted stale, suffocating. I knew what was coming, another raid, another night of blood, another morning with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.

I curled my fingers into fists beneath the table, nails digging into my palms, willing the rising dread to settle. It didn't. It only grew heavier, pressing against my ribs until it was nearly impossible to breathe.

The scrape of chairs on the wooden floor cut through the silence after Mattheo's warning. Nobody dared press further. Draco's face was carved from stone, grey eyes narrowed in quiet fury, but even he knew better than to provoke Mattheo when his temper had turned that sharp.

Theo was the first to move. He stacked his plate and mug, the sound oddly careful and deliberate, like he was tiptoeing through the aftermath of a storm. His expression gave nothing away, as always, but I saw the stiffness in his jaw, the way he avoided looking at anyone as he carried the dishes into the cramped kitchen corner.

Lorenzo rose next, lazily dragging himself to his feet with the grace of someone who wanted you to know he wasn't rattled, wasn't touched. He collected his cup in one hand and one of Daphne's abandoned utensils in the other, sauntering after Theo with that same bored demeanor. I could already hear him drawling some smug remark under his breath, but Theo didn't answer, and the sound of running water soon drowned him out.

Daphne pushed her chair back with a squeal of wood against stone, her laugh still lingering faintly on her lips like she hadn't even noticed the tension in the air. She glanced at me and raised her brows in a silent invitation. I followed her wordlessly, my legs stiff as if each step had been dipped in lead. The hallway that stretched from the main room was narrow, its walls crooked, the plaster cracked and yellowed from years of damp. My shoulder brushed the peeling paint as we walked, and I caught the faint smell of mildew mixed with woodsmoke and old dust.

The bedroom Daphne and I shared was little more than a box, containing two narrow beds shoved against opposite walls, their blankets worn thin from years of use. A crooked wardrobe leaned against the wall like it might collapse. The only other piece of furniture was a cracked mirror nailed above a chipped dresser. The window was streaked with grime, the curtain threadbare, letting in a weak ray of grey morning light.

Daphne shut the door behind us with a flick of her wrist and strode straight to her bed. Her robes were already laid out, folded with the kind of neatness that made my chest ache. The black fabric gleamed faintly in the half-light, pristine despite the blood and ash that always seemed to cling to us after missions. Mine were balled up at the end of my bed where I'd left them the night before, stiff with soot and sweat.

Daphne didn't hesitate. She stripped down with the ease of someone preparing for a dance rehearsal rather than another round of cruelty, her hands deft as she pulled on the black layers, smoothing them against her skin. The fabric clung, highlighting the sharp lines of her figure, the movements practiced and seemingly fluid. She tugged the sleeves down past her wrists and adjusted the collar so it sat neatly beneath her jaw.

I sat on the edge of my mattress, staring at the mess of fabric in my lap. My hands trembled as I unraveled it, the cloth heavy, suffocating. I pressed my palms against my thighs, forcing the tremor still, but it lingered in my chest, in my breath.

I told myself it was just another uniform. Just clothes. Thread and fabric, no different than the black dresses we used to wear to balls when we were younger, giggling in front of mirrors as we pinned flowers into each other's hair. But this uniform carried ghosts stitched into its seams. It smelled like smoke and copper, like the places we left in ruin. I slid my legs into the trousers, pulling them up inch by inch, as if they might bite. My chest felt tight, like I was dressing myself in chains instead of robes.

Daphne, already ahead of me, fastened her belt and tied her wand holster tight against her thigh. She turned to the mirror, sweeping her long hair into a knot at the back of her head, her fingers working quickly, efficiently. Not a strand out of place. Her reflection grinned back at her, eyes bright, feverish with anticipation.

I managed to pull the black uniform over my head, the fabric heavy as it settled against my shoulders. I could almost feel last night's smoke clinging to the fibers. My fingers fumbled at the fastenings, slipping once, twice, until I forced myself to breathe slowly, carefully, and tried again. The buckle clicked into place swiftly.

"Nearly done?" Daphne asked, voice light, almost musical.

I swallowed, my throat dry. "I think."

"Good." She flicked her wand, and the wardrobe door creaked open. A small wooden box slid out, hovering until it landed neatly on her bed. She opened it, revealing a stack of black smooth, masks with narrow slits for eyes. One by one, she brushed her fingers over them as if selecting jewelry.

She lifted one and held it to her face, tilting her head as though admiring the look. Then, satisfied, she tied it back around her head, the black ribbon snug at the base of her skull. Her grin widened beneath it, visible even without her mouth showing, because I could hear it in her voice when she said, "Perfect."

I hadn't even reached for mine yet. My mask sat at the bottom of the box, cold and waiting. The thought of tying it over my face yet again made my chest seize. It wasn't just anonymity, it was erasure. When the mask was on, Aurelia Avery ceased to exist. The girl who used to braid Daphne's hair and sneak sweets from the kitchens was gone. All that remained was a Death Eater, faceless, nameless, a creature of shadow.

I forced myself to lift it. The edges were smooth, cool against my palm. My reflection in the cracked mirror looked hollow, almost foreign, as I raised it slowly.

Steady. Steady.

My hands betrayed me again, shaking as I tried to knot the ribbon. The fabric slipped once, dangling loose. I cursed under my breath and tried again, tugging it tighter, forcing the tremor out of my fingers. Behind me, Daphne laughed softly. Not unkindly, but it still cut.

"You fuss too much, Aurelia. Just tie it and go. It's not like anyone out there cares what you look like under it."

She was already heading for the door, her strides quick, confident, her wand spinning between her fingers like a baton. She didn't even glance back to see if I was following. I stared at myself for a long moment in the mirror. The mask was crooked, the ribbon fraying at one edge, but it would hold. I didn't look like me anymore. Maybe that was the point.

I stood, my knees stiff, and tugged my cloak from the hook by the bed. The black fabric swirled as I pulled it over my shoulders, settling heavy, suffocating. Each layer felt like another weight pressed down, crushing, until it was hard to draw a full breath.

But I straightened anyway. Because if I didn't, Mattheo would see. And if Mattheo saw, he'd cut me down with words sharper than any blade, break me apart piece by piece until nothing remained but obedience. So I forced myself forward, mask tight, cloak settled, wand at my hip.

Daphne was already halfway down the hall, humming under her breath, eager as a child heading for a game. I followed her into the main room where the boys were waiting, the air thick with the scent of soap and damp wood.

Theo was drying his hands on a rag, Lorenzo leaning against the sink with his usual smirk. Draco stood by the window, arms crossed, gaze distant, though I caught the flicker of tension in his jaw. Mattheo was in the center, as always, his presence impossible to ignore, dark eyes cutting toward us the second we entered.

I froze, every instinct in me screaming to look anywhere else. But his eyes caught me, dark and unblinking, dragging my gaze forward as though my feet were nailed to the floor. He didn't speak at first. He just studied me in silence, head tilting ever so slightly, as if cataloging every fault, every weakness. Then, with a slow deliberate stride, he closed the distance between us.

The room was silent. Even Lorenzo, usually quick with some sly remark, had stilled, his smirk faltering at the sight of Mattheo's sharpness. Theo's arms crossed tight over his chest, his expression cold, but his eyes flicked between us with an edge of unease.

Mattheo stopped directly before me. His shadow swallowed the thin strip of light leaking through the curtains, making the space between us feel darker, colder.

"You tied it wrong," he said. His voice wasn't raised, but it carried. The coldness of it sank into my bones.

My breath caught, the instinct to defend myself bubbling up.

I tied it fine, it'll hold, it doesn't matter.

But one look in his eyes killed the words before they reached my tongue.

His hand shot up without warning, not cruel, not gentle, just controlled. He seized the ribbon at the base of my skull, the knot clumsy beneath his fingers. I flinched, my body betraying me, but he held me steady, his grip firm.

I felt the brush of his knuckles against the nape of my neck, the faint rasp of calloused fingertips grazing skin. It was a light touch, but it burned all the same, not from tenderness, but from the way it stripped me bare, reminded me how little control I had.

He tugged the ribbon loose with a single pull. The mask sagged forward, nearly slipping off. Humiliation clawed at my throat. I wanted to grab it, to hold it back in place, but I didn't dare move under his hand.

Mattheo didn't hurry. He smoothed the ribbon flat between his fingers, then pulled it tight again, firmer, neater. The mask pressed hard against my cheekbones, digging into the bridge of my nose. My breath warmed the inside instantly, stifling, claustrophobic.

The knot bit into the base of my skull as he tied it. His fingers brushed the edge of my hairline, cold and impersonal, the way someone might handle a weapon instead of a person. When he was finished, he gave the ribbon a sharp tug to test it. My head jerked back, spine forced rigid, shoulders snapping straight under the sudden pull.

"Better," he murmured. Not praise or approval. Just a cold acknowledgment, like a craftsman noting a blade was sharpened properly at last.

My heart hammered, the mask suffocating me with every breath. The world looked narrower through its slits, vision tunneled, confined. I swallowed hard, but even that felt difficult, as though the knot at the back of my head had cinched around my throat.

Mattheo let go without another word. He didn't look at me again, not directly. He turned away, shoulders squaring as he addressed the rest of the room.

"You three," he said, voice flat, sharp as steel. His gaze flicked to Theo, Lorenzo, and Draco. "You'll stay here. No wandering, no little adventures. Await instructions from me, or from the Dark Lord himself regarding the rest of the day's agenda."

Theo inclined his head once, silent and composed as ever. Lorenzo raised his brows, leaning back against the sink with a half-smile, though I noticed the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. Even Draco, tense and simmering as he was, gave a single curt nod, though his arms stayed crossed like he was physically holding himself together.

For a fleeting moment, I felt the thought ripple through them that maybe today would pass quietly. Maybe if they stayed put, no new orders would come.

But it was wishful thinking and we all knew it. The air in the safehouse itself seemed to whisper otherwise, thick with unease, with the knowledge that calm days were nothing but illusions. Mattheo didn't give space for speculation. His gaze cut back to Daphne, then to me, lingering like the edge of a knife pressed against skin.

"You two. Now."

It wasn't an invitation, it was a command. Daphne was already halfway to the door, her steps light and eager. I followed slower, each step dragging. My boots felt like they'd been filled with lead.

The safehouse loomed around me as I crossed the room, every detail sinking into me as though it wanted to leave a scar before I left. The sagging sofa with its frayed cushions, where Theo sometimes dozed and Lorenzo sprawled with feigned indifference. The cracked dining table still cluttered with half-cleaned dishes, water dripping faintly from the sink where Theo had left the tap not quite off. The peeling wallpaper by the doorframe where Draco's fist had once punched straight through the plaster after an argument with Mattheo.

This place wasn't home, not really. But it was all we had, and stepping beyond its walls always felt like walking into the mouth of something hungry.

Daphne didn't wait. She yanked the door open, light flooding the dim space, spilling across the floorboards in a harsh slash. She disappeared through it without hesitation. Mattheo moved next, his stride steady, unhurried, certain. The weight of command clung to him like another cloak, his shadow cutting long across the floor. I lingered a heartbeat longer at the threshold, staring at the safehouse interior. The air inside smelled faintly of soap and damp wood and yesterday's smoke from the fireplace. It felt safe, in its own fragile, temporary way.

The air outside, when I stepped into it, was sharp and biting. The cold hit first, crisp enough to sting the edges of my lungs. The ground outside was damp from an earlier rain, the dirt dark and soft beneath my boots. The sky above was a dull grey, clouds hanging low and heavy, as though even the heavens were waiting for something to crack.

The door shut behind me with a dull thud.

Daphne was already several paces ahead, cloak trailing like a shadow. Mattheo stood just beyond the porch, his back to me, shoulders squared, head held high as though daring the world to meet him.

I hesitated. Just a breath. Just long enough to feel the mask again pressing tight against my face, narrowing the world into a tunnel of shadow and light. Each inhale felt louder, each exhale fogging faintly against the inside, trapping me in my own breath. My dread rose sharp, pressing harder with every step I took after them. My feet obeyed even as every part of me screamed to turn back. To rip the mask from my face. To breathe freely. To stop being dragged forward into the same nightmare, day after day.

✦

The corridors of Riddle Manor always felt like a labyrinth designed to swallow you whole. The walls were paneled in dark wood, polished to a sheen that reflected the dim torchlight, but the air smelled faintly of damp and dust, like the house itself was rotting from within despite the glamour it wore.

We followed Mattheo down hall after hall, Daphne striding beside him with a poise that bordered on arrogance, her cloak slicing the air behind her. My own steps lagged by half a beat, my breath rasping shallow beneath the mask, each inhale catching on the knot tied tight at the base of my skull. None of us spoke. Words didn't belong here. The silence pressed heavy, broken only by the muted echo of boots on stone and the occasional creak of wood groaning somewhere above.

Finally, Mattheo slowed before a narrow corridor lined with doors, each one marked with a faint rune. The energy here felt sharper, as though the air itself carried the residue of screams soaked into the walls. He stopped before the third door. With one gloved hand, he pressed against it, and the magic laced into the wood shimmered faintly, recognizing him, then split open with a dull click.

The door swung inward, revealing a room dimly lit by a single lantern dangling from the ceiling. The walls were bare stone, stripped of any warmth or comfort, the kind of room where humanity felt like an afterthought. In the center of it, bound to a chair reinforced with layers of runes and glowing magical restraints, sat a man.

His head was bowed, chin against his chest, dark hair falling into his face in unwashed clumps. His wrists strained against the enchanted bindings, skin raw and reddened where he'd clearly tested them already. His chest rose and fell shallowly, every breath rattling, but when the door creaked wider, he stirred. He lifted his head and recognition stabbed through me like a knife.

"Lockwood," Daphne murmured under her breath, her lips curving into something cold, sharp, satisfied.

Thomas Lockwood. I remembered him instantly, though I'd only seen him in fleeting glimpses at gatherings years ago when whispers of the Order reached our world, his name muttered like a threat. He had been fierce then, a known recruiter, loyal to Dumbledore. An enemy our parents warned us about.

Looking at him now he was smaller. Shrunken. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheek split open with a bruise blooming deep purple, his clothes torn and stiff with blood. But the defiance was still there, simmering in his gaze when it flicked from Daphne to Mattheo.

Mattheo ignored the man's stare entirely. His eyes swept the room, calculating, then fixed on the partition at the far end. It was a thick wall of glass set into stone, framed by black iron. Beyond it was another chamber, identical in size, bare except for the heavy door with no handle on this side. It was designed for one thing, observation. One room for the prisoner, another for the audience.

Mattheo stepped forward, his cloak brushing against the floor. He didn't even glance at Lockwood as he moved, his attention fixed on the window. With a small gesture, the glass shimmered faintly, its surface brightening so those on the other side could see clearly in.

"Daphne," he said, his tone clipped, businesslike. "With me."

Daphne's chin lifted, eyes flashing with something like anticipation. She tugged her mask tighter into place, and in a single stride, she was at his side. Mattheo's gaze shifted then, straight to me. It was the weight of a command before he even opened his mouth.

"You."

The word sliced the silence in two. I straightened instinctively, though my throat tightened beneath the mask.

"Yes?"

His expression was unreadable, hard as stone. His eyes however, they pinned me like I was nothing more than a pawn on his board.

"You'll stay here," he said. His tone was slow, deliberate, each word layered with finality. "In this room. By the glass. You do not move."

The order sank like ice water down my spine.

"But—" The word slipped out before I could stop it, brittle and desperate.

His head tilted, just slightly. Not a threat, not even anger, something worse. A warning. I clamped my jaw shut as Mattheo stepped closer, just enough that his shadow brushed over me. His voice lowered, pitched for me alone, though the chill in it was sharp enough to cut.

"You will watch. You will learn. Nothing more."

My stomach twisted. The thought of standing here, trapped on this side of the glass, forced to watch, powerless and useless, nothing but an audience to whatever they chose to do, and I knew it wouldn't be easy to watch. But I didn't argue and I certainly didn't breathe too loudly.

Mattheo's eyes lingered on me a beat longer, as though daring me to disobey. His hand was at my shoulder before I could shift an inch, cold leather pressing through the fabric of my cloak. His grip was punishing, not bruising, not quite, but sharp enough that my knees buckled under the sheer force of it.

"Here," he bit out. No wasted words. No patience.

I stumbled where he pushed, boots scraping over the uneven flagstone, the weight of his hand steering me toward the room. The lantern light caught on the surface of the glass, throwing my pale reflection back at me. The mask, the dark cloak, the rigid slope of my shoulders that felt less like mine and more like his will imposed on my body.

When I faltered just once, just for a second, because the chair creaked in the corner and Lockwood groaned low in his throat. Mattheo tightened his grip and shoved me forward the final step. My palms slapped against the iron frame of the glass, the cold of it jolting straight into my bones.

"Stand." His voice was low, sharp, a command that rattled through the marrow of me.

I forced myself upright, breath shallow behind the mask. Mattheo's hand lingered on my shoulder for a beat too long, fingers pressing into the line of my collarbone, forcing my posture straighter until my spine ached. Then he let go with a flick, as though discarding something fragile and unwanted.

"Do not move from this spot." His tone carried no room for error, no chance of interpretation. "If I look over and you're not here, Aurelia—" His pause was deliberate, a blade unsheathed. He leaned in close enough that I felt the ghost of his breath against my ear.

My heart punched once, hard, against my ribs. The weight of him peeled off my skin as he strode for the side door. Daphne was already waiting, leaning against the frame with her wand balanced lightly between her fingers, her smirk curling wider as her eyes slid over me. Then she turned, mask gleaming in the dim light, and slipped into the chamber again with all the elegance of someone about to attend a ball instead of an interrogation.

Mattheo followed, his back straight, his movements sharp, controlled. He didn't glance back at me once. The door shut behind him with the sound of iron grinding against stone. Through the glass, the room on the other side came into clearer focus.

Lockwood sat hunched but unbroken in his chair, the magical restraints humming faintly where they cut into his arms and chest. His head turned slowly, eyes narrowing as Daphne and Mattheo entered like predators circling, ready to strike.

The lantern above flickered, casting shadows across Mattheo's face as he drew himself up to his full height. His mask obscured his expression, but his posture was all precision and menace, shoulders squared, wand loose at his side like an extension of his rage.

Daphne moved differently, almost fluid, predatory in her own way. She circled the perimeter of the room with a careless kind of grace, trailing her wand against the stone walls, sparks skipping lazily in her wake. Her hair caught the lamplight, her grin wide and fever-bright even behind the mask's shadow. I swallowed hard, every muscle in my body tight as wire as I pressed closer to the glass.

On the other side, Mattheo finally spoke, his voice slow and deliberate, each word sinking into the silence like a weight tossed into deep water.

"Thomas Lockwood."

The man raised his head with effort, blood from the cut at his temple streaking down into the stubble along his jaw. His lips twisted into something caught between a grimace and a smile.

"You know my name," he rasped. His voice was hoarse, raw. "Good. That'll make it easier when I haunt you."

Daphne laughed, the sound sharp and crystalline, echoing off the stone walls. "Oh, I like him already."

But Mattheo didn't laugh. He didn't move. He simply lifted his wand, the faintest flick in his wrist, and the restraints around Lockwood pulsed with a surge of energy that made the man's entire body jolt against the chair.

I flinched, even though the sound was muffled through the glass. The crackle of magic, the guttural groan that tore from Lockwood's throat, it all pressed into me, sinking under my skin, settling like fire in my stomach. Mattheo lowered his wand just as quickly, his voice cutting through the aftermath.

"You'll tell us what we need to know."

Lockwood lifted his chin, blood sliding down the curve of his jaw, and when he smiled it was ragged and defiant.

"You'll get nothing from me," he rasped, his voice breaking on the words.

Daphne's laugh cut through the chamber like a knife. "Oh, darling," she cooed, tilting her head as though she were admiring a painting. "You'll give us everything."

Her wand snapped up before he could speak again. A jet of red light struck him square in the chest, and the sound that tore from his throat was not human but a strangled, guttural howl that reverberated through the glass and into my bones. His entire body arched against the restraints, muscles contorting violently, fingers curling into claws against the chair's arms as if he were being ripped apart from the inside.

I flinched, my own hands tightening uselessly at the iron frame. My lungs burned, but I couldn't breathe deeply, not here. Not when I could hear every ragged note of his pain.

"Don't kill him." Mattheo's voice came low, steady, a command wrapped in steel, but he didn't raise his voice.

Daphne let the curse linger for another heartbeat before releasing it with a flourish, her grin stretching wider as Lockwood collapsed back against the chair, sweat gleaming on his skin.

"That was barely a taste," she whispered. "I've got so many more."

Mattheo stepped forward, and where Daphne danced in wild delight, he moved with the deliberate patience of a butcher. His wand hovered an inch from Lockwood's throat, the smallest flick sending sharp lines of pain cracking through the man's body, not the wild agony of Daphne's spell, but controlled, precise, measured cruelty. Each jolt forced a strangled gasp from Lockwood's throat, his body jerking once, twice, thrice, until his breath came in shallow, desperate bursts.

"Where are they hiding?" Mattheo asked, his tone flat. No inflection or emotion. Just cold purpose.

Lockwood spat blood onto the floor. "You'll never find them."

The silence after the words was heavy, but Daphne broke it with a shriek of laughter, twirling her wand between her fingers.

"Stupid, stubborn little thing. I like it when they try to fight. It makes the breaking so much prettier."

Before Mattheo could intervene, she flicked her wand again, and Lockwood's scream shattered the air. Flames erupted along the veins in his arms, not real but cruelly convincing, an illusion of his blood boiling under his skin. He thrashed against the magical restraints, eyes wide and wild as though he truly felt himself burning alive.

I turned away for a moment, nausea clawing its way up my throat. My reflection in the glass swam in my vision, pale and distorted, until I forced myself to look again, forced myself because I knew if Mattheo saw my eyes anywhere else, I'd pay for it.

Lockwood's screams ebbed into hoarse, choked gasps as Daphne released him again. She crouched in front of him, eyes wide, hair wild, mask catching the light like the face of a grinning phantom.

"Tell us, Lockwood," she whispered, so close her breath stirred the sweat-soaked hair at his temple. "Where do they meet? Who leads them now? Give me something, and I'll make it stop."

His eyes flickered just briefly toward Mattheo, who hadn't moved. Without a word, he lifted his wand and broke one of the man's fingers with a sound so sharp I nearly dropped where I stood. Lockwood's strangled cry followed instantly, his head snapping back as pain wracked his body anew.

Mattheo's voice came after, calm as ever. "I said, where are they hiding?"

Daphne clapped her hands once, manic delight in her eyes. "Oh, clever. One piece at a time, hmm? How many pieces do you think before he begs, Mattheo? Ten? Twenty?"

Mattheo didn't answer her. He turned slightly, his mask angled down toward the Order member. Then he lifted his wand again, and another finger snapped like dry wood. Lockwood's body convulsed in the chair, sweat and blood streaking down his face. His teeth were clenched so hard I thought they might break.

"You can end this," Mattheo said quietly. "It's your choice. Speak, and it stops."

But Lockwood only spat again, crimson staining his chest. Daphne shrieked with glee. She spun away from him, only to whip her wand back around in a violent arc. The chair jolted sideways with a crack, slamming him into the stone wall hard enough to rattle the restraints. His head whipped against the stone, splitting the skin above his brow, blood streaming down into his eye.

I pressed a fist to my mouth, muffling the sound that almost escaped.

Daphne twirled back to face him, delight curling her lips. "Still nothing? Oh, I do love the stubborn ones. It means I get to fuck with them longer."

Another curse, another scream, the sound of bones grinding. Mattheo finally stepped forward again, shoving Daphne back with his shoulder, his presence swallowing the room. He leaned close to Lockwood, wand angled just beneath the man's chin. His voice was barely above a whisper, but I felt it all the same, vibrating through the glass, settling cold in my chest.

"You'll break."

He didn't shout. He didn't gloat. He simply pressed his wand to Lockwood's sternum and released a slow, steady current of magic that forced the man into violent spasms, his scream torn raw and ragged, echoing long after the spell ceased.

Mattheo straightened, adjusting his grip on his wand with the precision of someone who could and would do this for hours without faltering. Daphne, panting from her bursts energy, practically bounced on her heels, clapping her hands again like a child at a puppet show.

Lockwood's voice came hoarse, broken, almost unrecognizable. "Go... to hell."

Mattheo's silence was worse than anger. He simply moved his wand again, poised with infinite patience, and Lockwood's body jerked once more in the chair, bones straining against the magical bindings. Helpless behind the glass, I felt the dread settle deeper than ever before.

The moment stretched, taut and suffocating, as Lockwood continued to sit in the chair, bound, defiant, and utterly silent. His chest rose and fell in shallow, jagged breaths, sweat dripping down his face, his hair plastered to the skin by the streams of blood that ran from the gashes Mattheo and Daphne had already inflicted.

Daphne leaned in closer, her wand poised. Her grin was wide and feral, eyes sparkling with manic delight. "You're going to speak, aren't you, Thomas?" she crooned, tilting her head. "You're going to tell us everything won't you."

Lockwood's silence stretched even longer, a defiance that seemed almost alive, a provocation that set every nerve in Daphne's body alight.

"Fine," she hissed, stepping back, a flush of fury across her cheeks. "If you won't speak, we'll play another way."

Before Mattheo could intervene, she raised her wand and muttered a sharp incantation. Lockwood's body jerked violently as a force lifted him clean off the chair.

I pressed against the glass instinctively, stomach knotting. The sight was unbearable. His body twisting in midair, muscles straining, wrists and ankles tugging against the magical restraints. His face contorted in raw, guttural agony, veins bulging at his neck, blood running freely down his cheeks and into his mouth where he tried to scream and could barely manage a choked gurgle.

Daphne twirled, laughing, her wand guiding him across the room. With a cruel flick, she slammed him into the stone wall. The impact made me flinch violently. The sound was a wet, bone-shattering crack, echoing off the bare walls. A spray of blood hit the lantern, smearing the glass, and I had to tear my eyes away for a second to keep from screaming.

Mattheo's voice cut through the chaos, low and cutting, a calm predator's purr beneath the storm.

"Look at you, Thomas," he said, his tone soft enough to make my skin crawl. "So much fight left. But for how long? How much more can you take before you break? How long before you beg?"

Lockwood hit the wall again, skidding down a few feet, bruising his ribs, the muscles along his back twitching uncontrollably. Blood streaked the stone in thin rivulets. Daphne laughed, spinning him upward again, letting him hang for a moment in midair, helpless and twitching.

"You feel that?" Mattheo's voice was ice. "That's what happens when you refuse to cooperate. That's what happens when you think your defiance matters."

Lockwood's eyes, wild and burning, flicked toward me through the glass. I felt my stomach lurch. He looked at me like he saw someone trapped, someone powerless, someone he couldn't protect and I realized with a jolt that was exactly what I was.

Daphne's laughter rose again, louder, cutting through the small space like a blade. She lifted him higher, pivoted, and sent him smashing against the glass. My breath caught in my throat as the sound of his skull cracking echoed in my ears.

He hit with a wet, sickening thud, and I saw the impact in horrifying detail, his head snapped back, blood spattering across the glass, streaking and distorting my reflection. I staggered backward, pressed my palms harder against the cold surface, my chest heaving.

Mattheo's eyes flicked to the glass, his mask concealing his expression, but I felt the weight of his attention like a vice. His voice was calm, but every word cut like a scalpel.

"You need to watch, Avery."

I couldn't look away. My stomach roiled, vomit threatening, but I couldn't move. The words were unnecessary. The mask pressed tight against my face, suffocating me further. I was pinned in place, an unwilling witness to the carnage, forced to see every moment in excruciating detail.

Daphne continued her ballet of destruction, twirling Lockwood across the room, each strike against walls, floors, or the occasional table splintering furniture, sending shards of wood skittering across the stone floor. His body collided with everything, bruises blooming across his skin, bones groaning under the weight of the force. Mattheo paced slowly around the room, wand loose at his side, eyes tracking every motion. His voice, when he spoke, was detached.

"Do you feel it, Thomas? The futility? Do you see your life unravel in real time? You fight, and fight, and yet you're utterly powerless."

Lockwood's mouth opened, but no sound came. Blood from his split lip dribbled down his chin as he gurgled. Daphne laughed at the sound, twirling him again midair, and slammed him shoulder-first into the wall.

I had to close my eyes for a second, the sound of cracking cartilage and bone pounding in my ears. But when I opened them again, he was still there , still writhing, still alive, still defiant in ways that made me shiver.

Daphne caught him midair once more, holding him high above the floor. Her fingers danced along her wand, laughing softly, a smooth lull in her violent storm.

"This is fun," she whispered. "Don't you want to make it stop? Just a little? A tiny bit of mercy?"

Mattheo's voice interrupted her, cold and lethal.

"Stop giving him false hope. He isn't allowed relief. Not yet."

She let him drop, not fully, just enough that his knees slammed into stone. His scream was gut-wrenching, tainted with blood and spit, echoing in the chamber and pounding against the glass of my viewing room. I pressed my face to it, tears welling, throat tight. My palms slipped against the slick surface where blood from his previous collision had smudged. My mask did nothing to protect me from the scent or the sound.

Mattheo walked past me, his presence barely more than a shadow in my peripheral vision. His voice was low, just for me, venom wrapped in ice.

"You see? This is what it takes. This is how you learn to be strong. Not by being careful, not by hesitating. By watching. By enduring."

I blinked, forcing myself to see again. Daphne had lifted him again, spinning him violently across the room. His shoulder collided with the lantern, sending it crashing to the floor. The fire from the oil within leapt like a tongue, licking at the edges of the stone, sizzling against the blood pooling on the floor. The stench was overwhelming. Smoke, blood, iron like a cocktail that made my stomach turn and my vision swim behind the mask.

Daphne laughed, spinning him back into the air. Mattheo's wand followed her motion like a silent counterpoint. He tapped a pressure point, and Lockwood's back arched unnaturally, his scream sharp and wrenching. His teeth bared, lips split, spit and blood dripping down, but his body was no longer entirely under his control, magic was bending him, reshaping him like clay.

I wanted to look away. I needed to look away.

But I couldn't.

The glass was all that separated me from him. My hands shook violently against it, knuckles whitening. I pressed my forehead to it in a feeble attempt to anchor myself. My chest ached, lungs burning, stomach roiling. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream.

Lockwood's body thudded and slammed again. Each impact, each scream, reverberated through me, rattling my bones. Daphne was a blur of movement, laughing, screaming, twirling, throwing him like a ragdoll against stone walls and tables and the occasional unyielding column.

When she misjudged one throw, one too violent and wild, Lockwood's body hit the glass wall of my viewing chamber again with a revolting crunch.

I jumped back instinctively this time, hitting the floor with my knees as the sound vibrated through my chest. The glass shook, tiny cracks spiderwebbing across its surface where the impact landed. Blood spattered the other side, streaking down like dark rain, and my stomach rolled violently.

I clutched the edge of the glass, pressing my mask harder into my face to stifle the sound that was almost a scream. My ears rang, my hands trembled, tears blurring my vision. Every nerve in my body was alive, screaming.

Mattheo's voice cut through the haze, calm and lethal.

"Focus."

I swallowed hard, pressing my face closer to the glass again, forcing myself to witness, to endure, to stay. The screams continued, the body flying, slamming, convulsing, blood painting the room in stark, obscene lines. I felt hollow, shattered, but I couldn't look away. Because that's what he wanted me to see, this was my lesson and because there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Lockwood's body thrashed across the floor, bruised and broken from repeated slams against stone and furniture. His chest rose and fell in ragged, desperate gasps. Every muscle screamed in pain, his skin slick with sweat and blood, and yet he still tried to resist, to twist, to find any ounce of control over the chaos that had become his life in the last ten minutes.

Daphne knelt on his back, hands gripping his shoulders with delight. Her grin was sharp, predatory, eyes wild behind her mask.

"Hold still, Thomas," she purred, pressing him down harder. "You're making this too easy for me."

Mattheo stepped close, wand raised, calm as a shadow. He tilted his head, watching the way the blood slicked floor reflected the flickering lanterns, the way the veins in Lockwood's neck strained beneath the bindings. There was no hesitation, no hesitation in the way he moved, every motion precise, surgical, measured cruelty.

In tandem, they began. Their wands flicked low, almost imperceptibly at first, before the cuts appeared, shallow at first, sparks of crimson blossoming across his skin like a perverse artwork. But they didn't stop.

Each swipe of their wands was sharp, cutting through flesh and bone, forcing screams that ripped raw from Lockwood's throat. I pressed my palms harder to the glass, mask trembling against my face, knuckles whitening as every sound, every motion, every explosion of pain carved itself into my mind.

Daphne's laughter rang high-pitched and manic over the chaos. "Oh, you like that, don't you?" she hissed, pressing her weight into him, keeping him down. "You're going to wish you talked, Thomas. But you didn't, and now..."

Mattheo's voice, low and rigid, cut through her chaos. "Not enough. Keep going."

Their wands moved in foul synchronisation, drawing lines across his body with terrifying ease. Each stroke flayed him anew, arms, torso, legs, even his face caught the edge of their cruelty. His screams were endless, jagged, tearing through the room in waves that made my stomach churn.

Blood spattered across the stone floor in thick puddles. Spasms shook his limbs, his teeth were bared, jaws clamped shut on bloodied gums. Every time he tried to move, to escape even a fraction, Daphne laughed and slammed her full weight down, pressing him harder, forcing him still. Through it all, Mattheo whispered in that calm, terrifying way that made it worse than the violence itself.

"You're going to tell us. You will. Or the pain won't matter because it'll never stop. And we will never get bored."

Lockwood's head lolled to one side, eyes wide and panicked, but even then, as tears mingled with the streams of blood on his face, he forced out words, strained and broken.

"Harry... Potter... and his friends..." His chest heaved in agony. "They're... looking... for... something... something to... end... the Dark Lord..."

His voice cracked. He coughed, a spray of blood hitting the stone between him and me. "I... I don't... know... what..."

His body sagged under their combined weight, the final twitch of a man broken beyond repair. Blood poured from fresh cuts, dripped down his arms, his chest rising and falling only in shallow, gurgling gasps. His mouth opened once more, a wet, rasping sound, then nothing.

I felt the glass tremble under the force of it. My stomach lurched. My knees gave out for a fraction of a second before I caught myself, mask pressed hard against my face, knuckles gripping the frame. Daphne stepped back, wand still raised, breathing hard, her grin almost feral.

"Finally," she said softly, almost in awe, like she had completed a work of art.

Mattheo's wand dropped. His mask concealed the slightest twitch of expression, but the way he straightened his shoulders, the faint tilt of his head, it was acknowledgment. He looked over at the broken body, then through the glass to me.

"You watched," he said softly, each word deliberate, weighted. "You learned. That is what it means to see weakness and destroy it. Never falter. Never hesitate. Do you understand?"

I swallowed hard, gagging slightly. I could only nod, tears pressing hot behind the mask, my chest heaving with ragged breaths.

Daphne turned, seemingly oblivious to my state. "Come on," she said, her voice sing-song. "We've got work to do."

Mattheo didn't speak. He simply adjusted his wand, eyes sweeping the room, lingering on the shards of blood and broken flesh like a surgeon evaluating his handiwork. Then, with a measured step, he moved for the door, Daphne at his side.

I was left alone behind the glass, staring at the broken, lifeless form of Thomas Lockwood, the metallic tang of blood clinging to my nostrils, the sound of my own heartbeat loud in my ears. I knew that this was what it meant to be among my friends still. To survive, to endure, to learn, or risk being discarded the same way.

The glass door shut behind them with a cold click, and the weight of the silence pressed into me like stone. I stayed where I was, frozen, hands still pressed against the iron frame, staring at the empty floor where Lockwood had fallen. His blood pooled across the stone, dark and glistening, mingling with the bruises that still marred the floor from the moments of violent tossing.

I could feel the rhythm of my heartbeat in my throat, each thump a deafening drum in my skull. My lungs burned as though I'd been running through fire, and yet I hadn't moved from that spot. My hands shook, slick with my own sweat and the blood spatters that had hit the glass when Daphne had slammed him into it. I tried to swallow, tried to breathe, tried to convince myself that I was just observing, just learning, that it wasn't me who had pressed the wand against his chest, who had snapped his fingers, who had watched him convulse and scream.

But the nausea didn't stop, threatening to betray me through the mask. I pressed my forehead against the glass, blinking rapidly to clear the tears that threatened to fall, but they wouldn't stop, hot and insistent behind the mask. Every detail clawed at me, the sound of cracking bone, the sickening wet thud when he hit the glass, the way the blood had splattered across the ground and the triumphant glee in Daphne's voice.

Finally, I heard the soft shuffle of footsteps behind me. My body stiffened instinctively, expecting Mattheo, expecting reprimand, expecting something.

Daphne's voice cut through the air, light, manic, almost playful. "Well, that was exhilarating. Did you see his face when I slammed him? Oh, I wish I had record of it. Pure panic, perfect terror, I could watch that all day."

I pressed my hands harder against the glass, squeezing my eyes shut. Her words felt like knives carving through the raw edges of my nerves. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to exist in this moment anymore even though this moment was merely a display of what I was enduring my whole life now. A shadow fell across the floor. Mattheo's voice, low and sharp, broke the tension like ice cracking.

"Focus, Daphne. You got the information. That's what matters. Don't waste it chasing your amusement."

Her grin faltered for a brief second, just enough to see the steel behind his tone. Then she twirled, wand still in hand, eyes gleaming. "Of course, of course."

He didn't respond immediately. Instead, his gaze swept the room, cold, calculating, absorbing every detail, the blood, the faint smell of burnt skin and bruised flesh. His jaw clenched, tight under the mask, and then his voice came, low and measured.

"Harry Potter and his friends. They're seeking something. Something capable of ending my father."

Daphne tilted her head, fingers still playing idly with her wand. "And we don't know what it is?"

Mattheo shook his head slowly. "No. He didn't know. That doesn't matter. I will alert the Dark Lord. We'll take care of it before it even has a chance to matter."

Her laugh was soft, almost whimsical, a stark contrast to the violence of moments ago. "That sounds satisfying. Very satisfying. Let's make sure we get there first."

I stayed pressed against the glass, trembling, fighting back the flood of tears and nausea. The mask hid the tremor in my chest, the rapid, shallow breaths, but I could feel it in every muscle, every nerve. The reality of what I had just witnessed was suffocating. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to steady the shaking, telling myself over and over that this is survival.

Mattheo's voice cut through my spiral, low and cold. "Aurelia."

I stiffened.

"Remember this. Every detail, every reaction, learn it."

I nodded, barely able to speak, my throat tight, dry. His gaze swept past me, toward the hallway, toward the rest of the manor, toward whatever the next piece of information would be. The silence that followed was suffocating, filled with the echoes of screams that would linger in my memory for a long time, long after they had left this room. My chest ached with the tension, the nausea, the guilt. I wanted to cry, wanted to fall to the floor and scream.

The shadows of the chamber stretched long across the floor as I finally stepped back from the glass, hands shaking violently. I had survived this. I had watched. I had endured. But the weight of it pressed down on my chest, a heavy, cold hand that would not let go.

✦

We walked back into the safehouse in uneasy silence. The stone floor echoed with our footsteps, the slight creaks of the old house amplifying the tension in the air. My mask was heavy, pressed tight against my face, hiding the trembling of my jaw, the tears I refused to let fall. I could feel every movement in my muscles, the lingering ache from witnessing Lockwood's screams, the blood and terror still crawling under my skin.

The others didn't notice. Or maybe they did, and didn't care. Mattheo moved ahead, shoulders stiff, pacing slightly as if the weight of command rested entirely on him, which, in this family of killers, it did. Daphne's earlier energy had faded into a controlled edge now, wand flicking absently as she followed, hair slightly damp, lips curled in a small, satisfied smirk.

I knew this was normal for us. This was what we did every day, we interrogated, tortured and killed. I'd done it myself, many times, but standing there behind the glass, watching their methods unfold, I felt the full weight of it. Not the act itself, I was capable of that, but the way they enjoyed it, the precision and cruelty, the way their laughter and cold satisfaction made life and death feel like nothing more than a lesson.

"So," Lorenzo drawled, voice light, almost teasing. He leaned casually against the counter, playing with his hair idly. "Another successful little... performance?"

Daphne clapped her hands softly, smirking at the glint in Lorenzo's eyes. "I call it an exhibition. Thomas Lockwood learned more in ten minutes than he ever will in a lifetime."

Theo began emptying the final of the breakfast dishes into the sink, moving as methodically as he did when we were clearing a building. Draco joined him, muttering something about reusing the bloodied rags for cleaning up later, his movements mechanical.

I moved slowly to the table, still trying to steady my breath. My hands shook, barely hidden under the gloves I'd pulled back on, and my stomach rolled with nausea I couldn't quite expel. I didn't speak. I couldn't. The memories of Lockwood's body being thrown, slammed, cut, screamed, and finally silenced, the sudden, final quiet after his last gasp was still hammering through my chest like a drum I could not stop.

Mattheo called everyone to the table. His voice was bitter and sharp, cutting through the tension.

"We have a debrief."

I nodded silently, forcing myself to sit, mask tight against my face. The others leaned in, eager, ready to discuss the information we had forced from Lockwood. Even with the horror fresh in my mind, I understood the purpose, the point of it all was intelligence. Survival. Strategy. But the brutality, the sheer, merciless cruelty, that part never stopped rattling me.

"He didn't know much. Potter and his friends are searching for something. Something that could end Voldemort. He doesn't know what it is yet, but they're moving. I'll alert my father. He'll handle it before it matters."

Daphne twirled her wand, still smiling, like the screams of minutes ago were a game. "I could go after them now, you know. I'm feeling... inspired."

"Not now," Mattheo snapped, the edge in his voice sharp enough to silence even Daphne's glee. "We have more pressing matters."

I tried to focus, tried to remind myself that this was just another mission. Another moment to endure. My stomach churned. I swallowed hard. I knew I could do what they did, but watching their fluid, precise cruelty made me feel fragile in a way I hated. It was hard to witness them in full force. My own kills had never carried Daphne's chaotic joy or that calm, measured brutality that Mattheo displayed.

A sudden swirl of thick, black smoke curled through the room, rising from the fireplace as if it had been summoned from nothing. Everyone froze. I felt my pulse spike. The smoke twisted and writhed, coiling like a living thing before forming into the serpentine shape of a face, the unmistakable presence of Voldemort himself.

Silence fell, heavy and suffocating. Even Daphne's manic energy dimmed, her lips parting in a silent gasp. Lorenzo leaned back, expression unreadable, and Theo stiffened, wand tightening in his grip. Draco's jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, staring at the smoke like it might strike at any moment.

The smoke condensed, forming letters, words that hovered in the air like firelight on the stone walls, a command, urgent, clear.

"Ministry official Amelia Bones, siding with the Order. Must be eliminated immediately. Move now. Do not fail."

Mattheo's eyes flicked to each of us in turn, calculating, cold, precise. His lips pressed into a thin line before he finally spoke.

"Get ready. This changes our schedule. We move immediately. Lockwood gave us what we needed, now there is no delay."

Daphne's grin returned instantly, more manic than ever. "Finally! Something... fresh. Something worth it!"

Lorenzo leaned forward, tapping his wand against the counter. "All together?"

Mattheo nodded his head. "Together. We do not fail. We move as one."

Theo and Draco exchanged a look, both silently acknowledging the new target. Daphne was already bouncing on her heels, wand at the ready, eyes sparkling with cruel delight. Lorenzo's grin was sharp, but still carried a charming glimmer.

I was stepping into another nightmare, another cycle of blood and cruelty, where survival meant watching, learning, and when the time came, it meant striking without hesitation. My chest tightened as I forced myself to steady, to inhale, to remind myself that I could endure this. That I had endured before. That I would endure again.

✦

The air shimmered around us as we apparated outside the Ministry, a sharp, metallic tang in my nose that made my stomach twist. The city noises were faint here, swallowed by the cavernous stone and towering windows of the Ministry. I pressed my mask tighter, feeling the straps cut into my cheeks, forcing my shoulders up straight.

"Stay sharp," Mattheo hissed, voice low, measured. "Only Amelia. Everyone else..." He let the sentence hang, and I knew the implication, collateral damage would be acceptable. Necessary even.

Daphne was already dancing along the edge of the street, wand twirling between her fingers, eyes glittering with delight. Lorenzo's smirk was sharp as he surveyed the imposing building, fingers brushing the hilt of his wand. Draco's jaw was tight, eyes narrow, already scanning for anyone who might interfere. Theo moved silently beside me, a shadow in black robes, hands relaxed but ready.

We moved as one, masks hiding any trace of emotion, but I felt it all, the dread, the nausea, the adrenaline hammering in my veins. We crossed the street, and before we even entered, the tension of the Ministry itself seemed to shiver at our presence. The doors swung open under Mattheo's wand, and chaos erupted instantly.

Civil servants screamed, scattering papers like snow, wands raised in panic. Office staff bolted in every direction, some ducking behind furniture, some attempting to raise protective spells, all of it useless against the six of us. Daphne laughed, twirling in place, wand flicking wildly. Sparks of red and green cut across the air, scorching papers, splintering doors, shattering glass.

"Don't run, don't hide, just look!" Her voice was high-pitched, cutting through the screams.

Lorenzo leaned casually against a fallen desk, tapping his wand against his palm as a young clerk ran past him.

"Where do you think you're going, darling?" he drawled. "We only want one person. But you make it so difficult."

Theo was quiet beside me, precise as ever. With a single flick of his wand, he sent a man crashing into a wall, ribs splintering beneath the impact. He didn't look at the man afterward, didn't even check to see if he was alive. He just moved forward, efficient but still deadly.

Mattheo's voice cut through the chaos, low and commanding. "Focus. Amelia only. Everyone else is collateral. Do not stop for anyone unless they interfere with her directly."

My legs shook, my stomach roiling with nausea, but I kept pace. The screams were deafening, and I stepped over a man's broken body without thought, wand ready to strike. I had done this before. I could do this. But the sheer scale, the chaos, the sheer brutality of the moment rattled my nerves.

A corridor opened to our left, and Daphne spun toward it, lifting a man into the air by the scruff of his robes and hurling him into a wall. I flinched at the loud crunch of his shoulder against stone, heart hammering.

Mattheo moved ahead, his wand slicing through any obstruction. Sparks of green collided with curses from terrified Ministry wizards, bodies hitting the floor with sickening thuds as each spell struck. Blood sprayed, glass shattered, screams filled the hall. He didn't stop. He didn't hesitate. He never stopped.

Draco was a shadow of precision behind him, cutting down anyone who raised a wand, body after body crumpling without sound beyond the wet collapse of flesh on stone. I tried to keep up, stepping over shards of wood, paper, and bone, wand moving, hands shaking slightly.

Lorenzo grinned at a frightened clerk, dragging him close and whispering something cruel before firing a hex that splintered the desk under him. Daphne spun past, igniting paper and cloth alike with fire curses, laughter trailing behind her like a blade.

I saw the door ahead, thick and imposing, the nameplate reading Amelia Bones, Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Mattheo's eyes flicked to it, sharp and cold beneath his mask.

"She's in there," he said, voice low, controlled, deadly.

Daphne spun toward it, almost vibrating with energy. "Finally! The fun begins!"

Mattheo held up a hand, stilling her mid-motion. "We do this precisely. She feels the punishment, we leave the rest to fear. Unless I say otherwise."

The door to Amelia Bones' office loomed, polished wood and brass gleaming faintly under the flickering lights. My hands were slick beneath my gloves, wand gripped tight, knuckles white. Mattheo signaled, hand sharp and precise, and Daphne bounded forward, her wand raised, Lorenzo lingered behind, smirking, while Draco and Theo flanked us both, cold shadows moving with deadly precision.

The door swung open under Mattheo's wand, and who I assumed to be Amelia looked up from her desk, brown eyes wide, jaw tight. Her wand was raised, but the flicker of panic was unmistakable. The room smelled of old parchment and candle wax, a faint trace of ink and human fear mixed into it almost immediately.

"Bones," Mattheo said, voice low and dangerous, echoing through the office. "We know exactly who you are, and we know what you've done. Supporting the Order. Hiding behind laws. Pretending the Ministry protects the innocent. All lies. You have choices today. Follow with us, or die."

Daphne circled behind her, fingers trailing along the edge of the desk, knocking papers into a fluttering mess.

"Oh, don't look so serious, Amelia," she said, tilting her head with a grin. "We just want to talk. It won't hurt... much."

Amelia's mouth opened, she tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Her wand flickered weakly in her hand, defensive, but every instinct told her it was useless.

"I won't leave with you," she said finally, voice quivering, trying to stand firm. "You will not take me—"

Mattheo's eyes narrowed, and his wand flicked toward the door. The world erupted in chaos. Sparks flew as the signal spread through the Ministry. Offices exploded into fire and smoke, ceiling panels splintered, raining debris. Screams echoed down the halls as Ministry employees tried to flee, most colliding with our team or the force of magic we unleashed.

Daphne rushed to the door, levitating a clerk by the scruff of his robes and smashing him into the wall. Lorenzo's wand swept through a group of fleeing aurors, curses cutting through them like knives through silk, bodies tumbling, groaning, blood dark against the polished floors.

Mattheo stepped into the room, voice cutting through the chaos. "Leave with us. Now. Or this entire Ministry will burn for your defiance."

"See, Amelia?" Daphne said, voice teasing. "We're not unreasonable. Just... persistent."

Amelia's wand rose again, feeble and shaking. Her mouth opened, trying to argue, trying to stand, trying to maintain control, as the world shifted violently.

Draco struck first, levitating a chair and hurling it across the office, smashing into the wall behind Amelia with a splintering crash. Sparks of fire erupted where the chair splintered. Amelia's body jerked with panic, and she fell back against her desk, hair falling into her eyes.

Mattheo's wand flicked, a precise hex cutting across her shoulder. Pain lanced through her, a hot, jagged scream tearing from her throat.

"I said leave," he snarled, stepping close, every ounce of cold fury in his voice amplified by the chaos surrounding us.

She shook her head, trembling but defiant. "Never," she whispered, teeth clenched.

That was the signal. Mattheo's hand rose, and Daphne's grin widened like a blade.

"All of you," he commanded, voice carrying across the room. "Make them feel what it means to defy us."

The Ministry erupted into full-scale assault. Desks were levitated, slammed into walls. Spells ripped through glass and wood, shattering everything in their paths. Screams of civilians and Ministry workers mingled with the sharp cracks of breaking bone as Daphne and Lorenzo moved in perfect, terrifying synchronization. Theo and Draco cut down any auror who tried to interfere.

Lorenzo was already in his element, a smirk curved over his lips as he weaved between the terrified Ministry staff. He didn't just cast spells, he toyed with them. A young auror tried to raise a shield, and he twirled, flicking his wand passively, sending a hex that shattered the shield and slammed the man into a filing cabinet. The thud was jarring, accompanied by a sharp crack of ribs breaking beneath the impact. Lorenzo bent close, whispering something too low to hear, just enough for me to catch the cruel glint in his eye as he finished the man with an unflinching curse.

Daphne was a hurricane. She levitated chairs, crates, and anyone who moved too fast, tossing them carelessly into walls. Sparks flew from her wand in rapid bursts, each one leaving scorched marks on stone and wood alike. She laughed a unsettling sound, as papers ignited and screams pierced the air. Every movement of hers was chaotic, violent, beautiful in its deadly precision, and terrifying.

Mattheo and Draco were different. Every hex they cast struck like a knife, leaving bodies crumpled, broken, or burning in a pool of dark, coagulating blood. I forced myself to keep up, wand flicking rapidly, every spell aimed at a threat, every curse deliberate. My gloves were slick with blood from a man I had struck in the chest with a forceful hex, ribs splitting beneath my curse. His gurgle of pain was raw and sharp, and I swallowed, forcing myself to aim at the next one.

I flinched and turned, just in time to see a young witch raise her wand at me. I reacted without thinking, firing a curse that hit her shoulder and sent her crashing into the edge of a marble table. The thud echoed. Blood smeared the floor, crimson and slick beneath my boots. I looked away, forcing myself to step over the body as I advanced.

Theo was faltering. I noticed it almost too late, the rigid precision, the calm he always carried, fractured slightly. A curse grazed his arm, burning flesh through his sleeve. Another hit the ground near his foot, sending splinters into his shoe. He froze for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to see the flicker of panic in his eyes.

I shoved myself toward him. "Nott!" I barked, voice hoarse. "I've got you!"

He glanced at me, jaw tight, trying to regain composure, but his wand trembled in his hand. I pushed past him, placing myself between him and the nearest threat. A man surged forward, wand flaring, and I reacted instinctively, striking him with a brutal jinx that sent him crashing into the wall. Wood splintered under his weight, blood blooming across the paneling where his head had struck.

Theo exhaled sharply, regaining his stance, wand ready, eyes narrowing as he leaned into me for just a fraction of a second, acknowledging the aid.

"Thanks," he muttered, voice low. I nodded, not pausing, there was no time.

We advanced through the hallways moving like shadows of death. Daphne laughed as she threw a group of aurors, slamming them into the ceiling beams before letting them drop with sickening thuds into the stone floor. Lorenzo was flitting between them, weaving curses that tore flesh and splintered bone, whispering cruel things as he executed each kill.

I struck a man who tried to raise a shield. My curse hit his chest, sternum fracturing audibly, sending him sprawling across the marble floor. He tried to crawl, only to have a splintered desk leg crash down, breaking his arm and shoulder. He gurgled, gasping for breath, and I pressed my wand to his temple, finishing the act without hesitation.

Through the smoke and debris, I caught sight of Mattheo. His movements were deadly poetry, every spell, every curse beautiful. Yet there was something in the way he surveyed the chaos, cold and detached, that made my stomach twist. He was a storm, unrelenting, unfeeling, and I had never felt smaller in my life. I watched as he disarmed a man mid-spell, then struck him with a spell that made his ribs collapse inward. Blood pooled around his body. Not a flinch, not a pause. Just pure efficiency.

I advanced again, stepping over bodies, weaving between fires and falling debris, wand striking whenever a threat appeared. I could hear screams, gurgles, and the wet crunch of broken limbs. The air reeked of smoke, iron, and fear. Every step was a battle. Every breath a challenge.

A man surged at Theo again, wand raised, and I reacted instantly, slamming my shoulder into him, sending him crashing into the wall. Splintered wood and blood followed. He hit the ground, convulsing, and I stepped back, wand ready, watching him struggle in vain. Theo didn't hesitate this time, striking with precise magic, and the man was still, bleeding into a spreading pool of red.

Daphne screeched, laughing, twirling in place, sending fire and curses in every direction. She grabbed another clerk by the scruff, slamming him repeatedly into walls until the splintered wood tore his clothes and flesh. I forced my eyes away, forcing myself to keep moving, heart hammering, stomach burning.

"Amelia!" Mattheo barked, and the focus shifted. The screams and chaos around us intensified. Ministry staff tried to raise shields, tried to fight, but the six of us were too fast, too lethal. Spells collided, glass shattered, bone cracked, blood sprayed.

We reached her office again. Amelia was standing defiantly, though trembling, eyes wide, wand trembling in her hand. Before I could catch my breath, Daphne lunged, shoving her against the wall. Mattheo's wand struck, precise and cutting, slashing along her shoulder, making her cry with pain.

I moved instinctively, cutting off anyone trying to interfere, curses striking fast and hard, aiming to incapacitate. A man surged from behind, and I slammed him into a desk with force, hearing the sickening crack of his shoulder. Blood bloomed across his robes, warm and sticky beneath my gloves.

Quickly, I moved next to Theo, pushing my shoulder into his back, placing myself between him and the next attack. My wand flashed, curses cutting through the threat before him. He exhaled sharply, grateful, but the strain was evident that even the most controlled among us could falter under this scale.

Amelia screamed, trying to resist, and that was the signal. Mattheo's eyes narrowed. Draco moved forward, and together they flanked her, wands striking, cutting off escape routes, her body recoiling from each hit. Daphne pressed forward, holding her in place with bursts of magic, laughing as Amelia struggled. Finally, Mattheo's sharp order cut through.

"Draco, restrain her!"

Draco's movements were instantaneous, almost inhuman. He stepped forward, pressing Amelia back, hands and wand working together to force her to her knees. She gasped, struggling, but there was no escaping the strength of his hold. Bloodied, terrified, and bruised, she sank to her knees, cornered, pinned in her office.

The chaos around us began to recede slightly, the Ministry staff either unconscious, fleeing, or incapacitated. But the air was thick with blood, smoke, and the metallic tang of fear. My chest heaved, mask pressing against my cheeks, hands shaking, wand slick with sweat and gore. I swallowed, forcing my breath steady, reminding myself that I had survived, that I had fought, that I had endured.

I looked at Theo, his jaw tight, shoulders trembling slightly, and felt a pang of something I couldn't name. Worry? Sympathy? It didn't matter. We were all survivors here, bound by the same cruelty we executed.

The office felt suffocating, thick with the metallic tang of blood, smoke curling through broken windows, and the acrid bite of fire still smoldering in the corners. Amelia knelt on the floor, restrained by Draco's solid grip, her robes torn and streaked with crimson, her eyes wide and panicked. Every muscle in her body trembled, a taut coil of fear and defiance, and I couldn't stop my own heart from lurching at the sight.

Outside the office, the sounds of chaos were growing louder again. Screams, curses, the crack of splintering wood, and the sharp, wet impacts of bodies hitting stone. The Ministry had begun to regroup. Aurors were circling, trying to coordinate, their green spells cutting across the hallways with deadly precision. A group of them converged inside the office, targeting Lorenzo, Draco, Mattheo, and Daphne as if the six of us weren't all instruments of terror.

"Stay here," Mattheo snapped at me, cold and sharp, eyes never leaving Amelia. But I didn't move. I couldn't. My chest was tight, fingers trembling around my wand.

The first of the Aurors struck at Lorenzo, who barely flinched. He striked and their chest exploded in a shower of blood, another's leg snapped beneath a curse that sent him sprawling into the wall. Yet there were too many of them, converging too fast, and the pressure mounted instantly.

Draco's wand flashed, cutting down a man charging from the side, but another struck him from behind, forcing him to stagger. Mattheo snarled, wand lashing, a hex smashing another auror into a doorway with a sickening crack of bone and wood. Daphne twirled, laughing, sending sparks in all directions, lifting one unlucky clerk and hurling her into the hallway wall.

The Aurors, desperate and coordinated, managed to force a small wedge through the chaos. A handful of them surged into the office, dragging the four of them out with curses, yanks, and brute force. Amelia stumbled to her knees again as the pressure on Draco and Mattheo grew, yelps of pain and curses flying from every direction.

Theo moved first, silent and controlled. I watched him approach Amelia, jaw tight, wand ready. His intent was clear, he was going to end it quickly, quietly, mercilessly.

"Wait," I whispered to myself. My stomach churned, fear curling through me, but I stepped forward instinctively, moving between Theo and Amelia.

He barely glanced at me. "I don't—"

"I'll do it," I said, voice trembling but firm. I raised my wand, drawing on everything I had learned, every brutal lesson Mattheo had hammered into me, every hour of training, every survival instinct.

"Avada—"

I froze. My lips moved, but the words felt wrong. My wand shuddered in my grip. I tried again. Sparks fizzled weakly, dissipating into the air like mist. I cursed under my breath, fingers white on the wand. My heart thudded painfully in my chest. I could feel Theo watching, measuring, judging.

Another attempt, another fizzle. The curses didn't hit, didn't hurt, didn't even ignite. Amelia's eyes flicked between us, realizing maybe that her fate wasn't sealed yet. A brief flicker of hope crossed her face. Then I heard it. Footsteps. Heavy, fast. The unmistakable click of boots on the Ministry floor. Mattheo. Daphne. Draco. Lorenzo.

"Step back!" Mattheo barked, voice cold, full of steel. Sparks of green magic shot past me as they barreled into the office, bodies slamming into desks, paper, and splintered wood. The aurors were caught off guard, scattered by a rapid sequence of precise, lethal curses.

I stumbled backward as the four of them surged past, Mattheo's wand carving a path toward Amelia. My heart froze as I looked toward the space where she had been standing.

She was gone.

My stomach twisted, a cold, sickening knot forming. The floor was scuffed, signs of the struggle visible, but no trace of her body remained.

"Where—" I began, but Mattheo's glare cut me off, freezing the words in my throat. His jaw was tight, his eyes dark, like storm clouds ready to break.

Daphne jumped, but even her laughter faltered, replaced by a sharp hiss.

"She's gone. Somehow, she's gone."

Lorenzo's smirk was gone too, replaced by something sharper.

"And you want to tell me exactly how?" he asked, voice low.

Draco's pale face was unreadable, but his wand had already swept along the office, scanning, measuring, calculating.

"She couldn't have gotten far," he muttered, voice clipped, "but she's fast, trained. Whoever helped her or whatever she used... she's gone."

Theo's jaw tightened, eyes narrowing, and he muttered something low under his breath. I could see his usual icy composure faltering, just slightly as he stared at the empty floor, the space where Amelia had been.

I pressed myself against the wall, shaking, wand still raised, realizing, she had escaped. Against all of us. Against everything we had thrown at her. My own failures, the faltering of my curses, the hesitance, had been a part of it.

Mattheo's voice cut through the haze, sharp and cold. "Search the building. Now."

But I couldn't move. My fingers were stiff, lungs burning, chest tight. I'd tried. I'd tried. But it hadn't been enough.

Draco's hand brushed past me as he stepped forward, muttering incantations to restrain remaining aurors. Daphne whirled, moving toward the windows to ensure no escape route remained. Lorenzo's voice cut sharp as he called out directions, weaving curses that kept the remaining staff in line.

I watched the space where Amelia had been, heart hammering, stomach twisting. I had failed. Theo's hand brushed mine briefly as a silent acknowledgment, almost imperceptible, but heavy. I nodded, not trusting my voice. Mattheo's boots clicked on the floor, making my limbs tremble.

"We will find her," he said, voice low, dangerous. "And when we do, she will not escape again."

I swallowed hard, pressing my mask tighter, forcing my shoulders straight. My hands were still shaking, my lungs still screaming, my mind racing, but I stepped forward again. We weren't done. I knew, deep down, that failure like this would only make him colder, harder, more merciless.

✦

The Apparition back to the safehouse hit like a blow, a lurching, stomach-dropping sensation that left me hollow and trembling. The world snapped into shape in the clearing outside the small, run-down house that had been our sanctuary, but sanctuary felt like a cruel joke now. Smoke still clung to my clothes, my hair matted with sweat and blood. My hands shook, wand still clutched tight, fingernails digging into the leather. Every breath was tight, every muscle wound up, every nerve alert.

Mattheo stepped out first, mask pressed firmly over his face, posture rigid, shoulders squared, his hands moving almost mechanically as if the horrors of the Ministry hadn't affected him at all. There was no word, no acknowledgement of what had happened, not a single sound. His silence was heavy and it gnawed at me more than any scream I had heard in the past twenty-four hours.

Daphne, flitting past him, exhaled sharply, twisting her wand, checking the perimeter. She moved like a live wire, chaotic, untouchable, but even her usual spark had dulled slightly. She flitted in short bursts, fingers twitching, eyes scanning the shadows. Lorenzo leaned against the side of the house, watching the trees, smirking faintly, but his grin didn't reach his eyes. Draco stood apart, unmoving, wand in hand, grim and silent as always.

Theo stepped out beside me, mask slightly askew, hair damp with sweat and grime. His hands flexed and tightened around his wand. I could see the tremor in his fingers, subtle but real. His eyes were wide, alert, haunted. We didn't speak at first. The weight of the Ministry incident pressed down on all of us, but especially on Theo and me. Mattheo's unspoken expectations, his brutal scrutiny, made the air itself heavy, and I could feel my stomach knotting with tension.

Finally, as the others dispersed, some checking the perimeter, others dragging supplies inside, Theo sank to the ground, leaning against the wall of the house. I followed instinctively, crouching beside him, letting the mask off so I could breathe more easily.

The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. My chest ached with every heartbeat, still tasting the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. The images of Amelia Bones, bruised and terrified, and of the other Ministry staff flashed through my mind, unbidden and relentless. The weight of what we had done, what we had to do, pressed down on me like iron.

Theo's voice finally broke the silence, low, trembling slightly, almost swallowed by the night air. "I don't want to turn into him," he whispered, eyes downcast. His hands flexed in his lap, fingers twitching as though he were trying to squeeze the thought out of his mind.

I looked at him sharply, mask half-off, eyes wide. "Your father?" I asked softly.

He nodded, jaw tight. "Yes. I can feel it, sometimes. The way I think, the way I move, the way I cast, all of it. I see myself in his eyes, in the way I push people, in the way I don't hesitate. I don't want to be that man, Aurelia. That monster. But every day, every mission, I feel closer to him and I fucking hate it."

My chest constricted. I wanted to say something, anything to make it better, but I didn't know how. Words felt fragile, worthless. I pressed my hand lightly to my wand, trying to steady myself as well, reminding myself I was still alive, still breathing, still capable.

I swallowed, voice tight. "Theo, I know." My words were small, shaky. "I feel it too. The things we do, the way Mattheo expects us to be, it's like we're walking that line every single day. And sometimes, I think I'm falling closer than I want to admit."

Theo's gaze flicked up at me, sharp, haunted. For a moment, he looked like a boy instead of the machine of precision he usually was. "Aurelia..." he whispered. "You make it, I don't know... easier, somehow. To feel like I'm not completely lost in it."

I blinked, taken aback, my throat tight. "I feel the same with you," I admitted softly. "It's easier, somehow, to see someone else faltering, someone else scared and know I'm not the only one."

Theo exhaled shakily, leaning back against the wall, staring up at the sky as though searching for some fragment of calm. "I hate that we feel this way," he murmured. "I hate that I'm scared of myself, scared of what I could become. I hate that I can't stop thinking about it every second, about every life we've taken, every scream."

I nodded, fingers tightening on my wand. "I know," I whispered, voice barely audible. "Every mission, every person, I see their faces after, when I try to sleep. I hear their screams when I close my eyes. And Mattheo never lets us forget. He doesn't even acknowledge it. He expects it, and he expects us to feel nothing. But I... I can't. And I'm terrified that one day I'll be as cold as him. As him."

Theo's eyes finally found mine, wide and glistening. "Do you think... do you think he's ever... scared? Of himself?"

I hesitated. "I don't know," I admitted. "I've seen him falter once, maybe twice. But... it's different. He doesn't let anyone see it. He uses it. He turns it into fire, into cruelty. And for that, he's terrifying."

Theo exhaled sharply, jaw tight. "And that's what scares me. That's what keeps me awake."

The silence returned, heavier this time, wrapping around us like a shroud. The distant sounds of the safehouse, the wind in the trees, the faint scuffing of boots on stone, the occasional shuffle of the others moving inside all felt distant, muted, unimportant. Theo's hands trembled slightly in his lap, fingers brushing his wand absently. I watched him, feeling an aching, sharp pang of empathy and fear.

"Do you think we'll ever be okay?" he whispered finally, voice raw. "Do you think we can survive all of this and not become monsters?"

I swallowed, heart hammering. "I don't know," I admitted, voice trembling.

He nodded slowly, eyes still fixed on the darkened treetops, as if trying to carve a space of calm from the night. "I don't want to lose myself, Aurelia," he said, voice low. "I don't want to be like him. But every day it feels like a little of me disappears and I'm scared I won't recognize myself soon."

I pressed my hand to his, careful not to disturb the grip on our wands, heart clenching. "I know," I whispered again. "And I'm terrified too. But we're not alone. Not yet."

The coldness of the night pressed down around us, the shadows stretching long across the clearing. From the doorway of the safehouse, Mattheo's boots clicked sharply against the stone, cutting through the silence. His shadow stretched toward us, long and precise, hands at his sides, wand in grip. His mask was in place, eyes unreadable.

"You two," he said, voice low, sharp. "Get inside. Now."

Theo and I exchanged a glance, hearts still hammering, and rose slowly, shakily. The weight of what had happened at the Ministry still pressed down, heavy and suffocating. The memory of Amelia, of her defiance, of the chaos and blood, it was still raw, still vivid.

Mattheo didn't look at us again, didn't speak more than necessary. He turned sharply, striding into the safehouse, leaving us to follow in tense, silent obedience. His coldness, his brutal control, was a knife-edge that cut through the quiet between us, and I felt myself trembling again, gripping my wand, heart hammering, as Theo and I moved after him.

We entered the safehouse, shadows stretching along the walls, the faint smell of smoke still clinging in the corners. The silence of the house was suffocating, unbroken except for the soft scuff of boots. No one spoke. No one acknowledged the weight of what we had done, or the fact that Amelia had escaped. Theo and I sank onto the steps outside, pressed close together, trying to steady our shaking limbs, while Mattheo, Daphne, Lorenzo, and Draco moved inside. The quiet pressed down, heavy and suffocating. Every creak of the floor, every whisper of wind through the trees outside, felt amplified, and I pressed my mask tighter, forcing myself not to cry.

Theo's voice was low, trembling as he leaned against me. "I don't know how much longer I can do this," he admitted.

I swallowed, squeezing my wand tighter. "I know," I whispered. "But we keep going. Because we have to. Because if we don't, they'll break us anyway."

The wind rustled the trees outside. The shadows pressed against us, long and dark, like the things we had done and the things we still had to do. Mattheo's cold presence inside the house, the silence, the unspoken expectations, pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating. I pressed my forehead to my knees, gripping my wand, heart hammering, and prayed silently, desperately that I would survive the next day, that we all would, and that we could both hold onto some fragment of who we still were.

After the silence passed and everyone had retreated to other duties around the safehouse, I found myself in the bathroom. My hands shook as I pulled at the straps of the death eater outfit, undoing the clasps slowly, as if the fabric itself were a chain keeping me tethered to what I had just done.

I stood there for a moment, hesitating, heart hammering in my chest. The mask came off first, sliding from my face, and I let it fall with a quiet clatter onto the floor. I could feel the sweat caking under it, the grime and blood from the fight sticking to my skin. My chest heaved as I took a shaky breath, trying to force the adrenaline to calm, trying to convince myself that I was fine, that I was still alive, that I could still breathe.

Then my hands moved to the rest of the outfit. I peeled away the black fabric slowly, carefully, each piece a weight lifted but also a reminder. The robes were torn in places, bloodied and damp, streaked with the crimson of both my victims and my own wounds. My gloves came off last, leaving my hands trembling and sticky with sweat and coagulated blood. I finally stood before the mirror, bare except for the underclothes I had been too exhausted to strip yet. My reflection stared back at me, unflinching. The sight was almost enough to make me collapse.

My hair was matted, streaked with red, white strands clinging to my forehead and cheeks. My eyes were wide, dark-rimmed from exhaustion and terror, pupils darting as if expecting the ghosts of the dead to emerge from the shadows behind me. There were flecks of blood on my arms, my chest, my legs. My skin was pale, sickly, almost translucent under the dim light of the bedroom.

I swallowed hard and shook my head, as if the motion could dislodge the images etched into my mind. The screams, the wet thuds of bodies hitting stone, the metallic tang in the air at the Ministry, I could still taste it, still smell it clinging to me.

I didn't even notice that I was trembling until I opened the bathroom door and flicked on the light. Steam curled faintly from the shower as I turned the knob, letting the water run hot, scalding. The sound of it filling the small, cramped space made my stomach twist, coiling tighter with every tick of the second hand on the clock above the mirror.

Slowly, almost robotically, I stepped in, letting the water cascade over me. It hit my skin like fire, washing over the blood and grime that coated me, but even as it flowed down my body, drenching me, rinsing away the visible stains, I knew it would never cleanse what I carried inside.

I sank to my knees in the warm water, letting it pound against my shoulders and face. I scrubbed my skin raw, fingers clawing at every inch, trying to peel away the guilt, the memory, the horror. The water turned a thick red as the blood mixed with sweat and soap, spiraling down the drain, carrying away pieces of me that I would never reclaim.

But it wasn't enough.

The bile hit me first, a sharp, burning twist in my stomach, and I vomited into the drain. The liquid was acidic, bitter, spiked with the metallic tang of iron, the remnants of adrenaline and fear. I gagged, retched again, trying to purge the taste of the Ministry, of the screams, of the blood from my mouth, but it came back up, over and over. Each heave left my throat raw, muscles quivering, stomach heaving violently, and still I didn't stop.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip my hair, scrubbing at it under the water, trying to wash away not just the grime but the memory of every face I had seen in those hallways. I saw Amelia Bones' terrified eyes flashing behind my lids, Lockwood's body convulsing as curses tore across him, the screaming aurors as we rained fire down on them. I tried to scrub the images from my skin, but they had seeped too deep.

Water poured down my face, over my arms and down into the drain. Each convulsion of vomiting made my chest and stomach burn, my knees buckle beneath me. I could feel my strength waning, could feel the raw, unfiltered horror and guilt bleeding into my bones.

I scrubbed at my hair until the strands felt like sandpaper, fingers raw and blistering. I clawed at my skin until it was pink, until it burned and stung with each movement. The shower head hissed, water spat like tiny knives against my body, and I welcomed it, welcomed the pain, welcomed the illusion that it might somehow absolve me.

My throat ached, raw from retching. My hands shook uncontrollably. I vomited again, dry heaves mingling with hot liquid that stung my throat and lips. My knees were bruised, scraped from where I had fallen to the shower floor, water pooling around me. The steam and heat made it hard to see, hard to think, but every time I blinked, every time I tried to steady my breath, the images came back, the screams, the blood, the faces.

I leaned against the wall, letting the water pour over me, hands trembling violently, tears streaking over my cheeks even though I tried to keep my face down, hidden. I couldn't stop thinking about Theo, his haunted eyes as we left the Ministry, and about Amelia, gone, slipping through our fingers, alive when she should have been dead. I thought about Mattheo, his eyes harsh and unforgiving, and I felt myself shrinking inside, crushed under the weight of what he expected of me.

I tried to tell myself I was strong. I was strong. I had survived, I had killed, I had done what was necessary. But the water couldn't wash away the guilt. My hands were raw, my skin a mess of scratches and abrasions, my stomach twisting and twisting with each dry heave. I vomited again, bile and water mixing in a bitter, acidic swirl, and I pressed my forehead against the tiles, sobs catching in my throat.

I thought of Theo again, trembling beside me on the steps outside the safehouse. His hands had been shaking too, and I had seen the same horror in his eyes, the same terror at what we were becoming. But even as I thought that, even as I remembered, my own shaking hands couldn't stop. My body convulsed violently, and I hurled once more, water splashing back at me, steam curling around my body in thick clouds.

I wanted to stop, wanted to lie down, wanted to curl into a ball and disappear into nothing, but I couldn't. I forced myself to stay upright, scrubbed at my hair again, clawed at the red streaks in my white strands until they were pink and frayed. The water ran red around me, and I didn't care. The metallic taste in my mouth, the burning in my throat, the raw ache in my muscles, it didn't matter.

I vomited until my stomach was empty, until my throat burned raw and my limbs trembled with exhaustion. My chest heaved, my shoulders shaking, my hands quivering until I could barely hold the shampoo or soap. But the guilt remained. Every image, every scream, every flash of blood and death lingered, settled in my bones, refused to leave.

Finally, exhausted, trembling, raw and shivering under the scalding water, I sank to my knees again. My arms pressed against my stomach, my hair plastered to my skin, blood and water and sweat dripping into the drain. My throat was raw, my mouth tasted of iron and acid. I closed my eyes, letting the water cascade over me, trying desperately to wash away what I couldn't, to scrub clean what would never be clean. But no matter how many times I vomited, how many times I scrubbed and clawed and burned myself under the water, the weight of it, the blood, the screams, the lives taken, the screams I hadn't saved, the screams I had caused, would not leave me.

When the water finally ran clear, I forced myself to shut it off. My body trembled from more than the cold. Knees weak, throat raw, skin burning where I'd scrubbed it raw, I pulled myself to my feet, leaning on the wall for balance. The steam had fogged the mirror, but I didn't wipe it clean, I didn't want to see what I looked like now.

I dried myself with a towel that smelled faintly of mildew and smoke, rough against my over-scrubbed skin. My hair, still damp, clung heavy and tangled down my back. I dug through the small trunk at the foot of the bed until I found something to wear, an old shirt, threadbare and faded, and pyjama pants with holes at the knees, the fabric soft only because of how many times it had been washed, worn, clung to. The clothes smelled faintly of dust and disuse, but they were mine, and in a world where even that was rare, I pulled them on with shaky hands.

The mirror still loomed behind the steam as I ran fingers through my tangled white hair. No amount of combing could undo the knots, but I tried anyway, if only to give my hands something to do. I smoothed the shirt against my body, tucked trembling fingers under the frayed hem, and forced myself to stand straighter. I had to be composed. I had to look unbroken, no matter how hollow I felt inside.

I opened the bathroom door. The hallway was dim, lit only by a flickering lantern near the far wall. The air was still, heavy with dust and silence. Standing there, leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed loosely, shadows cutting harsh across his face, was Mattheo.

My chest tightened, breath catching hard in my throat. For a moment, neither of us moved. His dark eyes locked on mine, unreadable, heavy, searching. He didn't say anything. I didn't either. Words would have been too fragile, too dangerous, too much. The silence between us said more than language could ever manage.

I straightened my back, forced my shoulders higher even though they shook. I tried to hold my head up, to make it look like I was fine, like I wasn't still trembling, like I hadn't just been on the bathroom floor vomiting until my throat bled. My lips pressed together in a thin line, and I made myself move, one step forward, then another, then past him.

I could feel his gaze following me, burning into my back, catching every stutter in my stride, every quake in my fingers. The floorboards creaked under my bare feet as I walked away, but my body betrayed me. My arms trembled, my breath was uneven, my steps were unsteady. The silence pressed down on me heavier than any scream, heavier than the blood still staining my memory.

As I reached the corner of the hall, I risked one final glance over my shoulder. Mattheo was still there, watching. Still silent. His face a mask, his eyes a storm I couldn't read. Then, slowly, he pushed off the wall and slipped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with a quiet, final click. I turned back, shaking, my throat dry, my chest tight, and walked on into the shadows of the safehouse.

Chapter Text

The morning air was sharp and biting, our clothing carrying the faint smell of smoke from yesterdays assault on the Ministry. I stood in the yard of the safehouse, arms crossed, my wand at the ready, watching the others move through the rough-hewn training ground Mattheo had set up. Wooden dummies, crudely carved targets, and piles of broken furniture were scattered across the yard, each scarred from previous practice. Mattheo didn't waste time on niceties. His cold eyes swept over all of us like each one of us were merely disposable.

"Form a line," he barked, his voice low, commanding, carrying the kind of authority that made you move before you even realized it. "No mistakes or hesitation. Unforgivables first. Then combat."

I swallowed hard, my stomach twisting. My muscles still ached from the Ministry mission, my body and mind exhausted, but Mattheo didn't care. He never did.

"Avery," he said, sharp as a knife. My head snapped up. His gray eyes were locked on mine, and I felt my pulse spike. "With me."

I nodded, heart hammering, gripping my wand tighter. He didn't smile, didn't hesitate. He simply drew his own wand and stepped in front of me, stance perfect, eyes bleak and calculating. Mattheo stepped closer and said nothing, just gestured sharply with his wand. The air shimmered around us as we practiced the first unforgivable. I swallowed hard, focusing on controlling my breathing.

"Crucio," he hissed, and my wand was up before I fully realized it.

The target appeared, a wooden dummy rigged with faint magical resistance. Mattheo's eyes never left mine as I aimed. I could feel the tension in my arms, the heat of anticipation crawling along my spine. My curse hit the dummy, sparks dancing along its wood like fire. He barked sharply.

"Faster. Harder. More control. I see hesitation, Avery."

I blinked, stunned, my pulse racing. "I... I—"

"I have not asked you to speak of words other than a curse."

I tried again. The curse ripped out of me, jagged and raw, hitting the dummy with a crack that made the splintered wood spray in tiny shards. Mattheo stepped closer, wand poised, and smirked just slightly, a cruel tilt of the lips.

"Better. But not enough."

My hands were shaking, sweat prickling the back of my neck. Every fiber of me wanted to cry, wanted to run, wanted to hide. But he didn't let you hide. He moved in, forcing me to adjust my stance, correcting my posture with precise, rigid movements.

"Wider base. Elbows tucked. Eyes on the target, not your wand hand." His fingers pressed sharply at my shoulders, pushing me into the right position. His touch was rough but efficient, making me unable to flinch.

Then he paired the next exercise, combat. "Hit me Avery," he said flatly.

I hesitated. My hands were trembling. My legs wanted to give out. But the controlling glint in his eyes pushed me forward. I lunged, wand raised, curses ready.

"Stupefy"

He dodged with a fluid, inhuman grace, countering with precise strikes, each one knocking me back, forcing me to react faster, sharper. I stumbled, tripped over the uneven ground, but he didn't hesitate to jab me with a hex that burned my shoulder.

"Again," he snapped.

My body screamed, but I went again. Each spell I cast, each movement, was corrected instantly. He was merciless, pushing me to the edge of my skill, stripping away hesitation, forcing me to respond before my mind caught up.

Around us, the others were at work. Daphne's laughter cut through the morning air as she sent a fireball screaming toward a dummy, spinning and leaping with pure joy. Lorenzo moved like a water, weaving curses with charming cruelty, grinning as each hit tore through targets or smashed wooden bodies across the yard. Mattheo's voice cut through all the chaos again, low and deadly.

"Control yourself. Pain is fine. Hesitation is not. You fail me, I correct you."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. His words were sharp, cruel, designed to wound just enough to ignite fear. My hands were trembling, my fingers slick with sweat as I tried to steady my wand. My body wanted to give out, my mind wanted to collapse, but I forced myself forward.

We moved to physical combat. He circled me, strikes coming fast, forcing me to parry, dodge, counter. Each blow I deflected was precise, but every strike he landed on me burned through my defenses, leaving me raw and screaming inside.

"Hit harder," he barked when I feinted too slowly. "Predict me, anticipate me. Don't flinch. You flinch, you're weak. When you're weak, you're useless to me."

I faltered for a fraction of a second, a fraction that felt like an eternity, and he jabbed my side with a curse that left me gasping. My teeth clenched, and I felt tears sting my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I lunged again, twisting my wrist to send the curse faster, sharper. It hit him squarely in the chest, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I had done it right. Mattheo didn't flinch. He caught the magic midair, turning it aside, then countered with a hex that slammed into my shoulder, sending me staggering back a step. Pain exploded through me, white-hot, but I didn't cry out. I couldn't.

"Stand," he said, his voice low, calm, but bitter.

I forced my legs to straighten, fingers clutching my wand so tightly they ached. My breathing was ragged, lungs burning. Sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging. I blinked it away, trying to focus.

Mattheo circled me, wand poised, eyes scanning every twitch of my muscles, every shallow breath, every flicker of fear. "Physical," he said. "You hit me. Properly."

I lunged forward, wand in hand, but he stepped aside with practised speed. My shoulder slammed into his chest, not hard enough, and he pushed me back, hard, knocking me onto the ground. I hit the dirt with a grunt, breath knocked out of me, and for a second I saw stars.

Mattheo didn't give me a second to recover. He bent down, lifted me by my shoulders roughly, shoving me upright. "You think the Order will give you a second chance?" he snapped, pressing his wand to my chest briefly, sparks licking at my robes. "No. They kill you."

I flinched, swallowing the rising panic. My wand hand shook. My legs felt weak. My vision swam. He released me abruptly, stepping back.

I launched myself forward, heart hammering, casting the Cruciatus curse with all my strength. The spell hit too weak. He sidestepped, flicking his wand, striking me lightly across the ribs with a counter-jinx. Pain seared through me, white-hot, making me gasp and stagger.

"Stop thinking!" he barked. "Stop caring! Control, Avery. Control!"

I tried again, my magic wild, jagged. Sparks flew, the air thick with heat. I slammed into him, forcing my body into the attack, wincing as my shoulder caught a strike he hadn't blocked, the pain was sharp, raw. I gasped, staggering back, fingers gripping my wand until they ached.

Mattheo pressed forward, closing the distance, wand at my chest, his face inches from mine. "Weak," he said softly, venomous, his eyes cold steel. "Pathetic. You think surviving is enough? You think just breathing makes you strong? It doesn't."

I swallowed hard, heart hammering, trying to block the sting of tears in my eyes. My muscles ached, my lungs burned, but I forced myself to stand taller, gripping my wand tighter.

He circled me again, slow, deliberate, like a predator enjoying the panic it evokes. "You're learning nothing from hesitation. I watch you falter. I see your fear. I feel it in your weakness. Do you understand, Avery?"

"Yes," I whispered, barely audible, choking on my own fear and exhaustion.

"Good." He snapped his wand suddenly. A sharp hex hit the ground near my feet, throwing dirt and debris. "Move. Attack. Don't think. Don't feel. Don't hesitate. Kill the hesitation."

I lunged, casting every hex I could, twisting, dodging, striking, sweat and blood mixing with dirt on my arms and face. Each blow he countered, each strike he deflected. Sparks and scorch marks streaked the air, the yard littered with scorch marks, divots, and broken wood from the earlier dummies.

Finally, I faltered. My wand hand shook uncontrollably, my legs gave slightly, and my heart sank. My chest heaved, lungs burning, and I realized I couldn't continue at full speed.

Mattheo stepped forward instantly, slamming the flat of his wand against my shoulder, forcing me upright. "Weak!" he hissed. His eyes blazed, cold fury radiating from him. "Do you think this is acceptable?"

I swallowed, shaking, trying to steady my breathing. "But..."

"No!" He slammed his wand again, close enough that sparks leapt onto my robes. "I don't care if your arms are shaking, if your lungs burn, if your heart feels like it will explode. I don't care! You will perform. You will survive, you will learn."

I could barely nod, tears stinging my eyes, throat tight, chest heaving. Pain radiated through every muscle. I wanted to collapse. To curl up and hide. To disappear. Instead, I lifted my wand again. My hands trembled. My knees threatened to buckle. Mattheo watched, silent now, letting me struggle, forcing me to push through the panic, the fear, the exhaustion.

I lunged forward again. This time, my hexes were sharper, cleaner, faster. Sparks hit him squarely, he countered, but didn't move away as quickly. He circled, striking, pressing, forcing me to anticipate and react in rhythm with him. My shoulder stung from repeated blows, my ribs ached, but I forced myself forward again and again.

My body was raw, lungs burning, arms trembling so violently I could barely hold my wand. My robes were scuffed, my hair damp with sweat, my skin streaked with dirt and blood from minor scrapes.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Mattheo stepped back, chest heaving slightly. He didn't speak, didn't smile. But his gaze held a measure of approval, it was faint, imperceptible to anyone else, but I felt it. I dropped to my knees, hands shaking violently, heart hammering. My lungs screamed, my body was raw from spells and hexes and physical strikes. Sweat stung my eyes, mixing with dirt and blood from previous scratches and fights.

Mattheo's voice cut through the noise of my ragged breaths. "Weak. But you survived. Barely. That's all I ask for now. Barely."

I swallowed, forcing my hands to stop trembling, forcing myself upright, forcing my mask of composure back in place. Around us, the others paused, watching, a mixture of awe, fear, and anticipation in their eyes. Daphne grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Not bad Auri," she teased, but the glint in her eyes reminded me that it was a compliment laced with danger.

Lorenzo smirked, twirling his wand between his fingers. "Could've been worse," he drawled.

Draco's gray eyes flicked briefly to mine, cold and unreadable, before he returned to his target practice, silent judgment in every glance. Theo gave me a small nod, almost imperceptible, but it grounded me. Mattheo didn't smile. He didn't say more. He simply watched, grim and relentless, the storm at the center of the yard, shaping us, breaking us, forcing every ounce of strength, skill, and fear into submission. I clenched my fists, heart hammering. My body ached. My mind was raw. But I was alive. I had survived him, if only barely.

The yard was a storm of motion. Mattheo's attention had finally shifted, pairing off the others. My chest still heaved as I tried to catch my breath, but the chaos around me was relentless. Sparks flew from wands, curses streaking through the air with violent hiss and crack.

Draco moved first. Pale, sharp, and rigorous, his gray eyes cut through the air like blades. He didn't waste time with theatrics, each hex was calculated, lethal in intent. I could see the subtle flex of his fingers as he split a dummy in half, its charred remains spitting embers into the morning. When Daphne lunged forward, her usual chaos barely contained, Draco's movements adjusted without hesitation.

Daphne laughed, wild and unhinged, twirling her wand in erratic arcs, sending fire shooting into the air. The sparks struck targets indiscriminately, it's wooden posts splintered, the ground scorched, a dummy exploding into splinters midair. She shrieked as she leapt, flipping backward, wand raised, throwing curses like a conductor gone mad.

Draco's eyes flicked toward her just once. Then, with an almost imperceptible flick of his wand, he countered, a shield hex catching her fire midair, snapping it harmlessly to the side, his wand already spinning to deliver a sharp curse aimed at her leg. She shrieked again, laughter breaking into a growl, and spun around to face him, wand swinging wildly.

I could see her nails digging into the earth as she crouched, almost feral, leaping toward him. Draco didn't flinch. He sidestepped gracefully, ducking under a swinging curse, countering with a sharp, cutting jinx to her ribs that made her grunt and stagger. Her hair flew wild across her face as she spun, launching herself again, screams of exhilaration mixing with the sharp crack of wood and sparks of magic.

Theo moved with quiet intensity beside me, jaw tight, wand gripped so hard his knuckles shone white. Lorenzo was in his line of sight, smirking carelessly, tossing curses with calculated ease. But Theo's style was different, more repressed. Each spell aimed not to miss, each movement conserving strength and ensuring impact. Lorenzo twirled, dodging Theo's first hex, letting it bounce harmlessly off a post behind him.

"Come on, Theo," he drawled, grin wide, "you're too stiff. Relax, enjoy it." But his amusement didn't hide the razor-sharp precision of his own attacks. He sent a rapid series of jinxes at Theo, each one snapping through the air like whips.

Theo's wand moved in near silence, countering, deflecting, hitting, stepping closer with unyielding purpose. Lorenzo laughed, dancing back, but each step was forced, Theo wasn't letting him gain ground. When Theo's curse cracked against Lorenzo's side, blood spattered onto the ground.

He only flicked it off with a grin, smirk widening. "That's it? Really?"

Daphne, still circling Draco, was a tempest. Fire, curses, leaps, flips, everything she did screamed chaos. Draco's precision never faltered. He blocked a flaming hex, jabbed another to send her spinning into the ground, barely grazing her with the corner of a curse designed to bruise. Her laughter rang out, delighted and sharp, as she scrambled to her feet, twirling back toward him.

I felt a pang of awe and fear. Watching them fight was like watching nature itself tear into itself. The ground was already littered with evidence of their cruelty, shattered dummies, scorched earth, splintered wood, scorch marks, the occasional faintly magical "blood" from training constructs simulating injury.

Theo advanced slowly, carefully, while Lorenzo whirled around him, flipping backwards, casting curses that snapped against Theo's shields with sparks. One of Theo's hexes hit Lorenzo's arm hard enough to make him stagger back. He grinned wider, licking the imaginary blood from his lips like it was a game.

"Careful, Theo. You don't want to hurt me too much."

Theo didn't smile. He didn't hesitate. Another hex, precise, clean, aimed at Lorenzo's chest. Lorenzo barely caught it with a shield, but Theo followed immediately with a Cruciatus curse aimed at his side. I flinched. Even though it was practice, the intensity of it, the realness of pain made me gulp. Lorenzo twisted, cursed in frustration, then leapt backward with a laugh, agile and alive, dodging the follow-up like a predator.

Draco and Daphne's fight had escalated into full contact. Daphne screamed with excitement, vaulting over splintered wood, sending fire curling toward Draco. He dodged, countering with a sharp spell that struck her thigh, drawing an exaggerated gasp, not quite real, but close enough to make the air thick with tension. She retaliated, sending a jagged burst of magic toward him, which he caught midair, redirecting it like it weighed nothing.

I gritted my teeth, keeping my own practice sharp even as I observed. Each fight was a lesson in cruelty, efficiency, and precision. I could feel my muscles learning to anticipate, my reflexes sharpening, even my mind registering the ways Mattheo was forcing me to process fear and pain simultaneously.

Daphne landed a heavy kick to Draco's side, and he stumbled, but only barely. He spun back with a silent hiss of effort, wand flashing like silver, striking her mid-leap. Her back hit the dirt hard, sending a spatter of mud into the air. She roared and sprang up immediately, grinning, claws at the edge of her wand as if to rend him by hand. Draco's gray eyes flicked to me, assessing, then back to her, unshaken and calculating.

Theo and Lorenzo's duel had reached a standoff. Lorenzo was bleeding lightly from a hex to the arm, Theo's face was pale, jaw tight. For a moment, both men stood, panting, eyes locked, and I realized just how thin the line was between control and chaos, restraint and full-blown carnage.

"Move!" Mattheo barked suddenly. His voice cut through everything like steel. "Push harder! No hesitation! Kill or be killed! Every strike matters!"

Daphne screeched, throwing herself at Draco again, sparks scattering like shards of glass. Theo dove forward at Lorenzo, hexes whipping through the air with brutal efficiency.

By the time the sun was fully up, sweat and grime coating every one of us, the yard looked like a battlefield full of charred earth, splintered wood, scorched grass, and a haze of smoke curling from the scorched dummies. Every one of us was breathing hard, muscles screaming, but none of us had faltered. Not Mattheo, not Draco, not Daphne, not Theo, not Lorenzo and not me. Mattheo stepped back finally, wand lowering slightly, gray eyes sweeping over the group.

"Pathetic," he said flatly, but there was no malice, just judgment. "Barely alive, barely competent. But alive." He looked at me specifically.

The yard felt smaller now, suffocating almost, as Mattheo stepped toward me. His gray eyes were sharp, calculating, and for the first time I noticed the faint curve of his jaw, set so tight it made my stomach twist.

"Now," he said, voice low and controlled, "we run a mock raid. I want aggression, speed, precision. Failure is not an option."

He split us quickly. "Strike team: Avery, Malfoy, Berkshire. You will move through the house as though it's an Order safehouse, you break in, you take down everyone inside. Defenders: Greengrass, Nott, and I will be hiding inside, resistance expected. Do not underestimate us."

"Move!" he barked, and we scattered.

Draco fell into step beside me immediately, wand poised, eyes scanning the interior with sharp precision. Lorenzo leaned back slightly, casually grinning, but there was a tautness in his movements, this wasn't a game for him. I followed closely, heart hammering, wand ready, ears straining for any movement from inside.

The house was dark, shadows pooling in the corners. Mattheo had set up small barricades and furniture to simulate an actual safehouse. My hands shook as I edged forward, stepping over splintered boards, crouching low, wand ready.

Draco moved silently, every step calculated. "Left," he whispered, voice flat, and I adjusted, gliding behind him as he advanced toward the living room. Lorenzo followed, light on his feet, already flicking minor hexes at imaginary targets.

A sudden flare of light from the kitchen, Daphne, laughing, flipping upside down behind a counter. Theo crouched beside her, expression cold, wand sharp.

"Surprise!" Daphne shrieked, flicking her wand. A hex slammed into Lorenzo's shoulder. He staggered, grinned, and fired back with a sharp jinx aimed low. Sparks collided in midair, crackling. I ducked instinctively as the magic ricocheted, scorching the wall behind me.

Draco moved in front, blocking a wild curse with a shield charm. I pressed forward, wand flicking, casting a minor cutting curse aimed at Theo's leg. He twisted just enough to avoid it, smirking at my effort.

"Faster!" Draco snapped, voice flat. "Eyes open. Anticipate!"

I swallowed, muscles trembling as I hurled curses, dodged sparks, slammed into a splintered chair for cover. Lorenzo was darting back and forth beside me, fast, efficient, grinning as he launched a hex that clipped the corner of the counter, it exploded in a small fireball. Daphne shrieked, twirling backward, sending another expulso in my direction. I barely dodged, feeling the heat brush my arm.

Theo's movements were silent and deadly as ever. He deflected a curse from Lorenzo, countering with a cutting jinx that grazed his ribs. Lorenzo yelped, grinned wider, and pushed forward anyway. I lunged again, swinging my wand in a wide arc. Sparks flew, catching the corner of the counter, sending Daphne staggering back. Draco moved with me, his wand a silent extension of his arm, blocking her follow-up attacks, striking at her in sharp, cold jabs.

A hex slammed into the wall behind me, splintering the wood. I ducked, countered, felt the slight sting as my own magic hit its mark. Mattheo twisted and sent a sharp curse toward Lorenzo. Draco moved to intercept, deflecting it effortlessly. The room was chaos, sparks, flying dust, the smell of scorched wood, shouts, laughter, the chaos of Daphne cutting against the calculated precision of Draco and Theo.

I lunged at Theo with everything I had, feeling my chest heave, muscles trembling. He twisted, barely avoiding the attack, and I stumbled past him, crashing into the counter. My wand flicked wildly, striking a piece of furniture that splintered under the force. Daphne gasped, laughing, and launched herself at me, but Draco intercepted, stepping in, wand snapping a shield charm that threw her back.

Lorenzo grinned, bleeding slightly from the minor hex Theo had landed, and moved to flank me. I forced my legs to obey, heart hammering, wand flicking as I tried to anticipate every movement, every hex, every attack. My body was raw, lungs burning, sweat stinging my eyes, and still Mattheo's voice echoed in my head. Every movement was a battle against exhaustion, fear, and the edge of panic. Each hex I cast, each dodge, each strike was a small victory, but the weight of it pressed down, bone-deep, muscle-deep.

Finally, Mattheo barked, "Enough!" The air went still for a fraction of a second, and I sagged against the wall, gasping, body trembling, wand clattering to my side.

He turned to the others, dismissing them with a gesture, leaving me leaning against the wall, breathing hard, feeling the weight of both pride and humiliation, alive, yes, but still not enough for him.

We gathered in the living room without words, the silence thick and unbroken except for the echo of our ragged breathing. There was only one couch, springs broken, fabric torn and a coffee table so battered it sagged in the middle like a snapped spine.

Daphne flopped down first, laughing faintly under her breath, hair wild, cheeks flushed like she'd just come from a party instead of combat. She tugged her boots off with quick jerks, tossing them into the corner. "That," she said, still half-giggling, "was fucking brilliant."

Draco didn't answer. He sat at the far end of the couch, composed as always, though his collar was askew and there was ash smeared along his jaw. His breathing was controlled, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed him. Theo leaned against the wall near the door, one hand clutching his stomach. His face was pale, drawn. He hadn't spoken since the mock raid ended, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the room.

Lorenzo perched casually on the ruined coffee table, smirking, tapping his wand against his knee like he was still buzzing with leftover energy. His gaze slid between us all, too bright, too amused. He thrived in chaos, even training that left me trembling only seemed to feed him.

I sat on the floor, the boards beneath me were cool, dust clinging to my skin where sweat had dried sticky. My hair was a tangled mess, white strands sticking to my temples. My wand still felt heavy in my hand, as if my arm hadn't caught up to the fact that it was over.

Mattheo didn't sit. He stood near the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, his stance rigid, his expression carved from stone. He looked each of us over, eyes cold, weighing. Not a commander who had fought alongside us, but one who had merely watched, judged. The silence thickened. For a moment, I thought we might collapse into some fragile calm, just breaths, just hearts slowing.

Then the burning started.

At first, it was a faint sting along my arm, sharp enough to make me flinch. I hissed softly, pressing my palm against my forearm as if that could dull it. But it spread fast, the searing pain crawling under my skin, twisting deeper, hotter, until it felt like fire threading through my veins.

A shudder rippled through the room.

Daphne sat up sharply, her smile vanishing. She pressed her hand against her arm, lips tightening in a grimace. "Shit."

Theo shut his eyes, jaw clenching, shoulders bowing as though the weight of it pressed him down. Draco's face barely moved, but his knuckles whitened where they curled against his knee.

Lorenzo's grin faltered for the first time that night, his hand clamping over his sleeve. His eyes flicked toward the floor, mocking charm stripped away, replaced with something sharper, darker.

I swallowed hard, my stomach lurching as the mark burned hotter, searing. My pulse hammered in my throat. The ache wasn't just pain, it was summoning, pulling, dragging us.

Mattheo didn't flinch. His expression didn't shift. He only rolled up his sleeve in one smooth, unhurried motion, exposing the dark mark etched into his skin. The snake and skull seemed alive under the fire of the summons, writhing as though it enjoyed the agony.

"Up," he said flatly. No hesitation. No softness. Just an order.

No one moved right away. We stayed there for one suspended breath longer, the dread settling over us heavy as lead. Because we all knew what it meant. It didn't matter that our training had drained us, that sweat still cooled sticky on our skin, that our lungs were raw from smoke. When the Dark Lord called, there was no excuse. There was only obedience or death.

Theo was the first to stand, stiff, his hand still pressed against his stomach. He didn't look at anyone. Just moved, silent, like a man walking to his own grave. Draco rose next, composed but pale, his face a perfect mask. Daphne groaned, dragging herself upright, her laughter long gone, replaced by something harder, flatter. Lorenzo finally slid off the table, stretching his neck with a loud crack, his smirk tugging back into place like armor.

I pushed myself up last, my legs trembling, my stomach knotted so tight I thought I might be sick again. The burn in my arm pulsed, a steady reminder, we belonged to him. Mattheo's gaze swept across us once more. His eyes lingered on me for a fraction of a second longer than the others, unreadable before turning toward the door.

✦

The moment we stepped through the wards and into Riddle Manor, the air changed. It was heavier here, as if the walls themselves exhaled a pressure that pressed down on my chest and slowed my steps. Even the earth felt different here, it was damp, blackened soil that seemed to drink in the night rather than reflect it, smothering the stars overhead. The Manor rose from it like a monument, a jagged silhouette against the sky, sharp roofs and spires cutting upward as though the house itself wanted to pierce heaven. No warmth flickered from its windows. No light escaped. It was a mausoleum of secrets, its walls steeped in centuries of quiet cruelty.

My boots crunched over the gravel path as we climbed the steps, my body already shrinking into itself, shoulders hunching, breath shallow. The others walked ahead of me, purposeful, their movements steadier than mine, as though they belonged here.

The iron doors opened without touch, groaning wide to reveal a corridor that bled darkness. The sconces lining the stone walls burned low, their flames a sickly yellow that licked the air sluggishly, smoke curling up toward the vaulted ceiling. The sound of our footsteps echoed like a procession, each beat amplified, stretched out, until it felt as though the walls themselves carried our tread to every corner of the house.

We passed portraits of dead, all in black, their pale faces long and sharp, eyes following with an unnatural brightness. The air smelled of damp stone, of wax melting slow in the sconces, of something beneath it all, sweet and metallic, like iron left too long in the rain.

The corridor opened into a vast hallway, longer than it was wide, lined with towering windows of stained glass that gleamed black and crimson. The glass distorted the moonlight into fragments that crawled over the stone floor like the shifting beams of a drowned cathedral. Above, the ceiling arched into shadow, disappearing into darkness.

The walls were carved with symbols that looked older than language itself, curling serpents and jagged runes etched deep, their grooves filled with shadow. Flames guttered in sconces between them, casting shapes that moved like specters.

At the far end stretched a table so long it seemed to narrow with distance, its surface polished obsidian, reflecting the flames like liquid night. The chairs on either side stood rigid, high-backed, carved with snakes and skulls. At its head, empty still, waited a throne of darker stone, larger, heavier, a seat meant not just to hold but to dominate.

We moved as one toward it. None of us spoke. The silence was thick, absolute, filled only by the echo of boots against stone and the low hiss of torches. I felt my throat tighten as we reached the table, each of us sliding into our seats with the kind of care one might take in a sanctuary where every sound was sacrilege.

Mattheo took the head of the table in Voldemort's absence, standing behind the throne until summoned otherwise. His shoulders were rigid, his chin lifted. He looked at home in the shadows, pale face lit by the dim firelight. I tried not to look at him, but I could feel the weight of his presence even from where I sat lower down, nearer the end of the table, my place determined long ago.

The other Death Eaters filed in after us, their masks gleaming in the torchlight, silver and bone, each marked by subtle alterations that betrayed the man or woman beneath. They filled the room with a rustling, a scrape of chairs, a hush of cloaks. Their eyes burned above the masks, sharp and intent, fixed upon the throne at the head. No one spoke, no one dared. The silence grew until I could hear my own blood pounding, until even the faint hiss of the sconces seemed deafening.

Then the doors opened and he entered without sound, yet the air bent around him. A ripple passed through the room, not in movement but in presence, a collective tightening, as though every heart clenched at once. His figure was cloaked, gliding across the stone with no wasted motion. Shadows seemed to cling to him, stretching, folding and obeying with ease.

We rose as one. Chairs scraped back, boots struck the stone, bodies bending forward in one seamless wave. Bows deep, spines curved. The sound of our breath caught in our throats as though we shared one set of lungs. My forehead nearly brushed the table's cold edge as I bent, my pulse fluttering frantic against my ribs.

When we straightened, he had already taken the throne. He sat with a stillness that was heavier than movement, fingers draped over the stone arms, long and pale. The shadows gathered close, flames bowing inward toward him as though drawn by gravity.

The windows cast fractured light over us, black-red patterns crawling like veins across the table, over our pale hands, our masks, our faces. The air was heavy, thick with heat from the torches, with the weight of expectation pressing down until I could scarcely breathe. He had not spoken yet, but it didn't matter. We were already listening, already waiting. Already his.

"Please be seated."

The voice unfurled like smoke, low and serpentine, every syllable lingering, winding its way into the marrow of the room. Voldemort's gaze drifted lazily over the long table, red eyes gleaming beneath the heavy shadow of the sconces. No one shifted. No one dared.

No word was spoken, but the silence itself had changed. It was reverence, it was terror, it was awe. Every eye was fixed upon him, every hand folded or clenched, every breath shallow and careful. I sat back slowly, trying to control the trembling in my hands as I slid them under the table. My body ached to fold further, to press my forehead to the stone floor and beg that his gaze would not find me. But I kept my head up, just enough, because anything else would be noticed.

"We gather tonight in triumph." His hands, pale as bone, extended lightly, almost mockingly, palms resting on the arms of his throne. "The Carrows have brought... order to Hogwarts." A thin smile slithered across his lips, joyless, as his gaze flicked to the two siblings down the table. They straightened in their chairs, chests puffing, masks glinting in the firelight.

"The children are learning what it means to serve a greater cause. Punishment is the most eloquent of teachers."

A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall, though no voice rose above the other. Each sound was swallowed by the stone walls, devoured by the firelight. My skin prickled, every hair on my arms stiffening beneath my sleeve. Voldemort let the silence pool again before he turned his head slowly. His gaze landed farther down the table, now resting onto us.

"And yet..." His voice lowered, drawing out the pause until it coiled around my throat. "Not all of my servants bring me such satisfaction."

My stomach turned to stone. I kept my eyes fixed on the table's surface, where the torchlight fractured against black glass. The blood in my veins burned, my Dark Mark prickling like a warning brand.

The six of us sat straighter without meaning to. I could feel Mattheo beside the throne, his jaw set, his shoulders rigid but his eyes calm, at least outwardly. Daphne's breath was sharp in her throat, her nails tapping an uneven rhythm on the polished wood. Lorenzo shifted, though it looked almost deliberate, as though he wanted his restlessness to pass as confidence. Theo's gaze was fixed on the table, rigid and still, but I saw the way his lips pressed bloodless white. Draco however, did not flinch.

Voldemort's eyes slid over us, lingering, dissecting. When he spoke again, his words dripped with false softness, each one a knife.

"My chosen six." The pause was deliberate, curling with disdain. "So young. So promising. And yet—" His tone hardened, the sibilance striking like a whip. "You allowed Amelia Bones to slip through your fingers."

The words struck the hall like a crack of thunder. I swallowed, hard, heat and cold warring under my skin.

"Head of Magical Law Enforcement. A woman of cunning, of influence, and you failed to bring her to me." His eyes narrowed, twin flames of scarlet. "Did she outwit you?" His mouth curved upward in a sneer, the smile brittle, cruel. "Or did your resolve falter?"

No one breathed.

Mattheo's jaw tightened. He said nothing. His silence was a shield, but I felt how brittle it was.

Voldemort's gaze slid across us, landing for the briefest moment on me. My stomach lurched. His eyes were sharp enough to cut, burning through the mask, through my skin, to whatever weakness lay hidden beneath.

"You disappoint me," he hissed, and the sound of it scraped the walls like claws. "You call yourselves hunters, but you return with nothing. You bring me failure and shame, when I have given you power, protection and purpose."

The room shrank around us. I could feel the other Death Eaters watching, their silence thick with hunger, for spectacle, for punishment, for blood that was not their own.

"Tell me," Voldemort whispered, voice dipping lower, colder, his gaze sliding back to Mattheo. "Why should I not make an example of you all?"

The question hung, heavy and poisoned, demanding but not inviting an answer.

"Who..." Voldemort's eyes flared redder, his pale face drawn into a grotesque curve of mockery. "...was responsible for Amelia Bones slipping through your grasp?"

The question struck me like a curse. My body locked. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. It was as though his gaze had pinned me to my chair, and I felt the truth swell in my throat. I had faltered. I had let her escape. I could still see it, the fizzled curse sputtering from my wand, the hesitation that cost us everything.

My lips parted. But no sound came. My tongue lay heavy, leaden, frozen. I stared at the gleam of black wood in front of me, praying the surface might split open and swallow me whole. The others knew. I could feel their awareness prickling along my skin. Theo's shoulder was taut beside me, Daphne's breath sharp. Draco did not move, did not look. He had already buried whatever thought he had deep beneath ice.

"It was me."

Mattheo's voice cut through, low and steady. My head jerked up in shock. His gaze didn't flick to me, didn't betray a thing. He stared forward, expression carved from iron, his jaw rigid but his tone unflinching. "I was responsible. I miscalculated."

Voldemort's eyes flickered, a flicker that might have been amusement. My breath strangled. I wanted to scream at him, to shove the words back into his mouths, to take the blame myself. But I was locked in place, horror cementing me to the chair.

Voldemort's chuckle slithered low, soft at first, then swelling into something shrill, high, and inhuman. The sound scraped along my skull, made my bones ache. "So eager to protect your little flock," he purred, tongue flicking across the air. "How noble."

He rose, the hall bent with the weight of his movement, shadows stretching long and skeletal against the walls. His wand slid between his fingers with casual grace.

"You would claim responsibility, boy?" His lip curled, the distortion of something almost human but not. "You would stand before me, before the Dark Lord, and confess that my blood, my flesh, my heir, was bested by Amelia Bones?"

His voice sharpened, climbed into a pitch that made my stomach clench. "A pitiful Ministry whore?"

Mattheo's hands were white-knuckled fists against the table, but his face did not break. "Yes, my Lord," he said, voice hoarse but steady.

Voldemort laughed, high and shrill, a sound that made the very walls vibrate. The laugh curdled quickly, descending into something far uglier, an edge of fury so sharp it seemed to split the air.

"You shame me," he hissed. "You shame the name Riddle."

The wand rose, slow and deliberate, as though he were savoring the anticipation.

"Crucio."

The curse struck Mattheo with a force that seemed to shake the table itself. His scream tore the hall open, ripped from somewhere deep in his chest, raw and animal. His body convulsed, legs kicking helplessly against the stone floor, spine arching until it looked as though it might snap clean in two.

But Voldemort didn't release it.

He stepped closer, pale face twisted with relish, wand carving cruel arcs in the air, each flick tightened the current of agony ripping through Mattheo's body. His hands clawed against nothing, nails splitting, blood dripping onto the floor as he writhed.

"Pathetic," Voldemort spat, pacing around him as if circling prey. "You call yourself my son, yet you cannot even subdue a woman who dared defy us. You cannot even strike cleanly. You disgrace me every time you breathe."

Mattheo's jaw clenched, strangled sounds breaking from his throat. His skin was slick with sweat, blood staining his lips where he had bitten through them to keep from crying out further.

But Voldemort pressed on.

"You are weak. Weaker even than your mother was, I see her in you, in your pitiful cries, in your feeble resistance. You have inherited nothing of me. Nothing but shame."

The curse intensified. Mattheo's scream cracked, broke, then rebuilt itself into something hoarse and jagged. He twisted violently, shoulder striking the table's edge with a dull crack that made bile rise in my throat.

Beside me, Theo flinched, his knuckles pressed white against his thigh. Daphne's chest heaved too fast, her pupils wide with something close to panic. Draco's mask was intact but his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. Lorenzo stared blankly, eyes wide and glassy, as though caught between horror and admiration for Mattheo's endurance. I couldn't breathe. My chest burned. My nails dug so deep into my palms that blood smeared warm across my skin.

Voldemort leaned down, voice low, a hiss against Mattheo's ear. "You will die a nameless, wretched boy if you do not learn. And when you die, the world will not whisper the name Riddle. They will spit it."

Mattheo's eyes fluttered open at that, bloodshot and wild, and for the briefest instant they met mine across the table. His lips parted as though to speak, but another surge of agony ripped the sound from him, his back slamming to the floor as Voldemort flung him down with the curse still sizzling through his nerves.

"Look at you," Voldemort sneered, circling again, his robes whispering across the stone. "Rolling in filth like a common rat. You are no son of mine. You are nothing."

The words flayed him more thoroughly than the curse. I saw it in the way his body trembled, not just from the spell but from the weight of each word, each syllable. He shook, heaved, but still he did not beg, and that enraged Voldemort further.

"Beg!" he shrieked, wand twisting cruelly. "Beg for release, boy!"

Mattheo's scream bled into a growl, his teeth clenched even as his veins bulged, even as blood streamed from his nose, staining the floor beneath him. He refused.

"Beg!" Voldemort's voice was high, shrill, inhuman. "Show me your weakness! Admit you are worthless!"

But Mattheo only gasped, chest heaving, his eyes rolled back, and still no words of surrender came. The curse broke off suddenly. The silence that followed was a vacuum, almost worse than the screams. Mattheo lay collapsed, chest jerking, his arms limp at his sides. Blood pooled at the corner of his mouth, his breath shallow, ragged.

Voldemort looked down at him with disdain, lip curling. "A disgrace. You are less than nothing. Even the lowest servant among us would have done better." His gaze flicked to the rest of us, slow and scalding. "Do you see? This is what failure looks like. This is what weakness births. You will learn," he whispered, voice silken and deadly, "or you will die by my hand. And when you die, I will erase your name from this world. Even your bones will be forgotten."

Mattheo, trembling, tried to push himself upright. His arms shook violently beneath him, but he managed to lift his head just barely. His lips moved, bloodied and broken, but I caught the faintest trace of words.

"I... am... Riddle..."

The defiance was small, ragged, but it was there. Voldemort's eyes gleamed, twin coals burning through the half-light of the hall. He lifted his wand again, almost idly, like a man deciding whether to slice open the throat of an insect that had already stopped twitching.

"Crucio."

The curse ripped through Mattheo's body once more. His back arched so violently I heard something crack, either a bone or tendon, I could not tell. His scream started high and shrill before it dropped into a guttural roar, blood bubbling in his throat. He clawed at the stones beneath him, nails splitting further, leaving streaks of red like frantic writing scrawled across the floor.

The smell of him, burnt sweat, iron, something acrid rising from skin too long under strain, choked the air. His body shook until his limbs looked barely attached to him anymore, his throat rasping like an animal caught in a trap.

Minutes passed, though it felt like hours. Mattheo's screams broke, faltered, then became only breathless, voiceless convulsions. His body jerked but no sound came, his throat too shredded to give voice anymore. His eyes rolled back, whites flashing, until finally, his limbs fell slack.

The sound of him hitting the floor was small, a hollow thud, drowned by the silence that swallowed the room whole.

He was still.

So still that I felt something in my chest wrench and twist. A scream clawed at my throat but froze there, burning, because I knew, if I made a sound, if I moved, if I dared, his fury would turn on me. For a moment, Voldemort only stood there, breathing evenly, his expression not one of triumph but of disappointment. A parent looking down at a broken toy.

"Pathetic," he murmured. "My son. Brought low by the weight of his own weakness."

The words dripped, each syllable echoing against the vaulted ceiling, sinking into my skin like hooks. He crouched, pale fingers brushing through the sweat-matted hair from Mattheo's forehead, a parody of tenderness that curdled into cruelty when his lips twisted.

"So fragile. So quick to shatter. You would disgrace me even in unconsciousness." He rose again, wand twirling lazily. "But you are not excused. You are not finished."

The tip of his wand glowed, a thin green light pulsing, and he whispered a word I did not know, but sounded old and terrible. The spell slithered across the stones like smoke, then burrowed into Mattheo's chest.

Mattheo's body shuddered violently, air tearing back into his lungs with a wet, shuddering gasp. His eyes flew open wide, bloodshot and gleaming with a raw, animal terror as the spell forced him back into awareness. He coughed, a sound thick with phlegm and blood, crimson spilling from his mouth to the floor.

He tried to push himself up, his hands slipping in his own blood, his arms trembling like snapped reeds in a storm. His body shook with spasms, every breath scraping like knives. Voldemort only watched. Smiling faintly.

"You see?" His voice was silk, cruel and calm. "Even in death, you are mine to command. You will not rest until I grant it. You will not close your eyes without my leave. Even unconsciousness is not yours to claim."

Mattheo's lips trembled, a strangled moan breaking free, half a word, half a sob. Another lash of pain shot through him. His spine bowed, his skull cracked against the stone as he writhed anew. His scream returned, raw and guttural, torn out of his chest like it had been buried and unearthed again. Blood splattered across the floor, painting the stones in a widening halo around him. It was unbearable. His pain filled every corner of the room, thick and suffocating. It pressed against my ribs until I thought I might shatter with it.

But none of us moved. We sat, cowards, in the shadows, trembling as his agony rang in our ears. But Voldemort, standing above his broken son, basked in it. The screams faded, not because the pain had ended, but because Mattheo's throat had finally given way. What was left of his voice was nothing more than a rasp, shredded and useless. He lay there twitching, his chest heaving shallowly, veins standing out along his neck as his heart struggled beneath the weight of Voldemort's wrath.

Voldemort lowered his wand at last, though the aura of violence clung to him still, shimmering faintly like heat above fire. His red eyes swept the room, deliberate, pausing on each of us as though peeling away flesh and bone, leaving nothing but raw fear exposed.

When he finally spoke, his voice was smooth, unhurried, calm in a way that was more terrifying than his rage.

"This failure will not be repeated. The Order thinks themselves untouchable. Bones thinks herself clever. They believe their loyalty to Potter and his allies is enough to shield them." He let the pause stretch, his thin lips curling into something that might have been amusement, though the hall felt colder for it. "We will show them how fragile such loyalty is."

A ripple of unease passed through the chamber. He turned then, his gaze fixing on Daphne. She sat straighter, though I saw her fingers twitch where they rested on her lap. Her chin lifted just barely, her mouth set in that familiar defiant curve, but I could see the tremor beneath it.

"Tomorrow," Voldemort said, each word deliberate, ringing against the blackened glass, "you will lead an execution. Not of one, not of few, but of many. A village. Muggles." His eyes gleamed faintly, cruel, hungry. "Every last one of them. Their blood will be a message. Their screams will be a warning. Their deaths will remind the world that to oppose me is to watch everything you love burn."

My stomach twisted, but I did not move.

The silence stretched, broken only by the faint crackle of the sconces burning down the walls. Voldemort's head tilted, snake-like, as he regarded Daphne. "Do you understand, girl?"

Her throat bobbed, but she nodded, steady, her voice clipped but even. "Yes, my Lord."

A pause.

He stepped closer, the hem of his robes whispering across the stone floor, his shadow falling across her. When he spoke again, the words dripped like poison. "I give you this honour because you have proven to be ruthless. Because you are unburdened by conscience." He leaned closer, his voice lowering until it was nearly a hiss. "But do not mistake my gift for trust. One slip. One failure and your fate will mirror his."

He gestured lazily with his wand toward Mattheo's crumpled body.

Daphne's jaw clenched, but her eyes did not waver. "I will not fail you my Lord."

A quiet laugh left him, soft and thin as a blade sliding from a sheath. "No, you will not. For if you do, you will beg for death before I am done with you."

The weight of the room pressed heavier. My lungs ached with the effort of pulling in air.

Voldemort straightened then, sweeping his gaze across all of us once more. "Go forth. Prepare. Tomorrow the world will remember who commands it."

Then he turned, robes whispering as he moved, the sound echoing like a procession down the long hall. No one moved until his shadow had passed fully from the chamber, until the door closed behind him, until the air itself seemed to loosen just enough for us to breathe again.

But the weight of his words remained, clinging to my skin like ash. Tomorrow. A massacre. And Daphne, bright-eyed, wild, always laughing at blood, was to lead us into it.

Draco and Theo moved first. Their steps were quiet, deliberate, carrying Mattheo between them like a fragile relic. Every twitch of his bloodied, trembling body made my chest constrict, and I forced myself not to look away. The dark mark burned faintly on my arm, a constant reminder that he was still ours, and still Voldemort's.

The other three of us followed silently, the weight of the hall pressing down with every measured footfall. The walls, tall and blackened, seemed to lean inward, narrowing the space, echoing our every breath and soft scrape of boots against stone. The torches along the sconces guttered as if in sympathy with the dread settling in the room.

Daphne's usual light energy was muted, her hands resting lightly on her wand as though it might bite her if she loosened her grip. Lorenzo's smirk was absent, even the twitch of his mouth that normally promised sarcasm or danger was gone. Theo's eyes were downcast, muscles tense beneath his sleeves, and Draco's jaw was tight, pale fingers curled over the straps of Mattheo's shoulders.

I kept my gaze forward, but I could feel Mattheo's weight beneath my peripheral vision, every subtle shift of his bloodied form, every ragged breath. He was broken, yes, but alive, and that was terrifying in itself. Alive and knowing that Voldemort's eyes were on him still, somewhere, always.

At the end of the hallway, the tall doors loomed, black iron and carved wood, their weight oppressive. With a silent nod from Draco, we moved through, leaving the vast, dark hall behind. Outside, the moon hung low, pale and cold, reflecting off the stone courtyard like a corpse's eye. The night air hit me with its chill, but it did nothing to clear the frost settling in my chest.

Voldemort's words from earlier lingered in the shadows between us.

Tomorrow. The world will remember who commands it.

The courtyard was empty except for the faint rustle of wind, but each of us felt it as a presence pressing against our skin, whispering in the back of our minds that the Dark Lord watched, that the execution would happen, and that none of us could falter.

We lined up, Mattheo held by Draco and Theo, his arms draped over their shoulders for support. Daphne walked a pace ahead, wand at the ready, her expression unreadable but her body taut with anticipation. Lorenzo followed close behind her, silent, eyes scanning the shadows for any threat, though the danger was not out here, it was the orders, the knowledge of what tomorrow demanded.

I stayed near the back, hands clenched around my wand, every nerve alight. My stomach churned, a mix of fear, dread, and the ever-present guilt that had taken residence in my chest. We were silent, all of us, the only sound the faint scrape of boots against stone and Mattheo's shallow, ragged breathing.

Finally, with a subtle gesture from Draco, we prepared to Apparate. The courtyard stretched before us, open, cold, empty, but the space beyond, the world, waited with unknown horrors. I took a shaky breath, feeling the familiar pull at my core. The Dark Mark burned hotter now, its heat spreading through my veins like molten lead. I gripped my wand tighter, drew in a ragged inhale, and braced myself.

The world blurred around me, stone walls and pale moonlight melting into shadows. The wind, the frost, the distant cries of the night, it all vanished, replaced by the vertigo of being torn from one place and thrown into another.

The air snapped around us as the familiar lurch of Apparition tore through my stomach. Stone walls blurred, the courtyard of the safehouse dissolving into shadow and light, replaced by the cramped, dimly lit interior of our hideout. Dust motes floated in the afternoon sun that had managed to filter through the cracks in the boarded windows.

Daphne moved immediately, like a force of nature, vanishing down the narrow corridor before anyone could stop her. Lorenzo shot off after her, boots thumping against the uneven floor, worry etched into his usual smirk. I caught a flicker of fear in his eyes, one I had never seen before, and it unsettled me.

Mattheo collapsed onto the couch with a thud that rattled the worn frame, one arm draped across the back, dark eyes flicking toward me briefly before he let them drop to the floor. Draco was crouched low by the cabinet, rummaging through a small chest for a healing potion, his movements deliberate, measured, and precise. He found the vial and held it up, examining it, and I could almost hear the silent calculation in his gaze.

I perched on the broken coffee table, the splintered wood pressing into my legs, and let my gaze wander. No one spoke. The silence was thick, almost oppressive, but somehow familiar, the unspoken acknowledgment of what had just transpired.

I cleared my throat and finally broke the quiet. "You—" I started, then stopped, letting my words reform. "Why did you take the blame?"

Mattheo's head tilted just slightly, his dark hair falling across his forehead. His eyes flicked up to mine, sharp, unreadable, and I could feel the edge of his coldness pressing like frost. "Because I am your leader," he said flatly. "Because it was my responsibility to take accountability for failure."

I let out a bitter laugh, the sound harsh in the quiet room. "No. Don't do that. You were tortured because of me. Because of us. Because of what I can't do right no matter how hard I try. You shouldn't have had to—"

He cut me off with a glance, eyes narrowing, and the weight behind them was unmistakable. "You forget your place, Aurelia. I take what I must. Do not apologize for that."

I pressed my lips together, frustration rising. "I'm apologizing for you having to live through that for..." I trailed off, chest tightening.

Mattheo's expression didn't soften. His voice was low, flat, almost cutting. "Emotions are a luxury."

I shook my head, annoyed, anger bubbling beneath the surface. "Luxury? Is that what you think? Is that why you think you can just carry all of it while the rest of us sit here?"

His gaze didn't waver, but there was a faint twitch in the corner of his jaw, subtle, almost imperceptible, and I saw it. He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The silence that followed was louder than any words, filled with everything we hadn't said, everything I feared would never be spoken.

I let out a slow breath, lowering my hands to my lap. "I'm sorry," I said finally, quieter now. "I'm sorry you had to go through that for me. I—"

He didn't look at me. Didn't move. The coldness pressed against my skin again, sharper than before. "Save your apologies, Aurelia. There is nothing to be done about what has happened. Only what will happen."

I swallowed hard, anger and guilt twisting together like knotted cords in my chest. I wanted to argue, to shout, to make him understand that what he endured wasn't just necessary, that it had been wrong, unbearable, but the weight of his stare, even in avoidance, kept me silent.

The quiet stretched, filled only by the faint shuffle of Draco as he returned to the couch with the healing potion secured in his robes, and the soft clatter of Theo returning from wherever he had been. The air was heavy, thick with unspoken tension, and I sat there, on the broken coffee table, hands clenched, fighting back the urge to fidget, to make a sound, to do anything to break the heavy weight pressing from every corner of the room.

Finally, after what felt like eternity, Mattheo leaned back into the couch cushions, dark eyes drifting toward the ceiling, voice low and controlled. "I will not be doing this for you again, prepare yourself for tomorrow."

With that, the silence descended once more now suffocating, leaving me to sit there, chest tight, hands trembling, staring at the floor as the enormity of what had happened, and what was yet to come, pressed down on us all.

I stayed still, perched on the broken coffee table, my hands folded tightly in my lap. The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating, and for a moment I almost convinced myself that if I didn't move, if I didn't breathe too loudly, maybe the weight of the world pressing down on us would ease. Mattheo's dark eyes flicked toward me briefly, sharp and assessing, but he said nothing. He didn't scold. He didn't command. He just watched, and in that silence I felt the full force of all he had endured, the horrors he'd taken without complaint, and the cold distance he always maintained as a shield.

The sound of the door creaking open drew my attention. Draco stepped inside, his movements measured, a small vial clutched tightly in his pale fingers. He muttered something low, almost unintelligible, but I caught the edge of it—"last one." His voice was quiet, like he was handling something precious and dangerous at the same time.

He approached Mattheo, eyes flicking briefly toward me before returning to the boy on the couch. With a precise motion, he placed the vial in Mattheo's hand. The glass was small, delicate, and the liquid inside shimmered faintly in the dim light, crimson and glowing like molten rubies.

I rose slowly, almost on instinct, and moved closer. My hands hovered for a heartbeat before I settled them on Mattheo's face. The warmth of my palms contrasted sharply with the cold, paled blood smeared along his jaw and cheek. His eyes closed briefly under my touch, and I felt a strange, almost unbearable weight in my chest.

"Here," I whispered, though my voice barely carried. "Slowly."

He tilted his head just slightly, letting me tip the potion to his lips. My hands lingered, brushing along the streaked blood on his skin, wiping at it gently, a futile attempt at tenderness in the midst of the chaos surrounding us. The warmth of him, the life beneath my palms, made my chest tighten, and for a single moment I allowed myself to imagine him not broken, not haunted, not a son of Voldemort, but just Mattheo.

The potion slid down his throat, a faint hiss escaping from the vial as the liquid vanished. His lips closed around it, his eyes flicking open to meet mine, sharp and unreadable, but not angry. There was a trace of something softer there, fleeting, before the weight of his coldness pressed back in.

I froze.

The intimacy of the moment, the softness I'd allowed myself, collided violently with the reality of everything else, the blood, the scars, the unrelenting cruelty of the world we lived in. My hands pulled back abruptly, leaving a faint streak where blood had mingled, and I stepped away, my chest tightening, hands trembling just slightly.

Mattheo did not move. Did not chastise. He only watched, eyes dark, the faintest twitch of his jaw was the only hint that he had noticed my hesitation. The silence returned, heavier now, thicker, filled with unspoken words that neither of us dared voice.

Draco lingered near the doorway, pale fingers curling around the edge of the frame, watching with quiet calculation before he finally turned and left. The door shut behind him with a muted thud, leaving us alone again.

I sank back onto the table, staring at the floor, the heat of my palms still lingering where they had touched his face. My thoughts twisted in on themselves, guilt, fear, and something dangerously close to longing all tangled together. Mattheo shifted slightly on the couch, the faintest rasp of his breathing the only sound. He didn't reach for me, didn't command me, didn't even speak. And somehow, that was more terrifying than if he had.

Because in the silence, I realized that he had let me touch him. He had let me tend, even just for a moment. The weight of that trust pressed down harder than any curse, any spell, any cruelty we had endured or inflicted. I looked away quickly, swallowing the tight lump in my throat, pulling my hands to my lap once more. I couldn't stay in that moment. I couldn't linger. I had to remind myself that this was no place for tenderness, no place for weakness.

I pushed myself off the broken coffee table, the scrape of wood against stone loud in the silence of the safehouse. My legs felt heavy, weighted with fatigue and the ghosts of the day's horrors, but I forced myself forward, toward the narrow hallway that led to the small room Daphne and I shared. The door was cracked open just enough to let a sliver of pale light from the kitchen filter in, and I paused for a heartbeat, listening.

The faintest sound of muffled sobs drifted out, making my chest tighten. My hand hovered on the doorknob as I hesitated, unsure if I should enter, but the pull of concern was stronger than hesitation. Slowly, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The sight made my stomach twist. Lorenzo was on Daphne's bed, holding her close, his body curled protectively around hers. Her face was buried in his chest, shoulders shaking as quiet, broken sobs racked her small frame. Lorenzo's arms were steady, his head bent toward hers as he whispered something low, soft, almost inaudible, stroking strands of her hair with gentle precision. His usual flippant grin, the teasing glint in his eyes, was gone. The corner of his mouth quirked just slightly, but it was tenderness, not mockery.

I froze at the doorway for a moment, unsure if I should speak, but the instinct to reach out overpowered hesitation. My lips parted, and I tried to form the words, "What's wrong?" but no sound came. Instead, I only mouthed the question, and Lorenzo's eyes flicked briefly toward me. He offered nothing but a faint shrug, the faintest tilt of his head, and then his attention returned to Daphne.

He leaned down, murmuring softly, the tone of his voice low and steady, almost as if he were trying to calm something that could not be reasoned with. Daphne clutched at him tighter, the warmth of his chest against her face, and I felt a pang in my own chest at the raw vulnerability laid bare in front of me.

Slowly, I moved toward them, the floor creaking beneath my boots. I knelt beside the bed, placing a hand gently on Daphne's shoulder, letting her feel my presence without demanding anything from her. Lorenzo shifted slightly, making space, and I leaned forward, wrapping an arm around her, letting her sob into me as well.

The three of us formed a small, tangled circle, bodies pressed close. Lorenzo's arm remained steady around her, his other hand brushing stray strands of hair back from her damp forehead. My hand rested lightly on her shoulder, fingertips tracing patterns that meant nothing and everything all at once, a quiet rhythm meant to ground us all.

I let my own forehead rest lightly against the top of her head, inhaling the faint scent of her shampoo mixed with the metallic tang of blood and smoke that clung to all of us. The heat of her body, the rhythm of her rapid breathing, was oddly comforting. For a brief moment, the safehouse felt less like a ruin and more like a sanctuary, a fragile pocket of intimacy in the midst of the chaos that had become our lives.

Daphne's sobs slowed, her body relaxing slightly against us, and I felt a quiet pull in my chest as the tension eased just a fraction. Lorenzo's whispers continued, gentle, calming, and for a moment I allowed myself to close my eyes, to let the weight of my own fear slip just enough to rest.

We stayed like that for several minutes, no one speaking, the silence between us soft and intimate, holding more than words ever could. I could feel the quiet strength in Lorenzo, the protection he offered, the way his body seemed to anchor Daphne, keeping her steady when the world outside was anything but. I felt the same in myself, the need to shield her now, to be present, to remind her, remind all of us, that even in the darkness, we were not alone.

Daphne's grip loosened slightly, and she lifted her face just enough for me to see her eyes, glassy and red-rimmed, but trusting, leaning fully into us. I whispered her name softly, letting my voice fill the space like a gentle shield, and she responded with a faint nod, a small acknowledgment that she was safe, at least for now.

I let myself rest against her more fully, letting the heat of her body seep into mine, letting the fragile sense of connection steady my own frayed nerves. In this quiet moment, I could almost forget the horrors we'd endured, the blood we'd spilled, the commands we had yet to follow.

After a while, Daphne's breathing started to even out, though every now and then a tremor still rippled through her frame. Lorenzo tightened his arm around her shoulders, chin resting against her hair, while I stayed tucked on the other side, my hand resting gently on her forearm. Together we held her steady, a silent fortress against the weight of everything we could not name.

Her body was warm against mine, the curve of her spine pressed to my chest, and I focused on that, on the steady rise and fall of her ribs, on the faint smell of smoke in her hair, on the rhythm of her breaths beginning to align with mine. But the longer I stayed still, the harder it became to keep myself present. My thoughts started to slip, spiraling out of the dim room and the weight of her in my arms. My eyes unfocused, gaze fixed on some cracked corner of the plaster ceiling, and slowly, quietly, the sound of her muffled breaths fell away. In its place came something else, louder, harsher, dragged up from some corner of memory I had tried to bury.

 

𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒; 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐘𝐔𝐋𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋

The Astronomy Tower had been theirs that night, at least, that's what they decided after stumbling breathless up the spiraling staircase, clutching bottles half-full of Firewhisky they'd smuggled from the Slytherin common rooms. The air was sharp and cold, the kind that nipped the skin, but the stars overhead burned so brightly they seemed to belong to them alone. Below, faint strains of music still drifted from the Great Hall, but up here, laughter reigned.

They were all still dressed from the Yule Ball, though not one of them looked pristine anymore.

Theo and Lorenzo had abandoned decorum entirely, spinning each other clumsily in the middle of the tower. Lorenzo's tie had been loosened hours ago, hanging in a crooked knot around his neck, and Theo's hair stuck up in drunken angles. They sang tunelessly as they moved, stepping on each other's shoes, stumbling, but never letting go. When Lorenzo nearly toppled backwards into the wall, Theo dragged him upright by the lapels of his jacket, both of them howling with laughter.

Draco, usually so composed, wasn't immune to the night either. His pale cheeks were flushed pink from drink, his silver hair mussed, the starch gone from his movements. Daphne, radiant in her midnight-blue dress, spun under his hand, her skirt flaring around her legs. For once, Draco didn't scowl when she laughed too loudly or tugged him off balance. Instead, he let her pull him in close, whispering something in her ear that made her eyes glitter brighter than the stars. He even smiled, a real, unguarded smile.

Aurelia was ethereal in white, her dress flowing like spilled moonlight around her ankles. The fabric was light and soft, and when she moved, it caught the candlelight in waves. Mattheo stood opposite her, still in his dark suit, though his jacket was unbuttoned and his shirt half-untucked, his tie shoved into his pocket at some forgotten point in the night.

"Come on, Avery," he teased, one hand extended, his grin lazy but warm. "Don't tell me you're too far gone for one dance."

She had rolled her eyes at him, but the Firewhiskey in her blood made her fearless, and her fingers slipped into his before she could think better of it.

He pulled her in with more force than finesse, nearly sending her crashing into his chest. She laughed, breathless, swatting at his shoulder as he grinned down at her, entirely unapologetic.

"Terrible," she accused.

"Flawless," he countered, spinning her clumsily so that the hem of her dress swept across his polished shoes.

The six of them filled the tower with noise and chaos, tripping over one another, partners changing by the minute, arms around waists and shoulders, feet colliding. Lorenzo shoved Draco lightly at one point, causing Daphne to shriek with laughter as they stumbled. Theo tried to dip Aurelia and nearly dropped her, and she ended up on the cold stone floor with both of them in tears of laughter.

Their cheeks were flushed, their hair mussed, their voices hoarse from singing half-remembered songs between gulps of Firewhisky. No one cared who was watching. No one cared what tomorrow would bring. They collapsed in a messy heap by the parapet, the firewhisky bottle now nearly empty, their laughter echoing off the high stone walls of the Astronomy Tower. The night air was crisp, biting at flushed cheeks, but none of them minded.

Lorenzo slumped back first, his suit jacket crumpled beneath him, grinning lazily as he swirled the last sip of whisky in the bottle. "Merlin's balls, I'm dizzy," he announced, leaning his head dramatically against the stones.

"You've had half the bottle," Theo muttered, but he was laughing as he said it, his tie hanging loose around his neck.

"Correction," Lorenzo said, pointing at him, eyes half-lidded. "We've had half the bottle. I was simply leading the charge."

"Leading the charge straight into idiocy," Draco drawled, though there was no venom in it tonight. He had taken a seat beside Aurelia, who, in her drunken haze, had sprawled across his lap without much thought. Draco hadn't pushed her off, he simply shifted his posture, letting her head rest comfortably against his thigh. His fingers drummed absently against his knee, and though his expression remained cool, there was a quiet softness in the gesture.

Aurelia stared up at the stars, eyes glassy, the sky spinning slightly above her. "It feels like they're all moving," she whispered. "Like the whole sky is... dancing."

"Or maybe that's just you about to vomit," Mattheo teased, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from her. His dark hair fell into his eyes, his grin crooked.

She lifted her hand weakly and flipped him off, which only made him laugh harder. Daphne slid down beside Draco, her navy-blue dress bunched up around her knees, hair falling in loose waves over her shoulders. Lorenzo immediately leaned closer, a sly smirk tugging at his lips.

"That dress," he said, voice deliberately low and flirty, "might be the single most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

"You're fucking drunk," Daphne retorted, but her cheeks colored slightly as she leaned into his shoulder.

"And you're gorgeous," Lorenzo shot back smoothly. "These are not mutually exclusive."

Theo groaned, throwing a balled-up napkin at him. "Shut up, Lorenzo."

"Never," Lorenzo replied, catching the napkin and tossing it back. "Flattery is an art, Nott. One day you'll learn."

Their laughter rang out again, softer now, tired at the edges, until the six of them settled into a loose circle, shoulders brushing, legs tangled. The whisky bottle lay discarded between them, glinting in the starlight.

"What do you think it'll be like?" Aurelia asked suddenly, her voice dreamy, slurred. "The future, I mean."

"Ugly," Draco said immediately, but Daphne elbowed him hard in the ribs.

"Don't be such a spoilsport," she said, rolling her eyes. "We're supposed to be having fun tonight."

"Fun," Mattheo repeated, amused. "That's one word for it."

"I think," Daphne continued, ignoring him, "we should all live together."

Aurelia blinked up at her, surprised. "All of us?"

"Yes," Daphne said firmly, her words tumbling over themselves with drunken enthusiasm. "One huge house. Bigger than my parents'. Bigger than all of ours. It'll have, like... twenty bedrooms. And a ballroom. And maybe a tower, just for us."

"Obviously," Lorenzo chimed in, nodding sagely. "We'll need a tower. To drink on. And to escape from the children."

"Children? Fuck." Theo frowned, his brows furrowing. "You're already planning children?"

"Obviously," Lorenzo said again, grinning. "We'll get married, all of us, and then—"

"Not to each other," Daphne interrupted quickly, cheeks pink.

"Well, maybe me and you," Lorenzo teased, and she shoved him so hard he nearly toppled backward.

"Shut up!" she hissed, but she was laughing.

Aurelia giggled too, covering her mouth with her hand. The sound felt light, unburdened, like something she hadn't heard from herself in years. "I like it," she said softly. "One big house. We'd never have to leave each other."

Theo glanced around at them all, his expression gentler than usual, almost shy. "That doesn't sound terrible," he admitted. "Not having to... go home."

The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning. For all their wealth, for all their privilege, none of them truly loved the cold estates they'd been raised in, the expectations that haunted every corridor.

"No parents," Mattheo said quietly, his grin softening into something wistful. "No rules."

"No curfews," Lorenzo added.

"No arranged marriages," Daphne muttered, though she laughed after.

"Just us," Aurelia whispered, her voice drifting with the wind. She tilted her head to look at Draco, who was staring up at the stars, his hand absentmindedly brushing strands of her white hair away from her face. "Just us, forever."

There was a pause, a silence so fragile it might have broken with the wrong word. Then Lorenzo clapped his hands together, breaking the tension.

"Right then," he declared. "Settled. Future plan: enormous house, tower for drinking, ballroom for parties, children optional, no parents allowed."

"And a library," Theo added suddenly, his eyes sparking. "I want a proper library, one that would put Granger into cardiac arrest."

"Of course you do," Lorenzo said with a grin. "Nott's wing. Full of books, dust, and misery."

Theo smirked faintly. "Better than your wing, which would just be broken bottles and questionable stains."

The group erupted into laughter again, their voices carrying into the night sky. For a moment, time stilled. They weren't Death Eaters' heirs. They weren't weapons in training. They were just six teenagers, tangled together under the stars, planning futures they'd never see.

The laughter had dwindled, tapering off into softer chuckles and slurred murmurs, the kind of quiet that came only when exhaustion and whisky began to settle into their bones. The Firewhisky bottle lay tipped on its side between them now, dripping its last sticky drop into the cracks of the tower floor. Above, the stars gleamed with cold brilliance, watching their revelry with distant indifference.

Theo leaned back on his elbows, eyes half-shut, Daphne curled into Lorenzo's side despite herself, his arm draped loosely around her shoulders in a gesture that was more protective than mocking for once. Draco sat rigidly upright, though his hand had remained in Aurelia's hair, absentmindedly combing through the pale strands as though it grounded him.

Mattheo's grin had slipped.

Aurelia noticed it first, even through the blur of drink. His shoulders were too tense, his hands restless in his lap, clenching and unclenching as if tethered to some invisible chain. His dark eyes weren't on the stars or their friends, but somewhere else entirely. Somewhere much darker.

"What is it Matt?" Aurelia asked softly, voice slurred but still tender. "You've gone all quiet."

Theo turned his head lazily, frowning. "Yeah, what's with you, Riddle? That's not like you."

Mattheo wet his lips, swallowed. For a heartbeat he looked as though he might laugh it off, but the weight in his eyes betrayed him. He dragged his fingers through his hair, then said it, the words they'd all feared without quite realising it.

"He's back."

The air shifted, as if the night itself had drawn in a cold breath.

Daphne straightened immediately, her smile vanishing. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," Mattheo replied, his voice low, almost hoarse. His gaze flicked to the floor, unable to meet theirs. "My father. He's back. Properly. Not just whispers anymore. Not just shadows. He's... here."

Lorenzo's arm tightened instinctively around Daphne, his usual smirk falling away. Theo sat upright too, his face pale even in the starlight.

Aurelia's head spun, and not just from the firewhisky. She pushed herself up slightly from Draco's lap, her white dress pooling around her like a spill of moonlight. "You're serious."

Mattheo nodded once, his jaw tightening. "I wouldn't joke about this."

Draco's fingers froze in Aurelia's hair. His grey eyes narrowed, sharp as flint. "How do you know?"

Mattheo let out a dry, bitter laugh that held no humour. "Because I feel it. Because he told me himself. You think I wouldn't know when the Dark Lord, my own blood, breathes again?"

Silence spread among them, thick and suffocating. Even the wind seemed to hush, pressing cold against their flushed faces.

Daphne's lips parted, her voice a whisper. "What... what does that mean? For us?"

"It means nothing good," Theo muttered, his hands tightening into fists against his knees. His sharp mind was already racing, already calculating the possibilities. "If he's back, he'll want—"

"Everything," Mattheo cut in. His eyes lifted then, dark and burning, meeting each of theirs in turn. "He'll want all of us. Our families. Our futures. You think he'll just let us be?"

No one spoke.

Aurelia felt something sharp coil in her stomach, twisting tighter with every second. The stars above seemed suddenly cruel, glittering like a thousand unblinking eyes. She glanced around at the circle of faces, her friends and in each of them she saw the same shadow flicker. Fear.

"We'll be okay though, right?" Daphne asked at last. Her voice cracked on the last word. She looked at Lorenzo, then Theo, then Draco, desperate for reassurance. "Right?"

Lorenzo pulled her closer against him, his usual arrogance stripped bare, leaving only sincerity. "Yeah. We'll be okay. We've got each other."

Theo nodded slowly, though his expression betrayed doubt. "We've always managed before. We'll manage again."

But the words sounded hollow, even to him.

Aurelia shifted, her body trembling. She felt Draco's arm slip around her shoulders, drawing her back against him without a word. For once, he didn't look smug, or aloof. His face was unreadable, but the pressure of his arm around her was fierce, almost desperate, as though she might vanish if he let go.

Mattheo exhaled sharply, his laugh bitter again. "You don't understand. He won't care that we're young. That we're—" He broke off, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. If he says jump, our parents will push us to the cliff's edge themselves."

The silence that followed was heavy, each of them swallowing the truth they already knew: there would be no escaping this. Aurelia closed her eyes, leaning into Draco's chest, listening to the frantic beat of his heart beneath the silk of his shirt. She wanted to believe Daphne's words, wanted to pretend they could live in that big house with its tower and library and endless laughter. But the darkness was already creeping in, staining the edges of their bright, drunken dream.

"We'll be okay," she whispered, not because she believed it, but because she couldn't bear to leave the thought unsaid.

One by one, the others nodded, murmuring their assent, though their voices lacked conviction. They leaned into each other, six bodies pressed close for warmth, as if proximity could shield them from what was coming.

Above them, the constellations shone in pitiless silence. The laughter had gone, replaced by the steady thrum of fear in their chests. Yet none of them moved. None of them spoke again. They simply sat together in the shadow of the stars, clinging to a fragile moment of unity, knowing it might be the last time they could pretend the world wasn't ending.

The tower held them close, but the night stretched wide and merciless beyond its stone walls. In that quiet, with Aurelia's head resting against Draco's shoulder, Daphne curled in Lorenzo's arms, Theo's eyes darting uneasily between them all, and Mattheo staring into the abyss of the sky, the six of them sat in stillness, knowing without words that everything had already begun to change.

Chapter Text

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

The ropes creaked when they tightened. The man's wrists jerked once against the splintered wood of the pole before he stilled, breath shuddering, eyes wide and wet in the grey London air. The woman beside him sagged as if her bones had already given up, cheek pressed to the timber, hair clinging damp with sweat and smoke.

I laughed. I couldn't help it, an awful little trill that split from my chest like a songbird shrieking through a storm. The sound bounced off the broken windows of the square and back into me, and suddenly my ribs ached from it. It wasn't funny, not really, but the heat inside me demanded it. My fingers shook, not with fear, no, but with that bright fizzing rush that burned up through my veins and told me I was infinite.

"Hold still, beautiful," Lorenzo cooed, adjusting the woman's chin with two elegant fingers as if posing her for a portrait. His smile glowed like polished ivory under the lanterns. He bent close enough that his lips brushed her ear. "You'll want the crowd to remember your best angle."

The woman whimpered, throat taut like a violin string. I laughed again, higher this time, throwing my head back so the sound knifed through the tension in the square.

The crowd was thick, pressed into the perimeter of the square, hemmed in by the others. Draco, Theo, Aurelia and Mattheo were each at the edges like black statues, faces hidden behind their masks. Crowd control. That was my order. Anyone who spoke, anyone who moved wrong, anyone who dared to look away would be killed. The flashes of green and red light already dotted the cobblestones where those brave enough to resist had fallen.

But it was working. The fear was ripe, tangible, rolling in waves through the packed crowd. Mothers pressed children against skirts, old men clenched hats in gnarled hands, young men trembled with fists that never lifted. I could feel their terror as clearly as my own pulse and it thrilled me.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Lorenzo's voice rang out, smooth as silk and loud as a bell. He was standing just to my right, cloak thrown back like he was making a stage entrance. He looked like he was about to charm an audience at the Opera, not preside over slaughter. His wand twirled in his fingers, gleaming in the light of the streetlamps. "You've been gathered here tonight for a very special performance."

The crowd groaned, shuffling, whispering. I giggled. Couldn't help it. My hands were already twitching with excitement, with too much energy. My skin felt alive, buzzing. Every flicker of lamplight was too bright, every movement too sharp. My heart rattled in my chest like a bird in a cage, wings desperate and beautiful. Lorenzo glanced at me, smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He loved me like this, unhinged, laughing. Or maybe not loved. But fed on it. He leaned closer, stage-whispering just for me.

"Darling, I think they like us."

I threw my head back and cackled. The sound burst from me, wild and jagged, sharp enough to split glass. The muggles at the poles flinched. I circled them slowly, boots scraping on the stones. My wand trailed lazily from my fingertips, the tip dragging sparks against the air. The man's eyes followed me, blue, watery, wide with terror. His lips moved, maybe praying, maybe begging. The words didn't matter to us.

"Do you think they know what's coming?" I asked Lorenzo, pitching my voice like I was in on some secret joke.

He shrugged, spinning his wand between elegant fingers. "Muggles never know anything, my love. That's the whole charm of it. Stupid little creatures stumbling about in their cages, pretending they've got control."

That made me laugh again. Except this time it was jagged, broken at the edges. Because something inside me was pulling, sharp and guilty. Not guilt. Not really. Just some quiet thing, far away, whispering that maybe these were people. That maybe the woman's tears looked too much like my own when I was small and mother had locked me in the cellar for screaming too loud.

"Shall we begin?" I sang, spinning in a circle so my cloak flared around me. The crowd gasped.

"Yes, let's," Lorenzo said, bowing like he was presenting a queen. His grin was sharp as glass. "The stage is yours."

I flicked my wand lazily, sent a spark of violet fire spiraling into the air. It cracked like thunder and the crowd shrank back, shoulders folding, heads ducking as if the sky itself were falling. I could almost taste it on my tongue, their collective dread, the knowledge they were trapped in here with us. It slid down my throat like champagne bubbles.

Lorenzo stroked the woman's hair as if she were a courtesan instead of a prisoner. "You're exquisite," he purred, lips barely moving, just for her. "A shame you've got to die tonight. I would have happily ruined you over several evenings."

Her husband jerked against the ropes, face flushing scarlet. "Don't you touch her!" His voice cracked into the air.

The crowd gasped. Heads swiveled. Mattheo was behind the children, two small things, wide-eyed, trembling where they stood like lambs corralled at slaughter. He didn't glance up, didn't blink, only shifted his wand a fraction toward them. The threat was enough. The husband's fury drained into silence, his chest heaving as if he'd drowned and resurfaced to no air.

"Shh," I hissed, tilting my head at him, eyes wide. "Shh, shh, shh. Don't speak." My voice was sing-song, lilting like a lullaby, but it cracked too high at the edges. "You'll spoil the fun."

Lorenzo chuckled. "You hear her?" He clucked his tongue, drawing a finger down the woman's jawline. "Spoil the fun, and Daphne gets ever so cross."

I grinned at him, teeth sharp in the lantern glow. "I do."

The crowd shifted again, a ripple of whispering feet. Theo flinched at the sound, eyes darting, but Draco's sneer carved the air into silence again. I leaned closer to the husband, letting my wand trail up under his chin, lifting his jaw until he had no choice but to look at me. His pulse beat frantically against the wood.

"You love her, don't you?" I whispered. My lips twitched at the corners, as though I might laugh again. "Sweet, foolish love. I wonder how far it stretches, will it snap if we pull hard enough?"

His eyes shone with rage, but also there it was, terror. I could see it glistening behind the fury.

"Lorenzo," I sang over my shoulder, "do be a dear and test it, won't you?"

"With pleasure."

He turned back to the woman with a predator's smile. His hand skimmed her collarbone, fingers tracing the neckline of her torn blouse with such obscene gentleness that I nearly clapped my hands in delight. The woman trembled, squeezing her eyes shut, silent tears streaking down her cheeks.

The husband lunged against the ropes, howling now, voice breaking. "Don't you touch her! Take me instead—"

The children screamed at the sound. Mattheo didn't move, only pressed his wand closer to their little ribs, expression stone. I shrieked with laughter, doubling forward, palms braced against my knees.

"Oh fuck, listen to him! A knight in rags, begging to swap places, isn't it chivalrous?"

My laughter caught too long in my throat and turned ragged, a cough stealing into it. For a moment my vision blurred. A strange pulse throbbed behind my eyes, the pit, always waiting. I blinked hard, forced it back, straightened, smiled too wide.

"Chivalrous," I echoed, softer, to convince myself.

Lorenzo pinched the woman's chin, tilting her head back to expose the pale column of her throat. "You'd make an exquisite canvas," he murmured. "Shall we paint her, Daphne?"

"Paint!" I clapped once, spinning in a circle. "Oh, yes, paint her red."

The crowd made a sound, one collective intake of breath as Lorenzo slid his wand down the line of her throat and whispered a cutting curse. A ribbon of crimson blossomed where the skin parted, staining her blouse.

The husband howled, thrashing uselessly against his bonds. "Stop it! Please!"

"Please," I mimicked, my tone mock-sweet. I pressed my wand to his chest, over the frantic beat of his heart. "Do you think 'please' ever saved anyone? Do you think the world bends for your pitiful word?" I leaned closer until our noses nearly touched, my breath shivering. "No. The world cracks."

I flicked my wand and his ribs snapped inward with a sound like dry sticks breaking. His scream ripped through the night, louder than the bells that had once tolled from the church at the square's edge. The children sobbed, clutching at each other, but Mattheo's wand held them fast like invisible chains. My laughter returned, raw, too sharp, slicing up my throat. It spilled out anyway.

"You hear it?" I shouted to the crowd, arms thrown wide. "Bones breaking like kindling for the fire? That's what mercy sounds like!"

No one answered. Not one dared. Their silence wrapped the square like funeral cloth. Inside, something twisted. The pit opened a crack. For half a breath I thought of my own father, of his hand raised, of my mother's hollow eyes. For half a breath I saw my own bones splintering under invisible weight. I blinked, forced the thought away, swayed on my heels. The euphoric rush surged back, hot and bright. My grin cracked wide again.

"More," I demanded, voice breaking into laughter again. "More, more, more!"

Lorenzo bowed with a flourish, his grin wicked. "As my love commands."

He dragged his wand down the woman's arm this time, slicing ribbons into her flesh as though carving a design into marble. She bit down on her lip until blood welled, refusing to scream, but her eyes rolled with the effort.

Lorenzo leaned close, whispering so intimately the crowd strained to hear, "Don't be shy, love. Give us your music."

When her voice finally broke into a scream, high and tearing, I clutched my chest and spun, laughing and weeping at once. The sound filled me, filled the hollow place, kept the pit at bay. Behind me, Draco's voice cut low to Theo, sharp as a whip.

"Keep them still. One twitch and you're next."

The crowd froze tighter, as if their spines had been fused into a single trembling wall. I stepped closer to the children at last, tilting my head. Their small hands clung white-knuckled to each other, faces blotched red from crying. For a breath, I felt something twist again, something almost tender, almost human. Then Mattheo's eyes caught mine, dark and warning.

So I smiled at the children instead, lips stretched too far, and whispered, "Watch. Watch carefully. This is what love costs you."

My mind burned hot and wild, dragging me forward again, and I let it carry me. The woman's scream still hung in the night like the trailing ribbon of a bell when my eyes caught a flash of white hair through the crush of the crowd, and for a moment the world seemed to sharpen, to burn gold at the edges, as Aurelia's figure cut clean through the chaos. She was a storm in herself, her braid loose and wild, her pale face spattered scarlet as she drove her fists into the face of a Muggle man who had dared to lunge forward, dared to think he could interrupt our spectacle.

Her movements were graceless, frantic, almost clumsy with rage, but each blow landed with a wet thud that echoed over the cobblestones, and I felt my chest swell with a surge of something dangerously close to pride, as though I myself had birthed that fury into her. My laughter broke into something high and wild, not just at the sight of his nose collapsing under her knuckles, but at the fact that Aurelia, my Aurelia, was still standing among us, still bloodying her hands instead of shrinking away, a sister to me in violence if not in ease.

I raised my wand in salute to her, a mock toast across the square, though she did not see it, too consumed by her fight, too caught up in the roar of blood in her own head.

Theo stood with his back too stiff, his jaw too tight, the point of his wand trembling ever so slightly in his grasp, his eyes flicking to every corner as though ghosts would come clawing from the shadows. His fear made him human, and I almost loved him for it. Beside him, Draco was marble and ice, every curse that left his wand precise, his mouth drawn in that elegant sneer that never faltered, never cracked, as though disdain alone were enough to keep the world at bay. He looked as if he belonged here, as if he had been carved for this moment in some cathedral long before his birth, and I could almost admire the art of it.

Mattheo's whole body was turned now, toward the two children huddled just before him, his shadow a jagged monster stretching long and black over their tiny frames in the lantern light. He crouched low so that his face was level with theirs, his wand tipped lazily beneath the chin of the boy, his mouth twisted into something that might have been a smile if it weren't so utterly hollow.

I could not hear his words at first, but the way the children's shoulders quaked, the way their eyes darted to their parents bound to the poles, told me enough. Then, drifting over the low thrum of the crowd, his voice came, velvet wrapped around barbed wire.

"Do you see?" he was saying, each syllable drawn slow as honey. "Do you see how easy it is for them to bleed? How soft the skin, how fragile the bone? This is what happens when you grow up believing you matter."

The girl whimpered, and his wand shifted immediately to her cheek, pressing until she flinched away. His eyes glittered like obsidian catching firelight.

"Don't look away," he whispered, so soft I felt the words rather than heard them. "If you blink, you'll miss the best part. You wouldn't want that, would you? You wouldn't want to disappoint Daddy when he dies."

Something inside me splintered with exhilaration. My laugh rose sharp and shrill, and I spun again in place, arms wide, cloak whipping about, dizzy on the chaos, dizzy on the sight of the children's tears reflecting torchlight like jewels. It was obscene, it was terrible, but it was intoxicating. The square ours now and all we were doing was pressing scripture into trembling mouths with every taunt.

The air tasted like iron and smoke, the whole square thick with the smell of scorched timber and the sweat of too many bodies pressed too close, and I thought it marvelous, I thought it divine, I thought the world had never been so sharp or so alive as it was in this moment with the torches flickering and the ropes creaking and the crowd straining to breathe through their own terror.

Lorenzo circled the poles as though they were a stage, each step languid, deliberate, his dark hair catching the firelight like a halo. I mirrored him, stalking the other side, our paths weaving around the two bound figures in a parody of a dance. The man was red-faced, veins bulging at his temple as he jerked against the ropes that would not break, while the woman only shivered, her chin trembling where Lorenzo's fingers had just touched.

"Now, darling," Lorenzo purred, flashing me a grin over the woman's shoulder, "do we start with the knight or the maiden? What's the proper order of things?"

"Order," I repeated, my laugh slicing high through the thick silence. "There's never any order. There's only choice, Lorenzo. And choice is such a cruel little thing, isn't it?"

I skipped closer to the husband, leaned in until my breath fogged against his cheek. "Should it be you first?" I whispered. "So you don't have to watch her scream? Or should it be her, so you know exactly what you've failed to protect?"

He tried to spit at me, but his mouth was too dry, his tongue sticking to his teeth. Only a strangled sound escaped him.

"Her," Lorenzo said, and his tone was teasing, playful, but his eyes glinted with something darker as he brushed the hair back from the woman's face. "Ladies first, isn't that the saying?"

"Imagine his face when you start carving her apart. Imagine how wide his eyes will go." I tilted my head at Lorenzo, lips stretched too wide, my laughter bubbling up again. "Perhaps it's kinder to keep him alive longer, yes? Let him savor every moment."

"Kindness." Lorenzo chuckled low, dragging the tip of his wand along the woman's collarbone, leaving a thin trickle of blood in its wake. "I've never thought of you as particularly kind, Daphne."

"I'm not," I sang back, voice breaking into another jagged laugh. "I'm not, I'm not, I'm not—"

The woman flinched as his wand traced lower, and the husband roared, jerking against the ropes, the veins in his neck straining fit to burst. "Don't touch her! You bastards, don't you dare—"

"Ah-ah," Lorenzo crooned, and his grin widened wickedly. "You'll spoil our fun again."

He glanced at me, a spark of mischief dancing in his eyes, and for a moment it was just us, playing a game in front of the crowd, feeding off each other's laughter and cruelty like we always had. He winked, and I felt the euphoric heat in me flare even brighter, my pulse racing.

Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to the woman's.

It was sudden, shameless yet oddly passionate, his hand gripping the back of her neck, tilting her face up, his lips moving against hers while she sobbed and tried to wrench away, her muffled cries spilling into his kiss.

The husband's scream tore the air apart, raw and broken, louder than anything that had come before, and for a heartbeat the crowd itself seemed to surge with it, a shudder of horror rolling through their ranks.

My laughter caught, snagged in my throat like a hook. I smiled, still, because I couldn't stop, because the world demanded it, but it was too sharp now, brittle at the edges. My chest felt tight. I turned my head quickly, as if to share the moment with the crowd, but my eyes flicked back unwillingly, drawn to Lorenzo's mouth still pressed against the woman's, the husband's face contorted with agony.

"Lorenzo," I said, my tone still light, but thinner now, strained like a violin string stretched to snapping. "You'll make him jealous."

He broke the kiss with a laugh, a smear of her blood at the corner of his mouth, and licked it away slow, deliberate, as though savoring wine.

"That's the point, darling," he said softly, eyes locking with mine for just a moment before swinging back to the husband. "What's the fun in cruelty if it doesn't cut the deepest? Besides, you're still my favourite girl."

The woman sagged against the ropes, gasping, tears streaking down her face. The husband sobbed and strained, veins bulging, his eyes bloodshot with rage and despair. The crowd was silent as death, only the crackle of torches and the sound of my own breath ragged in my ears. But somewhere deep inside, the pit yawned wider.

I lifted my arms slowly, wide, as though to gather the whole night against my chest, and the crowd stilled further, as though they feared even to breathe too loudly. My laugh came sharp, too high, but I let it echo across the cobblestones anyway, the note of it shattering the silence like the strike of a bell.

"Witness," I cried, voice ragged and triumphant. "Witness the cost of your defiance! Witness the price of standing against us!"

My gaze swept across their pale faces, feeding on the fear, on the way mothers clutched children tighter, on the way men clenched fists only to let them fall limp again under the gleam of wands at their throats. Each flinch was a sacrament, each tear an offering.

I turned then, slowly, deliberately, back to the two bound figures. The husband's chest heaved with broken sobs, his eyes wild, fixed not on me but on Lorenzo, who still lingered close to the wife, a wicked smile playing across his mouth. The woman herself had slumped, her hair tangled and damp with sweat, lips bruised and trembling from his kiss, yet her gaze still sought her children where Mattheo crouched like a shadow with his wand pressed to their cheeks. She looked at them as though trying to drink them in for the last time, and the desperation in her stare was almost unbearable.

I stepped closer, the hem of my robes whispering against the cobblestones, the tip of my wand catching the light. Inside, something in me was shaking, not with doubt, not with regret, no, never that, but with a feeling that would not let me be still, that demanded I move, I act, I burn.

Lorenzo tilted his head toward me, his eyes gleaming darkly. "Shall we, darling?" he murmured, and his voice was velvet, dangerous, thick with the intimacy of conspiracy.

"We shall," I answered, and my laugh trilled high again, though the sound was jagged, brittle, something broken beneath the shine.

I circled them once more, deliberately slow, dragging the anticipation out until even the crowd seemed to sway with it, until the victims themselves sagged under the weight of waiting. The ropes creaked as they strained against them, the sound like bones splintering.

"You are blessed," I whispered to them as I passed, my voice low enough that only they could hear. "Blessed to be chosen, to be offered up. Do you know? Do you understand? Your deaths will be the foundation of something greater."

The husband spat at the ground, his face contorted with fury. "You're monsters," he rasped. "Filthy, godless monsters."

"Godless," I echoed, tilting my head. The word rolled over my tongue, bitter and sweet at once. "Oh no, not godless. Never that. We have a god, and tonight, he listens."

The crowd shuddered as my voice rose again, carrying over their heads. "Let their blood sanctify this ground! Let their screams bind us in power!"

I lifted my wand high, and the flames of the torches seemed to lean toward me, the shadows pulling longer, blacker. My chest was tight, my pulse frantic, but I smiled, wide and bright, a mask that cracked at the edges but did not fall.

Then I brought my wand down in a swift arc, the motion sharp, decisive, and ropes of magic snapped from its tip, coiling around the husband and wife like serpents, binding them tighter still, pulling their bodies flush against the poles until the wood groaned under the strain. They gasped as the cords dug into flesh, blood welling in thin lines, and the crowd hissed as one.

I could feel them, all of them, the eyes, the fear, the horror and it rushed into me like a tide, like a thousand threads sewing themselves into my skin, filling me, swelling me until I thought I might burst.

Lorenzo had come to stand at my side now, his shoulder brushing mine, his grin dazzling in the firelight. He twirled his wand between his fingers as though this were nothing more than a game, as though we were still children in the dungeons daring each other into cruelties.

"Together?" he said, his tone light, but beneath it something taut, something reverent.

"Yes," I breathed. "Together."

We moved as one, raising our wands, the tips glimmering with green light that pulsed brighter, brighter, until the glow washed across the victims' faces, painting them sickly emerald. The woman whimpered, her eyes closing, her lips moving soundlessly in some final prayer. The husband only stared at me, hatred etched deep, his teeth bared.

"Avada Kedavra," I whispered, and in that moment my voice did not sound like my own at all, but like something vast, something ancient speaking through me.

Two jets of green burst forth at once, twin comets streaking through the night air, striking their targets with perfect symmetry. The husband and wife jerked as the light hit them, their eyes going wide, too wide, impossibly wide and then blank, rolling lifeless as their bodies sagged against the ropes. The sound of it, that instant when breath stopped, when the soul fled, was like a string snapping in the air.

The crowd gasped as though they, too, had been struck. The children screamed, high and piercing, and Mattheo laughed low, dark, cruel, his wand pressing harder against their trembling cheeks.

I stood frozen for a heartbeat, staring at the two lifeless forms slumped against the poles, their bodies still twitching faintly with the echo of death. I had killed before, but never like this, never in such splendour, never with so many eyes watching. It felt immense, infinite, as though the night itself had opened to swallow me whole.

But something surged back, wild, unstoppable. I threw my head back and laughed long and loud, the sound of it ricocheting off stone and timber, climbing up into the heavens themselves. My arms stretched wide again, robes billowing, wand still burning with the last glow of the curse.

"Do you see?" I cried, voice ragged with triumph. "Do you see what becomes of those who defy us? This is your future, unless you kneel, unless you obey!"

The crowd broke then into sobs, screams and wails rising as one. Some crumpled to their knees, others clutched each other desperately, children buried their faces in mothers' skirts. The square was chaos again, but chaos on its knees, chaos subdued, chaos reshaped into worship.

The bodies on the poles sagged, heads lolling, blood dripping slow into the dirt. The torches hissed as the wind picked up, scattering sparks across the cobblestones. The night smelled of ash and endings.

For one fractured heartbeat, I felt not triumph, not ecstasy, but a hollow ache that spread sharp and deep through my chest. The sight of their children screaming, the look that had been in the husband's eyes before death, it gnawed at me, threatened to unravel me from within. But I smiled. I laughed. I turned in a slow circle, arms raised, hair whipping wild around my face, and let the crowd see nothing but delight.

I felt Lorenzo's presence before I looked at him, the heat of him at my side, the faint tremor in his arm where it brushed mine. When I turned my head, our eyes met, and in that glance something dangerous passed between us, not triumph, not exhilaration, but terror.

It was there in the thin twitch of his smile, in the faint shake of his wand hand. For all his charm, all his bravado, he had felt it too, the wrongness of the kiss, the cruelty taken one step too far, the eyes of the husband haunting him even now as the body cooled. And in me, in the pit of my chest, the children's screams still rang in my skull, a pitch so high it scoured me raw, so sharp it cut through the laughter still clawing at my throat.

Lorenzo was the first to move. He raised his wand in a sweeping arc toward the sky, his grin flaring bright, deliberate, false.

"Do you see?" he shouted to the crowd, his voice booming, slick with mockery. "Do you see how your protectors fall? How fragile your hope is? This is what you are, nothing but prey at our feet."

I forced my own arm up, my wand glinting in the torchlight. My heart hammered like a war drum, my fingers trembling, but I stretched my grin wider, let my laughter spill shrill and jagged.

"Kneel!" I screamed, my voice cracking, shrieking high enough to make the children wail louder. "Kneel before us or join them!"

The crowd surged with sobs and terror, parents clutching children, men dropping to their knees with their heads bowed, women crying out prayers that fell flat in the cold night air. The square was a pit of misery, and for a dizzy instant it was intoxicating, a drug stronger than anything else. their terror feeding mine, mine feeding theirs, until it spun into a spiral that made me lightheaded. But still, the tremor in my hand. Still, the pit in my chest.

Beside me, Lorenzo's jaw clenched. I saw it, the tightness at the corner of his mouth, the way his grin wavered when he thought no one was looking. He was shaking too, though his voice rang clear as he called out, "Do you hear them, Daphne? Do you hear how sweet their cries are?"

"Yes!" I shrieked back, though the word felt jagged on my tongue. "Yes, Lorenzo, sweeter than any hymn!"

Then, without meaning to, my eyes flicked across the square to Aurelia, panting, her fists still bloodied from the man she had beaten, her eyes wide and wild with something between horror and awe. To Draco, his face pale marble, his wand hand steady but his jaw taut as he looked anywhere but at the children. To Theo, whose knuckles were white, whose chest rose and fell too fast. To Mattheo, crouched still at the side of the screaming children, his eyes black pits, his smirk cruel, yet his shoulders hunched like something coiled too tight.

We were all trembling. We were all breaking and yet we stood.

My laughter ripped out of me, raw, hysterical. I spun on my heel, raised my wand high, and with a scream that felt torn from the marrow of my bones, I unleashed it.

The spell burst forth like a storm breaking open the night. Sparks erupted from the tip of my wand, not golden and gentle like firework glitter but searing white, streaking across the square in great arcs of light. They fell upon the crowd like a rain of false starlight, beautiful and dazzling, until the first one struck flesh and ignited it.

A woman's body convulsed, her scream strangled as her chest burst open in a flash of fire and blood. Another spark sliced through a man's face, peeling skin from bone in a spray of crimson mist. Children shrieked as sparks rained down on them, sizzling into their hair, their clothes, their eyes, each impact a crack, a pop, a spray of gore.

The square became a furnace of screams. They tried to run, but the sparks followed, raining mercilessly, each one finding flesh, tearing it open, igniting it, burning through bodies like parchment. Blood spattered the cobblestones, the air thick with the metallic stench, with smoke rising from charred skin. The torches flickered wildly, almost drowned out by the brilliance of the spell, the entire square lit as though it were noon, yet painted in blood.

I stood trembling, wand raised, sparks pouring still, my laugh ringing high and manic over the horror. "Burn!" I cried. "Burn and bleed and be gone!"

The crowd writhed, bodies falling atop each other, limbs torn, eyes burst, mouths frozen open in silent screams as throats filled with blood. Children clung to mothers only to watch them collapse in flames. Men tried to shield their families only to be torn apart first, their entrails spilling steaming across the stones.

All the while, sparks rained down, relentless, merciless, until the air itself seemed to shimmer with blood-mist, until the ground ran slick and red, until the only sound was the crackle of burning and the wet squelch of bodies collapsing into ruin.

When at last the spell dimmed, when the sparks sputtered out and only embers floated aimlessly in the thick air, the square was silent again. Silent but for the hiss of cooling blood, the drip of gore down stone, the faint whimpers of those not quite dead yet.

I lowered my wand slowly. My whole body shook, my hands trembling violently. My breath came ragged, tearing at my throat. Beside me, Lorenzo still held his wand aloft, his grin frozen sharp on his face, but his eyes were wide, glassy, and his chest heaved with the same ragged rhythm as mine. But the crowd, there was no crowd anymore. Only bodies. Only ruin.

The children Mattheo had guarded were gone, ash and blood among the many. Aurelia stood stiff, pale, her fists limp at her sides now. Draco had turned away, his profile cut sharp, his eyes hard. Theo's wand hand hung slack, his face sickly. Mattheo only crouched lower, hands over his head, silent, shaking.

I swallowed, forcing my smile back, forcing laughter past the rawness in my throat. I raised my arms again as though conducting a hymn, though my fingers quivered.

"Behold," I rasped, voice breaking. "Behold the power you defied. Behold the fate of all who resist."

Though the only ones left to hear me were corpses, though the only witnesses were my own trembling brothers and sister in this hell, I laughed again, long and jagged, because I had to, because if I stopped, the silence would consume me whole. The sparks still floated faintly in the air, settling on blood-soaked cobblestones like the ashes of some fucked up prayer answered.

The silence after slaughter was worse than the screams. It pressed in thick and suffocating, a silence not born of peace but of absence, of the sheer immensity of what had just been ripped from the world. The cobblestones glistened slick and red beneath the sickly glow of the torchlight, the air clogged with iron and ash, every breath heavy with the ghosts of those we had erased. Bodies lay broken in heaps, tangled together in disgusting parodies of embraces, mouths still open in the last shape of their pleas. Limbs jutted at unnatural angles, torsos torn apart by magic, eyes glassy and unblinking, staring up at the sky that had betrayed them with its rain of false starlight.

We stood at the center of it all, the six of us, a circle of black-cloaked shadows ringed in crimson ruin. None of us spoke. None of us moved. Our boots were planted in pools of blood, the wet sound of it sticking faintly whenever someone shifted their weight, but even that was rare. It was as if the massacre had sealed us in stone, each of us frozen in the weight of it, caught between the expectation of triumph and the undertow of horror.

My wand still hung at my side, my fingers numb around it, though I could feel them trembling if I focused too hard. My breath came shallow, rasping, and I couldn't quite swallow the metallic tang on my tongue, like I had swallowed the square whole. I wanted to laugh, Merlin, I wanted to laugh, to shatter the silence, to fill the void with the delighted chorus bubbling still in the edges of my skull, but my throat ached raw, and the laughter wouldn't come.

It was then that I felt it, the faintest brush at my side, as though someone dared the world to notice. Lorenzo's hand, tentative at first, slid against mine. His fingers brushed once, twice, as though testing whether I would recoil. My gaze flicked sideways, but I couldn't meet his eyes, not yet, I only stared at the mess of our boots, both soaked, both planted in the same spreading pool. Then, slowly, his fingers entwined with mine.

The squeeze was soft, almost imperceptible, yet in the cavernous silence it roared louder than any scream had. His palm was clammy, trembling faintly, his skin slick from sweat, but the pressure was steady, anchoring, as though he was staking some quiet claim against the darkness pressing in on us. He didn't look at me, his face was tilted forward, his grin gone, his eyes fixed somewhere in the ruins before us, but I felt the tremor in him, the fear pulsing through the grip, the same guilt curdling my chest mirrored in his unsteady breath.

My own hand tightened in answer before I could stop it. A secret pact, silent, buried beneath the blood and ruin, that we had seen, that we had felt, that we would not say. I let my gaze drift outward, over the others.

Aurelia stood rigid, her pale hair damp with sweat and blood, her fists still clenched though they trembled faintly against her sides. She was unblinking, her eyes glazed as though fixed on something only she could see. There was blood spattered up her neck, on her jawline, and yet she made no move to wipe it away. She didn't cry this time, she didn't shake visibly anymore, but her stillness was its own kind of breakage, like porcelain holding just enough to hide the cracks underneath.

Draco had turned slightly from the rest of us, his profile sharp against the light, his jaw locked so tightly I thought I could hear his teeth grinding. His wand was tucked neatly away already, his gloves immaculate aside from the flecks of crimson near the cuff, as though he had already begun walling off the scene, boxing it neatly into the same compartment where he shoved everything else he couldn't bear. But I saw the stiff line of his shoulders, the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, the way his eyes refused to meet any of ours.

Theo looked sick. His wand arm hung limp, his other hand pressed tight against his stomach, as though he could hold himself together through sheer pressure. His face was pale, his lips bloodless, his breaths shallow and too quick. He wouldn't look at the bodies, wouldn't look at us, wouldn't look anywhere but the ground at his feet, and I thought if he blinked too long he might faint straight into the blood pooling beneath him.

Mattheo was crouched low, one knee bent, his forearm draped over it, his head tipped forward, hair hanging like a curtain to obscure his face. His wand dangled loose in his grip, but his knuckles were white, the veins in his hand standing out sharp. He hadn't spoken once since the sparks fell. The cruel smirk was gone, the barbs gone, only silence left, thick and black. He was trembling, though he fought it, his back stiff, his breath audible even in the hush. He looked like a boy waiting for punishment, like a soldier waiting for orders, like a son waiting for his father's hand, and it curdled something deep in my stomach.

I looked away quickly, back down at the wreckage, back down at Lorenzo's hand still bound in mine. The blood had crept between our fingers, sticky, binding, like a vow written not in words but in the ruin we had wrought. His thumb shifted, brushing once against my knuckle, and that small movement nearly undid me, nearly split me open in front of them all.

I squeezed back harder, nails biting into his skin just enough for him to feel it, just enough to hold us both off the edge. His head tilted then, the faintest angle, his eyes finally flicking toward me. In them I saw not triumph, not cruelty, not even the flirtatious bravado he wore like armor, but fear.

Still, we stood. Still, we kept our faces fixed, our silence strong, our masks intact. Because what else could we do? We were the chosen instruments of the Dark Lord himself. In the ruins of this town square, surrounded by the carnage of our own hands, all we could do was stand together in silence, hand in hand, as the blood cooled around us and the echoes of our sin pressed down like a cathedral ceiling collapsing overhead. The sparks had faded, but their afterglow lingered in my vision, burned into me like a stain I would never scrub away.

✦

The safehouse felt more like a tomb than a refuge. Its walls were damp and stained with the weight of years of neglect, the boards warped, the windows cracked and letting in thin streams of night air that smelled of soot and smoke and something damp beneath the floorboards. We filed in one by one, the six of us, shedding silence like our cloaks, though none of us spoke. Our boots tracked blood and ash across the warped wooden floor. No one made a move to clean it.

I found myself at the dining table, its surface uneven, the wood grooved from knives and age, its legs threatening to give if leaned upon too heavily. I sat down because my knees felt like they no longer belonged to me, because if I kept standing I would crumple, because the stillness of the table promised, if not safety, at least structure. My wand sat idle in front of me, streaked with dried red where I had gripped too tightly.

Draco moved with quiet efficiency, not the swagger of arrogance he liked to wear at school, but the kind of silence born from exhaustion, from grim necessity. He opened the cupboard with its weak hinges and produced a plate, chipped porcelain with a crack spiraling like a vein down the side. He placed upon it two fruits, an apple with its skin wrinkling, its shine dulled, and a pear soft in patches, the flesh beneath threatening to spoil. It was all that was left. He set the plate down in front of me without a word.

I shook my head, a reflex sharp and immediate. "No. Someone else should—" My voice was hoarse, scraped thin, but I forced the words anyway. "Give it to Theo, or Aurelia. I don't—"

Draco cut me off with a glance, sharp as glass. His pale eyes held mine, steady, refusing refusal. "You led tonight," he said simply, voice low, the cadence steady but carrying an edge of something that might almost have been reverence. "You deserve it more than anyone."

The words pierced me sharper than a blade. I wanted to laugh, wanted to scream. Deserve? What did that word even mean anymore? Deserve was for children, for fairy tales, for those untouched by blood. But Draco said it like it was truth, like it was undeniable, like I had earned something in the ruins. I lowered my gaze, staring at the fruit, unable to accept but unwilling to insult him by pushing the plate away. The apple sat dull and dented, but my stomach turned at the thought of biting into it, of chewing while the taste of copper still clung to my tongue. My hand trembled as it reached, fingers hovering, until I finally picked it up.

The bite was soft, mealy, the sweetness faded to something almost bitter. Still, it allowed some normality to run through me, the crunch, however faint, the act of chewing, the swallow that scraped down my throat like gravel. I broke off a piece and pushed the plate toward Draco.

He hesitated only briefly, then sat opposite me, the chair creaking under his weight. He took the pear, inspected it with his long, elegant fingers, and sliced away the bruised skin with his wand before bringing it to his lips. His face was impassive as always, but I caught it, the faintest flicker of relief, the smallest loosening of his jaw, as though even rotting fruit felt like a gift.

We ate in silence. Bite for bite, small pieces passed between us, an unspoken rhythm, an unacknowledged ritual. The others had drifted into corners of the house, nursing wounds, scrubbing blood from their arms, collapsing into chairs or onto the floorboards, too hollowed out for food. But here, at the table, Draco and I shared what remained.

I caught him looking at me once, when he thought I wouldn't notice. His expression softened, almost imperceptibly, the gratitude sharp in the corners of his mouth though he never said a word. He looked as though he might speak, might confess something, might acknowledge the unbearable intimacy of eating together in the wake of massacre, but he swallowed it down along with the pear.

But I understood. Words would have broken it. Words would have named it, and naming it would have ruined the fragile reprieve we had carved for ourselves. So we stayed quiet, chewing slowly, passing fruit back and forth, two children grown too quickly into executioners, clinging to the last sweetness left in a world gone rancid.

The plate emptied, aside for a stem and a scattering of seeds. Draco pushed it gently aside, and for a moment, he simply sat there, elbows resting lightly on the table, his gaze fixed on his hands. His breathing was steady, but when he finally looked back up at me, his eyes held something unguarded, the kind of gratitude that ran deeper than words, the kind that said thank you for letting me share, thank you for not letting me be alone.

I nodded once, as though I had heard him speak, though neither of us had.

I leaned back in my chair, letting the wood creak beneath me, my eyes half-lidded with fatigue I refused to name. My stomach was still hollow, gnawing, the fruit barely a whisper against the hunger, but I didn't mention it. Neither did he. Instead, the words slipped out before I could soften them, blunt and too sharp for our quiet.

"So," I said, dry as the boards beneath us, "what the fuck are we going to do?"

Draco's head jerked slightly, his pale hair falling across his temple. For a moment he just stared at me, like he wasn't sure if I was serious, then he gave the faintest exhale that might have been a laugh if he'd had the energy. He looked down at his hands, then back at me, his mouth twisting.

"You're asking me?" he said, voice low but with that familiar edge of superiority, worn thinner now by exhaustion. "As though I've got some grand strategy tucked under the floorboards?"

"You're the clever one," I shot back, a faint smirk tugging despite the heaviness pressing down. "And you're the one with the scowl that makes everyone assume you know what's going on. So. Enlighten me, Malfoy. What's the plan for the rest of our miserable little existence?"

He leaned his elbows onto the table, steepling his fingers, his face briefly illuminated by the sputtering lantern in the corner. "The plan," he said after a pause, "is to make it through tomorrow. And then the next day. And the one after that. Preferably without starving to death."

"Solid plan," I muttered, biting at my thumbnail. "I can see the strategic genius now. Just survive. Revolutionary."

The corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.

"Tomorrow night," he said more seriously, "we'll go into one of the smaller muggle towns nearby. Take what we can, food, supplies, whatever's light enough to carry back. But not too much. If we strip it bare, someone notices. And if someone notices, the Ministry notices. And if the Ministry notices..." His gaze flicked toward the others in the house, slumped in corners and shadows. "Well. You know what that means."

"Yes, I do," I said softly, drumming my fingers on the table.

"We'll also need to start thinking about winter. It'll be here before we know it. This place..." He glanced around the safehouse, the walls so thin you could hear the night pressing through them. "...it won't hold warmth. We'll need blankets, thicker clothes. Boots. Anything we can get."

I snorted, sharp and humorless. "Fantastic. A winter shopping spree, only without the vaults at Gringotts to foot the bill. Who knew the mighty Malfoys and Greengrasses would end up squabbling over moth-eaten coats nicked off a muggle's washing line?"

His jaw tightened, though I saw the flicker of bitterness in his eyes. "We don't have a choice. The Dark Lord keeps us here for a reason. If we go home, we're exposed. We stay in this hole, or we risk capture and capture is worse."

"Right," I said, tilting my head, my smile thin and sharp. "So we just sit here, slowly wasting away, eating apples that taste like chalk and pears that smell like piss, and hope our illustrious leader remembers we exist before our teeth start falling out."

"Daphne—" he began, warning in his tone.

But I cut him off, leaning forward, my elbows on the table now, mirroring him. "No, really, Draco. Tell me you don't hate this. Tell me you don't wake up every morning wondering how the fuck we went from silk sheets and silver spoons to this... this rat-infested coffin." I gestured at the warped beams above us, the flickering lantern light catching on cobwebs. "We're pureblood royalty, and here we are rationing half-rotten fruit like fucking beggars."

He didn't snap back like I half-hoped. Instead, he looked down, his face shadowed, his pale lashes lowering. For a moment he said nothing, just breathed, his fingers flexing against the table as though he needed to hold onto something.

Finally, he said quietly, "Of course I hate it." His voice was almost too soft, stripped of its usual arrogance. "Every second of it. But hating it doesn't change it and neither does pretending we aren't already in too deep to climb out."

The blunt honesty startled me more than if he'd shouted. I leaned back, staring at him, the faint smirk gone now. He was right. We both knew he was right. Still, the absurdity of it, the bleak comedy of our downfall, bubbled up inside me, threatening to spill into laughter I couldn't quite release.

I huffed instead, running a hand through my tangled hair. "Brilliant. So our grand future is stealing socks and stale bread off half dead muggles until the Dark Lord decides we're worth dragging out again. What a fucking legacy."

That time, Draco almost smiled. Almost. His lips curved faintly before flattening again, as though he couldn't quite allow himself the indulgence.

"Tomorrow we raid. Maybe you'll get your hands on something better than pears that smell like piss."

I rolled my eyes, but I didn't argue. My stomach growled quietly in the silence between us, and his eyes flicked to me, catching it. He didn't comment, though his expression softened just enough to let me know he had heard it, and that somehow, absurdly, he was glad I'd eaten what I had. We sat there a while longer, two disgraced heirs in a ruin of a house, planning raids like scavengers and mocking ourselves because it was the only way to stop from breaking.

The boards creaked under my feet as I pushed away from the table. My body felt heavier than it should have, like each step toward the hallway dragged through a tide of invisible water. The lantern light flickered behind me, leaving the dining room in shadow as I climbed the narrow stairwell, the banister rough and splintering beneath my hand.

I wanted nothing more than to collapse onto my mattress, to curl myself tight against the cold wall and stare into the dark until exhaustion pulled me under. Our bedroom was as meagre as everything else in this safehouse, two single beds crammed against opposite walls, the sheets thin, the frames rusting. It was not comfort, but it was routine.

When I pushed the door open, though, I froze.

Her bed was empty.

The sheets were still tucked neatly, undisturbed. No pale hair spilling over the pillow, no slight shape curled on her side as I had expected. For a moment something sharp tugged in my chest, irritation, then worry, then something nameless and fearful.

I turned back into the hallway, the air cooler here, my bare feet soundless against the warped floorboards. A sliver of yellow light spilled from the boys' room. The door was half-open, and something in me already knew.

I stepped inside.

The double bed sagged under the weight of three bodies. Lorenzo lay sprawled on his back, one arm draped loosely over his chest, his dark hair falling untidily into his eyes. Theo was curled at the edge, his knees drawn slightly inward, his face pale, his lips parted as though sleep had eluded him. Between them lay Aurelia, not touching either, her hands folded against her stomach, her head tilted toward the ceiling, her eyes open and glassy in the half-light.

They weren't clinging to each other, not tangled up like lovers or children huddling for warmth. They were just there, side by side, the closeness enough, the silence louder than any confession. Shaken, broken, but together.

Aurelia noticed me first. Her gaze flicked toward the doorway, catching mine, and in her face I saw it, her fear, the fragility she tried so hard to mask at Mattheo's command. Something inside me cracked, sharp and quiet, like a fault line splitting deeper.

I didn't hesitate. I crossed the room, the floor groaning faintly beneath my steps, and slid onto the bed between them. Lorenzo shifted slightly to make space, his warmth brushing mine, but I turned immediately toward Aurelia. I wrapped an arm tightly around her, pulling her against me, her small frame tense for only a moment before it yielded. Her hair smelled faintly of smoke and sweat and the sharp tang of blood.

For the first time that night, I allowed myself to soften. To hold her as though she were something fragile, as though by sheer force I could protect her from the weight pressing down on us all. I pressed my face briefly into the crown of her head, closing my eyes, letting the simple act of holding tether me back from the chaos still burning behind my ribs.

Her voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper, trembling but certain.

"We just... didn't want to be alone."

The words pierced the stillness, cutting through the quiet with their honesty. She didn't look at me when she said it, but her truth sat between all of us, undeniable, a confession made for them as much as for me. My chest tightened, but I only squeezed her closer, my hand splaying across her back, my thumb brushing faintly against the curve of her shoulder. I could feel Lorenzo's breath steady beside me, Theo's faint shifting at the far edge of the bed. They all heard it. They all knew.

The silence that followed was heavy, but not suffocating. I could feel Aurelia's shallow breaths against my chest, the tremor that lingered in her aching body, but slowly it steadied, slowly she began to sink into the warmth I offered. Beside me, Lorenzo shifted. The mattress dipped as he rolled onto his side, his arm brushing past my shoulder before settling firmly around me as well. His palm rested just beneath my collarbone, grounding, almost protective despite the sharp edge of his usual bravado. He squeezed gently, and I heard the low hum of his voice slip into the dark.

"Our brave girl," he murmured, and there was no smirk in it, no teasing note. Just the words, soft and unguarded. For a heartbeat I wanted to laugh, to shove him and tell him not to be so sentimental, but the sound caught in my throat, replaced instead by something hot behind my eyes. I leaned back into him, letting the curve of his arm hold me together.

Theo's voice broke through next, hesitant at first, fragile like glass.

"I'm proud of you," he said, and I turned slightly to catch the pale outline of his face at the far edge of the bed. His eyes, usually darting with nerves, were fixed on me. "I... I couldn't have done what you did tonight. Not ever. But you did it."

His voice cracked at the end, shame and awe tangled together, and my chest clenched tight. I wanted to tell him he didn't have to, that he shouldn't want to, that his softness, his fear, was what kept some small sliver of humanity alive in all of us. But the words refused to form. Instead I gave him a slow nod, a faint smile curving despite the exhaustion pulling at my bones.

For a long while, none of us moved. The weight of Lorenzo's arm, the fragile warmth of Aurelia pressed against me, the quiet admission from Theo, it all stitched together into something that felt almost like safety, though I knew it was only borrowed. The air was warm from our mingled breath, the thin blanket tangled somewhere near our legs, but no one reached for it. We didn't need it, the warmth in our closeness was enough.

The door creaked suddenly.

My head lifted just enough to see the pale blur of Draco's figure in the doorway. He froze when he took in the sight, all of us gathered on one bed, Aurelia curled between me and Lorenzo, Theo's knees drawn tight to his chest, my own hand still gripping Aurelia as though she might disappear. For a moment I thought he'd sneer, or scold, or simply turn away.

But he didn't.

He lingered, silent, his gaze flicking over us, something unreadable shadowing his sharp face. Then, without a word, he stepped inside. The door clicked softly shut behind him, muffling the rest of the house. He crossed the room with slow, measured steps, and the bed dipped again as he eased down beside Theo. Theo shifted, pressing his shoulder unconsciously closer to Draco's, and Draco allowed it, his hand brushing faintly against Theo's wrist in something that looked almost accidental. But it wasn't. We all knew it wasn't.

For the first time in what felt like years, there were no walls between us, no barbed words, no sharp edges. Just us, the ones who had slaughtered and burned and destroyed, huddled together like frightened children in the wreckage of our own lives. Nobody dared to breathe too loud. Nobody dared to break it.

This is what keeps us alive.

Not the missions, not the violence, not the Dark Lord's approval, but this. The simple fact that none of us wanted to be alone. The room was warm with our closeness, the air thick with breath and silence, when the door swung open again.

Mattheo stood in the threshold.

He didn't step forward immediately. He only leaned against the frame, shadows cutting sharp angles into his face, his eyes sweeping over us where we lay pressed together on the sagging mattress. Aurelia tucked into my arms, Lorenzo curled against my back, Theo drawn in tight beside Draco, a cluster of bodies where once there should have been distance.

For a long moment he just stared. There was no expression at first, nothing but the hard gleam of his eyes, and I almost thought, maybe he'll understand. Maybe he'll cross the floor like Draco had, slip down beside us without a word, let the night close around us like a fragile shield.

But then the smirk cut across his mouth. Cruel and jagged.

"What the fuck is this?" His voice was low but sharp, cutting through the quiet like a blade. "All of you, piled up like frightened children. Pathetic."

Aurelia stiffened in my arms, her body rigid at the sound of him, and Theo flinched visibly, shrinking back toward Draco. Lorenzo shifted behind me but didn't move away, his arm still heavy across my chest as if daring Mattheo to comment further.

"We're not—" I started, but he cut me off.

"You're fucking weak." He stepped into the room now, slow, deliberate, his boots sinking into the thin rug. "Do you think the Dark Lord would spare a second glance if he saw this? If he saw his Six cowering together, clutching each other like it'll save you from what's coming?"

His laugh was hollow, bitter. He looked at Aurelia as he said it, his eyes locking on her with a venom so sharp it made me want to bite back.

"You think this makes you strong?" He sneered. "It makes you prey. Easy to break. Easy to use."

I didn't even think.

One second I was pressed tight against Lorenzo's chest, his arm heavy across me, his breath warm against my neck, the next I was tearing myself free, his hand shooting out to stop me but finding only air. My feet hit the floor hard, fast, carrying me toward Mattheo before any of them could move, before my brain had the chance to catch up to my body.

My fist connected with his face before I'd even registered the swing. The sound was sickeningly solid, bone and cartilage crunching beneath my knuckles, the spray of warmth hot against my skin as his nose erupted in blood. His head snapped back and cracked hard against the wall behind him with a dull thud that rattled the wooden frame. He staggered sideways, one hand flying up to his face, and I turned on my heel, already walking away, shaking, every nerve on fire.

But Mattheo Riddle was not the kind of boy you walked away from.

Fingers like iron clamped around my hair and wrenched me backwards with such force I cried out, my spine snapping straight as he yanked me off my feet. My skull slammed against the wall with a jolt that sent white stars exploding across my vision. Pain lanced sharp and hot behind my eyes, and I barely had time to suck in breath before he did it again, and again.

"You stupid fucking bitch!" His words were spit-soaked, furious, blood streaking down from his ruined nose, dripping from his mouth. Each curse punctuated by the blow of my head colliding with the wall, the world spinning in flashes of light and sound. My scalp screamed where he gripped, each tug ripping fire through the roots of my hair, each impact making me feel like my skull was splintering open.

"Mattheo, stop!" Draco's voice was sharp, panicked, cutting through the chaos.

Theo was already off the bed, his long frame colliding into Mattheo's side, trying to wrench him off me. The impact made Mattheo's grip falter for a heartbeat, but then his fury doubled, his free hand slamming into Theo's chest, sending him staggering back.

Blood was running down into my eyes, warm and sticky, blinding me. I dropped to my knees when his grip finally loosened, my hands catching against the floorboards slick with my own spit and blood. My stomach lurched, vomit clawing at my throat, and the room was nothing but ringing sound and violent motion.

"Get the fuck off her!" Draco this time, his fists slamming into Mattheo's shoulder, his pale hair flying loose around his face as he tried to drag him back.

Mattheo's curses were feral, guttural, his rage pouring out like poison, and I felt the air shift as another set of hands tore him away, Lorenzo, bellowing louder than I'd ever heard him.

"You'll kill her, you bastard!"

He was behind me now, dragging Mattheo bodily backward, Aurelia's sobs cracking sharp against the walls as she clung to the bed. I was curled on the floor, blood dripping steadily from my nose, pooling at the corner of my mouth, my head pounding with every frantic beat of my heart. The taste of iron filled my mouth, copper and salt. The smell of sweat and fear was suffocating.

For a moment, no one spoke, just the sounds of shuffling, Mattheo's growls, Lorenzo's snarled restraint, Theo's rapid breathing as he pressed back against the far wall, wide-eyed. Then Draco was kneeling before me, his hands trembling as he touched my cheek, smearing blood across his fingers.

"Daph, Merlin—" His voice cracked. "You're bleeding everywhere, fuck—"

I wanted to laugh. The sound came out broken, wet, half a cough. "No shit."

My head lolled sideways, the room spinning around me in nauseating circles. I could still feel strands of my hair sticking to the wall where Mattheo had slammed me, tacky with blood.

Behind Draco, Lorenzo's voice was rising, venomous and desperate, as he held Mattheo pinned against the wall now, their foreheads nearly touching.

"You're out of your fucking mind. She's one of us. You hear me? You lay another hand on her—"

Mattheo spat blood onto the floor between them, laughing through it, wild and unhinged. "One of us? She thinks she's stronger than me. She thinks she can put her hands on me and walk away. Weak little girl—"

Lorenzo shoved him harder into the plaster, the crack of it splintering, Aurelia still sobbing from the bed, Theo's voice murmuring her name, trying to calm her.

I swallowed against the metallic flood in my mouth, my body trembling, but I forced myself upright, clutching at Draco's arm for balance. My whole face throbbed, my vision blurred, but I would not lie broken on the floor in front of him. Not Mattheo. Not ever.

"Let him go," I rasped, though the words cut my throat raw.

Lorenzo's head snapped toward me, eyes wide with disbelief. "Daphne—"

"Let. Him. Go." My voice cracked on the final word, but I stared at Mattheo through the blood and haze, forcing my body to stay upright though every nerve screamed for rest.

Because no matter how broken I felt, I refused to let him see me crawl.

I lay there on the floor, blood dripping steadily from my scalp, down the side of my face, pooling sticky at my chin. My body shook, but I couldn't tell if it was from pain or adrenaline. My lungs worked in ragged pulls, trying to drag air into a chest that felt crushed by the weight of betrayal.

Mattheo didn't speak another word. His eyes, blazing with fury, carved into me with the weight of everything he thought I had just done. And then, in a gesture that made my stomach churn with a mixture of fear and rage, he spat. The thick, wet glob landed on the floor beside me, close enough to send a sharp, acidic tang of his contempt through the room, burning even without touching my skin.

I froze, muscles taut, my chest heaving in a trembling rhythm that matched the bitter pulse at the back of my skull. The metallic scent of blood and spit mixed with the scent of sweat, dust, and the faint tang of old paint and lantern smoke, forming a heavy miasma in the cramped room that clung to every nerve. My fists curled tightly in the blanket beneath me, my nails digging into the fibers as though I could claw back some of the dignity he'd ripped from me.

Lorenzo moved immediately, his jaw set, dark eyes burning with something more dangerous than anger, a kind of wrath that made the hair on my arms prickle. I could feel the weight of it even from where I lay, bruised and throbbing. He followed Mattheo out of the room, stepping with the silent, measured precision of someone ready to strike, and I could hear the door close behind them, the soft click of the lock snapping home like a challenge left hanging in the air. Even from inside, I could feel the tension, the almost tangible promise of confrontation that Lorenzo carried in his gait, a storm waiting to crash.

I sagged back against the floor with a hollow groan, my limbs trembling from the adrenaline still coursing through me, my scalp screaming where Mattheo had torn at it. My fingers grazed my hair and felt the sticky clumps clinging to blood and sweat. I wanted to cry, to curse, to scream until my throat tore open, but no sound came, only the quiet rattling of my pulse in my ears, each beat echoing against the walls like distant drums. Theo's voice broke the silence, low and careful, measured in a way only he could manage.

"Daphne... I can help you clean up. We can get you out of these—" He gestured to my clothes, now marred with dark crimson streaks and dampened with sweat. His eyes flicked nervously to the doorway, tracking the shadows where Mattheo and Lorenzo had disappeared.

I shook my head, my hair flaring out around my shoulders, damp and sticky. "No," I whispered, voice hoarse and ragged. "I'm not going out there. Not yet. If I move, if I go anywhere near him, he'll find something else to be angry about. Let him leave. Let him burn himself out."

Theo's jaw tightened. He wanted to argue, to insist, but he understood. His hand hovered over mine, lingering as though the simple gesture could heal me entirely. He dropped it, silent, and knelt instead beside me on the ground.

Aurelia slid over, her presence quiet but solid, curling around the curve of my hip in a way that radiated calm, grounding energy. Draco joined, his usual meticulous posture softened in exhaustion. For a moment, I allowed myself to sink into the weight of them, the three of them forming a kind of protective crescent around my battered body, their closeness a silent pledge that no one would touch me again tonight.

They fetched their pillows from the beds and lowered them to the floor, to join me. Draco adjusted his so that my head rested lightly on it, careful not to jostle me, and Theo brought his pillow up, tucking it beneath my legs to support them. Aurelia's hand lingered against my side, brushing lightly, not demanding anything, just present, like a quiet affirmation that I wasn't alone.

The room was dim, lit only by the faint glow of the lanterns we hadn't bothered to extinguish, their flames trembling against the walls like nervous spirits. The smell of blood and sweat and fear still lingered, but beneath it, something warmer settled into my chest, the gentle pulse of human touch, the rhythm of their presence. I felt the tremors in my limbs begin to reside, replaced slowly by a numb, pliable exhaustion that let me breathe, let me exist without the immediate threat pressing against my skull.

Draco's fingers found their way into my hair, methodical and gentle, stroking through the tangles and the sticky clumps, smoothing and untangling. Each pass was a tether to something steadier, a quiet insistence that I could relax, that it was safe, at least for now. His hands lingered, light but deliberate, his thumbs tracing small, careful patterns against my scalp, and I felt myself sinking further into him, into the warmth radiating from the three of them.

Theo murmured occasionally, a quiet hum, his voice low and soft, as if the sound alone could erase the last traces of panic from my system. Aurelia shifted, moving closer to tuck her head near my shoulder, letting me feel her steady breathing, the rise and fall of her chest. The weight of her presence was a tether, a quiet declaration that we were still alive, still human, still capable of clinging to each other even in the aftermath of what had just transpired.

Time lost its shape. The ringing in my ears dulled, replaced by the soft brush of hands against hair, the warmth of bodies pressed close, the gentle sighs and murmurs that rose like incense in the room. My head lolled slightly, heavy and thick, and for the first time since the confrontation with Mattheo, I allowed my eyes to drift closed.

I could feel Draco still awake, his hand threading through my hair with a soft, almost ritualistic care, each pass over my scalp slow and patient, grounding me further. I was aware of him, aware of Theo's presence, of Lorenzo's lingering absence, and of Aurelia curled close enough that our shoulders pressed together. It was intimate without being invasive, protective without being smothering, a fragile, wordless shelter that stretched across the floorboards, over pillows, under the dim lantern light.

Sleep didn't come at once, but it came slowly, riding in on the rhythm of breath, the warmth of bodies, the steady, gentle persistence of human touch. My pulse settled, though the ache in my head lingered, dull and throbbing beneath the surface. I clutched at the edge of Draco's pillow lightly, letting my fingers curl around it as if I could tether my mind to this fragile calm.

Draco's thumb moved in slow circles through my hair, the repetition hypnotic, coaxing me downward. My lids grew heavier with every pass, my chest unclenching just a fraction, my body yielding finally to the exhaustion that had been gnawing at me all night.

The room was quiet except for our breathing, the occasional creak of the floorboards settling under our weight, the soft rustle of the blanket as we adjusted. In that quiet, in that tenuous stillness, I allowed myself to feel, not brave, not strong, not victorious, just human, just fragile, just held. Eventually, I drifted completely into the haze of sleep, tangled in pillows and the warmth of those who would not let me fall alone. Draco's hand remained against my hair, light but there, a promise that at least tonight, the world's cruelty could not reach me no more.

Chapter Text

The morning came not with sunlight, but with a dim, watery glow through the cracked bathroom window, the kind of light that didn’t warm so much as reveal. My reflection in the mirror above the sink looked ghastly, half a ghost and half a ruin. My skin was smeared with dried blood, blonde hair matted in dark clumps with bruises beginning to bloom in deep violets and sickly yellows along my temple. My body felt like stone, every movement heavy, but they hadn’t let me stay in asleep.

So here I was, stretched across the chipped counter, my cheek pressed against the cool porcelain, the room smelling faintly of soap and mildew. Aurelia’s small hand was wrapped around mine, her thumb running a rhythmic pattern over my knuckles, holding my heartbeat steady with every pass. Her eyes were fixed on the work she was doing, her wand raised carefully, tracing shimmering threads of light over the broken skin at my scalp. Each stitch of magic tugged sharply, like fire knitting the wounds together from the inside, but her touch on my hand never wavered, even when I twitched or hissed through my teeth.

Behind me, I felt the warm trickle of water as Lorenzo poured it slowly, carefully over my hair. His movements were uncharacteristically gentle, not a trace of his usual careless energy in them, no winks, no jokes to hide behind. The pads of his fingers worked delicately against my scalp, massaging through the blood and grit, coaxing it free, rinsing the filth of last night away one careful handful at a time. The water ran down into the porcelain basin, pink at first, then rusty, then finally clear, the stains of violence leaving me strand by strand.

“You’re alright, Daph,” he murmured, his voice low, steady, and far softer than I had ever heard it. The words vibrated against my skin, warm as his fingers worked through the tangles. “I’ve got you, we’ve got you. All you need to do right now is breathe for me.”

I let out a shaky laugh that caught halfway in my throat, bitter and fragile. “Feels like my head’s been split open.”

“I’m almost done here, I promise,” Aurelia whispered, her thumb still stroking my hand. Her voice carried a calm certainty, but her grip was tighter than usual, betraying the tremor she was hiding. She hadn’t slept, I realized. None of us had, not enough at least.

Lorenzo leaned down close enough that I felt the warmth of his breath by my ear as he worked.

“You’re stronger than him,” he said quietly, and for once, there was no edge of mockery or performance in his tone. “Stronger than you know. Last night… you scared the hell out of me. But you stood up to him, Daph. You didn’t flinch, you never do and I admire that.”

My throat tightened, though whether from pride or pain I couldn’t tell. I kept my cheek pressed against the counter, watching Aurelia’s concentrated face, her lips pressed thin, her brow furrowed with every flick of her wand. Lorenzo rinsed another handful of water through my hair, his fingers combing it gently, untangling the knots with patience I hadn’t known he possessed.

“I want you to know something,” he went on, his voice still low, still meant only for me, though I felt Aurelia’s ears tilt toward his words. “I found him after. Mattheo.”

The name hung in the damp bathroom air like smoke.

“I taught him a lesson,” Lorenzo continued, his fingers never pausing in their slow, careful rhythm. “And I promise you, he will never touch one of our girls like that again. Not you. Not Aurelia. Not ever.”

Aurelia’s eyes flicked up from my wound to his face, a flash of something passing through them, something like relief, maybe, or disbelief. Her grip on my hand tightened, and I squeezed back weakly, letting her know I’d felt it too.

“Did you kill him?” I croaked, the words thick on my tongue.

Lorenzo huffed a short, humorless laugh. “Not yet.” He leaned closer, his voice dipping to a whisper that coiled like smoke around the three of us. “But he knows now. He knows where the line is and if he ever forgets again…” His fingers pressed briefly, firmly against my scalp, a promise in the weight of the gesture. “He won’t walk away next time.”

The water ran clear now, trickling warm down my neck, the last of the blood spiraling away down the cracked drain. I closed my eyes, breathing in the steam, the faint scent of cheap soap, the murmur of Aurelia’s healing spells. For the first time since last night, the pounding in my head began to ease, dulled by the steady rhythm of their care, the gentle persistence of touch, voice and presence soothing me.

I wasn’t sure if I believed Lorenzo’s promise, not entirely. Mattheo was a storm no one could fully leash. But as I layed there, with Aurelia’s small hand holding mine and Lorenzo’s careful fingers rinsing the ruin from my hair, I let myself believe in the possibility of safety, even though I knew it may be too good to be true.

The three of us stayed like that for a long time. Aurelia murmuring spells, her face pale but focused, Lorenzo whispering quiet assurances as his hands worked steadily, while me, limp across the counter, drifting in and out of a haze where pain and tenderness blurred together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. In the fragile space within the bathroom, the first thin light of morning sliding through the cracked window, there was a dull dull ache inside me telling me that this was the closest thing to peace we were ever going to get.

Aurelia’s wandlight dimmed, her spell settling the last line of fire along my scalp, and she finally drew back, exhaling slowly through her nose. She looked exhausted, more hollowed-out than I felt, and yet her hand was still welded to mine, her thumb still moving in that same gentle rhythm, as if letting go would mean I might slip away entirely.

“It’s closing,” she murmured, brushing a stray strand of hair from my face with the back of her knuckles. “You’ll scar, but it’s shut. No more bleeding.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a hoarse rasp. “Another scar to add to the collection.”

Her lips twitched, not quite a smile, not quite anything, but her thumb pressed harder against my knuckles. Lorenzo straightened behind me, his palms steadying my head as he poured one last careful stream of water through my hair, watching it spiral clean this time, pale strands freed of the black-red clumps that had glued them together overnight. He wrung the water from my hair gently, gathering it in his hands before letting it fall back into the basin, as if he were afraid even the weight of a towel might jar me too much.

“There,” he whispered, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “Like nothing ever happened.”

I tilted my head slightly, just enough to catch his reflection in the mirror, his usual grin gone, eyes stripped bare, a darkness in them that wasn’t flirtation, wasn’t charm, just quiet fury and something like grief. His shirt sleeves were rolled high, damp from splashes of blood and water, and I thought, absurdly, that he looked more human than I’d ever seen him.

“You’ll get yourself killed, standing up to him like that,” I said, my voice a dry scrape.

He bent closer, his lips almost at my temple. “Better me than you.”

The words landed heavy, leaving me no room to reply. Aurelia shifted, sliding her wand onto the counter, both her hands now wrapped around mine, her face angled down as though she couldn’t bear to look at either of us.

I breathed in through my nose, catching the mingled scents of soap, iron, and the faint sweetness of Aurelia’s hair, which had fallen in front of her face. My head still throbbed, but it was dulled now, wrapped in their care, in the low hum of their voices and the warmth of their touch.

“Alright,” Lorenzo said finally, pressing his palm flat to the crown of my head with a surprising tenderness, as though sealing everything shut. “Up you get.”

Aurelia helped lever me upright, her arm slipping around my waist, my legs trembled beneath me, the tiled floor cold under my bare feet, but she held me steady, her small frame stronger than it looked.

Lorenzo grabbed an old looking towel from the hook on the wall, wrapping it carefully around my damp hair, blotting it with the same patience he’d shown with every motion as he washed it. His hands lingered on my shoulders for a heartbeat longer than necessary, giving a quiet squeeze before he let go.

I caught his eyes in the mirror again, not playful, not sly, but blazing with something unspoken. It frightened me, that look. Frightened me more than Mattheo’s rage had, because it meant Lorenzo wasn’t simply pretending anymore.

Together, the three of us shuffled out of the cramped bathroom, Aurelia still clinging to my waist, Lorenzo shadowing my other side like a bodyguard. The dim hallway stretched ahead, the floorboards creaking under our weight, the house smelling faintly of dust and damp. I could hear the faint shuffle of movement from the kitchen.

The thought of facing the others, of sitting at that splintered table with the weight of last night still clinging to all of us like smoke, made my stomach twist. But with Aurelia’s grip around my hand and Lorenzo’s steady presence at my shoulder, I stepped forward anyway, my damp hair dripping down my back, each footfall echoing like the start of something I wasn’t yet ready to name.

The kitchen was gray, daylight seeping through the broken blinds that were doing little to keep it out, casting harsh stripes of white across the cracked linoleum floor. The air smelled faintly of stale water and wood rot, as though the walls themselves were tired of sheltering us. Theo was already seated at the warped table, his elbows pressed to the wood, his face pale and unreadable.

Across from him, Mattheo slouched low in his chair, one hand curled around the backrest, the other flat on the table as though he were trying to pin himself there. His jaw was tight, lips pressed in a hard line, the faint bruising under his eye blooming a mottled red-purple reminder of last night. His nose was crooked, swollen, though healed enough that he could breathe again. His dark gaze snapped up as we entered.

Our eyes met.

For a second, the entire world stilled. His stare pinned me, black and sharp, a mixture of venom and something else, something buried deeper that I didn’t dare name. The memory of his hand in my hair, my skull cracking against plaster, blood running hot down my face, those things flashed through me in jagged fragments, but I didn’t flinch. I held his gaze, teeth gritted, waiting for him to sneer, to spit, to strike.

But he didn’t.

He just looked.

It was worse than if he’d cursed me outright.

I turned my face away first, the silence crackling in the air between us like static, and Aurelia tightened her hold, drawing me toward the empty chairs as though the act of sitting could settle us, could force us back into something resembling normal.

Draco was pacing, a long piece of parchment clutched in one hand, his eyes scanning line after line, lips moving soundlessly as though counting something over and over again. The list seemed endless, curling at the edges, his knuckles white around it. He didn’t even look up when we entered, too consumed by whatever numbers haunted him. His hair fell untidily into his face, his shirt wrinkled, sleeves half-rolled, like he hadn’t slept.

“There’s nothing left,” he muttered finally, more to himself than to us, his voice flat. He jabbed at the parchment with his finger. “Not a bloody thing, we’ve run through it all faster than I thought, and we were meant to get a drop yesterday.”

My stomach twisted, guilt flaring at the implications. The memory of that half-rotten pear I’d shared with Draco the night before rose sharp in my mind, the softness of it on my tongue, the way we’d pretended it was enough. My throat tightened.

The silence that followed was suffocating, thick with everything unsaid. Lorenzo slipped into the chair beside Theo, Aurelia finally easing me down into the seat opposite Mattheo. I could feel his eyes dragging over me again, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back. My hands rested on the scarred table, fingers twitching against the grain, needing something to do, anything to break the weight of the stillness pressing in from every wall.

Theo’s eyes flickered toward me, a shadow of concern buried in their depths, but he didn’t speak. Lorenzo shifted in his chair, the scrape of wood against stone jarring in the silence. Aurelia sat rigid beside me, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze locked down on the floorboards as though she could disappear into them.

Mattheo hadn’t looked away from me since I sat down. His stare was a blade pressed just beneath the skin, waiting for the right angle to draw blood. His silence wasn’t peace, it was the promise of something waiting, lurking, biding its time. I watched his fingers drumming once, sharply against the table before they stilled.

The tension wound tighter with every breath. The air itself seemed to buzz, ready to splinter. My scalp throbbed faintly, each heartbeat echoing against the fresh stitches Aurelia had woven through me. My chest felt hollow, my stomach knotted, every instinct telling me to speak, to break the silence, but knowing one wrong word could unravel us all.

We sat in that ruin of a kitchen, the weight of hunger gnawing at our insides, the ghosts of last night still fresh in the blood beneath my fingernails, the list of our dwindling survival rattling in Draco’s hands, and we let the silence stretch longer, tighter, until it felt like the house itself might crack under it. In the middle of it all, Mattheo’s eyes stayed locked on mine, daring me to move, daring me to speak, daring me to prove that I wasn’t weak enough to break.

Draco finally stopped pacing, the parchment dangling at his side like it had defeated him, but when he looked at us his jaw was set, his eyes hard, and for a moment he almost managed to look like the version of himself he had been molded into. The boy bred for command, carved sharp enough to lead. He planted his hand flat on the edge of the table, the sound sharp in the silence, making even Lorenzo flinch slightly.

“Tonight,” he said, his voice clipped, deliberate, cutting through the heavy quiet like a blade, “we go to the next town over. Small place, hardly on the map. They’ve got a shopping center there, nothing fancy, but it’ll have what we need.” His eyes swept the table, resting on each of us in turn, daring anyone to interrupt. “We go in after dark, when it’s near empty. I’ll take care of the cameras and the alarms, don’t ask how, just trust me. But the rest of you—” his hand curled into a fist on the table, knuckles paling, “—you have to stay sharp. We don’t know how many people might still be lurking about. If someone sees something they shouldn’t, we deal with it fast.”

Mattheo snorted low under his breath, a cruel twist to his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. His gaze slid to me again, and I ignored it, my eyes fixed on Draco.

He carried on, unshaken, though I could see the flicker of weariness behind his words. “We only take what we need. Food. Medicine if we can find any. Blankets, clothes for winter. No trophies. No indulgence.” His voice cracked slightly, but he pressed on, harsher now, almost barking it to hide the slip. “We take too much, the cycle breaks. They notice shelves emptying too quickly, they lock things down, increase security. They send people looking around, and if they start, we lose everything. You want to starve in the dirt, be hunted like prey? Then fuck this, ignore me. But if you want to survive, then you follow my lead.”

The parchment crumpled under his grip as he said it, his hand shaking, though his voice didn’t. I could see it though. The sleepless nights carved under his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the way his shoulders hunched as if the weight of us all pressed there alone. He was trying so hard to be cold, to be firm, to make us listen, but underneath it his body was betraying him. He looked like the skeleton of a man, now restless, worn raw, stretched too thin.

No one spoke for a long moment. The only sound was the faint tick of a clock on the wall, its rhythm uneven, like even time itself was faltering in this place.

Theo nodded slowly, his expression sober. “Understood.”

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest, his usual grin absent, but his eyes steady.

“We’ll do it clean. In and out.” His voice was quieter than normal, lacking the flourish of his usual bravado, and it made the words sit heavier.

Aurelia sat stiff and small beside me, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She didn’t speak, just gave one short nod, her gaze fixed on the table’s surface.

Mattheo said nothing. He sat back in his chair, legs sprawled, tapping one finger against the wood in an idle rhythm, his dark eyes still locked on me. His silence was louder than words, and I felt it, like a shadow at my back. Draco drew a sharp breath and rolled the parchment tightly in his hands, as though winding up all his tension into one brittle cylinder of paper.

“Good,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction now, brittle at the edges. “We move tonight. Until then, conserve your strength. No wandering, and no bullshit.”

His gaze swept us once more, lingering longest on me, then Mattheo, then finally softening, almost imperceptibly, when it landed on Aurelia. For a heartbeat, I thought he might break, might let slip the exhaustion, the despair knotted tight behind his eyes. But he didn’t. He just straightened his spine, smoothed the parchment against the table, and said, “That’s all.”

 

He turned away, pressing his hands to his temples for a brief second before dropping them to his sides, resuming his slow, restless pacing, as though the act of moving was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

✦

The night air snapped against my skin one second, and the next it was gone and replaced by the sharp, sterile cold of artificial light. We landed with a ripple of displaced air, the faint echo of our apparition ringing off the cavernous walls of the shopping mall. The place was deserted, but not lifeless. Fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead, flickering in intervals that gave the long corridors of shops a sickly, uneven glow. Our boots clicked sharply against polished tile, the sound too loud in the silence.

Draco moved first. His wand was already raised, his face a mask of harsh precision. With a flick, the nearest black eye of a security camera exploded, glass shattering into a rain of glittering fragments that pattered across the floor. Another swish, another crack. Lenses burst one after the other, each violent sound reverberating through the empty atrium like gunshots. I watched his jaw clench tighter with every spell, the hollows under his eyes lit harshly by the cold lights above.

“Stay alert,” he barked, turning on us once the last camera lens cracked and fizzled with smoke. His wand hovered, restless, still ready to strike. “No wandering off, no wasted time. Food is the priority. Then blankets, winter clothes, medical supplies. Nothing else. We’re not here to—” His gaze cut to Aurelia, sharp as a blade. “— fuck around.”

Aurelia flinched. Just the smallest movement, her shoulders folding inward, her chin dipping. Mattheo let out a low laugh, leaning lazily against the wall though his eyes were burning with something dangerous.

“He’s right, Aurelia. Try not to slow us down yeah?” His mouth curved cruelly. “Last thing we need is you getting distracted by shiny little trinkets.”

Aurelia’s jaw tensed, but she said nothing. Her silence only fed the moment, stretched it taut and uncomfortable. I felt it instantly, the tension rising, sharp and ugly, the kind that could eat us alive from the inside out. The boys were wound too tight, their anger spilling over from last night, from hunger, from everything. Aurelia was going to be their scapegoat if I didn’t cut the thread now.

“Enough,” I snapped, stepping forward before either of them could add more. My hand found Aurelia’s wrist, firm and deliberate. “We’ll take care of the clothes.”

Draco turned on me, mouth opening to argue, but I didn’t let him. “We’ll be quick,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “You won’t have to waste your energy babysitting us. Focus on food. You said it yourself, it’s our priority.”

For a moment, the silence felt like it might crush us all. Draco’s eyes narrowed, calculating, and I could see the protest rise to his lips. Mattheo’s stare slid between me and Aurelia, heavy with annoyance. But before either of them could spit another word, I tugged Aurelia hard and broke into a brisk stride, pulling her with me down the gleaming corridor.

“Daphne, fuck—” Draco’s voice barked after me, but I didn’t turn back. The echo of our boots carried us further, further, until his voice was swallowed by the wide, empty halls.

Aurelia stumbled once as we rounded a corner, then fell into step beside me, her breath sharp and quick in her throat. When we finally slowed outside a darkened storefront lined with mannequins, she turned her head toward me, her pale hair brushing her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she whispered, the words small but fierce. Her fingers squeezed mine briefly, gratitude searing through the contact like heat. “I thought he was going to—”

“Don’t think about it,” I cut her off, softer this time. “Those bitches can stew in their anger. We’ll do what actually needs to be done.”

For a moment, her expression cracked open, the faintest glimmer of relief breaking through the exhaustion in her features. Then, just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by a sudden burst of laughter, quiet at first, then spilling into something freer, lighter.

It startled me. The sound of it in this graveyard of a place, Aurelia laughing, almost childlike, made me bite down on my own lip, fighting the pull at my chest. But then it caught me too, rising up sharp and bitter, until I was laughing with her. It felt wild, wrong, echoing down the sterile corridors, bouncing off the tiled floors and glass displays. Two girls, running through an empty mall in the dead of night, hands still clasped, laughter spilling out like it might drown out the hunger, the tension, the memories of blood.

We apparated with a quiet pop in the middle of the department store’s main floor, and for a heartbeat, I felt like we were intruding on some kind of magical dream. The place was massive, fluorescent lights stretching far overhead, racks and racks of clothing arranged neatly in colors and patterns that made my head spin with possibility. It smelled faintly of perfume, detergent, and something sweet, and the contrast to the stale safehouse air almost made me dizzy. Aurelia’s fingers tightened around mine, her touch pulling me back to present.

“You sure this is a good idea?” she whispered, though there was a faint upward tug at her lips that made me grin.

“Are you kidding? Of course it’s a good idea,” I said, yanking her lightly toward a rack of sparkly tops. “Do you realize how long it’s been since we could just touch something new? Try things on? Act like we’re normal girls for five whole minutes without the rest of them breathing down our necks?”

Aurelia’s laugh was soft, hesitant at first, then rising as the corners of her mouth curled. “I… I can’t even remember. Maybe not since Hogsmede”

I shoved her gently, laughing. “Exactly, and now, behold, a department store full of things to steal and try on and look fabulous in.” I gestured grandly, arms wide. “Let’s fucking ruin it.”

“Are you sure Daph, Draco said not to—”

“Well Draco can go fuck himself, just stop worrying for a moment and lets actually have fun.” I rolled my eyes, already heading over to a rack of clothing.

A familiar feeling kicked in almost immediately, that thrill of something forbidden, reckless, and fun. I grabbed a pink top, held it up to my chest, and spun in place, the hem twirling like a tiny dancer.

“Look at this! Aurelia, I would wear this if only I could be seen in it without looking like a total psychopath!”

She snorted, rolling her eyes but smiling anyway. “I think you’d look like a sparkling psychopath, yes.”

I grabbed a soft, black velvet dress and held it against her. “Here, you try this, you’ll look hot.”

Her cheeks flushed faintly as she tugged it over her head, laughing nervously at the snug fit, but I clapped dramatically.

“Just fuck me in that why don’t you?”

She let out a laugh, and we set off again, like two kids let loose in a candy shop, throwing ourselves into the madness of choice. Aurelia grabbed a hat, one of those oversized floppy ones that looked ridiculous on her little head, and I nearly collapsed from laughter.

“Shut up,” she said, laughing so hard she had to hold onto a clothing rack to keep from toppling.

I grabbed a pile of scarves and tossed them over my shoulder. “I’m stealing these for layering. You need a scarf too, an extra one so we can turn Mattheo into new hanging decor if he fucks around again.”

“Daphne you can’t just say that!” She gasped, but still picking up a silver scraf and draping it around her neck and spinning.

I leaned over, whispering conspiratorially, “Don’t you stand here and tell me you haven’t thought about it Auri.”

She grinned, the kind of full, unguarded grin that made my chest ache a little with happiness.

We moved from rack to rack, tossing clothes over our arms, piling them on tables, hanging things on mannequins to see how they looked. Aurelia tried on a delicate blouse with embroidered sleeves, holding it up to the mirror and turning side to side.

“I think I could almost believe I was rich for a second,” she murmured, the wistfulness in her voice making my chest tighten.

“Almost,” I said, grabbing a sequined miniskirt and holding it against my waist. “We can pretend for a while. Rich, fabulous, and completely untouchable.” I twirled, and the skirt spun around me like a halo.

She laughed, a low, melodic sound, and I grabbed a pair of black heels from a floor display and held them up dramatically.

“In what world do we need those Daph.”

“Fuck whatever, just incase?” I slapped her arm playfully, laughing.

I grabbed her hand again, pulling her down a side aisle, ignoring the lights flashing faintly above the jewelry and accessories. We ran our hands over silk and lace, tossing anything that didn’t fit or look outrageous back onto tables or into corners with wild abandon as we dashed from rack to rack, throwing clothes into fitting rooms, modeling them for each other, making ridiculous poses, and laughing until our ribs ached.

The thrill of the night, the stolen freedom, and the laughter wrapped around us like a blanket. In the department store, surrounded by silk and sequins, feathers and hats, we were untouchable, invincible, completely and utterly ourselves. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel guilty, scared, or trapped. I felt alive. It was almost surreal that we were in a department store that would never remember our names, but that would carry the echoes of our joy for a moment longer than the walls deserved.

We left the fitting room with piles of clothes spilling out of our arms, leaving a trail of chaos behind us, giggling like maniacs, holding hands tight, and I knew that even the rest of the world’s violence couldn’t touch this.

I zipped Aurelia’s last top into my extendable pouch and gave it a sharp tug, hearing the soft pop as it expanded to swallow the pile of new tops, pants and jackets, and the high heels that I had insisted on getting.

“Now,” I said, pointing at the towering racks of coats and sweaters, “we do the boys. And frankly, I vote we let Mattheo freeze a little. He deserves a few days of frostbite, or even a year.”

Aurelia snorted. “Maybe just no gloves. We don’t want him to be more miserable than he already is or he will probably—”

We let the implication hang, both of us not wanting to ruin the moment. I grabbed a plush, oversized scarf and tossed it into my arms, then pulled a matching coat off the rack.

“Fine, fine, we’re generous. But just imagine this, Mattheo trying to keep warm, teeth chattering, and all he can do is scowl at us. It would be glorious.”

We moved like two hyperactive ghosts through the aisles, grabbing hats, scarves, thermal socks, and chunky wool sweaters. Once the boys’ winter wardrobe was stuffed neatly into the pouch, now magically expanded to an impossible size, we turned our attention to the jewelry section, and my eyes sparkled like the glass display cases surrounding us. Aurelia’s gaze followed me warily, but I could see the spark of excitement in her too.

I grabbed a pair of thick gold hoop earrings and dangled them in front of her face. “Try these on.”

She shook her head immediately.

“No, I’m good. Really. I like… simplicity.”

I waved my hand dramatically. “Fuck you, simplicity is boring. Our lives are anything but simple, at least embrace it a bit Auri.”

She smiled faintly, then lifted her hand and touched the silver necklace resting delicately on her chest. Little angel wings hung from it, catching the harsh fluorescent light and sparkling softly.

I paused, holding the earrings halfway to my own ears, and stared at her. “Oh wow, it’s beautiful. Who gave it to you?” I asked, tilting my head. “Very poetic.”

“I don’t know, and I know it sounds really stupid, but I feel attached to it in some way. Or maybe I’m overthinking this.”

I stuffed the earrings and a small stack of necklaces, some thick, gold chains, some delicate silver strands with tiny charms, into my pouch anyway.

“Fine, whatever, I’ll get them anyway and you can borrow them. I know you will anyway.”

Aurelia laughed, a quiet, warm sound that made the wild energy around me soften slightly. She was still sparkly in her own way and it reminded me why I liked having her with me in these little moments of freedom.

Next, we moved to the makeup aisle. I grabbed a display of lipsticks, waving one at her with a flourish.

“Red! Obviously. It’s the color of power, of people who don’t give a fuck about authority.”

Aurelia rolled her eyes, smiling, her fingers brushing lightly over a palette of eyeshadow. “You don’t need all this Daph.”

I rolled my eyes, dragging her gently by the elbow. “I know, but it’s fun. We are stealing. Also, this palette has shimmer so I think we do need it.”

She finally relented with a small laugh, letting me swirl a brush over her lids lightly, the soft pigment leaving a faint glow. I smirked, stepping back and nodding approvingly.

“See? You look like a goddess.”

Then, the gleam in my eyes caught a set of colourful nail polish stacked neatly near the lipsticks.

“And these,” I whispered, like revealing treasure, “are mandatory. Mandatory for both aesthetic and morale.”

“Daph? I’m glad I have you with me. I would never manage half of this alone.”

“Half?” I repeated, bluntly, “you wouldn’t be able to manage at all without me.”

She grinned, her hand brushing mine as we clasped fingers briefly. “We should do this more often.”

I laughed, spinning on my heel to grab a final bracelet off a mannequin. “Yes. Yes we should. But let’s leave now before the boys start looking angrily for us.”

We burst into giggles again, moving toward the exit, the pouch bouncing against my hip with the weight of our spoils, hearts racing, laughter spilling into the empty night.

I glanced over at Aurelia as she fumbled with a rack of muted-colored sweaters, brushing a strand of her white hair behind her ear, and I felt a sudden impulse bubble up inside me.

“Quick,” I called, tugging her gently by the sleeve. “Look over here. I found something that’ll make you stop being so fucking boring for five seconds.”

Her pale eyes lifted, wary but amused. “What is it?”

I grinned, plucking a dress off the rack and holding it against her chest. The fabric was smooth, shimmering slightly under the harsh store lights, a pure, radiant white that caught the little fluorescent sparks like snowflakes.

“This,” I said, my grin widening, “is what you need. Now. No arguments. I insist.”

Her eyebrows rose, a flicker of hesitation crossing her face. “I… I don’t know…”

“Bullshit,” I interrupted, waving my hands dramatically. “You will put it on. It’s beautiful. It’s you and I swear to Merlin, you need to see it on yourself.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then sighed, almost reluctantly, and took the dress from my hands. I turned away, giving her privacy, pretending to scour the nearby racks while secretly grinning like a fool. The soft rustle of fabric and the faint clink of hangers made the seconds stretch, and then she emerged slow, tentative, and suddenly radiant.

Her pale skin seemed to glow against the white silk, and the dress hugged her in all the right places without being overwhelmingly tight, falling gracefully around her thighs like she was drifting through moonlight. I blinked, momentarily speechless, then laughed quietly to myself.

“Oh my god. You look… unbelievable.”

Aurelia flushed, twisting slightly to get the full view in the mirror. “It’s… nice,” she murmured, clearly caught between embarrassment and quiet pride.

“Nice?” I scoffed, stepping closer and adjusting the hem slightly. “Nice? No. You look like a goddess who just appeared to smite the world with kindness and chaos at the same time. That’s not ‘nice.’ That’s ethereal.”

She gave a small, hesitant smile, and my chest warmed at the sight. I yanked a black dress off the rack with a flourish, letting it spill over my arm.

“And me? I can’t have you stealing all the thunder, now, can I?” I twirled, letting the fabric catch the light. “This is mine, a perfect match for you, I think.”

Aurelia’s eyes softened as she studied me, tilting her head ever so slightly. “It’s beautiful.”

We both stood there for a moment, dresses on, looking at each other through the mirror. Her white silk against my black velvet felt like some ridiculous metaphor, the contrast striking but somehow perfect. I reached out impulsively and tapped the glass between us, and she mirrored the gesture, fingertips nearly touching.

“You know,” I said quietly, almost shyly, “I don’t tell you this enough. But you’re incredible, Aurelia. Seriously. I appreciate you all the time. Even when you’re quiet and pale and frowning like you’re about to solve a thousand problems I can’t even imagine.”

She blinked, her lips parting slightly, and I could see the faintest flicker of tears threatening to escape her pale eyes.

“Daphne…” she whispered, and I held up a hand to silence her before she said anything else.

“No, listen,” I said firmly, my voice gentler than usual, almost tender. “I mean it. You’re the one who keeps me grounded when everything else is chaos. And I love being around you, even when we’re stealing everything in a department store or about to die. I just appreciate you and I don’t think I ever say it enough.”

Her lips curved in a small, genuine smile, the kind that made my chest ache with warmth. “I appreciate you too, Daphne,” she admitted softly, almost shyly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You make the world a little lighter, even when it’s dark as it is, mine at least.”

I stepped closer, tilting my head to look at her face reflected in the mirror. “You’re not just light, Aurelia. You’re everything I need right now, I love you and you better not forget it.”

She laughed softly, shaking her head, a blush rising faintly over her cheeks. “I won’t,” she murmured. “I promise, and I love you too Daph.”

We stood there a moment longer, side by side, just breathing in the quiet joy of being together, the chaos of the night fading into something softer, warmer, and infinitely precious. I could feel her heartbeat near mine, a steady drum that reminded me, painfully and beautifully, that she was alive and here and real.

“Alright,” I said finally, my voice lighter, teasing again but gentle. “As much as I’d love to stand here like this forever, we should probably put these on hold for a bit.”

We took the dresses off slowly, I think neither of us wanted this to end. Her fingers brushed mine as I helped fold the white dress neatly. I stuffed my black dress into the pouch with a flourish, both of us still glancing at each other, grinning faintly.

“We’ll do this again right Daph?” she said quietly, as I tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

“Of course we will.” I said, and for a heartbeat, everything else fell away, the safehouse, the raids, the blood, the boys’ tempers. It was just us, laughing and stealing and existing in a little bubble of chaos, wrapped up in dresses and friendship and something far deeper, something neither of us fully named but both of us understood.

 

We left the dresses folded neatly in the pouch, our stolen treasures gleaming in the magical expanse of fabric, and walked away from the racks hand in hand, giggling softly, whispering little jokes, and stealing one last glance at ourselves in the mirror.

✦

The night broke around us like glass when we apparated, the department store dissolving in a twist of air and magic, leaving behind racks of ransacked clothes and laughter still clinging to my skin like perfume. In the blink of a heartbeat, the chaos of sequins and mirrors was gone, replaced by the cracked plaster walls of the safehouse, the musty chill of stone floors that smelled faintly of damp and old ash. We landed in the main room, the boys appearing almost simultaneously with a sharp series of cracks that echoed off the bare walls. The silence that followed was heavy, filled with the uneven breathing of fugitives carrying more weight than their arms could hold.

Draco moved first, his blond head bent, his expression a carved mask of focus as he flicked his wand toward the shelves lining the far wall. Boxes and bags rattled under the spell, stacking neatly, jars clinking as they slotted into place. His face was harsh, set, but the way his shoulders hunched betrayed the bone-deep tiredness clawing at him. Theo followed suit, quiet and efficient, tugging at bags, checking labels, lining tins in precise rows as though order itself was the only thread keeping him together.

Mattheo, on the other hand, didn’t so much as glance at the shelves. He scooped up a bundle of thick wool blankets and strode toward the living room with them thrown over his shoulder. He dropped them unceremoniously on the battered sofa, the dust rising in little clouds as though protesting the sudden weight.

Aurelia caught my eye, and I tugged her hand without a word. We darted down the corridor like two guilty schoolgirls, clutching our bulging pouch between us, laughter threatening to bubble again but strangled back by urgency. The last thing we needed was Draco’s lecture about “restraint” or “priorities”.

We burst into our room, shut the door tight, and emptied the pouch onto Aurelia’s single bed. A mountain of fabric cascaded across the sheets, spilling onto the floor in rivers of velvet, wool, and silk. Sweaters in many tones, tops glinting with embellishments, stacks of skirts we would probably never need, and the delicate sparkle of stolen jewelry all tumbled out in a glorious mess.

We both froze, then collapsed into muffled giggles, clutching at each other like we’d shared a terrible secret, which, in fairness, we had.

“We’re going to hell,” I muttered, snatching up a glittery black top and tossing it over my shoulder.

“Probably,” Aurelia whispered, still laughing softly, her eyes sparkling as she began folding things into something resembling order.

We worked quickly, shoving the clothes and jewelry deep under our beds, folding the rest into uneven piles, stuffing shoes into corners. By the time the chaos had been tamed into a semblance of neatness, my heart had slowed enough that I could almost breathe again.

Then I scooped up the carefully chosen pile of winter clothes, thick with wool and warmth, and carried it proudly down the hall. Aurelia followed, arms full, her face still flushed with the remnants of laughter.

In the main room, Draco was still pacing, muttering numbers under his breath, quill scratching against parchment as he worked through his endless lists. Theo sat cross-legged on the floor, stacking tins of beans and soup into tidy pyramids. Lorenzo was sprawled on a chair, looking smug as ever, his eyes flicking lazily to the pile in my arms.

“Boys,” I announced, dropping the clothes onto the table with a theatrical flourish. “Your winter survival kits have arrived. You may thank us later when your fingers don’t fall off in the frost.”

Theo looked up first, his tired face cracking into something almost like relief as he reached for the thick grey jumper sitting on top.

“You got these… for us?” he asked, his voice quiet, as though the idea was foreign.

“We stole,” Aurelia corrected softly, setting down his pile.

Draco paused mid-scratch, his quill hovering in the air. His eyes flicked to the clothes, then to me, suspicion narrowing his gaze for half a heartbeat. I gave him my most innocent look, raising an eyebrow as though daring him to question how much we had actually taken. After a long second, he let it drop, sighing quietly and reaching for a thick scarf.

“Thankyou,” he muttered, almost begrudgingly. But the way his hands lingered on the wool betrayed his gratitude more than words ever would.

Lorenzo, of course, leaned forward and plucked a ridiculously ugly striped beanie out of his pile, tugging it onto his head with exaggerated flair.

“Oh, wow,” he said to Aurelia, batting his lashes, “you shouldn’t have.”

Mattheo reappeared from the living room then, his expression shadowed, his eyes landing briefly on the clothes before sliding to me. The tension crackled in that moment, silent but heavy, a reminder of last night that neither of us dared acknowledge aloud. He reached for a pair of gloves, tugged them sharply onto his hands, and turned away without a word.

The silence that followed pressed down on us all, thick as the dust clinging to the walls. But for just a flicker, just a heartbeat, there was warmth too, in Aurelia’s soft smile, Theo’s quiet relief, Draco’s weary acceptance, Lorenzo’s irreverent humor. And me, standing among them, my heart still racing from laughter and theft, feeling for the first time in a long time like we had done something right.

The dining table was a wreck of uneven legs and water rings, one of the chairs perpetually threatening to collapse if anyone leaned too far left, but it had somehow become our center. We all sat around it that night, shoulders pressed close, the piles of clothes and supplies shoved haphazardly against the wall.

Theo, who had been rummaging through one of the smaller bags, suddenly cleared his throat. “So,” he said, a little awkwardly, “I… might’ve stolen something.”

I groaned, slumping back in my chair. “If it’s another tin of that gross soup, Nott, I swear—”

He pulled out a box with an almost triumphant flourish, setting it on the table with both hands like he was offering us the crown jewels. A muggle box of playing cards.

For a long second, nobody said anything. Then Lorenzo leaned forward, resting his chin on one hand, and smirked.

“Really? Out of everything in that fucking store, you stole cards?”

Theo flushed, bristling. “I thought it might be… fun.”

Draco arched an eyebrow. “Fun,” he repeated dryly, like the word tasted foreign.

“I’ve seen muggles use them,” Theo rushed on, flipping the box over. “Look, it even has instructions printed on the back. Some game called… ‘poker.’”

That was when Lorenzo burst into laughter, the kind of easy, sharp-edged laugh that filled the whole room.

“Oh, this is rich. Imagine it, most feared kids in Britain sitting around like pensioners playing poker.”

“Better than staring at your smug face all night,” I muttered, snatching the box from Theo’s hands.

Aurelia leaned in, curious despite herself. “How does it work?”

Theo pulled the instructions closer, already scanning them with an intensity usually reserved for battle strategy.

“It says each player gets five cards. You bet with chips—” He paused, glanced at the rest of us. “Fuck. We don’t have chips.”

“We’ve got rocks,” Lorenzo suggested cheerfully, nodding toward the door. “Plenty of those outside. We’ll pretend.”

“Brilliant,” I said, standing abruptly before anyone else could move. I stomped outside barefoot, grabbed a handful of uneven stones from the dirt, and came back in, dumping them onto the table with a clatter.

“There. Currency sorted.”

Theo looked faintly horrified at their jaggedness but said nothing, quickly dividing them into little piles as if it all made perfect sense.

Mattheo sat stiff in his chair, arms crossed, scowling like a thundercloud. “This is a waste of time.”

“You’re just saying that because you know you’ll lose,” Lorenzo shot back immediately, plucking a stone from Mattheo’s pile with exaggerated delicacy.

Mattheo’s eyes flashed dangerously, but Draco’s sharp voice cut through before it could escalate. “Sit down, both of you. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it properly. Nott, explain.”

Theo straightened, his voice growing steadier as he outlined the rules, pairs, straights, flushes, full houses. It was a bloody mess of numbers and suits, but somehow he rattled it off with an ease that left me squinting at my cards in open bafflement.

The first round was a disaster. Aurelia kept forgetting what beat what, Draco looked like he wanted to strangle Theo for overcomplicating it, and Lorenzo was blatantly cheating, palming extra cards, sliding rocks from other piles into his own whenever Theo wasn’t looking.

“Fuck you, I saw that,” I snapped, smacking Lorenzo’s hand when he reached for another of my stones.

“Shut up, Greengrass,” he said, clutching his chest with mock offence. “Can’t a man adjust his winnings in peace?”

“Not when you’re stealing half the bloody table.”

“I’m not stealing, just creatively redistributing.”

Draco groaned. “Merlin save me.”

By the third round, Aurelia had collapsed into quiet laughter every time she accidentally revealed her cards too early, cheeks flushed with the effort of keeping up. Draco was muttering calculations under his breath like a man preparing to file a lawsuit against us all. Mattheo hadn’t smiled once, though his sharp eyes caught every slip of Lorenzo’s fingers, every twitch of Theo’s mouth, cataloguing it all in silence.

Theo, fucking Theo, was winning. Hand after hand, rocks clinking into his ever-growing pile while the rest of us stared in disbelief.

“This is rigged,” Lorenzo said darkly after losing another round.

“You can’t rig muggle cards,” Theo replied, his voice infuriatingly calm.

“Watch me.”

“Face it,” I said, grinning despite myself. “The nerd’s better than you.”

Lorenzo gasped like I’d stabbed him. “You take that back.”

“Not a chance.”

“You wound me,” he said again, flopping dramatically back in his chair, though his eyes glittered with mischief.

Even Aurelia was giggling by then, though her cards were upside down in her hands, and Draco looked two seconds away from confiscating the entire deck. We played for what felt like hours, the room filling with a warmth I hadn’t realised I’d been craving. The fire in the grate was low, the shelves half-stocked with food we’d probably burn through in days, the walls thin enough to let the wind whisper through, but for a short stretch of time, it almost felt normal.

Except for the restlessness buzzing under my skin, sharp as static. I tapped my fingers against the table, shifted in my chair, stretched my legs out only to pull them back in again. The laughter helped, the banter dulled the ache, but it was still there, the edge of something curling in my chest, whispering that sitting still too long would break me.

So I cracked another joke at Lorenzo’s expense, leaned into Aurelia’s shoulder when she laughed, shoved Theo’s pile of rocks halfway across the table just to see him splutter, and tried to ride the feeling instead of letting it swallow me. When Mattheo finally threw his cards down with a muttered curse and stalked from the room, I didn’t stop him.

The table was loud now, rocks clattering across the wood with each dramatic bet, cards being slapped down like weapons, laughter ricocheting off the cracked plaster walls. For once, even Draco had softened, his mouth twitching into the faintest smile when Aurelia proudly announced she had “two of the shiny leaf ones” and Theo nearly fell out of his chair trying to explain that clubs weren’t called “shiny leaves.”

“Honestly,” Draco muttered, shaking his head as he pulled a card from the deck, “you people are insufferable.” But there was no venom in it. His eyes were bright in a way I hadn’t seen for weeks.

“Oh, don’t pretend you’re not enjoying yourself,” I teased, leaning across the table. “Look at you, Malfoy, almost a human again.”

Aurelia snorted, covering her mouth. “He was smiling. I saw it.”

Draco’s ears went faintly pink, and Lorenzo pounced immediately.

“I knew I saw it! Someone’s having fun. Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone. Your reputation as the brooding commander is safe.”

“Shut up, Lorenzo.” But Draco was smiling again, small and reluctant, as though the corners of his mouth had betrayed him against his will.

Another round began, and once again Theo cleaned us out like a professional swindler, gathering the rocks into a neat, smug pile.

“You’re cheating,” I accused, glaring.

“I’m not!”

“You’re too fucking good at this,” Lorenzo added, narrowing his eyes. “You’ve definitely got some trick. A mirror? Wandless magic? Hand over your sleeves, Nott, I’m checking for hidden cards.”

Theo rolled his eyes. “Or maybe you’re just terrible at it.”

“Excuse me?” Lorenzo’s voice went scandalised. “I am a brilliant liar. This is an outrage.”

“Oh, you’re a liar, all right,” I said, smirking. “Just not a good one.”

Aurelia burst into laughter again, leaning against me, her shoulders shaking. Even Draco’s laughter slipped out. The sound startled me. For a moment, we weren’t fugitives or killers or children without a future, we were actually alive.

Except Mattheo.

He hadn’t laughed once. He sat rigid, arms folded, eyes sharp and flat as blades. Watching us, but not with us. The sight of all of us enjoying ourselves seemed to make something ugly curl behind his eyes, like he wanted to spit venom just to cut through the sound of our laughter. He leaned back in his chair like he was above it all, and yet there was something brittle in the set of his jaw that told me he wasn’t indifferent, he was angry.

Underneath it all, my chest was burning. My head was spinning. The longer I sat there, the louder the laughter became, the hotter my skin felt, like fire had been creeping up inch by inch all evening and now it was pressing, insistent, against my ribs. My jokes were coming quicker, my hands tapping against the table, my voice a little too sharp. Fun wasn’t enough. I needed more.

Another hand ended with Aurelia somehow showing all five of her cards at once and declaring “full house” even though she only had three of a kind, and the table dissolved into chaos again.

“Bloody hell,” Lorenzo wheezed, wiping his eyes, “I don’t know what’s worse, your maths or your poker face.”

“I was close,” Aurelia said indignantly, but she was giggling too, cheeks pink.

Then she turned to me. Her hand brushed mine under the table, soft, grounding.

“Daph?” she asked quietly, though everyone’s attention shifted at the sound. “Are you okay?”

The laughter hushed. My chest constricted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I said too quickly, flashing a grin that felt stretched too thin. “Just, my head’s spinning a bit, that’s all. Sitting still too long makes me itch.”

Draco frowned. “You need to rest.”

“No, I need to do something,” I snapped, the words spilling out before I could stop them. The restless fire surged higher, clawing up my throat. I slammed my hand against the table. “We should go out.”

Silence.

Theo blinked at me. “Out?”

“Yes, out,” I said, leaning forward, breathless with the idea. “The muggle town, we should go back. Now.”

Lorenzo sat up straighter, intrigued. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

Draco’s expression hardened immediately. “We just raided. It’s too risky.”

“Oh, come on,” I pressed, my voice pleading now, too fast. “We’ll be careful, we’ll be smart. We don’t have to do much. I just can’t sit here all fucking night playing cards like everything isn’t rotting around us. We need something or I may as well just kill myself and give the Order a head start.”

Theo looked uneasy, shifting in his chair. “It’s dangerous.”

“It’s always dangerous,” I shot back. “But we’re not dead yet, are we? Come on. Please.”

Aurelia squeezed my hand tighter under the table, worry flickering across her face, but she didn’t argue. She just looked at me, searching, like she could see the fire blazing in my eyes and didn’t want to extinguish it, only hold me steady.

Draco rubbed his temples. “This is madness.”

“Exactly,” I said, a crooked grin tugging at my lips. “And madness is better than this.”

For a long moment, no one moved. Then Lorenzo leaned back, hands behind his head, smirking like a devil.

“I say we do it. What’s life without a little chaos?”

Theo groaned. “Merlin help us.”

Aurelia glanced between me and Draco, biting her lip. Finally she whispered, “If it’ll help her…”

Draco exhaled sharply, shoulders slumping. He looked at me, long, tired, but with a flicker of something softer in his eyes. Resignation, maybe. He nodded once. “Fine. But only for a short while.”

“Yes!” I nearly shouted, slamming my palms against the table. My grin was wide, uncontainable. “Let’s go raise hell.”

 

Across from me, Mattheo’s eyes burned like coals. He didn’t say a word, but I could feel his hatred thick in the air.

✦

The streets of the muggle town stretched out in front of us like a stage set, narrow and crooked, lined with little shops with their shutters pulled down, pubs glowing warm and hazy through their smeared windows, and the faint tang of fried food and cigarette smoke clinging to the damp air. My new black dress clung to me in all the right ways, swishing just above my knees with each stride, and beside me Aurelia glittered in her white one like some sort of angel dragged through chaos. We didn’t belong here, not really, but that only made the walk sweeter, every step a defiance, every smile between us another spark catching fire.

Mattheo trailed behind like a ghost, his boots scuffing against the pavement, his face set into that familiar scowl that made him look half-dead and half-furious. Lorenzo, never one to let misery sit in silence, was walking with Theo and Aurelia, throwing pointed jabs over his shoulder.

“Careful, Riddle,” he called, his voice sharp with mockery. “That brooding act might actually kill you before the Aurors do. Lighten up, yeah?”

Mattheo didn’t answer, just shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, his shoulders hunching forward like he wanted to swallow himself whole.

“Don’t waste your breath,” Theo said, though there was a faint twitch of amusement at his mouth. “He feeds on his own misery. It’s the only meal he’ll take.”

Aurelia laughed softly, though she glanced back at Mattheo with something almost pitying in her eyes. I didn’t bother looking. I had better things to do, like dragging Draco along by his sleeve, practically yanking him step for step as I pointed at every ridiculous little thing in the town.

“Look, look at that!” I said, jerking my chin toward a tiny corner shop with neon letters buzzing faintly, half-dead. “They sell food at all hours, imagine if we had one of those near the safehouse. You’d never have to eat your sad fucking pears again.”

Draco’s mouth tightened, his gaze fixed firmly ahead. “It’s rubbish food. Grease and sugar. It would make you sick.”

“Good,” I said bluntly, laughing at his grimace. “At least we’d die tasting something interesting.”

He sighed through his nose, but he didn’t pull away from my grip, which was telling in its own way. He let me drag him, his long strides adjusting easily to mine, his pale hair catching the glow of every passing lamppost.

“Merlin’s sake, Daphne,” he muttered after I tugged him toward a shop window displaying cheap sequined handbags. “Do you have to point out every blinking thing like you’ve never seen a town before?”

“Yes,” I said instantly, flashing him a grin. “And you’re going to suffer through it with me.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but not far either. He was softer with me, I realised, than he ever was with Aurelia. With her, he was sharp, cutting, his words laced with a cruelty that sometimes made even me flinch. I wondered, not for the first time, why that was. Aurelia was gentler than I’d ever be, quieter, less likely to challenge him outright. Maybe that was why, maybe Draco hated gentleness because it reminded him of things he couldn’t afford to want.

But the thought slipped away as quickly as it came, lost in the pulse of the town, because then I saw it, flashing lights cutting through the dark, a bass line pounding through the air like a second heartbeat, laughter and shouts spilling from a building that practically glowed at the end of the street.

I stopped dead, my hand tightening on Draco’s sleeve, my eyes locking on the source of the noise and light. Neon letters screamed above the doorway, their glow painting the pavement in lurid pinks and blues, and through the narrow entryway I caught glimpses of bodies moving, glittering, music crashing over them like waves. A nightclub? I couldn’t tell and didn’t care. What mattered was that it was alive. I didn’t say a word, I just dragged Draco even harder.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he hissed, stumbling slightly as I pulled him off course, down the street toward the pulsing glow.

“Following the sound,” I shot back, my grin wide, my pulse racing in time with the bass.

Behind us, Lorenzo’s voice rang out, scandalised and amused all at once. “What the hell, Greengrass? Where are you—oh, no. No, no, no.”

Theo’s groan followed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

But I didn’t stop, didn’t slow, even as their voices rose behind me. Aurelia’s laugh, soft but nervous, floated over the chaos as she hurried after us, her white dress glowing in the neon. Mattheo’s boots dragged heavily, his silence heavier still.

The closer we got, the louder the music thudded against my chest, rattling my bones, the air thick with perfume and sweat and smoke spilling out of the open doorway. A bouncer stood at the entrance, arms crossed, eyes scanning the street with the boredom of someone who’d seen everything twice already.

“Daphne, stop,” Draco hissed again, but I ignored him.

The bouncer’s gaze flicked over us as we approached, my black dress, Aurelia’s white one, Draco’s tailored sharpness, the boys flanking us like shadows. For a heartbeat, I wondered if he’d stop us, demand proof or payment or something tedious. But then his eyes slid off us, uninterested, as though we were just another group of rich kids looking to waste the night.

We slipped past him, into the pounding heart of the club. The air inside hit me like a wave. It was heavy, thick with sweat and smoke and perfume, the scent of too many bodies pressed together beneath flashing lights that painted the room in shifting shades of pink, blue, and blood-red. Music thudded through the floorboards, a bassline so deep it rattled in my chest, steady and relentless, the kind of beat you could feel in your bones even if you tried to ignore it.

People filled the space, their movements chaotic, fluid, glittering in the strobing lights. Some were crammed around little tables with sticky glass tops, others swayed and twisted on the dance floor, the air vibrating with laughter, shouting, the clinking of glasses and bottles. Toward the back, a stage stretched out under a wash of light, empty for now, but clearly waiting for its next performer.

For the first time in hours, maybe days, my head eased. The constant spinning slowed into rhythm with the music, folding itself into the pulsing lights and the hypnotic crash of sound. It wasn’t quiet, not even close, but it was the kind of noise that soothed, that let me melt into the chaos without having to think. Beside me, Draco scoffed, his lip curling as though the very sight of sweat-slick bodies and neon was offensive to his sensibilities.

“Disgusting,” he muttered, his voice cutting against the music. “All this noise, all this… filth. Muggles have no sense of restraint.”

I barely glanced at him, too caught up in the colours. “You say that like restraint has ever done us a single favour,” I shot back.

But he didn’t bother arguing, just turned on his heel and strode toward one of the long leather couches that lined the edge of the dance floor, sinking down with a disdainful air like a king forced to sit among peasants.

Aurelia and I followed, weaving between swaying bodies until we reached him. She perched gently on the edge of the couch, her white dress glowing faintly under the shifting lights, while I dropped beside Draco, close enough that our shoulders brushed. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, clearly annoyed at my proximity, but he didn’t move away.

“You’re not going to sit here all night, are you?” I asked, tilting my head toward the dance floor.

“Yes,” he said flatly. “I don’t dance.”

I grinned. “You do now.”

Before he could react, I grabbed his wrist and yanked him up, ignoring the startled look that flickered across his face. He stumbled to his feet with a hiss of irritation, his pale hair catching in the strobe lights.

“Daphne,” he said sharply, tugging back against my grip, “absolutely not—”

But I was already pulling him toward the dance floor, weaving through the crowd with a wicked smile. The music was too loud for his protests to carry, and if anyone noticed his scowling, they didn’t care, they were too busy losing themselves to the beat.

Behind us, I heard Lorenzo’s voice rise above the noise, triumphant and teasing. “Guys! Look what I found!”

I turned to see him and Theo swaggering through the crowd, each carrying a tray of tiny shot glasses filled with neon liquid that glowed faintly under the lights. They moved like they owned the place, Theo smirking, Lorenzo practically radiating smugness.

My eyes widened. “How the hell—?”

“No money,” Lorenzo said cheerfully, setting the tray down on a nearby table. He waggled his brows. “Imperio. Works like a charm. Bartender didn’t even blink.”

“Merlin,” Draco muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re going to get us killed.”

Theo shrugged, already plucking a glass from the tray. “Or drunk. I’ll take the risk.”

They each raised their shots, smirking. Draco grabbed one, scowling all the while, and tossed it back in a single swift motion, grimacing at the burn. He reached for another immediately, as though determined to wash the taste of this place out of his mouth with fire.

Aurelia lifted her glass hesitantly, glancing at me.

I shook my head. “Not tonight. My head’s already spinning.”

Without a word, she nodded and downed her own, then reached for mine, drinking that too. When the boys looked at her in surprise, she simply smiled, small but proud, and raised the second empty glass like a trophy.

“Well, well,” Lorenzo said, clapping his hands together with mock reverence. “Look at our Aurelia. Braver than the rest of us.”

Theo grinned. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Her cheeks flushed pink under the lights, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. She only set the glasses down with a little more force than necessary, her eyes shining.

Draco downed his second shot in silence, his jaw tight, as though the alcohol might stiffen the walls around him. Mattheo hadn’t moved. He leaned against a column on the far edge of the room, his eyes cold and sharp, fixed on us with open disdain. He hadn’t touched a glass, hadn’t joined us on the couches, hadn’t stepped onto the dance floor. His face was pale in the shifting lights, his expression carved into something cruel, as though watching us enjoy ourselves was an insult he couldn’t forgive.

We just ignored him. The music was too loud, the lights too beautiful, the heat of bodies and the burn of laughter too intoxicating to waste on his bitterness.

I pulled Draco toward the dance floor again, laughing at his grimace, at the way his feet dragged even as the beat rattled the air around us as if the music was alive in my veins.

It was too loud, too bright and too fast, but I wanted more of it, wanted it clawing at my skin until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts anymore. The bass throbbed beneath my feet, shaking the ground like a heartbeat, like the floor itself was alive. Coloured lights swept across the room in dizzying arcs, painting strangers’ faces blue, then pink, then green, then gone again into shadow.

We were moving through the bodies, Aurelia’s hand gripping mine tight so we didn’t lose each other, while Draco’s sleeve was caught in Lorenzo’s merciless grip. Draco looked like he wanted to hex someone, preferably Lorenzo, as he spun a flailing Draco in a dramatic circle right into the middle of the floor.

“Lorenzo, I swear—” Draco started, his voice drowned out by the pounding music as Lorenzo laughed and swung him again, ignoring his stiff posture and muttered curses.

“Relax, Malfoy!” Lorenzo shouted, grin wide and unhinged. “It won’t kill you to loosen up for once!”

“Won’t kill me, but I might kill you,” Draco growled, stumbling as Lorenzo tugged him again. His pale hair gleamed under the strobing lights, his scowl catching in fragments, snapping in and out of view like a shuttered photograph.

Aurelia and I slipped away from them, spinning into a pocket of space where the crowd shifted enough to breathe. Her white dress glowed faintly like a star beneath the shifting lights, and she threw her arms up, laughing as I twirled her around. Her laughter was high, wild, almost giddy, it wrapped around me, tangled in my chest, pulled me further into the noise until it was all I could hear.

She was beautiful when she let go like this.

I was flying. My head spun, not in a way that hurt yet, not in a way that dragged me down. It was spinning like a carousel that wouldn’t stop, faster and faster, and I wanted it to go faster still. Theo appeared behind Aurelia suddenly, a wicked grin on his face and a tall glass in his hand. The liquid inside shimmered pink, glowing faintly under the neon.

“Here,” he shouted over the music, pushing it into her hand. “Couldn’t let you dance without the good stuff.”

Aurelia’s eyes lit up like lanterns, delight spilling across her features. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t question, she tipped it back, pink liquid vanishing in a few eager gulps, and when she lowered the glass her lips were stained darker, her eyes gleaming.

Theo chuckled and pressed another shot into Draco’s reluctant hand, ignoring the glare he got for it. Lorenzo took two, already halfway through one before Draco had even finished his sentence of protest.

I lost track of Aurelia for a moment, she was swept into the orbit of the others, Theo laughing into her ear, Draco snapping something bitter, Lorenzo clapping them both on the shoulders like the chaos was a joke.

I kept moving, letting the crowd swallowed me up, faceless bodies pressing against me, the air thick with perfume and sweat and smoke. I could feel their heat through the thin fabric of my black dress, the beat of their pulses syncing with the music, their laughter tangling with mine even if I wasn’t laughing anymore.

My head spun harder. Lights exploded behind my eyes, sharp and white, then splintered into pink, blue, violet. The world tilted, twisted, fractured like glass, but I didn’t care, I couldn’t care. I kept dancing, moving because stopping felt impossible, because the moment I stood still I’d fall apart.

Hands brushed my shoulders, my hips, my hair, but I didn’t look to see who they belonged to. The crowd was all teeth and glitter, a sea of strangers who melted into one another until they weren’t people anymore, just noise and colour and movement.

And then I saw them.

On the far edge of the floor, near the velvet ropes where the lights dimmed into sultry shadows, a line of girls moved like water.

They wore almost nothing, scraps of sequins and silk that caught the lights and threw them back in dizzying sparks. Their bodies gleamed with sweat, with oil, with glitter dusting their shoulders and thighs. They glided through the crowd like predators dressed as angels, their smiles sharp and practiced, their laughter low and sticky like honey.

Each one had a man in tow. Men twice their size, stumbling after them with dazed grins, hands already reaching, eyes fixed on nothing but the sway of hips and the promise of whatever lay beyond that roped entrance. The ropes glowed under the blacklight, pulsing faintly violet. Beyond them, the shadows shifted with heat and laughter and music that was lower, dirtier, like a secret that pressed against the edges of my mind without fully revealing itself.

I couldn’t look away.

For a moment, I forgot about Aurelia, forgot about Draco’s scowl and Theo’s grin and Lorenzo’s reckless swing. I forgot about the safehouse and the fruit and the poker and the way Mattheo stood cold and apart. All I saw were the girls, their sequins catching the light like fireflies, their hands curling around men’s wrists as they led them deeper into the dark.

My head spun faster, harder, the lights blooming too bright until I couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t think through the crash of music and the rush of blood in my ears because the lights had become liquid. They didn’t just flash anymore, they dripped down from the ceiling, pooling across the glossy floor, sticking to my skin like molten paint. Blue, red and purple, each one bled into the next until there was no separation, no shape, just colour consuming colour. My head tilted back with it, my body moving because it had no choice, because the music had replaced my pulse and every thud of the bass sent a shiver up my spine.

I didn’t remember crossing the floor, not really. But when my vision sharpened again, just barely, I was standing in front of a group of boys, their faces slack with drink, eyes glassy and too bright. They leaned against one another like scaffolding, half-standing, half-falling, bottles clutched in fists that were already slick with condensation.

“Oi, look at this one,” one of them slurred, his words breaking apart and tumbling over the beat. His eyes dragged down me, black dress catching neon in fragments. “Come dance, sweetheart.”

I should’ve rolled my eyes. I should’ve walked away.

Instead, I stepped closer.

“If you think you can keep up,” I said flatly, and my lips curved even though my chest was hollow.

They erupted in cheers like I’d said the funniest thing in the world. One of them, a tall, broad-shouldered brunette with his shirt unbuttoned slightly too far grabbed a half-full glass from a table and tipped it toward me. His grin was crooked, teeth flashing, eyes unfocused.

“Open up,” he shouted, though the music drowned half his words.

I tilted my head back, mouth open, and let the liquid burn its way down my throat as he poured. Half of it splashed across my cheeks, down my chin, soaking the neckline of my dress until it clung tighter to me, cold and sticky. My throat ached, my eyes watered, but I didn’t care. The sensation was everything, sharp, jagged, real enough to keep me upright.

The boy laughed, stumbling as he lowered the glass. His hand brushed my jaw, clumsy and too rough, but it barely registered. My skin already felt too thin, like every touch was a needle pricking through to the bone.

Another one of them slid behind me, his arm wrapping around my waist with drunken confidence. His body pressed against mine, swaying in a rhythm that didn’t quite match the music. I let him hold me, let him guide me through the crush of bodies, though my own movements were sharper, less fluid. My feet barely touched the floor.

Everything blurred.

The faces around me melted into streaks of colour. The music no longer had layers, it was just one endless, throbbing sound that filled my skull until it was all I could hear. Every flicker of light burned too bright, smearing across my vision, staining the inside of my eyelids even when I tried to blink.

I was dancing. I think I was dancing. My body moved, hips twisting, shoulders snapping to the beat, but it wasn’t me. Not really. My mind lagged behind my limbs, like I was watching from outside, a second too slow, a second too far away.

The boy behind me leaned close, his breath hot and sour against my ear. His words blurred together, something obscene, something meaningless. I laughed way too loud, too sharp, and threw my head back so hard it almost cracked against his chin. He didn’t notice.

I kept moving, kept spinning, kept pressing forward, my chest tightening in bursts, my fingers trembling with urges I couldn’t name. My thoughts fractured into half-formed impulses: kiss him, slap him, run, climb, scream, laugh. They came too fast, piling on top of one another until I couldn’t separate want from need, couldn’t tell what was mine and what was just my mind dragging me.

I turned in his grip, pressing my palm flat against his chest. His shirt was damp, slick with sweat and spilled alcohol, but I pushed anyway, shoving myself back far enough to meet his dazed eyes.

“Later,” I told him, blunt as a knife, but I managed a wink. My voice cracked with a smile I didn’t feel. “I’ll come back and fuck you later or whatever, wait for me.”

He cheered, fist pumping the air like he’d already won. His friends echoed him, laughter spilling out, slapping him on the back as if I’d just handed him a prize.

But I was already gone.

I slipped from his hands, my dress sticking to my thighs, my hair clinging damp against my face. I stumbled through the crowd, bumping shoulders too hard, earning glares and muttered curses that slid right off me. My head was spinning faster, so fast it felt like the whole room tilted around me, and for the first time a sliver of fear crept through the haze.

I couldn’t breathe.

I pressed myself against the nearest wall, palms flat against the cool surface, trying to anchor myself. But the wall pulsed beneath my hands, alive with the vibration of the music, and the lights still poured down, too bright, too sharp, slicing across my vision until I saw stars even with my eyes closed.

Air refused to come. My chest rose and fell too quickly, my lungs catching, stuttering. I gasped, mouth open wide, but the air tasted thick, heavy with sweat and smoke and perfume, not enough, never enough.

My vision tunneled. The crowd blurred at the edges, melting into streaks of light and shadow. Their voices were distorted, stretched thin and broken like tape unraveling. Every sound layered on top of the music until it was unbearable, one endless roar that pressed against my skull.

I clawed at the wall, nails dragging down the surface, searching for something solid. My body shook, stumbling against itself, legs unsteady beneath me.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

The rush that had carried me this far twisted into something else, something jagged, choking, a thousand blades turning inward. I pressed my forehead against the wall, the coolness sharp against my fevered skin, and squeezed my eyes shut. My heart slammed too fast, my pulse skipping and tripping like it wanted to escape my body entirely.

The wall pulsed against my skin when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jolted, turning too fast, and there he was, a stranger, one of the boys who hadn’t even noticed me earlier, his hair messy with sweat, his shirt plastered to his chest. His words came out slurred, dragged by the beat, but I caught them anyway.

“Hey, you good? You don’t look—”

I didn’t let him finish.

I couldn’t. The question was too sharp, too close to something real, and I couldn’t stand the way his voice cut through the blur. So I pulled him to me, hard, my hands fisting in his shirt as my mouth pressed to his. It was messy, desperate, nothing but teeth and the taste of alcohol that wasn’t mine spilling into me. He groaned against my lips like I’d given him something precious, and I pressed harder, dragging my mouth down the line of his jaw, over his throat, contacting enough to leave marks.

For a moment it was enough, the distraction, the sharpness of touch, the rough weight of someone else’s body against mine. It cut through the spinning, it held me just enough to keep from collapsing.

“Aurelia!”

A voice tore through the haze like glass shattering. It wasn’t laughter. It wasn’t play. It was raw, sharp, a scream pitched with rage.

I froze.

The boy blinked at me, dazed, still holding my hips like he expected me to keep going. But I shoved him off with all the strength I had, and he stumbled back into the crowd, his drink spilling down the front of his chest. I didn’t look at him again.

My eyes snapped toward the sound.

Aurelia was in the middle of the floor, stumbling on unsteady legs, her pale dress already stained with someone else’s drink. Her hair whipped around her shoulders as she thrashed, trying to wrench her arm free. Mattheo had her wrist in his grip, his jaw tight, his body hunched as if he were trying to shield her from falling, but Aurelia was screaming like he was the one hurting her.

“Let me go!” Her voice ripped through the music, cracked and vicious. “Don’t touch me, don’t you ever touch me!”

Mattheo’s mouth opened, words spilling out I couldn’t hear over the noise, but Aurelia didn’t stop.

“I hate you!” she screamed, her voice breaking, her throat straining with the force of it. “I hate you, I hate you, you’re disgusting, you’re vile, you ruin everything—”

He flinched. I swear he flinched. His grip loosened, his eyes wide for a second like he hadn’t expected the blow even though he should have, even though he deserved it.

“You think you can play protector now? You think I trust you looking after me when I’m drunk after everything you do to me every day, after how I watched you hurt my best friend?” Aurelia spat, shoving at his chest with her free hand. “You’re a monster, Mattheo! You’re nothing but your father’s son, nothing but rot. And that’s all you ever will be.”

The crowd had started to notice, heads turning, space opening up around them as if the sheer force of her fury pushed everyone else away. Mattheo stood in the middle of it, Aurelia’s words cutting into him like knives, and for the first time since I’d known him, he didn’t look cruel.

He looked lost.

“Aurelia, stop—” His voice was low, urgent, almost breaking, though I could barely hear it. His hand hovered as if he wanted to reach for her again, but fear held him back. “Please.”

She ripped her wrist free at last, stumbling backward.

“Don’t you dare say please to me. Don’t you dare act like you care now.” Her chest heaved, her eyes wild and burning. “I wish you were fucking dead.”

And then she turned. She shoved her way into the crowd, disappearing between strangers, her small figure swallowed whole by the pulsing lights and shadows.

I couldn’t move.

I stood frozen, my chest heaving, my own hands trembling against my sides. I had never seen Aurelia like that, not with that much venom, not with that much strength behind her voice and I had never seen Mattheo look like that.

He stood there, rigid, his face pale beneath the shifting lights. His mouth opened, then closed, like the words had been stripped from him. His eyes glistened, and for a second, a split second, I thought he might cry. The sharp, untouchable Mattheo Riddle looked as if Aurelia’s words had cracked him open, raw and shaking, and the sight was something I couldn’t reconcile with the boy who had beaten me bloody against a wall only a night ago.

Then his gaze found mine.

I couldn’t look away.

For a long moment, we just stared at each other, the music fading into static in my ears. His expression shifted, grief, fear, something almost pleading, and then it hardened. His shoulders squared, his jaw clenched, and the cold slammed back into place like iron bars around his heart.

He was Mattheo Riddle again.

I swallowed, my throat raw, my body trembling from the inside out. And before I could think, before I could breathe, I turned and shoved myself into the crowd after Aurelia, the lights swallowing me whole, because standing still meant acknowledging what I had just seen, and I wasn’t ready for that.

The rush came back like a knife to the chest.

One moment I was forcing myself through the crowd, heart still slamming from Aurelia’s screaming and Mattheo’s eyes on me, and then it hit, the sudden, dizzying surge, like my blood had been replaced with lightning. Everything sharpened and blurred all at once. The music wasn’t music anymore, it was a pulse, a scream, a machine gnawing at the walls of my skull.

Hands closed around me before I could even resist. The boys from before, their laughter ringing loud and warped, dragged me back into their orbit. Their laughter was loud and warped, a jagged soundtrack to the spinning world around me, ringing in my ears, vibrating through my chest and shaking my bones. It mingled with the bass, the strobe lights, the clatter of shoes against the floor, creating a kaleidoscope of sound and motion that made it impossible to distinguish reality from pulse and rhythm.

“Where’d you go?” one shouted, his words slurred, dragged and stretched over the pounding music. His face was too close, nose nearly brushing mine, breath sticky with alcohol and sweat, warm and pungent. “Thought you’d run off before we could have fun with you.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t form words. My chest heaved, lungs catching in ragged little bursts, and instead let the heat of their bodies anchor me. Another hand pressed against my waist, firm and possessive, pulling me in closer before I even had a chance to think.

His lips grazed my neck, clumsy and hot, stubble scratching, teeth nipping lightly at the sensitive curve below my ear. I let it happen. Let the group of them exist in this space with me, pressing, leaning, exploring without hesitation, without caution. Their laughter, their sloppy words, their warmth, they were real, grounding in a way nothing else had been tonight.

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the sensations take over. The world behind my lids was a riot of color, flashing lights, red, blue, purple, blending until it became impossible to distinguish shapes or people. It felt like I was underwater, yet the water was alive, pulsing in rhythm to the bass that thudded in my ribs, vibrating through every joint, shaking me from the inside. The bodies pressed to mine, hot and alive, made my own heartbeat feel like a distant metronome, barely keeping pace with the internal storm.

My hands found them, moving almost automatically, brushing over shoulders, tensing at hips, exploring the textures of fabric and skin. One boy’s lips grazed my collarbone, teasing, sloppy, warm. The other traced his mouth along the line of my jaw, teeth pressing lightly, stubble scratching, leaving sharp little shocks of sensation in its wake. I let my head tip back, exposing my throat, letting the heat wash over me, letting their weight, their clumsiness, their laughter, and the overwhelming noise take over.

The lights overhead shattered into jagged prisms across my vision, blue streaking into red, red into violet, violet bleeding into blinding white. Every pulse of bass shook me internally, thumping against rib, syncing with the sloppy movements pressed against me. I could feel the sweat of their bodies, the tug of fabric, the press of mouths and hands, and the floor moving beneath my feet, all dissolving into a single, overwhelming blur of sound, motion, and sensation.

I was aware of the absurdity, of how reckless this all was, but the awareness felt distant, like I was watching someone else move. It didn’t matter. I let it all just flow. Their kisses, their hands, the warm pressure, the chaotic rhythm of bodies in motion. I let myself be both detached and immersed, my brain screaming and my body answering, desperate for something tangible in the spinning, bleeding vortex around me.

My breath hitched as one of them nipped gently at my ear again, while the other’s lips pressed harder into the side of my neck. It was chaotic, uncoordinated, but it didn’t matter. The sensations sliced through the rush of overstimulation, and the creeping sense of panic at the edges of my mind, giving me just enough focus to remain upright, just enough to feel my own skin, my own weight, my own pulse.

But my head, my head had tipped back, my eyes unfocused, staring up at the ceiling where the lights shattered and bled. Blue bled into red, red into purple, streaks streaking until there was nothing left but blinding white spots across my vision. The bass thudded in my ribs, louder than my heart, drowning out everything.

I knew something was wrong.

The thought came clear for the briefest moment, like a single drop of cold water in boiling oil. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

My limbs were heavy, trembling, but I shoved them off me, pushing the boys away. One of them stumbled back, muttering something crude, but I didn’t catch it. My ears were ringing too loudly. I was already moving, shoving past strangers, my breath clawing up my throat.

My chest burned. Air refused to come. Tears blurred my vision, hot and relentless, spilling down my cheeks even though I hadn’t even realised I was crying. My body didn’t feel like mine anymore, it was too fast, too slow, collapsing in on itself. My thoughts fractured, impulses shoving against each other.

Keep dancing, keep moving, find Aurelia, run, scream, kiss someone, hit someone, fall down and never get back up.

Everything was too much.

The press of bodies against mine, slick with sweat, skin scraping against skin. The stench of alcohol thick in the air, perfume cloying, smoke biting the back of my throat. Lights stabbing into my eyes, each flash cutting deeper, burning behind my eyelids even when I squeezed them shut. Sound pounding, pounding, pounding.

I couldn’t breathe.

I stumbled forward, shoving past a man twice my size, barely hearing his curse as I clipped his shoulder. My dress caught on someone’s arm, tearing at the seam, and I nearly fell. Tears blurred everything, my hands outstretched, clawing at the air like I could tear a way out of it. My heart was a wild animal in my chest, too fast, too frantic, and my head was splitting, too heavy to hold up.

I crashed into her before I saw her, skin bare, glitter clinging to her collarbones, hair slick with sweat under the neon lights. A stripper, her heels high, her skirt short, her expression sharp with irritation until she looked properly at me.

She froze.

I must’ve looked feral, my mascara smeared down my cheeks, my dress damp and torn, my eyes wide and bloodshot, chest heaving like I’d just drowned and clawed my way back up. Her irritation dropped away instantly. She grabbed my arm, steady and sure, and leaned down to my ear, her voice cutting through the roar with startling clarity.

“Breathe. Come with me.”

I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. My body sagged into her grip, my legs stumbling as she pulled me through the crowd. She moved with precision, cutting between clusters of drunk men and swaying women, dragging me along as if I weighed nothing. Her perfume was sharp, clean, nothing like the cloying mess around us..

The crowd thinned, the music grew muffled and lights dimmed. The side exit door slammed open, and cold night rushed over me like a wave. I stumbled into the alley outside, collapsing against the brick wall, my palms flat against the rough surface as I gasped and sobbed all at once. My whole body shook, my knees threatening to buckle. The tears wouldn’t stop. My lungs wouldn’t work. Everything hurt.

The woman shut the door behind us, muffling the roar of the club until it was just a dull throb beneath the hum of the town. She crouched in front of me, her hands firm on my shoulders, her gaze steady.

“You’re alright,” she said, her voice low, grounding. “You’re outside now. You’re okay.”

But I wasn’t.

My vision blurred, my head heavy and splintering. The relentless rush that had carried me all night was collapsing in on itself, caving into a pit of exhaustion and despair. My thoughts weren’t bright anymore; they were dark, sticky, looping on themselves. Every sound was too sharp, every sensation too raw. My body felt poisoned by itself.

“I—” My voice cracked, my throat raw from crying. “I can’t—”

“Shh.” Her hand moved to my cheek, brushing away smeared makeup with surprising gentleness. “Just breathe, love. In, out. Slow.”

I dragged the back of my hand over my face, smearing tears and mascara into something worse, and forced a laugh that sounded more like a choke.

“I’m fine,” I lied, sucking in a sharp breath that rattled through my chest. “Really. Thank you. I’m—” My voice broke. I swallowed it down. “I’m okay.”

The girl crouched in front of me just raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. Her long lashes caught the glow of the streetlamp overhead, casting little shadows against her cheek. The sequins on her top flickered whenever she shifted, scattering glints of silver over the damp pavement.

“You’re not okay,” she said softly, not unkind, but with the kind of certainty that made me want to crumble. “But that’s fine. Nobody in there really is.”

Her words cracked something in me, and I huffed another laugh, leaning my head back against the wall. My chest was still heaving, but the night air cooled the heat burning inside me, making each breath sting a little less.

“You’ve got good timing, whoever you are,” I muttered, blinking at her. “Like… guardian-angel kind of timing.”

Her lips tugged into a smile, small and surprisingly shy. “Name’s Lelia.”

“Lelia,” I repeated, tasting the syllables, as if saying it out loud made her more real, more solid than everything else spinning around me. I pointed clumsily at myself. “I’m Daphne. And you’re… hot. Just so you know. Or maybe you do know.”

The smile broke into a laugh, light but hollow, echoing faintly against the alley walls. “You’re sweet,” she said, though her tone suggested she’d heard the line too many times before.

I couldn’t look away from her. Something about her steadiness pulled at me, even though I could see the exhaustion tucked in the corners of her eyes, the way her laughter carried an emptiness I knew all too well. She wasn’t like the boys inside, all noise and want. She was calmer.

“So, uh…” I tilted my head, still watching her, still trying to steady myself on her presence. “What do you do? In there, I mean. You work the stage, or?”

She hesitated. For the first time since pulling me out here, her eyes flicked away, down the alley, as though the shadows might swallow her words if she wasn’t careful.

“Sex worker,” she said finally, her voice low, but matter-of-fact. “Sometimes dancing, sometimes private rooms. Depends on the night.”

I nodded, my chest tightening, not out of judgment, but because of the blunt honesty in her tone, the way she said it like it was just a fact of life. Which it was.

“That’s… intense,” I murmured, still watching her carefully. “Do you… like it?”

Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug, sequins glinting under the streetlight. “I don’t hate it. It pays. Keeps a roof over my head. People assume girls like me don’t have plans, that we’re just… this.” She gestured vaguely at herself, at the glitter, the heels, the makeup worn thin from hours under lights. “But I’ve got plans, I think.”

“What kind of plans?” I asked, leaning forward despite the heaviness still dragging at my limbs.

Her gaze flicked back to mine, and for the first time, her eyes lit up, not with neon or glitter, but with something softer, as if nobody had asked her that question before.

“Medical school,” she said simply. “I want to be a doctor. Always have. Got into a program, even. But…” She trailed off, shaking her head, the spark dimming again. “My parents didn’t take it well. They kicked me out when I wouldn’t follow their ideals. I had no money, no safety net. Just me. So, this is what I do. I save, I survive. But I know that one day I’ll be where I want to be.”

The raw honesty of it slammed into me harder than the music ever had. I just stared at her, my brain slowing for a moment, stunned into stillness.

“You’re—” I shook my head, trying to form the right words. “That’s… fuck, that’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

She gave another soft laugh, and this time there was less hollowness, though still a shadow. “I don’t know about that. Just stubborn. I wasn’t going to let them decide who I get to be.”

“God.” I wiped another tear from my cheek, though they kept coming anyway. “I want to be you when I grow up.”

She smirked at that, tilting her head. “Pretty sure you’re grown already, sweetheart.”

“Barely,” I muttered, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. The dizziness was still there, but her presence grounded me enough to fight through it. When I lowered my hands again, she was still watching me, still steady, like she had all the time in the world to sit in a filthy alley with a girl falling apart in front of her.

“You’re not gonna make it as a doctor if you keep dragging sobbing strangers out of clubs,” I told her, trying for humor, my voice still shaky.

Her smile curved again, softer this time. “Maybe I will. First lesson is learning to care for people when they don’t even know how to care for themselves.”

Something in me broke then, not the brittle crack of earlier, but something gentler, the kind that let tears slip down freely without shame. I was enthralled, utterly caught up in her, not just because she was beautiful, but because she was real in a way I hadn’t touched in weeks.

“You’re too good,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Too good for this place. Too good for all of it.”

She reached out again, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear with a tenderness that made my chest ache. “So are you, Daphne. You just don’t know it yet.”

For the first time all night, my body stilled, not from exhaustion or overstimulation, but from the strange comfort of being seen. I blinked up at her, my heart still hammering from the remnants of the night, and tilted my head, letting the neon glow of a distant streetlamp spill across my face.

“Would… would you… recommend it?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, fragile, quivering, but carrying all the euphoria that was still draped over me like a tattered cloak.

Lelia tilted her head back slightly, eyes widening in disbelief for a moment before the softest laugh escaped her lips, one that shook with a mixture of amusement and disbelief, and it made my chest tighten in a way I didn’t understand.

“Recommend it?” she said, her voice lilting with incredulity, like she couldn’t fathom that someone as… reckless, as wild as I was, could be thinking about taking this on as a serious thing. She shook her head slowly, her curls catching the neon and glittering faintly, and her laugh faded into a sigh that carried the weight of honesty I hadn’t expected. “It’s… not really as great as it sounds.”

Her words fell over me like stones tossed into a lake, each one sinking into the chaotic swell of adrenaline still spinning in my chest.

“It’s not?” I murmured.

“God, no. Not really. It’s not as glamorous as it looks. Not even close. You think it’s a party with lights and glitter, and sure, sometimes it is, but mostly it’s hard, exhausting, and lonely. And people? People don’t see you as a person in there. They see what you’re giving them and nothing else. They don’t see you.”

I nodded slowly, a high still humming beneath my skin, and for a moment, the sounds and lights from the club inside and the distant traffic faded into something less urgent. She didn’t have to try, she just exhaled and sat beside me, her presence warm and steady. The quiet of the alley seemed surreal, like a small bubble of safety in the chaos that had swallowed me before.

“See,” she continued softly, brushing a hand lightly over her own arm, “nothing in life’s really that great. You learn that young, or you’re in for a hard awakening. So if someone wanted to do it for survival, fine. But it’s not some fun adventure. There’s no glamour in being treated like property or a commodity. There’s just you, surviving. And one day, maybe you’ll find something that actually feels alive. But it’s messy. People lie. People hurt you. Sometimes you hurt yourself without even meaning to. It’s temporary, and it’s hard, and… yeah, you survive, but surviving is not the same as living.”

Her words pressed into me, each syllable embedding itself deep into the muscles under my ribs, and for the first time in hours, I felt my mind shiver, flicker, and then unravel at the seams, unravel in a way that made my stomach pitch violently and my chest tighten so sharply I thought I might pass out right there on the curb.

We sat together in silence for a long while. Lelia shifted slightly, offering me a small bottle of water that I didn’t take at first, and I let her presence calm me, the steadiness in her voice and posture pulling some of the heat and flashing lights out of my head. I wanted to stay in that moment forever, just her there, explaining that life wasn’t perfect, that everything I’d felt, everything I’d craved and chased tonight, wasn’t permanent. But beneath it all, something dark and restless was stirring, a hurricane waiting for the calm to break.

She eventually stood, brushing her fingers lightly against my arm.

“You should get back,” she said, a soft smile playing on her lips, but her eyes held something I couldn’t name, something like concern, maybe pity. “You’ll be okay. Go find your friends. Don’t get lost out here.”

I nodded, barely hearing her. Her words hit me, but the tension coiled inside me didn’t ease, it twisted, spiraled, clawed at my chest like it wanted to escape, and I realized before I even had the chance to stop it that she was walking away. Her footsteps faded into the night, leaving only the echo of her presence, and the world around me shifted. The neon lights blurred, the music throbbed in my skull like a relentless drum, the air felt both too hot and too cold, and suddenly, all the energy I had clung to was gone.

The crash hit like a wave, sudden and merciless, slamming into me with a force I hadn’t anticipated, and my knees buckled before I could even think to steady myself. I stumbled into the alley wall, clutching at the bricks, letting my head press against the cold, solid surface as the first sobs tore from my throat, loud and ragged, scraping along the edges of my vocal cords. The sound was ugly and raw, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything anymore.

My lungs felt like they were on fire, burning with the effort of taking in air, and the sobs only made it worse, but I couldn’t stop. My hands clawed at my face, smearing the last traces of mascara and tears into a sticky mess, my nails digging into my skin as if trying to physically rip the chaos from inside me. But it was still there, still gnawing at my ribs, twisting my stomach into knots that were more than just nausea, they were guilt, regret, self-loathing, shame.

I screamed. I don’t even know how long. The sound tore from me, guttural, high-pitched, low, rising and falling, a symphony of every fractured piece of me that had been held together by mania just moments before. I clawed at the air, at the bricks, at anything that might help me, anything that might slow the spiral, and when nothing worked, I sank to the ground, curling up in a tight ball, rocking back and forth on the rough pavement, letting every ounce of frustration, exhaustion, and despair wash over me in waves.

I hated myself. I hated the way I had been reckless, the way I had let my body and mind run wild without thinking of consequences, the way I had flirted and danced and let strangers touch me without control, the way I had abandoned Aurelia, the boys, the mission, the night’s purpose. I hated that not even alcohol had driven me to it just my own fucked up head.

Every thought I had, every reflection that flared in my mind, was a knife twisting deeper, I was stupid, reckless, selfish, weak, unworthy, broken, dangerous, too fragile to hold anything together, too volatile to be safe for anyone.

I clawed at my hair, pulled at it in frustration, and cried so hard that my ribs ached, my chest burned, and my throat was raw from screaming. The cold alley walls bit into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress, the rough pavement pressing into my knees and elbows, and I didn’t care. The world was too bright, too loud, too full of sensations I couldn’t control, and yet nothing mattered at all.

I gasped for air, filling my lungs in short, desperate pulls, feeling my body shake so violently I thought it might snap in half. Tears and snot ran together, glistening in the faint neon light, my face a mask of misery and exhaustion, my arms trembling as they wrapped around my legs, trying to hold myself together when I knew there was nothing left to hold. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to crawl into the shadows and never exist again. I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me I wasn’t a complete disaster, but there was no one. Lelia was gone, probably fucking some loser who wouldn’t know the half of what I did about her even though I only met her for ten minutes. The boys were inside. Aurelia was somewhere, I didn’t know where, and I didn’t care.

Every breath felt like punishment, every heartbeat a cruel reminder that I had driven myself to this, that I had invited this feeling and now I was drowning in its wreckage. The night spun around me, the music from the club a distant, pulsing throb in my skull, and I hated myself for having fun, for letting myself feel alive, for letting it all slip away so completely.

I sobbed harder. My body shook uncontrollably, and my limbs felt like lead. My vision blurred, not from tears alone, but from the overwhelming flood of emotions that had no outlet. I felt disconnected from myself, as though I were watching my own collapse from above, a spectator in my own life, and the knowledge of it made the self-loathing worse, sharper, more relentless.

I had no control. I was fragile. I was volatile. I was unworthy.

I tried to crawl forward, tried to push myself to stand, but the effort made me collapse again. My nails dug into my palms, my fingers curled into fists, and I whispered my apologies to the darkness, to the air, to the empty street, to anyone who might hear.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I am reckless. I am weak. I am nothing. I am sorry.

The cold seeped into me, mixing with the heat of panic and grief, and I could feel my energy bleeding away, the euphoria gone, leaving me raw, exposed, and hollow. I gasped, my ribs heaving, the muscles in my back twitching as my body struggled to regulate, my mind spinning in a swirl of shame, fear, and despair that had no relief.

I wanted to scream. I did scream.

I wanted to cry. I did cry.

I wanted to run. I couldn’t move.

I wanted to disappear. I could not.

Minutes passed, or hours, I couldn’t tell, the only certainty was the emptiness, the pain, the crushing weight of my own mind turning against me. I rocked back and forth on the ground, shivering, gasping, hitting my fists lightly against my knees, willing the storm to stop, willing myself to stop, but it didn’t. It wouldn’t.

I was alone. I was reckless. I was stupid. I was broken and I would never forgive myself.

Eventually, my body slumped fully against the wall, limp and spent, and my tears ran dry, leaving only traces of smudged makeup and raw skin, my breathing ragged and uneven, a hollow rhythm that seemed to echo off the alley walls. I wanted to sleep and just disappear. I wanted it all to be over.

In that emptiness, I realized that I was utterly, completely alone with myself, and for the first time in hours, I felt the terrifying, aching truth of just how much I had fallen, and how utterly powerless I was to stop the crash from consuming me.

The night pressed down on the alley like a heavy, suffocating cloak, the distant thump of music from the club a dull, hollow vibration that seemed almost cruel against the quiet emptiness around me. My arms were wrapped around my knees, trembling, and the pavement beneath me felt impossibly hard and sharp, digging into my skin in a way that was almost comforting, grounding me in the physical world even as my mind spiraled further into the hollow pit of exhaustion and shame.

My hair was damp with sweat and tears, clinging in wet strands to my pale face, my cheeks stinging from the rough scrape of my own hands as I’d clawed at myself to feel something, anything other than the dizzy, crushing emptiness consuming me. Every breath was a battle, my lungs trembling with the jagged rhythm of sobs that I couldn’t suppress, every intake of air like inhaling shards of glass, every exhale a raw, guttural scream of frustration and self-loathing.

The world shifted. The distant sound of hurried footsteps, a sharp, familiar rhythm cut through the thundering quiet like a blade through flesh, and before I could even register the moment, the alleyway seemed to split open with light and motion, and Lorenzo was there, bursting through the exit door like a storm of warmth and intent.

“Daphne!” His voice, urgent yet soft, carried itself across the small expanse of the alley, but there was no accusation, no frustration, only concern, threaded with a tenderness I hadn’t felt in hours. Before I could react, before I could try to curl further into the floor as I’d instinctively done, he had scooped me into his arms with that effortless, protective grace he always had, pressing me tightly against his chest as though he were willing to absorb every fragment of my despair into himself.

The smell of him, leather from his coat, faint smoke from the night air, his subtle, underlying scent of warmth and safety, washed over me in a wave that made my muscles tremble even more violently, both from the release of fear and the realization that someone was here, wholly present, wholly unafraid to hold the broken parts of me that I’d tried so desperately to hide.

I buried my face into the crook of his neck, the raw edge of my tears dampening his shirt, and I couldn’t stop the sob that ripped through me, long and jagged, shaking my entire body. Lorenzo’s hands moved with deliberate gentleness, one cupping the back of my head, fingers threading into my damp hair, the other resting lightly along my spine, rocking me subtly back and forth.

“Shhh… it’s okay darling, you’re safe with me, you’re always safe with me,” he murmured, voice low and soothing, and there was no pressure in the words, no demand for explanation or apology, just a quiet assurance that I didn’t need to justify the collapse, didn’t need to defend myself against the storm inside.

His lips brushed gently against my forehead, warm and grounding, and I felt the tremors of my body begin to slow slightly, not because the pain or despair had lifted, but because his presence anchored me, tethered me to a moment outside the chaos of my own thoughts. My hands, still clutching at his coat, slowly loosened their grip as I let the tremors wash through me without resistance, letting myself be held in a way I hadn’t allowed in hours, maybe days. Each exhale felt like a surrender, a relinquishing of the frantic control I’d tried to maintain.

I felt my body begin to slump further, surrendering entirely to his strength, letting myself be cradled like a child despite the bitterness and anger gnawing at the edges of my mind. Lorenzo didn’t speak again immediately, just held me, rocked me gently, and let the quiet of the night fill the spaces between the remnants of my panicked sobs. The town noises beyond the alley faded into a distant hum, and all I could perceive was the warmth of him, the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear, and the faint whisper of his coat brushing against my cheek.

“Just breathe, Daph, I’ll take care of you now yeah?” He murmured again, voice barely above the hum of the distant nightlife, but it resonated inside me in a way that no other sound could.

I tried to respond, to articulate the chaos still raging inside my mind, but the words caught in my throat, choked off by the lump of despair lodged in my chest. Instead, I let my body shudder against him, my heartbeat slowly syncing to the gentle, unrelenting rhythm of his arms around me.

Eventually, my sobs became less violent, more drawn out and quiet, the sharp edge of panic dulling to a tremulous exhaustion. My head lolled back slightly against his shoulder, eyes glazed and unfocused, and I felt myself slipping into that hollow, dissociated state where the world seemed simultaneously impossibly heavy and achingly distant.

I could hear his breathing, the soft shuffle of his boots as he shifted slightly to make me more comfortable, the faint rustle of his coat, but everything else, the town, the club, the music, my own frantic thoughts seemed to recede into a blur, a grey haze beyond the warmth holding me upright.

“Daph…” he whispered softly, pressing a kiss again to my temple, lingering just long enough to remind me that someone saw me, really saw me, and still didn’t flinch away.

His fingers traced gentle circles along the nape of my neck, coaxing my tense muscles to release just slightly, though I remained mostly limp, body heavy and unresponsive in the best way I could allow. My breathing was still uneven, catching in small hiccups, but the worst of the suffocating panic had passed into a dull, relentless ache, a heaviness that made my eyelids droop despite the restlessness I knew was still buried in my bloodstream from earlier.

I could feel the residue of dissociation curling around me, each heartbeat distant, each thought trailing off into blank spaces, but Lorenzo didn’t pull away, didn’t speak, didn’t ask. He simply let me exist in this fragile state, providing an anchor in the form of his touch, his warmth, his steady presence. My hands hung limply by my sides, dangling over his arm, as I allowed the collapse to continue, each shuddering breath a reminder of the storm I had survived, if only in this moment.

Time seemed suspended, the night stretching endlessly around us, and though I was physically present, emotionally and mentally, I hovered somewhere outside my own body, aware of the comfort, aware of the gentleness, but unable to interact fully with it. My limbs felt like lead, my muscles slack, my chest rising and falling with an exhausted rhythm, tears still streaking my cheeks but no longer forced or jagged, just the residue of the torrent that had consumed me.

Lorenzo’s arms never wavered, his hold never faltered, his voice never pressured, and it was in that quiet constancy, that unshakable presence, that the tiniest flicker of relief began to form inside me, a fragile, trembling phenomenon that whispered of safety, of trust, of survival. My head rested fully against his chest now, his heartbeat a soft, steady drum that reverberated through the hollowed-out shell of my body, and for the first time since the crash had begun, I felt the edges of the overwhelming despair soften, even if just slightly.

 

I let myself linger there, utterly helpless, utterly raw, utterly seen, my body limp against his as though I had given up the fight entirely, and for the first time since the chaos had started, I could imagine, however faintly, that I might eventually rise again. But in the quiet bubble of Lorenzo’s embrace, I could breathe, I could exist, and I could simply be broken, exhausted, dissociated, but cradled by something human.

Chapter Text

THEODORE NOTT

The drawing room of Malfoy Manor had always seemed to me like something from the pages of a book I would never write. It was too gilded, too heavily draped, its air perfumed with centuries of triumph and cruelty. Even in the quiet, even with Narcissa’s soft hand resting lightly on Draco’s arm as he spoke, the walls remembered the wars they had witnessed, the betrayals whispered into velvet curtains. In saying that, there was a strange comfort to it, a hush that pressed gently against my ears, as if reminding me that for once, for this fragile hour, there was no command, no masks and no burning mark.

Mattheo was at Riddle Manor with his father, which meant the air here at Malfoy Manor was not weighted by his constant threat of eruption. Without him, the five of us were allowed a rare breath.

Draco leaned forward across from me, his pale hair catching the light from the tall windows. He was speaking with his mother in a low, steady voice, and I found myself watching Narcissa Malfoy more closely than him. She was elegance incarnate, her every movement refined, each gesture deliberate. She poured herself more tea without spilling a single drop, her rings catching in the sunlight.

I loved her. Not in the desperate, reaching way that I’d once loved my own mother, but in the way a boy with a hollowed-out chest loves any gentle thing that doesn’t flinch at the sight of him. Narcissa did not raise her voice. She did not shame or command. She made this house feel like it had walls stronger than blood and promises, and for that alone, I loved her.

Draco leaned toward his mother as though he were a boy again, shoulders not yet sharpened into the angles of cruelty. Narcissa’s eyes, pale and weary but still filled with that particular Malfoy precision, softened at him in a way I don’t think anyone else in the world could elicit. I watched them with a quiet ache in my chest. It was envy, yes, but not bitter envy, rather a fragile sort of gratitude that one of us, at least, still had something resembling sanctuary, however thin. I thought of my own mother, a ghost more than a memory, and my father, whose shadow still haunts me no matter how many rooms I step into, and I wanted to stay in this moment simply because it meant Draco had not been entirely stolen from himself.

Daphne sat across from me, a teacup balanced in one hand, the porcelain too delicate against the faint bruises that still marred her fingers. She was not the Daphne she had been in recent weeks, not the dazzling flame, but dimmed, tired, a candle guttering low. Her shoulders slouched, her eyes carried shadows too heavy for a girl so young, and though she said nothing, I could feel her silence stretching toward me like an exhausted hand. I wanted to reach across and catch it, but I didn’t. I only watched, and worried, and thought of how fragile she seemed when the laughter had drained from her bones.

On the opposite sofa, Aurelia was doubled over in laughter, a sound so sudden and bright that it startled me, not because it was unfamiliar, but because of how rare it had become. She and Lorenzo had pulled a leather-bound album from the carved cabinet, its edges frayed with age, and were turning its pages as though they were treasure maps. The photographs flickered with Draco as a child, pale-haired and pout-mouthed, tiny fists clutching toy broomsticks, cheeks still round with babyhood. Lorenzo was pointing with exaggerated dramatics, laughing so hard he nearly spilled his tea, and Aurelia’s laugh followed his like a chime, high and clear and startlingly alive.

I felt my lips curve, though only faintly, because in that sound was something I cherished quietly. Proof that Aurelia, for all her pallor and her hollow-eyed guilt, could still laugh. She has never belonged to cruelty as naturally as the rest of us, and I thank whatever remains of fate that she has not. She is my friend, more than that, she is the one I guard silently, with all the care I have not managed to give myself. All I want to do is keep her whole, even in fragments.

The tea was warm in my hand, Narcissa’s voice a murmur, Daphne’s silence a weight, Aurelia’s laughter a fragile reprieve. For a brief moment, I let myself imagine that we were simply a group of friends gathered in a fine drawing room, that the darkness was elsewhere, that Mattheo was not kneeling before his father in some cold hall. It was a lie, of course, but it was a sweet one, and I drank it down with the tea, letting it coat my throat like honey.

Lorenzo had always known how to fill silence with mischief, how to pry at seams until something warm spilled out, and now, as he leaned dramatically across the sofa with the album spread between his long fingers, he tapped at a particularly animated photograph of Draco as a toddler astride a toy broom, mouth wide open in an indignant wail.

“Look at him,” Lorenzo drawled, his voice pitched with theatrical pity. “Merlin, you were born with that scowl, weren’t you? Look at the grip, like he’s about to hex the photographer for daring to witness his humiliation.”

Aurelia laughed so hard she clutched at her stomach, tumbling sideways against the armrest, white hair falling like a veil over her flushed face. “Oh Draco, your expression—” she wheezed between giggles, “—it’s exactly the same now. You haven’t changed at all.”

Narcissa, composed even in her mirth, pressed two fingers against her lips, but the sound of her laughter escaped anyway, light and crystalline, like a bell in the heavy room.

“He was always so particular,” she said with fond indulgence. “Even at two years old, he wanted his robes pressed properly. He used to pout at me if a seam wasn’t straight.”

Draco, who had been attempting to maintain his usual hauteur, finally allowed the faintest pout to pull at his lips in truth, though his eyes betrayed the faintest glimmer of amusement beneath the silver sharpness.

“You’re all insufferable,” he muttered, lifting his chin, though the corner of his mouth threatened to betray him. “I can hardly be blamed for wanting dignity, even then.”

“Dignity?” Lorenzo cackled, pointing now to a photograph of Draco tugging furiously at his hair while a house-elf attempted to bathe him. “Is that what you call this? Because to me it looks like a war crime.”

Aurelia tipped over completely, shoulders shaking, one hand covering her mouth as she tried to stifle the sound and failed miserably. Her laughter filled the space like sunlight through a crack in heavy curtains, sharp and startling, yet utterly precious. I found myself watching her more than the photographs, treasuring the rare ease that softened her, the way the scars on her skin seemed almost invisible when she laughed like that.

At the center of it all, Draco with his faint scowl and Narcissa’s gentle laughter, Lorenzo’s endless teasing and Aurelia’s delight, I felt something like normality brush against us, ghostly but warm. I cleared my throat softly, setting my teacup down with more care than necessary.

“Narcissa,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt, “thank you again, truly, for having us here. For the tea, for lunch. I don’t think I can quite explain what it means. To all of us.”

Her eyes, pale as her son’s but gentler, turned to me with something that resembled kindness, not the brittle politeness of pureblood society, but something genuine, worn but real.

“You don’t need to thank me, Theodore,” she said, her tone soft as velvet. “You are always welcome here. All of you. This house has seen enough darkness. It could do with some youth, some laughter, even if it comes at Draco’s expense.”

Draco rolled his eyes, but he did not argue. His lips twitched, and I wondered if he too could feel the rare breath of peace moving through the air like a fragile thread. I wanted to stay in that moment, to hold it close, but the world does not allow such mercies for long.

The doors to the drawing room burst open with a violence that cracked the stillness in half. The laughter died at once, Aurelia’s especially, strangled into silence. My hand twitched toward my wand before I saw who stood there, framed by the heavy doors and the light that bled in from the corridor.

Nicholas Avery.

He was a man carved by war, his body written over in scars that spoke of violence both dealt and received. His face bore the roughness of one who had long forgotten vanity, his hair streaked with grey, his shoulders broad beneath a travel-worn cloak. He looked like he had walked out of some darker tale, the sort of figure children whisper about, half-terrified, half-fascinated.

But then Aurelia moved, she dropped the photograph album with a thud, the images of a younger Draco sliding to the floor, forgotten, and she rose in a rush that startled me. For a girl who so often moved with hesitation, with the weight of guilt dragging at her every step, she leapt toward him now with no restraint at all.

“Father!”

The word cracked out of her throat like lightning, raw and startling in its nakedness. She threw herself into his arms, colliding against him with a force that might have broken another man. But Nicholas only wrapped those scarred arms around her, roughness softening into something I had never thought to see on his face. He bent his head low, pressing his cheek into her white hair, and his voice when it came was softer than the man himself seemed capable of being.

“My sweet girl.”

The world tilted, just slightly.

I watched them, father and daughter, clinging to each other with a desperation that seemed to erase the room around them. My chest ached, not sharp, but deep, a hollow kind of longing I had learned to live with. Because my father would never look at me that way, would never soften at my sight. His eyes had always been stone, his hand always heavy, his voice nothing but commands and cruelty.

Jealousy curled in me, but warm and painful, a yearning so sharp it felt almost like love. I wanted it for myself, yes, but more than that, I wanted it for her. Aurelia, who had carried too much already, who had bled and broken herself to belong to us, deserved this softness. Deserved someone to hold her as though she were not a soldier, not a murderer, but simply a daughter.

Nicholas kissed her forehead, his hand cradling the back of her skull with surprising gentleness.

“You’re too thin,” he muttered, as if scolding her, though his voice was thick with affection. “And you’ve been running yourself ragged. You need to rest, Aurelia.”

Aurelia only nodded against him, her arms wound tight around his ribs as though she meant never to let go.

The rest of us, even Daphne with her hollowed eyes, sat silent, intruders on something we were not meant to witness. Even Narcissa, composed as ever, folded her hands together and looked down, granting them privacy within her own house.

At length, Nicholas pulled back just enough to look at Aurelia’s face, brushing a scarred thumb across her cheek.

“Come,” he said softly, “walk with me. Just for a little while, talk to me.”

She nodded eagerly, her eyes bright with something I had not seen in them for months. Together they turned, leaving the drawing room, the heavy doors swinging closed behind them with a muffled thud.

The silence they left was immense. I let out a breath and slumped back against the sofa, my shoulders sinking into the cushions as though the strength had drained out of me. My gaze dropped to the abandoned photograph album on the floor, Draco’s frozen childhood smile staring up from the scattered pages, but my thoughts were elsewhere, circling endlessly.

I thought of Aurelia’s smile as she’d run to him, the way her voice had cracked open with unguarded love. I thought of Nicholas’s scarred hands softening to cradle her as though she were fragile glass. I thought of my father, of the way his hand had only ever tightened around my shoulder to drag me into the dark, his voice only ever rising to remind me that I was his son and therefore his property, his mirror, his heir.

No softness. No love. No word like my sweet boy.

I pressed my palms hard against my knees, staring at the patterned rug, and felt the familiar mixture of longing and resignation wash over me. I could not change it. I could not conjure a father who did not exist. But watching Aurelia, hearing her laugh with Lorenzo, watching her run into Nicholas’s arms, it reminded me that some things were still possible in this ruined world, even if not for me.

The air in the drawing room had shifted once Aurelia and her father left, the charged silence giving way to something quieter, though not gentler, for it carried with it a peculiar heaviness, the echo of absence, the hollow ring of a laughter cut short. Narcissa resumed her conversation with Draco in low, measured tones, her hand occasionally brushing her son’s as though the simple act of touching him might steady them both, and though Draco sat straighter than before, every line of his body sharp and bristling with pride, there was in the set of his mouth a smallness, a fragility, the faintest impression of a boy who wanted, for just a few moments, to stop being a Malfoy and instead be simply a son.

Daphne, who had been quiet all afternoon, let her head tip against Draco’s shoulder in a manner so uncharacteristic it startled me, her eyelids drooping half-shut as though she might drift into sleep right there. Draco stiffened, his eyes darting to her in irritation, but when she made no effort to move, he allowed it, though reluctantly, his lips pressed into a line that suggested he wished to object but could not bring himself to.

I watched them both for a moment, Narcissa murmuring something soothing, Daphne sinking further against Draco, and I thought it best to give them the privacy. Lorenzo seemed to reach the same conclusion, for he rose from the sofa in one fluid motion, his usual grin playing at his mouth, though his eyes lingered a little too long on Daphne, betraying his concern. He caught my gaze and tilted his head toward the doors.

“Come on,” he said under his breath, his voice pitched so only I could hear. “Let’s leave them to it.”

I nodded, and together we slipped from the room, the great doors falling shut behind us with a muffled thud that seemed to seal Draco and his mother away in their own little world. The corridor stretched before us, long and echoing, lined with tall windows that let in a pale wash of light. We walked in silence for a while, the sound of our footsteps softened by the thick carpets, until Lorenzo turned to me with that particular gleam in his eyes, the one that always preceded trouble.

“Let’s play a game,” he announced, too brightly for the hush of the manor.

I shot him a sidelong glance, already suspicious. “What kind of game?”

“Hide and seek.” He grinned, teeth flashing, as though he had just suggested something clever rather than ludicrous. “I’ll count, you hide. The manor’s perfect for it, endless corridors, secret staircases, hidden rooms.”

I stopped dead on the carpet, appalled. “You cannot be fucking serious.”

“Deadly.”

“You’re a child.”

“I’m fun.”

“You’re a child,” I repeated, my tone clipped, “and this house is far too large for something so idiotic. You’d never find me.”

“That’s the point.” He smirked, clearly enjoying my disgust. “Come on, Theo, when was the last time you played anything?”

I opened my mouth to retort, then closed it again, because the truth was uncomfortably obvious, I had never been one for play. Books had been my only refuge, words my only companions, and the idea of hiding in some dusty corner while Lorenzo prowled the halls looking for me seemed like the height of indignity.

Lorenzo’s grin widened, his voice dropping into mockery. “Afraid you’ll lose? Or is it that you don’t know how to have fun?”

“I know how to have fun,” I muttered, though it sounded feeble even to my own ears.

“Prove it then.”

I sighed, long and heavy, tilting my head back as though to ask the carved ceiling for patience.

“Merlin save me,” I murmured, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Fine. But only because you’ll never let it go otherwise.”

“That’s the spirit.” Lorenzo clapped me on the back with far too much enthusiasm. “Go on then. You’ve got a head start. I’ll count to… oh, I don’t know… fifty.”

“This is absurd.”

“You love it already.”

“I most certainly do not.”

He closed his eyes, turned to face the wall, and began to count in an exaggerated voice, far too loud for the corridor. “One… two… three…”

I shook my head, muttering something unflattering under my breath, and without giving myself time to reconsider, I hurried down the hall, my footsteps echoing. The manor spread before me like a labyrinth, corridors branching into further corridors, staircases twisting upward and downward, doors leading into rooms both vast and intimate. I chose a staircase at random, a narrow one of pale stone that wound down into the lower floors, and descended quickly, the air cooling with every step.

 

The descent carried me farther than I had expected, the stone staircase narrowing with each turn until I felt as though I were walking into the throat of some great beast, swallowed down into its belly where air grew thinner and sound became muffled, pressed close by the weight of centuries overhead. By the time I reached the landing, the pale daylight from above had all but vanished, replaced by a dim, flickering glow cast from sconces whose flames seemed to burn lower here, as though reluctant to illuminate what had been hidden for so long.

The corridor stretched before me, long and straight, its floor lined with rugs whose once-rich colors had dulled into muted tones of maroon and brown, their edges frayed, their patterns worn thin by footsteps long since gone. Along the walls hung portraits, but unlike those in the upper halls full of gossip and watchful eyes that followed every move, these remained eerily still.

I slowed as I passed them, waiting for the inevitable twitch of a painted eye, the shift of a mouth preparing to sneer, but none came. The figures were frozen in their gilded frames, unmoving, unblinking, their faces cast in shades of sternness and disdain, as though even in oil and canvas they could not be bothered to acknowledge me. Some wore robes that had long fallen out of fashion, stiff collars and elaborate embroidery, their hair powdered or tied with ribbons, others stared out with gaunt cheekbones and severe lines, portraits that had darkened with age until their expressions were almost illegible.

There was something strangely pleasing in their silence. Up above, the walls themselves seemed alive with judgment, but here, among these relics of Malfoys past, I found a kind of indifference that suited me, a coldness I could almost admire. They would not snitch to Lorenzo, at least, and that thought pulled at the corner of my mouth in the faintest shadow of a smirk.

Lorenzo would never think to follow me down here, of that I was certain. He thrived in warmth and noise, in movement and light, his world was built from laughter and clever remarks, from the thrill of drawing others into his orbit. He would search upstairs, darting from room to room with exaggerated theatrics, calling my name loud enough to startle the house-elves. Here, though, where the air felt heavy with memory, where silence pressed hard, Lorenzo would not tread and for once, I would have the advantage.

The first door I came to was large and heavy, its dark wood polished to a sheen dulled only slightly by time. A nameplate of tarnished brass was affixed just above the handle, its engraved letters catching the weak light.

ABRAXAS MALFOY

I paused, reading the name once, twice, as if it might rearrange itself into something more familiar. Abraxas. Draco’s grandfather. I knew little of him, just a vague sense that he had once been formidable, that he had walked these halls long before us, that he might well have been at school alongside my own grandfather, back in the days when such names still carried unchallenged weight. The history of our families intertwined so deeply that it was sometimes difficult to tell where one ended and another began, but of Abraxas himself I knew nothing personal. Only that his son had been Lucius, and his grandson Draco. A line like a chain.

I placed my hand on the door handle, its metal cool against my skin, and pushed. The room that opened before me was not full of dust, as I had half-expected, but preserved, as though time itself had been reluctant to trespass here. Dust clung faintly to the surfaces, yes, a thin film softening the sharp edges, but beneath it all the chamber remained intact, whole, waiting.

The first thing I noticed was the bed, a grand double with a carved headboard of dark mahogany, its posts rising like sentinels at each corner. The cover, once rich green, had faded into something closer to sage, its folds neat, undisturbed, as though the occupant had merely stepped out and intended to return at any moment.

Opposite it stood a vintage dresser, its mirror framed in gilt, though the glass had begun to silver and cloud at the edges, catching my reflection in warped fragments. A fireplace yawned at the far wall, empty of flame, but above it hung a mantle crowded with objects, a silver clock, stopped at some forgotten hour, 10:00pm to be exact, a collection of vials whose contents had long dried into residue, a small, framed miniature of a woman whose face was delicate but whose gaze was sharp enough to cut.

Bookshelves lined the room, tall and heavy, their shelves groaning under the weight of leather spines stamped in gold. Many were pristine, their bindings uncracked, as though purchased for display rather than use, though here and there the tilt of a volume suggested it had once been pulled free, thumbed through, returned hastily.

I stepped further inside, my footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, and let my gaze wander over the details. The way the bedposts were carved into twisting serpents, their eyes glinting faintly in the half-light. The way the books seemed to stare back at me from their shelves, titles stamped in Latin and French, names of philosophers and alchemists and forgotten wizards whose words had likely gathered dust for a century. The way the curtains hung heavy over the tall windows, blocking out what little light there was, trapping the room in perpetual dusk.

I thought of my own room at home, it was functional, sparse, chosen more for necessity than comfort. My father had never seen the point of adornments, of indulgence, of making space one’s own. A bed, a desk, and a wardrobe was enough. The rest was distraction. So to step into a chamber like this, so carefully constructed, so ornate and yet so lifeless, was to step into a reflection of a life I had never known.

I moved toward the bookshelf, trailing my fingers lightly across the spines, feeling the grain of leather beneath my touch. Some cracked at the edges, brittle with age, others smooth and cool, well-preserved. I tilted my head, reading titles I did not recognize, wondering if Abraxas had ever actually read them, or if they had been placed here to impress visitors, to perform intellect rather than embody it.

The fireplace drew me next, its grate empty but clean, as though fires had once been a daily ritual, tended to with care. The mantlepiece objects seemed untouched for years, the stopped clock particularly unsettling in its frozen silence, its hands fixed forever at twenty minutes past eleven, though whether morning or night I could not tell. I reached out and adjusted the frame of the miniature, setting it upright where it had tilted, and the woman’s eyes seemed to fix me more firmly for it, cool and appraising.

I exhaled slowly, the sound loud in the stillness, and allowed myself to stand there, taking it in. It felt intrusive, to linger in another man’s room, particularly one who had long since passed into history, but I found that the stillness of the chamber encouraged me to trespass further, I could not resist opening the drawers and rifling through the shelves than I could stop myself from breathing.

The bookshelves beckoned first, as they always do. I slid a volume free almost at random, its spine stiff but intact, the title stamped in faded gold: De Arte Tenebrarum. The pages whispered as I fanned them open, the smell of old parchment rising like incense, sharp and almost sweet, a perfume of age. The words within were dense, written in Latin interspersed with annotations so cramped they seemed to crawl like tiny insects in the margins.

I did not linger long enough to puzzle out meaning and slipped the book beneath my arm anyway, followed quickly by two others, one on ancient blood rituals and another whose spine bore no title at all, its cover unmarked save for a faint stain that might have been wine, or something darker.

I told myself it was not theft, merely preservation. These were books too fine to be left here to rot in the dark, gathering dust on forgotten shelves. That was the justification I built for myself, though beneath it I knew there was something more selfish, the urge to possess, to claim some fragment of this history for myself, to take it away as proof that I had been here, that I had touched a life once grander than my own.

I moved next to the dresser, its drawers stacked in neat rows, their brass handles dulled to a muted green. The first opened smoothly, the wood groaning softly, but inside there was nothing save the faint shadow of fabric long since removed, the ghost of shirts folded once upon a time.

The second was the same, and the third, each empty, each carrying only the faint scent of cedar, as though some house-elf had charmed them against moth and mold even after their purpose was gone. The emptiness unsettled me, as though the room had been carefully stripped of life, its contents carried away, leaving only the shell, the suggestion of grandeur without the substance.

Still I persisted, working through each drawer methodically, though a strange guilt began to creep in, as though I were prying open coffins and finding them hollow. I told myself I should stop, that there was nothing to be found here, but something in me pushed on, the same stubbornness that kept me turning the final pages of a book I disliked, the need to reach the end even if the end was nothing.

It was in the lowest drawer, half-hidden at the back, that my hand brushed against something solid.

I froze, fingers curling around the edge of a small wooden box, its surface cool beneath the thin layer of dust that coated it. I pulled it free carefully, setting it atop the dresser, and examined it in the flickering half-light. It was plain, unadorned, a box of polished oak, its clasp simple but sturdy, the kind of container that might once have held jewelry or letters or keepsakes, though its lack of decoration suggested it was not meant for display but for safekeeping.

For a long moment I hesitated, my hand resting on the clasp, torn between the urge to open it and the sense that I was already trespassing too far, that to pry into the secrets of the dead was to invite them closer than I wished. But curiosity is a sin I have never learned to contain, and in the end it won out.

The clasp gave easily, and the lid lifted with a faint sigh of displaced dust.

Inside, stacked with surprising neatness, were letters and notes, their parchment yellowed at the edges, ink faded but still legible. Some were folded crisply, others rolled and bound with thin cords, but all bore the marks of age, of hands long gone that had written and handled them. I lifted one, careful not to tear the brittle fold, and let my eyes drift over the words.

The handwriting was elegant, looping, though the words themselves blurred together in the dim light, dense with formal phrases, with talk of alliances and gatherings, with references to events long since past. Yet what caught my attention, again and again, were the names.

Riddle.

Malfoy.

Dolohov.

Rosier.

Mulciber.

Avery.

Nott.

Lestrange.

The surnames repeated, echoing across letters that seemed to span decades, perhaps longer, binding themselves together in threads I could not entirely follow. It was as though the families had been keeping a record of one another, their names braided into a pattern that pulsed with a significance I could feel but not yet decipher.

I set the letter down and picked up another, then another, flipping through the stack with increasing urgency. Each bore the same constellation of names, scrawled in different hands, some elegant, others harsher, but always the same circle, the same bloodlines repeated until the pattern seared itself into my mind.

Riddle, I thought at once of Mattheo, Avery, Aurelia, who had just thrown herself into her father’s arms upstairs with a love so raw it had made my chest ache. Nott, my own name, my own legacy, scrawled here among the others as though I too were bound to this web, as though my place had been decided long before I drew breath.

I leaned back against the dresser, the box still open before me, and let the weight of it settle. I told myself it was only coincidence, only the record-keeping of old pureblood families too proud of themselves to let any thread be forgotten, but the repetition nagged at me, suggestive of something larger.

My hand hovered over the stack of letters, tempted to take them as I had taken the books, to carry them away for study, for safekeeping, for possession. But I hesitated. To steal a book was one thing, to steal words bound and printed for any to read. To take letters, private correspondence between the dead, was another. It felt like theft of memory itself.

I slid the letters back into the drawer with more care than I had taken in pulling them out, my fingers trembling slightly as I tried to smooth their edges into some semblance of order, though the parchment was so brittle that even the gentlest touch felt too rough. It seemed wrong to leave them in the open, exposed to the air and my unsteady breath, as though they were not merely scraps of writing but something more.

But the box remained.

It sat as though waiting, its lid still lifted, its darkness yawning, the letters gone but something else glimmering faintly within. My curiosity, insatiable and dangerous, stirred again. I leaned forward, breath shallow, and peered inside. There were six objects, nestled loosely against one another, each distinct, each gleaming faintly in the dim light as though they retained a life of their own, as though the years had not touched them in the same way they had worn down everything else in the room.

First was a hand mirror, small and circular, its handle carved of gold in patterns so intricate they seemed almost impossible, a tangle of vines and serpents that wound into one another until they became unrecognizable. The glass itself was not quite clear, not cracked, but hazy, as though a thin film of smoke lingered perpetually across its surface. When I tilted it, I saw my own reflection blurred, shifting, almost unsteady, as if the mirror were trying to show me something else, or someone else, hidden just beyond sight.

Beside it lay a ring of silver, thick and heavy, its band engraved with lines that did not resemble letters so much as runes, symbols I could not decipher. At its center was a stone the color of old ash, not quite black, not quite grey, but something in between, a dead star caught in metal. The weight of it seemed immense even without lifting it, as though the air itself bent subtly around it.

A pocket watch lay half-open, its chain coiled like a snake, its face cracked delicately across the glass. I picked it up carefully, feeling its weight drag against my hand, and heard the faintest ticking from within, though the hands did not move. It seemed to pulse more than tick, a heartbeat caught in brass. I turned it over, and the breath caught in my throat.

Engraved into the back, neat and deliberate, was a single word.

Nott.

I stared at it for a long time, my chest hollowing, my throat tightening. It was not my hand that had written it, not my father’s, not mine yet it bound me all the same, proof that whoever had gathered these relics had counted my family among them, proof that the name I carried had been stitched into something larger, something older, something that pressed now against my ribs as if to remind me of a debt unpaid.

Next to it were a pair of cufflinks, small but striking, polished to an almost impossible shine despite the dust that coated everything else in the room. Their faces were inlaid with a pattern of interlocking circles, simple, elegant, but somehow unsettling in their precision.

There was also a page of parchment, torn roughly from whatever volume had once held it. The ink was thick, almost oily, black that shimmered faintly green in the half-light, the script jagged and unfamiliar. It was not Latin, nor any tongue I recognized, though it had the weight of language, the rhythm of something spoken aloud in a place where no one dared listen. My eyes ached trying to follow it, as though the letters shifted when I looked directly at them, refusing to be fixed in meaning.

Finally, tucked almost carelessly to one side, was a golden sword charm, no larger than a pin, its blade slim and delicate, its hilt carved with lines too fine to make out. It gleamed more brightly than the rest, catching the light in sharp, glancing cuts, as though it were impatient, eager, alive.

I leaned back, my hands trembling faintly, staring down at them all. They looked less like keepsakes and more like relics, objects of power or worship, each humming with a significance I could not yet name but could feel in the marrow of my bones. They did not belong here, in the dust and silence of an abandoned room. They belonged to something larger, something dangerous.

The sudden crack of Apparition made me flinch violently, my hand snapping to the lid of the box as though I could hide everything inside it with a single motion.

“Caught you!” Lorenzo’s voice rang out, loud and triumphant, his laugh ricocheting off the stone walls. “Merlin, Theo, you’re hopeless, I gave you a whole five minutes and you come skulking down into the crypts? You’re—”

He stopped short, his laughter breaking off as his eyes fell on the open box, on the glimmer of objects within. His grin faltered, curiosity sliding into its place, his steps carrying him forward with the careless ease that made my teeth clench.

“What’s this?” he murmured, though it wasn’t really a question. Before I could answer, he reached forward and plucked the sword pin from its resting place, holding it up between thumb and forefinger so the golden blade flashed. He grinned again, carelessly. “Well, that’s bloody brilliant. Look at it, a tiny little sword, like something off a dueling trophy. Fits me, don’t you think?”

He pinned it against his sweater without hesitation, letting the gold gleam against the dark fabric as though it were nothing more than ornament.

I swallowed hard, anger prickling hot in my chest. “Don’t,” I said sharply, sharper than I intended. “You don’t even know what that is.”

Lorenzo only shrugged, glancing down at it with mock admiration. “What it is, Nott, is stylish. You’ve got no sense for these things, honestly. If you didn’t want me to take it, you shouldn’t have left it sitting there like a prize.”

“You shouldn’t touch it,” I snapped again, though the words faltered as they left me, because I could not quite say why. I didn’t know what the pin was, only that they carried the same weight as the letters, the same thick, invisible gravity. I wanted to tell him it was dangerous, but my throat closed around the word. Dangerous how? I didn’t know.

Lorenzo laughed again, softer this time, but when his gaze flicked back to the box, some of the humor drained away.

“Alright,” he admitted, “it is a bit odd. All these things shoved together. They don’t look like they belong to the same person.”

I seized on that, relief twisting with dread. “They don’t. They must have been from them. From the ones in the letters.”

He frowned, stepping closer, crouching slightly so we both looked down at the relics as though they might shift beneath our gaze. “The letters?”

I nodded toward the drawer, reluctant to open it again. “Look who they all are addressed to, the same names keep coming up. Malfoy, Rosier, Dolohov, Mulciber, Avery, Lestrange—” my voice caught on the last word, my throat dry, “—Nott. Over and over. Like they were connected. Like they belonged to each other somehow.”

Lorenzo’s brow furrowed, his fingers brushing unconsciously against the pin as though it had already claimed him. “And you think these belonged to them? To Abraxas’ friends? This is his room after all.”

I swallowed, glancing down at the watch again, the name still burning into the brass. “I don’t think. I know.”

For a moment neither of us spoke. The silence stretched, thick and uneasy, filled only by the faint pulse of the broken watch in my hand.

The silence between us grew dense as we crouched before the open box, the six objects glimmering faintly in the half-light as though they were listening, as though our words would decide their fates. It was Lorenzo who reached first, not with his usual carelessness but with a kind of cautious curiosity, lifting the ring between thumb and forefinger so that its dull stone caught what little light there was.

“There’s an engraving,” he said, squinting. The silver band was thick, heavy, and when he tilted it the faintest carving could be seen inside, neat and precise. “An A. Has to be Avery, doesn’t it?”

The name landed between us with more weight than I wanted to admit. Avery. My eyes flicked at once to Aurelia in memory. An A for her line, though she had no idea.

“Presumably,” I said, voice dry, though I could feel the thrum of unease under my ribs.

Lorenzo set the ring back, and I leaned forward to slide the cufflinks into the light. Their polished surfaces glared back at me, and it was Lorenzo again who noticed the tiny engraving, almost invisible at the join.

“A.M.,” he murmured, his grin faint but real this time. “Abraxas Malfoy. You think?”

I allowed myself a small sound of agreement, glancing toward the closed door as though Draco might hear us even from above.

The parchment, that torn scrap of slick black ink, caught my eye next. I drew it closer, the letters still shifting in ways that made me blink, but at the bottom, faint, jagged, yet unmistakably deliberate, was a signature. T.R., curling in cursive that faltered at the edges.

“Tom Riddle,” I said, low, as though the name itself should not be spoken.

Lorenzo laughed, though it was hollow. “So that’s Mattheo’s inheritance? A scrap of nonsense scribbles? Fitting, really, about all he deserves.”

“Yes. If there was ever proof of poetic justice, it’s that.”

The mirror gleamed when we both looked down at it again, its hazy surface seeming almost to stir as if it were waiting to be noticed. Lorenzo picked it up, the golden vines catching around his fingers, and tilted it so that the faint mark etched along the edge could be seen.

“R,” he said softly. “Rosier’s?”

We both stared down at the objects for a long while after, the tick of the broken watch still pulsing faintly, the glint of the ring, the shine of the cufflinks, the smear of language across parchment.

“There were eight names,” I said eventually, the words scraping against the quiet. “But only six objects.”

Lorenzo shrugged, though the gesture was not as careless as he wanted it to be. “Maybe two were lost. Maybe some weren’t important enough to keep.”

I did not like that answer, though I had none better.

At length I let out a slow breath, leaning back from the box. “We should leave them.”

Lorenzo snorted, his hand brushing against the sword pin gleaming at his chest. “Speak for yourself. This one’s mine now. You’d only lock it away to gather dust again.”

I wanted to argue, I felt the argument burning at the back of my throat, but I could not find words that would sway him. The pin looked so small, so harmless, ridiculous almost, gleaming there like nothing more than a trinket. But I could not shake the feeling that it was not harmless at all, that none of this was.

Lorenzo seemed to sense my frustration, because he offered a compromise, his tone softening into something almost thoughtful. “Look, maybe we can’t keep them, but what if we gave them back? Not to everyone, not the whole bloody lot, but to the ones we know. Aurelia. Draco. Mattheo, even. This was probably meant for them anyway.”

I hesitated, the idea twisting in me. It was reckless but right, in a strange way. The names in the letters, the objects in the box, all threads of the same tapestry, one that wound inevitably back to us. Lorenzo grinned again, a shade of mischief flickering through his seriousness.

“I’ll keep the sword, it looks cool.”

I glared, but said nothing. We both looked again at the mirror, its haze shifting faintly as though it knew it was the subject of our silence. Lorenzo’s voice dropped when he spoke next, quieter than I had heard him all afternoon.

“Daphne should have it,” he said.

I turned sharply to look at him, surprise prickling across my skin.

“She’d love it,” he continued, his tone almost defensive now, as though anticipating my objection. “You know she would. Always preening, always checking herself in the glass, pretending she doesn’t care. It would suit her, don’t you think? And it would be unfair if she didn’t get anything, not when all of us have some claim.”

“You don’t even have anything.” I rolled my eyes.

“That’s where you’re wrong Notty.” He smirked, tapping on the sword.

“That’s not even—” But I stopped, there was no use in arguing. “Fuck, whatever. Yes Lorenzo, you have the pin.”

 

We sat there for a long while, caught between laughter and unease, two boys crouched over relics they did not understand, trying to parcel out the past as though it could be divided neatly, as though it could belong to us. Even as we laughed, even as we teased, even as Lorenzo laughed again about Mattheo’s worthless scrap of paper, I could not shake the feeling that the room was watching us, that the relics were not merely objects but eyes, ears, memories, and that by touching them we had already stepped into something that would not easily let us go.

✦

The lawn of the safehouse was not much to look at, a ragged stretch of grass that had long ago surrendered its greenness to a dull and lifeless yellow, the blades flattened in patches as though some invisible hand had pressed against them again and again until they no longer dared to grow upright, yet for Aurelia it might as well have been the softest meadow in the world, for she had thrown herself upon it with an unbothered sigh, her arms flung wide, her hair spread like ink against the brittle stalks, her smile unfurling as though nothing around her could ever spoil it.

I sat beside her, knees drawn up, the roughness of the earth pressing against my palms, and for no reason I could explain I plucked one of the tiny weeds that had sprouted stubbornly near my hand, a crooked little stem with a pale, half-wilted blossom clinging to it, and I tucked it behind her ear. She laughed melodically, not opening her eyes, and I let myself believe that there was something innocent in the act, something untouched by all the heaviness that pressed upon us.

On my wrist the pocket watch gleamed faintly, its chain coiled against my sleeve, its face cracked, its hands unmoving. The time was fixed at ten o’clock, as though the world itself had frozen there, as though some moment long before had been caught and locked inside it. I could not stop looking at it, nor could I rid myself of the faint pulse I felt whenever I held it, a heartbeat that did not belong to me.

A few feet away, Lorenzo had sprawled back onto the grass with the deliberate laziness of someone determined to appear unconcerned, his arms folded beneath his head, his grin tugging at his mouth as he teased Draco with the easy cruelty of friendship.

“Honestly Malfoy, relax for once you’re going to wrinkle yourself into an old man if you keep sitting like that,” he drawled, nodding at Draco’s posture, legs crossed precisely, spine arrow-straight, hands folded in his lap as though the grass itself were beneath him.

Draco’s mouth tightened, his pale hair catching the dimming sunlight like strands of fire. “I am relaxed,” he said coolly, though his tone suggested quite the opposite.

“Fucking hell, if that’s you relaxed I dread to think what tense looks like.” Lorenzo’s laugh rang out, unbothered, but even as his shoulders shook with amusement his eyes kept sliding toward the safehouse, flicking quick and restless, betraying the worry he would not admit.

I followed his gaze and found myself staring at the windows too, their dark panes reflecting nothing but the slant of the fading sky. Daphne had vanished into her room the moment we returned, the sound of her door shutting still sharp in my mind, and she had not emerged since. Her absence sat among us like a shadow, unspoken but undeniable.

The early evening air thickened around us, cool but close, and for a while the only sound was Aurelia humming softly to herself, her eyes still closed, her chest rising and falling with the steady rhythm of someone who wanted to believe she was safe. I glanced down at her again, at the little flower trembling faintly in her hair, and wondered how she could carry lightness so easily when the rest of us seemed made only of stone.

Then the silence was torn, by the violent crack of apparition. The sound shivered through the air like a whip and I felt my shoulders jolt before I could stop myself, the breath in my chest stilled. Lorenzo’s grin faltered, his body stiffening even as he tried to mask it with a careless shift of his hands. Aurelia’s eyes snapped open, her fingers curling into the grass beside her, the happy hum cut short.

I turned my head, slowly, though I already knew what I would see. Mattheo came into view not like a boy but like a shadow cut loose from the night, his stride quick, his expression closed, and in his hand he carried a slip of parchment that looked incongruously small for something that made the very air tighten around us, and without pausing or softening or even asking after Daphne, whose absence should have been obvious, he stopped above us and let his shadow fall across the dead grass where Aurelia still lay, her smile already vanishing, and I felt the silence sharpen as though it were a blade held to every throat.

“My father has a list,” he said, the words flat and cold, spoken with such practiced control that I knew he was repeating them, not as himself but as the echo of another voice. “Muggle-born children of wizarding families. Names and addresses. Their families are to be erased.” He let the parchment dangle from his fingers as though it were nothing more than an errand written down by a servant, and yet I knew, as we all knew, that every letter upon it meant screams and blood and the kind of silence that never lifted again. “We leave in an hour. First family on the list. Be ready.”

With that he was gone, moving past us without waiting for reply or question, the sound of the door shutting behind him carrying a finality that made something in my stomach curl and tighten, though I kept my face still, because to show what I felt would do nothing but betray me.

For a long moment none of us spoke, though I could feel the weight of their thoughts in the way their bodies shifted, in the way Aurelia pushed herself slowly upright, her white hair tangled from the grass, her eyes wide but silent, in the way Lorenzo’s jaw had tightened even though his mouth tried to hold on to a semblance of a smile.

Draco rose first, smooth and seemingly unbothered, dusting the faint traces of grass from his trousers with an elegance that seemed almost mocking in its detachment, and without a word he left us there, his expression unreadable, as though he had already folded the task into himself and found no reason to dwell on it. Lorenzo exhaled heavily, his sigh carrying a weight that did not suit the smile he wore, and with a shrug that was almost too casual he patted the ground in front of him.

“Come on, Aurelia,” he said, his tone soft, almost playful, though there was something brittle beneath it. “Sit here. Let me do something with that wild mane of yours before we go.”

She laughed but it was too high, too quick, the sound of someone desperate to catch hold of something light, shifting across the grass until she sat with her back to him, her hair spilling over her shoulders like pale silk, and Lorenzo, with hands that were far steadier than his eyes, began to braid it, weaving order into the chaos strand by strand.

I sat beside them, useless, my hands clasped around my knees, my thoughts moving too fast and too slow all at once, and I could not stop myself from staring at them, from thinking how they could still find some softness in this moment, still carve out something almost gentle, while I felt myself tearing quietly down the middle, because I did not want to do it, I could not want it, and yet I knew that wanting or not wanting changed nothing, because we had never had a choice, not once, not since the Mark had burned itself into our skin and set us apart from the rest of the world.

“Theo,” Lorenzo said, his voice low, his hands working gently through Aurelia’s hair. “Do me a favour, will you? Check on Daphne. She hasn’t come out since we got back. I’d go myself, but…” He trailed off, his fingers tightening briefly around the strands he held, before he forced a smile again. “She listens to you sometimes. Maybe more than she listens to the rest of us.”

I hesitated, torn between relief at being given something to do and the heaviness of what it meant, and then I nodded, pushing myself slowly to my feet. My legs felt stiff, my chest tighter than I liked, and as I moved toward the safehouse door I glanced back once, just once, at the two of them, Aurelia sitting still with her hair gleaming pale in the failing light, Lorenzo bent close with a concentration that masked everything else, and the watch upon my wrist glinting like some terrible reminder and I thought that perhaps we were all only ever pretending to be more than the inevitability carved into us.

The safehouse was quiet when I stepped inside, the air heavier, stiller, as though it had been holding its breath for hours, and the wooden floor creaked beneath my steps with the soft complaint of something old and tired, and I thought to myself that even the house knew what lay ahead of us tonight and wanted no part in it.

The door to Daphne and Aurelia’s room was half-shut, enough to make me hesitate, enough to feel like I was intruding, but I pushed it open gently anyway, not bothering to knock because I already knew she would not answer.

She was there, curled into herself on the bed, the covers dragged over her, though I could see her eyes peering out from beneath them, open but lifeless, unfocused, like twin fragments of glass that had forgotten how to catch the light.

She didn’t move when she noticed me, didn’t startle or ask what I wanted, only watched as if I were nothing more than another shadow creeping into her space, and for a long moment I stood there caught between the instinct to leave her alone and the fear of what silence would turn her into, but reluctantly, I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice low, gentler than I intended, though the words sounded clumsy even as I said them, because I already knew that asking her to name what was wrong was like asking a drowning girl why she hadn’t simply decided to breathe.

She blinked slowly, and after a silence that stretched too long, she murmured, “I’m just tired.”

I wanted to believe her, but the flatness of her voice made the words hollow, a lie spoken out of habit rather than intention, but I didn’t press, because what right did I have to demand she unravel herself for me when she could barely keep from collapsing?

“Tired,” I repeated softly, as if saying it back to her would somehow make it more true, but I let the disbelief sit quietly inside me, unspoken.

She shifted beneath the covers, her hand emerging for a moment, trembling slightly before she pulled the blanket tighter around herself, and then she began to speak again, not in any way that made sense, but in fragments, in nonsense, in pieces of thought strung together like broken beads, half-formed sentences about wanting to sleep forever, about the colour of the ceiling, about how nothing mattered but the sound of the wind against the window, about how her bones felt like stone.

I listened, because listening was all I could do, even if every word made me ache with the knowledge that she was drifting somewhere far beyond me. I didn’t speak either. Instead, I shifted closer, sliding beneath the covers, the heat of her body pressed faintly against mine, fragile and cold all at once, and without thinking, without asking, I wrapped my arms around her.

For a moment she went still, so still I wondered if I had done the wrong thing, if my closeness was a weight she could not carry, but then she let out a sound, it was small and her chest heaved against me, the sob breaking free before she could stop it.

She buried her face against me and cried, quietly at first, then with a force that seemed to shake her apart, and I held her tighter, pressing my cheek to her hair, my hand smoothing over her back, not because I thought it would fix anything but because I had nothing else to give her but my presence, my steadiness and my silence.

As she wept, as the covers tangled around us and the air grew stifling and hot, I thought about how little any of us truly knew each other even though we had been friends for so long, how much of ourselves we kept hidden in the dark, but here I was, holding her while she fell apart, knowing she would never say what she needed, and I would never ask, because sometimes love was not in the words we spoke but in the quiet weight of staying when we might otherwise have left.

I did not let go. Not until her sobs began to soften into something like exhaustion, her body sinking heavier against mine, as though the fight had gone out of her at last. She had grown quieter against me, her breathing still uneven but no longer shaking with sobs, and when she began to murmur again her words were blurred by exhaustion, fragments that slipped away almost as quickly as she spoke them, little admissions that sounded like they weren’t meant to be heard.

I stayed still, listening, though a part of me hated myself for not knowing what to do, for not knowing what she truly needed, and eventually, because I could not sit there pretending the world outside her blanket did not exist, I sat up, easing her gently away from me though I kept one hand against her shoulder.

“Daphne,” I said softly, watching her eyes half-lidded but awake, “we have to go soon.”

Her gaze shifted lazily toward me, dull and tired, and I swallowed before continuing.

“Mattheo came back. His father’s given him a list. Muggle-born families. The first one… tonight. We’re leaving in less than an hour.”

For a moment she did not react at all, only let her head fall back into the pillow as though it were too heavy to hold upright, and then, with a sigh so deep it seemed to empty her of what little strength she had left, she closed her eyes.

“Of course we do,” she whispered, flat, unbothered on the surface but carrying a weight that pulled at me, because I knew what lay beneath was not indifference but something darker, heavier.

“I don’t want it either,” I admitted, surprising myself with the honesty, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “But we don’t get to want, you know that.”

Her lips curved faintly, bitterly, into something that might have been agreement or mockery, and then she said nothing more, retreating again into silence. I sat there for a moment longer, restless, unwilling to let her fall back into that hollow stare, and then an idea came to me, sudden, unsteady, but it gave me purpose. I rose from the bed, ignoring her soft protest at the shift in weight, and slipped out of the room, the boards groaning beneath my steps as I went down the hallway toward the living room.

The cabinet where I had hidden the relics waited in the corner, and as I opened it, the gleam of the objects caught the light, cold and uncanny, each one heavy with names and histories I did not understand. My hand went immediately to the mirror, its golden frame smooth and ornate, the engraved “R” catching my thumb as though it were meant to anchor me.

Carrying it carefully, I returned to her room, closing the door softly behind me. She was still lying as I had left her, eyes half-open, her hand curling at the edge of the blanket.

I held the mirror up with a faint attempt at a smile. “I brought you something,” I said, uncertain, but her eyes flickered toward me, curious despite the hollowness in them.

She sat up slightly as I crossed the room, propping herself on one elbow, and when I handed it to her she took it with both hands, turning it over, tracing the frame with her fingers. Slowly, she lifted it until her reflection looked back at her.

For a long moment she only stared, expression unreadable, and then she tried to smile, tilting her head, testing the way her mouth curved in the glass, but the moment the expression touched her face, her eyes darkened, and she made a sound of disgust, lowering the mirror as though it had betrayed her.

“I look awful,” she muttered, pressing her lips together, almost angry.

I shook my head, moving into her line of sight, gently pushing the mirror back so she was forced to catch both of us in its surface, her pale and weary, me with my hair falling untidily into my face.

“You’re beautiful,” I said simply, not because I thought it would fix anything, but because it was true in ways she could not see, and perhaps if she heard it enough she might begin to believe it.

She glanced at me, something sparking faintly in her eyes, and then, slowly, she smiled, not at herself, but at me.

“Beautiful, am I?” she said, her voice mocking but soft, and then her gaze shifted deliberately to my hair, her mouth twitching with the beginnings of a laugh. “And you, with that haircut? Honestly, Theo, you look like you let a house-elf at you with a pair of blunt shears.”

I rolled my eyes, relieved despite myself, because the sound of her laughter, faint though it was, had broken something in the silence.

“At least I have hair worth noticing,” I replied dryly, leaning back against the bedframe, though the warmth in my chest gave me away.

 

She laughed again, a short sound, and for a moment her shoulders lifted, lighter, her eyes no longer dead but alive with something fragile. She held the mirror against her chest, not looking into it again, as though it might be enough to keep it near without having to confront herself in its glass.

When she rose at last, the covers slipping from her shoulders, I felt the smallest curl of something like relief unwind inside me, for though her movements were slow and her expression still held that hollowness, she had chosen to leave the safety of the bed, and that, for Daphne, meant something more than any answer she might have given me.

I noticed it immediately, though I kept my smile to myself, the shirt she wore was not hers, the fabric too large across her frame, the sleeves brushing her wrists in a way that belonged to someone taller, broader, and I knew without asking that it was Lorenzo’s, stolen or borrowed or left behind in some careless moment, and there was something almost tender in the sight of her choosing to armour herself in his clothes instead of her own.

She padded over to the dresser with bare feet, the golden mirror glinting faintly in her hands, and she set it down with a kind of finality, turning it so that its reflective face pointed toward the wall, as though she wanted no more of her own image staring back at her.

She looked at me, her expression caught between weariness and defiance, and said, flatly, “I don’t feel like killing today.”

The bluntness of it struck me like a stone tossed against still water, rippling outward through me, because she said it so simply, as if it were any other complaint, and for a moment I almost laughed at the absurdity of the truth spoken so carelessly.

“I don’t either,” I admitted, my voice low, because there was no use pretending otherwise between us, and something in her eyes softened at the honesty.

It was then that her gaze shifted, sharpened, a spark alighting within it, and she stepped closer, lowering her voice as though the walls themselves might overhear.

“Did you steal any alcohol last night?” she asked, her tone almost conspiratorial, though her lips were twitching with the beginnings of a smile.

I blinked at her, half-amused, half-appalled, and shook my head slowly. “I’m sure you know the answer to that,” I confessed, because lying would have been pointless, “but we’re not about to drink before a task, Daphne. Even you have to see how idiotic that would be.”

Her smile widened, the first true curve of it I had seen all day, and she tilted her head, stepping closer.

“Please,” she said, simple and pleading, like a child asking for something sweet, and I felt my resolve waver, not because her argument held any weight but because her eyes had lit with something alive again, and I found myself craving that light no matter how it was conjured.

I hesitated, the rational part of me telling myself this was reckless, that it would be one more mistake in a long list of them, that Mattheo would notice, would punish us, would twist whatever amusement he could from our indulgence, and yet another part of me, quieter but more dangerous, whispered that perhaps it did not matter, that sober or drunk we would still walk into blood, that our fate was already sealed, and if we were to die tonight then perhaps it would be better to die with a taste of rebellion on our tongues.

She saw me wavering and pressed her advantage, her voice softening into something coaxing.

“Just a little. It’s not as if anything matters, Theo. Not really.”

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps nothing did.

So I gave in, not with words but with the movement of my body as I rose from the bed, my decision written in the set of my shoulders, and I did not miss the way her lips curved into triumph as I crossed the room.

Down the corridor, the house lay in silence, and when I reached the kitchen the bottle was where I had hidden it behind the tins and jars, its clear contents catching the light in a way that felt almost too sharp, too clean, for what it was. Muggle vodka. A strange, burning thing I had taken more out of curiosity than intention, though now, as I curled my fingers around its neck and pulled it free, I felt a rush of something like exhilaration thread through me, a low thrum of anticipation that had little to do with the drink itself and everything to do with the fact that I was choosing this, I was defying the order of things, if only for a moment.

I carried it back through the hall with a faint, dangerous smile pulling at my mouth, and I thought to myself that perhaps Daphne was right, perhaps it didn’t matter whether we were sober or not, because Mattheo would kill us either way, with words or with actions, with fire or with silence, and maybe it would be easier to meet it laughing, or at least not caring.

 

When I stepped back into her room, bottle in hand, her eyes lit up with a spark that looked almost like life, and though I told myself this was reckless, that I was a fool, I couldn’t deny the thrill curling low in my chest as I set it down between us.

Daphne’s fingers closed around the neck of the bottle before I could even settle myself back onto the bed, and with a flash in her eyes that looked both reckless and alive she twisted off the cap and lifted it straight to her lips.

She drank without hesitation, swallowing mouthful after mouthful, her throat working as the liquid burned its way down, and when at last she pulled the bottle away she coughed, wincing, her eyes watering slightly as she let out a laugh that was half-pained, half-thrilled.

“Merlin, that’s vile,” she muttered, though the grin spreading across her face betrayed her, and before I could speak she was shoving the neck of the bottle against my mouth, tipping it sharply so the liquid spilled past my lips before I could protest.

It burned immediately, fire racing across my tongue, down my throat, filling my chest with heat that felt both wrong and exhilarating, and though my instinct was to push her hand away I didn’t, I let her pour the sharp taste into me until I was coughing too, gasping and swearing under my breath as she laughed, delighted by my misery.

“You’re insane,” I told her hoarsely, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, but the corner of my mouth tugged upward despite myself, and she laughed harder, collapsing back onto the bed with the bottle cradled against her chest like something precious.

I lay back beside her, the ceiling swimming faintly above us, and for a moment we only breathed, the sharp burn settling into something warm in my stomach, loosening the tightness that had been sitting there all evening.

Then Daphne sat up slightly, the bottle tilted again, and she took another long swallow before passing it to me, her eyes glinting with a kind of feral challenge. “Go on,” she said, her voice rough but alive.

I rolled my eyes, but I took it, and I drank, longer this time, the fire numbing into something that almost felt good, and when I lowered it I could feel the heat in my cheeks, the heaviness starting in my limbs.

We passed it back and forth, faster each time, until the sharpness dulled and the warmth grew, until the silence between us softened into words that neither of us would have said without it.

“I hate all of it,” Daphne said suddenly, her head rolling against the pillow as she stared at the ceiling. “All of them. The stupid Mark, the stupid lists, the stupid way we’re supposed to pretend it’s all for something bigger. It’s not bigger. It’s just cruel.”

Her voice cracked, but she laughed as if that would patch it, and I nodded, the truth of her words thick on my tongue.

“I know,” I said quietly, taking another swig before pressing the bottle back into her hand. “I hate it too. Mattheo. His father, my father, and even you’re mother Daph. I feel like we’re pieces they can move wherever they want. Like we never belonged to ourselves.”

She hummed, tilting the bottle until the last drops slid into her mouth, then wiping her lips with the sleeve of Lorenzo’s shirt as though she didn’t care what stains it left. “We don’t,” she whispered. “We never did.”

I turned my head toward her, watching the way her eyes shone faintly in the dim light, and for a moment the anger in me shifted into something softer, something like grief. “Maybe not,” I said, “but lying here, drinking this shit feels like ours.”

“Because its fucking stupid.” Her lips twitched into a smile and she nudged the empty bottle onto the floor, letting it roll away.

Time blurred in the way it always did with drink, the sharp edges softening, the silences filling with words that might never have been spoken otherwise, and the more we lay there the more the warmth built until it was not just in my chest but in my head, buzzing, lifting, making everything feel both lighter and less controlled, and Daphne’s laughter began to spill from her without warning, bright and sharp, the sound of it filling the room like something that shouldn’t have existed there, something alive.

She rolled onto me at one point, her head resting against my chest, her hair falling across my face so that I had to brush it away, and she giggled at my clumsy attempts, mumbling something about how I looked ridiculous, which only made me laugh too, though I couldn’t quite explain why.

I was talking faster now, words tumbling out without the usual carefulness, and she kept interrupting me, poking at my side, telling me I sounded like some pompous old book, and I told her that at least I could read, which sent her into another fit of laughter so sudden that she nearly fell off the bed, clutching at me for balance.

At some point the conversation slipped, as though by accident, back to the task waiting for us, the muggle family whose name sat inked on Mattheo’s parchment, and though it should have sobered us, it didn’t, it twisted into something absurd, and yet strangely funny in the way only drunken minds could find it.

“You know what we should do?” Daphne said suddenly, her voice conspiratorial, her eyes wide with drunken brightness. “We should sneak into their kitchen and turn everything they eat into slugs. Let them choke on it before they even see us.”

I barked out a laugh, unable to stop myself. “That’s awful. Imagine the little one trying to sip a cup of tea and it just—” I mimed slugs slopping out of my mouth, gagging exaggeratedly, and Daphne laughed so hard she collapsed fully onto me, shaking against my chest.

“Merlin, Theo,” she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes, “you’re disgusting.”

“You started it,” I reminded her, grinning, the words tumbling fast, unfiltered. “Or, or listen to this. We could transfigure their entire house into jelly, like proper quivering jelly, and then just… watch them sink into it slowly. They’d never even know what hit them.”

She shrieked with laughter, pounding her fist against my chest as though I’d said something genius, her body shaking so hard I thought we might both fall to the floor.

“Yes! And we could freeze it halfway, so they’re stuck inside. Little muggle family trapped in a jelly museum.”

I laughed until my stomach hurt, until the warmth of it rose into my head and blurred everything further, and I realised with a strange sort of shock that it felt good, good to laugh with her like this, reckless and cruel and harmless all at once, good to forget for a moment the weight pressing down on us.

Our ideas grew wilder, more ridiculous. Daphne suggested levitating them upside down by their ankles and dangling them over a river until they fainted, then dropping them gently into a boat just to confuse them. I countered with transfiguring their furniture into animals, chairs that would run off, tables that would bite their legs, wardrobes that would swallow them whole. She cried with laughter, clinging to my shirt as though she couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t stop smiling, the pace of my words quickening with every ridiculous thought.

“We could enchant their front door,” I said between gasps, “so every time they try to leave it just leads them back into their kitchen. Like an endless loop of breakfast.”

Daphne howled, her face buried against me, her voice muffled but still bright. “Oh, Merlin, they’d die of boredom before we even had to lift a wand.”

The laughter spilled out of us until we were breathless, tangled together, our bodies loose and heavy with drink, the bottle forgotten somewhere on the floor. Her weight pressed into me, heavier with each passing minute, not in a way that hurt but in a way that anchored me, like she had decided that my chest was the only thing keeping her tethered to the world.

She lay there, breathing unevenly, strands of her hair brushing across my jaw, her fingers curled lightly into my shirt as though without thinking, and I just let my hand move through her hair again and again in absent motions, not with tenderness exactly, not with the sort of intention people put on gestures when they wanted to be seen as tender, but simply because it gave me something to do, because the repetitive motion soothed me too, because in a room where nothing ever stayed still, this at least felt steady.

She muttered things half into my chest, nonsense mostly, fragments of thoughts that never seemed to connect.

“You ever think,” she mumbled, words blurring together, “about how stupid everyone looks when they sleep? Like mouths open, drool everywhere. People look pathetic when they’re unconscious.”

I snorted, the sound vibrating in my throat beneath her ear. “That’s the first thing you want to say? That people look stupid when they sleep?”

“Yes,” she said simply, lifting her head just enough to glare at me before collapsing back down with a dramatic sigh. “It’s true. I bet you snore. You look like someone who snores.”

I laughed, unable to stop myself, shaking my head. “I don’t snore.”

“You do,” she insisted. “You probably wake the whole house up.”

“I don’t, Daphne. I’ve literally slept next to you lot in this fucking house for months. If I snored, you’d all have hexed me by now.”

She was quiet for a moment, then huffed into my shirt. “Fine. Then you grind your teeth. That’s worse.”

I rolled my eyes, still laughing under my breath. “You’re insufferable.”

“Yeah but you like it.”

She wasn’t wrong. Not really. The sound of her voice, even when slurred and sharp, even when she was throwing ridiculous accusations at me, made something inside me loosen. At one point she pushed herself up too fast, maybe trying to sit, and immediately lost her balance, tumbling sideways onto the bed with a groan. I burst out laughing, sitting up to catch her before she rolled completely off.

“Graceful,” I teased, dragging her back toward the pillows.

“Shut up,” she muttered, half giggling herself as she flopped back into place. “Floor moved.”

“No, Daphne, that was you.”

“The floor moved,” she repeated stubbornly, eyes glassy but amused, and I shook my head, still laughing at how stupid she sounded.

The bottle lay somewhere beside us, rolling when we shifted, and every now and then she reached for it and handed it to me without words, and I took it without thinking, the burn of it sliding down easier each time, the sharpness dulling until all that was left was warmth and the steady rhythm of her lying half on top of me, her laughter quick to spark and her sighs heavy in between.

We kept talking, nonsense piling on nonsense, both of us too far gone to care how it sounded. At one point I told her I thought portraits downstairs at the manor didn’t move because they were ashamed of whoever painted them. She wheezed with laughter, clutching my sleeve. She told me she thought house-elves were actually plotting a secret rebellion, biding their time until wizards were too drunk to fight back, and I laughed so hard my stomach cramped.

But as it always did, the laughter slowed, stretched into silence, the warmth settling heavy and the truth creeping back in around the edges. Daphne lay quiet for a long time, her face pressed to my chest, and I could feel her breathing shift, slower, not asleep but something close, and then she whispered, so low I almost missed it, “We’re fucked, Theo.”

The words hung there, heavier than anything else we’d said, and for a moment I didn’t know what to say back, because she was right, because no amount of drunken laughter could change the fact that in less than an hour we’d be dragging ourselves across someone else’s threshold, wands out, pretending we had a choice.

I swallowed, staring at the ceiling. “Yeah,” I admitted finally, voice rougher than I meant it to be. “We are.”

She didn’t move, but I felt her lips twitch against my shirt. “At least you admit it.”

“What’s the point in pretending otherwise?” I said, my words slurring slightly now, softer. “We’re fucked. Completely. Totally. Irredeemably fucked.”

There was a pause, and then she laughed, not sharp this time but low, muffled, a laugh that vibrated against me. “You sound like Lorenzo when he tries to give speeches.”

I chuckled too, shaking my head. “Except I’m right.”

She lifted her head just enough to meet my eyes, her expression dazed but amused, her smile crooked.

“We’re fucked,” she repeated, and it made us both laugh again, not the loud laughter from before, but something smaller, almost hysterical in its honesty, the kind of laughter that came when there was nothing else left to do.

We laid there like that, tangled in exhaustion and drink, laughing quietly at the inevitability of it all, holding onto the shared understanding that at least we weren’t alone in the ruin. Daphne stirred suddenly, shoving herself upright with all the grace of a collapsing chair, her hair falling in front of her face as she blinked around like she’d only just realised we were in a room and not in the middle of the sky.

She muttered something under her breath and pushed off the bed, staggering toward the wardrobe in the corner, her socks sliding on the floorboards so that she smacked into the door with a thud that made me wince.

“You alright?” I asked, watching as she half-slid down the wood.

“Shutup,” she drawled, reaching for the handle like it was the most complicated thing she’d ever been asked to do. After a few failed attempts, she managed to wrench it open, the door creaking like it too was drunk and unwilling to cooperate.

I rolled onto my side, propped up on an elbow, my head swimming slightly, the ceiling spinning slow circles. “You sure you can even stand, Greengrass?”

She shot me a sharp look over her shoulder, strands of her hair sticking to her cheeks, her voice almost breaking into a laugh.

“You look like you lost a duel to your own shoes, so don’t start.”

I grinned despite myself, then quickly turned away when she began tugging clothes off hangers. I stared hard at the cracked plaster on the wall, trying not to focus on the sound of fabric rustling, on the muted curses as she tripped half into her trousers, half out, muttering under her breath about “stupid uniforms” and “stupider mothers” and “thank god they are black, now I look skinny.”

“You done yet?” I asked finally, the edge of laughter creeping into my voice.

“Stop rushing me, don’t turn!” She shouted back immediately, which only made me laugh harder because I hadn’t even considered to.

When she was finally finished, she let out a victorious sigh and stumbled back toward the bed, collapsing into the mattress with such force that it bounced beneath me too. She lay there in full Death Eater uniform, hair wild, face flushed and her eyes bloodshot from the vodka.

We stared at each other in silence, her chest rising and falling too quickly, my own thoughts spinning, and then I reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Come on,” I said, my voice thick, low, my hand squeezing hers with more force than I intended.

She raised a brow. “What, now?”

“Yes, now,” I said, tugging lightly, though I nearly toppled forward myself. “If we stay here any longer, we’ll never get up again.”

“You’re bossy when you’re drunk,” she muttered, but didn’t pull away.

“You’re impossible when you’re sober,” I shot back, the words slipping out too easily, and she laughed, the sound cracked but genuine, shaking her head as though she couldn’t believe me.

Somehow, through sheer stubbornness and the absurd logic of drunken bodies, we managed to haul ourselves upright, arms tangled, shoulders colliding, half leaning on each other as though we were one awkward, unbalanced creature trying to figure out how legs worked.

“Left foot,” I ordered, grinning.

“I’m not a child,” she snapped, but then immediately stumbled over her right shoe and crashed into me, nearly knocking us both back onto the bed.

“Clearly,” I muttered, catching her just in time, my arms bracing around her.

She shoved me lightly in the chest. “You’re worse. You can’t even walk straight.”

I laughed again, the sound too loud in the small room, too sharp, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, not the uniforms, not the mission, not the weight pressing in around us.

Still laughing under our breath, still leaning too hard into one another, we stumbled out the door, not soldiers, not heirs, not killers, but two reckless, broken kids tumbling toward something they could never escape, gripping each other’s arms as though if we held tight enough the world might forgive us for what came next.

Chapter Text

The air was cold and wet as it always was in these narrow London streets, the kind of suburban row where every house looked eerily the same, neat brick and cheap iron railings, little squares of garden that held no life but weeds. But I felt lighter than I had in months, though the truth of that sat uneasily in my chest, because I knew it wasn’t clarity or bravery that steadied me, but vodka still burning in my veins, dulling the edges of the fear I ought to have been drowning in. Perhaps Daphne had been onto something all along, that maybe the only way to walk willingly into the parody of a war we were made to fight was to already be half destroyed, half detached, half laughing at the inevitability of it.

We stood together in the shadow of a streetlamp, six of us, hoods drawn, wands concealed in sleeves, our boots sinking slightly into the soggy grass verge. Mattheo was at the front, dark-eyed and impatient, a rolled parchment clutched in his hand like the commandment it was, and the rest of us were nothing more than bodies to fill out its demand.

“This is the Finch-Fletchley family,” he said, his voice carrying easily even though he didn’t raise it.

At once, the name dug into my stomach like a nail. Finch-Fletchley. Too familiar, too close. I glanced sideways at Draco, then Lorenzo, then Aurelia, I knew they all recognised it too, though none of them spoke at first. It was Daphne, pressed slightly against me, her shoulder brushing mine in a way I tried to disguise as nothing, who broke the silence with a flat, slurred murmur.

“As in Justin?”

Mattheo’s mouth twitched, half irritation, half amusement. “Yes. As in our classmate.”

“He only has his mother,” Aurelia whispered, her voice thinner than usual, and it sounded like she was reminding herself as much as the rest of us. “No siblings. His father died years ago.”

The words hovered, brittle, and though Mattheo shrugged them off as irrelevant, I felt the others stiffen, even Draco, though he schooled his face quickly. I thought of Justin, cheerful in his Hufflepuff tie, always too loud in lessons, always trying too hard, and I wondered whether he had any idea that his mother’s life would be taken from her by people who had watched him grow up just as much as she had.

Mattheo turned, his gaze sweeping over us, his face expressionless save for the faint tension in his jaw. “Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.”

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, as though slaughter could be uncomplicated, but Daphne swayed slightly against me and I swallowed the sound instead, clamping my teeth down hard. My hand brushed her arm, not intentionally, not enough for anyone to notice, but enough that she steadied, her head bent toward me just for a second before she straightened.

We were drunk, both of us, and I knew it, knew the burn was still humming in my blood and I could smell it faintly on her breath, but nobody seemed to notice. Or maybe they did, and nobody cared.

I stared at the neat little suburban house in front of us, a red front door with a brass knocker polished to a shine, lace curtains drawn over the square windows, a potted plant already dead by the step, and for one terrifying moment I imagined myself walking up and knocking politely, asking if Mrs. Finch-Fletchley might like tea, as though this were some distorted call on neighbours instead of the execution it was.

“Suburban hell,” Lorenzo muttered under his breath beside Aurelia, his face shadowed, his usual humour gone. “They all look the same.”

I wanted to tell him that was the point, that the whole street had been built to make life appear predictable and safe, a perfect lie, and now we were about to rip it apart for no reason other than that Justin Finch-Fletchley had been born to the wrong parents.

Draco stood slightly apart, his posture straight, arms folded, his eyes locked on the front of the house with a look that wasn’t indifference exactly, but something colder, something detached in a way I envied because I couldn’t summon it no matter how hard I tried.

“Are we—” Daphne started, her voice sharper than she meant, but Mattheo cut her off.

“Yes,” he said simply, rolling up the parchment and tucking it away, his tone final. “We are.”

The word settled heavily, a stone in my gut, but Daphne only leaned into me slightly, as though to steady herself, and I let her, keeping my face neutral, my steps ready to fall in line. Mattheo’s voice cut through the damp night like a blade, clipped, efficient, each word snapping into the air with that grim finality that reminded us he wasn’t just our friend anymore but his father’s son, a vessel of that same cruelty.

“The mother is a Muggle,” he said, his eyes never leaving the neat red door. “Defenceless. It will be quick. Justin is another matter. He’s fought before, he knows what he’s doing. If he’s home, we’ll have to be sharp. Get it done fast.”

The word done sat sour on my tongue, as if it could disguise what it really meant, but I only swallowed hard and glanced at Daphne, whose hair caught the yellow wash of the streetlight, her expression caught somewhere between blank detachment and bubbling laughter that hadn’t yet found its way out.

“Berkshire, you first,” Mattheo said, jerking his chin.

Lorenzo gave a crooked smirk, like this was some ridiculous duel rather than a planned killing, but his eyes betrayed the flicker of unease as he moved toward the side gate.

“Malfoy, you’re with him.”

Draco inclined his head, stiff and deliberate, every line of him carved from Malfoy discipline, though I noticed his knuckles pale where his arms folded.

“Avery.”

I saw her flinch, shoulders trembling as she took a step forward. Her pale hair caught the moonlight, almost silver, and I realised with a sharp pang that her hands were shaking where she held her wand, though she tried to keep her chin high. Before she could move away, I stumbled into her, deliberately too casual, arms wrapping briefly around her in something that hovered between a hug and the clumsy collision of my unsteady balance.

She stiffened, half turning as if to push me off, confusion written across her features, but when she met my eyes she seemed to understand something in the gesture. That it wasn’t about weakness, but about needing her to know she wasn’t alone. Slowly, she leaned back into it for just a heartbeat before stepping away, following Lorenzo and Draco toward the side path.

“Good,” Mattheo said shortly, watching them disappear into the shadows.

It was only then that I realised what was left, me, Daphne, and him.

I turned to her, wide-eyed, and she turned to me in the same moment, and the recognition of how impossibly stupid this arrangement was, how unlucky it was for the two of us to be left tethered to Mattheo when we could barely keep our own feet under us sparked laughter in both of us before either of us could stop it. A snort broke from her, sharp and sudden, and I bit down on my lip but failed, a grin tugging at my mouth, a laugh bubbling up and spilling out despite the weight of the night.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered hoarsely, clutching my sleeve, giggles breaking through. “Us. With him.”

“It’s suicidal,” I muttered, my voice wobbling with laughter, and then we both dissolved into it fully, clutching at each other, drunk and breathless, our shoulders shaking. Mattheo turned, his face catching the lamplight, his eyes narrowing into something vicious.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” he barked, the sound sharp enough to make the empty street echo.

I clamped my hand over my mouth, but that only made it worse, because Daphne muffled a cackle into my arm, her entire body trembling against mine, and the absurdity of trying to not laugh in front of him sent me spiralling.

Mattheo glared for a long, terrible moment, then turned sharply back to the door, muttering something under his breath, his shoulders tense. He moved forward, precise, controlled, the hem of his cloak brushing the wet path.

Daphne and I stumbled after him, leaning too much into each other, tripping over the uneven garden stones, our laughter stifled but not gone, building in our throats like pressure that couldn’t be released. Every step behind him felt like a game, as though one sound too loud, one hiccupped breath, would make him spin around and hex us both into silence.

“Stop stepping on me,” Daphne hissed through laughter, elbowing me weakly.

“You’re the one leaning,” I shot back, grinning helplessly.

We clung to each other, not out of fondness, not even out of balance, but because it was either that or fall apart completely before the door was even breached. So half stumbling, half choking back laughter that didn’t belong here, we followed Mattheo into the Finch-Fletchley house, two drunkards tripping into a nightmare, held together by nothing more than vodka and the refusal to look too closely at what we were about to do.

Mattheo didn’t even hesitate. He led us down the side path, his boots crunching over damp gravel, his shoulders locked with purpose. One sharp flick of his wand and the back door gave way with a violent blast, the lock splintering, hinges screaming as glass shattered inward in a spray that rattled the silence of the street. Shards scattered across the tiled kitchen floor, catching the yellow glow of the overhead light, and I flinched instinctively though the noise struck me as oddly funny in my state, like someone had just dropped a stack of plates at a drunken dinner party.

“Inside!” Mattheo snapped, striding inside as though he owned the place, the air around him vibrating with command.

Daphne and I stumbled after him, trying to tread carefully over broken glass but failing miserably, our boots crunching loud, deliberate notes into the floor. It sounded to me like music, sharp and staccato, and I bit down on my lip to keep the laugh from bubbling up again.

“Already checked!” Lorenzo’s voice rang from the hall. He appeared briefly, wand alight, his grin too wide and too sharp. “Nobody on the ground floor!”

Mattheo barked something in response, short and clipped, already turning to the stairs, but Lorenzo was gone again before I could catch the words. Draco’s pale head glinted in the lamplight as he and Aurelia slipped past, silent shadows as they disappeared toward the basement door. So that left us three again to go up the stairs.

I stared at the staircase as if it were a living thing, the wood banister gleaming faintly under the low light, the pattern of the carpet swirling and folding into shapes I couldn’t quite pin down. It was too much, the lines moving, the steps melting into each other until the whole thing looked like one long, impossible climb.

Mattheo bounded up two steps at a time, I tried to follow but Daphne went first, or at least she tried. Her foot caught on the second step, and instead of falling with any kind of grace, she went forward with a wild laugh, arms flailing, her hair a mess of blond streaks flying everywhere as she collapsed chest-first onto the third stair.

The sound of it, that stupid hollow thunk had me laughing immediately, uncontrollably, before I even realised I was moving.

“Get up!” Mattheo barked, snapping his head back, but Daphne only laughed harder, the sound harsh and high-pitched, her cheek pressed against the carpet. “We don’t have time for this!”

I reached for her arm, half dragging, half lifting, but the stairs blurred in front of me, merging into waves of carpet and wood. I blinked hard, tried to focus, but my balance went, my knees buckled, and in one absurd, inevitable moment I tumbled forward onto her, both of us collapsing into a heap against the banister. Her laugh caught mine, breathless, raw, sharp in my ear, and I couldn’t stop myself, I laughed with her, the sound spilling out until my chest ached, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.

Mattheo’s boots pounded back down three steps, his face a mask of disbelief and fury as he stared at us, his wand arm trembling. “Are you insane?” he shouted, his voice cracking with the force of it. “We are here to kill, and you two—”

“Shut up!” Daphne screamed back, her voice cruel and cutting, the kind of venom only she could conjure even when drunk. Her head snapped up, hair falling across her face, eyes wild and glittering. “You’re not a fucking dog Mattheo, stop barking like one!”

Her words hit the air like another shattering spell, raw and vicious, and I froze for a moment, my laughter dying in my throat as I glanced between them. Mattheo’s face darkened, his jaw tightening, lips pulled back as though he might hex her right there, but then his nostrils flared, his chest heaving, and he snapped around again without a word, storming up the stairs.

“Come on,” Daphne hissed, pushing herself up clumsily, yanking at my sleeve.

I staggered upright with her, the both of us stumbling forward, our arms hooked together out of necessity more than choice, dragging each other upward step by chaotic step. The staircase tilted beneath us like some moving ship, but somehow we made it, clinging to each other, stifling laughter behind our hands even as Mattheo’s furious silhouette loomed above.

Every creak of the wood underfoot sounded louder than it should have, echoing through the hall like mockery, and every time Daphne stumbled into me she giggled, sharp and breathless, the sound bubbling out despite the tension of the moment.

We rushed upward in a mess of tangled limbs and muffled laughter, our boots thudding, our bodies lurching against the walls, Mattheo’s fury leading us and our drunken haze pushing us forward and the three of us spilled into the upper floor of the Finch-Fletchley home, chaos pressing against the quiet, violence humming at the edges of absurd, alcohol-stained laughter.

The landing creaked as we spilled onto it, the walls narrow, the wallpaper faded yellow with thin stripes that made my eyes blur if I stared too long. My head spun, but I steadied myself against the banister, the wood sticky under my palm, and when I blinked again I realised the whole place was lined with photographs.

Not wizarding ones. Just still, frozen images in frames of gold and wood, lined up in careful order like some proud catalogue of a family’s life and it hit me harder than I expected, even through the buzz still numbing my head.

Justin. There he was, the floppy brown hair, the wide smile, eyes crinkled with an earnestness that felt too soft to be real anymore. One picture had him in Hufflepuff robes, standing at the edge of the platform with steam curling around his feet, a trunk by his side, his grin wide as his mother’s arm wrapped tight around his shoulder. Another of him younger, teeth too big for his face, mud streaked on his cheeks, hugging her in the back garden while some muggle dog bounded beside them. And one, I swear my throat closed on it, was a wedding photo, his mother in a white dress, veil tucked back, standing with a tall man whose features looked faintly like Justin’s but stronger, older. A father, maybe. Someone who was gone now, if Aurelia’s words were true.

I staggered closer, my eyes wet in a way that wasn’t just the alcohol, and reached for one of the frames. My fingers pressed against the glass, the cool surface strange against my skin, and my chest felt tight. I didn’t even like Justin. He was annoying, always too loud in lessons, too eager to please professors. But he was a kid like us. He had pictures on the wall. He had memories. Standing here, drunk and swaying, I felt the ground tilt under me, because it was like staring into something I had no business destroying.

But the moment came undone as Mattheo raised his wand. With a single flick, a crack of raw magic, every single photograph along the wall exploded. Glass burst outward in a shimmering wave, frames split, splinters flew. The wedding photo was gone, Justin’s smile was gone, the mother’s arm, the garden, all of it obliterated in an instant. The sound rattled through the narrow corridor, a merciless finality that left silence hanging like a blade.

I winced, covering my ears too late, flinching as a shard nicked my cheek. The sting barely registered compared to the ache in my chest. Mattheo didn’t even look at the wreckage. He just kept moving, every step like he knew exactly where to go. His shoulders were squared, his breathing heavy, and he started kicking doors open without hesitation, each slam of boot against wood echoing sharp down the hall.

I hung back, tugging Daphne with me, but she wriggled out of my grip with a laugh that echoed hollowly. She wanted to try, I watched as she reeled herself toward one of the doors, braced her heel, and kicked with all her drunken strength.

Instead of the wood breaking, it was her balance that went. Her foot slipped, the door stayed stubbornly shut, and she went flying backward with a squeal, crashing onto her side on the floor, hair tangled across her face, her laugh cutting sharp into the silence.

I doubled over laughing, the kind of breathless, painful laugh that came from too much vodka and not enough sense, holding my ribs as I wheezed, “You, didn’t even, it didn’t move!”

Daphne rolled onto her back, clutching her knee, tears of laughter spilling, her voice shrill and high, “I swear it, it was the carpet, it moved, it wasn’t me—”

Mattheo didn’t notice. He was too far ahead, already kicking in another door with brutal precision, his anger pushing him forward without pause. The sound of wood splintering filled the upstairs like gunfire.

I stumbled to Daphne, pulling her up, both of us swaying together, her hair brushing against my cheek as I leaned close, whispering, “He’s going to murder us before we even get to them if you keep falling over—”

She giggled again, her breath warm on my ear, “Maybe we should just let him, end of story, done deal.”

I shook my head, still half-laughing, half-sick, my eyes flicking back to the wall where the photographs had been. Now there was only shattered glass on the floor, frames broken, edges jagged. The images of Justin’s life scattered in fragments, silent and irretrievable, for a split second, as Daphne leaned heavy into my side and Mattheo’s fury cracked through another door, I thought about what it would be like if it were my family’s faces, my father, my mother, my name. All erased by a single spell, a single careless flick of a wrist.

The thought made my stomach twist.

But there was no time. Mattheo’s shout echoed down the hall, sharp and commanding, and Daphne dragged me stumbling forward, both of us still half-laughing, half-terrified, trying to keep up with the chaos pressing in around us.

The hallway felt unreal, like we were trapped inside a stretched-out painting where everything was tilted just enough to make your stomach lurch. Shards of glass sparkled across the carpet like ice, crunching under our boots with every step, and Daphne, instead of stepping carefully, scooped one of the fragments up between her fingers and waved it at me like some precious jewel.

“Look,” she whispered, eyes wide, grin slanting crooked across her face, “I’ve got the most valuable relic in the entire house. Behold—” She thrust it in front of my nose, the sharp edge flashing dangerously close to my cheek, “—the sacred Glass of Finch-Fletchley.”

I burst out laughing, stumbling sideways into the wall, slapping it for balance as my ribs ached. “That’s not even, that’s not even a thing, Daphne,” I wheezed, trying to catch my breath, “you just, you invented that.”

Her grin widened, wild and unrepentant, and before I could move she flicked the shard straight at me. It bounced harmlessly off the sleeve of my robes, clattering to the floor, and she cackled so hard she bent double, hair swinging like a curtain.

“Oh, you’re insane,” I muttered, bending down clumsily to scoop up my own piece of glass, my judgment long drowned. I brandished it dramatically, narrowing my eyes at her. “Prepare yourself, Greengrass, for I am the Keeper of the Sacred Window, sworn enemy of the Glass of Finch-Fletchley.”

Before she could dodge I lobbed it gently toward her. It spun, caught the light, and tapped her knee before skittering harmlessly onto the carpet. Daphne shrieked with laughter like it was the funniest thing in the world, clutching at me, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing along, the sound ragged, raw, but better than anything I’d felt in months.

We threw shards back and forth like children tossing pebbles by a river, neither with aim nor strength, just reckless drunken glee, the hall echoing with our ridiculous laughter. At one point Daphne slipped again, sprawling onto the carpet, but instead of helping her I collapsed next to her, both of us gasping for air, faces pressed into the scratchy fibres as if we couldn’t breathe from how hard we were laughing.

The world was spinning, my throat burned with vodka, my stomach ached from laughter, and for a brief insane heartbeat it didn’t matter that we were here to kill, that everything outside this narrow strip of hallway was blood and war and inevitability.

And then it ended.

A sharp sound, boots on wood, much heavier than ours, purposeful and fast.

Mattheo stormed back down the corridor like a thunderclap, his cloak billowing behind him, wand clutched in his hand like a blade. His face was a storm, eyes blazing, mouth set in a thin line that promised nothing but fury.

Before Daphne or I could even scramble upright properly he reached us, his shadow cutting across the mess of glass and broken frames. His arm swung out and, with a brutal shove, he knocked Daphne straight aside. She hit the floor with a thud, a sharp cry leaving her lips as her back smacked against the skirting board, her laughter gone in an instant, replaced by a stunned silence.

I barely had time to move before Mattheo’s hand fisted tight into the cuff of my uniform. He yanked me upward, slamming my back hard against the wall, the air rushing from my lungs with a painful grunt. The wallpaper scraped my skin, glass dug into the soles of my boots, and my head spun violently, but it was nothing compared to the look in his eyes.

“You think this is a fucking game?” he roared, his voice low but cutting, the kind of fury that made the floor itself seem to tremble. His breath was hot against my face, his grip rough, my wrist burning where he held it.

My mouth opened, but no words came. My drunken haze swirled with panic, fear thrumming sharp in my chest.

He slammed me harder into the wall, every syllable a strike. “Do you even understand where you are, what we’re doing? This is not a school corridor. This is not your little safehouse. This is war, Nott, and you’re acting like a fucking child—”

I flinched, my heart pounding so violently it hurt, but I caught a glimpse of Daphne out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting up slowly, hand pressed to her ribs, her hair tangled across her face, glaring at him with fire even through the wreckage of her fall.

Her lips curled into a cruel sneer, and her voice came sharp, venomous, cutting through the tension. “Get your hands off him, Riddle.”

Mattheo ignored her. His eyes bored into mine, wild and merciless, and for the first time that night I wished desperately that I was sober, that I could answer him with something other than the shallow rise and fall of my chest. My thoughts were a tangled mess, but beneath the fear and the alcohol, something colder stirred.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know why we were laughing, why our steps were unsteady, why Daphne’s curses slurred just slightly at the edges. He thought it was disrespect, carelessness, weakness. He didn’t know we were drunk. He didn’t know that was the only way we could bear it.

The slam of Mattheo’s hand into my chest rattled me so hard my head hit the wall behind me, a shock of pain sparking white across my vision. He gave me one last shove for good measure, the kind that was more insult than necessity, and then let me drop, my knees buckling slightly as I slid down the wall. My ribs screamed where he’d crushed me, my breath shallow and broken, but before I could gather myself he had already turned away.

He stooped, grabbed Daphne by the arm, not gently, not even with the cold efficiency of a soldier, but like she was a rag to be dragged, yanking her upright with such violence her shoulder wrenched back unnaturally. She half-stumbled, half-tripped across the glass-strewn carpet, her boots slipping, her robe catching on broken frames.

At first, impossibly, she was still laughing, her face split wide open with a grin even as shards tore at her legs, slicing red ribbons into her pale skin. The sound of it was broken, a desperate cackle forced out of a throat already hoarse, echoing horribly through the hallway.

Then her laugh cut off.

Not into silence, but into a strangled gasp, her voice failing her. Her lips moved, shaping soundless cries, but no words came. She tried again, her throat seizing, her breath catching in shallow bursts, her eyes fluttering heavy. Blood traced down her arms from where the jagged glass had caught, soaking into the sleeves of the Death Eater robes, marking her dark. But Mattheo pulled her through the wreckage without looking back.

I stumbled forward, every step loose, clumsy, my balance all wrong, but my head roaring with some drunken instinct that said don’t let her go like that. My limbs didn’t listen properly, the vodka made the whole corridor tilt as though the manor itself had been knocked off balance but I lurched after them, my boots slipping on blood and shards, my vision tunneling in and out.

The hall stretched on forever, door after door slammed open by Mattheo’s wand, each bang reverberating through my skull until finally, at the end, we reached one that resisted.

He stopped.

For the first time since he’d grabbed us, Mattheo laughed. Not like Daphne’s laughter, wild and too bright. Not like mine, bubbling reckless from drink. His laugh was dark, cutting, cruel, pulled straight from his father’s throat.

He tried to kick the door down, boot smashing into the wood with a crack that shook the frame, but it held. He stepped back, breathing hard, lips curling. Then, wand raised with venomous ease, he whispered a spell that burst the door wide open.

The sound was deafening, wood splintering, hinges screaming, and the world behind it came spilling into view.

Inside was a cramped bedroom, barely big enough for the bed shoved against the far wall and a small wardrobe in the corner. And pressed into that corner, illuminated in the debris of the blasted door, were two figures.

A woman, her hands trembling as they clutched her son, voice shrill and broken as she screamed, high-pitched and raw. Her face was pale, streaked with tears, her body taut with terror, next to her was Justin.

Justin Finch-Fletchley, our year-mate, the boy who smiled too easily, the Hufflepuff who waved at everyone even if they ignored him. He stood in front of his mother, his wand shaking in his grip, his body rigid but his knees trembling. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow bursts, fear etched into every angle of his face.

He shouted at us, words I couldn’t even properly hear through the vodka fog, through the ringing in my ears, but I caught the fragments, stay back, don’t touch her, I’ll fight. His voice cracked halfway through, his fear louder than his courage.

He didn’t know it was us. The masks still covered our faces now, making us monsters rather than classmates. Mattheo, without pause, without hesitation, without anything human in his voice, turned to us and said, cold and sharp as a blade, “Kill the mother first. The boy won’t last long after that.”

My stomach lurched violently. The room swam, Justin’s pale face doubling in my vision, his mother’s scream rattling against my skull, Daphne’s ragged breathing behind me like a dying animal. I pressed a hand against the wall to steady myself, but it didn’t work, everything tilted, everything spun, and I wanted to vomit, to scream, to vanish.

Daphne made a sound then, a half-laugh, half-whimper and I realised she was still trying to cling to some shred of herself even as blood trickled from her arms. She glanced at me, her eyes glazed with drunken pain, a wild glint in them as though to say can you believe this, can you believe what he’s asking us to do?

But there was no choice. There had never been any choice.

I bent down fast, or what felt fast, though in reality my movements dragged like honey, and tried to get Daphne up off the glass-scattered floor. My hands slipped on her robes, blood slick beneath my palms, but I yanked and pulled anyway until she was standing, swaying against me, her laughter breaking out again in gasping hiccups.

“Come on,” I said, my voice cracked and too loud, half a shout, half a cheer. “We’re fucking Death Eaters, aren’t we? Show him, Daph. Show him you can still stand.”

Her eyes lit up at that, glazed but glowing, the drink blazing through her veins like a torch. She gave this wild grin, all teeth and bloodied lips, and pushed herself upright, staggering only slightly before raising her wand.

“Yeah,” she panted, excited suddenly, her shoulders rolling back like she was about to duel for the Triwizard Cup instead of someone’s actual mother’s life. “Yeah, I’ve got this. Watch me, Theo. Watch me burn him.”

She flung her wand out with the wild abandon of someone drunk enough to forget what restraint even meant. Sparks exploded, ricocheting off the walls, burning black streaks into wallpaper already shredded from the blast.

Justin was ready, he met her spell head-on, his wand slicing the air with precision that cut through her chaos. The sparks rebounded, scattering like fireworks, showering the room with light. I whooped, though my wand was shaking in my hand, my own spell leaving me almost sideways as I stumbled. A jet of purple light shot out, hitting the wardrobe instead of Justin, splintering the door clean off its hinges.

“Nice aim, Nott you fucking idiot.” Daphne shrieked, though she could barely stand upright. She fired another curse, the tip of her wand sputtering like it was drunk too. A streak of fire shot across the ceiling, licking upward until the plaster caught. Flames bloomed, fast, greedy, climbing into the rafters like they’d been waiting for her to call them.

Justin’s face twisted in horror, but not fear, more like fury. He retaliated with a blast of force that knocked Daphne back into me, both of us collapsing in a heap against the bed. The mattress bounced, squealing under our weight, but we were laughing, both of us gasping, tangled together in a drunken mess as spells flew overhead.

Mattheo wasn’t laughing. He stood with purpose, his movements sharp, efficient, lethal. His spells cut through the haze like a knife, driving Justin back step by step. The difference between him and us was night and day, where we floundered, he struck with care, his wand an extension of rage sharpened to a deadly edge.

“Focus!” he bellowed, his voice cracking through the chaos, but Daphne only cackled louder, scrambling upright, hair plastered to her face with sweat and blood.

“I am focused!” she shouted, whipping her wand in a wild arc. Fire roared again, this time engulfing the curtains, flames spiralling so quickly it was as if the whole room exhaled heat at once.

Justin fought fiercely, a shield charm glowing bright in front of him, sweat dripping down his temple as he deflected, redirected, and sent curses hurling back at us with a precision that made my drunken stomach twist. His wand moved fast, too fast, like he’d trained for this, like he’d been waiting for this moment.

“Expulso!” he yelled, and the spell exploded at our feet. Glass and splinters rained upward, the blast throwing me back into the wall so hard my teeth rattled. Daphne shrieked, not in fear but in delight, and fired back blindly, missing him by several feet and igniting the wardrobe fully.

The fire was spreading, ravenous, greedy, swallowing oxygen, the room shimmering with heat. Smoke curled black and heavy, filling my throat, making me gag. Through it, faintly, I heard it, voices outside the room.

Aurelia. Lorenzo. Draco.

Their footsteps thundered across the landing, their shouts muffled by the thickening wall of fire. And then, screams. High-pitched, sharp, raw with agony.

Aurelia.

The sound shot through me like ice, cutting straight through my head, straight through the smoke. I turned, stumbling toward the doorway, but the fire was already spilling out, a living thing guarding the threshold. I could barely see anything beyond it, just flashes of figures moving and Aurelia’s scream piercing again, dragging me halfway sober with the sound alone.

“Fuck,” I muttered, my throat raw, my chest tight. My wand lifted halfway, but the smoke stung my eyes, my brain spun, my hand shook. I couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see anything, but Mattheo’s voice snapped me back like a whip.

“Forget them! Now!” he roared, turning on me with eyes wild, wand aimed straight past my shoulder at Justin.

I spun back.

Justin was still standing, still fighting, his wand steady, his jaw locked, his body shaking with the effort of holding us off. He moved like a duellist twice his age, fury in every line of him, but he was only one fighter against three.

The flash of green cut through the smoke so suddenly, so violently, that for half a second I thought the flames themselves had birthed it, that the fire had bent and turned poisonous, a curse made of heat. But then I saw where Mattheo’s wand was aimed. I saw where the sickly emerald glow landed.

Straight into the chest of Justin’s mother.

She’d been pressed into the corner like a trapped bird, sobbing, hands trembling as if her palms alone could shield her son from us. The light struck, her scream caught in her throat and vanished, and she crumpled without sound, her body folding in on itself before sliding to the floor in a lifeless heap. Her eyes stared glassy and blank at the ceiling, mouth still open like she was trying to beg for mercy that never came.

I watched it all, frozen, unable to breathe, the vodka acid in my gut suddenly tasting like vomit.

Justin saw it too.

That boy, his boyish face that had always been Hufflepuff bright, kind-eyed in corridors changed. In that instant he wasn’t a classmate. He wasn’t a schoolmate we’d glimpsed across the common room tables. He was raw grief carved into flesh, fury given form. His wand hand shook, but his aim didn’t. Tears streaked down his face even as his jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth would snap.

Mattheo laughed. Actually laughed, like it was all some grand joke.

“Now you’ve got nothing left, Mudblood,” he sneered, his voice cutting through the roar of the flames. “No family. No home. Just what you deserve.”

Daphne, staggering at my side, blood trickling down her arm and staining Lorenzo’s shirt she still wore, cackled at the words, her eyes half-lidded with drink but sharp enough to sting.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” she said, voice hoarse, head tilted like she was sharing a secret with the boy we were meant to slaughter. “You’re going to fucking die.”

The cruelty of it rang even through my haze. Justin’s tears caught the light, shimmering like glass shards, his face a mixture of anguish and rage. He raised his wand again, his breath ragged.

“Filthy little Mudblood,” Mattheo taunted, twisting the word like venom. “Thought you belonged in our world? Thought you could ever be one of us? You’re nothing. Your mother was nothing. You’ll die like nothing.”

That broke him. That snapped something inside him so violently that the air itself seemed to shudder with it. He screamed, a sound that was not words, not human, more like the roar of a wounded animal, and his wand slashed upward with ferocious precision.

“EXPULSO!”

The explosion ripped through the room with a deafening boom.

It caught Daphne square in the chest. She didn’t even have time to scream before the force hurled her backward. She flew into the window, the old glass shattering instantly, jagged shards slicing across her body as the frame gave way. Her body vanished from view, tumbling out into the night.

I lurched toward the window but stumbled, smoke and heat blinding me, my drunken legs sluggish and useless. I reached for the sill but the flames coiled upward, devouring the frame, pushing me back with their searing breath. My skin singed, sweat pouring into my eyes, my lungs filling with black. I couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see anything but fire and dark sky beyond.

Mattheo didn’t even flinch. He barely glanced at the shattered window, his lips curling into that cruel, joyless smirk that was more Voldemort than son.

“She was a liability anyway,” he spat. “One less bitch to slow us down.”

But Justin wasn’t done. Through his tears, through the pain ripping across his face, he raised his wand again. His whole body shook, but the spell in his voice was steady, filled with so much rage it shook the walls harder than the flames.

“CRUCIO!”

The red jet missed Mattheo by inches, slamming into the wall and splintering the wood.

Justin was sobbing, his voice cracking between spells, screaming hoarse accusations.

“You murdered her, you murdered my mum… you’ll pay for this, you’ll all pay!”

He hurled another curse, another, his magic wild and uncontrolled, powered by grief so raw it made even my drunk chest seize. He wasn’t duelling anymore. He was destroying. He was tearing the room apart, his fury turning every surface into dust and flame. Mattheo only grinned wider, as if Justin’s pain was a gift.

“Keep crying, Mudblood,” he snarled, flicking his wand with sharp, clean movements. His shield charms caught every curse like it was nothing, sparks exploding off him in a halo of control. “Your tears won’t save you.”

I was caught between them, choking on the smoke, my body heavy and slow with drink, my mind screaming Daphne’s name though my lips couldn’t form it anymore. I wanted to get to the window, to look down, to see if she was breathing, if she’d landed in pieces or whole, but the fire pushed me back, Justin’s spells shook the room, and Mattheo shoved me into the corner like I was nothing more than furniture in his war.

My wand trembled in my grip, but my vision blurred with sweat, drink, and tears I didn’t know I had in me. I tried to raise it, to aim it at Justin, at Mattheo, at anyone, but my hand was useless.

Each curse of Justin’s was rawer than the last, powered by the fresh wound of watching his mother die. His magic cracked the ceiling, scorched the walls, sent shockwaves through the floor. He was dangerous now, not because he was skilled, though he was, but because he had nothing left to lose. Mattheo seemed to relish it, meeting him strike for strike, cruel laughter mixing with Justin’s screams, firelight warping both their faces into monsters.

All I could think was, Daphne is gone. Daphne is outside. Daphne might be dead, and there was no way to reach her.

The fire had eaten the frame of the window entirely now, a jagged hole spitting embers into the night, heat pressing so close my skin blistered just standing near it. I couldn’t step closer without being swallowed alive. I stood there, wand limp, lungs burning, ears ringing with Aurelia’s screams from the landing, Justin’s sobs, Mattheo’s cruel laugh, and my own silent voice repeating one thought over and over.

She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone.

The air cracked as the door slammed open, smoke curling into the hall, and Lorenzo stumbled inside. His face was pale beneath the smear of soot, his eyes wide with a panic that I had rarely seen in him. He looked at me first, my trembling hands, my face streaked with sweat, and then at the window, at the flames spitting out into the night. His mouth opened like he meant to ask where’s Daphne, but before he could form it, a shriek cut through the room.

Justin was on the ground now, his body convulsing, his voice no longer words but raw sound, ragged and broken. Mattheo towered above him, wand angled down, his face lit hideously by the glow of the curse that poured from him in steady, merciless force.

“Crucio.”

The word was carved from his throat like it belonged to him, like he relished the syllables. Justin’s back arched so violently I thought it might snap. His fingers clawed at the floorboards, nails tearing and bleeding as he writhed. His scream rose higher and higher, splintering into sobs that were half-choked by smoke.

Mattheo leaned closer, the curse burning bright and steady, and I realised with a wave of nausea that he wasn’t just torturing him, he was enjoying it. Every cry, every tear seemed to feed him.

“Your mother’s gone,” Mattheo hissed, his tone soft now, cruelly tender, as though speaking to a lover rather than a boy dying in the dirt. “You’ve got nothing left. Nothing. And still you think you belong in our world? Pathetic.”

Justin screamed again, the sound cracking into silence, his throat giving out before his body did. He twitched helplessly, the curse forcing his muscles to spasm in ways that looked inhuman. I couldn’t breathe. The smell of burnt wood, of charred fabric, of blood and sweat was everywhere, sticking to my tongue, clawing at my throat. I wanted to turn away, wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. My gaze was locked on Justin, on the way his tears ran down his face, cutting clean paths through the soot.

Lorenzo had gone utterly still beside me, his mouth slightly open, his hands flexing uselessly at his sides. His usual humour, his taunts, even his reckless energy, all of it had drained away. He looked older in that firelight, his boyish grin burned out of him in an instant.

Mattheo laughed softly, the sound low and cruel, and finally lifted his wand. Justin collapsed instantly, his body twitching once, twice, before going limp. His chest heaved, shallow, broken breaths wheezing from him. He turned his head slightly, his eyes were bloodshot and wet, catching mine.

In that moment, through the haze of drink and smoke, I saw him not as an enemy, not as a Mudblood, not as a target. I saw him as a boy I had walked past in the corridors of Hogwarts, someone who had once laughed with friends at the Hufflepuff table, someone who had hugged his mother in photographs on the walls outside. He looked at me like he knew I wasn’t the one with the curse in my hand. Like he knew I was useless, watching, complicit.

Then Mattheo raised his wand again.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The green light erupted, drowning out the orange of the flames for a moment, searing the air with its unnatural brilliance. It struck Justin, his body jerked once, his eyes rolling back, and then he was still. Perfectly still.

The silence that followed was unbearable. Only the fire made noise now, the crackle and snap of wood breaking under heat, the groan of beams threatening to collapse. Smoke rolled heavy across the ceiling, but all I could hear was my own heart hammering, too loud, too fast, like it wanted out of me.

Justin lay crumpled on the floor beside his mother, their bodies tangled in grotesque symmetry, her hand inches from his like even in death she had reached for him. The flames licked closer, heat warping their skin, their hair. The smell was indescribable, human and wrong, something that made my stomach clench.

Mattheo looked down at them, chest heaving once, and then he straightened, smoothing his robes like it had been nothing but a duel won.

“One less Mudblood to stain the world,” he muttered.

We didn’t move. Not right away. Lorenzo and I stood there as if rooted to the floor, staring at the bodies as the fire reached them. It caught first on her dress, fabric curling, blackening. Justin’s hair smoked, the scent burning my lungs, my eyes. The flames roared louder, brighter, claiming them inch by inch.

We just watched.

 

Watched as Justin Finch-Fletchley and his mother burned to ash.

The smoke was everywhere now, a thick, choking veil that clawed its way down my throat and made my eyes stream, but the heat was worse, it was suffocating, pressing in on every side until my skin prickled like it was blistering already. The walls groaned, beams cracking overhead, sparks cascading down around us in showers that hissed when they met the pools of blood on the floorboards. I stumbled backward, swaying against the corner of the wall, my lungs burning with every shallow gulp of air I could manage.

We were trapped. Lorenzo knew it first, his eyes darting left, then right, panic bleeding across his usually easy grin. He grabbed my arm, fingers digging deep into the sleeve of my robe, his voice hoarse as he rasped, “We can’t stay in here. We’ll suffocate. Fuck, Theo, we’ll die in here.”

I wanted to agree, to scream the same thing, but the words stuck in my throat. Vodka still hummed in my veins, making the floor tilt beneath me, and the fire blurred my vision until I couldn’t tell where the walls ended and the flames began. Everything was too loud, too hot, too close.

Mattheo stood in the middle of the chaos like he was untouched, the firelight licking across his pale face. He didn’t cough, didn’t flinch, didn’t even raise a sleeve to shield himself from the heat. He was terrifying in his stillness, as if the inferno bent around him instead of threatening to swallow him whole.

“There!” he shouted suddenly, his voice cutting clean through the roar of the flames. He pointed to the far end of the room, where the window Daphne had been thrown through still gaped open, glass shards glittering in the firelight like teeth. For now, the fire had curled back from it, a brief gap in the wall of heat, smoke pouring outward in a steady stream. “One of you, go!”

The command was sharp, impossible to ignore. My stomach dropped. The window was two stories high, jagged with glass, the fire creeping closer every second. My legs felt like they were filled with lead, my head spinning from drink and smoke alike. Lorenzo hesitated too, his chest heaving, his hands flexing uselessly at his sides. He looked at me, his wide eyes reflecting the firelight, and for a moment neither of us moved, both frozen like animals in a snare.

“Now!” Mattheo barked, wand slashing through the air to blast back a wall of flame that threatened to close the gap. His control over the fire was violent, and it bought us seconds, but seconds only.

Lorenzo’s jaw clenched, his teeth flashing as he sucked in a ragged breath, and then he moved. He didn’t wait for me, didn’t argue, didn’t give himself the chance to think twice. He sprinted, his body low, his arms thrown up to guard his face. The fire curled toward him, greedy, but he was faster, faster than I thought possible, his silhouette vanishing in a blur as he dove through the jagged mouth of the window.

For half a heartbeat there was silence, then the muffled crash of him hitting the ground below. A cry followed, pained but alive, and I staggered forward a step, relief crashing through me even as the flames surged back to claim the window, roaring louder than before.

The gap was gone and it was just me and Mattheo now.

The fire was a living thing around us, coiling and snapping. My face stung where embers landed on my skin, my chest heaving so fast I thought my ribs might split. I turned to Mattheo, desperate, my voice breaking as I stammered, “We, we can’t, we’re stuck.”

He looked at me, calm, his dark eyes unreadable through the haze. He didn’t panic, didn’t pace, didn’t even blink. He just stood there, sweat glistening along his temple, his wand steady in his hand.

“No,” he said finally, his voice steady, deliberate, as though he were delivering a lesson in a classroom rather than standing in a burning house. “We’re not stuck. We go through it.”

The words knocked the breath out of me.

“Through it?” I repeated, choking on smoke, my throat raw. My laugh came out strangled, wild. “It’s fucking fire, Mattheo! It’ll burn us alive!”

He stepped closer, his hand suddenly gripping my collar, dragging me upright. The calm in his face cracked then, just a little, enough for me to see the edge beneath it.

“You’d rather suffocate in here?” he snarled, eyes flashing. “You’d rather rot in the rubble while the Aurors pick through our bones? Pick, Nott. Burn or choke.”

My mouth opened, closed, no words coming. My legs shook beneath me, my wand useless at my side. I could barely stand, my knees felt like water, the smoke making my head spin until I thought I might collapse. But he was right in that we had no choice.

The flames had swallowed the doorway, the walls, even the ceiling above. The only way out now was through the very thing that wanted us dead.

Mattheo’s grip tightened, his face close enough that I could see the sweat dripping from his jaw, the soot clinging to his skin.

“You’re not dying here,” he said, his tone final, a command, not comfort. His eyes bored into mine, unwavering. “You hear me? You don’t die here.”

I nodded, though the motion was jerky, unconvincing. My throat ached, my lungs screamed, my body felt weak, but I forced the word out anyway, cracked and broken.

“Fine.”

He released me then, turning toward the fire, his wand lifting as if it could tame the inferno long enough to let us through. I staggered after him, my stomach churning, my skin already hot enough that I swore I could feel it peeling.

The air was so thick with smoke that each breath felt like swallowing fire, but somehow I forced my lungs to gulp it down anyway, my chest heaving in a rhythm I could barely maintain as I stumbled after Mattheo, who was moving with that terrifying purpose he always had. My wand felt heavy in my hand, my fingers slick with sweat and soot, and without thinking I muttered Aguamenti, just bursts of water that sprayed into the flames ahead, hissing and steam-laden, the smoke curling around me like it wanted to swallow me whole.

The water didn’t put out the fire, not truly, but it gave me tiny, desperate victories, a small pocket of air that smelled less like ash and death. Mattheo didn’t slow, didn’t glance at me, but I could feel the wave of heat roll off him, and then, just as the sweat burned my eyes, he muttered something I barely recognized, a fire protection charm, or maybe something older, something far older than any spell I’d ever learned properly, and the effect was immediate.

The fire still roared, still lashed at our skin with its snapping tongues, but it felt warmer than burning. Like walking through a furnace that was meant to protect rather than kill. Our robes were scorched, patches of skin raw and reddened where the spell couldn’t reach, and I felt pain like needles along my arms, my hands, my neck, but somehow it didn’t stop us. Somehow it became possible to keep moving.

The corridor was a nightmare of heat, broken glass, and smoke so thick it felt like it had weight. Every step was a gamble, every footfall a brush with molten debris. The glass from the shattered window had begun to warp, melting in the infernal heat until it became a jagged, glimmering river along the floor, and I had to jump, stumble, slide, my wand sparking in my hand as if it, too, was alive and protesting the chaos. Mattheo was ahead, his wand cutting flames like he was sculpting them into something manageable, and I followed, half-crawling at times, muttering bursts of water into the air wherever the heat threatened to push me back.

The stairs loomed ahead, their wooden treads slick with melting glass and embers, curling and cracking with every step we took. I grabbed the rail with one hand, my other clutching my wand, and tried to keep balance as the stairs groaned and snapped under our weight. Mattheo didn’t slow, didn’t even glance down at me, and I had no choice but to follow blindly, my stomach turning from smoke, alcohol, and fear all at once.

We were nearly at the back door when a sound ripped through the house, a choking, gasping, uneven rasp that froze my heart in place.

“Aurelia?” I croaked, but the smoke stole my words.

Mattheo’s head snapped toward the sound, and I could see the ghost of alarm cross his otherwise unreadable face. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t wait for me to catch up. He sprinted, and I followed, stumbling over debris, my robes catching on fallen beams, until we burst into the living room.

The sight that greeted us made my stomach drop violently, my mind scrambling to process.

She was on the floor. Mask off. Her braided white hair was blackened with soot, clinging to her scorched skin. Her body, her arms, her legs, her chest, was covered in burns where the remnants of her death eater clothing had been consumed by the fire. Smoke curled in her hair, her eyes fluttering as she gasped for air, each inhalation trembling, shallow, desperate. Her mouth opened, but no sound came, and I could see the panic, the pain, the life flickering in those pale eyes as they began to close.

I froze for the barest moment, horror stealing all thought, until Mattheo was there, swooping to her side with a speed that made my own limbs feel useless. He lifted her effortlessly, or at least it seemed effortless, her burned frame cradled against his chest as if she weighed nothing, and I staggered to keep pace, trying to match him through the maelstrom of smoke and heat.

Her skin burned against his robes, and I saw the faintest tremor in his otherwise controlled expression, a flicker of raw alarm that I hadn’t expected. I opened my mouth, tried to speak, but my voice was gone, choked out by the smoke and fear. Instead, I reached with my free hand, trying to shield her from the worst of the falling embers as Mattheo carried her toward the back door, where the gap in the flames from Daphne’s fall offered the only chance of escape.

The fire lashed at us, more insistent now, as though it had realized we were fleeing. Sparks rained down in sheets, blackened shards of glass shattered further, and the heat pressed against my back like an invisible weight. I could feel the alcohol in my system fighting with my adrenaline, my head swimming, my legs trembling under the stress, and yet there was only one thing I could do, keep moving, keep pace, don’t let them fall behind.

Aurelia’s breathing was ragged, uneven, and every time she gasped, I flinched. Her eyes flickered open briefly and I thought I saw a faint recognition of us, a tiny spark of trust, and then they slid shut again, exhausted, broken by the fire’s cruel hunger.

Mattheo’s hands were steady, though I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his shoulders shook slightly as he carried her. He muttered something low, a charm or a spell I couldn’t hear over the roar of fire, and I followed immediately, casting bursts of water ahead and around us, hissing and twisting in the heat, trying to carve a path, trying to keep our own skin from catching on flame.

Finally, finally, we reached the back door. The flames roared around the frame, licking at the edges, snapping at the wood, but the gap Mattheo carved was just wide enough. He paused at the threshold, crouched slightly, and I caught my breath, my eyes scanning for any remaining threats in the smoke, glass, and fire. Then, with a force that seemed almost cruelly simple, he stepped through, carrying Aurelia with ease. I followed immediately, stumbling across the threshold into the night air, gasping, choking, the cool London evening like a balm against the fire’s wrath.

Mattheo knelt in the grass, holding Aurelia against his chest, her body trembling with each shallow gasp, the soot and burns still stark against her pale, braided hair. I wanted to move closer, to help, to intervene, but the energy around him was sharp, electric, impossible to cross, and so I stayed frozen, my hands twitching, my wand hanging loosely, watching as he muttered spells I barely recognized, words I couldn’t parse, some in tongues that made my skin crawl with their unfamiliar resonance.

His fingers moved reverently over her arms, tracing lines of pain I couldn’t see but could imagine, lifting her slightly here, adjusting her position there, and I felt a wave of something bitter and furious inside me, anger that he, of all people, was the one cradling her, keeping her safe, while moments before he had been so cruel, so utterly merciless.

I wanted to argue, to tell him he had no right, that she belonged somewhere safe, somewhere warm, somewhere free of him, but the fire had made all of us raw and ragged, and he was Mattheo Riddle. The sharp lines of his face, set jaw, and the almost imperceptible intensity in his eyes told me that any protest would be useless, that any word might be twisted and thrown back in a way that could make things worse for all of us.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he gently laid her down on the scorched grass, her body trembling in shallow convulsions as she sputtered, trying to draw air, her blackened hair sticking to her face and shoulders. I saw her eyes flicker open, just a thin crease of colour peeking through, and my stomach twisted at the fragility of it all. Her small body jerked slightly as she tried to inhale, her lips moving in silent panic, and I could almost feel the residual heat of the fire licking at her skin, even through the damp grass.

Mattheo’s gaze never left her, sharp and unwavering, and for a moment I thought I saw something that wasn’t cruelty, something that might have been concern, a faint flicker of that impossible, contradictory care he sometimes allowed himself, but it vanished the instant she blinked at him, fragile and wet-eyed, and the edges of his lips tightened into that cruel, precise line that had become second nature to him.

Then, as if suddenly remembering that Aurelia was a liability, a tool, or merely someone to be moved out of the way, he turned his eyes on me, and I flinched at the command in his voice, cold and controlled, sharp enough to cut through the smoke and my dazed state.

“Figure it out Nott.”

The words didn’t leave room for argument. There was no softness there, no hint that he was even considering the fact that she had just been through a furnace, that her body was broken and barely breathing. It was a command, an order from someone who expected obedience.

I didn’t hesitate. My legs moved before my brain could catch up, carrying me over to her as if by some instinctual force. Her body was so small, so impossibly fragile, that I half-expected her to crumble in my arms. Her head rested against my shoulder, her braids burned and frayed, her clothes blackened and tattered, and the smell of smoke clung to her hair like a second skin. My own stomach churned at the realization of how close she had been to death, how easily the flames could have claimed her.

I whispered to her softly, words almost meaningless in their comfort but spoken anyway, a litany of small things, “It’s okay, you’re okay, I’ve got you, it’s alright…”

My lips brushed against the top of her head, tucking stray blackened strands behind her ears as her small, burning fingers curled slightly against my chest. She shivered violently and whimpered, and I held her tighter, careful not to press too hard against her burns, careful not to jostle her too much, and yet desperate to give her some sense of grounding in the chaos that still surrounded us.

Mattheo stood for a moment longer, watching us, his posture straight, his wand still loosely gripped in his hand. I could see the faintest tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes darted to the fire still roaring behind us, calculating something, escape, perhaps, or the containment of the threat, or simply the next move he always seemed three steps ahead in planning. There was something scary in the way he observed, the contrast between how carefully he handled her just now and the ruthlessness he had displayed mere moments ago as the fire consumed the house, the lives inside, and the glass and smoke and debris became a tangible threat to all of us.

I glanced up at him, searching for some signal, some recognition that he understood the risk she had endured, some acknowledgment that maybe he cared, and for the briefest fraction of a second, his lips twitched almost imperceptibly. His eyes softened, not entirely, not in any way that would betray weakness, but enough that I felt a flicker of hope, a dangerous hope I quickly shoved down. He was Mattheo Riddle, and he did not linger in softness, he did not allow sentimentality to govern his choices for long.

Then, as Aurelia’s eyes fully opened, still catching the dim moonlight, still flickering with confusion and terror, he shifted. The trace of care vanished like smoke in wind, replaced by the sharp, cruel efficiency that defined him. He looked at her for a moment longer, his gaze assessing and I felt my stomach twist again, just moments ago holding her like she was something precious, now observing her as though weighing her usefulness.

Mattheo walked off, blending into the shadows of the night with that same terrifying, precise purpose, leaving us to navigate the aftermath, leaving me to cradle Aurelia as she coughed and shivered and trembled against me. I let out a shuddering breath, feeling the weight of Aurelia in my arms, her body still trembling against me, the burnt smell of her hair and clothing thick in my nostrils. Then my gaze flicked sideways and my chest loosened just enough that I could laugh, the sound unsteady and raw, because of course, impossibly, gloriously, Daphne was there.

She was crouched over Draco, hands hovering and moving as she helped him upright, and the sight of pale Draco, scorched and burned along the edges of his uniform, made my shoulders shake with laughter I couldn’t hold back.

Draco glared at me, his face pale even beneath the soot and his lips twisted in anger that was more performative than real, he was still alive, so whatever fire had tried to consume him had failed, and his eyes narrowed, cutting into me with a dangerous precision. I laughed anyway, too relieved and too foolish to care, letting the absurdity of it all, the chaos of the fire, the near-death, the utter madness, wash over me.

Daphne lifted her head, eyes sparkling despite the soot streaked across her cheeks and the bloodied rips in her sleeves, and she looked at both Mattheo and me, tilting her head with that infuriating mix of exhaustion and mischief.

“Why didn’t you two just Apparate out?” she asked, her voice half-laughing, half-exasperated, as if we were idiots for not having thought of it, as if the last hour of carnage and fire had been completely normal.

I glanced at Mattheo, who stood a few paces away, his posture still rigid, jaw set, gaze unwavering, and the tension between us was palpable, a silent storm of irritation and shame, both of us recognizing the other’s inability, or unwillingness, to acknowledge the question aloud. We just stared at each other, wordless, burning with equal parts frustration and embarrassment.

I felt my cheeks heat up, an idiot in every sense of the word. Here we were, supposed to be cold, controlled, professional, carrying out a mission that had nearly turned into disaster, and I had done nothing except fumble with spells, mutter assurances to Aurelia, and now stand in front of Daphne like an utter fool. I opened my mouth to answer, but words failed me, caught somewhere between indignation and relief, and all that came out was a half-choked, “I… I don’t know.”

Daphne rolled her eyes, a faint smirk tugging at the corners of her bloodied lips. “Figures,” she said lightly, the infuriatingly casual shrug of her shoulders betraying none of the chaos we’d just survived.

My arms tightened around Aurelia as I looked at her, stunned, taking in the grin, the burnt edges of her sleeves, the disheveled hair stuck to her face in a way that made her look almost feral, yet impossibly alive.

“And how the fuck did you survive falling out of a second floor window?”

Daphne just shrugged again, casual, infuriatingly casual, and let out a laugh that was high, gleeful, and laced with the drunken chaos that had been building since earlier. “Felt kinda nice, actually,” she said, and I swear my stomach dropped, a mixture of awe, relief, and the kind of helpless exasperation only Daphne could inspire. “You know, the wind, the falling… like flying a little. Didn’t even hurt much.”

I stared at her for a long moment, trying to process the combination of insanity and survival instinct that had brought her through it all, and I could feel a laugh building, unsteady and relieved, spilling out despite the blackened street, the embers still floating faintly in the air, the acrid taste of smoke lingering in our mouths.

“You’re… you’re insane,” I muttered finally, shaking my head as a laugh burst out uncontrollably, the sound raw and ragged, almost echoing off the surrounding buildings.

Daphne’s grin widened, matching my laughter, and for the first time since the fire, I felt a sliver of genuine release from the weight of the mission, the chaos of Mattheo’s temper. She leaned against me lightly, precariously, and I felt the warmth of human connection in the midst of all the destruction, a grounding force that made my hands still tremble but my mind finally ease slightly.

I tightened my arms around Aurelia, inhaling the faintly burnt scent of her hair, the lingering warmth of her trembling body, and glanced at Daphne, who had straightened slightly, wiping soot streaks from her cheek with a careless sweep of her sleeve.

“I can’t believe you just got blasted out of a fucking window and laughed about it.”

She snorted, brushing herself off, her grin wide and unrepentant. “Well, someone had to keep things interesting,” she said lightly, her tone almost teasing, even in the aftermath, and I felt a strange sort of warmth, part amusement, part exasperation, part relief, spread through me. “Besides, you should try it sometime.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, feigning scorn, but the laugh escaped anyway. “I think I’ll pass,” I muttered, though my body betrayed me with a shiver and a chuckle that rolled out before I could stop it.

 

She leaned back slightly, smirking, clearly pleased with the chaos she had inspired, and I felt the weight of everything, burns, smoke, fire, the mission gone wrong, the lives lost, the adrenaline still thrumming in my veins, start to settle into something almost like normalcy, a dangerous, fleeting sense of control. I let out a long breath, finally, my arms still wrapped around Aurelia, my gaze flicking between her and Daphne, between survival and absurdity, and for the first time since we had stepped into that house, I allowed a tiny, fragile laugh of relief to bubble out, shaky but genuine.

✦

The safehouse felt colder when we returned, as if the fire clung to our clothes and skin but refused to warm the walls. The dim lamps flickered, casting long shadows over the warped wooden floorboards, and the air smelled faintly of damp stone, smoke, and the faintest metallic tang of blood. The adrenaline that had carried us through the burning house finally wore off, replaced by the ache of exhaustion, the burn of half-healed cuts, and the strange silence that always followed chaos.

Daphne peeled herself away from the group almost immediately, her expression unreadable, shoulders stiff as she disappeared down the corridor without a word. Her boots scuffed softly against the floor until the sound faded, followed by the sharp metallic click of a lock turning. The room swallowed her whole, leaving the rest of us blinking in her absence.

Mattheo didn’t linger, his dark eyes skimmed across us, expression flat and impassive, as if nothing in the last hour had shaken him, and without a word he shrugged his coat back on, the faintest curl of smoke still rising from the singed edges of his sleeves.

“Don’t wait up,” he muttered, voice low and deliberate, before slipping out into the night. We all knew where he was headed, though none of us wanted to say it aloud, the father, the task, the endless shadow that loomed over him like chains.

That left Draco, hovering stiffly by the fire where Aurelia lay curled on the couch, her skin pale beneath the soot, her breaths shallow but steady. He held his wand with concentration, muttering incantations under his breath, and pale blue light spread across her blistered arms and face, seeping into the burns and pulling tight the blackened edges of her skin. His hand didn’t tremble, but his jaw was set, the usual sharp cruelty in his features softened by the faintest trace of steadiness, almost, though none of us would dare say it aloud, but concern.

Lorenzo leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed, lips tugging into a grin that was far too amused given the circumstances. I slumped into one of the old chairs, letting out a long groan as the springs creaked beneath me.

“Look at him,” Lorenzo murmured, nodding toward Draco. “Our mighty, untouchable Malfoy, savior of the wounded. Who knew he had such a gentle touch?”

I snorted, unable to help myself, pressing the heel of my hand against my forehead as I tried not to laugh too loudly. “Gentle? You’ve seen him, right?”

Draco shot us both a glare sharp enough to cut stone, but his wand never faltered, the pale blue glow still working steadily against Aurelia’s charred skin. “Do either of you want her to die?” he snapped, his voice hoarse, edged with smoke from the fire.

“That’s not what we said,” Lorenzo replied smoothly, lips curving into an even wider grin. “We’re just impressed. I didn’t know you could heal anyone without charging them a consultation fee and giving them a lecture first.”

I doubled over, laughter spilling out properly now, raw and uncontrollable, my stomach aching from it.

“Fucking hell,” I gasped, “he looks like he’s about to write her a bill. Two galleons for every burn mended and an I fucking hate you surcharge.”

Lorenzo laughed along with me, leaning heavier against the frame, his hair falling into his eyes, his grin devilish. “Don’t forget the surcharge for breathing in his presence.”

Draco’s lips twitched, not a smile, but the faintest tremor of annoyance mixed with something dangerously close to amusement, but he quickly suppressed it, snapping his gaze back to Aurelia. I leaned back in my chair, wiping the corner of my eye with my sleeve. The laughter felt good, like it was burning away the last of the smoke still lodged in my lungs.

Draco finished another spell, the glow fading slowly from his wand, and Aurelia let out a faint groan, her eyelids fluttering, her skin was still raw, reddened, the pain etched across her features, he adjusted the blanket around her with surprising care, his hands efficient but gentler than I’d expected.

Lorenzo caught my eye, eyebrows raised knowingly, and I bit back another laugh, the corners of my mouth twitching uncontrollably.

“Careful, Malfoy,” I teased lightly, voice deliberately loud, “if you keep that up, people might start thinking you’ve got a heart.”

Draco shot me a look that could have frozen fire, his mouth opening as if to unleash one of his usual vicious retorts, but instead he just exhaled sharply, almost a sigh, and turned back to Aurelia without another word.

Lorenzo smirked, nudging me with his elbow. “That’s as close to an admission as we’ll ever get.”

 

I grinned, leaning back in the chair with a satisfied sigh, letting the warmth of the banter carry me through the silence that followed. Lorenzo was the first to peel himself away, muttering something about reeking of soot and death before heading toward the shower. His footsteps echoed faintly down the corridor, the sound of running water starting soon after, dull and steady like rainfall, masking the faint cracks of the building’s bones as it settled.

Draco sat stiffly at the table, shoulders bback, quill scratching across parchment in sharp strokes. I didn’t need to ask who the letter was for, I’d seen the way his hand softened slightly on the quill, the way his brow furrowed not with arrogance but care. His mother. Always his mother.

Aurelia shifted from the couch slowly, as though every movement still pulled against skin raw from the fire. Her braids were singed at the ends, streaks of pale hair tangled and heavy with soot, and her clothes hung from her in ruined tatters. She pressed a hand against the wall as she steadied herself, jaw clenched tight.

She slipped toward the hall with a murmur of something about clothes, her steps uneven but determined. I listened as she padded down the corridor, then stopped outside the room she shared with Daphne. A sharp knock rattled the door. Silence answered first, then the harsh scrape of a lock shifting as Daphne’s voice cut through, brittle and sharp.

“Get the fuck away. Leave me alone!”

Aurelia froze, her hand still against the wood, her face flickering with hurt and the echo of loneliness. For a moment she lingered, as if maybe Daphne’s voice might soften, might offer something more, but the silence after was absolute, and I could see the fight drain from her shoulders.

I rose from the chair, moving before I thought better of it, the words slipping out of me in a voice rougher than I intended. “Aurelia. Don’t bother with her. Just take some of mine.”

She turned, her eyes catching mine, and for the briefest moment her expression cracked into something softer, vulnerable. She nodded once, almost uncertainly, before retreating into my room.

When she came back, the sight nearly undid me. One of my shirts hung loose from her shoulders, the sleeves too long, the collar dipping slightly over one shoulder. The pale fabric looked fragile against her skin, there was something unbearably human in the image, something tender in the aftermath of everything we’d just walked through. I felt warmth bloom in my chest, startling in its gentleness, pulling me out of the haze of smoke and cruelty. For once, she didn’t look like a soldier or a weapon, but a girl who had been pulled through hell and was still standing.

“Looks better on you,” I said, the words coming out softer than I’d meant, almost more thought than speech.

She blinked at me, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at her lips, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry, and then the thought slipped out before I could question it. “Do you want to go for a walk? Just…get out of here for a bit?”

“Yeah. I think I need air.” She nodded softly.

We slipped outside quietly, past the creaking door and into the night. The damp air of the countryside wrapped around us, cool against the heat still trapped in my skin. Crickets sang faintly from the hedges, and in the distance, the glow of a muggle town shone like scattered embers across the horizon. We walked in silence at first, our footsteps crunching softly over gravel, the world unnervingly peaceful after the roar of fire and screams. The town grew nearer with every step, rows of houses with yellow-lit windows rising out of the darkness, curtains drawn tight, the faint hum of muggle life pressing gently against the night.

Aurelia walked close beside me, her shoulders brushing mine every so often, her breaths shallow but steadier than before. She didn’t speak, and neither did I, not at first. When we reached the edge of the town, the streetlights flickering softly overhead, she finally broke the silence, her voice hushed, almost uncertain.

“It feels…strange to be here right now. Like we’re not supposed to.”

I glanced at her, taking in the way the lamplight caught the soot still clinging to her skin, the faint tremor in her hands as she tugged the too-long sleeve down over her wrist.

“Maybe we’re not,” I admitted. “But maybe that’s why it feels better.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line, but I saw the way her shoulders eased, just a fraction, as though the air here was lighter. The gravel path tapered into softer ground beneath our feet, the crunch fading to the muted hush of grass and soil as Aurelia and I walked further than we’d ever dared before, the edges of the little muggle town giving way to open stretches of land, scattered with trees that bent in the night wind.

The silence between us was not awkward but easy, the kind that hummed with an understanding neither of us needed to name, the simple comfort of having someone there beside you after too much noise and too much fire. We slowed when the path curved, our eyes catching on a shape rising out of the darkness ahead, and for a moment I thought it was just another cluster of muggle homes, maybe a school, something ordinary. But as we drew closer, the building revealed itself, taller and sharper than anything else we had passed.

A tower reached into the night, its pointed peak cutting the sky, while stone walls stretched wide and high, lined with windows so tall and narrow they looked like glass arrows frozen mid-flight. Warm light spilled faintly from the cracks in the doors, glowing against the stone, and there was a hush around it that felt heavier than just silence.

Aurelia stopped beside me, her pale hair catching in the lamplight, her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head to take it in.

“What is this?” she asked softly, her voice carrying the faintest note of awe.

I stepped closer to a wooden board stuck into the ground, squinting through the shadows until the words painted there resolved.

“St. Augustine’s Church,” I read aloud, the syllables strange in my mouth. The letters meant nothing to me beyond their arrangement, but the word church echoed oddly, as though it carried weight even in my ignorance.

“Church,” Aurelia repeated, tasting the word herself. “Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Some muggle thing, I guess.” I paused, glancing up again at the spire rising like a wand piercing the sky. “But it’s… something.”

We stood there for a long while, shoulder to shoulder, just staring at it. The stone seemed to hum in the night air, the sharp lines softened by ivy clinging to the walls, the glass in the windows glinting faintly when the moonlight caught at the right angle. It felt alive in a way buildings weren’t supposed to, as though the air around it held a kind of charge, not magical but something else entirely.

Aurelia let out a slow breath, her voice low. “It’s beautiful. I didn’t even know muggles could build things like this.”

“Neither did I,” I admitted, my chest tightening with something I didn’t quite recognise. Curiosity, maybe, or hunger. The thought pressed against my tongue before I could stop it. “We should go back here. Look inside sometime. If the outside looks like this… imagine what’s in there.”

Her lips curved faintly, the closest she’d come to a real smile since before the fire. “Yeah. We should.”

Neither of us moved for a while. It was as if leaving it behind, even just for the night, might break whatever strange spell the sight had cast over us. But eventually Aurelia tugged lightly at my sleeve, nodding toward the soft shimmer of water just beyond the church’s grounds. A small lake stretched out, the surface silvered with moonlight, rippling gently as the breeze whispered across it.

We wandered over, wordless, and lowered ourselves onto the grass at the edge. The earth was damp beneath my palms, cool and grounding, and the air here smelled cleaner, washed through by water. The reflection of the church towered long and distorted in the lake’s surface, bending and swaying with the ripples until it looked like something out of a dream, flickering and fragile but impossibly there.

Aurelia hugged her knees to her chest, the sleeves of my shirt slipping down her arms, and for a while neither of us spoke. I leaned back on my elbows, eyes tracing the silver path the moon cast across the water, my heartbeat slowing, my thoughts softening for the first time in what felt like years.

The grass was damp beneath my palms, the scent of water and earth heavy in the air, when my fingers brushed the hard edge of something in my pocket. For a long moment I only held it there, debating with myself, but the quiet pressed closer, the silver light from the lake washing Aurelia’s face in pale fire, and it felt suddenly right to bring it out. I shifted, drawing my knees up, and slipped the ring into the hollow of my hand before holding it out between us, the metal catching the moonlight like it was waiting to be seen.

Aurelia tilted her head, strands of her white hair falling loose across her cheek as she leaned in, her eyes narrowing curiously.

“What’s that?” she asked, her voice carrying a kind of soft intrigue.

I rubbed my thumb along the silver surface before answering, feeling the engraved A press into my skin. “I found it at the manor,” I admitted. “In Abraxas Malfoy’s old room. There was a box, full of… things. Objects, letters, names. Your name was there. Avery.” I glanced sideways at her, watching the way her expression shifted, how the faintest line of tension rippled across her brow before smoothing again. “I think it must’ve belonged to one of your ancestors. It has an A carved into it, see?”

She took it gently when I held it out, her fingers brushing mine as she turned it over in the moonlight. The silver gleamed softly, the lines of the engraving sharp even after all these years, and for a moment she just stared at it in silence, her lips parted as though she wasn’t quite sure how to breathe. I shrugged, a half-smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as I leaned back on my elbows again, trying to keep my tone light even as my chest tightened.

“Figured you should have it. Didn’t seem right for it to sit in a drawer gathering dust.”

She glanced up sharply at that, and for the first time in weeks, maybe months, she smiled without the edges of pain pulling at it. “Theo,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

I smirked. “I get told that a lot.”

For a moment she hesitated, then held the ring out to me, her pale fingers extended in a kind of mock formality. “Well? Aren’t you going to do the honours?”

I raised an eyebrow, though laughter was already rising in my throat. “The honours?”

“Come on,” she teased, her grin widening. “You can’t just hand a girl a ring in the moonlight by a lake and not make it dramatic. Put it on me, Nott.”

I groaned theatrically but reached out anyway, taking her hand carefully in mine. Her skin was cool, delicate beneath my calloused fingers, and for a strange, fleeting second it almost felt serious, as though the world had slowed to watch. I slid the ring onto her finger, the silver fitting snugly, and the instant it settled the faintest shimmer of light caught on the band, glowing softly in the moon’s reflection.

We both stared at it, startled into silence, before Aurelia let out a breathless laugh, clutching her hand close to her chest. “Merlin, Theo, look, it actually glows. What did you give me, some cursed relic?”

“Probably,” I said dryly, though my lips curved into a grin. “Fitting, isn’t it?”

She shoved my shoulder lightly with her free hand, her laugh spilling out brighter this time. “Unbelievable. Aurelia Avery, cursed bride of Theodore Nott.”

“Has a nice ring to it,” I suggested, and she groaned, burying her face in her knees as her shoulders shook with laughter.

I leaned back, watching the way the silver band caught the moonlight as she waved her hand at me mockingly, pretending to show off, and despite myself, warmth spread through my chest, slow and steady.

The night deepened around us, the stillness of the lake broken only by the occasional ripple across its surface, the faint splash of something unseen moving beneath. Aurelia’s laughter had softened into something quieter, her voice low and steady as she spun off fragments of thought, half-finished stories, the kind of words you say only when you feel safe enough to let silence fill the gaps. At some point she shifted closer, stretching out on the grass and finally lowering her head onto my lap with a trust that startled me, her pale hair spilling in tangled braids across my legs.

I froze for a heartbeat, unsure of what to do with the sudden weight of her, but then my hands found their way into her hair, fingers moving almost without thought. The braids had loosened over the day, soot and ash still clinging faintly to them, and with a strange, delicate patience, I began undoing them, strand by strand. Aurelia’s breathing slowed as I worked, her eyes fluttering shut, the sharpness in her features softening into something close to peace. Each braid I pulled free left her hair curling softly, waves falling around her face in silvered tangles that caught the moonlight, and I found myself watching the way it shimmered, the way it turned her into something both ethereal and achingly human.

She drifted into sleep as I worked, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that pulled at something deep in me, and for a while I let the silence stretch, content to sit there with her weight against me, the damp grass pressing cool against my palms, the night alive around us in a way it never was inside the safehouse. I wanted to keep her like this, unbothered, untouched, the ring on her finger still glowing faintly in the dark, as though it too was standing guard.

But then my gaze dropped to my wrist. The watch gleamed, its face frozen stubbornly at the same time it had shown since I first slipped it on, ten o’clock. Always ten o’clock.

Frustration prickled at me. With my free hand I tugged it closer, turning it in the dim light, trying to coax the mechanism to move. I twisted the dial, pressed at the back, shook it lightly, anything to disturb the stillness inside. Nothing. The second hand remained motionless, the clock face as stubborn and silent as stone.

A muttered curse slipped through my teeth as I dug at the clasp, intent on prising it open, but the moment my nails scraped the metal, the surface beneath my skin warmed, then flared.

I hissed as the watch grew hot, searing against my wrist. The silver seemed to pulse, glowing faintly at first, then violently, light spilling out between my fingers like liquid fire. Pain lanced up my arm as if the thing was embedding itself into my skin, and I clawed at it with my other hand, desperate to pull it off, but the light only grew, blinding and sharp, burning until I swore my flesh might split open.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

The glow drained from the metal, but the air beside me shimmered, folding in on itself as though the night had torn open. My breath snagged in my throat as a figure bled out of the darkness, not solid but not entirely insubstantial either, ghostlike yet heavy enough that the grass seemed to bend beneath the echo of his boots.

He wasn’t much older than me, no lines etched into his face, no grey streaks in his dark hair. His shoulders were straight, his expression calm but sharp, the kind of sharp that cut even without effort. His eyes, though, stopped me cold. They were familiar. My own eyes looking back at me from another time.

I knew him. Instantly, instinctively, as though the recognition was carved into my bones.

Photographs flashed in my memory, dusty frames left ignored in the corners of my family home, portraits my father never spoke of, faces blurred with time but always there if I dared to look. The resemblance was undeniable.

My grandfather.

My chest tightened, breath shallow, my skin still stinging where the watch had burned me, and though every part of me screamed that this was impossible, that the dead were gone and gone forever, I couldn’t drag my eyes away.

I could feel my pulse as it pounded loud in my ears, drowning out the soft ripple of the lake and Aurelia’s even breaths as she slept across my lap, utterly oblivious to the figure that had forced its way out of the darkness, conjured by the impossible fire in my wrist.

He stood there in silence at first, the faint shimmer of him flickering at the edges as if he wasn’t quite part of this world, but the longer I stared, the more solid he became, until I could see him clearly, sharply, as if he had always belonged to this place. His hair was dark, combed neatly away from his pale face, his posture unnervingly perfect like a statue come alive. But it was his eyes that hollowed me out, the same cold green as mine, the same shape, the same unrelenting sharpness.

My lips parted, words fumbling clumsily out of me, my voice more brittle than I wanted it to be.

“Who are you?”

I already knew. But I needed to hear it. I needed it confirmed, dragged from his mouth so I couldn’t deny it later, so I couldn’t pretend this was just some hallucination spun out of my own drunken nerves. He tilted his head, his mouth curling into something that might have been a smile if it wasn’t so venomous. His eyes skimmed over me, over Aurelia, over the ring that still glowed faintly on her finger, then settled on my face with a disdain so sharp it made my stomach twist.

“You mean to tell me,” he said, his voice smooth, controlled, every syllable soaked in contempt, “that my blood, my legacy, bled itself down to you?”

The words hit like a slap.

I swallowed hard, my hand frozen in Aurelia’s hair, my wrist still throbbing where the watch had burned me. “I’m—” My throat tightened. “I’m your grandson.”

For a moment, silence. The wind stirred the trees across the lake, leaves whispering like voices too far away to understand and then his laugh cut through it.

“My grandson.” He said it like it was poison on his tongue. “Pathetic. Fragile. Soft in the face. I can see it written all over you, you’re weak. Nothing like me. Nothing like what you should have been.”

The ground seemed to tilt under me. My heart gave a heavy, painful lurch, the words digging deep, carving into old wounds I didn’t even know I had.

“I—” My voice broke, and I forced it steady. “I’m not weak.”

His smile widened, sharp and humourless. “Not weak? Look at you. Sitting here like some smitten schoolboy, wasting time with your stained little band of friends. Do you think strength is found in loyalty? In companionship? No. Strength is cruelty. Strength is knowing when to cut the flesh from bone and never look back. You’re too afraid of your own shadow to do what needs to be done.”

I clenched my jaw, heat rising in my chest, the words burrowing in like hooks. “That’s not true.”

“Not true?” His tone was mocking now, thick with scorn. He stepped closer, and though his body flickered faintly, each movement felt heavy, real, pressing down on me. “Tell me, boy, how many times have you hesitated? How many times have you stood shaking, wand in hand, waiting for someone else to strike first? You wear my name, but you are no heir of mine. You are soft. A disgrace.”

The breath caught in my throat, my insides twisting. I wanted to argue, to spit back, to defend myself, but his words struck deep because they were the very fears I carried. Weak. Hesitant. Always second to someone stronger, louder, crueler. Always the one left standing on the outside, desperate for belonging.

My fingers tightened around Aurelia’s curls, and guilt seared through me when she stirred faintly, murmuring in her sleep. I let go instantly, staring down at her face, the soot still smudged on her skin, the faint glow of the ring lighting her hand. She looked peaceful, untouched by the venom dripping from the ghost that bore my name.

But my grandfather wasn’t finished. His eyes gleamed, cold and sharp.

“You remind me of my friends,” he said slowly, his voice slipping into something distant, almost thoughtful, though the cruelty never left his tone. “We were your age, young, untested, but we weren’t cowards. We carved our names into the world with blood and fire. We followed power, and in return we became power. Not this—” his lip curled as he gestured at me, and Aurelia, “this farce of camaraderie. Friendship does not make you strong. Friendship makes you dependent. Weak.”

My chest tightened. His words slid into me like knives, because I saw the parallels he wanted me to see. Our group, wandering half-broken, tied together by bonds we barely understood. And his friends, the last names I had seen in the letters, hardened into monsters, sharp enough to cut the world apart.

I forced myself to speak, though my voice wavered. “We’re not like you.”

His eyes narrowed, cruel amusement sparking there. “Oh, you are exactly like us. Too blind to see it yet, but you will. Power calls to those who carry it in their blood. You will learn to answer, whether you want to or not.”

I shook my head, but doubt wormed through me, cold and unrelenting. I thought of Mattheo, of the way he had thrown curses without hesitation, of the cruelty that burned in him like a second skin. I thought of Daphne, laughing as flames swallowed the house. I thought of myself, hesitant, stumbling, but following anyway.

“I’ll never be you,” I said hoarsely.

He stepped closer again, his face inches from mine now, and though his body shimmered faintly, I could feel the weight of his presence pressing down on me, suffocating. His breath was cold against my skin.

“You are already me,” he whispered. “Just weaker, and weakness in my bloodline does not last long.”

The words crushed me, hollowed me out until all I could feel was the pounding of my heart, the sick twist of my stomach, the rage and shame bleeding together until I couldn’t tell one from the other and then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.

The air folded back in on itself, the shimmer fading into nothing. The grass bent upright again, the night swallowed the last echo of his voice, and I was left sitting there with Aurelia asleep across my lap, my wrist aching, my mind a storm of venom that wasn’t entirely mine.

My breaths came shallow, uneven, my hands trembling as I stared down at the watch, at the ring, at my reflection in the water’s dark surface. His words echoed over and over, sharper each time.

Weak. Pathetic. Dependent.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw at my skin until his voice stopped echoing inside me. But all I could do was sit there, silent, staring into the lake until my own reflection warped into something monstrous and the sickest part of all was that I wasn’t sure he was wrong.

The world didn’t feel real anymore. The lake, the church spire in the distance, the cool grass beneath me, it all blurred at the edges, dissolving into something unreal, like smoke in my lungs that I couldn’t breathe out.

My chest tightened, breath coming in short, sharp bursts, shallow and ragged. My hands shook against Aurelia’s hair where it spilled across my lap, each tremor worse than the last, until I couldn’t steady myself no matter how hard I tried. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only brought him back stronger, my father, his fist slamming against the table, his voice like acid against my skin.

Every drop of magic in your veins is wasted. You’re soft, useless, a stain on everything we’ve built.

I could leave you to rot in mediocrity, but it pains me even more that you pretend to try

The words fused with the ones I had just heard. Generations of venom, passed down, carved into bone, until I couldn’t breathe through the weight of it. My throat closed, and I felt like I was ten years old again, cornered, cowering, staring up at him with terror burning in my chest.

I couldn’t stop shaking.

A choked sound broke in my throat, and Aurelia stirred faintly. I shook her harder than I meant to, desperate, frantic. “Wake up,” I rasped, my voice breaking. “We need to go now.”

Her eyes blinked open, bleary and confused, curls spilling into her face as she sat up. “Theo? What—”

“Now.” My hand was already at her arm, pulling, urging, too panicked to explain. “Please, we need to go now.”

She must have seen it, the raw panic etched into every line of me, the shaking I couldn’t hide, the way my words splintered apart. She didn’t argue. She only nodded, frowning, and wrapped her hand around mine. The world collapsed, squeezed, spun. My lungs burned, and when we reappeared it was in the narrow road outside the safehouse.

The night was darker here, the air thicker, the shadows of the countryside folding in close. My feet hit the gravel hard, and Aurelia’s grip slipped as soon as we landed. She turned instantly toward the door, her steps urgent, her hair still wild from the wind.

But I couldn’t move.

I staggered to the side of the road, dropping hard onto the stone curb, my hands clutching at my knees as though holding myself together by force. My body wouldn’t stop shaking, the tremors deep and uncontrollable, rattling my bones like they were hollow. My breath came in quick, shallow gasps, the panic clawing higher and higher until I thought my chest might split apart.

Aurelia’s footsteps faded toward the safehouse door, but I couldn’t call out. My throat was locked tight, strangled by echoes. My father’s voice. My grandfather’s voice. Both of them feeding into each other until there was no space left inside me for my own.

I pressed my hands against my face, digging my nails into my skin, desperate to feel something real, something that belonged to me, not them. But all I felt was the tremble of my own weakness. And there, by the side of the road, with the dark pressing in and the safehouse only steps away, I sat shaking like a child, unable to make myself stand, unable to silence the ghosts clawing at me from the inside.

I pushed myself up off the curb, legs like water beneath me, the tremors still running from my shoulders down into my hands, as if my body was an instrument played by someone else. I told myself to breathe, to steady, to find some sense of control, but my chest heaved shallow and tight, no air ever enough, and my skin felt raw, stretched too thin over bone.

Every step back toward the safehouse was an effort, my boots dragging across the gravel, my arms hanging useless at my sides, fingers twitching as though the ghost of my grandfather’s grip still held them. The door loomed in front of me, black against the night, and all I wanted was to turn away, to keep walking until the fields swallowed me whole. But something pulled me inside, maybe Aurelia, maybe guilt, maybe just the hollow knowledge that I had nowhere else to go.

I opened the door, the hinges groaning, and stepped into the living room.

The scene hit me like a slap.

Mattheo stood in the centre of the room, his posture sharp and aggressive, shoulders squared like he was ready to strike. His eyes were locked on Aurelia, who stood cornered by the couch, her arms half-raised, her braid falling loose around her face, her pale skin flushed with fear. He was staring her down, his jaw clenched tight, his voice rising sharp enough to slice through me the moment I entered.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded, spitting the words like venom.

Aurelia stammered, her lips trembling, words fumbling over themselves without shape or strength. “I was just—”

“Don’t lie to me.” Mattheo stepped forward, his face twisted, shadows carving his features into something crueler than human. “I asked you a question. Where have you been?”

Her voice broke, the stutter worse now, panic strangling every syllable. “Outside, I just, I wasn’t—”

The sound of it, that helpless scrambling for an answer, snapped something ugly inside me. It sounded too familiar. My stomach turned.

Before she could finish, before she could even breathe, Mattheo’s hand snapped out. His fist collided with her face.

The crack of knuckles against skin echoed sharp in the room, louder than it should have been. Aurelia crumpled sideways, catching herself weakly on the edge of the couch, her hair falling forward to hide her face. Blood dripped faintly from her lip, a thin red line against pale skin.

I froze.

Everything inside me froze.

I should have moved, I should have stepped forward, I should have grabbed his arm, I should have pulled her behind me, I should have done anything. But I couldn’t. My feet rooted to the floor, my body paralysed, my mind collapsing in on itself.

Because it wasn’t just Mattheo I was seeing.

It was my father. His hand raised, the same sharp movement, the same voice roaring questions I could never answer right. And it was my grandfather, standing over me in the dark by the lake, telling me I was weak, telling me I would never stand, that cruelty ran deeper than my bones and all I’d ever know how to do was flinch.

I flinched now.

Mattheo turned then, his eyes cutting to me, a cruel smile stretching across his face, and for a moment I thought he could hear the thoughts unraveling inside me.

“Well, go on then,” he said, tilting his head mockingly toward Aurelia where she wiped at the blood on her mouth with shaking hands. His voice dripped with venom, cruel amusement. “Go save her. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t move. I wanted to. Every muscle in me screamed to. But my body betrayed me, locked up, held captive by fear and memory. My heart pounded so hard it drowned out everything else, blood rushing in my ears until the world around me blurred. I told myself, move, move, move, but the command went nowhere.

I was weak. Just like they said.

 

Mattheo’s smirk deepened, satisfied, as though he had proven something about me, something I already knew. Something I hated. He turned his back toward Aurelia, leaving me stranded in my own uselessness and I stood there, paralysed, shaking, the weight of my grandfather’s disdain crushing me into the floor.

Chapter Text

AURELIA AVERY

I woke to the muted hush of morning, the kind of silence that feels heavier than sleep itself, as though the house were holding its breath. The room smelled faintly of damp wood and stale smoke, the scent of boys who had claimed this bedroom in turns, and though the sheets were rough against my skin, there was something disarming in the knowledge that Theo had given up his night of comfort for me as Daphne still wouldn't let me inside our room. He'd chosen the couch instead, a decision I hadn't asked for, hadn't deserved, but one that sat in my chest like a weight.

For a long moment, I stayed still, curled beneath the thin blanket, trying to pretend that the ache in my face was only imagined, that it was some lingering echo of a nightmare. But the throbbing pulse beneath my right eye reminded me with every beat that it was real. It was there.

Dragging myself upright felt like pulling free from water, the air in the bedroom was cold, but the floorboards gave under my bare feet as though they might splinter. I crossed the threshold and into the hallway, each step deliberate, a slow march toward the bathroom. The door creaked as I pushed it open, and the sound seemed to slice the silence apart.

Inside, the light from the high, narrow window was thin and pale, catching on the cracked mirror above the sink. I hesitated before lifting my gaze, a pause too long, too careful, because I already knew what I'd see, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to face it.

When I finally looked, the breath left my chest in a sharp, startled sound.

The reflection that stared back at me was almost unrecognizable. My right eye was swollen nearly shut, the skin around it blooming in shades of violet and sickly yellow, veins of angry red where the blood had burst beneath the surface. The bruise had a life of its own, raw and vulgar against the pale canvas of my skin, stretching from my cheekbone up toward my brow. It looked violent, like a secret the world could read at a glance.

I gripped the edge of the porcelain sink, chipped and stained, as if anchoring myself could stop the shiver crawling up my spine. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. My reflection held me captive, the cracked glass splitting my face into fractured pieces, each shard showing the same girl but altered, I was broken, and distorted.

The boards creaked beneath me as I stepped out of the narrow hallway and into the living room, and for a moment I thought I could slip by unnoticed, just another shadow moving through the stagnant air of the safehouse. But the quiet was too watchful, the kind of silence that presses on your ears, thick and unrelenting, and I knew before I even saw them that I wasn't alone.

Theo, Lorenzo, and Mattheo had occupied the couches that sagged in the middle with years of use, as it was Draco's turn in the bedroom. Their bodies were sprawled but restless, as though even in stillness they were caught in the coil of something waiting to snap. Mattheo's dark hair fell over his face, his elbow braced against the armrest, his gaze cold as it flicked lazily toward the cracked window. Theo sat curled in on himself, elbows on knees, hands clasped like he was holding himself together by force of will, his eyes shadowed and distant. Lorenzo leaned back with a slouch that might have looked effortless if not for the restless tapping of his fingers against his thigh, that constant hum of energy that betrayed him when he was trying too hard to seem casual.

"Morning," Lorenzo said, his tone almost sing-song. But the word barely finished leaving his mouth before his eyes landed on me, and in an instant the lazy lilt drained from his voice, replaced by something sharp and raw. His head jerked back, the movement almost violent, and I felt the shift in the room like a crack in the air before a storm.

He was on his feet before I could move, before I could even think to retreat. His eyes burned, wide with fury, and I knew that he knew what had happened, who had done it, and that knowledge was a flame licking up the walls of this fragile house.

"What the fuck did you do?" Lorenzo's voice tore through the silence, sharp enough to cut skin, aimed like a blade at Mattheo. He pointed, not even glancing back at me, because there was no need, the bruise on my face was confession enough. "Theo, get her out. Get her out of here now."

"Lorenzo—" Theo started, his voice tight, but Lorenzo cut him off, louder, harsher.

"I said get her out! Now. Don't fucking argue with me right now." His voice rose with a heat that made the walls seem too close, the ceiling too low, as if the safehouse itself couldn't contain him.

I froze, my hands trembling at my sides, breath caught halfway in my throat. My body betrayed me, panic spilling in waves as my voice broke free, ragged and terrified.

"Stop, please Enzo, don't—" The sound didn't even seem like mine, too high, too thin, scraping raw against my teeth.

Lorenzo's fury wasn't something I'd seen turned this sharply before. It was wildfire, uncontrollable, and it terrified me in a way I couldn't contain. He didn't even look at me, didn't blink at my scream, didn't hear the crack of my voice. His focus was locked on Mattheo, who had finally shifted, lifting his gaze from the window to meet Lorenzo's eyes.

Mattheo didn't move, didn't flinch, his expression unreadable but his silence dangerous. His stillness was a provocation, daring Lorenzo closer. Theo reacted before Lorenzo could, stepping forward, his arm coming up like a shield in front of me, his body angled to block me from the sight of what was about to erupt.

His voice was low, urgent, cracked with strain. "Aurelia, come on. Come on, we have to go."

But Lorenzo was already across the room in three strides, his hand shooting out and gripping Mattheo by the collar of his shirt, dragging him up with a force that jolted the couch backwards. The fabric twisted in his fist, knuckles white, his chest heaving as he shoved Mattheo upright, nearly nose to nose.

"You touch her again, I swear to fucking God—" Lorenzo's words broke, half-choked with fury. "You're not your father, Mattheo, and if you think you are, then I'll fucking show you what it feels like when someone fights back."

The sound that left me was a scream that split the air and clawed at the walls, my body shaking with it. It was too much, the bruise throbbing, Lorenzo's rage, the silent coil of Mattheo's darkness, the weight of Theo pressing against me to shield me from the sight of violence layered upon violence. My hands clutched at Theo's shirt, nails biting into the fabric, but he didn't move, didn't break his position as a barrier.

"Don't look, Aurelia," Theo whispered, his voice frantic, desperate, trying to ground me, to keep me tethered. "Don't look. Just walk with me. Please."

But my legs wouldn't move, frozen in place, every nerve alight with the electricity of the moment. I could hear the rasp of fabric as Lorenzo tightened his grip on Mattheo, the faint crack of seams stretching under the strain.

Mattheo's voice, when it finally came, was low and venomous, cutting through the room like smoke. "Let go of me, Berkshire. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. You don't understand shit."

Lorenzo snarled in reply. "Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing." His other hand curled into a fist, drawn back with intent, and the world seemed to hold itself still in that breath before impact.

Theo moved then, not toward them, but back and out, dragging me with him, his hand closing around my wrist, tugging me away from the storm. My feet stumbled, reluctant, my eyes wide and glassy, but he forced me into motion, shielding me with his body as he pulled us down the hallway.

Behind us, Lorenzo's voice roared again, words muffled by distance but still sharp, still dangerous, "Get her out before I break him in half!"

Theo didn't stop, didn't loosen his grip until we were at the door, shoving it open with a force that rattled the hinges. The cool bite of the morning air hit me like a slap, the street outside gray and washed in weak light, the kind that never warms.

He guided me over the threshold, his hands firm on my shoulders now, steering me away from the doorway, away from the echo of fury spilling from inside. My chest was heaving, breath shallow and frantic, but his voice was steady, even if his hands shook.

"Don't look back, Aurelia. Don't look back."

The street stretched before us, cracked pavement and empty windows, a world abandoned to ruin. The sound of my heartbeat pounded in my ears, drowning out everything else, until even the muffled chaos behind the closed door became distant, like something happening in another life.

We kept walking, Theo's body angled protectively between me and the safehouse, his shoulders tense, every movement careful and deliberate as though the air itself might shatter. I clutched the sleeve of his shirt, my nails digging into his skin, afraid that if I let go I'd be dragged backward into that house, into that violence, into the inevitability of destruction waiting for all of us.

Theo didn't stop walking until the shape of the safehouse had disappeared entirely behind the crumbling rows of brick and stone, until the only sound left of Lorenzo's rage was the hollow echo of it in my chest. He kept his hand firm at the small of my back, steadying, guiding, not rushing but insistent, like if he let me falter for even a second I might shatter entirely. I let him lead me, because I didn't have the strength to do otherwise, my head bowed against the cold that seemed sharper this morning, biting at the corners of my bruised eye until tears blurred my vision.

We followed the narrow, uneven path until the familiar stretch of water appeared, the lake, its edges now rimmed with pale ice that glinted beneath the thin light of dawn. Winter was pressing down, insistent and inevitable, and the surface of the water seemed to mirror it with a glassy sheet caught between movement and stillness, fragile, and beautiful in its quiet threat. The reeds along the banks had browned and stiffened, whispering as the wind threaded through them, carrying with it the metallic sting of frost.

I slowed, breath curling in pale clouds, and Theo matched me step for step, his eyes on the lake as though it might answer a question he hadn't asked aloud. For a moment, neither of us spoke. It was enough just to exist here, side by side, the cold air burning our lungs, the silence between us heavy but not suffocating.

Then the sound broke the stillness.

A bell.

It tolled behind us, deep and resonant, rolling through the thin winter air with a weight that felt both mournful and commanding. My body flinched instinctively at the suddenness of it, and when I turned, I saw the source, the stone steeple of the church from last night rising behind the bare trees, its silhouette sharp against the grey sky, the bell swinging high within its tower. The sound seemed to vibrate through the ground itself, as though the world beneath our feet answered to it.

Theo's gaze snapped to mine, wide and uncertain, and for a long heartbeat we just stared at one another, suspended in that sound. His lips parted, as if he wanted to ask, but he didn't, because what could either of us say? We didn't understand what it meant, this ritual sound that called from the heart of a building that looked older than anything around it, solemn and rooted, like it had been waiting centuries for someone to listen.

Without speaking, we moved like we were pulled by some thread neither of us wanted to name, something other than last night's curiosity. The narrow path led us closer, the heavy wooden doors already open as though expecting us. Through them spilled a glow of candlelight, warm and golden, the scent of wax and something sweeter drifting into the frost-bitten air. My heart hammered against my ribs as we crossed the threshold, and though I told myself it was only nerves at being among Muggles, part of me knew it was something else, something quieter, stranger.

Inside, the space opened vast and echoing, the ceiling arching high with beams of dark wood, the walls cool stone carved with lines and symbols I couldn't read. The seats were already filling, people sliding into rows, their movements unhurried but deliberate, like they were part of a rhythm older than themselves. Children fidgeted, mothers hushed them softly, men removed hats and bowed their heads. A slow murmur rippled through the congregation, a current of voices woven together in low tones, almost like the whispering reeds along the frozen lake.

Theo hesitated just inside the doorway, his hand brushing mine, his expression flickering between unease and curiosity. "Do we...?" His voice was low, uncertain.

I swallowed, the bruise under my eye pulling tight with the movement. "Let's just sit, and watch."

So we slipped into the last row, the wood cold against my legs, polished smooth by years of use. My fingers traced absent patterns along the grain, and I could feel the weight of eyes around us, not hostile, but aware. No one questioned, no one turned us away, we were simply absorbed into the tide of people who had gathered here for something neither of us understood.

Candles glowed along what we later learned was called an altar at the far end, dozens of them flickering against the pale morning light that seeped through stained glass. The windows were impossibly intricate, colored shards depicting scenes I couldn't piece together, figures with outstretched hands, beasts and birds and patterns spiraling like incantations. They were beautiful, but strange, like spells written in a language just beyond comprehension.

Theo leaned forward slightly, elbows braced against his knees, his eyes fixed on the front with a tension that mirrored mine. "What is this?" he whispered, not really to me, but to the space itself.

I shook my head slowly, my hair falling like a curtain over my bruised face. "I don't know."

But as the bell stilled above us, its last echo fading into silence, the congregation rose as one, the sound of wooden pews groaning in unison, the shuffle of feet, the rustle of coats and skirts. We exchanged a glance, Theo's brows furrowed, mine wide and searching, though my body tensed, ready to stand as well, I stayed seated. Because whatever this was, it wasn't magic we knew, and yet it hummed with a power that was undeniable and for the first time, sitting among Muggles who bowed their heads and clasped their hands as though speaking to something unseen, I felt small in a way I had never known before.

Theo shifted beside me, stiff on the pew, his sharp shoulders hunched as if bracing against a storm, eyes darting across the congregation with suspicion. But I could not look away from the front, where the altar stood like a stage, draped in white and gold. A man in long robes moved with slow precision before it, raising his arms to call silence, and the effect was immediate, as though he commanded them not by force but by something stronger, something willingly given.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

The voices around us echoed him in unison, rising and falling like a tide.

Amen.

I felt it like a pulse beneath my skin. Not magic, not anything I had ever learned to fear or wield, but power, nonetheless. Theo glanced at me, a flicker of question in his eyes, but I shook my head quickly, wordless. I wanted to listen.

The man began again, his voice carrying with trained clarity through the echoing nave. His words were unfamiliar, yet weighted, spoken in that same rhythm of ritual.

"Let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries."

My chest tightened at the word sins. The congregation lowered their heads, voices blending in something like confession, their tones hushed, as though pressing secrets into the air itself. I did not know the words, but I heard fragments.

I have greatly sinned... through my fault...

May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.

My fingers tightened in my lap. Forgive sins. Bring us to everlasting life. The phrases rooted deep inside me, as if they had been waiting there all along, waiting for language to set them free. A God who forgave. A God who saved. A God who promised something beyond this sharp, cold world, something beyond bruises and betrayal and endless blood.

I had never been promised such a thing before.

The Mass unfolded like a pattern, ritual woven into ritual. Songs rose, sung by voices rough and untrained yet still beautiful in their unity, swelling to fill the vaulted ceiling until it seemed the very stone trembled with it. Latin phrases cut like blades through the familiar cadence of English, shimmering and ancient. Candles flared, smoke from burning incense curled upward, carrying with it a smell both sweet and sharp, clinging to the air like a living thing. I watched every movement, every word, with eyes too wide, drinking it all in.

Theo, beside me, was restless, his jaw tight, his knee bouncing faintly, his gaze darting more often to the doors than to the altar. Yet even he could not disguise the moments when his attention slipped, caught by the solemnity of the ritual, the inexplicable gravity of it.

Then came the words that held me utterly still.

"A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans..."

The lector's voice was steady, carrying each syllable as though it were a spell.

"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I could not breathe. The wages of sin is death. I knew that. I had lived it. Every drop of blood I had shed, every scream I had caused or endured, every shadow I carried inside me, I knew the price. But here, this man spoke of something else, something impossible, a gift. Eternal life. Forgiveness. Salvation not earned, not taken by force, but given.

I pressed a hand against my sternum, as though to steady the trembling there. I wanted to laugh and weep at once, the absurdity and beauty of it colliding inside me like storm and fire. Could it be true? Could there exist something, someone, who would offer redemption even to the damned?

Theo leaned toward me, his whisper sharp. "This is nonsense."

I turned to him, eyes fierce. "But what if it isn't?"

He froze at that, lips parting, and for once he had no immediate retort.

The Mass continued. Another reading, another chant, the Gospel proclaimed with reverence so heavy it bowed the heads of all around us. The priest spoke of parables, of mercy, of a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to save the one that was lost.

Theo muttered, shifting uncomfortably, but I couldn't look away. My bruise throbbed, my body still ached from nights of fear and anger, but my mind was captured by this notion of a God who noticed the lost, who loved without condition, who promised salvation not in exchange for power or obedience, but because it was His nature.

Then came the another section, I watched the man lifted bread high, his voice ringing through the silence.

"This is my Body, which will be given up for you."

A chill ran through me so violently I shuddered. The air itself seemed to shift, heavy with unseen force, and for the first time I wondered, was this their kind of magic? Or was it something greater, something that made even our darkest arts look small?

I did not understand, but I was enthralled. To eat, to drink, to take into oneself the body and blood of a God who died for love of them, it was grotesque and beautiful, terrifying and tender all at once. I could not look away as the congregation came forward, one by one, receiving that mystery with bowed heads and whispered prayers.

Theo's hand brushed mine again, grounding me, though he shook his head faintly, refusing even the thought of participation. I didn't move either, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't yet dare.

When the final prayer was spoken, when the last Amen echoed like the toll of a bell, when the congregation bowed their heads for blessing, I remained utterly still, my mind a storm. As the Muggles filed out, slow and quiet, their faces softened by something I couldn't name, Theo muttered low and sharp.

"They believe in some invisible thing that saves them. It's madness."

But I could only whisper back, breath trembling. "Maybe madness is what saves."

The last notes of the recessional hymn faded into the high rafters like smoke, lingering long after the voices had stilled. Muggles had drifted down the center aisle in pairs and families, coats pulled close, the murmur of their conversation softer now, as though they carried some of the light with them into the cold morning.

Theo rose quickly, brushing off his trousers, restless to be gone, but I sat a moment longer, staring at the altar where the candles still burned, their flames trembling in unseen drafts. Something in me resisted leaving, as though if I stepped back into the frost and noise of the street, whatever I had felt here would dissolve like breath on glass.

When Theo tugged lightly at my sleeve, I shook my head. "Wait. I want to... ask."

His frown deepened, suspicion sharpening his features. "Ask what?"

I couldn't form the words yet. Only ask, or stay.

At the far end of the nave, the man was speaking quietly with an elderly couple, his hands folded, his head bent to listen. There was patience in every line of his body, the kind of gentleness that never seemed rushed. When at last they left, he turned, and his eyes found ours. Not with surprise, though surely he had noticed us, strangers with wide eyes and hesitant movements, but with something like recognition, as though he had been expecting us all along.

I stood, my legs unsteady, and Theo followed reluctantly, muttering under his breath. We walked the length of the aisle, our footsteps echoing, until we stood near the front where the altar loomed and the man waited, robes still bright against the stone.

"Good morning," he said, his voice low but warm, the same voice that had carried the prayers with such clarity. Up close, I saw the lines carved deep around his eyes, but they were softened by kindness. He looked at me, not with curiosity for my bruise, not with judgment, but with simple regard. "You stayed after. Was there something on your mind?"

I swallowed, suddenly conscious of Theo beside me like a shadow, of the bruise throbbing under my eye, of the dozens of words clamoring at once inside my head. When I spoke, my voice was barely more than a whisper. "What... what is God?"

The man tilted his head slightly, studying me, not in suspicion, but as though weighing how best to answer a question he had heard countless times and yet never the same way twice.

"God," he said slowly, "is the one who created all things. The source of life, of love, of every breath we take. He is not a man, not a creature among creatures, but the beginning and the end of all. He is infinite. Eternal."

Theo gave a short, sharp laugh. "So, nothing, then. An invisible idea. Convenient."

The man glanced at him, unoffended, only steady. "Invisible, yes. But not nothing. You cannot see the wind, yet you know it by the rustling of the leaves. You cannot see love, yet you know it in the way a hand reaches for yours. God is like that. Known by His signs, His presence in what is good, true, and beautiful."

I leaned forward without meaning to, caught by the cadence of his words. "But if He is everywhere, why can't we see Him? Why doesn't He just appear?"

The man smiled faintly, not condescending, but almost sorrowful. "Because He does not force Himself upon us. He desires faith, freely given. Some have seen visions, yes, but even then, He comes clothed in signs. To see Him face to face is something promised only beyond this life."

My heart twisted. Promised. Beyond this life. The words trembled inside me like a secret chord struck too deeply to name.

Theo crossed his arms, his scowl deepening. "So He hides. He lets people suffer, die, bleed, and He just, what? Watches?"

The man's eyes rested on him, but his smile was warm. "He does not watch with indifference. He entered our suffering Himself. In Christ, He took on flesh, bore pain, betrayal, death so that none of our suffering would be alone. That is the meaning of the Cross."

I thought of the window above us, the colored glass depicting a man with arms outstretched, light blazing around his head, nails driven through his hands. I had stared at it during the Mass, unable to look away, but now it seared itself into me with new weight. A God who bled. A God who died.

My voice trembled. "So He saves us? Our souls?"

"Yes. That is His promise. No sin too great, no darkness too deep. He saves. Always."

The words cracked something open in me. I thought of the black bruise around my eye, of Mattheo's hand raised in fury, of Theo's stillness as I broke, of Lorenzo's rage, of all the blood we had spilled, all the screams we had left behind. No sin too great. No darkness too deep. Could it be true?

Theo shifted sharply. "And what if you're wrong? What if this is just a story you tell people so they'll feel better about dying?"

The priest's smile did not falter. "Then I would still rather live with hope than without. But I do not believe it is a story. I have seen lives changed. I have seen hearts healed. That is not illusion."

I dared another question, my throat dry. "Do you speak to Him?"

"Every day," he said simply. "In prayer. In silence. In joy and in pain. He listens. He speaks, too, but not always in ways we expect. Sometimes in Scripture, sometimes in the quiet of our conscience, sometimes through others."

"Through others," I echoed softly, tasting the phrase. My mind leapt to the relics we had stolen, to the cold shimmer of power that lingered in their presence, to the way voices sometimes seemed to stir in the shadows of ancient magic. Could He appear through such things?

"If He wanted to appear. If He wanted to come to someone. How would we know it was Him?"

The man considered me for a long, quiet moment. Then he said, "By His love. By His mercy. True appearances of God do not bring terror or cruelty, but peace, even when they shake us to our core. He comes not to destroy, but to save."

The words sank deep, but already I could feel how easily they might blur in my mind, how easily one may mistake power for peace, command for mercy, promise for salvation.

Theo's voice was sharp again. "Or it could just be your own head. Your own need to believe."

"Yes. That is why we test all things. We measure them against what God has revealed. But never doubt that He does speak. He does act. He is not distant."

The silence between us stretched, heavy with things unsaid. I thought of the cold safehouse, of the endless cruelty, of the hollow ache in my chest that no spell or potion could fill. And I thought of this new revelation, a God who promised rescue, who promised love, who promised life everlasting.

When I finally whispered, it was like a confession. "I want to believe."

The man's eyes softened further, his voice gentler than ever. "Then begin with that. Curiosity is the first prayer."

The heavy wooden doors closed behind us with a muffled thud, sealing the last of the candlelight and incense inside. Outside, the air hit sharp and cold, the sky pale with a weak sun trying and failing to cut through the winter haze. Our breaths puffed in clouds before us, vanishing into the brittle wind.

For a moment we stood on the church steps, watching people on the cobbled street, their voices soft, their faces lighter than when they had gone in. Families huddled together, children tugging impatiently at sleeves, elders leaning on arms. None of them looked bruised or broken, and yet they carried something as if they had been given a gift unseen.

I rubbed my fingers together, the skin chilled, the bruise under my eye throbbing. My thoughts hummed too loud in my head, still filled with the priest's words, still caught on the strange fire I had felt when he spoke of God saving souls. It lingered like warmth under my skin, and I didn't want it to leave.

Theo shifted beside me, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his jaw tight against the cold. But his eyes slid to mine, softer than I expected. "So," he said quietly. "You're thinking of going back, aren't you?"

I blinked at him, startled that he'd read me so easily. "Maybe," I admitted. "I... I don't know. I want to hear more."

"More about an invisible man in the sky?" His tone was teasing, but there was no bite in it. Only a thin thread of disbelief.

I hugged my arms close, gazing down the street. "Not just that. It was different. Like for once, there was something that wasn't about cruelty, or power, or fear, just something that said we could be forgiven. That we could be saved." My voice broke a little on that word, though I tried to hold it steady.

Theo watched me, silent, his breath clouding the air between us. Then, finally, he sighed, a long curl of white mist. "If you want to go back," he said, his voice gentler now, "I'll come with you."

I turned to him, startled. "You don't have to—"

"I know." He cut me off, eyes steady on mine. "But I will. Not because of them, but because of you."

The words landed soft but heavy, sinking into me like warmth against the cold. My throat tightened. "Theo—"

He smirked faintly, though it was softer than usual. "I don't need some fucking god to save me when I've got you."

The wind whipped at my hair, stinging my cheek, but I barely felt it. His words pulsed through me like a spell, and I was suddenly, achingly aware of him, his nearness, his steadiness, the way he always seemed to fold himself around me without asking anything back. My chest ached, but it wasn't pain this time. It was something lighter, something that made me feel fragile and safe all at once.

I smiled, small but true, my voice soft. "That's... that's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

Theo ducked his head, a flush creeping faintly over his pale skin. We lingered there for a moment, both of us pretending the silence was casual, though it was thick with words unsaid. Then I breathed out, long and slow, and stepped down from the church steps.

"Come on. We should get back before they start tearing each other apart without us."

He fell into step beside me easily, our shoulders brushing now and then as we walked. The street stretched narrow and uneven, the cobbles slick with frost, the roofs of the buildings sagging under thin sheets of ice. Muggle lamps still burned faintly, their glow pale against the morning light, and every so often we passed the smell of smoke from unseen chimneys.

We didn't talk much, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. The words had already been said, the important ones, and what was left was just the quiet ease of being near each other. I glanced at him once or twice, catching the way his breath curled from his lips, the way his eyes softened when they slid to me. Every time, a little warmth rose in me, pushing back the cold. For the first time in a long while, the weight on my chest felt a little lighter.

By the time the safehouse loomed ahead, hunched and shadowed between the ruined buildings, I found myself almost wishing the walk had been longer. But Theo's hand brushed against mine as we reached the door, just briefly, as though reminding me that the warmth didn't have to vanish when we stepped back inside and I carried that with me, like a hidden flame, as the door creaked shut behind us.

When Theo and I pushed through the warped front door, the sound of scratching quills pulled us into the heart of it. At the dining table, three figures bent low, shoulders hunched, parchment spread wide like wounded skin. Their movements were frantic, urgent, ink blotting, scraping, words dragged into being with a kind of fever.

Draco sat rigid, posture sharp even in exhaustion, his pale hair falling in strands over his eyes as his quill slashed deliberate strokes across the page. Lorenzo leaned crookedly, muttering under his breath as he wrote, his jaw clenched tight, his charm burned away into something hard. And at the head of the table, Mattheo, his body folded close to the parchment, his hand moving with a detached precision, his face shadowed and broken.

It was Daphne, though, who caught my breath first.

She lay sprawled on the couch, her arm hanging limp over the edge, eyes glassy and fixed somewhere above the cracked ceiling. Her chest rose shallow, and her lips trembled faintly as though caught in some unspoken prayer. But there was no spark, no fire, none of the wild energy that usually danced through her. She looked like her body had been ruthlessly emptied, burned out, leaving only the hollow shell behind.

Something inside me twisted sharp. Quietly, I crossed to her. Kneeling, I brushed the hair back from her damp temple and pressed a kiss against her forehead. Her skin was cool, clammy. She didn't blink, didn't stir, only a faint flicker passed through her gaze as if she registered me there, nothing more. I lingered a moment longer, whispering, "I'm here," though I wasn't sure she heard, before I rose and turned toward the kitchen.

The air there was heavier still.

Mattheo lifted his head when I stepped in, and the sight of him caught me dead in my tracks. Both of his eyes were bruised black, ringed with swelling that turned the brown of his irises into sharp, unnatural gleams. Dried blood striped down from his nose into the hollow of his mouth, crusted dark against his pale skin. His shirt hung in tatters around him, exposing slashes of angry red cuts across his shoulders and chest, wounds that looked both raw and as though someone, Lorenzo, had carved the anger out of him with his fists.

I froze, the words caught in my throat, my gaze locked to him. He didn't flinch, didn't look away. He only stared, his jaw tight, a faint twitch of something raw in his expression, shame, defiance and exhaustion.

Draco's voice sliced through the silence before I could speak. "We're writing suicide notes."

I blinked, torn from Mattheo's battered face. "What?"

Draco didn't lift his eyes from the parchment. His quill moved in steady, brutal strokes, scratching like knives on stone. "For Finch-Fletchley. For his mother. Making it neat. Tying it up." His voice was flat, precise, without a hint of hesitation. "The Ministry will find the bodies, find the letters, and think they broke under pressure. Took the easy way out."

Theo stiffened beside me. "You're forging their deaths?"

Lorenzo's laugh was sharp, humorless. He leaned back in his chair, though his hand never stopped moving. "That's the point. Covering our tracks. Turn a massacre into a family tragedy. 'Tragic story of a mother and son driven to despair.' Easy headline, and no loose ends."

My stomach twisted. The parchment in front of Mattheo blurred in my vision, the words he'd already scrawled stark in the lamplight. The loops of the handwriting weren't his, they were jagged, forced into mimicry. But the words. The words bled.

"I can't keep fighting anymore. I see no way forward."

"This world is cruel, and I am too tired to stay."

Lines written in a trembling hand, letters crafted to sound like the voice of someone they'd silenced. A voice stolen, bent into the shape of despair.

I swallowed hard. "You're making them say goodbye."

Draco finally looked up, his grey eyes glinting sharp. "We're making them disappear. Would you rather leave a trail for the Aurors to follow? Would you prefer to hand them the truth?"

My breath hitched, but I didn't answer. Because I knew what he meant. I knew the weight of leaving proof, of giving the Order any thread to pull. But still, the words on the page clawed at me.

Lorenzo sighed, dragging a hand down his face, smearing ink across his knuckles. "Don't romanticize it, Aurelia. It's ink on parchment. A trick. That's all."

But his eyes betrayed him. They burned too bright, his jaw too tense. He hated it as much as I did.

Mattheo hadn't spoken. His quill kept moving, scratch after scratch, until his hand stilled. He lifted the parchment slightly, reading over the final lines. The words shimmered in my vision, blurred by the sting in my eyes. They weren't his, but the sight of them in his hand, written in his ink, with his blood still drying on his skin, felt like some cruel mirror. A confession he'd never speak, disguised as someone else's last breath.

My fingers curled tight at my sides.

Draco broke the silence again, his tone clipped, all business. "We'll plant these in the house. Make it seem like the fire was started on purpose." His quill scratched once more before he set it down firmly. "No one will question it."

Theo shifted beside me, his mouth parting, words caught somewhere between protest and disbelief. But he didn't speak them. His shoulders sagged instead, and he exhaled, low and heavy. I moved closer to the table, unable to stop myself. My eyes dragged over the letters, over the broken phrases of love and apology, over the lies we'd carved from other people's deaths. My throat burned.

Mattheo finally looked at me again. His eyes were blackened, bloodied, ringed in violet shadow. But deeper than that, they were hollow, empty in a way that frightened me. Like he wasn't even here, just a shell moving ink across parchment because someone told him to.

I wanted to speak. To ask if it hurt. To tell him to stop. But the words caught, and I stayed silent, frozen in the candlelight glow, watching as he bent his head again and signed another man's death with his own broken hand.

Behind me, Daphne stirred faintly on the couch, a soft sound escaping her lips. I turned instinctively, my chest tightening, but she didn't rise. Her eyes fluttered, half-open, then slid shut again. Her breath came shallow, and the hollowness in her mirrored Mattheo's. Both of them fading in different ways, each breaking along their own cracks.

It was Lorenzo who broke the silence first, his voice dragging across the heavy air with something like a dare. "Aurelia," he said, leaning back in his chair, the quill twirling between his ink-stained fingers, "you should try. You're a better writer than half of us combined. Your letters won't read like forged scraps. They'll sound real."

His tone wasn't cruel, not exactly, but there was steel threaded through it, an edge that suggested he was testing me, pushing me into this ugliness just to see how far I'd bend. He gestured vaguely toward the cabinets behind him, his hand smudged with ink. "There's spare parchment in the kitchen."

I hesitated, my throat tight, before I turned away without a word.

The kitchen smelled of damp wood and lingering ash, the sink stacked with cracked mugs that hadn't been washed in days. I reached up into the cabinet, my fingers brushing past the warped stack of parchment until I found one loose sheet folded in the corner, slightly crumpled at the edges. It felt thicker, heavier than the rest, as though it had soaked up years of neglect.

I pressed it against my chest and gathered ink and quill before slipping quietly out the back door. I couldn't sit at that table with them, not with Mattheo's bloodied face bent over paper, not with Daphne's hollow stare in the corner. I needed air, even if the air here was sharp and cold.

The cold clung to me as I stepped outside. The ground was stiff with frost, the grass brittle underfoot. The sun hung low above the roofline, smudged by the smoke that leaked endlessly from the chimneys of the distant town. I sat on the back step, my knees drawn up, and spread the crumpled parchment across them, but when I smoothed it open, my stomach sank.

There was already writing there.

Not the neat loops of a boy’s forged farewell, but lines carved in a language I recognized only from the margins of dusty books. Latin. Slightly faded but still recognisable, every letter etched with such precision it seemed to hum against the page.

“Brilliant,” I muttered under my breath, the word brittle with frustration. I hadn’t even managed to grab a clean piece. Just some discarded scrap already filled, already useless. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed, the bruise around my eye throbbing against the pressure.

I dipped the quill in ink anyway, determined to flip the parchment and use the back, when the letters shifted. At first it was subtle, the faintest shimmer across the page, as though the moonlight had caught it just so. But then it grew, each line of ink glowing faintly, the strokes no longer flat but alive, pulsating in rhythm with a heartbeat I could feel in my own chest.

The parchment grew warm against my knees.

I froze, my breath snagging in my throat. The ink seemed to swell and recede like waves, the Latin words thickening until they gleamed molten gold. The glow spread to the edges of the page, seeping like fire through paper that should have burned but did not. My quill clattered to the step beside me, forgotten.

The letters twisted, rearranged themselves before my eyes, reshaping into forms I couldn’t follow, into symbols that seemed older than the bones of the earth. Every line vibrated faintly, humming against my skin, and I felt the weight of something vast pressing against me, as though the night itself had leaned close to watch.

I should have dropped it. I should have flung it into the frost and run. But I couldn’t move. My fingers were fused to the edges of the parchment, my gaze locked to the shifting words, my body trembling with the certainty that I was being seen. The glow pulsed stronger now, in time with my own heartbeat, until it filled my vision, drowning out the world beyond the parchment. The air felt thick, electric, every breath dragging heavy and sharp into my lungs. My skin prickled, my chest tightened, but still I couldn’t look away.

I whispered into the paper, the sound trembling out of me without thought. “What are you?”

The parchment pulsed once, a flare of light so bright it seared the inside of my eyelids, and for a single, shuddering second I swore I felt a hand brush against mine. Not warm, not cold, but present, something reaching from beyond the veil of ink and paper to touch me. I gasped, pulling back, but still I couldn’t let go. The parchment clung, the glow searing its way into my veins, settling in my chest like a second heartbeat.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stilled.

The glow dimmed to a faint ember, the letters settling into rigid lines once more. The heartbeat in my chest slowed, leaving only the echo of it, the ghost of that presence lingering in my bones. An unfamiliar feeling coursed through my veins, I thought it was the cold creeping deeper, the winter air seeping into my bones. But no, this was different. The shadows lengthened unnaturally across the frost, and the light of the sun fractured as though something unseen had stepped between me and the sky.

Then he was there.

A figure standing just beyond the reach of the back step, shaped out of the world itself. He looked young, no older than I was, but there was a sharpness to him that felt eternal, as though the world had carved him more carefully, more ruthlessly, than anyone I had ever known. His hair was dark and perfectly in place, his eyes a startling, glass-cut shade that caught the weak light and seemed to hold it captive. His presence was at once magnetic and suffocating, a pull I couldn’t resist and a weight I couldn’t endure.

I scrambled to my feet, clutching the parchment to my chest. My heart thrashed violently against my ribs. “Who—” The word broke, and I swallowed, trying again. “Who are you?”

He tilted his head, lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile. His voice, when it came, was low and smooth, carrying that peculiar cadence of someone who always expected to be listened to. “Does it matter?”

I froze, the question sinking into me like a hook. His eyes flicked to the glowing parchment in my hands, then back to me.

“You called, didn’t you? And I came.”

The words struck something deep inside me, something raw and unsteady. I thought of the man earlier that morning, his gentle explanation of a God who answered when you cried out, a God who did not abandon. Here he stood, a figure pulled from the earth, emerging from the words on a page I hadn’t understood. My breath trembled out of me, fogging the cold air.

“You…” I whispered, clutching the paper tighter. “You’re—” The word stuck in my throat. It felt too enormous, too fragile, to speak aloud.

He stepped closer, his movements deliberate, graceful in a way that unsettled me. “What is it you think I am?” His voice was soft now, coaxing, coaxing like hands drawing me closer to fire.

My lips parted, the word spilling before I could stop it. “God.”

For a heartbeat, his face was unreadable. Then he smiled, slow and thin, the kind of smile that revealed nothing and promised everything. “If that is what you need me to be.”

My chest tightened, confusion knotting through me. I glanced at the parchment, then back at him. The bruise under my eye pulsed in time with my heartbeat, the throb grounding me and unsteadying me all at once. “But you’re here,” I whispered. “Not like… not like a story. Not like a prayer. You’re real.”

“Of course.” He reached out, fingers brushing the cold air between us, not quite touching me but close enough that I felt it. “Why shouldn’t I be real?” His tone was light, teasing almost, but underneath it was steel. A command disguised as a question.

I should have stepped back. Every instinct screamed at me that this was wrong, that nothing about him was safe. But instead, I found myself leaning forward, drawn into the orbit of him like a moth to a candle flame. “Why now?” I asked, voice trembling. “Why me?”

He studied me in silence for a moment, eyes lingering on the bruise darkening my face, the way my fingers shook against the parchment. His gaze was sharp, dissecting, but when he spoke his voice dripped with gentleness. “Because you needed me.”

The words sank into me like warmth, like a bandage pressed to a wound I hadn’t dared show anyone.

I wanted to laugh, to argue, to push him away. But instead, I found myself whispering, “I didn’t even… I don’t even know if I believe in any of this. I only thought maybe.”

“And isn’t that enough?” he murmured. “A thought. A hope. A reaching hand.” His smile deepened, still measured, still careful. “I reach back.”

I blinked rapidly, my throat tight, my chest aching in ways I couldn’t name. My mind raced with the echoes of the man’s words, of the ceremony earlier, of the comfort I’d felt at the idea of salvation. Now here was someone answering. Standing before me, and offering himself as proof.

“But what does that mean?” I pressed. “Will you save me?”

The word tasted desperate, childish even, but it slipped free before I could stop it.

His eyes glittered. “If that’s what you want.” His voice dipped, lower, intimate. “You’re tired of being hurt. Tired of being left behind and thought of as weak. You want someone who sees you, who understands you and doesn’t turn away.”

The words hit too close. My knees weakened, and I sank slowly back onto the step, clutching the parchment against me like a shield. “How do you know that?”

He stepped closer, his shadow stretching long across the frost. “Because I know you.” His voice was steady. “I’ve always known you.”

My pulse thundered in my ears. The world tilted slightly, as though I were standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable. “Always?”

He crouched now, close enough that I could see the fine lines of his face, the dangerous beauty of it. “You’ve called for me more times than you realize. Every scream swallowed in the dark. Every tear you never let them see. Every wish you buried because you thought no one would care.” His hand hovered near mine, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from it. “I heard all of it.”

I stared at him, my breath shallow, my mind spiraling. It felt impossible, yet terrifyingly true.

“You…” My voice broke, and I tried again. “You won’t leave me?”

His smile sharpened slightly, though his tone remained tender. “Not unless you ask me to. Not unless you turn away.”

I shook my head quickly, fiercely, the bruise throbbing with the movement. “No. Don’t. Please.”

“Then I won’t.”

For a moment, silence stretched between us, thick and charged. The air pressed in, the frost glittered sharp, and the glow from the parchment pulsed faintly still.

Finally, he straightened, towering above me once more, his gaze unwavering. “You don’t need to understand everything now,” he said softly. “You only need to trust.”

Trust. The word rang in my ears, heavy and impossible.

I hugged the parchment tighter, my chest aching, my thoughts tangled in a thousand knots, but through the fear, through the confusion, through the aching bruise and the hollow weight of everything that had happened, something warm unfurled in me. Something that whispered maybe.

Maybe this was what I had been reaching for all along.

“You’re still afraid,” he said softly, his voice low enough that it seemed to slide straight into my mind rather than my ears. “Even now, with me here.”

I swallowed hard, forcing my voice steady. “Shouldn’t I be?”

That smile again, thin, deliberate, the kind that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You should always be afraid. Fear keeps you alive.” He crouched then, coming level with me, his gaze cutting into mine. “But with me, you don’t have to be. Do you believe that?”

The words pressed heavy against my chest, and I struggled to shape an answer. I wanted to say no, wanted to tell him I didn’t know him, that he wasn’t the god I had imagined this morning in the church. But here he was, speaking to me as though he knew me better than I knew myself.

“I think so,” I whispered.

He tilted his head, studying me with that unnerving patience. “Think so?” His tone was soft, but underneath, the edge of it cut sharp. “Faith isn’t a thought, Aurelia. It’s a surrender.”

My breath caught. The way he said my name, it was both intimate and chilling, like he had plucked it from my chest without permission.

“You know my name,” I murmured.

“Of course.” He leaned closer, so near I could see the faint reflection of the moon in his eyes. “I know more about you than you dare admit to yourself.”

A shiver coursed through me, sharp and involuntary. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer, not directly. His smile widened slightly, but his eyes darkened, as though shadow passed through them. “I see your pain. I see the fracture of you, the way you try to hold the pieces together while the world claws at you, and I can fix you.

The words dug deep, prying at the spaces in me I hadn’t dared to examine. I blinked quickly, trying to disguise the sting in my eyes. “Fix me?”

“Yes.” His voice was silk now, soothing, as though he could weave me into believing. “You’ve suffered wounds no one else can see. They don’t treat them, don’t acknowledge them, because they are blind. But I—” He reached out, his hand hovering inches from my temple. “I am not blind.”

My heart hammered wildly. Everything in me screamed that this was wrong, that his touch would not heal but burn, but I wanted it. Wanted someone to look at me and see more than the bruise blooming purple on my face and think that I was weak. Wanted someone to save me from all that I was forced to endure.

“What do you mean?” My voice cracked. “What will you do?”

“Nothing more than you’ve asked.” His eyes glittered. “I will mend you.”

Before I could protest, his hand pressed against my forehead. His skin was so cold it burned, but his grip was iron. I gasped, my fingers clutching the parchment tighter, as he closed his eyes and murmured words in a language I couldn’t place. They weren’t Latin, not exactly, though they echoed with the same ancient cadence.

The sound filled me, threading through my veins like smoke. My vision blurred, the night around me dimming until there was only him, his voice, the sharp press of his hand against my skin. My body trembled, my breath stuttered, and for one terrible, glorious moment I felt as though something inside me had been cracked open and filled with fire.

Then, silence.

The glow faded. His hand withdrew.

I collapsed forward, gasping, my palms pressed against the frozen step. My skin prickled, my chest ached, but there was something else too, something lighter, almost soothing, like a dull ache I hadn’t realized was there had finally quieted.

I looked up at him, my hair falling across my face, my voice ragged. “What did you do?”

His smile was faint, almost fake. “I gave you what no one else could. A chance to breathe.”

I touched my chest, my skin still buzzing faintly. I couldn’t name what I felt, couldn’t explain it, but it was real. He had done something, something impossible.

Tears stung my eyes before I could stop them. “Thank you.”

The words felt small, fragile, but they were all I had.

His gaze lingered on me, his expression carefully composed. Then, slowly, he straightened, looking down at me like a king at a supplicant. “You asked. I answered. But such things are not free.”

My breath faltered. “What do you mean?”

His voice hardened, though it remained quiet. “You think salvation comes without cost? That you can simply take, and give nothing?” He shook his head once, sharply. “That is not how the world works, Aurelia. Not the mortal one. Not mine.”

A tremor ran through me, unease curling sharp in my gut. “What do you want?”

He held my gaze, unblinking. “Something you and your allies can give me.”

I waited, but he did not elaborate. His silence pressed against me until I could hardly bear it. “Tell me,” I whispered.

Finally, he spoke. “You already have what I need.”

I frowned, confusion flooding me. “What?”

“The fragments that remain. Pieces of heritage waiting to be claimed. They belong together, waiting for the hands that will not falter.” His words dropped like stones into water, rippling out with meaning I couldn’t grasp.

My pulse quickened. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to,” he replied swiftly, cutting me off. “Not yet. You will know them when you see them.”

I stared down at my hand, at the dull gleam of my ring stood out to me. The thought rose unbidden, Was this one of the fragments he meant? The idea unsettled me, and I curled my fist tight.

“And if I fail?” I asked, my voice trembling.

His smile returned, colder this time, a serpent’s curve. “You won’t.”

The certainty in his tone silenced me. There was no room for protest, no space for refusal. He had already decided, and in his decision, I was bound.

“You have them, you just need to bring them together,” he said softly, his voice weaving through the night like smoke. “Only then will what I’ve given you last. Only then will you never be broken again.”

I wanted to ask more, but before I could shape the words, he stepped back, his form flickering at the edges like a flame about to snuff.

His eyes glinted, sharp and final. “Do not disappoint me, Aurelia.”

 

Then he was gone, swallowed by the cold air, the silence crashing down as though he had never been. I sat frozen on the steps, the parchment burning faintly against my palm, the ring on my finger pulsing with a strange heat I had never felt before. He had been real, he had touched me, healed me, but he had asked something of me, of us. I didn’t understand, but I believed. At least I thought so.

When I pushed the door back open, the hinges groaned, and for a heartbeat I thought the whole house might flinch with me. The air inside was warmer than outside, but not by much; it smelled of ink, sweat, and the faint char of the fire that had burned itself low. For a moment, I lingered in the threshold, steadying my breath, shoving the fragments of what had just happened into some locked corner of my mind. They pulsed there, waiting, but I would not let them surface. Not yet.

The living room was quieter than when I had left it. Daphne was still stretched across the couch, though not alone this time. Her head rested in Lorenzo’s lap, her blonde hair spilling over his thigh like a curtain, his hand absentmindedly combing through it. Her glassy eyes flickered when I entered, but not enough to sharpen with recognition. She looked adrift, as though the world had pulled a veil over her, dimming everything beyond reach.

I crossed the room slowly, knees unsteady, and lowered myself to the floor beside her. The rug was scratchy beneath me, grounding. Without thinking, I reached for her hand where it lay limp against her stomach. Her fingers were cold, unresponsive, but I threaded mine through them anyway, holding her as though the mere act might keep her alive.

“What’s wrong?” My voice came out hushed, careful, the kind of tone one uses with the fragile, though I knew Daphne would scorn the word if she heard it applied to her.

Her lips parted, sound scraping its way out like something reluctant. “I don’t know.” She blinked slowly, gaze fixed somewhere above me. “I get like this sometimes. It just happens. Like sinking into water you can’t see the bottom of.”

The words were raw, but not enough to explain. Not enough for me to understand. My grip on her hand tightened, desperate to give her something to hold on to, even if it wasn’t enough.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, her lashes fluttering shut again. “It passes. Always does.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her I would worry, that she was not alone, that I had seen her fierce and burning and alive, and that seeing her hollowed like this carved me open. But I didn’t. Instead, I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, swallowing the ache in my throat.

My gaze shifted up to Lorenzo. He leaned back against the couch cushions, his expression caught somewhere between watchfulness and ease. His hand kept moving through Daphne’s hair, a steady rhythm that might have been for her comfort or his own.

“Thank you,” I said softly, forcing the words past the tightness in my chest. “For dealing with Mattheo. For keeping me safe.”

He glanced down at me, and to my surprise, a laugh slipped from his mouth, it was low, wry, like the sharp edge of a blade dulled by familiarity.

“Don’t thank me for that,” he said, shaking his head. “He had it coming. And if you think I’d let him get away with hurting you like that, you don’t know me half as well as you should.” His grin flickered briefly, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Besides, it was fun knocking him down a peg. Someone’s got to remind the great Riddle boy he’s not untouchable.”

I blinked at him, startled by the casualness, by the almost playful way he smoothed the edges of something that had felt like a war inside me. My heart was still bruised, still trembling from everything I’d witnessed, and yet his words pulled some of the sharpness from it.

“I mean it,” I murmured, meeting his gaze, finding steadiness in the glint there. “I’m glad you were there.”

For a moment, his expression softened. The bravado slipped, just slightly, enough to reveal something steadier beneath. He gave a short nod, his hand pausing in Daphne’s hair before resuming. “I’m glad too,” he admitted quietly. “You’re safe now. That’s what matters.”

I leaned back against the edge of the couch, Daphne’s cold hand clasped in mine, and let the quiet settle over us. The house breathed around us, its shadows deepening with the slow crawl of daylight through grime-streaked windows. Across the room, the others scribbled at the table, but here, in this small corner, it was different.

The sound of a chair scraping back pulled my eyes into focus again. Draco strode in from the kitchen, pale hair catching the weak light, his expression sharper than it had been in days. There was a restless energy about him, a faint glimmer of something like excitement, though it carried the hard edge of calculation.

Without hesitation, he nudged the coffee table out of the way with his knee, dragging it toward the far wall. The wood screeched against the floorboards, startling Daphne from her daze. Lorenzo’s hand stilled in her hair, and he looked up, frowning.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Lorenzo asked, his tone dry but edged.

Draco glanced at him, lips twitching in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Making space. Tomorrow we’re getting someone in. Capture and interrogation.”

The words dropped into the room like a spark into dry tinder. I felt Daphne’s fingers twitch faintly in mine, though she didn’t lift her head. My pulse jumped.

Lorenzo arched a brow, half amused, half wary. “Someone? Or did you mean someone?”

Draco’s eyes gleamed, sharp with anticipation. “If there’s any justice in it, Potter. And if it is him…” His jaw clenched, the faint thrill in his face hardening into something darker. “Then I’ll be the one to finish it. After we’ve taken what we need from him.”

For a beat, silence. Even Daphne’s glassy stare shifted, just slightly, as though the name had pulled her from her depths.

Then Lorenzo barked a laugh, abrupt and irreverent. “Merlin’s sake, Malfoy. You want Potter, you can have him. I’ve no interest in babysitting the Chosen One while he bleeds out.” He leaned back, smirking. “Consider it your personal prize.”

Draco’s gaze snapped to him. “I wasn’t fucking joking.”

The air thickened, the humor curdling in the space between them. Lorenzo raised his hands in mock surrender, though his grin lingered. “Relax, I wasn’t taking it from you. Just saying, you don’t have to fight us for the privilege.”

“I wouldn’t be fighting you,” Draco said smoothly, his voice colder now. “I’d be reminding you of your place.”

The jab hung there, sharp and deliberate. Lorenzo’s grin didn’t falter, but I saw the flicker in his eyes, something steely tightening behind them. My chest knotted, caught between their dangerous play. Theo had drifted into the room during this, standing near the doorway, silent as ever, watching with a narrowed gaze. It was he who broke the tension, voice steady, almost bored.

“And what makes you so sure it’ll be Potter?”

Draco turned slightly, acknowledging him with a shrug that was too controlled to be casual. “I’m not. But it’s possible. The Ministry’s been desperate. They’ll send whoever they think we can break and when it’s him—” His voice sharpened, cutting clean. “It’s mine.”

Daphne made a faint sound in her throat, not quite a word, not quite approval or protest. I squeezed her hand, grounding myself in her even as my thoughts spun.

“What are you planning, then?” Lorenzo asked, the edge of challenge still threaded through his tone.

Draco gestured toward the couch, toward Daphne sprawled across it, toward the space where I sat on the floor. “Double bed room will be cleared. The prisoner will be kept there.” He began pacing, marking the room with his steps. “The mattresses from the room will be dragged in the living room tonight. We’ll sleep here, all of us boys, until the interrogation’s complete. Theo and I will ward our old room to keep them in, and to keep anyone but me out.”

I looked at the couch, at the table shoved against the wall, at the narrow space that already felt suffocating with the five of us simply living.

“Sharing the floor with you lot wasn’t what I envisioned when I agreed to this shit,” Lorenzo said, though his smirk returned. “But I suppose I’ll manage as long as Malfoy doesn’t snore.”

“I don’t snore,” Draco snapped, quick, clipped.

“Good, or I’ll hit you. Take a look at Mattheo if you need a reminder of my capabilities”

Theo, quiet until now, spoke again, voice cool and certain. “I promise I can help you ward it, but we will do it tonight so we can clear all our clothes and shit out.” His eyes flicked briefly to me, then back to Draco. “Are you sure you want only yourself allowed in the room?”

“Positive.”

Daphne shifted faintly in Lorenzo’s lap, her lips parting as though to speak, but no words came. Her eyes slipped closed again, retreating. I squeezed her hand tighter, wishing I could pull her back, wishing I could vanish myself. I let out a shaky breath, my thumb brushing over Daphne’s cold knuckles. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but I knew one thing with certainty. Whoever walked into that room tomorrow, Draco would ensure they did not leave the same.

Chapter Text

DRACO MALFOY

Theo's foot was in my face when I opened my eyes.

Not metaphorically, not some ghastly hangover dream, but literally, his heel pressed against my cheekbone like he'd mistaken me for a bloody pillow. The great Theo Nott, noble heir of ancient blood, reduced to a sprawl of gangly limbs, snoring softly as though we weren't crammed together on a mattress against both of our will.

I shoved his foot aside with more force than necessary, rolling onto my back. The ceiling above was cracked, the plaster peeling in shapes that looked like maps to nowhere. The whole room smelled faintly of ink, sweat, and damp wood. A cocktail of human bodies forced into proximity, and I was already tired of it.

This was not the life I had been bred for. Silk sheets, imported feather beds, a room of my own, that was supposed to be my inheritance. Instead, I was sprawled beside Theo fucking Nott on a lumpy mattress in a safehouse that barely held together.

At least I wasn't Lorenzo. He was on the floor across from us, half-buried beneath a pillow that he'd chosen to drape across his bare back rather than under his head. Idiot. He claimed it kept the chill away. I suspected he just liked the dramatics of suffering out loud.

Mattheo, predictably, had taken the armchair, his head lolled to the side, curls matted, one arm hanging limp, his breathing the shallow kind that suggested even sleep gave him no peace. May his dreams torment him the way his presence torments the rest of us.

Daphne hadn't moved from the couch. She looked pale against the cushions, as though she'd been carved there in stone. Her chest rose and fell, but her eyes were shut, her hair tangled over her face. Something about her stillness unnerved me. Of all of us, she was the only one who could rival me, the only one sharp enough to cut me back. I hated that it gave me something close to admiration.

I pushed myself up, dragging a hand through my hair. The room was stifling already, though the morning light had barely filtered through the filthy window.

Today.

The word pulsed in me with a clarity that burned away the fog of sleep. Today they would bring someone in. A prisoner, someone to break. I wanted it to be Potter. Merlin, how I wanted it. I'd see his face again, smug and infuriating, the boy who had stood opposite me in every hallway at Hogwarts, who had ruined my family's name again and again with his bloody Gryffindor heroics.

But more than that, Potter meant legacy. He meant redemption. If I was the one to break him, to carve his defiance down into ash and silence, then maybe the stain of my failure would be washed away.

Dumbledore's face flashed in my mind, pale and patient even as I had stood there trembling, wand shaking in my hand. I hadn't done it. I hadn't been able to. The weight of that moment pressed on me every night, a hand around my throat, reminding me that I had failed the Dark Lord, that I had failed the Malfoy name. My mother's eyes, my father's disappointment, the way the Manor itself seemed to shrink with shame. Potter could undo it all. If I shattered him, if I delivered him broken, if I was the one to end him, it would be mine. My absolution.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, eyes narrowing as I studied the pathetic sprawl of bodies around me. My brothers, in some cruel sense. Theo with his anxious heart. Lorenzo with his silver tongue. Mattheo with his relentless cruelty. I would bleed for them, though I'd never say it aloud. Not in love, never that, but kinship forged in violence and ruin.

Daphne still hadn't moved, in some way, she was the only one I didn't pity. The room was too quiet, too still. I needed movement, action. My mind had already begun its work, running through scenarios of interrogation, rehearsing methods of dismantling a person piece by piece. Potter would resist. He always did. That was the pleasure of breaking him would mean more than breaking anyone else.

Start with silence. Withholding food, water, warmth. Strip him of comfort until even breath felt like a gift. Then pressure, words, reminders of all the ways he'd failed, all the deaths at his hands. Twist the knife of his guilt. He had so much of it, always dragging it around like a chain. It would be easy to pull.

Then pain, when words were no longer enough. Pain was universal. Pain stripped away pride faster than any curse. The Cruciatus, yes, but more than that, small, precise agonies. A cut here, a burn there, timed between questions until his nerves sang with expectation. When he was trembling, when the last vestige of defiance flickered in his eyes, then I would end him. Not quickly, Potter didn't deserve quick. Slowly, deliberately, until every trace of him was gone.

I could almost see the triumph, the look on my father's face if word reached him. The whisper of my name again spoken with pride, not derision. Draco Malfoy, who killed the Chosen One.

Theo stirred, rolling over, his foot dangerously close to my ribs. I shoved him aside without hesitation. He grunted, half-awake, mumbling something incoherent.

"Move over, Nott," I muttered. "You're worse than a dog."

He muttered something back that might have been "fuck off," and buried his face into the mattress. The others also began to rise with the kind of fragile quiet that always precedes waking chaos. Lorenzo shifted on the floor, muttering in his sleep, Mattheo let out a low sound, a growl almost, though his eyes stayed closed.

It was then that I heard the faint creak of a door.

Aurelia stepped out into the hallway as though she had been waiting for this precise moment, when the room was thick with the remnants of sleep, when no one was yet sharp enough to question her movements.

She was dressed already.

Not in the loose night things Daphne sometimes wore, nor the mismatched, comforts we had all grown accustomed to in this wretched safehouse. No, Aurelia emerged dressed as though the world outside waited for her, as though she had been plucked from another place entirely and dropped into ours. Shoes laced, a grey sweater, hair pinned back with exact precision and neat curls.

My eyes locked on her instantly, as though my body betrayed me in the act. She paused, and our gazes collided, sharp as a blade drawn free of its sheath. There was no kindness in it, no acknowledgement either. Her eyes on mine felt like a test I hadn't been told I was taking. I lifted my chin, the instinct of generations coiled inside me, because if there was one thing a Malfoy did not do, it was falter beneath a stare.

Still, the look lingered longer than I liked.

Something stirred in me, something unpleasant, jagged, sour. I hated her. The thought rose in me with a clarity so absolute it startled even me.

I hated her.

She looked at me as though she knew something I did not. Because she walked through our lives like she belonged, when everything about her screamed interloper. Because every breath she took seemed to carry with it some hidden judgement, though she never said a word.

Or was it something deeper? Something far less tidy, less easily pinned to reason. I could not say, and that enraged me further.

Hatred should be simple, clean. The Dark Lord. Dumbledore. Potter. Those names slid across my mind with ease, their weight balanced, their definitions clear. But Aurelia was different. My hatred of her was a knot I could not untangle, I despised that most of all.

The silence stretched. I felt my lips curve into the faintest ghost of a smirk, a reflex I had learned early in life, the mask of superiority, the blade of sarcasm honed to keep others at bay. But before either of us could speak, before I could decide whether to cut her down with words or ignore her entirely, Theo shifted beside me.

His head rose groggily from the mattress, hair a wild mess, eyes blinking in slow confusion. Then he saw her, and just like that, the air in the room changed.

Theo was on his feet in a motion quicker than I would have given him credit for, pulling a shirt over his bare chest as though it had been rehearsed. His face had lost its sleep-drunk slackness. It was intent now, sharp, though he didn't say a word.

Aurelia gave the faintest incline of her head. That was all. No explanation or command, Theo just followed. The two of them slipped through the door without a sound, leaving only the faint echo of boots on wood and the click of the latch.

I remained where I was, my jaw tight, my mind already spiralling into the kind of precise dissections that had once made my professors mutter of my intelligence with something like dread. I could have followed, of course. No one moved through a Malfoy household without being tracked, catalogued, filed neatly into place. Following would have been natural.

But I didn't. Not because I wasn't curious. Not because I didn't care. But because something in me recoiled at the idea of stepping into her shadow. Of chasing after Aurelia as though I wanted to know her.

No.

Better to stay seated, to press my palms together, to draw my thoughts inward like smoke into glass, but still, the unease would not be shaken.

I told myself, as I so often did when the world threatened to become unruly, that hatred made things neat. Hatred drew a clean line through complication and left a map I could follow. And so I gave it a name.

Yes, I hated her. I hated the gentle tilt of her chin that suggested, absurdly, a trust in things that had no business being trusted, I hated the soft cadence of her voice when she spoke, small, almost pleading, and yet threaded with a kind of quiet steel that annoyed me more than any raised fist, I hated the way Theo, of all of them, rose without thought to follow her, as if some invisible tether tugged at him and he could not refuse.

For a breath I tried to remember her before this, the way children rearrange one another into roles, how rivalries and friendships are carved into the soft wood of adolescence. Something hovered at the edge of my mind, a laugh, perhaps, or the flash of hair in sunlit corridors, but the recollection slid through my fingers like smoke, indistinct and mocking, and what remained was a colder certainty than nostalgia could provide.

I told myself that that was where my dislike had always begun. If I could convince myself I had always felt this way, then the anger had roots, it was not a new blemish on my temperament but something old, handed down and therefore, in its own twisted way, respectable.

It was easier to reduce her to something clear-cut. Easier to call her a parasite, to imagine her clinging to Daphne and, by extension, to the rest of us, a soft, insidious presence that spread until it could not be dislodged without pain. That thought spared me the discomfort of nuance. It allowed me to sharpen my contempt into a tool I could use, precise, effective, and completely under my control.

So I named it hatred and set it in a place of honor, let the loathing be a thing to wear, the way one slips on a tailored coat to keep the cold at bay. If Theo wished to trail after her like some faithful hound, let him, if she wished to weave secrets in half-light, let her, I would be there when whatever she concealed unraveled, ready to bare it, to dissect it, to dispatch it in the harsh light.

I stayed where I was, leaning back against the wall and closing my eyes, though there was no sleep in them, only the slow, cold turning of thought. Hatred was useful, I reminded myself, a kind of armor that kept messy affections at bay. It kept me clean. It kept me dangerous. And I hated Aurelia Avery with all the ceremonious clarity of someone reciting ancestral grievances, because it was simpler, because it made the world sensible, because it let me believe I understood exactly where I stood.

✦

The table was scattered with some debris of our last raid, half-empty bowls, the remnants of milk streaking porcelain, the gaudy, cheerful box of Coco Pops, a muggle cereal, sitting like an alien artifact in our midst. I had insisted I despised the stuff the moment the sickly sweet smell of chocolate hit my nose. It was beneath me to indulge in something so thoroughly Muggle. Despite my disdain, I spooned it into my mouth with the mechanical determination of a man carrying out a distasteful duty.

Across from me, Lorenzo was devouring his bowl like he hadn't eaten in weeks, milk dripping from the corner of his mouth, the spoon clattering as he shoveled more in before even swallowing the last bite. He had no shame, no sense of decorum. He was the kind of boy my father would have dismissed with a sneer, but at the parody of this breakfast table, he looked almost enviable in his lack of restraint.

"I can't believe muggles could create something like this" he grinned, shoving another mouthful between his teeth, not waiting for an answer.

I raised a brow, dabbing at my mouth with the corner of a napkin that was, in truth, unnecessary. "If you enjoy consuming something that looks as though it's been dredged from the bottom of a cauldron, then yes. Quite the delicacy."

Lorenzo snorted into his bowl, nearly choking. "You're still eating it though, Malfoy. Don't think I didn't notice."

I refused him the satisfaction of acknowledgment, tilting my chin as though the world were simply too trivial to respond to.

Daphne hadn't touched any food. She sat silent, her posture rigid, her fingers knotted in her lap. Her eyes were far away, unfocused, glassy in that way I had begun to recognize. When Lorenzo, with his characteristic lack of delicacy, scooped up a dripping spoonful and attempted to shove it toward her lips, she smacked his hand away without even glancing at him. Her silence unsettled me more than I cared to admit.

Mattheo was hunched at the far end of the table, parchment spread before him, quill scratching in quick, sharp movements. He hadn't joined in our mockery or the hollow attempt at levity. His face was closed, jaw tight, hair falling into his eyes as he bent closer to his work. I did not ask what he was writing. I did not want to know. There were certain truths that, once glimpsed, could never be unlearned, and I had learned enough truths already to fill a lifetime of sleepless nights.

The memory rose before I could stop it, parchment torn and crumpled in my own hands, words half-finished, a plan that was not mine but pressed upon me, weighted with a destiny I had not chosen. My breath caught, sudden and sharp, but I forced it down, schooling my face into the same neutrality that had become my armor.

Then came the knock.

Three sharp raps against the door, slicing through the muted hum of our little tableau. We all froze. The sound reverberated through me, an echo of other doors, other nights, other summons that had promised nothing but blood.

Mattheo's quill stilled. Lorenzo's spoon clattered into his bowl. Even Daphne, who had seemed so distant, lifted her head, eyes sharpening in sudden dread.

No one moved.

The knock came again. Slower, like a heartbeat against the wood.

I was the first to stand. Of course I was. Who else but a Malfoy would rise when fear held the others in place? The thought was bitter, but I clung to it anyway. I straightened my shoulders, brushing invisible dust from my robes, and strode to the door with measured steps.

Mattheo followed without a word, his face unreadable. Together, we unlatched the door and pulled it open. The sight on the threshold stole the air from my lungs.

A bodybag.

It lay sprawled like an abandoned offering, the black vinyl gleaming dully in the gray light. Its shape was unmistakable, the curve of shoulders, the long line of legs zipped away into silence.

For an instant, my vision fractured. The scene before me warped, bled into another of Dumbledore falling, robes billowing like the shroud of a corpse, the green flash still seared into my retinas. I blinked, and it was gone, only the bodybag remaining. But my hands had already curled into fists, my nails biting into my palms.

"Help me," Mattheo muttered, his voice low, stripped of inflection.

Together we dragged the bag inside, the weight of it dragging across the floorboards with a sound like teeth grating stone. It was heavy, not just in mass, but in meaning. Something in me recoiled at the idea of it crossing the threshold, fouling the stale air we all breathed.

The others gathered near the table, silent, tense. Daphne pressed back into the couch cushions, her lips pale. Lorenzo stood with his arms folded, though his posture was all defense, his eyes sharp, wary.

We heaved the bag into the cleared space at the center of the room, letting it slump unceremoniously to the floor. The silence afterward was unbearable, ringing in my ears like the aftermath of a spell.

No one rushed to open it. No one wanted to see.

I stood over it, breath steady, face composed, though inside me the old dread writhed. Whoever lay within was meant for us, for me to tear apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but confession and ruin. It should have exhilarated me. Once, I might have even told myself it would. But all I felt now was the familiar sickness that crept in whenever expectation pressed down like a boot on my throat.

"Who do you reckon it is?" Lorenzo's voice was the first to break the silence, brittle with forced humor.

"Does it matter?" I replied, my tone clipped, calculated. "They're here for one purpose. Ours."

But still my eyes lingered on the shape beneath the black vinyl, my mind already sharpening itself, cataloguing methods, rehearsing strategies. Hoping, perversely, that when the zipper was pulled back, the face beneath would be Potter's. Hoping, because if it was, then perhaps I could finally carve the ghost of Dumbledore from my memory by cutting down the boy he had placed all his faith in. Hatred, after all, was useful, and I hated Harry Potter with a clarity that tasted like salvation.

The zipper peeled back with a sound like tearing flesh, sharp and final, and the face revealed was not Potter's.

It was Granger.

Her hair was the same untamable mess it had always been, a dark, frizzy halo splayed against the inside of the bag. Her eyes were closed, lashes resting against her cheeks, her lips slack in the unnatural stillness of a stunning spell. Her wrists were bound neatly, tucked across her chest. She might have looked almost peaceful, if I ignored the fact that she had been delivered to us like a parcel.

At her collarbone was pinned a scrap of parchment, the writing brisk, impersonal: 30 minutes.

I stared. The silence stretched until it was unbearable, pressing in like the air before a storm.

Then Lorenzo laughed. It wasn't a polite chuckle, not a sly smirk. It was a full-bodied, breath-stealing cackle, the kind that made his shoulders shake and his eyes water. He bent double, hands braced on his knees, choking out the words between peals of laughter.

"Fucking hell, Malfoy, you wanted Potter so bad, and instead you got—" Another wheeze, another howl. "You got Granger! The bloody bookworm!"

Heat flared in my chest, a hot, tight coil of rage and humiliation. I straightened, spine rigid, my face a mask of cold disdain. "Shut it, Berkshire," I hissed, though my voice lacked the weight I wanted it to have.

But he only laughed harder. "Oh, come on! All that brooding, all that talk, 'When it's Potter, he's mine, he's mine', and now look. The Dark Lord sends you this. What's next, Longbottom? Maybe Lovegood, tied up with a bow?"

Even Mattheo, who had been silent and stony at my side, blinked in surprise. His mouth twisted, caught between disbelief and something close to amusement. "It's actually her," he muttered. "Granger."

"Yes, thank you, we can all see that it's Granger," I snapped, cutting across him.

But the words rang hollow, brittle. Because I had wanted Potter. I had prepared for Potter. My mind had traced every possible angle, every cruelty I could inflict upon him, every method of breaking him down until he was nothing but blood and screams. Potter had been the ghost at my shoulder, the target of all the rage I had nursed since that tower, since the moment Snape's spell lit the night.

But now, instead of Potter, I had her.

The mudblood.

The clever little shadow always perched at his side, the one who made up for his stupidity with her ceaseless knowing. She was dangerous in her own way, yes, but she was not the boy who had haunted my sleepless nights. She was not the name I had rehearsed breaking on my tongue. I stepped back, dragging a hand down my face, trying to school myself into composure.

"I'll switch," I said curtly, too fast. "Theo can handle this one. I've no use for her."

That set Lorenzo off again, laughter bubbling out of him like a pot left too long to boil. "Switch? Switch?" he wheezed, nearly doubling over. "After all that, you warding the room, you swearing none of us would touch Potter but you, and now you want to trade? Oh, no, Malfoy. You've made your bed."

His grin was feral, his laughter unrelenting. "Now you get to lie in it, with Granger!"

Mattheo had crouched at the bodybag's edge, watching her. Finally, he glanced up at me. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Neither did I," I muttered, the words bitter in my mouth.

I hated her even more now. Not because she was Granger, not because she was clever or brave or any of the things that had made her insufferable at school. I hated her because she was not him. Because she was the wrong ghost. Because the rage I had prepared had nowhere proper to go, and it turned inward, sharp and poisonous. Still, I forced my shoulders back, drawing in a slow breath through my nose.

"Fine," I said, each syllable clipped and precise, the voice of a Malfoy returning to his mask. "It's Granger. So be it. The Dark Lord delivered her, and I'll make do."

But even as I said it, Lorenzo's laughter echoed in my skull, and the bitter taste of disappointment clung to the back of my throat.

Thirty minutes. That was all the note promised. Thirty minutes until she woke. Thirty minutes until I would have to confront the fact that the enemy I'd prepared to destroy was not here, only the girl who had always stood at his side.

We carried her between us, Mattheo at the feet, me at the shoulders, and the weight of her was strange. Not heavy, not light, but awkward, like handling a mannequin with all the wrong proportions. She didn't stir, didn't twitch, didn't even breathe loudly enough for me to hear. She was simply there, limp and silent, her body surrendered to enchantment.

The room I had claimed for this purpose, our "holding chamber," as I had so loftily declared it, waited at the end of the safehouse next to Aurelia and Daphnes room. The wards shimmered faintly against the walls, runes invisible but thrumming under the skin if you lingered long enough. I had built them with Theo, and though I had provided the brains, the exacting placement of each line, the layering of counter-hexes, the perfectionism had been his.

Mattheo left me at the door without a word, his eyes following me, unreadable. He wanted no part in this. So it was my hands that gripped her shoulders, my arms that hauled her into the chair in the centre of the room. My wards sealed behind me with a hiss of air, the faintest pulse of magic, and the others vanished from view. For the first time, it was just me and her.

I tied her myself. I didn't trust Theo's neatness nor Lorenzo's mockery. Rope rasped against my palms as I wound it across her wrists, tight enough to bite, then knotted it behind the chair. Her ankles were bound as well, the rope secured to the chair legs with a precision my father would have admired. A spell would have done it faster, but spells could be undone. Knots, if you placed them just so, had a language of their own, a stubbornness no counter-curse could touch.

I stepped back and looked at her.

Granger.

Her head lolled slightly to the side, hair spilling over one cheek like a curtain. Even unconscious, she looked strained, lines at the corners of her mouth, the faintest crease between her brows, as if she was already fighting battles even in sleep. There was dirt smudged along her jawline, a scrape half-healed near her temple. Her lips were chapped. I turned sharply on my heel and began to pace. The clock in my head began its count. Twenty five minutes.

The silence didn't last long, I heard Lorenzo's laugh muted, muffled through the walls, but unmistakably his. Then his footsteps, closer, careless.

"Malfoy, how's the—!" he called, and his hand touched the door.

The wards screamed.

The crack was like lightning, the flare of power throwing him backwards across the hall with a force that rattled even my bones. His shout turned to a guttural cry, cut off mid-breath as the wards dumped him on the floor. The thud reverberated through the walls, followed by his pained groan.

I smiled grimly, despite myself.

Theo's voice carried next, he was back to the safehouse now, clearly filled in on the situation. "You fucking idiot, what did you expect to happen? Malfoy's wards aren't for show!"

"Worth it," Lorenzo groaned, still laughing between winces. "Wanted to see if he really locked himself in with her."

I ignored them. My jaw tightened, and I resumed pacing.

Her presence filled the room like smoke, even though she was silent. I had dreamed of Potter, screaming, pleading, his arrogance stripped bare, but Granger? She was something else entirely. Too clever, too calculating and too mirrored.

Because when I looked at her I saw things I did not want to see.

The war had bitten chunks out of her, same as it had me. She was thinner than I remembered, the bones in her hands sharp beneath her skin. Her robes hung wrong at the shoulders, as though she'd outgrown them in reverse. Her hair, always untamed, now looked half-singed in places, curls frayed, ends brittle.

Beneath all of that, the small things. The bite marks at the side of her nails. The faint shadows beneath her eyes. She was fraying, even in sleep.

Just like me.

I forced the thought down.

No. She was not like me. She was Granger. The clever little mudblood who had raised her hand too often, spoken too loudly, believed herself better because she was. The one who had stood at Potter's side, always the whisper in his ear, the real brain behind his undeserved triumphs.

I told myself that again and again, each repetition harder, like beating against glass.

Granger.

Granger.

Granger.

But my eyes betrayed me. They kept tracing the hollows at her temples, the tired slump of her posture, the way even in unconsciousness she seemed worn down to nothing but edges.

I stopped pacing. My boots clicked against the stone, the echo sharp in the silence.

I looked at her until the back of my throat ached. Until I remembered the bathroom mirrors shattered beneath my fists, the sting of silver against my skin, the bruises I hid under sleeves. The hollow, familiar thought.

The war has ruined me.

And then the other, unwanted.

It has ruined her too.

I shoved it down, she was not mine to pity.

When she woke, what would I say? Threats, obviously. Demands. The usual lines of interrogation. But how far? I stopped pacing, pressed my palms against the wall, and breathed slowly through my nose.

The wards hummed in answer, their steady thrum reminding me, I was in control here. This was my stage, my script. I straightened my robes, tugged at the cuffs, smoothed my hair back with one sharp pass of my fingers. My face slid into place. Cool, distant, disdainful. A Malfoy's expression, the kind that showed nothing.

As the clock in my mind ticked closer to its end, I felt the unease burrowing deeper, gnawing. Because in twenty minutes, it would not be just a girl tied to that chair. It would be her.

✦

Her eyelids fluttered, a faint tremor beneath the lashes, and then her breath shifted, deeper, sharper. Consciousness pulled her up like a tide, dragging her out of the enchantment’s depths.

I straightened, wand already in my hand, pulse quickening though my face gave nothing away.

Her eyes opened. Brown, and startled, the sharp intake of breath that followed snapping through the still air. She jerked against the ropes, wrists straining, and her gaze darted from wall to ward to me, fastening on my face with immediate recognition.

“Malfoy—” she began, voice cracked but still steady.

“Crucio.”

The word slid from my lips like silk, and her scream tore through the room like glass shattering.

Her body arched against the chair, every nerve alight beneath my spell, fingers clawing at empty air. The sound of her pain filled the warded chamber, reverberating back at us, a choir of echoes twisting into something almost symphonic.

I held it. I always held it. There was a technique to casting, one I had learned from watching, listening, absorbing every cruel lesson the Death Eaters had poured into my skin. You did not simply speak the curse, you leaned into it. You let your anger slide through you like oil, igniting every syllable, every flick of intent.

Her scream cracked into silence as I released the spell.

She slumped forward, strands of hair clinging to her damp forehead. Chest heaving, lips parted, she blinked up at me with eyes that blazed not with defeat but with fury.

I almost smiled.

“Good morning, Granger,” I said, my voice cool, precise, each word carved like marble. “I trust the accommodations are to your liking.”

Her laugh was hoarse, surprising me. “You’ve improved, Malfoy. Last I saw you, you couldn’t even disarm me properly.”

“Funny,” I murmured, pacing a slow circle around her, the click of my boots deliberate. “I don’t recall you laughing then. In fact, if memory serves, you were screaming.”

Her jaw tightened, but she said nothing. Silence was her shield.

I tapped my wand lightly against the back of her chair. “Tell me, where’s Potter?”

She met my gaze steadily. “I wouldn’t tell you if he were standing in this room.”

The corner of my mouth twitched, though the amusement did not reach my eyes. “Brave words for someone who just writhed like a trapped insect.”

Her chin lifted, that ugly Gryffindor defiance, that unbearable tilt of righteousness. “And what does it make you, Malfoy? A boy who hides behind his family name and borrowed curses.”

The words stung. They always did, because they were true.

I leaned down, bringing my face close enough to catch the faint tremor of her breath. “No, Granger. Not borrowed. Perfected.”

Before she could retort, my wand pressed against her collarbone, the tip glowing faintly. “Let’s not waste time. Where is Potter?”

Her lips curved, not a smile, exactly, but something sharper, crueler in its own right. “Somewhere you’ll never reach him.”

The fury flared, fast and hot. The idea of Potter slipping away, still beyond my grasp, still the figure haunting every plan, every failure.

“Crucio.”

Her scream ripped through the room again, louder this time, body bucking so violently the chair scraped against the floor. I held it longer, feeding my rage into the curse until her voice broke, until her throat gave out into ragged gasps.

When I lifted it, she sagged, trembling, sweat soaking the fabric of her robes. Her head lolled to the side, hair hiding half her face, when her gaze met mine again, there was no surrender. Only that stubborn, maddening light.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she rasped.

I inhaled slowly, smoothing the front of my robes, forcing composure back into my limbs. “Don’t tempt me.”

I began to pace again in slow, taunting circles.

“You see, Granger,” I said, my voice almost conversational now, “I know you. I’ve watched you. Hogwarts’ brightest witch. Perfect scores, perfect plans, perfect little speeches about fairness and justice. You live for control, don’t you? You hoard information like oxygen. So I know you’re dying to speak, dying to prove that you’re smarter than me, that you can outwit me even here.”

Her jaw clenched, knuckles white against the ropes.

“And yet—” I paused directly behind her, lowering my voice until it brushed her ear. “You’ve said nothing. Which tells me one of two things, either Potter has abandoned you, left you with scraps and shadows, or you know something worth protecting.”

Her breath hitched, barely, but I caught it.

I smiled to myself, a sharp, thin curve of satisfaction. “So which is it, Granger? Have you been discarded, or are you still clutching his secrets to your chest like a pet?”

“Better a pet than a coward,” she shot back, voice raw but steady. “Better a pet than you.”

The laugh that slipped from my lips was low, brittle. “Coward? You think I’m a coward?” I stepped in front of her, eyes burning into hers. “I’m still standing. I’m still fighting. And where are you, Granger? At my mercy.”

She met my gaze without blinking, even through the wreckage of pain in her face. “Then kill me.”

I wanted to. For a single, sharp heartbeat, I wanted nothing more than to silence her forever, to snuff out that infuriating flame. But I couldn’t. Not because of any shred of decency, that had been scorched out of me long ago, but because she was valuable. She was information. She was leverage.

I exhaled slowly, stepping back, pressing the urge down until it calcified into something colder.

“No,” I said softly, dangerously. “Death would be mercy. And mercy is wasted on you.”

I should have taken it. The easier road would have been to press my wand to her throat and do precisely what she asked, remove the problem, silence the insolence, and walk out with the soft satisfaction of an act performed and a legacy recalled. But I had learned patience in a different school, if there was a thing to be gained, it was worth withholding the finality of death until its usefulness had been wrung dry.

So I escalated.

The first phase was calculated cruelty rather than instinctive violence. I began with deprivation, a slow removal of comfort. The chair was bolted in place so she could not shift, the ropes adjusted so blood sang at the edges of her wrists but did not cut. I left her there gasping and raw, a husk testing the edges of endurance.

I didn’t think of pity, I catalogued reaction. How she swallowed, how her neck corded when she tore breath into lung, how her hands clenched and unraveled in torturous rhythm. Her body answered in patterns, an organism learning to hate the world as efficiently as any soldier learns to obey.

When the ropes had done their work, when they had bruised and shown her a different kind of boundary. I forced her to stand once, then sat her back down, each movement a demonstration. I made her taste dust and iron and the tang of her own blood as I grazed an old cut on her lip with the tip of my wand until it bled anew. I told her lies as I worked, about Potter being taken, about the Order being crushed, about friends dead and the world shrinking to a single room of flame.

Each lie I shaped for maximum fracture. I wanted her to hear the possibility of despair and feel it clench at the base of her skull, to have hope become brittle before my eyes. She refused to break for the first few lies; she chewed the words and spat them back, defiant. That anger tightened me. It made me more precise.

I moved from words to the bending of senses. Not a killing curse, not a simple cut, but things that wore a person down. I conjured cold that ran like ink across the floor and curled up her sleeves as though winter itself had been bottled and poured over her limbs. I made light flash in her eyes with flicks of wand and then suffused the room with a close, choking dark so that she tasted panic and could not find purchase on the world. Those were small torments, apparently petty. But they took the surface of someone apart, fear, blindness, the fragility of certainty, so that later cruelties could carve deeper.

She responded each time as she always had, stubbornly and ferociously. Even when the world narrowed to nothing but the taste of metal in her mouth and the sound of her own ragged breathing, those eyes, those eyes kept flaring. I watched them, noting the rhythm, cataloguing which spells bent her faster, which words slipped past her guard. I took meticulous pleasure in it, shut myself off from nuance so I could study with a surgeon’s coldness. It would have made my father proud in a perverse, private way.

When she began to find a rhythm of resistance, an iron metronome of breath and snarl, I felt the old feelings in me rise. I had trained for this. I had imagined this. The fantasy that had warmed me since the tower, the sense of finally being put to use, sanctioned violence that erased the taste of failure flooded forward. For a dizzy moment I let myself imagine Potter’s face crumbling under this same regimen and felt a small revanchist glee that tasted almost like relief. Then I remembered the prize at hand, Hermione Granger was useful in her own right. She would tell me nothing if I allowed her to remain merely enraged. The tool for that was not brute force alone.

I moved to threats that were psychological and personal because nothing cuts like a person’s mind being invaded. I stopped at the edge of legilimency, only a warning offered. My voice lowered and slid into her ear in a way designed to unsettle. I spoke of knowledge I could reach for if I desired, a cold list of secrets I could pluck and lay bare, memories, names, faces she kept tucked behind teeth. I promised, without promising, that next time, I would not be satisfied with mere compliance. Next time, I would take what she would not hand over.

She answered me then, not with information, but with a laugh that was a thin, bitter thing.

“You think you can hold my mind like an open book?” she rasped. “You think you can read me like you read a ledger? You’re wrong.”

The wrongness of it stung deeper than any curse. There was a contempt in her words that made my hands ache. To her, I was someone to be mocked at length. It was unbearable.

So I went harsher.

I let the pain be precise, not about spectacle. Crucio, used with elegant restraint at first, stabs of agony followed by cold air to let her settle, then stabs again. The room filled with the ugly sound of her screaming again and then the quiet that follows, when a person is left with nothing but the hard work of merely keeping breath in lungs that feel like they’re on fire.

There was no cruelty in randomness, I kept my hand steady, the curse measured, long enough to make her taste the possibility of surrender and short enough to keep her defiant enough to be useful.

She did not surrender.

There were moments when I pressed the wand so close to her face I could see the sweat on her lashes and the small quiver at the corner of her eye, and yet the defiance held. The ropes bit red into her wrists. Her clothes were wet with sweat. Her hair stuck to her temples and still she refused. She spat at me once, the fleck of saliva landed on the floor and I laughed because there was a ferocity to it that was almost admirable.

Real, hot, ridiculous anger, filled me when the spectacle didn’t break her. It was intolerable not to be able to find a clean, decisive end when I wanted one. My hands shook with the urge to be absolute. My chest burned as if someone had lit a coal against my sternum. I wanted to undo this public proof that neither I nor anyone else could bend the world to his will with the mere pressure of will. I hated the way she smiled, the way she hurled back a taunt, the way her brain continued to work even when her body was nothing but a canvas of bruises.

“You will tell me,” I said finally, quietly, the sort of voice that carries a promise to be even crueler later. “You will tell me where Potter is. You will tell me what the Order intends. You will tell me who else is in their network. Or I will come for your mind, and when I do, it will not be pleasant.”

I did not speak of spells or incantations now, these were idle details for those who needed instruction manuals. For me, the promise was the point. I wanted her to understand the inevitability. I wanted her to feel the slow collapse of options. For the first time she trembled not from the pain but from the calculation, the real knife I wielded was the one that could reach inside the place where she kept every hope and memory and unravel it.

She laughed then, a ragged thing that made something in me freeze. “You think you’re the only one who fears being read?” she said. “You think your threats shake me? You don’t even understand what you’ll find.”

“Then stop being coy and say it,” I snapped, Crucio flickered again at the edge of pronunciation, so close to casting I could taste it like iron.

She bit off a curse instead of answering. A hot word, filth and power in one syllable. The sort of word you practise in the mirror to make it sound like steel.

I let the moment stretch, she had courage in abundance, she had strength I would never admit is beyond great. But I also had time, and I had a long cold hunger that had nothing to do with moral triumph, everything to do with the little voice in my head that wanted proof. Proof that I could make the world answer on my terms.

So I left her. It was not a retreat bred of pity or revaluation of tactics, it was anger made pragmatic. I leaned over her once more, close enough to feel her pulse flutter against the underside of my jaw.

“Next time,” I whispered, “I will take what I want from you. Legilimency will be torturous. You will not enjoy it.”

That last word was a lie and a curse both, meant to frighten, to promise suffering beyond the body. She watched me go with the same cool fire in her eyes that had met me at every turn. It was infuriating.

The door sealed behind me with the same soft hiss the wards had made when they wrapped her in their prison. Somewhere, Lorenzo muttered a joke I ignored, Mattheo scribbled again at the table, all secret and shadow.

I was not a soldier right then. I was a man gnawed by the idea that what I wanted most could be denied by stubbornness and wit. That impotence made me vicious in ways that were not always strategic. I ground my teeth until they hurt. I wanted to return to her and drag out the thing I needed and never stop until it was raw and useless.

Instead I went to the window and stared out at the street, letting the gray light wash my face. I rehearsed Legilimency in my head, I thought of what I might find and was both hungry and sick at the same time. The thought that someone else had the keys to secrets I craved was unbearable, so I planned.

I would do it well. I would not give myself over to fury entirely. I would make it precise, professional, efficient. I would extract every name and location and plan until the Order was a rag and Potter was a message carved in bone.

I promised myself quietly that when I did, I would know nothing in the world could touch me for that achievement. That in the end, the scar that haunted me from the tower would finally mean something other than a failure.

Theo found me pacing in the narrow corridor, my boots striking the stone in rhythm with my temper. He had that insufferable smirk painted across his face, the one that told me he was about to say something designed to irritate me.

“Well,” he drawled, hands tucked neatly into his pockets, “how’s married life with Granger?”

I stopped pacing and gave him a look sharp enough to cut skin. “Careful, Nott.”

He laughed, which only stoked the irritation burning through me. “Don’t glare at me like that. You’ve been obsessed with the idea of Potter landing at our doorstep, and instead you’ve been gifted his clever little shadow. The irony is almost poetic. Tragic, but poetic.”

I could have hexed the grin off his face, but instead I folded my arms and leaned against the wall, forcing myself into stillness. “You know nothing about irony, Theo. Nor poetry.”

“And yet,” he said, closing the distance between us with that lazy grace of his, “you’re seething like a poet scorned.” He tilted his head, examining me as though I were some strange creature under glass. “Tell me, was it everything you dreamed? Did she confess Potter’s secrets with tears in her eyes the moment you asked?”

I clenched my jaw. The truth of her silence gnawed at me more than his teasing ever could. Theo’s grin softened into something subtler, more measured. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a small velvet pouch. Without preamble, he tossed it at me. My reflexes caught it before I even thought to let it fall.

“What is this?” I asked, suspicious.

“Open it.”

Inside, nestled against dark velvet, gleamed a pair of cufflinks, silver chased with intricate detail. The craftsmanship was exquisite, so fine that each line of engraving seemed alive, breathing.

“They were Abraxas’s,” Theo said casually, as if he were discussing the weather. “Your grandfather. Thought you might appreciate them more than the dust collecting on their box.”

For a moment, I said nothing. Abraxas Malfoy. My father’s father. A name whispered in corridors, but never spoken plainly in our house. Even my father, for all his arrogance, seldom spoke of him, as though the memory carried too much weight, too much shadow.

I traced the circles with my thumb, feeling the sharp ridges beneath my skin. Beautiful, but dangerous. Just as I had always imagined him.

“I didn’t know him,” I said finally. My voice felt thinner than I intended.

“No one our age did,” Theo replied. He leaned against the opposite wall, his posture almost lazy. “But he was… significant. One of the Dark Lord’s trusted, back when he was still Tom Riddle. Before he became the figure we know now. Your grandfather had influence. Authority. Power enough to matter.”

His words curled through me like smoke, feeding the part of me I hated most, the part that still wanted that same legacy, that same seat in the shadows of kings. I pinned the cufflinks to my shirt, fingers steady, movements precise. They fit as though they had been waiting for me. A small detail, perhaps.

I caught my reflection in the cracked mirror across the hall. For a moment, it wasn’t my face staring back at me, but the echo of him. Pale, composed, eyes burning with a hunger no amount of power could ever sate.

Abraxas Malfoy. Tom Riddle’s inner circle.

The thought fascinated me more than it should have.

Theo’s voice broke my reverie. “They suit you.”

I straightened my cuffs, letting the silver catch the light.

Theo smirked, watching me with the sharp amusement of someone who had given a man both gift and burden. “Don’t thank me all at once.”

“I won’t thank you at all,” I said, but my voice lacked its usual venom. The cufflinks glinted at my wrists, quiet symbols of a history I both loathed and longed for.

I turned away from him, pacing once more, though slower this time. The weight of the relics pressed against my skin, anchoring me to a legacy of power I could neither escape nor deny. I wondered if the shadow of Abraxas Malfoy was not something I carried unwillingly, but something I might one day step into willingly.

Mattheo’s voice carried through the narrow confines of the safehouse like a whipcrack, sharp and commanding, the kind of voice that brooked no hesitation.

“Living room. Now.”

The demand was not unusual, but the tone, there was an edge to it, a severity that turned even the air stagnant.

I rose at once, irritation a reflex as much as obedience, brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from the sleeve where Abraxas’s cufflink gleamed in the dim light. Theo fell into step behind me, his mouth curved in a half-smile that suggested he was enjoying the disruption more than the command itself, while Lorenzo shuffled along in his careless way, shoulders loose, hair unkempt, as though he were perpetually half-drunk on life itself.

The living room was already half-filled when I entered. Daphne was curled in her customary position on the couch, pale but composed, her expression giving nothing away. She shifted only enough to make space when Lorenzo practically collapsed beside her, elbow catching hers until she swatted him off with visible annoyance.

Aurelia was there too, of course. Always there, threaded into the fabric of our days like some unwanted stain that no amount of scrubbing would erase. She perched at the far end of the couch, spine straight, eyes already trained on Mattheo with something between fear and obedience.

Mattheo stood before us, not in his usual state of half-dress and casual disdain, but clad in the full nobility of what he was. The black of his robes seemed to absorb the faint lamplight, rendering him a silhouette, a figure carved from darkness itself. His boots clicked against the stone as he moved, deliberate, militant, not a trace of hesitation in his step.

The mask was absent, but he did not need it. His face, stern and unreadable, was mask enough.

My stomach tightened. Death Eater attire only meant one thing. Movement. Action. Task.

“Up,” he barked, voice hoarse with urgency. “All of you. No questions. No excuses. We leave in five.”

The room shifted uneasily. Daphne’s fingers tightened on the fabric of the couch. Lorenzo let out a long, theatrical sigh but pushed himself upright all the same. Aurelia’s gaze darted briefly toward me, though whether for reassurance or silent accusation I could not tell. I ignored it, as I always did.

“There isn’t time to explain,” Mattheo continued, voice rising over the faint sounds of movement as we gathered ourselves. “You’ll know what you need to know when we’re there. Until then, you move when I say move, and you keep your mouths shut. Do you understand?”

 

I inclined my head with measured precision. Daphne gave the barest nod. Lorenzo, the idiot, lifted two fingers in some parody of salute before Daphne smacked his arm down again. Theo only stared, the glint in his eyes suggested he, too, recognised the weight pressing against us.

✦

We vanished with the familiar, awful feeling of being unmade and then reassembled somewhere else, and dropped into Diagon Alley like a freight of bad intent.

What met us was a ruin masquerading as a market street. My first, brutal impression was of a town that had been shaved at the edges and left raw. Shopfronts that, in another life, had gleamed and boasted polished windows now hung like broken teeth, shutters dangled on rusted hinges, the crooked, jaunty sign for Florean’s Ice Cream leaned at a sick angle, its painted letters flaked and ghost-pale. Glass littered the cobbles, a scattering of papers, posters, and ash drifted where the wind found pockets to play. Boards nailed across doorways rattled. A sweet shop front gaped open like a mouth missing its teeth.

People filled the street in ragged clusters, some wore banners, others stood on crates or upturned barrels and shouted. Signs were everywhere, scribbled on whatever could be commandeered, cardboard, torn cloth, flat bones of once-proud pamphlets.

FOR THE MINISTRY. END THE BLOOD. HANDS OFF POTTER. One placard read FOR THE CHILDREN. Another simply read NO MORE DEATH. There were faces I recognised in the crowd, faces I’d passed in the halls of Hogwarts, ordinary neighbours, shopkeepers with soot-streaked aprons, a woman with a toddler clutched at her breast, all lit by a feverish righteousness that made them both dangerous and pitiful.

People argued. People cried. Someone across the way had strung up a magical banner that projected, in stuttering script, names and accusations like a ledger of grievance. A group of ragged youths had painted an enormous SPEAK across a wall in clumsy, angry strokes. It all looked like a city figuring out its own fury in charcoal lines.

“What did they do to the Alley?” I muttered, more to myself than to anyone. The streets had the kind of damage that judicial actions leave. Windows smashed wide, the stone blackened in arcs where spells had hit, and boarded shops that had clearly been emptied of anything saleable and then burned out. The place felt desecrated.

“We take what we came for and we leave,” Mattheo said, voice low in my ear though he stood a dozen paces ahead, perfectly still in his robes, a black shape of composure. He had positioned himself where he could see both the market and the access-ways; being seen to be in control was, in itself, a spell. He had that look on, the one that suggested a plan had already been carved into stone and we were only there to execute the cut.

He looked at us once, and his eyes lingered on my cuffs with something like appreciation. “Listen up.” The syllables were crisp, the sort of sound that would have everyone’s head swivel. “There’s no time to waste. We’ll make a sweep, push the crowd back, find any who shout against us, any who shelter sympathisers, and take them. Those who won’t bend will be made to. Do not hesitate.” He glanced at Daphne and Aurelia, calling them his side felt too small a phrase, he treated them like a blade he could rely on to carve whatever piece he wanted. “I’ll take them. Malfoy, Berkshire, Nott, you take the other side. Move fast. Leave nothing that breathes and opposes us.”

The ease of that order, the casual way “leave nothing” hung like a sentence fragment, it was a kind of violence in itself. I swallowed the thoughts that always rose when Mattheo spoke as though we were already an army, and I felt the familiar gear in my mind engage. Strategy is comfort. Strategy is control. Give me direction and my head will make the world neat again.

Lorenzo grinned, the expression of a man who thought the whole world was a delightful theatre. He patted his pockets as if checking props. “So, do I get to be theatrical?” he asked, not waiting for permission. “I could make a scene.” He flat-out loved this, the possibility of drama thrilled him like sugar.

Theo’s face was half-hidden in shadow, but I saw his fingers, callused and jittering, they twisted at the hem of his sleeve.

We moved, Mattheo's voice was the beat by which we marched He split Diagon Alley into lines and pockets, and we took our group’s allotted area. The crowd parted with a mixture of fear and contempt, some tried to stand their ground with placards raised, their faces flushed with righteousness, but a few of them crumpled and ran when the first flashing glints of black-cloaked figures wove through the street.

“You watch for those who shout too loudly,” Mattheo said as he drew a line in the air with his wand, “or who make a stand. We take them. We make examples.”

Lorenzo danced ahead of me, disgusting theatrics in every movement. He delighted in the show of it, a taunt cast one way, a flourish of a wand the next, a hand thrown to the sky, as if he’d been performing this desecration on a stage for decades. He would pick someone, an orator or a banner-holder, sweep them up verbally, cradle them in a circle of his voice and then fling them into the air with a flourish of force that sent their limbs flailing.

He loved the way the crowd’s fear caught like wind in his sails. I watched him make victims spin and fly and he laughed each time like it was the punchline of a joke only he could hear.

I did not laugh. I removed myself from the joke. My work was clean. Quick. Necessary, I told myself in the language of survival. When a man lunged at me with a broken placard, more hope than threat in his eyes, I did not indulge in spectacle.

My wand came up, a simple, small arc, and he fell silent in a single motion. No contortions, no theatrics, simply gone from the equation. There was no room for melodrama on my side of the street.

Theo was a different thing entirely. At first, I thought it was nerves, some ugly, human trembling under the strain. But then I saw the way his wand hand trembled with a looseness that had nothing to do with fear. He was sloppier than a man in the grip of adrenaline should be. Spells angled wrong, harmless charms misfired into splintering fountains of sparks that caught a stall awning alight and sent a small shower of hot embers across a woman’s shoulders, he cursed under his breath and laughed a hiccupping laugh when a feeble hex that should have knocked someone off their feet instead sent them sprawling into a cart of rotten fruit.

He staggered on his feet, a little, more often than could be chalked up simply to exhaustion. There was a loose, drunken rhythm to his casting, I snapped at him once, a blade of a command to shape the scene into something effective.

“Pull yourself together, Nott!” I barked, my voice stripped of indulgence. “You’re making a mess.”

He only flashed a grin, the kind that was too young and too careless for this afternoon.

“Relax, Draco,” he slurred, and the word slid out of him like a joke he didn’t mean. He aimed his wand at a cluster of placards and flung a charm that sent them fluttering like blown leaves, and then he stumbled over his own feet, straightened, and laughed as if the world had become absurdly funny.

I was bewildered, and it showed in the small, irrational ways I tried to justify it to myself. Perhaps he was exhausted. Perhaps he had been up all night. Perhaps something had snapped and this was the effect. But none of those reasons steadied the sight of him launching spells the way a drunk throws bottles, without trajectory, without care, and sometimes with an ugly aim.

I caught sight of a woman with a child, trying to push them behind a stall, and something colder than thought marched through me. The child’s face showed confusion more than fear until a stray bolt, not mine as I had been careful, hit a crate nearby and splinters sent the child shouting into the woman’s arms.

She tried to run. Lorenzo, in a moment of showmanship, sent a gust that toppled her to the ground and then lifted the child to dangle above the heads of those around us, to the delighted howl of Lorenzo’s own voice. The child screamed and then went still, and I felt the old, raw thing rasp at my throat, not regret, exactly, but the nameless recognition that what we were doing had teeth and a taste.

I kept killing fast and low. I aimed to end a resistance with a blink. A man lunged at Theo because Theo’s charm had sent his stall ablaze, he was an athlete in his desperation, a clean, angry charge and I closed the distance between us in two strides, wand a whisper, and he folded instantly.

The crowd beneath the banners, seeing bodies fall with no decree and no justice, began to fragment. Some disappeared into alleys and broken doorways. Others, the ones with mouths still full of slogans, found themselves seized and hauled into knots on the cobbles, their shouts were muffled by hands, by curses, by the weight of our bodies. We dragged them aside and bound them, placed them into pockets carved out by our violence, temporary prisons that would be permanent enough for the purposes of our message.

Lorenzo treated it as an audience. He did rope tricks with a man’s arms, made him jive like a to the tune of a hex and then sent him stumbling into the crowd to be trampled by his own attempt to flee. I think he believed cruelty could be artistic, I believed it was an inconvenience, a step on a path.

Theo’s laughter echoed like a small bell when a barrel toppled and soaked a dozen people in sour ale. He hiccuped and staggered and then cast a blinding charm that ruined two men’s eyesight for the remainder of the day, at least. When I saw the expression in one man’s eyes, a glassy, terrified thing that registered only the immediate, something cold hardened in me. This is not the way to wage war, I thought. This is not skill. This is a man bleeding himself into a stupor and pulling us down with him.

“Stop fucking around!” I yelled once more. My voice carried, even the wind seemed momentarily to hold its breath. “Pull it together. You want to be useful, then be useful.”

Theo’s head turned as if the sound of my voice had woken him from some pleasant dream. He grinned, the expression of a boy who’s been given the permission to be wicked and finds it delicious.

He was laughing as he threw a curse that sent a man’s banners skyward and then toppled the stand he sheltered behind. The man tried to grab the banners and fell into a cart of rotten fruit, and when he scrambled up, his face was raw and red and pleading. I stepped in and ended him myself and then turned to find Theo watching me as if I’d performed a clever trick.

I’m not stupid. I can see the map of cause and effect. Theo’s sloppy work cost us control, and control was the only thing that kept the street from turning into pure chaos, the kind that humiliated even us. I called it like I saw it, a liability dressed in charm. He only smiled. The smile was maddening, a mirror held up to the madness of it all. I let the bewilderment sit against my teeth and turned it into something else, a relentless focus that made my spells sharp and fast.

By the time Mattheo called us to regroup, the Alley had been cleansed of its noise. The banners lay in the gutters. The mouths that still moved did so within cages of ropes and wards, voices muffled, anger sealed into little islands of silence. The crowd thinned like a tide, parts of it washing away, some pieces left to rot. Muggles would have called it purging. We called it necessity.

We walked back through the alley, the smell of smoke and the metallic tang of adrenaline hung in the air, thick and distinct. The sound of someone wailing in the distance punctured the aftershock, a raw sound that the heart makes when it realises itself emptied. I felt nothing for it beyond a small, mechanical nausea. It rattled something in me that I hid under a harder mask.

When the door to the safehouse sealed behind us, the echo of the street clung in our clothes, in our hair, lodged like grit in the corners of our lips. I scrubbed my hands, feeling them tremble slightly from the exertion of precision. I caught sight of Aurelia on the couch again, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes catching the damp light as if it were a wound. I looked away. My rage had a way of returning home like a dog that drives nails into the wall. I didn’t want to see her ideocracy routine of grief.

 

We had done what needed doing. We had sown fear and harvested silence. The city would tremble. The message was delivered and somewhere in the hollow left behind all those fallen bodies, I thought, some part of me would find its cold, tidy solace.

✦

The hallway was wrong.

That was my first thought, though I could not have said why. It stretched on in both directions, an endless ribcage of black stone, walls narrowing and widening as though the very air were breathing. There were no torches, no lanterns, no windows, yet I could see a muted, ashen light, enough to make shadows crawl along the floor like oil. My footsteps echoed against the stone, sharp and solitary, the sound a reminder that I was, undeniably, alone.

Except I wasn’t.

I heard a scrape of leather on stone. A step, light as breath, behind me. My body turned before my mind could protest, wand hand twitching, but there was nothing. Nothing but the corridor, stretching infinitely, an empty vein carved into the dark. My pulse thudded in my throat. I turned forward again, walked faster.

Then came another sound. But this time it was sharper, closer, like the drag of fingernails across stone. I spun round again, this time quicker, sharper, wand raised.

And he was there.

The figure stood less than a yard away, as if he’d been conjured from the air itself. He was young, barely older than I was. His shoulders squared in a way that bespoke breeding, entitlement, his robes immaculate, black cut through with silver thread that caught the dim light and glimmered faintly. His hair, pale as frost, was swept back in a style I had only ever seen in fading portraits at the Manor, and his eyes were cold, knife-grey, so like mine, were unmistakable.

“Abraxas,” I breathed before I could stop myself.

The name felt foreign on my tongue, as if I had no right to utter it.

His lips curved into the faintest smile, though it did not warm his eyes. “So. You know me.”

I swallowed. My throat was dry. “I’ve seen your portraits. At the Manor.”

“Yes.” He tilted his head, assessing me with the sharp detachment of someone weighing a specimen, not a relative. “They did not do me justice.” His voice was smooth, aristocratic, clipped with precision. There was a subtle arrogance in every syllable, as if language itself bent under his command.

For a moment, I could not speak. The sight of him alive, young and eerily whole, was disorienting, dizzying. But then his gaze sharpened, cutting through my hesitation.

“You’re thinner than I expected,” Abraxas said softly, almost idly. “Palid, hollow. The last Malfoy scion reduced to this.” He gestured faintly, his long fingers dismissive, as though brushing away dust.

Anger spiked through me before I could temper it. “I am not reduced to anything.”

A low chuckle escaped him, rich and disdainful. “Not reduced, you say? My dear boy, you are diminished by your very existence. The line ends with you. No brothers. No heirs. No strength.” His gaze flicked to my hands, my shoulders, my stance, with the cruel precision of an anatomist. “You were given a task, once. A sacred charge to kill an old man who was already dying. And you—” he leaned forward, sudden, his grey eyes boring into mine, “could not even do that.”

Heat burned the back of my throat. “You know nothing of it.”

“Oh, but I do.” His voice was silk wrapped around steel. “I know you faltered. I know you hesitated. I know you were spared only because others cleaned your mess. That, Draco, is your legacy. Not conquest. Not cunning. Hesitation.”

The words landed like curses, sinking into my skin, my bones. I clenched my fists, nails digging into palms until pain sparked.

“You think yourself clever? Strategic?” Abraxas’s smile sharpened, wolfish and cruel. “Do not lie to yourself. You wear cunning as a mask to hide your trembling hands. You pretend at cruelty, but you have not yet let it soak into your marrow. That is why they do not fear you. That is why you will never be enough.”

“I am enough.” The words scraped from me, raw. “I have killed. I have—”

“You have killed nameless fools in the street.” His interruption was swift, merciless. “It means nothing. Any boy with a wand and a dark command can slaughter rabble. But you?” He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the faint sheen of light across his pale skin, the sharp angle of his jaw. “You have the chance to carve your name in history. To make the world tremble with it. Instead, you cower. And when history turns its eyes to you, it will remember only that you failed.”

A tremor ran through me, though I despised myself for it. His voice was too close, too sharp. I wanted to turn, to walk away, but the corridor pressed on infinitely in both directions. There was no end, no escape.

“You shame me,” Abraxas whispered. “You shame our blood. Once, Malfoys commanded respect, we were ruthless, proud, untouchable. Now? You are an errand boy in another man’s war. A dog on a leash. You mistake obedience for strength, yet every command you follow is proof of your weakness.”

My chest tightened, rage and humiliation tangled. “You don’t know what it is like.”

“I know precisely what it is like.” His expression darkened, suddenly solemn, though his eyes gleamed like knives. “I stood in the circle. I fought beside the Dark Lord when he was no more than a shadow. I made myself indispensable. I bent the world toward my will. That is what it means to be a Malfoy. That is what it means to be worthy of our name.”

His lips curled, soft, cruel. “And you, Draco? You are a shadow of a shadow. A boy fumbling to wear a dead man’s crown.”

My breath came fast, shallow. Words pressed against my tongue, desperate, furious, but none left my mouth.

Abraxas leaned back slightly, studying me with something like amusement. “Perhaps it is better this way. Better the line end with you than drag our name further into the mud. I will not weep for it. I will not grieve the loss.”

I flinched, though I tried to mask it as stillness. His words cut deeper than any curse.

“Pathetic,” he said simply.

The corridor stretched on around us, endless and unyielding, the silence between his words louder than thunder. And I could not decide if I wanted to strike him, or fall to my knees, or run until the dark swallowed me whole.

The silence thickened, and in it Abraxas smiled again.

“You’ve been given opportunities most would kill for, Draco,” he said softly, his words like venom dripped drop by drop. “Yet, you squander them. Do you imagine your companions, the pitiful circle you cling to, would falter as you have?”

“Shut up,” I snapped before I could stop myself.

Abraxas’s eyes gleamed with triumph, as though he had been waiting for that crack. “Touch a nerve, did I? Good. It is time you felt something beyond that empty shell you call strength.”

I turned from him, breath shallow, the endless corridor spinning. But then came pain.

It struck like lightning.

My body seized, every nerve igniting with fire. My knees buckled, and I hit the stone floor hard, palms scraping raw as I collapsed under the curse I knew too well. Crucio.

The scream clawed up my throat before I could swallow it, spilling raw into the hall. My vision blurred, white searing into the edges of my sight. My back arched involuntarily, muscles snapping taut as though my very bones wanted to tear themselves apart.

Then, almost suddenly, there was silence. The curse had lifted. My breath came ragged, broken, chest heaving. I pushed myself up on trembling arms, fury and terror crashing against one another.

“You—” My voice cracked, thin, useless.

The curse hit again before I could finish.

This time it was sharper, crueler, threaded with a precision that made me think he knew exactly how to target the weakest points of my body. My teeth rattled in my skull, and my nails scraped grooves into the stone as if I could claw my way out of my own skin.

It stopped. My body slumped to the floor. Every limb shook, my chest rose and fell as though I’d been drowned and dragged back gasping from the depths. I tried to focus, tried to push the fog away, but his voice cut through it like a blade.

“You cannot even endure a few moments of pain,” Abraxas sneered, his face above mine now. “What did you expect, Draco? That the world would hand itself to you without blood? Without suffering? You disgrace our name.”

I spat, blood wetting my lips. I hadn’t realised I’d bitten my tongue.

He crouched low, so that his cold grey eyes were level with mine. “Tell me, what would your father think if he could see you now? Quivering. Broken. A child begging for mercy in silence.”

“I’m not—”

The third Crucio tore the words apart.

This time I screamed, a ragged, tearing sound that felt as though it ripped straight from my lungs. The agony was endless, relentless, as though time itself slowed and stretched beneath it. When at last it ended, I was left gasping on the stone floor, shaking uncontrollably.

Abraxas did not stand. He reached out, one pale hand curling like a serpent around my throat.

The touch was almost gentle at first, fingertips ghosting against my skin, before pressure settled.

“You will never be enough,” he whispered.

His grip tightened.

Air vanished. My throat convulsed, lungs straining against emptiness. I clawed at his hand, nails tearing into skin that would not yield, his grip like iron. My legs kicked against the stone, useless, wild. The corridor darkened around the edges of my vision, the walls closing in as though they too conspired to choke me.

I could not breathe. My chest burned, my body jerked, and still he held me there, his eyes calm, cold, pitiless.

“This is how the Malfoy line ends,” Abraxas hissed, face close, voice curling into my ear like smoke. “Gasping, weak and nameless.”

The pressure became unbearable, the edges of the world collapsing to nothing but the feel of his hand, the darkness flooding into me.

I jolted awake.

The safehouse ceiling swam above me, shadowed by the faint wash of early light. My chest heaved, air clawing its way back into my lungs. I sat up abruptly, drenched in sweat, heart hammering as though it would split through my ribs.

It was a dream. That was all. Only a dream.

But the echo of his hand still lingered, phantom and raw. My throat ached with every breath. I stumbled from the mattress, nearly tripping over Theo’s sprawled leg. He muttered in his sleep, rolling over, oblivious. I pressed a hand to my mouth to steady the shudder in my breath and fled down the hall.

The bathroom mirror met me with its pale, merciless light. I gripped the sink, water rushing from the tap in a desperate hiss, splashing handfuls onto my face. The cold did little to banish the heat clinging to my skin, or the pounding in my head.

When I finally dared to look up, my stomach dropped.

Faint, angry marks circled my throat. Reddish, mottled bruises already darkening, I touched them with trembling fingers, and pain answered, sharp and real.

Not a dream.

Not entirely.

I staggered back, hitting the tiled wall. My breath stuttered, shallow, uneven. The mirror showed me pale, shaking, hair plastered damp to my forehead, my own eyes wide with something I did not recognise, terror.

Abraxas’s words coiled through my mind, inescapable.

This is how the Malfoy line ends.

I pressed harder against the bruises, as though pressure alone could erase them, hide them, deny them. But the mirror did not lie.

They were there and I could still feel his hand.

I scrubbed until the skin burned raw beneath my fingers, water streaking down my chest, down the porcelain sink, pink now where skin gave way to broken capillaries. The marks did not fade. They sat there stubbornly, proof that the dream had teeth.

Panic twisted inside me. I could not stay in that room, not with the mirror mocking me, not with the walls pressing in. My breath came in frantic gasps as I shoved the door open, moving fast, near stumbling back into the main room of the house.

And froze.

There, at the dining table, sat Abraxas Malfoy.

Not the withered patriarch I knew from family portraits, but the same seventeen-year-old boy from the corridor, composed as though this were his rightful place. He lounged back in one of our rickety chairs as though it were a throne, one arm draped lazily across the back, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth.

“Those marks suit you,” he said smoothly, eyes flicking to the bruises at my throat. “Almost as if you were born with them. I think that I did well on you Draco.”

My lungs stopped. Every nerve screamed at me to move, to do something, but I couldn’t. My body was stone. My mind, a storm.

Sitting across from Abraxas was another boy, posture sharp, gaze colder than winter. I recognised the Dolohov face immediately, though this too was a younger version. Antonin Dolohov in his youth, though there was nothing youthful about his eyes. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together with the kind of stillness that spoke of violence carefully leashed.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Dolohov said, voice flat but edged with disdain. “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have something of ours.”

Before I could speak, shuffle or blink, there was motion behind me.

Theo stumbled in from the living room, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, hair a mess, shirt half-hanging from his shoulders. Lorenzo followed, less bleary, dragging his feet like he’d only just risen, but the lazy smile slipped when his gaze caught on the table. Mattheo entered last, still riddled with sleep.

I saw it in Theo first, the jolt in his body, the way his spine went rigid. Because out of the hallway, calm as if he belonged here, stepped Nott Senior.

Theo flinched. It wasn’t subtle.

The sight was almost worse than the dream.

Abraxas’s smirk widened, razor-sharp. His gaze skimmed lazily across each of us, pausing on me, then on Theo, then Lorenzo. “The paper. The mirror. The ring.” His voice was smooth, but the words pressed like blades into the air. “You’ve got them, and you’ll hand them over.”

Dolohov didn’t smile. He simply inclined his head once, his eyes black with something like hunger. “Best not waste time. They’re not toys.”

The words didn’t make sense, not yet. But Theo went pale, his glance darting to Lorenzo, then away, as though there was something unspoken already hanging between them.

“Wake the others,” Abraxas said, his tone casual, though there was command in it. “Go on. Fetch them. All of them.”

For a moment neither boy moved. Then, without a word, Theo swallowed hard, turned, and disappeared down the hall. Lorenzo lingered long enough to send me one last strange look, half wary, half calculating, before following after him.

And I remained frozen in the doorway, breath shallow, bruises burning at my throat under Abraxas’s gaze.

The house was suddenly too small, too full of ghosts. Lorenzo came first, his arms full. At first I thought he was carrying her in some lazy display of chivalry, until the dim light caught her face. Daphne’s body hung slack against him, her head rolling slightly against his shoulder, her hair spilling down in pale strands. She was awake, barely, but limp enough to look broken. He lowered himself into a chair, settling her across his lap like a possession rather than a friend. His hand absently brushed her arm, holding her there.

Then Aurelia emerged.

She was walking under her own strength, but her steps were purposeful. I watched her cross to the table, her expression filled with fear, her lips pressed thin. In her hand gleamed a ring, dark metal with a stone that seemed to swallow the candlelight whole. Without hesitation, she placed it down, the sound sharp against the wood.

From her other hand came a crumpled piece of parchment, already marked with inked writing that seemed to bleed into the fibres. She smoothed it once before setting it beside the ring.

Theo followed last, shoulders hunched. He held out something small, reflective. A mirror. He set it down almost sheepishly, withdrawing his hand fast as though afraid of touching it too long.

For a heartbeat, silence held.

Then it broke, not with words, but with delight.

Dolohov leaned forward first, his sharp features twisting with a hunger I recognised in killers. Abraxas’s smirk deepened, his eyes brightening in triumph. Nott Sr. clasped his hands together and let out a low chuckle that made my stomach twist. They looked at the objects as though they were crowns being returned to their rightful heads.

The air thickened. The very walls seemed to hum.

Three more figures materialised, their outlines rippling before solidifying into flesh and fabric.

The first was a boy, black-haired, handsome in a way that unsettled me instantly, too sharp, too harsh, his gaze cutting the room into pieces. He couldn’t have been older than us, maybe seventeen at most, but his presence pressed down like centuries.

Beside him, a Rosier, older but still youthful, I had to blink twice. The arrogance was there in every line of his face, his smirk carved in marble. And next to him, Avery, another young man I recognised from history, his posture deceptively casual, but his eyes venomous.

Six of them now.

I felt it before I realised I was staring, Aurelia’s face, tilted up toward the black-haired boy. She wasn’t just staring, she was enchanted. Awe written plain across her, every breath caught in her throat.

I flicked my gaze to Mattheo. He had seen it too. Only his reaction was different. He knew. His expression cracked, all iron composure splintering into something I had never seen in him before. Fear.

Pure, unmasked fear.

The black-haired boy watched us all with calm detachment, eyes lingering a fraction longer on Aurelia, before sweeping the room. Abraxas tilted his head, his smirk snake-like.

“Where are Mulciber and Lestrange?” Abraxas asked, voice dripping with superiority, as though the question itself was a command.

Nott Sr. cut him off before the silence could stretch. “Not here. Irrelevant.” His tone was sharp, final, as though dismissing even the thought of them.

Abraxas let it go, though his lip curled faintly.

Avery chuckled, leaning back, eyes sliding lazily over Theo and Lorenzo. “This is the next generation? These children? Merlin help us all.”

Dolohov folded his hands, his stare locked on me. “Do you know what you’re holding? Do you understand what’s been placed in your hands?”

None of us answered.

“Of course you don’t,” Abraxas sneered. “Look at you. Unfit. Fragile. Toys playing at war.”

I clenched my fists. The words dug under my skin too easily.

It was the black haired boy who finally moved, finally spoke, though there was reluctance in it. He stood straighter, his gaze pressing through us. His voice was low, calm, but heavy, like it carried truth carved in stone.

“These are not objects,” he said, motioning faintly toward the relics on the table. “They are anchors. Our souls, bound to them when we were seventeen. Not fragments, not broken, whole pieces of us, preserved, waiting. To be passed forward.”

Theo shifted uneasily. Lorenzo blinked, his brows furrowed. Daphne stirred slightly in Lorenzo’s lap, a faint noise slipping from her throat. Aurelia didn’t move at all, her eyes still locked on Tom as though every syllable was gospel.

“Why?” I found myself asking before I could stop.

Rosier’s smirk returned. “Because legacy must be maintained. Because we would not let the bloodline end in weakness.”

Avery’s voice followed, mocking. “You thought you were chosen. You thought your fathers’ sins were your inheritance. No. You’re placeholders, shadows. You’ve been carrying us.”

Abraxas leaned forward, eyes fixed on me like knives. “You, Draco. Malfoy heir. Do you think you’ve earned your place here? You couldn’t even kill when you were ordered. You hide behind cruelty now, but it’s empty. Hollow.”

My jaw clenched, heat rising in my chest. I wanted to deny it, to snarl, but the words stuck like glass in my throat.

Dark-haired boy, whatever he was, let his eyes sweep us again, finally landing on Mattheo. For the first time, his gaze sharpened, interest flickering there. Mattheo’s fists were white-knuckled, his face set, but I could see it still, the terror bleeding through his usual demeanor.

And I realised then, he knew.

He knew exactly who this boy was.

It was Mattheo who broke first.

His voice, usually sharp, calculated, rose rough in the silence. “How?” he asked, his words dragged out like they were pulled from his throat against his will. His eyes were locked on the black-haired boy. “How did you? How could you even…”

The room froze.

The boy tilted his head, studying him with such stillness it made the air brittle. For a long moment, he didn’t speak, only looked, looked as though he were peeling away Mattheo’s layers, one after the other, until there was nothing left but bone.

Then, calmly, softly. “I probably shouldn’t answer that should I?”

Mattheo’s lips parted, his brow furrowing, the tiniest fracture of confusion breaking through the fear.

His next words slid like ice across the floor. “Not if I intend to do no further harm to my son.”

The silence was obliterated.

Mattheo’s face drained of all colour, white as frost. The air seemed to buckle, the room swaying with the weight of the revelation. My breath caught, my pulse sharp in my throat.

Son.

The others realised it at once.

Theo blinked, his mouth falling open. Lorenzo made a low sound in his throat, some broken laugh caught between disbelief and dread. Aurelia’s head snapped toward Mattheo, her eyes wide, startled, almost betrayed. Daphne stirred faintly in Lorenzo’s lap, the word reaching her like a distant echo.

This was no ordinary boy. No impostor. No apparition summoned by accident. The face was young, untouched by time, but the name swelled behind it. The truth coiled itself into the marrow of every one of us.

Tom Riddle.

The Dark Lord himself, at seventeen.

Voldemort.

The Knights of Walpurgis (as their group was named) straightened as though his revelation was nothing new, nothing surprising. Their smirks grew sharper, their eyes cutting into us like blades. Dolohov was the first to step forward, his eyes narrowed on Lorenzo.

“You,” Dolohov said, voice soft and venomous. “I don’t know you. Do you know what it means to hold my relic? To bear my legacy in your clumsy hands?”

Lorenzo, always brash, always too quick with a joke, swallowed hard. He tried for a grin, but it faltered at the edges.

“You are nothing like me,” Dolohov continued, tone almost pitying. “Where I honed cruelty into an art, you make it spectacle. Cheap, gaudy theatre. You think throwing bodies into the air makes you feared? No. It makes you ridiculous.”

Lorenzo stiffened, his jaw locking, but he didn’t speak.

Dolohov leaned closer, his smirk widening. “I carved screams into silence. You? You play. And when you die, they will forget your name by morning.”

Lorenzo’s grin was gone entirely now. His knuckles whitened against Daphne’s arm.

The mirror flashed next, its cracked surface catching the candlelight. Rosier Sr. lifted it, holding it up so the reflection fractured across Daphne’s pale face where she lay against Lorenzo’s chest.

“Greengrass, I presume,” Rosier drawled. “So quiet now.”

Daphne stirred faintly, her brow twitching, but she didn’t speak.

“You think suffering makes you strong?” Rosier’s smirk deepened. “No. It makes you weak. Your bruises are visible to anyone who looks twice. The world can already see how easy you are to break.”

His tone dropped lower, crueler. “I would have made you unbreakable. Instead, you waste yourself on surviving. You’ll never be more than a cracked mirror of what I was.”

Daphne turned her face away, her eyes tight shut. Lorenzo’s hand tightened on her shoulder as though he could shield her from words that pierced deeper than any spell.

Then Tom moved.

He did not need a relic in his hand, the air itself seemed to bend toward him. He let his eyes fall on Mattheo, who sat rigid in the, pale, shaking faintly despite his clenched fists.

“I think you know what I’ll do if you wrong me.” Tom said, his voice smooth, soft as silk.

Mattheo flinched as though struck.

Tom’s smile curved, not kind but knowing. “You fear becoming me, don’t you? You bleed yourself to keep from drowning in the rage. But the truth is—” He leaned forward slightly, his gaze burning. “You are already mine. My cruelty sings in your blood and you have already began to embrace it.”

Mattheo’s breath hitched audibly, his fists trembling. I could see it, the desperate urge to lunge, to scream, but he sat stone-still and shaking rapidly.

Avery Sr. reached across the table, his ring glinting faintly in the low light, his eyes sliding to Aurelia.

Unlike the others, he didn’t smirk. His voice was quieter, almost tender. “My granddaughter.”

Aurelia’s eyes widened. Her breath caught.

“You wear the ring well,” Avery murmured. “It recognises you. Accepts you. Not all blood is wasted.”

He tilted his head, studying her with something like pride. “But you are foolish. Soft. You still look for beauty in a world made of knives. That will be your undoing.”

He didn’t spit venom at her. He didn’t shred her. His words were a caress laced with steel. And somehow, I could tell that cut her deeper than cruelty would have.

Her lips trembled, but she said nothing, her hand tightening on her knee under the table.

Then Abraxas stood.

“Draco,” he said, his voice a lash across my skin. “The heir who could not kill. The boy who carried a name heavier than his own bones and collapsed beneath it.”

My chest tightened.

“You wear my relic, and yet you are an insult to it. My blood forged power. Yours drips weakness.” His lip curled. “You parade cruelty and stratergy like armour, but I see through you. I see the boy who trembled with a wand in his hand, the boy who could not do what was demanded. Pathetic.”

The words were knives. I felt them slice open wounds I had buried years deep.

“You are no Malfoy. Not truly.”

I swallowed, my jaw tight, the cufflinks like shackles on my wrists.

Then Nott Sr. laughed. It was a hollow, rattling sound as he tapped the watch at his wrist, his gaze fixed on Theo.

“Theo,” he drawled, almost fondly. “My failure. Do you even know how many hours you’ve wasted? How many seconds of potential drowned by you.”

Theo flinched, his lips pressed tight.

“You’ll die choking on your own soft indulgence, and no one will bother to remember your name.”

Theo’s hands shook. I sat there, silent, watching them tear us apart piece by piece. The six of us, unravelled by six shadows. As their words echoed in my skull, I realised that this was not cruelty for cruelty’s sake.They knew exactly where to cut and they did not miss.

Their laughter filled the room like smoke. Not light laughter, not even cruel in its surface. It was hollow, ancient, the kind of sound that did not belong to young men at all, but to shadows older than time. It clung to the walls, rattled in the hollows of my ribs, and lodged behind my eyes until I swore it might never leave.

“You see now,” Dolohov said, his voice cutting cleanly through the sound. His pin glinted dark at his throat. “You are not free agents. You never were. You carry us, and so you belong to us.”

Rosier Sr. tilted his mirror, the fractured light scattering across Daphne’s pale face as she stirred faintly against Lorenzo’s shoulder. His smirk was soft, almost fond. “And we will not hesitate to turn you into what the war requires. Into the kinds of heroes whose names are burned into history. The kinds who leave nothing but ruin behind them.”

Tom, Voldemort, whatever name fit him in that moment, did not smile. He stood very still, his gaze drifting across us with that same slow calculation, as though measuring us not as people but as pieces of something greater.

“This is not a request,” he murmured, his voice quiet but carrying sharp as glass. “You will obey. You will fight. You will rise to the shape of us. Or you will shatter.”

Abraxas’ laugh came low, deliberate, drawn-out. He leaned forward, his eyes fixed on me. “Yes,” he said. “And if you shatter, we will ensure you are remembered for it. For failure is as instructive as triumph, and history does not care which one writes your name.”

Avery Sr. spoke last, his tone softer than the others, though no less absolute. His hand brushed the surface of the table near Aurelia’s ring, his eyes on her.

“You are ours now. Not by choice, but by blood, by legacy, by the relics that tie you to us. We will make of you what we wish. That is the way of inheritance. That is the price of being chosen.”

The air thickened with it, pressing down on my chest until I could hardly breathe.

And then they were gone.

No sound, no light, no tell-tale shimmer of apparition. One moment they were there, filling the room with shadows too heavy for their youthful faces, and the next, nothing.

The silence they left behind was almost unbearable. I sat frozen in my chair, my jaw locked, my hands digging crescents into the polished wood beneath my fingers. I could still feel the weight of Abraxas’ eyes on me, hear his voice slithering across my skin like ice.

You are no Malfoy. Not truly.

Across from me, Mattheo sat stiff as stone, pale, his knuckles white where his fists clenched against his knees. His breath was shallow, almost inaudible, but his eyes burned with a hollow, shaken light.

Theo had slumped back into his chair, his lips parted as though he might speak, but no words came. His hands shook faintly against his thighs, though he tried to still them, to laugh, to play it off, but the laughter caught in his throat, choking him silent.

Lorenzo, usually the loudest voice in any room, had gone quiet. He still cradled Daphne against him, but his usual grin was gone, his mouth set in a grim, uneasy line. His eyes, wide and dark, darted between us, searching for something solid to cling to, finding nothing.

Daphne herself barely stirred, though I saw the faint crease between her brows, the faint tremor in her lip. Even in half-consciousness, the venom of Rosier’s words had reached her. Even asleep, she suffered.

Aurelia sat very still, her wide eyes fixed on the place where her grandfather had stood, her lips pressed together so tightly they were white. She looked not frightened but entranced, caught in some web none of us could see, her breath rising and falling in shallow, uneven waves.

I hated the sight of it. Hated the awe written across her face, hated the softness of it, hated the thought that she might take even a single word of their poison as something meaningful.

No one spoke.

No one moved.

We sat there like corpses left in the aftermath of a massacre, our ears still ringing with the laughter of ghosts who had not so much visited us as claimed us and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something sharp, something icy, coil in my gut. Not fear of death. Not fear of the war. Fear that perhaps, for the first time, I had no idea whose war it was anymore

Chapter Text

AURELIA AVERY

The cold had settled into my bones before dawn. The safehouse was still and sour with last night's revelations when Theo and I slipped out into the morning, our footsteps muffled by snow beginning to thin into slush on the cobblestones, the horizon pale with a shivering grey light that belonged to neither night nor day. The air cut against my face like glass, so sharp I could almost imagine my skin breaking open and spilling all the thoughts I carried inside, but I kept walking, hand gloved in wool, breath coiling like incense before me.

Theo didn't say a word. His shoulders were hunched and uneven, his coat buttoned wrong, the collar biting at his neck. When I brushed against him, meaning nothing more than to feel a little less alone, he leaned into me without hesitation, as though gravity itself wanted us pressed together.

The bell from the church began to toll low and heavy, shaking my bones. It was this sound that drew us forward, though I could not have said whether it was curiosity or hunger that led me through the frosted wooden doors.

Inside, warmth wrapped around us tightly, faint smoke from candles thick in the nave, light dripping down from stained glass that painted the stone in bruised purples and wine-reds and muted blues. My first thought was that it looked like blood caught on ice. My second thought was that it was beautiful.

We sat near the back as usual, side by side on a long wooden pew, the grain splintered under my fingers when I traced it. Theo dropped down beside me heavily, one hand coming to rest against his knee, his breathing slow and deliberate. His eyes were glassy, blurred at the edges, though I didn't know why, I thought maybe he hadn't slept, or maybe he'd dreamed something he couldn't yet shake free. Still, when my shoulder brushed his, he leaned toward me almost imperceptibly, as if I were the only thing keeping him upright. I wanted to ask if he was all right, but the silence of the church pressed so strongly into me that the words died, folded small inside my throat.

The priest's voice filled the air like water poured into a glass. It was low and soft, but it carried to every corner, and I felt each syllable ripple against me. Forgiveness, he said, as though it were a word forged of gold, as though it were something one could hold in both hands. Forgiveness that could fall like snow on a soul, covering everything that had once been jagged, dirty, ruined. Forgiveness like a cleansing fire.

I couldn't stop staring at the crucifix above the altar, the figure nailed there, carved with a beauty so sharp it was nearly obscene, pale wood catching the sun in a way that made it look like marble, veins etched into his arms like rivers. His eyes closed, his body broken, but all of it framed by light. I thought of Amelia Bones, of Lockwood, of the muggles in the square, of Justin's mother screaming as the house burned, and my chest ached so badly I had to bite my lip to stop from sobbing.

Could God really forgive that? Could He forgive me?

Theo shifted beside me, his head tilting as though the weight of it were too much, and when it came to rest against my temple, I didn't move. His breath smelled faintly of something bitter, something I couldn't name, but I took it into myself anyway, as if by sharing his air we might split our sins between us.

The priest spoke of mercy, his voice blooming in the vaulted ceiling, echoing back until it seemed the stones themselves whispered the word again and again.

My thoughts began to twist, jagged edges cutting into the beauty. I saw Tom Riddle's face again, not Voldemort's, but the young one who had shown himself again last night like smoke shaped into a man, his voice like silk dragging through my skull. I had thought desperately that he might be God, come to me not in white robes or in angel's wings but in black ink and pale skin and eyes that carried secrets too heavy to bear. The priest had said God could appear in many ways, hadn't he? That faith was about mystery, about trust in what could not be seen?

Maybe God did not always look like a savior. Maybe He looked like a boy. Maybe He looked like Tom.

Theo's hand twitched on the pew, his fingers brushing mine. I let them. I thought of how tired he looked, how heavy his eyelids were, how he leaned just enough that I knew he wanted the weight of me against him. He didn't ask for forgiveness, didn't seem to believe in it, but maybe if I believed enough for both of us, it would be enough. Maybe God's mercy could spill from me into him, wash him clean even when he didn't want to be.

The choir began to sing, voices thin but haunting, weaving through the candle smoke. I shut my eyes and let it fill me. In the darkness behind my lids I saw blood on stone, smoke on skin, Daphne's tears cutting her face raw, Mattheo's eyes when he struck me, and underneath all of it the pulsing need for forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

The priest's words blurred into music, and I imagined stepping forward, kneeling before the altar, confessing every sin, the curses I had cast, the screams I had heard. I imagined the priest placing a hand on my head like Tom had, whispering words that made the weight lift, made my blood feel clean again. But I didn't move. I stayed pressed against Theo's shoulder, his warmth seeping into me.

The candles flickered, the wax running like tears down the brass holders, and the congregation whispered prayers I didn't know, their voices like moth wings brushing at the edges of my hearing. I didn't know the words, but I mouthed them anyway, shaping my lips into their sounds, hoping God would understand the effort if not the meaning. Beside me, Theo let out a breath so heavy it sounded like surrender, and I pressed closer, my cheek against the coarse wool of his coat.

The frost did not break as we stepped out of the church, it only thickened, weaving itself into the corners of my lungs so that every breath felt like drawing in glass and holding it until it melted into ache, and Theo walked beside me in silence, shoulders slightly slouched, his coat not quite buttoned properly, his eyes lowered as if the world itself was too sharp to look at, and I thought perhaps that was the quiet holiness of mornings like this, that you could share silence with someone and it did not feel like absence, it felt like prayer stretched thin between two bodies.

Our hands brushed once, twice, timidly, and without thinking I let mine slip into his, not with urgency or declaration but with a kind of instinctive reaching, his hand was cold but steady, his fingers curling slow, hesitant, then decisive around mine, and we walked like that, together, the crunch of frost beneath our boots the only sound we needed. I could not shake the vision of Theo's glassy eyes in the pews, the way his body had leaned too heavy against mine, and I wondered if he was praying or only drowning quietly where I could not see.

The safehouse loomed ahead, its bricks darkened by damp, the windows shuttered against the cold, and Theo squeezed my hand once, brief, almost imperceptible, before slipping free and disappearing inside without a word, leaving me on the threshold, breath spilling white into the air like the smoke of extinguished candles.

Then I felt it, no sound, no footstep, only the shifting of air, the certainty of presence, and I turned, my body already bowing before I knew it, for Tom Riddle stood there as though carved from the air of the morning itself, his figure slender and straight against the pale horizon, his eyes fixed on me with a steadiness that was neither cruel nor kind, only infinite.

"Aurelia," he said, my name wrapped in velvet but bound tight, and though his tone was gentle, something in me recoiled, the way the body flinches when it realises it has been seen whole.

"My Lord," I whispered, lowering my eyes, for to meet his gaze too long was to feel the ground vanish beneath me.

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate, every movement precise as if the world bent itself around his will, and when he spoke again his voice was soft, almost sweet, though it carried no softness in meaning. "You and your companions have done well. The relics stir again. You have brought life to what was dormant, and for that you are commended."

His praise seared like a brand, not because I felt worthy of it, but because some desperate, trembling part of me wanted it, craved it, the way one craves warmth in a room full of frost. "My Lord," I murmured, lifting my eyes just enough to meet the pale line of his mouth, "we... we don't understand. How did it happen? How did we do this?"

The faintest shadow of a smile curved his lips, a smile that did not reach his eyes. "You will understand," he said, "in due time. Some truths are not for you to hold yet, Aurelia. To know too much too soon is to shatter."

I wanted to protest, to ask, to plead for clarity, but the words tangled in my throat, and instead I bowed my head, fingers twisting together, heart aching with the weight of not-knowing.

"Forgiveness..." I whispered, my thoughts leaping clumsily from one desperate tether to another, "the priest said today that all can be forgiven, that mercy is greater than sin, and I—" I faltered, heat stinging my eyes, "I want to believe that is true. I want to believe we can be forgiven."

For a moment the silence between us was vast, cathedral-deep, and then his voice cut through it, soft as incense, harsh as iron. "Forgiveness is not given, Aurelia. It is seized. Mercy is not a gift placed gently in your palms, it is a kingdom you must take by force."

My breath caught, sharp, uncertain. "But isn't that God's gift?"

He tilted his head, watching me with an expression that was almost tender, though it carried within it the weight of judgment.

"God reveals Himself in many ways," he said, his words flowing like scripture yet carrying no comfort, "in fire, in silence, in blood, in the trembling heart of a child who cannot name what she feels. And in me." He leaned closer, his eyes never wavering, his breath cold and steady as it brushed my skin. "I am what you need me to be, Aurelia. I am the hand that guides, the voice that commands, the fire that purges. If you choose to see God in me, then God has chosen to appear to you thus."

The words wrapped around me like chains disguised as silk, and I could not untangle where my faith ended and his voice began, only that my heart pounded as if caught between worship and fear.

"And forgiveness?" I asked again, fragile, small, desperate.

"Forgiveness," he murmured, "is not the absence of sin. It is the transformation of it. You are forgiven when your sin ceases to be weakness and becomes strength."

The sky above seemed darker then, though the morning had not waned, and I felt a shiver pass through me, not from cold but from the realisation that what he offered was not absolution but transfiguration, the reshaping of guilt into weapon, and yet some lost and starving part of me wanted to accept it, to believe that even my brokenness could be turned to purpose.

"Do you understand, Aurelia?" he asked, his tone neither demanding nor kind, simply inexorable.

I nodded, though I did not understand at all, and his smile returned, faint and cruel and sweet, the smile of a god who had already decided what his disciple would become. Tom's hand lifted faintly, no more than a flick of his wrist, as if the entire conversation had already been dismissed in his mind, and his voice, velvet wrapped tight around steel, sealed the air.

"Go back inside. They are waiting for you. Do not keep them in ignorance longer than you must."

I bowed without meaning to, as though my body had already been taught this posture long before I was born, and when I lifted my head again he was already dissolving into the pale edge of the morning, no footstep marking his departure, only the thin trace of his shadow lingering in my chest like a stain.

Inside the safehouse the air was warmer but not kinder, heavy with the faint smell of damp wool, old wood, and smoke that clung stubbornly to the corners no matter how many fires were lit, and the contrast to the stillness outside made my head feel thick, as though the walls were already closing in on me.

Daphne was there, leaning against the living room wall, her body folded sharp and strange, arms crossed over her chest as though to hold herself in place, her eyes rimmed dark and empty, her mouth set in a line that dared anyone to come closer. Lorenzo and Draco were absent, the silence they usually filled now a strange hollow. Theo's voice and the hiss of water could be heard faintly from the shower, a broken rhythm of pipes shuddering through the ceiling.

Mattheo sat hunched at the dining table, his profile pale in the dim light, his hair shadowing his eyes, his shoulders curved inward as though he carried not just his body but the whole of something heavier, and though I did not look too long, the shape of his stillness was melancholy itself, and I wondered, fleetingly, if words hurt more when written or when left unsaid.

It was Daphne who caught me, Daphne who anchored me with the raw violence of her silence, and something in me refused to walk past her though every instinct begged me to.

"Daphne?" I said softly, my voice like a question to a closed door.

Her head snapped toward me, eyes glassy, hard, her lips curling into a scowl that looked more like pain than anger but carried the edge of a knife all the same.

"Don't," she snapped, her voice cracking sharp in the stale air, "don't come near me, Aurelia."

I stopped, breath caught, my hands folding together as if in prayer, but the quiet insistence of her tone only pulled me closer.

"I just wanted—"

"You just wanted to what?" she cut in, her laugh brittle, cruel. "Save me? Fix me? Don't pretend you know what you're looking at, you haven't got a clue."

Her words struck like lashes, sudden and unrelenting, and I flinched though she had not moved, my chest tight, but I could not retreat.

"I only thought—"

"You thought wrong," she hissed, pushing herself off the wall so sharply it seemed the movement itself hurt her, her body trembling in ways she did not acknowledge. "Leave me alone, Aurelia. Go dream or whatever it is you do to make yourself feel clean."

Her cruelty landed like stones in water, rippling out through me until I could not tell if it was guilt or love or stubbornness that made me step closer still, my voice small but steady.

"I can't leave you like this."

Her eyes flashed, wet but furious, and she laughed again, a hollow sound that grated like broken glass. "You don't even know what 'this' is. You think you're helping? You're fucking suffocating me."

Her words should have sent me retreating, but instead they caught something in me that refused to bend, some blind devotion that did not know how to stop reaching even when the reaching burned. "Then tell me," I whispered, pleading, "tell me what it is. Help me understand."

For a moment she stood still, trembling, her lips parting as if to unleash another cut, another cruel dismissal, but instead she shuddered, her face breaking all at once, and then she was in my arms, collapsing so suddenly that I almost staggered beneath her weight, her body shaking, her breath coming in ragged sobs that tore through the silence like thunder.

"I feel nothing," she choked, clutching at my sleeves, her nails biting into the fabric, "nothing at all, Aurelia. It's like everything inside me has been scraped out and I'm walking around hollow, and I can't stop it, I can't fight it, I can't even explain it, it's just empty. I wake up and I don't want to, I breathe and it feels wrong, and even when I laugh, when I smile, it's all fake, all empty, like I'm made of glass and everyone can see straight through me."

Her sobs wracked through her body violently and I held her tighter though I did not know what else to do, my own tears rising unbidden.

"I'm so tired," she whispered, her voice breaking into fragments. "Tired of pretending I'm fine, tired of fighting something I don't even have a name for. I hate everyone, I hate myself more, and the worst part is I don't even care enough to change it. I just want it to stop, all of it, I want to disappear, I want to vanish into the walls and never have to feel this again."

"It's like I'm moving through fog all the time," she said at, voice a ragged edge of sound, "and even when the fog clears I'm not there. I stand in the middle of a room and people talk to me and I can hear them but their faces are flat, like paintings, and their mouths move but the words don't reach me. I try to answer and the sound that comes out of me is not mine. It's like someone else borrowed my voice for a while and didn't bother to give it back." Her fingers dug into my sleeve and I felt the nails, short and sharp. "Do you know what that's like? To be watched but to be nothing to watch? To feel that the part of you that used to be warm is now cold as the inside of a clock?"

She laughed then, and the laugh tore the room like a cracked bell. It had no humour in it. "Only a week ago I wanted to hurt, I told myself that if I could make them feel what I felt, then maybe the emptiness would fill with their agony and leave me lighter. But it never does. Hurting others only makes the inside of me splinter more. It's like stabbing a rotten apple and watching it leak out red and nothing changes." She pressed her face against my shoulder, cheek slick with tears that made my skin cold where they ran. "But I don't even think I am tired of being violent because I don't know any other way to be alive. It's easier to be cruel than to be seen."

She pulled back a little and stared at me as though measuring my capacity to hold her. The kitchen clock ticked somewhere beyond the walls, indifferent, counting time the way a ledger counts debt, and I felt each tick as an accusation.

You have failed someone, you are failing someone, you will fail someone.

Daphne's eyes were enormous and red-rimmed and so very tired that they looked like the eyes of a thing who had been awake for centuries.

"What scares me the most," she continued, "is how boring it feels. People think despair is full of thunder and oceans and big tragic gestures, but mostly it is just grey afternoons stacking into nights. It is getting up and deciding it does not matter. It is the little things that kill me, the food I forget to eat, the braid that hangs limp at my back, the way laughter tastes like ash. It is the knowledge that I can make a thousand people scream and I will still get up the next morning and the ache will be there like wallpaper you can't peel off. It makes me believe I don't deserve to be kept warm, to be worth anyone's patience."

Her voice became tangled as though she feared the sentence itself, a tremor passed through her. "I want to feel it again, the momentary blaze, when I was unstoppable, because that time is when I felt like mattered because I could make people look. But afterwards I keep crashing so far that the ground that catches me isn't a floor, it's the bottom of a well, and there's no rope. There is no middle for me. There is no calm. I am always shifting, and movement is not living when it is all you know."

She spat the last as though it were medicine. "And I hate being looked at with pity." Her hands tightened on my sleeve until pain flared. "Hate it. People say, 'I'm here, I'm here,' like it's a balm, and their hands are warm and clumsy and then they leave and the warmth fades like a dream you cannot return to. I don't want fucking pity. I want something that lasts longer than a hand on my shoulder. I want someone who will take the empty part out of me and stitch it back up with something that does not fall apart when the rain comes. I think sometimes that maybe this is just how I am meant to be. Maybe the world made me this way. Maybe I am a piece broken so the rest of you can hold together. It's easier to be the fracture. You can say, 'That's Daphne, she's broken, we'll clean up her pieces,' and everyone nods and goes back to whatever they have to do. But if I was whole, if I asked to be held for the sake of it, would anyone stop and hold me? Or would they be too shocked? Too afraid?"

Her hands found my face then, rough fingers cupping my cheeks like something sacred but trembling. "Do you think you would hold me if I asked nothing in return, Aurelia? Would you still stay?"

I swallowed hard. Words were slippery in my mouth. I had never had to answer such a question because no one had asked me for presence and nothing before, not in that way. The answer formed like a small, bright prayer in my ribs, and I offered it, the simplest truth I could find.

"I would," I said. "I will." The words were small but they landed between us, and for a blink I thought they might be enough.

Daphne laughed again, but this time it was a sound split through with new things, incredulity, bitterness, a flash of hope so quick it was almost cruel to call it hope.

"You would," she repeated. "You would. You... you are so good, Aurelia. You cling to ideas and names and you make them beautiful simply by believing. I think that's the kind of dangerous faith I envy." She squeezed my hands with a grip that bordered on pain, and then she was crying so hard her breath was shallow and unsteady, and the words sped up like a storm.

"I keep thinking someone will come and make the fog lift," she said, "and sometimes, for a second, I see it. Like when Lorenzo holds me and the world turns the right way for five heartbeats and I think maybe I'll be okay. But then the memory of those five heartbeats goes grey and I am back to being a thing that cannot fill itself. I might have the courage to become a vessel for violence but not for grace. I am courageous in all the wrong places."

Her sentences became a stream-of-consciousness then. "Why did I laugh when they fell? Why does it matter that I can make them drop like stones if afterward I feel the same? Maybe I am a monster. Or maybe monsters are just people who have been allowed to be private about the dark. Everyone else has daylight and I have to carve mine from the bones of other people. Everyone claps for the fire and then leaves the ash behind. Will I ever be anything other than ash?"

She stopped, and the room held its breath as though we were all listening for an answer. Theo's footsteps padded, and somewhere in the house I heard a clink of a bottle opening, ordinary sounds that belonged to a life that could go on even as one of them broke open.

"I'm scared," she whispered finally, as if admitting it was the only honest thing left to do. "I am afraid I will fall into myself and never come back. I am afraid that one day I'll wake up and there won't be a me to wake up. I am afraid that I will hurt the people I love because it's what I know. I love you," she said, the words spilling out with the force of confession, "I love all of you, and it terrifies me because I don't know how to keep you from being burned by me. I don't know how to be kinder than my own skin."

Her nails were leaving angry marks in my arm now and I realized I had not been breathing properly for several minutes, the way she spoke, raw and unvarnished, had tunneled a path straight to the center of me. I did not know whether I could take her fear away, only that the alternative felt worse than anything else.

"I don't have a name for this," she said at last, softer, the words like a benediction. "I only know that sometimes the world is too loud and sometimes it is too quiet and I am always the wrong volume. Help me," she begged, the single, terrible plea that had no ceremony or rhyme. "Stay. Don't leave me to the grey. Don't let me be a story people tell about how brave they were to survive someone like me."

I did not hesitate. I wrapped my arms around her neck and held her as if I could fold her in, as if the warmth of my body could be enough to stitch the holes she spoke of together. Her body fit against mine in a way that made me understand the scale of her need.

The house hummed around us, ordinary and indifferent, and I pressed my face to the top of her head and let the scent of her hair, of smoke and something floral that lingered in her skin, anchor me. I whispered the only litany I knew, small, insistent promises stitched of truth.

"I will stay," I whispered again, "I will stay Daphne Greengrass"

For a long time she cried into me, words slowing, breath raw and retreating, until finally the shakes lessened and the violent sobs became a small, ragged quiet. Her breathing found a pattern, not the steady rhythm of someone healed but the fragile cadence of someone who had not fallen completely through. She clung to me still, and when she finally lifted her head her eyes were dimmed by salt and exhaustion but there was a thread of lucidity in them that made me hold my breath.

We stayed like that for a while, the two of us, in the low wash of the safehouse's light, until the house grew quieter and the edges of pain dulled enough that sleep became possible. Daphne's head collapsed into my lap with a weight that spoke of emptiness and trust at once, and I stroked her hair slowly.

Outside, the day wore on. Inside, for as long as my arms could hold, we were not alone. Her despair soaked into me like ink into cloth, staining everything it touched, and though I did not understand, not really, I felt the weight of it, the terrible, crushing enormity of her emptiness, and it broke something in me too.

The warmth of Daphne's body trembled against mine, her sobs soft and breaking in my arms, as though she were unraveling one seam at a time and I had been tasked with catching every falling thread. Her tears soaked the shoulder of my sweater, and I pressed my cheek to the crown of her head, whispering half-formed comforts I didn't even know I believed, words borrowed from Mass, from my mother's mouth, from something softer than this house had ever allowed.

But the floorboards creaked, that betraying sound of intrusion, and like the sudden extinguishing of a candle, the fragile intimacy between us broke.

Avery Sr. stood in the doorway first, his mouth curved not into a sneer exactly but something that resembled it, something with disdain folded neatly into amusement. Behind him, Rosier Sr. loomed taller, sterner, his shadow seeming to reach the wall before his body did. They carried with them the bitter draft of cold air and something metallic, as though cruelty itself had a scent, sharp and choking at the back of my throat.

"Well," Avery said softly, almost like a sigh, his voice gentle in the way velvet might be before it strangles. "Isn't this precious."

I stiffened, my arms tightening instinctively around Daphne, who only buried her face further into me, sobbing more desperately, as though she knew the reprieve was already gone. My own heart slammed against my ribs, though I forced myself to lift my chin, to look at them as though I were not afraid. But I was. God help me, I was.

Avery's eyes moved between us, studying the knot we'd made of ourselves, her brokenness tangled with my desperate attempt to soothe. Then he shook his head, still smiling faintly, and stepped forward.

"Aurelia," he murmured, as if speaking to a child, "you have such a tender heart. I commend you for it, I do. But you must learn, that mercy is wasted on those who cannot rise to meet it."

His hand, cool and deliberate, touched my shoulder. The weight of it was not rough, yet it commanded me more effectively than a shove. Slowly, as if my body no longer belonged to me, I loosened my hold on Daphne. Her sobs faltered, turning strangled as my arms fell away.

"There," Avery whispered. "That's better."

Before I could respond, before I could find words to defend her, Rosier moved past him. His boots struck the floor like judgments, heavy and absolute, and then his hand was on Daphne's arm, dragging her away from me with no care for her cries.

"Up," Rosier barked. His voice was a whipcrack, his face carved into anger. He yanked her to her feet, though her legs buckled beneath her. She stumbled, choking on tears, and he pinned her against the wall, one arm across her chest, his face so close she must have smelled the bitterness of his breath.

"Pathetic," he hissed, every syllable sharpened to cut. "Sitting here sobbing like a child when the world burns. Do you think anyone cares for your tears, girl? Do you think your weakness will buy you pity?"

"Please," Daphne gasped, shaking her head, her voice raw from crying. "Please, I—"

"You what?" Rosier thundered, pressing harder, making her cough. "You hurt? You're sad? You feel empty? Good. Good. Because that is all you are, empty. Worthless. You shame me with this display."

Her body shook beneath the weight of his words, as though each one was a stone hurled at her chest. Her hands clawed weakly at his arm, but he did not relent.

"Stop," I whispered before I could silence myself, the word torn from my throat, small and breaking. My hands curled into fists at my sides, though my knees wanted to give way. "Please, she's only—"

Rosier's head snapped toward me, his eyes blazing. "She's only weak," he spat, his voice like fire. "And weakness deserves no gentleness. Do you hear me, Aurelia? No gentleness."

Daphne sobbed harder, her whole body convulsing with it, and he only leaned closer, sneering into her grief.

"Do you think your tears will move me? Do you think anyone in this house will hold you now that I have seen you like this? They will laugh. They will sneer. They will know you are broken. And when they break you further, you will have only yourself to blame."

"No—" Daphne's voice cracked on the word, shattering like glass.

"Yes," Rosier snarled. "Yes, you little bitch. Cry louder. Let them all hear. Let the walls drink your weakness so they can whisper it back to you every night for the rest of your miserable days."

Her sobs turned into a wail, raw and unrestrained, and I stood frozen, torn between the terror that rooted me and the guilt that screamed at me to move, to fight, to pull her back into my arms no matter the cost. But Avery's hand remained lightly on my shoulder, a reminder, a restraint, his voice low at my ear.

"See, Aurelia? This is what care leads to. This is what comes of coddling. She must learn, as must you."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw his hand off, to claw Rosier away, to cradle Daphne against me and tell her she was not empty, not worthless, not what they said she was. But my body betrayed me.

The floorboards groaned under the weight of approaching steps, first Lorenzo, and then Draco, the sharp edge of his boots cutting into the quiet like knives. The air in the room thickened as they entered and I felt my stomach knot, a cold twist of both hope and fear.

"Get your hands off her!" Draco's voice cut like steel, and he was approaching before either of the Knights could blink, reaching forward and yanking Daphne out of Rosier's grip. The sudden movement made her stumble, and I instinctively stepped toward her, hand trembling, ready to support her.

"You dare—" Rosier Sr. hissed, his voice low, venomous, and I felt it in the marrow of my bones.

"You dare to hold her!" Lorenzo spat, shoving Rosier back with the full force of his body. "Let her go!"

Avery Sr. stepped in front of his companion, hands raised almost lazily, but the command in his eyes was undeniable. "Patience," he said softly, a whisper that carried the weight of thunder. "You think you control this world? You think these children are yours to defend?"

Draco growled, shoving him back again. "Try me."

Then the world shifted, impossibly fast. The Knights' forms shimmered, vibrating at the edges like a disturbed reflection in water, and when they moved, it was both everywhere and nowhere, appearing a foot to the left, a step behind, a breath above. Every attack Draco or Lorenzo threw met only air, their fists passing through thin nothing that burned like ice.

"You cannot fight what is not entirely present," Rosier Sr. said, voice a low rumble, and Daphne shrank back instinctively, clutching my hand. Her sobs trembled against my palm, raw and ragged, as I squeezed her wrist, trying to anchor her, even as chaos unfurled around us.

Draco shouted again, and this time he managed to push Rosier Sr. against the wall, only to have the phantom vanish and reappear behind him, whispering, "Is that the best you can do, boy? Weak, like all of them."

Lorenzo's hand shot toward Avery Sr., intending to strike, but his fingers passed through the Knight as though through smoke.

"They're not real," I whispered to myself, heart hammering, "not real, not real, not—"

But the feeling of pain in their taunts was real. Every word, every shift in air, carried weight, and with it came the tightening in my chest, the cold nausea that made me clutch Daphne closer.

"Enough!" Draco yelled, voice raw and ragged, and for a heartbeat it seemed as though the room might still in our favor.

But then the air pulsed, and two more figures coalesced at the edges of the room. Dolohov and Abraxas, their features sharp and cruel, eyes glowing with a light that seemed to pierce the darkness inside me.

"Ah," Dolohov murmured, voice like wet stone scraping across glass, "so the children have decided to resist. How quaint."

Abraxas's grin was slow, deliberate, stretching impossibly across his face. "Did you truly think you could act as guardians? That your violence and your defiance could shield them? You are mere dust in a windstorm, and soon you will taste the inevitability of your place."

Daphne shrank against the wall, but I could not let go. My hands pressed into her shoulders, into her spine, grounding her, willing her to breathe. She trembled like a leaf caught in a storm.

"You will watch," Rosier Sr. said, stepping forward, moving through Dolohov as if through water, "as your little surrogates crumble. You will see that power is not mercy, that protection is an illusion. And Aurelia..." His eyes flicked to me, sharp and piercing, "you will learn that tenderness is a tool to be wielded, or a weakness to be exploited."

Draco surged forward, and this time he was joined by Lorenzo, fists flying. They shoved, struck, yelled, each movement desperate and full of a wrath that had no margin for hesitation. But the Knights' forms flickered and vanished, then reappeared behind them, beside them, above, below, and every swing met nothing but a presence that bruised the mind as much as the body.

Abraxas circled slowly, eyes scanning us like a predator measuring prey. "How sweet," he said softly, cruelly, "to see mortals attempt to fight inevitability. The effort itself is almost... charming."

Avery Sr. moved like water around me, and though he did not strike, I felt the authority, the cold expectation that I obey. I had not believed anything could feel heavier than the weight of Daphne in my arms, and yet the air itself pressed down, saturating the room with judgment.

Daphne's sobs caught in her throat as Rosier shot a final blow at her. His voice was cruelly steady, a monotone of contempt.

"Do you think anyone will cry for you? That anyone will care for your failures? You are weak, every fragment of your being weak, and yet you pretend to madness as if it shields you from the truth. There is no shield. You are nothing, girl. Remember that."

She cried silently, pressing her forehead against the wall, and I could feel the trembling in her spine through my hands, hear it in the shallow, staccato breath that rattled her chest. Draco lunged again, and for a moment I thought that we might break them, shatter the room with our rage. But the air rippled around them, and the Knights vanished, leaving only the echo of their laughter, a sound that seemed to curl around my ears and sink into my skull.

Then, abruptly, they reappeared, all of them, surrounding us. Abraxas to the left, Dolohov to the right, Avery Sr. hovering near me, Rosier Sr. pressed against Daphne's back. Their presence was absolute, oppressive, and I felt my chest tighten as if the walls themselves had folded inwards.

"You will learn," Avery whispered, voice gentle but carrying the weight of judgment, "that care is a dangerous indulgence. You cannot save everyone. Even those who cry and sob, even those who cling, will not be yours to mend."

Rosier's grip on Daphne did not loose, if anything, it pressed her tighter. "Your tears are the currency of weakness," he said, leaning in so close her hair brushed his cheek. "Every drop marks you, every sob seals your fate. Do you understand what I am saying? You are unworthy of compassion. You are unworthy of light and we will ensure that you never forget it."

Daphne gasped, a sound half-choked, half-breathed, and her shoulders shook under the weight of his arm. "I am trying," she whispered, voice cracking, "I'm trying."

"Trying?" Rosier's laugh was a jagged knife across the room. "Trying? You think effort absolves your weakness? You think this wretched display makes you strong? There is no absolution for the fainthearted, girl. You are frail, empty, a vessel of broken things, and it is our duty to show you that there is no other end."

Dolohov leaned closer to me, voice low and dangerous, like the scrape of metal against bone. "You are fragile. Your faith, your tenderness, your desire to cradle the broken, all of it will be weaponized against you. Do you understand, child?"

I swallowed, my throat tight. "I—I do," I whispered, though every fiber of me screamed that I could not truly comprehend, that the room, the air, the weight of all these voices had swallowed.

The air snapped. One second the room trembled with the relentless pressure of the Knights' voices, the next it fell into a suffocating, brittle silence that made my chest pound as though the world had paused to hold its breath. Even Daphne, still pressed under Rosier's grip, seemed frozen, her sobs caught in her throat like shards of glass.

Smoke swirled from the hearth, curling and eddying into shapes that were not shapes, as if the very air had grown thick with magic, waiting, watching. I felt it before I saw it, the voice that carried through the room, low, serpentine, and impossible to ignore.

"Come forth," it hissed, resonant, dripping with authority and expectation, "you are summoned."

Mattheo's boots pounded the floor as he burst into the room, eyes wide, cloak flaring behind him. "What is—" he started, but the voice cut him off before he could finish.

Theo stumbled in after him, half-laughing, half-tripping over the uneven floorboards, his movements slow, unsteady. There was a glassy sheen in his eyes, a loose weight to his shoulders that made me ache inside. Even in this moment, I wanted to reach for him, to steady him, though I feared disturbing the charged magic humming through the air.

From the smoke, shapes resolved further, darkly familiar yet impossible, until Tom Riddle himself coalesced, his expression both sharp and distant. Nott Sr. followed, looming behind, his aura oppressive, the very air seeming to resist his presence.

Voldemort's voice cut through.

"You will travel to Saint Mungo's. There are those who suffer there, those already broken, those who tremble. You will demonstrate the futility of resistance, the reach of the Dark Lord, and the consequences of hope unguarded."

The room froze, even the trembling of Daphne paused mid-shiver. My pulse hammered against my throat as if my body wanted to escape before my mind could catch up.

I watched, almost in a daze, as Tom's eyes flicked to us, and the corner of my heart leapt, a strange warmth, a thrill that I did not entirely understand. His gaze lingered on me longer than the others, softer, gentler, and I felt, briefly, as though he were seeing me not as a child of sin and war, but as something worth tending. The rest of the room seemed to constrict around that thought, and I clung to it even as fear coiled like a serpent around my ribs.

Draco's jaw tightened, his hands curling into fists as he spat through clenched teeth, "Saint Mungo's? Are you mad?"

Nott Sr.'s hand lashed across Theo's cheek with a sharp smack, not hard enough to injure, but enough to make him flinch and stumble forward, groaning, "Theodore!"

Theo blinked blearily, the remnants of drunkenness spilling from his movements. "What? I... yeah... right... Mungo's..." he slurred, voice trailing off as he sank onto the nearest chair, dazed, the glassiness of his eyes betraying him more clearly now.

Abraxas' voice rumbled, low and dangerous, and it echoed through the room, shaking the floorboards with its authority. "The Knights, we will accompany you. Each step will be observed, each action noted, each failure recorded. You will learn what it means to carry my will."

A wave of shock swept through the us like a sudden storm. Even Mattheo, usually unshakable, clenched his jaw and pressed a hand against the table, his pale knuckles nearly white, the color of fear crawling up his neck. Daphne's body sagged against the wall as if gravity had doubled, her breaths shallow, panic caught in her chest. Lorenzo's lips tightened, fists flexing, but he did not move. Even Draco, the hardest of us all, looked uncharacteristically tense, a scowl barely hiding his uncertainty.

Despite everything I felt a flutter of anticipation, a trembling, nervous thrill in my chest at Tom's gaze on me, the gentleness in it, the subtle curve of his mouth as if the chaos and horror of this moment did not touch me.

Dolohov's laugh cut through, sharp, jarring, reminding me of the reality, and I bit my lip, heart twisting with guilt and terror. Every instinct screamed that I should kneel, shrink, hide, pull Daphne and Theo and everyone else away from this power, but my curiosity, my strange, misplaced hope, anchored me.

Voldemort's voice came again, smoother now, carrying a weight of finality.

"Go. Let the world see fear. Let them remember who watches, who punishes, and who decides the fates of the weak."

Mattheo finally moved, shaking off the initial shock, his movements precise but carrying the tension of someone preparing for battle while cradling a wound that would not heal. He looked at us, eyes hard, voice low but firm.

"Prepare yourselves. There is no room for hesitation. You know the cost."

Theo slumped further, blinking owlishly. "C-c-come on, guys... we've... we've got... we've got..."

Nott Sr.'s hand whipped across the back of Theo's head again, a sharp correction that made him cry out, "I said focus!"

The Knights shimmered and shifted at the edges of the room, their presence a living, breathing cage.

Tom stepped closer to the center, voice silky but lethal. "You will feel our eyes on you at every turn. Do not pretend otherwise. Every falter, every hesitation, is known."

I swallowed, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks, and yet despite the fear, despite the weight of what was demanded, I could not look away from Tom. His face was calm, impossibly composed, the gentleness in his gaze something I could almost, dangerously, believe in, even as the world around me twisted with terror and expectation.

I felt Daphne leaning against my side instinctively, trembling, and I pressed my hand lightly to her arm, grounding myself even as the currents of fear, fury, and anticipation swirled around us. Draco's fists flexed, Lorenzo's eyes glinted, Mattheo's jaw tightened, and Theo swayed slightly, glassy-eyed and stumbling, but I, for a brief moment, felt exhilaration.

Exhilaration because Tom Riddle, gentle, commanding, watching, was near, and I thought, maybe, just maybe, there was something I could learn from him, something I could understand.

✦

The hospital loomed like a pale cathedral of sickness, its windows dim and its stonework swollen with rain. We filed in, boots muffled on stone, cloaks heavy, breath shallow. No one among us moved with anything like eagerness, we were a bundle of ragged nerves pressed into uniforms, faces hollow and pale under the hospital lanterns, and I could taste the reluctance like metal at the back of my throat.

Mattheo stepped forward, his voice a blade that cut clean the air.

“We move,” he said, barked almost, eyes sweeping us as though tallying weakness. “No hesitation. No pity. We do what is necessary and we leave nothing unlearned.” There was no warmth in it, there was only orders, cold and absolute, and the kind of certainty that turned the others’ knees to jelly.

He divided us with the efficiency of someone who had practiced this enough to be cruel without thought. “Daphne, Draco, Lorenzo, lower wards. Ground to second. You take the artefacts, the creature wards, the malignant infections. Make them remember fear.” He didn’t flinch when Daphne’s hand trembled, he didn’t soften when Draco’s jaw tightened. “Aurelia, Theo, with me. we will take third floor up. Potion and plant poison, spell damage, and the visitors’ wards. You will demonstrate that sanctuary is an illusion. You will make them see that there is no corner of refuge the Dark Lord cannot shadow.”

I felt a cold clamp in my chest when he said those words.

Sanctuary is an illusion

Even then my mind floated back to the church bell and the priest’s soft promises of mercy. The notion that we were to trample that idea, to take terror into the places that ached most with the hope of being healed, felt like sacrilege tattooed on my bones. Yet Mattheo’s face was steel, his eyes did not ask for consent, they demanded obedience.

Theo moved almost unwillingly toward me, his steps uncertain and oddly slow. He kept his head down, there was a glassy sheen to his stare that made my hand twitch toward him before I could stop myself. I pressed my fingers against his sleeve, and he clung to my hand like a boy who had forgotten the world’s edges.

As we stepped through the hospital’s archway the air inside changed, clinical brightness gave way to a hush that smelled of herbs and the iron after a storm. The directory board near the desk, fancy and old with curling script, told us where suffering lived, artefact accidents on the ground floor, creature-induced injuries above, magical bugs and contagions on the second; potion and plant poisoning on the third, spell damage on the fourth, visitor’s tearoom and hospital shop on the fifth, an ordinary ring of civility crowning madness beneath. It seemed obscene, a map of where hope and harm sat in uneasy rooms across the same building.

Only we could see the Knights and that made the world tilt in a new way, to all other eyes we were merely a trio of young Death Eaters on a grim mission, but for us the air hummed with company. Tom Riddle slipped at my side like a shadow given teeth, his presence soft and deathly warm, Avery Sr. stood a measured step ahead of Mattheo, not touching but sovereign in his stillness, Nott Sr. hovered close to Theo, a pressure that was almost paternal and twice as heavy. Over in the periphery, as Mattheo’s chosen division marched, Rosier’s phantom glided with Daphne, Dolohov matched Lorenzo’s stride, Abraxas lingered like a knife at Draco shoulder.

Mattheo’s tone left no room for debate. “You will make the sick feel small,” he said quietly, eyes meeting mine for a brief moment that was not warmth so much as a transaction. “You will show them that the hand that tends can also be the hand that breaks. We are to be lesson and law.”

The door crashed inward with a sound like a thunderclap, wood splintering against stone, and immediately the room became a hive of panic. The ward for potions and plant poisonings, once hushed with the rhythmic clinking of vials and the rustle of healer’s robes, erupted into screams. The beds along the walls jolted to life as patients sat upright, eyes wide, mouths opening like fish dragged from water. The healers scattered, hands scrambling for wands, but their movements were sloppy with surprise.

Mattheo’s voice was the first blade to cut through. “On the ground!” he bellowed, his tone so sharp it silenced even the alarms that shrieked from the walls, though not for long. His wand sliced upward, and with a single flick, the hospital bells, the enchanted sirens, all the clamor of warning died in their throats. Then, darkness, the lanterns above shattered, glass sprinkling down like sharp rain, leaving only the faint gleam of moonlight through the tall windows.

Shadows grew teeth.

Tom Riddle stood near me, visible only to us, his pale face smooth with approval. “Good,” he murmured, not to Mattheo, but to me, as though my breathless horror were the lesson he craved. “See how quickly hope burns out when the light is stolen.”

“Do not waste time!” Avery’s voice thundered in tandem with Mattheo’s orders. “Make them crawl!”

Patients scrambled from their cots, some dragging IV stands still dripping with potion, others tripping over blankets. I saw a young boy clutching his stomach where welts of green rash bloomed, his face waxy. He fell to his knees in the stampede of bodies. A healer tried to reach him, only to be ripped back by a curse that scorched the wall behind her.

“Nott!” Mattheo snarled, his voice a whip crack. “Take them down, damn it!”

Theo’s wand whipped through the air with an uneasy flourish. The spell burst too wide, searing across beds, exploding through plaster, blowing open a window in a hail of shattered glass. The cold night air rushed in with a roar, sucking screams upward into the city beyond. Patients clutched one another, robes whipping in the sudden wind.

“Fuck was that Nott?” Mattheo barked, shoving him with a shoulder.

“Fuck off!” Theo shot back, his voice hoarse and cracking. He aimed again, another curse bursting too wild, smashing through a healer’s desk and scattering vials of glowing liquid that hissed and burned on the floor.

Nott Sr. appeared at Theo’s side, slapping the back of his head with cold disdain. “Pathetic. Aim, boy! You don’t spray terror, you direct it.” His voice was venom wrapped in silk. Theo stumbled, gritted his teeth, and threw another spell, this one crashing into a bedframe, launching an old man into the wall with a sickening crunch.

“Please, please, stop!” one of the healers cried, arms raised. She had soft brown eyes, wide with terror, her wand quivering in her hand.

Mattheo’s answer was merciless. “Stop?” His laugh was sharp and cruel, echoing against the ruined ward. “You think pleading will make him care? You think healing hands make you sacred? You will learn tonight what mercy tastes like.”

He kicked the wand from her grasp and pressed the tip of his own beneath her chin, forcing her head back. She sobbed, falling forward, hair a curtain across her pale face. Patients cowered behind overturned beds. The air reeked of smoke and burnt potions, acrid and sharp.

I couldn’t hold the sob in. It tore from me, small and helpless, and Tom’s face turned to me instantly. His voice slid beneath my skin like honey.

“You weep because you understand,” he said softly, close enough that I felt breath where none could be. “But understanding means obedience. Do you see, Aurelia? To teach them is to love them. To show them the fragility of their hope is a gift, only then will they see the truth.”

“I don’t—” My voice cracked. “I don’t want to hurt them.”

His eyes glowed like coals. “You already have. Simply by being here, you are the shadow in their sanctuary. Do not shy from it, complete it. Lift them. Show them what it means to fall.”

Mattheo’s scream jolted me. “Avery! Do something!” He stood amid the broken glass, wand pointed at three patients huddled against the far wall. “You think you’re above this? Prove yourself, or you’re nothing.”

Theo’s laughter was jagged, wrong. He flicked his wand again, a curse sparking wildly off course, smashing another window. The gale howled louder. The boy with the rash screamed as he was nearly pulled toward the opening, his fingernails scrabbling on the slick floor.

My hands shook. Tom’s gaze burned into me, warm and cold all at once. “Lift them, Aurelia. They are nothing but feathers in your grasp. Show them gravity’s truth.”

“No—” I whispered. “I can’t—”

“You can,” he interrupted, his voice slicing the word from my lips. “Mercy is letting them believe they are safe. Do you call God merciful when He breaks bodies with plague and fire? He is merciful in the lesson. Be merciful, Aurelia. Obey.”

Mattheo snarled, eyes wild. “Do it! Or I’ll throw them myself.”

I raised my wand before I knew it. The sob shook through me like an earthquake. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

Three bodies lifted into the air, their screams high and animal. A healer clawed at the hem of one’s robes, but the wind dragged him higher, glass cutting his arms as he writhed.

“No! Please!” one shouted, tears streaking his face, his legs kicking helplessly. “Don’t do this! I have children—”

The sob broke me. My grip faltered, but Tom’s hand ghosted over mine, unseen by the world, steadying my wrist. His voice was silk. “Do not drop them yet. Let them know the sky before the fall.”

“Please—” another patient sobbed, a woman with her arm wrapped in bandages soaked through with green potion. “Don’t kill us, please, we’re not—”

“Kill them,” Theo muttered, his words slurred with a strange joy. “Kill them all, make them fly.” He threw another curse wildly, this one blasting through the ceiling, plaster raining down.

The bodies writhed above us, moonlight painting their faces in silver terror. My tears blurred them until they were shapes, shadows begging.

Tom whispered, “Forgive them, Aurelia. Forgive them by ending their illusion.”

I closed my eyes. I let my wand tip forward. The screams cut the night air as their bodies hurtled out the shattered window, swallowed by the dark. The silence afterward was thick, punctured only by the ragged sobs of those who remained.

Mattheo grinned, teeth sharp. Tom leaned closer, his voice threading into the hollow place left in me. “You see? Even in your tears, you serve and they will remember this night as holy.”

The stairs to the next floor felt endless, spiraling upward like a throat that swallowed us whole, each step a tolling bell that shook the marrow of my bones. My legs were jelly, but Mattheo climbed with an unsettling precision, his shadow slicing sharp against the flickering light of sconces. Theo stumbled behind, his hand brushing the wall as though the building itself were swaying. His breath came too loud, ragged with something more than fear, though I clung still to the story I wanted, that he was frightened, only frightened.

The Spell Damage ward stretched before us like a cathedral stripped of its saints. Beds lined the walls, some draped in curtains, others open to reveal the grotesque imagery of curses gone wrong. Twisted limbs that bent in impossible shapes, eyes glazed white by hexes, mouths that moved without sound as if the voices had been stolen mid-word. The air was thick with the acrid tang of failed magic, of smoke that never quite dissipated, of herbs ground into pastes that stung the back of my throat.

Alarms had begun to wail again, but Mattheo was fast. With a flick of his wand, the sound strangled to silence. He laughed, the sound low and sharp. “Do they not learn? Do they not see how easily hope is undone?”

Tom’s presence lingered at my shoulder like candle flame. “They cling to systems, Aurelia,” he murmured, his tone sweet, his words coiling like smoke in my ear. “They believe healing can erase consequence. Show them consequence cannot be mended.”

“Move!” Mattheo barked, striding into the center of the ward. “All of you, out of the beds, on your knees.” His wand sparked crimson, and patients whimpered, dragging themselves from the sheets, some collapsing as their broken bodies failed them.

Theo’s laughter was a cracked mirror. He flicked his wrist, and a curse exploded across the floor. A patient shrieked as their leg spasmed, twisting further, bones snapping with a wet crack.

“Nott!” I gasped, reaching toward him, but Nott Sr.’s hand shot out like a claw, pushing me back.

“Do not hold him,” He sneered. “This is what strength looks like, he is closer to us than you think.”

But Theo swayed, his face slick with sweat, his eyes glassy with something that didn’t match the scene. He hurled another spell without looking, and it ricocheted, shattering a mirror on the far wall. Shards rained down like falling stars.

“Pathetic,” Nott Sr. hissed, striking Theo again across the head. Theo stumbled forward, nearly dropping his wand. “You waste power like wine spilled on the floor.”

Mattheo stepped into the chaos, seizing a healer by the collar and dragging him forward. “You think yourselves saviors,” he spat, his face inches from the trembling man’s. “You think magic bends to heal? No, magic breaks. Magic punishes. Tonight you will learn that your craft is a hollow lie.” He flung the healer into the center of the ward, where he landed hard, groaning.

Tom’s hand ghosted over mine. “You are trembling,” he said softly. “Good. Tremble with divinity. Choose one, Aurelia. Choose one and show them the truth of their condition.”

I shook my head, choking on sobs. “I can’t. I can’t pick—”

“You must.” His tone cut.

Theo laughed again, louder this time. He pointed at a man whose face had been half-melted by a curse, skin raw and glistening.

“Him! Him! Make him scream louder than the rest.” His words slurred at the edges, but his grin was wide and broken.

The patient’s eyes widened. “Please, no, please, I—”

Mattheo shoved him to his knees. “Avery. Now.”

My wand lifted without my will. The spell left me with a sob, Levicorpus. The man shot into the air, dangling by his ankle, his screams high and piercing as his mangled face pulsed with blood rushing to his head.

The healers surged forward, but Mattheo spun, slashing his wand. “Back! Watch her work.” His eyes glittered, cruel and hungry. “Show them, Aurelia. Show them that even the innocent can be executioners.”

Tom’s voice slid into me like a hymn. “Raise him higher. Make him a star above their misery.”

I obeyed. The man floated toward the ceiling, his screams echoing. My tears fell hot down my cheeks, but my wand held steady under Tom’s invisible guidance.

Theo staggered forward, flinging a hex at another patient. The man’s mouth sealed shut instantly, his muffled screams clawing at the air. Theo howled with laughter, spinning unsteadily. “No voice for you, none at all! You’re nothing without sound!”

Mattheo dragged another healer forward, forcing her to her knees beside the dangling man. “Tell me,” he snarled, yanking her hair back so she met his gaze. “Do you believe your hospital can save him? Do you believe your spells undo the Dark Lord’s will?”

She sobbed, shaking her head, words spilling out. “Please, I don’t know, I—”

“Wrong answer.” His wand burned scarlet, and her arm twisted with a sick crack, bones snapping under invisible force. She screamed, collapsing onto her side.

Theo clapped like a child, his laugh jagged. “Yes! Break her more!”

Mattheo’s eyes flicked to me. “Aurelia. Do it again.”

I whispered, shaking. “Please don’t make me.”

Tom leaned close, his voice a knife wrapped in velvet. “You already have. Each act binds you closer to truth. Do not resist, resistance is nothing but pride. Pride is sin.”

The dangling man’s screams filled my ears. My wand shook. And then, with a flick that wasn’t mine alone, I let him fall.

He hit the ground with a sound like broken glass. Silence followed, then another wave of sobs.

Mattheo’s grin widened. “Good.”

Theo swayed, his grin beginning to falter, sweat dripping from his brow. “I—” His voice cracked. “I don’t feel—” He staggered, his wand lowering. For the first time his eyes looked truly lost. “Mattheo, I—”

Nott Sr. sneered, grabbing his collar. “Weakness already? You disgust me.”

Theo’s body slumped, and for a moment, I thought he might be sick right there on the floor. His peak was crashing, his laughter gone, replaced by a hollow emptiness.

Tom’s voice threaded into me, soft and endless. “Do you see, Aurelia? How fragile they all are? How easily undone? This is why you are chosen. This is why you must not look away.”

Theo’s laughter broke, one moment sharp, ringing, almost alive, and then silence, a guttural choke, and the sound of his wand clattering against the stone floor. His body jerked forward, doubling over, and a retching noise filled the air.

“Theo?” I breathed, already moving toward him, but before I could reach his side, the first wave came violently. He vomited onto the floor, the sound raw and wet, echoing in the chamber louder than any spell.

Mattheo turned his head with a sneer. “Oh, perfect,” he drawled, folding his arms. “The great Nott, reduced to an insolent display of fear.”

“Shut up!” I snapped, dropping to my knees beside Theo. His entire body shook as though wrung out from the inside, his hands braced against the slick tiles. He retched again, harder this time, and crimson splattered the floor.

Blood.

My breath caught. “Theo, no, no, no—” My hand found his back, his skin clammy and cold beneath his shirt. His chest heaved, muscles straining as though something inside him was trying to tear free.

Avery Sr. moved closer, his mouth pinched though his voice stayed detached. “Control yourself, boy. Weakness is unbecoming.”

But his eyes lingered too long on the blood, betraying a flicker of unease. Theo gagged again, the noise rattling deep in his throat, and a thick stream of red spilled from his lips. It stained his chin, dripped onto his arms. He was trembling violently, and I could feel each tremor under my palm.

“Stop, please stop—” I begged, though my voice was useless against whatever storm raged inside him.

Theo only groaned, his body convulsing as another wave overtook him. Blood splattered against Nott Sr.’s sleeve, and for the first time the boy recoiled, his expression cracking into something dangerously close to worry.

Mattheo barked a hollow laugh, though it was sharp, defensive, too loud. “We’re meant to march into history together, and one of us can’t last the stairs.” His words dripped disdain, but I caught the flash in his eyes, a flicker of fear he refused to voice.

I pressed closer to Theo, my arms wrapping around him as his strength faltered. “It’s okay,” I whispered desperately. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you—” His head lolled against my shoulder, his body still shaking, the blood thick and metallic between us.

Avery Sr. scoffed, but his voice was thinner than before. “She holds him like a child. Let him choke, if he must. The Dark Lord does not waste time on liabilities.”

But even as he spoke, Nott Sr. began to fade, his body unraveling into smoke that curled back toward the ceiling. His voice lingered a beat longer than his form. “Weakness like this spreads. Do not think mercy will save you, Aurelia.”

Then he was gone.

Theo groaned once more, a wet, rattling sound, and then collapsed completely. His body went limp in my arms, his breathing shallow but steady, his face pale beneath the streaks of blood.

“Theo, please—” My tears burned as they slipped free, falling into his hair. “Don’t leave me here with them. Please don’t.”

Mattheo’s shadow fell across us. “He’s not dying, Avery. He’s weak, but not dead. Leave him.”

“I can’t.” My voice cracked, trembling as I cradled Theo’s head. “I can’t just…”

“You can. And you will.” Mattheo crouched down, his face close to mine. “This is war. If you stop for every broken soldier, you’ll never make it out alive. Do you understand me?”

I shook my head, sobbing. “He’s our friend.”

“We’ll come back for him later,” Mattheo snapped, his hand clamping around my wrist. His grip was bruising, but his words were low, almost desperate. “If you stay now, you’ll be next. Is that what you want?”

Behind him, Avery Sr. growled in disapproval but said nothing, his eyes still on the bloodied figure slumped against me. Even he, cruel as he was, seemed unwilling to approach too closely.

I let Mattheo drag me to my feet, my hands reluctant to let go of Theo until the last possible second. His body lay crumpled on the floor, blood staining the tiles around him.

“We’ll come back,” Mattheo said again, more quietly, his voice a whisper only for me. “But we have to move now.”

 

The words hollowed me out, but I nodded because there was no choice. The Knights’ shadows pressed at our backs, urging us forward, demanding more blood, more fear, more spectacle. I glanced back once more, my chest aching so fiercely it felt as though my ribs might crack. Theo lay unmoving, his wand just out of reach, his breaths shallow but real. Mattheo pushed me forward, through the ward doors, into the next room, leaving Theo behind in the darkness, alone.

The next room opened like a throat into which sorrow had been poured and left to harden; it smelled of old dust and antiseptic, of stale breath and the iron tang of dried blood, and the light that filtered through the high windows was thin and listless, making every face into a pale coin pressed flat by time.

Beds lined the walls in two neat rows, but the patients did not look like the sort of people a hospital usually holds, they were hollowed with something worse than illness, their eyes unfocused as if the world had once been a song and now all the notes had been stripped away. Some sat with their hands in their laps, fingers curled around nothing, some mouthed words that went nowhere, while others stared at the ceiling and wept without sound. Memory had been ripped from many of them, leaving them blinking and bewildered in the glare.

As we entered, a nurse stumbled forward, her face the color of ash. “Please,” she said, hands trembling against a clipboard. “Please, we—” Her words caught on the air because she could not make the rest of the sentence legal enough to say. Her eyes darted to Mattheo and then to me, a pleading that was not for me but for whatever small mercy might be left in the world.

“These patients, some of them cannot speak. Some of them forget their names. Please do not—” She could not finish. The sentence dissolved like breath on a windowpane.

Mattheo’s face was a blade. He swept forward and seized the clipboard from her hand as if he would carve meaning into it with his palm.

“You dare stop us with your sobbing?” His voice was cold enough to frost the air. “This is a lesson. These are the ones who believed in sanctuary and found only lies. We will show them the truth.” He tossed the clipboard away as if it were litter.

Avery Sr. drifted at my shoulder like a courteous storm, his presence soft but immense. “Observe,” he said to me, not loudly, not a command so much as a gilded suggestion. “See how fragile their understanding is. They are the easiest to teach. When memory unravels, terror becomes an old friend. All you must do is remind them who sits at the head of the table.”

Tom hovered nearer, his face an impassive kindness carved from bone. “You have the hands for it,” he murmured. “Hands that tremble, and that is precisely why they must learn. Your reluctance makes you more effective, they will remember your pity as proof your lesson was merciful.”

The room breathed around us, the patients’ expressions a map of erased lives. One woman, her hair within a white cap tried twice to lift her hand as if to greet someone she loved, then let it fall, satisfied and lost, and then tried again, failing to recall whether the movement meant joy or grief.

A man at the far end stared at his own wrist as though he expected to find a watch he had once owned, his lips shaped the beginning of a word and then dissolved into a slack, unfinished curve. Some had inked safety runes beneath their hospital gowns that had been charred to nothing by misplaced hexes, their fingers traced the scars absently, like someone who keeps patting a wound to remind himself it is real.

I felt nausea rise at the edges of every breath. When did I become a tool of unmaking? When had my hands been trained to unhinge the doors behind which people hid their names?

“Begin,” Mattheo ordered. His voice left no room for answer. He divided us like a general distributing plunder. “Take them down one by one. Do not break those who can be mended into silence forever, only enough to teach. Leave those who are too fragile, they are not spectators for our lesson. We are making an example, not hauling corpses.”

It started small. Mattheo snagged for himself first, he chose a woman who had been a teacher, I learned from whispering staff, who were now dead, that her tongue had been snipped by a curse so that she could not find words beyond the simplest nouns. Mattheo walked toward her with ease, and the Knights moved closer. Avery’s praise wrapped around my ears like silk. “Good. Tender. Let the child learn to wield what she cannot yet accept.”

I lifted my wand against my will, my fingers stiff from the cold of my thoughts and the cold of his compliment. My throat ached with grief and something colder like guilt. The first spell was a gentle snare, a contraction of thought, a Minor Obliviate. The woman’s eyes fluttered, the edge of an old memory lifting like a moth taking flight, but then some other thought, muted, incorrect, fell in its place, something ordinary, as if the memory of her deceased son had been replaced with the smell of fresh fruit.

She blinked. “Apple?” she whispered.

Mattheo smiled with lips that did not quite reach his eyes. “Good.” He shuffled on. “Keep them disoriented. Replace the names that mean strength with things innocuous and hollow.”

We moved through the room like a slow blight. I found pockets of myself that resisted. When a man reached out to touch his own face and then flinched, unsure whether he had any right to be in his body, I could not help but slide my fingers into his palm and hold them. The Knights hissed at me like cats denied a feast. Tom’s voice, though gentle, had the authority of an executioner.

“Detach her. Make her feel meaningless but not terrified. Give her a sort of unending smallness. Let her mistaken forbearance be the rope she’ll use to hang her own going-home.”

Avery hovered closer and whispered of commendation, but there was cruelty folded in his tongue.

“You are doing well. See how the smallest adjustments teach the largest lesson? Mercy can be a scalpel, use it wisely.”

Each suggestion was a pivot. Where I wanted to fill holes, where I wanted to stitch torn names back into the fabric of a life, they taught me to snip thread instead.

One patient, a young woman with a faint tattoo on her wrist tried to ask for water. Her lips formed sound, but the sound collapsed into a birdlike chirp, a broken, childish warble that she did not understand and that made her look suddenly older and smaller than she had a breath before.

I moved then, and hated myself for moving. The Knights spoke of mercy this time with the same gloved hand, Tom’s fingertips ghosted against my wrists. I leaned close to the woman with the tattoo and whispered a charm to twist the edge of her memory into a loop that would make the sound of her child’s name a nonsense syllable she could not hold. The syllable fell from her mouth like an odd shell, and she clutched at it as though it were a lost toy.

“Good,” Avery said, softly, aloud enough that others heard. “You see how we make the mind refuge-less? You are meticulous.”

The Knights’ praises built me like a scaffold around my conscience. Each compliment was a nail driven into my resolve. I felt my gentleness corrode under their affection, became practiced at bending people's memories into something manageable, into something that would keep them obedient. Where once I would have mended, I now replaced. It was less violent than the windows, less dramatic than the levitated bodies, but it lacerated in a way that bled on slowly.

“Let them forget their fears but not the fear of forgetting,” Tom murmured in my ear as if handing me a prayer. “Make them believe their oblivion is mercy.”

“Do you see?” Avery cooed from Mattheo’s side. “You are perfect for this. Fragility with purpose.” His hand lifted in a manner that passed without touching me and yet left me feeling rearranged.

We worked like surgeons, these were not bodies broken at once, they were lives undone in quiet pieces, each one left with a pocket in which their names had once fit.

Tom’s gaze caught mine over the edge of a curtain at one point, and he smiled, small and final. “You’re learning how to be useful,” he said. “This is the difference between those who break and those who build. You are being taught to build in the right way.”

I wanted to vomit and to kneel and to strike him. Instead, I moved to the next bed because when he praised me my heart warmed in a dangerous, terrible way. Avery’s soft approval was like heat from a fireplace that would burn me if I ever stood too close.

When at last we were dragged away, driven by Mattheo’s precise impatience and the Knights’ invisible urging, the room was a map of small deaths and furtive, ruined mercies.

Outside, the corridor air felt like it might cleanse me, but the Knights’ voices had already seeded me with a new certainty, I had been useful. I had been effective. Tom’s hand brushed the back of my neck, no more than a phantom and I felt the warmth of approval flood the place where remorse sat. Avery’s pleasant murmur reached me as we moved away.

“You will be remembered,” he said. “You are precise. Mercy sharpened is far more terrifying than cruelty crude.” His words were compliment and warning both, and for reasons that sickened me I wanted them repeated, so that I might not be left to think too hard about the shape my hands had become.

The next ward was brighter, obscenely so. The windows gaped wide, spilling sunlight that did not belong here, light that revealed too much, pale curtains with childish patterns of stars, half-crushed toys at the ends of beds, small shoes tucked beneath cots as if their owners might yet rise and walk away.

I felt the warmth sting against my eyes. These were not soldiers, nor broken adults whose names had been stolen. These were children. Their faces were round with confusion, their hands small and restless, reaching for comfort that was not given.

Some bore scars across their skin, old hex marks curling like tattoos of pain. Others sat with vacant stares, lips trembling but no sound coming out. A little boy clutched a stuffed owl, its wing missing, stroking it again and again like a ritual against fear.

Some healers had formed a protective line as we entered. “No,” one of them said sharply, her voice iron despite her trembling. “You won’t touch them. Not them.”

Mattheo stepped forward. His jaw was tight, his shoulders squared, his wand already half raised. “We touch who we’re ordered to touch and you will not tell us otherwise.”

“You’re monsters,” she spat, though her hands were shaking as she spread her arms. “They’re children.”

“They’re examples,” Mattheo cut across. His eyes burned with a fury as he killed each healer in a single motion. “The Dark Lord doesn’t care how old they are. The younger they learn, the longer they’ll remember fear.”

Tom leaned closer to my shoulder, his tone gentler still. “It is not cruelty. It is necessity. When you spare them, you only leave them unprepared for the world that waits to consume them.”

But my body recoiled. I could feel my pulse thrashing at my throat, my stomach roiling. A little girl was watching me from one of the beds. Her hair was thin, a golden halo of curls matted by sweat. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, impossibly innocent. She clutched her blanket in both hands and whispered something so faint I had to lean in to hear it.

“Help me.”

Two words. A plea. A prayer.

I felt my wand hand tremble. My throat burned. I tried to raise the wood, tried to find the spell, but my body froze. The Knights pressed at me, their shadows heavy, but still I couldn’t. The child’s gaze cut through every layer of fear I had been building around myself.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

Mattheo’s head snapped around. “What?” His voice was sharp, dangerous.

“I can’t,” I said again, louder this time, my voice cracking. My wand fell slack at my side. “They’re children. I can’t.”

The air shifted. The patients whimpered, the staff pressed tighter against the walls, and the Knights stirred like predators smelling weakness.

Mattheo’s eyes darkened, his lips curling into a snarl. “You dare defy me?”

“I’m not—” My words tumbled out, frantic, broken. “I just, please, Mattheo, look at them, they’re—”

His wand moved faster than I could think. A blast of force struck me square in the chest, an invisible fist hurling me backward. My scream tore out of me as my body crashed into the wall. Stone cracked, plaster crumbled, and the breath was driven from my lungs in a single violent burst.

Pain flared white-hot through my spine and ribs. The world lurched, blurred, tilted sideways. Dust filled my throat, choked me, made every gasp ragged. I could taste copper on my tongue.

Mattheo stalked forward, his boots grinding against the stone. His face was twisted with fury, his eyes like shards of obsidian. He stood over me where I lay crumpled, my vision hazy, swimming with light. He spat. The moisture landed cold against my cheek.

“You’re pathetic,” he hissed. “Weak. If you can’t do this, you’re nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing.”

I blinked, fighting to keep my eyes open, but they kept blurring. My head rang, every heartbeat a hammer against bone. The ceiling above me seemed impossibly far, and the sunlight through the windows was too bright, searing into my skull.

Somewhere to my left, a child began sobbing. The sound was sharp, piercing, a wail that cut deeper than any curse. Nurses tried to hush them, their voices breaking with terror.

Tom’s voice drifted down to me, quiet as velvet. “Do not mistake him for your enemy, Aurelia. This is for your salvation as much as theirs. Forgiveness requires sacrifice. Pain first, mercy after. Even Christ suffered before redemption.”

Avery bent low, his tone almost kind. “He’s right, you know. You’ll thank him when you see what strength this forges in you.”

Their words tangled in my mind, echoing off the throbbing pain. My body felt too heavy to move, pinned by rubble and exhaustion. But my thoughts, they reached upward, past the Knights, past Mattheo’s fury.

God, I thought, please, please see me here. See me in this ruin. Forgive me for what I’ve done, for what I couldn’t do. Forgive him, too, if you can. He doesn’t know what he’s become.

 

Mattheo’s shadow loomed, his breath sharp, his wand still clenched like a threat. I lay there, dust in my lungs, blood on my lips, wondering if Heaven’s gates would ever open wide enough to let him in.

✦

Dust still hung in the air like smoke when Mattheo dropped his wand and rushed to me. His boots crunched over the rubble, each step a crack of urgency. He knelt hard beside me, hands sliding beneath my shoulders, dragging me up against him. His breath came sharp and ragged, his voice low, frantic, cutting through the ringing in my skull.

“Stay with me, Aurelia. Don’t you dare close your eyes. Do you hear me?”

His grip was fierce, fingers digging into my arms as though by force alone he could tether me to the world. My head lolled against his chest, his robes rough against my cheek. The heat of his body pressed through the haze, the pounding rhythm of his heart thundered against my ear.

“You’re stronger than this,” he whispered, his words tumbling out too fast, too raw. “You are not weak. Don’t make me watch you die.” His voice caught, sharp with something I couldn’t place. “Please, Aurelia. Stay.”

I tried to answer, but only a broken sound left my lips, half-breath, half-sob. The world tilted, shadows bending, voices echoing and fading. His words slipped in and out of my ears, like water through cupped hands. I caught fragments, “need you,” “can’t lose,” “stronger than this," but they scattered before I could hold them.

Over his shoulder, Tom stood watching, expressionless, as if carved from stone. “She will live,” he said coolly. “But your friend is rotting in the ward. He’s of no use to you in this state.”

Mattheo jerked his head, snapping, “Go. Tell Draco to collect Theo. Now.”

For a moment Tom lingered, his eyes flicking to me with something unreadable, then he inclined his head and vanished into shadow, footsteps echoing down the corridor.

Mattheo’s arms tightened around me. His mouth brushed my hair, his words spilling faster now, almost desperate. I tried to lift my head, my vision still a smear of light and motion. His name barely made it past my lips, more exhale than sound.

His hand cradled the back of my head, too gentle for the violence still smouldering in him. “Don’t speak. Just breathe.”

The next moments blurred. Shouts echoed in the halls, staff scrambling, spells flashing like lightning. Tom returned with Draco and Daphne, Theo’s limp body slung between them, his face ashen and slick with sweat. Lornezo followed, his wand hand trembling, his face pale but set.

Mattheo rose, pulling me up with him, my legs barely held, but his grip was iron, dragging me forward through the hospital’s choking corridors until the cold air outside hit my face.

Saint Mungo’s loomed behind us, its walls groaning with the chaos we’d left inside. Patients’ screams carried faintly through the broken windows. Mattheo lowered me onto unsteady feet but Lorenzo kept me upright, wrapping an arm around my waist tightly, pressing a soft kiss to my hair.

Mattheo lifted his wand. His voice, when it came, was low and soaked in fury.

“Incendio.”

Flame bloomed. First in the windows, then racing up the walls, licking across curtains, swallowing wards and ceilings. Fire consumed the building like hunger incarnate, every scream within twisting into the roar of the blaze. Smoke poured into the sky, black and heavy, blotting out what little light had dared to shine.

We stood together in the street, shadows flickering in the firelight. Daphne’s lips were pressed tight, her face wet though she didn’t weep aloud. Draco stared, jaw clenched, hands trembling. Theo sagged unconscious between them, his head lolling.

Lorenzo held me even tighter, my vision finally sharpening, the haze lifting into dreadful clarity. I blinked, staring at the inferno as Saint Mungo’s groaned and buckled, the upper floors collapsing into themselves. Sparks flew like dying stars across the night.

The fire painted Mattheo’s face in shades of scarlet and gold, every shadow sharpening the cut of his jaw, the hollows of his eyes. He didn’t speak. None of us did.

Then his hand moved. Slow. Careful. He reached toward me, not to grip, not to drag, but to touch the chain at my throat. My angel necklace had twisted, the small silver wing charm caught against the clasp at the back of my neck. His fingers slid gently along the chain, pulling it forward until the wing rested properly over my heart again.

He didn’t look at me. Didn’t say a word.

Just fixed it.

 

The fire cracked, the building groaned, and Saint Mungo’s collapsed into itself in a tower of flame as the six of us stood silent, watching it burn.

Chapter Text

DRACO MALFOY

The room swam before my eyes as I leaned in closer, wand angled like a blade beneath Granger’s chin. The ropes cut into her wrists, keeping her anchored to the chair, her wild hair sticking to the damp of her cheeks. Her breath rattled, uneven but stubborn, as though every inhalation was an act of rebellion. I had half a mind to hex her tongue into silence, but that wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted sat behind her eyes.

I had toyed with the thought of watching her wither in our safehouse shadows, trying to keep her lips sealed shut even as the fire in her gaze screamed of knowledge. Potter’s secrets. The Order’s plans. Today I decided I would prise it from her, tear it free if I had to.

I lowered my voice, silk over steel. “Look at me.”

She didn’t. She stared at the cracked floorboards, lips pressed so tightly together I thought she might draw blood. I seized her jaw in one hand, forcing her face up until her eyes met mine. There it was, stubborn brown, tired but sharp, a fortress she thought she could defend.

“Legilimens.”

The world shifted.

It was never a clean thing, Legilimency. It wasn’t opening a door, it was smashing through a wall with your bare fists, scraping nails along stone, searching for an opening. I found it, at first, the cracks spreading like veins of light through the dark. I pushed harder.

I landed somewhere damp, cold, the smell of pine heavy in the air. My boots sank into soil and dead leaves. The air tasted of frost and smoke. I turned, taking in a rather large tent, the dark canvas sagging under drizzle. A camp in the woods.

I felt her before I saw her. A pressure, like hands on my shoulders, shoving me back. I pressed forward. Branches snapped underfoot as I stalked toward the tent, knowing what, or who, must wait inside. My heart lurched as though something living writhed against my ribs.

Sudden heat seared my skull. She was fighting me.

“Get. Out. Malfoy.”

Her voice thundered through the air, though her lips hadn’t moved. Her mind screamed it. For one fractured moment, I almost admired her. Potter had taught her well, of course he had. Occlumency, slipped to her like contraband, preparing her for moments like this. Always thinking ahead, always fucking righteous.

I pressed harder. The forest trembled, the canvas of the tents flickering like weak flames. I wanted to peel them open, to drag Potter out into the dirt and spit his secrets into the night. But the harder I pushed, the stronger she became.

“Legilimens,” I hissed again, in the physical world, and the forest sharpened once more. I stumbled forward, into the largest tent. For a heartbeat, I was inside. Maps, parchment, candlelight. Potter’s messy scrawl across a sheet, the faint outline of a locket sketched like it was important, vital.

A wall slammed up and she shoved, a tidal wave of resistance crashing against me. My grip faltered, and I felt it then, the tearing sensation, like my own mind splitting at the seams.

The forest dissolved.

I staggered back into the room, head splitting open behind my eyes. My wand slipped, just for a second, before I caught myself. My breath tore ragged in my throat. Granger was panting too, her chest heaving, sweat trickling down her temple. But her lips curved, not into a smile, exactly, but into something far worse. A defiance that tasted like victory.

And then I felt it. The wet warmth trailing down over my lips.

I wiped my hand across my face. Blood.

The metallic tang filled my mouth, sharp as a blade. She had done that. She had forced me out, clawed her way against my intrusion until my skull felt like it would cave in. I wanted to snarl, to hex her until her bones sang, but I only stood there, the room spinning, the shadows crowding in.

War does things to the mind and I knew that better than most. I had trained myself sharp, honed like a knife, but knives dull under enough use, enough blood, enough nights spent listening to the screaming of the damned until you start hearing it even in silence. I thought Legilimency would give me power. Instead, it exposed me. My walls were cracked, the foundations rotten, and she had seen it.

Her voice, rasping but steady, dragged me back.

“You’ll never get anything out of me like that.”

I wanted to hurt her, to punish the words out of her mouth. Instead, I staggered to the side, one hand clutching the edge of the chair I’d left her in. My vision blurred, red drops staining the floorboards beneath us.

My laugh came brittle, cracked like ice. “You think you’re stronger than me, Granger?”

She didn’t answer, her silence screamed louder than words. I straightened, blood still running from my nose, tasting iron and humiliation. My hand shook as I raised my wand again, not at her but at myself, I forced it steady. I would not let her see me falter again.

But inside, I knew the truth. She was strong, far stronger than I had anticipated. Potter’s lessons had not gone to waste, and the forest, the tents, the scraps of parchment, they were already fading, slipping through my grasp like smoke.

I had failed, and failure was not something I could afford. Not with Mattheo watching. Not with the Knights creeping at the edges of our minds. I turned back to her, sharpness settling once more across my features like a mask, even as my insides rotted.

“This isn’t over,” I murmured, voice smooth despite the tremor in my hand. “You can build all the fucking walls you like, Granger. But walls can be broken.”

Her gaze met mine, unwavering, brown to grey.

“Then you’ll bleed trying,” she whispered.

The words lodged in my chest like glass. As I stepped back into the dim of the safehouse, blood still stinging the back of my throat, I wondered if perhaps she was right.

I should have stopped.

My nose still ran raw with blood, my head pounding, but I couldn’t leave it there, her gaze steady, her mouth curved in silent defiance. It wasn’t just her resistance. It was me. The cracks in me she’d pried open, the rot she’d exposed and I couldn’t bear it. I tightened my grip on the wand until my knuckles flared white. My voice was a rasp, shredded by fury.

“Legilimens!”

I tore into her again.

The world yawned open, harsher this time, jagged at the edges. The forest snapped into focus once more, the tents, now mud and the faint glow of a dying fire. I lurched forward, shoving past the resistance that rose instantly, like a tide slamming into a crumbling wall.

She was waiting for me, but stronger this time.

The ground trembled beneath my boots as she forced stone up from the soil, walls of black rock rearing up in every direction. She was building a maze in her mind, and I was merely prey, stumbling, clawing at corners that bent back in on themselves.

“Show me,” I hissed, though I wasn’t speaking aloud anymore. My skull was burning, my veins crackling with the weight of magic I couldn’t afford to waste. Every step felt heavier, my body aching with exhaustion. But I pushed, clawed at her walls, tearing splinters of thoughts including scraps of parchment, Potter’s handwriting, a glint of metal shaped like a locket before she smothered it in darkness again.

Her voice rose around me, echoing, cruel.

“You won’t find him here.”

The walls closed in. My vision blurred. I staggered, clutching my head, the taste of iron thick on my tongue. She shoved again, a psychic blow that rattled every bone. I fell out of her mind like a body hurled from a cliff.

The safehouse rushed back. Rope creaked where she strained against it, sweat streaking her pale face. My own chest was heaving, my heart a hammer trapped in bone. Blood streamed freely from my nose, dripping scarlet down my chin. My fingers trembled where they gripped my wand. I had nothing but scraps and she had beaten me. Her eyes glistened, not with fear but with triumph.

“Crucio!”

Her body arched violently, the chair groaning beneath her. A scream burst from her mouth, raw, guttural, tearing through the stale air. She writhed, every tendon pulled roughly, her wrists straining against rope until her skin split.

I stood there, arm locked, wand rigid, watching as agony painted itself across her face. Every second of her shrieking was another second I convinced myself this was control. Power. Not weakness, not failure, not the cracks she’d shown me. But her voice rose and fell like shattered glass, and beneath it I heard my own name, my own shame, echoing back at me.

I pressed harder. My magic burned through me like fire, my veins alight. The shadows of the room seemed to bend closer, as though watching, hungry for it.

“Do you like this?” I hissed, though my throat was raw. “Do you think your little walls can save you now?”

She sobbed, a sound caught between pain and defiance, and still I held the curse. Her nails dug into her palms until blood slicked her fingers. Her head snapped back against the chair, tears streaking through the grime on her face. She looked monstrous, human, beautiful in her suffering.

But part of me hated myself more than her. Because this wasn’t strategy. This wasn’t victory. This was desperation. This was the wild lashing of a boy who had already lost.

Her scream reached a pitch that fractured something in me. My arm faltered, shaking, before I finally let the curse drop and the silence that followed was worse. She collapsed forward, gasping, choking on air that didn’t seem to fill her lungs. Her body quivered with aftershocks, her skin pallid, lips cracked and bloody from biting down to contain her cries.

I stared at her, my wand still raised, my chest heaving. The taste of nausea rose up with the copper in my mouth. My knees buckled, and I caught myself on the back of her chair, my hand inches from her trembling shoulder.

Her head lifted, barely, just enough for her eyes to meet mine.

There was pain there, yes. But deeper than that, something worse.

Pity.

She fucking pitied me.

I stumbled back as though she’d struck me. The blood on my face, the sweat on my skin, the hollow in my chest, it was all laid bare under her gaze. I turned sharply, retreating into the corner of the room, the shadows swallowing me whole. My wand hung limp at my side. My breath sawed, uneven. I tried to steady myself, to rebuild the mask, but every shard of my composure had been stripped away.

She had taken nothing, and yet she had everything while all I had was blood on my face, shame in my bones, and screams ringing in my ears that I knew would kill me eventually.

The silence pressed against us dense and suffocating, filling every gap between her ragged breaths and my own uneven heartbeat. The room stank of sweat, iron, and burned magic, the air still humming faintly with the residue of the curse I had just unleashed. I stood there, my wand slack at my side, staring at her crumpled form, at the way her shoulders shook with the slow rhythm of her recovery, as though her body was relearning how to breathe.

I should have left. I should have turned and walked into the night, let the dark woods outside swallow me whole before I had to face the sight of her again. But my feet stayed rooted, my body rigid.

Her voice broke the silence, low and hoarse, but clear enough to slice through me.

“What happened to you?”

The words stopped me colder than any spell.

My breath caught. I blinked, unsure whether I’d even heard her correctly. My grip tightened on my wand, though I made no move to raise it. She lifted her head, trembling, but her eyes were locked on mine, searching me with a kind of curiosity that felt crueler than defiance.

“What happened to you, Malfoy?” she whispered again, and the sound of my name in her mouth was unbearable, like a blade dragged across raw skin.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My tongue felt thick, heavy, dead. There were too many answers, none of them fit for air, none of them that would sound like anything but weakness. She tilted her head, even as she winced at the movement, and her gaze slid lower, to my throat.

“There’s bruises,” she murmured, her voice fraying at the edges. “On your neck?”

My hand rose instinctively, fingers brushing the collar of my shirt as if I could hide it. The bruises were still there, shadows of fingers burned into pale flesh, Abraxas’s grip, reminders of how easily he had bent me to his will.

Something cracked inside me.

The pity in her tone. The audacity of her question. The memory of Abraxas' hand, squeezing the life out of me until I was nothing but a gasping, trembling child. It all flooded me, rage and shame woven into a single burning thread.

Before she could speak again, before she could look at me with those wide, soft eyes that had no right to see me at all, my wand rose of its own accord. My voice was a rasp, vicious and unrelenting.

“Crucio.”

She screamed again, her back snapping against the chair, body writhing in spasms as the curse ripped through her. The ropes creaked violently as she thrashed, her skin burning raw against them, blood from her wrists smearing the wood.

I didn’t stop this time. I poured everything into it.

Every inch of Abraxas’s hand closing around my throat. Every memory of the night I woke up choking, sweat-drenched, convinced I was still pinned beneath him. Every whisper of unworthiness that had haunted me since.

All of it surged out of me, into her.

Her screams clawed at the walls, filled every shadow, and still I pressed harder, my hand shaking not with hesitation but with the sheer weight of fury burning through me.

“Do you want to know what happened to me?” I snarled over her cries. “THIS happened! Men with power, men with names, men who break you down until you don’t know what you are anymore, that’s what fucking happened!”

She sobbed, her throat raw, but I didn’t let her breathe.

The veins in my temple throbbed, sweat pouring down my back, my muscles trembling as though the curse was burning me alive too. I felt it in my bones, the toll it took, the drain of magic siphoning out of me like blood from an open vein. Her body spasmed, tears streaming down her face, and yet even in the agony I saw the spark that refused to go out. The spark that dared to witness me.

“Don’t look at me like that!” I screamed, the words tearing free as my vision blurred. “Don’t you dare!”

The curse faltered, my strength waning, and at last I dropped it, gasping as if I had been the one tortured. My knees nearly buckled. My wand arm hung limp at my side, trembling violently.

She slumped forward again, shoulders shaking, breath wheezing in and out like a broken bellows. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, her hair plastered to her face with sweat.

But she raised her head. Slowly.

And her eyes, bloodshot and glassy, still met mine.

“You will always be one of those men,” she whispered, her voice wrecked but steady.

The words gutted me because she was right as much as she was wrong.

I stumbled back, one hand clawing at my throat as if I could tear the bruises off, scrape them away, erase every trace of what he had done to me. But they were there, under my skin, in my bones, and no amount of magic, no amount of pain inflicted on her would ever purge them. I sank into the shadows of the corner, chest heaving, wand clattering onto the table beside me. My hands shook uncontrollably. My entire body ached as if I’d been the one held under the curse.

She sat slumped in the chair, gasping, half-broken but still there, still looking at me with eyes that saw too much and I realized, with a sickness that curdled deep in my gut, that I didn’t know whether I wanted to silence her forever or collapse at her feet and beg her to stop seeing me.

 

The silence stretched on once more, heavy, unbearable and for the first time, I wished the Knights would come for me because anything, even their cruelty, would be easier than facing the truth of myself reflected in the eyes of the girl I had just tried to destroy.

I burst from the room like a hunted thing, the echo of her screams still hanging in the stale air, my lungs raw, my throat burning, the taste of blood still thick on my tongue. The corridor swallowed me whole, walls pressing close, light from the single hallway bulb making the shadows lurch and sway until I felt as though the entire safehouse were bending around me. My boots slid against the warped floorboards, my breath tearing ragged in my chest, and still I didn’t stop moving until I stumbled into the girls’ room and let the weight of my body collapse onto the floor with a hollow thud.

The world tilted sideways. I lay there, cheek pressed against the cold wood, the faint smell of damp and dust filling my nostrils. My pulse roared in my ears, deafening, drowning out everything but the hammering of my own heart. My wand had slipped from my grasp somewhere between the corridor and here, but I didn’t care, couldn’t care, all I could do was breathe, sharp and shallow, trying not to choke on whatever was clawing up the back of my throat.

And then I heard laughter.

High, light and sharp spilling down from somewhere above me. I forced my eyes open, blinking against the blur, and saw her standing there, framed by the crooked doorway.

Daphne.

She loomed over me, hair falling in a messy sheet around her face, her eyes wide and shining far too brightly, pupils blown, her whole body vibrating with a restless energy that made my own exhausted limbs feel heavier by comparison. She was laughing, breathless, too fast, as though every word she’d ever swallowed was spilling out all at once and she didn’t have the time or patience to keep them contained.

“Well, well, well,” she said between bursts of laughter, her voice pitched higher than usual, quick, tumbling over itself like water racing downhill. “Draco Malfoy, crumpled on the floor bleeding and pathetic.”

I blinked at her, uncomprehending, my chest still heaving.

Her laughter grew louder, echoing off the walls, sharp and unsteady, and she crouched down beside me, her knees cracking against the wood, her eyes so close I could see the tremor in them, the way they refused to settle, darting and gleaming like flames.

“You think you’re the only one losing your mind” she whispered rapidly, leaning so close I felt the hot rush of her breath against my cheek, and then she threw her head back and laughed again, the sound jagged, too bright, as though it were cutting through her throat on the way out.

“We’re all broken, Draco, every last one of us. Oh fuck, you should see yourself. Why are you staring at me like that?” she demanded suddenly, her words rushing, tripping over each other. “Do I look strange? Do I sound strange? No, no, no, you’re the strange one, Draco, with your pale little face and your blood dripping down, dripping, dripping, you’ve got crimson smeared all over you, oh fuck, its bleeding, Draco you’re bleeding.”

Her hand darted out, quick as lightning, and she brushed her thumb across my cheek, smearing the trail of blood there, then held it up before her eyes as if it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. She giggled again, wild, delighted, as though she’d uncovered a secret no one else could comprehend.

I let her because I didn’t have the strength to push her hand away, nor the will to summon anger. My mind was empty, scraped hollow by Granger’s eyes and screams, by the echo of Abraxas’s grip on my throat. I wanted silence but Daphne gave none.

She rose suddenly, pacing the narrow room in sharp, restless strides, her hands fluttering, her words pouring out too fast, too many, too much.

“We’re all going to fucking die here, you know that, don’t you Draco? All of us, Theo, Mattheo, Aurelia, and you, Draco, you with your bleeding nose and your cracked head, and me, fuck me, I’ll probably dig myself into the grave, wouldn’t that be a sight?”

Her laughter followed the words, echoing and ricocheting through the cramped space until the walls seemed to tremble with it.

I closed my eyes.

The floor creaked beneath her steps, the air too warm, too sharp, my skin crawling with the weight of exhaustion. Her voice was just another scream layered over the ones already embedded in my skull.

I didn’t give it thought. I couldn’t.

I lay there, heavy and limp, letting her voice wash over me like static, her laughter rising and falling, her words spilling like a torrent that I had no hope of stopping. My body sank deeper into the floor, bones pressed into wood, the cool damp soaking through my shirt, anchoring me to something solid even as the rest of the world spun out in madness.

Her laughter became a rhythm, sharp and steady, and I let it fill the silence where my own thoughts should have been. Still I did not move, because movement would mean thought, and thought would mean remembering, and remembering would mean collapsing all over again. So I lay there, and she laughed above me, her eyes wide and gleaming and I let it pass through me, let it fill the hollow space where I used to be.

Daphne’s fingers curled into the fabric of my sleeve with surprising strength, and before I could stop her she hauled me upright, her laughter still bubbling high, ricocheting off the cracked plaster walls like shards of glass. My legs buckled beneath me, unsteady, my knees raw from where I’d collapsed, but she didn’t care, didn’t pause, she pulled me into the corridor like I was nothing more than a corpse.

“Come on, Draco, come on, you can’t lie around on the floor forever,” she sang between bursts of laughter, the rhythm of her voice too fast, her words snapping and tumbling as though if she slowed for even a second the weight of silence would crush her. “The house is alive, can’t you feel it? The walls are breathing, the shadows are watching, oh Merlin, isn’t it all just so cool?”

The scent of damp stone and extinguished candles clung to the narrow passageways, the floorboards creaked beneath her hurried steps, and I let myself be pulled along, my mind too frayed, my limbs too heavy to resist. My cheek still stung from the memory of the floorboards, my throat ached with phantom fingers, and the iron tang of blood coated the back of my teeth.

When she shoved open the heavy dining room door, the world seemed to lurch forward.

The air inside was thick with the stale smell of parchment, ink, and the faint bitterness of spilt firewhiskey. Mattheo sat at the wooden table, a storm of shadow bending around him and a quill gripped so tightly in his fist that the tendons in his wrist strained white. The scratch of pen against parchment filled the room until Daphne’s laughter spilled in like a flood.

At the same moment, the front door groaned, hinges shrieking, and Theo and Aurelia stepped through the threshold.

For a second, the world stopped.

Theo looked better than yesterday, if better could mean his skin wasn’t quite so grey, his hands not shaking quite so violently, his eyes clearer, if only by a fraction. He stood straighter, shoulders squared as though bracing against the memory of St Mungo’s, his lips drawn tight but his breath steady. Aurelia was beside him, her hair damp from the rain outside, her expression was something calm, almost soft, though I could see the faint tremor at the edges of her jaw, the way she clutched her sleeve like a child trying not to shiver.

Mattheo noticed immediately.

The scratch of quill ceased with a violent crack, his fist slamming the pen down onto the wood with such force the ink splattered, a dark blot blooming across the page. His head snapped up, eyes narrowing, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might splinter.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

The words rang across the room, sharp as a curse.

Theo froze mid-step, his face carefully blank, but Aurelia flinched, her shoulders twitching as though she’d been struck. Daphne laughed again, high and incongruous, dragging me further into the room, her grip iron on my sleeve. Mattheo rose slowly from the table, the scrape of chair legs against stone grinding like a blade. He placed both palms flat on the wood, leaning forward, every muscle in his frame tense, carved from fire and fury.

“I’ve received intel.” His eyes cut to Theo, then Aurelia, sharp enough to wound. “We’re under watch, subject to raid I presume. Which means nobody leaves this house without explicit permission. From me and only me.”

The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the low hiss of the dying fire in the grate and the ragged rhythm of my own breath.

Aurelia stepped forward, her chin lifted though her voice wavered. “We were just—”

“Fuck you.” Mattheo’s voice rose, a whip crack through the room. He slammed his hand against the table again, the sound reverberating through the floorboards. “You think your judgement outweighs mine? You think running around outside while we’re being watched is clever? You want to get us all killed?”

Aurelia flinched again, a tremor darting across her face like lightning, but she didn’t speak, her lips parted, the words caught behind her teeth.

I should have revelled in it. I hated her calm voice, her softness, her quiet faith in everything that sickened me when the rest of us bled and burned. But as I stood there, Daphne’s laughter piercing the silence, Mattheo’s rage towering over her, I felt something sour twist in my chest.

Because this wasn’t worth it.

This wasn’t a betrayal, or a mission gone wrong, or even a secret worth hiding. It was meaningless, and for all my hatred, I didn’t want to see Mattheo break her over nothing.

“Isn’t it funny?” Daphne giggled, dragging me closer, her eyes wide, unblinking, her words spilling faster and faster. “Merlin, you’re all so serious, it’s pathetic, it’s hilarious—”

“Shut up, Daphne!” Mattheo roared, his voice echoing like thunder. He turned on her, his face twisted, veins pulsing at his temple, his fury spilling over every corner of the room. “Do you ever stop? Do you ever listen to yourself? You think this is a fucking joke?”

Her laughter faltered for a heartbeat, a stutter, before it resumed, sharper, more brittle, but she didn’t stop, couldn’t stop.

Mattheo slammed his fist into the table again, the sound shuddering through my bones. “Enough! In thirty minutes we leave. Do you understand me? Thirty minutes. We’re going to finish the next family on the list, the next filthy little muggleborns who think they can live while we rot. And if anyone disobeys me again—” His eyes cut to Theo, then Aurelia, hard as stone. “—they’ll answer to me.”

The room froze in the silence that followed.

Theo’s jaw tightened, his hand curling into a fist at his side, but he didn’t speak. Aurelia’s face was pale, her lips pressed thin, her eyes shining with something she swallowed down before it could surface. Daphne’s laughter finally broke into silence, a choked sound like a bird struck mid-flight. I stood there, the weight of her grip still on my sleeve, the echo of Hermione’s screams still in my head, the taste of blood still sharp in my mouth, and I wondered how much longer any of us could keep from collapsing under the weight of the walls pressing closer every night.

 

Mattheo stood tall at the table, his chest heaving, his eyes lit with fire, and for the first time I thought I saw the shadow of his father in him, the same hunger, the same darkness, the same iron certainty that none of us would ever escape.

✦

THEODORE NOTT

Mattheo’s words clung to the inside of my skull like nails hammered too deep to remove.

Thirty minutes.

That was all he gave us, all he gave me. Thirty minutes until the blood, until the fire, until the pieces of myself I had not yet lost were chipped away in the name of his lists.

I should have been thinking of my wand, of tactics, of the ways my hands might move in rhythm with the curses that came so naturally to the rest of them, but my mind fractured into something simpler, something darker, a single thought screaming beneath my ribs like a wound that refused to clot.

Not enough time.

Not enough time to numb it, to flatten the edges, to bury the weight of memory under something mercifully heavy and liquid.

Thirty minutes to be drunk. Thirty minutes to be drunk enough that the knots in my brain, the heavy, merciless thinking that woke me at dawn and set me trembling at dusk, would loosen if only for the sliver of time before we were supposed to behave like men again.

I’d never planned on it becoming the thing I wanted most, the warm, false mercy of oblivion, but I’d noticed it first as an echo after the Finch-Fletchley task, that hollow lightness in my limbs, the easing like a latch released. For hours after I’d felt new, as if some thread that had been taut in my chest for years had finally snapped and let me breathe.

That day we’d stumbled into the mission and I’d felt it there too, an ease in my spells, the clumsy energy that had always shrouded the tremor beneath, and I’d liked it, more than I thought I should like anything. Because when I was drunk, the things that gnawed the most, my grandfather’s voice calling me weak, the image of Mattheo’s father like a cold star watched by all of them, when I was drunk those images did not sit on my tongue like stones, they dissolved into the air and left me with the ridiculous impression that I might be allowed to be myself for a moment, that I might be allowed not to be ashamed.

No one could know. Not Aurelia especially because she had that look like light held in a hand, the sort of look that made you think of absolution and made you bleed with the shame of not being worthy of it, and there are some sins I could not bear to have her name witness.

I heard my own breath in the room as though it were another man’s, shallow and quick, my hands moved before my mind could compose itself into sentence and lie. I told myself I needed time, that thirty minutes was a beast I would appease, not a sentence to be served in full, and so I ran.

I left whatever remained of my dignity at the door as I shouldered past bodies and faces that blurred into smear and shadow, my Death Eater robes snagging on the edges of the table where Mattheo had been writing, the smell of ink and old paper following me like a ghost.

The bathroom door closed behind me with a hollow click, the sound swallowed instantly by the silence inside. The mirror above the sink was streaked, spotted with mildew, reflecting a pale, hollow version of myself, my eyes too large in their sockets, my lips pressed thin, my body mottled with bruises I’d stopped counting.

I tore my gaze away, because I couldn’t look at him, not the boy I used to be, not the man I was supposed to be, not the monster I was becoming. My hands worked with frantic purpose, pushing aside the rotted wood beneath the sink, revealing the stash I’d built in quiet desperation.

In the cabinet under the sink there was a hollowed place where a jar of soap might have once lived. It was usually empty, an absence that most people didn’t think to check, but I knew of it because memory is a cupboard full of secret things and because the world had taught me that small preparations are survival.

I slid open the cupboard door and my hand brushed glass. It glinted in the dim light, dozens of bottles, all sharp angles and clear liquid, the labels peeling, the caps twisted tight. Muggle vodka. Tasteless, efficient, brutal in its simplicity. It smelled like a thing that has no history and therefore refuses to be anything but itself. I closed the cupboard again on the world and sat with the bottle balanced on my knees, fingers wrapped around the cold that did not care for me.

I wanted to drink for the neat reasons I could have explained in lecture halls to students five years younger than myself, to dull the reflex that made morals scream at me, to make the sound of the ghostly hand on my throat go muffled, to flatten every angled thought that would otherwise sharpen into some terrible display of blame and doom.

My hands shook, not from the need to drink but because the thought of not doing so produced a physical pain, like hunger from which my stomach would not relent. I tipped the bottle again and drank more than I should, more than I ought, and felt the world slide further into a softened pool where the constant computations that made me useful and thin and watchful did not have to be made.

My fingers closed around a bottle, cold against my sweating palm. I unscrewed the cap, the faint metallic snap loud as thunder in the silence, and the sharp scent rose instantly, chemical and clean, a burn even in the air.

I pressed it to my lips and drank.

The liquid hit my tongue like fire and ice both, searing, numbing, bitter enough to make my throat spasm, but I swallowed hard, harder, until it slid down into me, burning a path through my chest, settling heavy in my stomach. I drank again, longer, the liquid spilling down the corner of my mouth, dripping onto my collar, soaking into the black fabric of the uniform I hadn’t even finished buttoning.

It was ritual by now, desperation disguised as discipline, the only consistency left in a world that tore itself apart every day. Drink, swallow, burn, forget. But I didn’t forget. Not at once.

The panic still clawed, whispering that it wasn’t enough, that I needed more, faster, that I had thirty minutes, no less, before I’d be forced to stand steady with blood on my hands, and I could not, would not, face it sober.

I tipped the bottle back again, swallowing half of it in greedy gulps, each mouthful harsher than the last, until my throat felt raw and my chest throbbed with the weight of it. My hands trembled, my vision blurred, the world tilting in strange rhythms, but already the edges softened, already the roar in my head quieted to a dull hum.

I sank onto the cold tile floor, my back pressed to the door, the bottle clutched between my knees like some grotesque chalice. The uniform clung damp to my skin where the vodka had spilled, the air smelled of alcohol so thickly and still I drank.

The alcohol seeped into me, warm and heavy, spreading through my veins like an anaesthetic, dulling the sharp edges, numbing the tremors in my hands. My thoughts loosened, less coherent, words slipping in and out of clarity, but that was the point, wasn’t it?

I pressed the bottle to my forehead, the glass cool against my skin, my breath ragged, my heart slowing into something bearable. I wanted to laugh, the sound clawing at my throat, but it stuck, bitter and heavy.

I thought of Aurelia, of the way she looked at me like I was still whole, still clever, still the man she’d once trusted. I thought of her voice when she asked if I was all right, the softness I didn’t deserve. She couldn’t know. She can never know because if she saw me like this crumpled on the floor with poison in my veins, she’d see the truth. She’d see that I was no better than the rest of them, that I was weaker still, and I couldn’t bear her eyes on me like that.

The minutes slipped by, though I couldn’t tell how many, the edges of time fraying, the silence swallowing me whole. The bottle was nearly empty when I pulled it from my lips, the burn in my throat constant now, the warmth in my veins almost pleasant. My hands were steadier, my chest lighter, my mind mercifully quiet.

 

I knew I would stand when the thirty minutes ended. I would march with them , my wand ready, my mask secure, my voice steady when spoke. They wouldn’t see the cracks, wouldn’t see the glass beneath my skin, wouldn’t see the failed excuse of a man on the bathroom floor.

✦

The air split apart with the sound of tearing cloth as we Apparated, and I stumbled onto solid ground, my boots skidding against gravel slick with rain. The air smelled of wet earth and chimney smoke, and before me rose a small brick house with yellow light glowing faintly through its curtains, warm and ordinary, as if the world inside could not imagine the shadows gathering outside.

I swayed, caught myself on my own knees, and straightened quickly, forcing my breath steady. The alcohol coursed through me, my veins singing with it, my skin humming, my mind loose and too fast, too free, as if I were flying without broom or spell. I felt untouchable, as though no curse could pierce me, no shadow could consume me, because wasn’t this the point?

Wasn’t this what the others never understood, that you could drown out terror if you simply drank enough?

Mattheo’s voice cut across the night.

“This is the Creevey family, Colin and Dennis should be at Hogwarts so Greengrass, Berkshire and Nott you three go in. No need for all six of us against two.”

His tone carried iron authority, his eyes glittering as he gestured toward the house. Aurelia stood just behind Lorenzo, her lips parted as if she wanted to speak but thought better of it. Draco hovered near the gate, face drawn and unreadable, his eyes flicking toward me with something sharp I couldn’t place.

I nodded too quickly, perhaps too eagerly, though I told myself it was conviction, not desperation. My words tumbled out before I could think. “Of course, efficiency, always better to divide the task, leave fewer traces, keep the structure neat, yes, yes.”

Mattheo frowned harshly, but he didn’t question me further. He only jerked his chin toward the front door.

“Oh, come on then,” Daphne sang, her hand already tugging at Lorenzo’s sleeve, her eyes glittering with a feverish light. “Let’s not waste the night standing out here like idiots.”

I followed them, my steps too loud on the gravel, the alcohol making every movement both clumsy and effortless, like the world had turned fluid beneath my boots.

The door gave easily beneath Daphne’s wand, swinging open with barely a creak, and the warmth of the living room spilled into us at once, the hum of a television and the soft shuffle of a couple’s voices carrying over from the sofa.

The couple looked up as we entered, a man with greying hair, his arm draped around a blonde woman whose knitting needles slipped from her lap. Their eyes widened, mouths opening in shock, and for a single moment I saw my own parents in their faces, my mother’s startled glance, my father’s steady hand on the arm of a chair.

I raised my wand.

The television exploded in a shower of sparks and flame, glass and plastic shattering outward, the noise deafening, the screen collapsing into smoke. The couple screamed, clutching each other, the woman shrieking as sparks rained across the carpet.

My laugh escaped before I could stop it, echoing against the walls. The alcohol made everything funnier, lighter, the destruction glittering like fireworks on New Year’s.

“Oh, wasn’t that brilliant?” I muttered, my words tripping over themselves. “Muggle trash, see how fragile it is? A flick of the wrist and it’s gone.”

“Theo,” Lorenzo drawled, his grin wide, his wand twirling between his fingers. He stepped closer to the couple, his eyes flicking between them with something hungry and cruel. “You’re showing off again. Save some of the fun for us.”

“Fun,” Daphne echoed, her laughter bursting again, sharp and bright. She skipped forward, wand pointed lazily at the woman. “Don’t be frightened, we’ll make it quick. Or slow. Depends how I feel.”

The man stood, placing himself in front of his wife, his voice trembling but steady enough. “Please, whatever you want, take it, just—”

“Oh, don’t grovel,” Lorenzo purred, stepping closer, tilting his head as though examining art. “It ruins the mood.”

Daphne flicked her wand and the knitting needles flew up, stabbing into the wall with a metallic clang, the woman crying out again. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Daphne said, eyes wide, too wide, sparkling with something feverish. “Every object here, every pathetic little toy of theirs is just waiting to be shattered. Waiting to bleed.”

I staggered forward, glass crunching beneath my boots, and with another flick of my wand the lamp burst into shards, the couch cushions tearing open, feathers scattering like snow. I laughed again, breathless, giddy. “Look at it, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, everything breaks, everything burns—”

The couple’s terror filled the room, thick and choking, their voices trembling over each other. Lorenzo hushed them with a mockingly gentle finger pressed to his lips.

“Now, now, no need for panic,” he crooned, his grin sharp. “We’ll make this a night to remember.”

Daphne moved closer, her wand aimed directly at the woman’s chest, her laughter bubbling over into words too quick. “Tell me, do you love her? Do you? Because we can test it, we can peel her apart, see how loudly she screams, and we’ll watch how long you last before you beg for it to end.”

The man trembled but didn’t move, his jaw tight, his arm outstretched. I swayed on my feet, the room spinning just slightly, my heart hammering too fast, too loud. The alcohol made everything shimmer, specifically the glass glittering on the floor, Daphne’s wild eyes, Lorenzo’s sharp smile, and yet beneath it, faint but insistent, I felt something twisting.

Not enough. Drink more. Numb it deeper. Faster.

But there was no bottle here, only my wand, only the family before us, only the laughter of my companions echoing through the room. So I raised my wand again, my voice breaking into a slurred spell, the syllables tangling but still sharp enough to send the coffee table splitting in two, the wood splintering with a crack.

The woman sobbed, clutching her husband’s sleeve, and Daphne’s laughter rose higher, higher, until it seemed to fill every corner of the house.

“Don’t cry,” she said, almost sweetly, though her eyes betrayed the madness. “It won’t help.”

Lorenzo leaned closer to her, his grin dangerous, his words dripping like honey. “Oh, but it makes it so much prettier, don’t you think?”

I felt my stomach twist, my chest burn, but the alcohol wrapped its arms around me, pulling me down, making everything lighter, easier, freer.

This was freedom, wasn’t it?

To destroy, to laugh, to drown, to never feel again. Some part of me knew I would still remember this night. No matter how much I drank.

The man tried to speak again, but his words broke apart in my ears, dissolving into nonsense syllables drowned beneath the ringing in my head. His mouth moved, his lips stretched, but I couldn’t hear him clearly, the sound warped, as if I were underwater, the only noise sharp enough to pierce the fog was Daphne’s shrieking laughter, Lorenzo’s velvet drawl, the distant hum of blood pounding in my ears.

The room spun. The walls tilted slightly to the left, then swung back, the floor beneath my boots shifting like a ship at sea. The couple’s faces blurred together, her pale cheeks, his dark brows, their eyes wide and shining until they were nothing more than spheres of terrified light, glowing like moons in the smoke and feather-snow.

“Enough talking,” Daphne said, her voice too high, too fast, like glass cracking. Her wand twitched in her hand as she danced a half-circle around the man, her boots crunching over shattered glass. “Let’s see how brave you really are, then.”

She flicked her wand, and the man crumpled to his knees with a strangled scream, his back arching, his hands clawing at the air. The sound split the air, raw and human and unbearable.

I felt something fizz in my chest, the alcohol colliding with adrenaline, turning dread into exhilaration. My hand twitched. I wanted to add my voice to it, to carve my magic into the air, to feel the release of it. I lifted my wand, my voice slurred but still sharp enough.

“Confringo.”

The cabinet in the corner erupted, wood splintering outward, glass shattering, plates spinning into shards that rained down over the man as he writhed. The crash was thunder in the small space, feathers from the couch still drifting down to mingle with ceramic fragments.

Lorenzo tilted his head, his lips curling in that mocking grin as he crouched low to the man’s face, watching the spasms with an almost tender fascination. “You hear that?” he murmured. “That’s the sound of love. That’s the sound of your body telling you it was all for nothing.”

The woman sobbed, stumbling forward to clutch at her husband’s shoulders, but Daphne shoved her back with a careless curse, sending her sprawling into the overturned coffee table, wood splinters scratching across her arms.

“Don’t touch him,” Daphne snapped, laughter spilling out again, wild and sharp. “You’ll have your turn. I promise.”

The man’s screams built and broke, built and broke, until Daphne released him, letting him collapse onto the carpet, gasping, twitching. The air smelled of sweat, burnt fabric, and the acrid tang of ozone from too much uncontrolled magic. My head spun faster, my heart slammed, and I stumbled closer, nearly tripping over the broken lamp at my feet.

I wanted to do something, to prove myself, to feel the magic sing again in my hands.

“You—” I pointed my wand at the woman, my arm unsteady, the tip weaving. Her face blurred, doubled, then snapped into focus long enough for me to see her tears streaking down her cheeks. “You don’t, you don’t deserve—” The words tangled, too many, too fast. I licked my lips, swallowed, tried again. “You don’t deserve to keep breathing, not when you birthed filth.”

“Finally, Nott,” Lorenzo said smoothly, though the mockery glinted beneath the compliment. He straightened, wand twirling again. “Well said, if a little messy.”

Before I could curse him out, Daphne struck. “Crucio!”

The woman’s body arched, a shriek ripping from her throat so high it pierced the fog in my head, clear, unbearable. She writhed on the carpet, her nails clawing at her own skin, her eyes rolling.

Daphne laughed louder, skipping closer, her wand tracing shapes in the air as if this were performance, not punishment. “Look how she dances, look, do you see, Lorenzo, do you see how they always break the same way? Isn’t it gorgeous?”

“Exquisite,” Lorenzo murmured, watching her with half-lidded eyes, his grin lazy and cruel. He flicked his wand casually, sending a chair leg flying into the man’s ribs, drawing another broken cry. “I think she screams prettier than he does.”

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, stifling a laugh that wasn’t mine, a sound that clawed its way out of my chest anyway. My stomach flipped, but the vodka smoothed the edges, turned nausea into euphoria, until I almost doubled over with the force of it.

“Prettier, yes, like music,” I said, though my voice slurred, words sloshing together.

The woman’s voice broke into sobs as Daphne released her, leaving her shuddering, her hair damp with sweat, her chest heaving. Daphne crouched, gripped the woman’s chin hard, and tilted her face upward, her own grin too wide, eyes glittering too bright.

“You should thank us,” she whispered, though loud enough for all of us to hear. “We’re freeing you. Freeing you from your pathetic little life, your needles and your sofa and your fucking muggle trash. You should be fucking grateful.”

The woman sobbed harder, shaking her head, choking on words.

Lorenzo chuckled, brushing Daphne’s shoulder with a mock-intimate touch. “Darling, don’t expect gratitude. Terror is its own gift.”

Daphne’s laugh burst again, sharp and manic, and she shoved the woman back against the floor, raising her wand high. “Fine then. No gratitude. Just silence.”

I blinked, the room tilting, the woman’s blurred face swimming before me. My hand shook, but the alcohol made me bold, made me fearless, made me crueler than myself. I tightened my grip on my wand, my lips curling into something like a smile.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The green light burst from my wand before I could breathe, slamming into her chest, silencing her at once. Her body crumpled, her face slack, her eyes wide and empty.

The room went still.

The man’s broken sobs filled the silence, raw, desperate, keening. Daphne tilted her head, her grin faltering into something almost disappointed, then she laughed again, sharp, short. “Fucking hell Nott. You ruined the fun.”

“Not ruined,” Lorenzo said softly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at me, something unreadable passing through them. “Efficient.”

I swayed, my chest heaving, the air thick with death, feathers, glass, smoke. The vodka burned hotter in my stomach, but my head felt light, spinning, free. I laughed, the sound breaking too high.

“Efficient, yes,” I echoed, staggering back a step. “Quick. Clean. No fun left, no fun at all.”

The man screamed again, clutching his wife’s body, his face streaked with blood and glass.

Daphne raised her wand, eyes alight, and said, “Then we’ll make him last.”

“I’ll check upstairs.” I staggered across the splintered floor, each step sending shards of glass crunching under my boots, the acrid tang of smoke and blood filling my nostrils.

My stomach lurched violently, a bitter swirl of vodka and vomit, and I clutched at the edge of the doorway, retching onto the torn carpet. The smell of vomit mixed with the taste of blood and the acrid bite of charred upholstery, spinning into a haze so thick I thought it might suffocate me. I’d promised myself I’d keep control, that I’d stay just enough above the edge to be useful, but the world pitched beneath me.

Daphne’s shrill laughter echoed up from below, Lorenzo’s smooth, teasing voice winding around it, a siren call of chaos that made my head pound harder. I could hear the man’s pleas cut short by Daphne’s ruthlessness, the explosion of a chair leg, the splintering of glass, the sick thrum of magic ripping through the room. My vision tilted, faces blurring together into a kaleidoscope of fear and panic, and I stumbled forward, hands shaking.

“Stay steady,” I muttered to myself, words slurring, tangled with the thick rush of alcohol in my blood. “Just upstairs. Quick. Clean. Nothing to see.”

I gagged again, heaving violently onto the carpet. My knees buckled, but I forced myself to my feet, gripping the railing of the staircase tightly. Each step was a battle, the wood twisting and swaying beneath me, the smell of smoke and blood curling into my nostrils, the screams below hammering in my skull.

When I reached the first floor, my stomach convulsed violently once more, vomit coating the polished wood as I lurched toward the first door on the left. My wand hung limply from my fingers, a warm, metallic weight against my palm. I forced myself to push it open, the hinges squealing in protest.

Inside, the bedroom was almost untouched. Sheets twisted and tangled on the bedpost, a faint smell of detergent lingering underneath the smoke and blood from downstairs. And there she was.

White-blonde hair, small and trembling, eyes wide and shining with tears that reflected every flicker of the fire and magical light below. Backed into the corner, she clutched herself, sobbing so violently that it tore at my chest, made my stomach twist again. My mind froze, and then shattered.

“Aurelia…” I whispered, voice thick, slurring, low.

The girl flinched, confused, clutching herself tighter, but I didn’t notice. I saw Aurelia with the same wide, terrified eyes, the same small trembling hands, the same silver angel wing necklace I’d imagined clutched between her fingers, and everything I’d been holding in, everything I’d tried to smother under vodka and rage, broke.

I stumbled forward, nearly tripping over the threshold, and crouched in front of her. My hands shook violently as I wrapped them around her small frame, holding her against my chest, my face pressed into the top of her head.

“It’s okay, Aurelia… it’s me, Theo. Your Theo. I’ve got you, I promise.”

Her cries hit my chest like hammers, each sob twisting through me, breaking something raw and deep inside. I pressed my cheek to hers, inhaling the sharp, clean scent of her hair, tasting the smoke and dust from downstairs, feeling her small heartbeat hammer against my own.

In that instant, nothing else existed, the blood, the screams, the shattered lives below, they were distant, muted, irrelevant.

Only her.

Aurelia.

“Don’t… don’t cry,” I murmured, voice breaking, tears mingling with the sweat on my face. My arms trembled as I held her tighter, rocking slightly back and forth, whispering her name over and over as if the repetition could stitch the world back together. “I’m not letting them hurt you. Not anymore.”

The room tilted, spinning slightly, and I felt vomit rise again, gagging softly against the edge of her hair. She flinched at the sound, and I whispered urgently, “No, Aurelia, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s just me, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her small hands grasped at my robes, clutching frantically, and I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of tears and blood and smoke burn through my body. The chaos downstairs became distant, fading to a dull roar, replaced by the steady beat of her frightened pulse against my chest.

“You’re safe,” I choked out again, voice hoarse and slurred, my head pressing against hers as if by sheer force I could shield her from the world, shield her from everything I had become.

I rocked slightly, murmuring her name, the syllables breaking off into sobs, into laughter, into incoherent fragments. The world outside the bedroom blurred, Daphne and Lorenzo, the explosion of magic, the screams, the images melted into abstract colors, distorted shapes, sounds that came in and out like the tide.

My vision doubled, then tripled, faces flashing in my mind until all I could see clearly was her, the small, white-haired girl trembling against my chest. Her small hands tugged weakly at my robes, and she wrenched herself free, stumbling back against the wall, her wide eyes searching mine with confusion and fear.

My chest tightened, a sharp, burning knot, and my stomach pitched again. The room tilted, the edges of reality smearing into one another.

“No… no, stay… stay with me,” I croaked, voice cracking, rasped with alcohol and desperation, as though sheer will could tether her to me. But her small, upturned face told me the truth, even as my mind rebelled, this was not Aurelia. Not her. Another child. Another innocent life caught in the ripple of my mistakes, my weakness, my rage.

“I know it’s not you…” I whispered hoarsely, hands shaking as they hovered near her shoulders, afraid to touch, afraid to let her go, afraid she would vanish into smoke and blood before my failing senses could grasp her.

“But I can’t… I can’t let you die…” My words trailed off into a trembling, incoherent mess, torn between reality and the vision of Aurelia embedded so deeply in my mind that the two seemed inseparable.

The girl blinked at me, still clutching herself, sobbing quietly now, the sound splintered in my chest. Her fear was raw and palpable, an almost physical weight pressing down on me, and I felt my body shiver violently, cold sweat slicking my palms even as the heat of the fire downstairs licked at the walls through the cracks and broken windows.

Then, another smash. The sound ripped through the floorboards beneath me, echoing like a gunshot, bouncing off walls, reverberating in my skull. I grabbed her small hands with frantic urgency, clutching them just enough to guide her toward the corner wardrobe.

“Closet,” I gasped, voice trembling and wet with panic, shaking her slightly but not letting go. “Hide in the closet. Quick, please, now.” My words were slurred, jagged, broken by my nausea and the tremor in my chest. Her tiny body pressed into the shadowed space as I held my hand over her, forcing her down.

She nodded weakly, her hands fumbling with the small brass knob, the lock clicking faintly in the dim light. I could feel her heartbeat thumping like a frantic drum through the thin walls of the closet, matching the violent rhythm in my chest. I pressed my forehead against the wood, whispering low, urgent prayers, promises, fragments of guilt and care.

“When the smashing stops…” I stammered, shoving my hands through my hair, voice breaking, breath ragged, the room tilting dizzyingly as I nearly collapsed again. “When it stops, you run, run far, never come back here. You hear me? Never come back.”

Her small lips quivered as she murmured something I barely caught, a tiny, trembling “okay,” and I forced myself to believe it.

Outside, the din of destruction continued, furniture splintering, glass shattering, flames licking the floorboards, the occasional curse punctuated by Lorenzo’s silky voice and Daphne’s laughter. Each sound stabbed into me, slicing through the haze of alcohol, rage, and panic that clouded my mind.

I knelt on the floor, arms dangling, shaking from the effort of trying to protect her without fully being able to save her. My chest felt raw and bruised from the panic pounding inside me. I wanted to scream, to throw myself into the fire below, to tear down the walls and stop the chaos, but my body refused to respond beyond trembling and shallow, ragged breaths.

“Please,” I whispered under my breath, voice hoarse and broken. “Please don’t die, just survive… I can’t, I won’t forgive myself if—” My words caught in my throat, choking on the mixture of alcohol and vomit that had settled thick in the back of it.

Even as my mind screamed that she wasn’t Aurelia, even as reality pressed down, twisting and burning in the haze of alcohol, panic, and grief, I couldn’t separate the two. To me, in that broken, spinning moment, she was Aurelia. And I could not, would not, let her die.

I pressed a trembling hand to the closet one last time, whispering through the sobs and the vomit, the spinning chaos, the burning smoke, “I’ll always be here, Aurelia, I’ll always be here…”

I stepped back, knees weak, vision blurring, vomit threatening again, as the fire and screams below continued to claw at the house, the walls, my mind, leaving me stranded somewhere between guilt, intoxication, and a protective delusion I could no longer untangle.

✦

The house smelled faintly of smoke, scorched wood, and dust that clung to the air after the raid, but somehow it felt quieter than the chaos outside. I slouched at the dining table, mask discarded, uniform rumpled, sleeves damp from my own vomit and the residual heat of adrenaline. My legs trembled slightly beneath me, the tremor subtle at first, then insistent, insidious, as though the energy I’d burned out in the raid now had nowhere to go but shake through my bones.

Draco broke the silence, muttering something under his breath about running low on supplies again, and suddenly a box appeared on the table, rough brown cardboard opening to reveal muffins, slightly stale, edges hardened from being packed too long. The scent was faintly sweet, comforting, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to care. Everyone else was already reaching in, grabbing them greedily, fingers brushing crumbs into the thin layer of dust on the table.

I refused to eat. Couldn’t. The thought of biting into something solid, normal, safe, was alien, sober meant clarity, and clarity meant the crushing awareness of everything I’d just done.

The heat of guilt, the nausea from alcohol, the weight of blood and fire and the girl pressed down on my skull, pressing against my skull in a painful, tangible way. I could feel it in my legs, shaking beneath the table. I crossed them tightly under the wood, trying to anchor myself, trying to pretend my body was still tethered to the here and now.

Daphne’s voice cut through the fog. It was fast, almost jubilant, as she went about recounting the mission, dragging the violent chaos into something exhilarating, a performance almost.

“And then, Theo, you should’ve seen it, after you went upstairs, the chandelier in the dining room went bang! Exploded right into the table, right! Lorenzo, you nearly fell into it!” She laughed, flinging her hands, eyes wide, alive with that reckless energy that always both terrified and enchanted me.

“And the table!” Lorenzo interjected smoothly, adding flare to her recounting, grinning as he mimed tossing a vase across the room. “The vase flew like a rocket, smashed everything within two meters.” He laughed too, low and musical, finishing Daphne’s sentence with gleeful violence.

I barely registered the words, the motion of their hands, the sound of laughter and light clattering on the table, the crumbs from stale muffins, the faint tang of charred curtains that had been brought in on our uniforms. My head was spinning, still tilted by the alcohol coursing through me, and my thoughts were fixed on the girl upstairs, the one I had cradled, the one whose small white hair and frightened eyes had been, in my mind, a replica of young Aurelia herself.

The child was alive. She was safe. I had saved her. Somehow, impossibly, in the chaos, I had prevented a death that could have mirrored the ruin I’d unleashed elsewhere. My chest tightened as I remembered the way her little hands had clutched at me, the way she had sobbed, the raw terror she had radiated, and my mind still overlaid that image with Aurelia’s face, soft and pale, flushed with the light of safety.

Aurelia. I felt her hand touch my thigh lightly. One hand, delicate and warm, resting on the shaking tremor of my leg. My vision blurred around it, fingers and table edges melting into indistinct shapes, but her touch anchored me.

She was sitting across from me now, fingers brushing crumbs off the table, hair falling in soft waves over her shoulders, eyes clear and bright against the dim, flickering light of the room. I blinked, struggling to focus, struggling to reconcile this image with the memory of the girl or Aurelia, crumpled against the closet wall.

Daphne continued, laughing, flinging gestures, spinning through the story of broken furniture, exploding vases, shattered windows and I felt my heartbeat quicken, shaking in rhythm with hers, or maybe just with the tremor of adrenaline left in my system. Lorenzo leaned back, tossing a muffin in his mouth with careless grace, eyes glinting, catching the light in a way that made me dizzy.

I kept staring at Aurelia, caught in the soft rise and fall of her chest, the way her eyes, my Aurelia, the one I had saved in my mind, shimmered with quiet understanding and patience. She didn’t say anything, just rested her hand on my leg, holding me steady without judgment, without words, letting me lean into her warmth, letting me cling to this fragile tether.

My thoughts swirled around the events, colliding, breaking apart, forming a single, desperate thread, I had saved her. That child had lived because of me. She had white hair, just like Aurelia. Her wide eyes, the way she trembled in my arms, I saw Aurelia in her, and that was enough, that was everything. She was safe. I had made that happen, and somehow, in this fragile, spinning moment, I could breathe again, even if just a little.

 

Daphne’s words were still bouncing off the walls, wild and fast, Lorenzo adding a darkly cheerful commentary, Draco muttering about muffins and supplies, the air thick with crumbs and smoke and lingering adrenaline, but my vision was narrowed, focused entirely on Aurelia’s hand on my thigh.

When chairs scraped, everyone getting up to unwind after the task, none of it touched me. I barely registered the motions, my limbs heavy, my mind spinning in a warm, unsteady fog.

Aurelia’s hand was suddenly in mine. No words, just the soft, firm press of her palm against mine, guiding me without asking, pulling me toward her room. I stumbled behind her, letting her lead, not thinking, not caring. My legs felt like lead, dragging me along the floor, but her touch anchored me in a way nothing else could.

She pushed the door open, and I collapsed immediately onto her single bed. My back hit the mattress with a soft thud, and I flopped into the pillows, the world tilting pleasantly sideways. Aurelia sat beside me, white hair spilling over her shoulders and brushing my face like silken strands of moonlight. She reached for my hand again, gripping it gently, and her voice came soft but urgent, slicing through the haze.

“Theo? Has everything been okay? I mean, lately, like, have you been okay?” she stumbled, eyes wide, searching mine like she could see past the alcohol and the mess of everything else.

I blinked at her, trying to focus, throat thick, words slurring slightly. “I’m… yeah,” I croaked, the syllables thick and slow. “I’m fine. I promise.” My hands lifted automatically, pushing her gently down onto the bed beside me, not thinking, just wanting to feel her close.

She let out a small sound, almost musical against the low thrum of my pulse. “You really don’t look fine. I can’t help worrying after yesterday, I’m scared Theo.” she said softly, brushing hair from my forehead, tucking it behind my ear softly.

I swallowed, throat raw, and let my hands slide over hers, guiding her up so she was laying across me, her chest against mine, weight warm and real. Her hair fanned over my face, brushing my cheeks and mouth. I inhaled deeply, the faint scent of flowers and smoke and Aurelia filling me with something close to peace.

“Please…” I said, voice low, hoarse, almost cracking. “I’m fine. Just stay with me, please. I need you Aurelia, I’m okay as long as I have you with me.” My hands tightened slightly around her, fingers threading through her hair, pulling her closer.

Her laugh was soft, nervous, and sweet, but her eyes glimmered with seriousness. “I need you too, Theo,” she said quietly, tilting her head so her gaze met mine. “I need you. You need me.”

“I do… so much,” I admitted, voice thick with drink and something else I couldn’t name, desperation, relief, fear, all twisting together. My lips brushed against her hair, against the curve of her shoulder. “Don’t ever leave me, okay?”

She smiled faintly, leaning into my chest, letting me pull her closer, arms wrapping around her. “I won’t, I’m not going anywhere, not without you at least.”

I exhaled shakily, letting my forehead rest against hers, taking in the weight of her against me, the way her hair smelled, the soft rise and fall of her breathing. My hands traced the line of her back, memorizing the curve, the warmth, the subtle pulse of life beneath her skin.

“You’re so… beautiful,” I muttered, slurring slightly, voice low and urgent. “I mean God, Aurelia, every fucking thing about you… smile, your eyes, your laugh. You look like some fucking angel…” I trailed off, pressing my cheek into hers.

She laughed again, low and soft, brushing my lips with hers gently, testing, comforting. “I need you too, Theo. Always.”

I squeezed her closer, heart hammering, shaking under the weight of the alcohol, the fear, the relief. “You don’t know how much I need you here,” I whispered, voice breaking, slightly slurring. “Every time I think, I don’t, I can’t, but then you’re here… you’re always here.”

“I am Theo,” she whispered back, nuzzling into me. “I’ll always be here for you.”

I held her like that, arms tight, shaking slightly, rocking her against me, needing the contact, needing her warmth to ground me. My head spun, vision fuzzy, senses blurred, but her presence anchored me, soft and steady.

I closed my eyes, pressing my face into her hair, breathing her in, holding her tight. For the first time in hours, maybe days, the chaos, the guilt, the fire, the screams, the drunken haze, it all softened around the edges, reduced to a dull hum. All that mattered was her in my arms, warm and alive, hair spilling across my face, soft laughter brushing against my lips.

I whispered her name repeatedly under my breath until the sound became meaningless, just comfort, just grounding. She let me, let me fall apart a little, let me lean into her, into warmth, into life, into something pure amid all the darkness.

Aurelia’s breathing slowed against me, steadying into that fragile rhythm of sleep, each rise and fall of her chest brushing against mine. Her laughter had quieted into silence, into soft sighs, into something innocent, something I should have let myself fall into completely. I held her tighter, letting her weight press me down into the mattress, the soft hum of her existence wrapping around me like a shield against everything else.

But my mind wouldn’t still.

It should have been easy, being here, her warmth pressed against my chest. It should have been perfect. Yet behind the haze of drink, behind the white hair brushing against my lips, another face crept in. Brown curls, soft hands, a voice like quiet song. My mother.

Ten years. Nearly ten years.

I swallowed hard, throat catching as the thought clawed at me. I’d forced it down all week, but now, in this quiet, with Aurelia sleeping so peacefully against me, the memory slithered back up like smoke from a fire that never really went out.

Her death.

Nobody spoke of it. Nobody ever did. I was seven when it happened. Too young to understand, too old to forget. I never knew how, nobody told me. My father didn’t, and I never asked, not really.

But the suspicion lived there, deep in my chest. He had something to do with it. He must have. She was the kindest woman I’d ever known, soft and gentle in a house that knew only sharp edges. Sweet, always sweet, always protecting me from him, from the shouting, from the cold.

And then gone.

I clenched my jaw, feeling the warmth of Aurelia’s body, but the comfort was breaking apart under the pressure of memory. Her soft breath against me should have been enough to hold me together, but all I could see was my mother’s smile flickering into shadow, all I could hear was her laugh being swallowed by silence.

Ten years.

Ten fucking years.

The timing of it burned, too. The anniversary crept closer every hour, circling me and I couldn’t outrun it. But here, with Aurelia safe and beautiful in my arms, the thought twisted cruel, intruding where it didn’t belong. It was ruining this. Ruining the moment I should have held onto.

I blinked hard, vision swimming, though maybe it was just the alcohol. My throat was tight, words pushing up that I couldn’t say aloud, not even to her, not even as she lay asleep against me, trusting, safe.

I kissed her hair, whispering against her scalp, “I’ll be back. I promise. I just need to go for a moment. I’ll be back, Aurelia. I promise you.”

Carefully, I slid out from beneath her, moving slowly so as not to wake her. Her body shifted slightly, curling into the empty space I left, face pressing into the pillow that still carried my warmth. For a moment, I just stood there, looking at her, at the fragile perfection of her resting there, so unaware of the storm tearing through me.

Then I turned, feet heavy on the floor, pushing myself toward the door, each step feeling like betrayal.

The corridor outside was dim, shadows curling against the walls, silent except for the faint hum of voices elsewhere in the house. My head spun, still drunk, but the burn of memory cut through it sharper than any knife. I moved down the hall, hands brushing the wall to steady myself, until I reached the bathroom.

The door creaked as I closed it behind me, shutting myself in, shutting the world out. The air was cool and smelled faintly of mildew, sharp and earthy. My reflection in the mirror above the sink was a mess, hair falling into my eyes, skin pale and sickly, eyes rimmed red from drink and unrest. I looked like a ghost.

I crouched, pulling open the cabinet beneath the sink. The bottles were still there, lined up like an army waiting to be called into battle. My hands shook as I grabbed one, twisting the cap off, the smell hitting me like a slap, sharp and chemically. My stomach turned, but my throat ached with want, with need.

I lifted it, pressing the mouth of the bottle to my lips, drinking deep. The burn scorched down my throat, spreading fire into my chest, but it was good, it was what I wanted. Something that could blur the edges, drown the thoughts, hush my mother’s voice in my head, hush the suspicion, hush the grief clawing through me.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, already lifting it again.

In the silence of the bathroom, with the world locked out, I whispered again, hoarse and slurred, to no one but the mirror, to no one but myself.

“I’ll be back, Aurelia. I promise.”

The bottle was almost half-empty when the first wave hit me. My stomach turned, twisting violently, and I lurched forward, gripping the sink with both hands as vomit forced its way up. Bitter, acidic, it burned my throat, splattering against the porcelain, clinging to the back of my tongue. My eyes watered, my head spun, the bathroom tilting sideways. I spat, coughed, wiped my mouth with a shaking hand, and reached for the bottle again.

Another swallow. The fire scorched, raw and merciless, but I clung to it anyway. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but trapped in my head with ghosts that wouldn’t die, with anniversaries I couldn’t outrun. I wanted oblivion.

“Pathetic.”

The voice crawled up my spine like ice.

I jerked, spinning clumsily, the world tilting as I staggered back against the wall. He was there, Nott Sr. or at least the version of him that was preserved. Seventeen forever, sharp-jawed, smirking, eyes glinting with something cruel and amused.

“Look at you,” he said, stepping closer, hands tucked lazily into his pockets. “Drunk on the floor of a bathroom. Weak. Just like your mother.”

Rage flared, sharp and sudden, but it fizzled as quickly as it came, swallowed by the spinning in my head. “Don’t,” I croaked, voice hoarse, slurring, “don’t talk about her.”

Nott Sr. only smirked wider, crouching down so his face was level with mine. He plucked the bottle from my hand, examining it, then lifted it to his lips and took a long swallow. He didn’t flinch at the burn. When he lowered it, he licked his mouth slowly, deliberately, and passed it back to me.

“Go on,” he said. “Drink. You want to drown yourself? Drown. I’ll sit with you awhile. You’re more entertaining this way.”

I snatched the bottle back, breathing hard, my hands trembling. I drank. Another burning mouthful, another sear of fire down my throat. My stomach lurched in protest, but I forced it down, closing my eyes against the spin.

“What would your dear mother think of you now?” he asked, voice mocking, tilting his head.

I opened my eyes, staring at him blearily. “She was… she was the sweetest person. You don’t get to talk about her like that.” My words slurred together, heavy, clumsy.

Nott Sr. leaned back on his heels, still smirking. “I knew her, you know, she was my daughter in law. She was pretty. Smart too. Everyone thought she was too soft for Slytherin, but…” He let the thought dangle, eyes narrowing as though savoring it. “She had a way of slipping past people’s defenses. Much like you try to do. Though, admittedly, she was far more successful.”

My breath hitched, chest tightening. The room spun, doubled, blurred, but his words cut through, clear as glass. “Tell me,” he pressed, leaning forward again, eyes gleaming. “What do you remember of her? Go on. Drink, and tell me.”

I drank, choking on the burn, tears springing unbidden to my eyes. My voice cracked when I spoke. “She used to sing. At night. When my father, when he was angry, she’d tuck me in, and sing. Soft. Like the storm couldn’t reach me.” My throat closed. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, but the words kept spilling. “She smelled like sweet vanilla. Always. And she laughed at everything, even when things were falling apart.”

For a moment, Nott Sr.’s smirk softened, almost contemplative. He reached for the bottle again, took another swallow, then handed it back. “She did laugh,” he said, quieter now. “I remember that and she always tried to make people feel seen. Even me. Even when she shouldn’t have.”

The admission caught me off guard. My chest clenched. I wiped at my eyes with the heel of my hand, hating myself for crying, hating him for watching, but I couldn’t stop.

“Then why?” I demanded, voice cracking, half-sob, half-slur. “Why did she die? Why is she gone? What did he do to her?”

Nott Sr. tilted his head, studying me. For a heartbeat, his eyes looked older, burdened with knowledge. “That,” he said softly, “is not a story you want to hear drunk.” His lips curled again into a half-smirk. “Though, truth be told, it’s probably the only way you’ll survive hearing it.”

I gripped the bottle, knuckles white, heart hammering. “Tell me.”

“Not tonight, boy. Tonight, you drink. You ruin yourself. And I’ll watch. Because that’s all you are right now. A mess. A weak, trembling shadow.” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “And she would weep to see you like this.”

The words shattered me.

I lifted the bottle again, desperate, gulping until my throat burned raw, until my stomach lurched again, until I coughed and sputtered and choked on it. I fell sideways against the wall, bottle slipping from my grasp, clattering onto the tile.

Nott Sr. sat back, watching with lazy amusement, though something flickered behind his eyes, a shadow of something like pity, or maybe I imagined it through the haze. He reached once more for the bottle, took a final swig, and set it down neatly beside me.

“Your mother was kind,” he said, almost softly. “Too kind for this world. And for that, she paid.”

I blinked through the blur, trying to hold onto the words, trying to hold onto his face, but my vision was slipping, the edges of the room curling into black.

When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

The bathroom spun, the tiles tilting beneath me. My stomach heaved, my throat burned, my body shook uncontrollably. I tried to push myself upright, but the world collapsed beneath me, black swallowing everything whole.

The bottle clattered away somewhere down the sink, forgotten. The room was a blur of tile and mirror and the sickly yellow light above me, everything doubled and soft around the edges. My hands trembled so badly I couldn’t make the glass sit still in my palms, it rocked like a small, dangerous sea. The vodka burned where it pooled against my tongue, and for a moment there was a promise in the heat, a trick of quiet, the illusion of being anywhere but inside my own head.

The promise had slipped through my fingers. The freedom I’d been chasing all night had dissolved into something thinner and meaner. Instead of calm there was a jagged, hungry shame, the feeling of being watched by a dozen ghosts who winked at me with the faces of my failures.

Drinking didn’t lift it now. It spread it, thickened it, made it slick and intimate, so that I could feel every old bruise, every small wound in the dark places of my life.

I thought of my mother, not as a memory but as a presence sliding across the bones of the room. Her laugh like warm light. The sound of her voice telling a story as if she were knitting us together, stitch by small stitch, against everything ugly outside.

Anger rose in my chest. Not the raw, righteous anger I could point outward, the kind that made me snap at a friend or sharpen my tongue to cut a rival, but the interior kind that chews at your knuckles until they bleed.

I wanted to tear the thing off me that remembered kindness, to remove the soft part so the rest of me could be hard enough to survive in here. I wanted punishment. I wanted to feel something clean and burning that would prove I was still real.

I don’t know when the wand was in my hand. One second I was pressing the heel of my palm to my mouth to stop the tremor, the next it was there, cold wood, familiar weight, and my breath hitched. I told myself it was theater at first, a ridiculous demonstration, some awful attempt to shock the feeling out of my veins. But the shame didn’t respond to theatrics. It only leaned forward, patient, hungry.

"Crucio."

My body spasmed almost instantly, the edges of my mind screaming and tearing itself from my body. The pain was white hot and immediate, it made me suck in air like I’d been punched. Blood came quick, shocking in its brightness against the pale of my skin as it started to run like a waterfall down my arms, some getting in my mouth on the hand that was muffling my screams. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t feel poetic. It was simply there, vivid and honest.

I told myself not to think. I told myself the physics of it, that the pain would reset me, that the burn would burn out the ache. I told myself stories about bravery and control that belonged to other men. None of them held.

I ran my wand down my arms and stomach, every hit landed with a clean, ugly sound and a hot bloom of blood. I kept going because stopping felt like admitting something final, continuing felt like punishing the part of me that still loved softness and light.

The rational part of me, the one who could still make a plan and keep a secret, offered small, whispering protests.

This is stupid, this is temporary, you’re making a mess.

The other voice, the one full of old days and cold nights, laughed low.

You deserve it.

The laugh sounded exactly like my father’s contempt. Each bright smear of blood against pale skin made that laugh larger and dumber and more convinced. The mirror watched me and did not look away.

Through the bathroom window I could see the black sky, one small slice above the rooftops, and for an awful second I wished the world would tilt and pour me out into it so I could be gone without the procurement of drama. Instead I felt small and ridiculous and utterly responsible for that red leak that spread across my body.

My breath came in ragged, shallow bursts. Blood ran hot, slick and bright, and it was on my palms, my forearms, my stomach, dripping into the tiles in dark, impatient beads that spread like ink on paper. Each drop sounded obscene in the little room, a tiny, symbol that said I was real and that I had done this.

What if I just kept going? What if I stopped breathing? What if the next slice was the last thing I ever did? There was an ugly calm to the idea, a detached logic that made the world simplify into a single line. But then another piece of me, the small piece the vodka hadn’t entirely drunk away, flinched at the sight of my own blood and recoiled.

I didn’t stop. I kept going like someone rattling at a lock that wasn’t meant to open, half-expecting nothing to happen, half-expecting the opposite. The skin under my fingers broke and burned in sharp, immediate pain, which was a mercy in itself because it was honest, it was not a trick. Blood ran down from my shoulders now, and slicked the inside of my short sleeve and I could feel the heat of it spreading through my collarbone now, warm and insistent, a map of where I’d been careless enough to mark myself with my own wand.

The cuts and gashes on my body weren’t artistic, they were blunt, clumsy attempts at erasure, each one an ugly, immediate punctuation that left a bright, undeniable smear on my skin. Blood was left slicked my fingers, I tasted iron on my lips, my breath came raw and sharp. For a terrible second the pain cut through everything else and I mistook the clarity for relief.

Then I heard footsteps in the hall. The sound was ordinary, someone moving with the reckless casualness of those who do not yet suspect catastrophe beside them. I froze, breath caught in my throat. Whoever it was would see me if they looked, and the thought of people stepping into that private ruin made an uneasy feeling rise in my mouth that had nothing to do with alcohol. I pulled the curtain close tighter with a shaky, useless action and curled in on myself, trying to make my body small and invisible.

I force myself up on shaking arms, the world lurching, movement is an effort, a monumental thing. My head swims, vision doubling, but I claw toward the bathroom, each step a small disaster. Blood dragged across my body and tile still as I move.

Inside the stall the world is smaller. I pull the curtain closed with hands that no longer feel like mine and collapse against the cool tile, letting my cheek press to the wall as if the stone can hold me together where I cannot.

The world narrows further until it is nothing but the drip, drip, drip and the rhythm of my breath and the faint hiss of my own blood on the tiles that were still damp. Darkness pressed at the edges of my vision, inky and patient. There are moments when I slip free of pain and memory and float in a thin grey place where time does not move, and other moments when the cold of the tile and the wet of the blood thrust me back to a harsh, cruel clarity.

The door eased open and a silhouette filled the bathroom doorway. Lorenzo, half-asleep, hair sticking up as though he’d been awaken too quickly, a mug in his hand that left a dark ring on whatever surface he rested it on. He moved with casualness and oblivion, and began to brush his teeth, foam bobbing at the corner of his mouth, eyes focused on some distant place beyond the immediate world.

My heart hammered. His shoulders were broad enough, his back turned just so. If he stepped even slightly wrong, the curtain might flutter and reveal me inside. Panic coiled in my stomach into something physical, I wanted, with a purity of desperation that surprised me, for him not to look.

He rinsed his brush, spat into the sink with that lazy, careless motion, and paused as if considering whether to stay. A tiny quiet part of me wished he would turn away and leave me. He did not. He turned away.

Lorenzo left the room, the door clicking softly behind him. He’d not seen me. He hadn’t looked. I let out a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob, slurring into the empty tile. I lay back against the wall with the curtain still drawn, letting the cold press against my spine. The blood kept running, warm and incessant, a physical record of choices I had made that refused to be contained.

At some point, whether minutes or hours, the world folded into a quiet that was not peace. I was aware of small things, the faint scrape where my sleeve had run across the tile, a hair stuck to the side of my forehead, the way a smear of blood had worked itself into the stitch of my clothes and The last coherent thought that comes is stupidly, unbearably small.

God? It’s me, Theo, Theodore Nott. If you are truly real, please, let Aurelia be safe.

Chapter Text

THEODORE NOTT

When I wake, the world is too bright. A dull, grey ache presses behind my eyes, as though someone has stuffed glass shards into the hollows of my skull and left them there to glimmer whenever I so much as breathe. My mouth tastes sour and metallic, my throat raw, and every beat of my heart hammers through my temples like a drum I never asked to hear.

The first thing I notice is warmth. Not the heavy warmth of fever or the choking warmth of blood-slick tiles, but something softer. Skin against mine, breath feathering across my collarbone, the delicate rise and fall of another body pressed close. My arms were wrapped around Aurelia, as though I’ve spent the entire night clinging to her like a drowning man to driftwood.

Her hair was scattered like snow across the pillow, the strands glowing faintly where the morning light cuts through the curtains. For a long moment I couldn’t move, not out of caution, but because the sheer strangeness of it roots me in place. My clothes are different. They’re clean, fresh against my skin. My body, too, feels scrubbed of its sins, though the scars scream their evidence with every shift of the sheets. No sticky dampness clings to me, no iron tang rises from my skin. Only faint antiseptic, soap, and the dizzying possibility that someone has seen more of me than I ever wanted revealed.

How?

My stomach turns violently at the question. Memory cuts out in jagged frames, the sharp bite of vodka, the sting of the wand, the sound of footsteps, the curtain pulled across like a veil. After that, nothing.

I should not be here. I should not be clean. I should not have been carried anywhere.

Aurelia stirs, her fingers brushing absently against my wrist. She breathes out a soft sigh and blinks open her eyes, half-asleep still, and when she sees me she smiles. A real smile, unguarded and so radiant it makes my chest ache worse than any wound.

“You stayed,” she murmurs, her voice rasped with sleep. “I thought you’d slip away.”

I swallowed hard, throat raw. “I didn’t.” The words scrape out, hoarse, brittle, a lie wrapped in a truth.

She tilted her head, her cheek brushing the fabric of my shirt. “Thank you for tucking me in last night,” she said, shy but sure, like the memory of it comforts her. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. You could’ve just left me.”

I nodded slowly, because what else can I do? My mind claws for any fragment of laying her down, pulling blankets over her, pressing myself in beside her to guard her sleep. Nothing comes. Only a hollow void where hours should be.

“You looked after me,” Aurelia continues softly, her eyes slipping closed again, trusting, safe. “It means more than you know.”

The words land like a blow. Because I don’t know. Because I wasn’t there, not truly. Because someone else cleaned the blood from my skin, changed my clothes, laid me in her bed, and left me with the illusion of innocence I don’t deserve.

My arms tighten around her unconsciously, desperate to ground myself in this moment, to feel her weight and warmth as proof I haven’t slipped into some delusion. She doesn’t flinch. She only shifts closer, tucking her head beneath my chin.

Inside, I am unraveling.

I catalogue the evidence despite the burn in my skull, there’s faint sting across my skin where the cuts have closed, the smell of a sandalwood soap that doesn’t belong to me, the sheets beneath us, which carry only the faintest trace of blood, too faint to have been left if I’d come here myself. Someone intervened, meaning someone knew.

What was more important to me however, was the fact that Aurelia doesn’t. She believes I stayed and tucked her in. She believes in the softer version of me that exists only in her eyes. A part that twists like a blade between my ribs keeps ensuring me that I want to let her believe it, because in her belief, for the span of this morning, I am not a ruin. I am not the boy curled on the bathroom floor begging for the blackness to swallow him whole. I am something steadier, gentler, almost whole.

I close my eyes briefly, only to find my thoughts betraying me again, shards of last night pressing in, the curtain pulled hastily, the dull clink of glass on tile, the sick rush of blood. My stomach lurches, my mouth filling with sourness, and I force the images down. Not here. Not now. Not with her resting against me like something pure.

Aurelia shifts again, lifting her face just enough to meet my eyes. “You look awful,” she teases lightly, though the concern behind it is thinly veiled. “Headache?”

“Like someone split my skull open and stitched it back with wire,” I admit, voice sharper than I intended, though the edge fades when she brushes a strand of hair out of my face.

“I can get you a potion Theo,” she whispers, her fingers ghosting across my temple in a gesture so tender it nearly undoes me.

“I’ll survive.”

 

The words sound convincing enough in the quiet morning light. She smiles again, believing them, and for her sake I let myself lie still, wrapped around her, pretending that survival means something more than dragging myself bleeding from one dawn to the next.

The dining room felt half-awake, as if the house itself resents the morning as much as I do. The curtains have been pulled back only partway, so a diluted grey light spread across the long table, catching on the scuffs in the wood and the chipped plates left over from yesterdays dinner. The air smelt faintly of burnt coffee, Lorenzo’s handiwork, no doubt, and the ghost of tobacco smoke still clings to the walls, stubborn, unwilling to leave even after hours.

Aurelia walks just ahead of me, her hand brushing mine and I feel the weight of my head pounding with every step, the sour edge of a hangover gnawing at the back of my throat, but I say nothing. Let her believe I’m just tired. She doesn’t need to know what shadows I dragged myself out of this morning.

At the far end of the table, Daphne sits perched on a chair sideways, legs drawn up, her hair cascading down her back like a glowing waterfall. She’s talking so fast it’s almost a performance, her words tumbling over one another, but her face glows with a stark brightness that makes it hard not to look.

Draco sits opposite her, pale and composed, one hand curled around a mug he hasn’t drunk from. His posture is straight, his eyes attentive, but his mind is far away, buried under calculation or memory. Still, he nods at all the right moments, offers the occasional murmur, performing the role of a man engaged.

Lorenzo kneels behind Daphne, his long fingers moving deftly through strands of her hair, weaving it into a braid. His touch is surprisingly gentle for someone so reckless, his face set in a mask of exaggerated focus that makes Daphne laugh between her words.

Mattheo is nowhere to be seen. The absence is a weight at the table, invisible but undeniable. His presence usually sharpens the air, fills the silence with something unspoken. Without him, the room feels stretched, slightly off-balance.

Aurelia slides into a chair beside Daphne, pulling me with her. I sit stiffly, feeling the scars burn beneath my clean clothes, though no one notices. Daphne tilts her head at Aurelia’s arrival, mid-sentence, but doesn’t slow, her eyes bright and wide, words spilling like water through a broken dam, talking about what I gathered to be a healer she fought at St Mungos.

“…and if you think about it,” she’s saying, “the whole thing was just absurd, the man barely knew what spell he was trying, it was like watching a child trying to juggle knives blindfolded, and Draco, honestly, you should’ve seen your face.”

Draco lifted an eyebrow, dry as parchment. “I’m sure my expression was the highlight of the evening.”

She giggles, leaning back against Lorenzo’s hands. “Don’t be sulky. It was funny.”

Draco’s lips twitched as if resisting a smile, but his eyes remain shadowed, fixed somewhere beyond the table. Lorenzo tied off the braid with a strand of ribbon scavenged from who knows where and pats Daphne’s shoulder.

“There. Perfect. You look like you’ve been invited to a ball instead of another miserable day trapped in this shit.”

She swats at him playfully, then twists to look at Draco again, her words tumbling faster. “Speaking of the day, what’s the plan? I’m fucking starving, Lorenzo ate the rest of the cereal.”

Draco’s eyes flick briefly toward me, then Aurelia, before settling back on his mug. “Another raid,” he says flatly. “Soon. The shopping place again, or somewhere similar. We’ll find something, just hold on for a couple days okay.”

Daphne frowns, her foot tapping against the chair leg. “Why can’t we just buy things like normal people? Food. Supplies. Anything. Wouldn’t that be easier than sneaking into shops and hexing security cameras?”

Her voice is bright, curious, but there’s a sharpness beneath it, the first edge of something more serious. Draco sets down his mug carefully, as though weighing the gesture. When he looks at her, it’s with that cool disdain he’s perfected.

“Because, Daphne, in case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t actually have muggle money. Which is what you would need to be able to accomplish that.”

She laughs as though he’s being dramatic, but he doesn’t soften. His eyes narrow, his mouth tight.

“If we did,” Draco continues, his voice edged with sarcasm, “it would indeed be better. We could stroll through shops, fill our baskets, pay at the counter like law-abiding citizens. Instead of risking even more raids and curses than we already have to, wasting energy pretending we’re ghosts. But we don’t. So until one of you learns how to conjure currency out of thin air, raids are what we will do, and you will just have to survive a bit longer.”

The silence that follows is thin, almost brittle. Lorenzo leans back in his chair, stretching, clearly amused by the exchange. Aurelia looks down at her hands, quiet, her expression unreadable.

“Alright, fucking hell. No need to bite my head off. I was just asking.” Daphne mumbles quickly.

Draco exhales sharply, his annoyance simmering beneath the surface. “Ask smarter questions, then.”

I lean back in my chair, the ache in my skull pounding with the weight of their words. Food. Money. Starvation. The practicalities of survival grinding down on us all. My stomach twists, not with hunger but with unease. Daphne chatters again, shifting the subject back to something lighter, a memory of school, an imitation of Professor Slughorn’s pompous laugh while Lorenzo laughs with her, his voice rich and careless. Draco smirks faintly, though his eyes stay distant.

Aurelia nudges my knee under the table, I glance at her, and she smiles softly, the kind of smile that asks me to stay present, to not drift too far into my head. I nod, though the pounding in my skull and the weight of unspoken truths threaten to pull me under.

The scrape of Daphne’s laughter was still echoing when the air cracked. It wasn’t the gentle pop of Apparition I’d grown used to, this was sharper, rawer, like a whip splitting through the dining room.

Mattheo.

He stood in the center of the room, chest rising hard as if he’d run through a storm, one hand wrapped around the handle of a black case. His eyes, dark and tense, swept across us all without lingering. No smirk, no taunt. Just something heavy and final in the set of his jaw.

The chatter died instantly. Daphne’s braid slipped from her fingers. Lorenzo sat forward, every line of his body tensed. Draco’s hand went still on his mug. Aurelia’s smile faltered beside me, her posture sharpening into quiet alertness. Mattheo said nothing at first. He set the case on the center of the table with a deliberate thud, snapping open the latches. The hinges groaned.

Inside were six syringes, neatly arranged in dark velvet grooves, each filled with a glistening black liquid that caught the light in a way that made my stomach turn. Thick and glimmering, it looked almost alive, like shadows liquefied, swirling faintly inside the glass.

My throat tightened. Every instinct screamed don’t touch it.

“The Dark Lord needs us unconscious.”

The words fell like stones into water, rippling through the room, each of us flinching in our own way.

Daphne’s eyes went wide. “Unconscious?” Her voice was sharp, pitched higher than usual. “Why? What for?”

Mattheo shook his head once. “I don’t know.” A pause, then quieter, as if it hurt to admit, “But I know people are coming soon, and when they do, we’re being taken to Riddle Manor. While we’re out.”

Draco’s mug cracked in his hand, porcelain splintering from the force of his grip. “Out? Drugged? You want us to let you—”

“Not me,” Mattheo cut him off, flat and controlled. “Him.”

The name went unspoken. But we all knew.

Daphne was shaking her head now, braid swaying against her shoulder. “There has to be another way. I’m not—”

Mattheo pulled one syringe free, the needle catching the light like a dagger. He motioned to her arm. His face didn’t change. “Now.”

Her lips parted in protest, but no words came. The room had gone too still, too sharp. Even Lorenzo had nothing clever to add. Slowly, as if her body betrayed her, Daphne extended her arm. Her hand trembled faintly where it rested against the table.

The needle pierced her skin. A thin sound left her throat, not quite a cry, more like a stifled gasp. Mattheo’s thumb pressed the plunger, pushing the blackness into her veins. The liquid glided down smooth and slow, disappearing beneath her pale flesh.

Daphne’s body jolted. Her eyes rolled, lids fluttering half-shut as if caught between waking and drowning. Then she collapsed sideways in her chair, limbs loose, braid slipping over her shoulder.

Mattheo caught her before her head could strike the wood, lowering her gently onto the floor. For all the detachment in his eyes, the gesture was careful. He brushed her hair out of her face as though it mattered.

My stomach churned.

Draco was next. He met Mattheo’s gaze with open fury, but his arm still went out. There was defiance in the movement, as though he were daring Mattheo to flinch. The needle slid in clean. Draco didn’t make a sound, his face unmoving.

But the black liquid did its work, his breath hitched, his jaw slackened, and his body went rigid for half a heartbeat before slumping. Mattheo caught him too, though without tenderness. He laid Draco down beside Daphne, pale as stone, lips parted slightly as if caught mid-curse.

Lorenzo muttered something under his breath but he didn’t resist when Mattheo motioned. His grin was brittle, stretched too thin, his eyes flashing wild. “I’ve always liked a bit of poison with my breakfast,” he joked, though his voice cracked.

The joke died as the liquid entered him. His head lolled, laughter breaking into nothing as he folded against the table, Mattheo dragging him down before he slipped entirely. The case gaped open, three syringes left. My heartbeat pounded in my temples, my palms were slick with sweat.

Mattheo’s hand hovered over the syringes before selecting one, slower this time. He turned to Aurelia, and something shifted in his face, barely, but enough for me to see. His jaw loosened, his gaze softened at the edges.

“Aurelia,” he said, almost a whisper.

Her hand was steady as she gave it to him. Brave or resigned, I couldn’t tell. The needle slid beneath her skin. She winced, a small furrow between her brows, and Mattheo’s hand lingered longer on her wrist, steadying it, his thumb brushing her pulse as though grounding her. The blackness flowed and I watched as she swayed. Her head turned slightly toward him, lips parted, breath shallow.

Then she fell.

He caught her as if she were made of glass. Not just catching, but holding. Lowering her with infinite care, his hand still cupping hers until the last moment, as though unwilling to let go.

The sight made something sour burn in my chest. My hands clenched under the table, nails biting my palms. Mattheo looked at her a fraction longer than he had the others. His fingers brushed a strand of her white hair from her face, softer than he’d ever been in front of us.

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat, the pounding in my skull, the rage clawing its way up through my ribs.

It would be me next.

The room felt hollow, the air already drained of warmth by the four unconscious bodies on the floor. Daphne’s braid had loosened, strands fanning across her cheek. Draco’s face was turned away, stiff even in stillness. Lorenzo’s grin had dissolved into something slack and childlike. Aurelia looked as if she were merely asleep, her chest rising in shallow, steady waves and her hair bright against the dark rug.

Then Mattheo turned the last syringe toward me and my stomach dropped.

“Wait,” I croaked, voice raw from drink and bile. The sight of the black liquid churning faintly inside the glass made my skin crawl. My pulse thrummed behind my eyes. “You’re just going to stick that in me too?”

Mattheo’s gaze held mine, sharp as a blade but unreadable beneath it. His grip on the syringe didn’t falter.

“No,” he said finally, his voice lower than before. “Not like them.”

The words crawled down my spine, cold and strange.

“What do you mean?”

He shifted, crouching beside me now, close enough that I could see the faint red lines still lingering in his eyes from lack of sleep, the rigid set of his shoulders. He slid another syringe free from the case, holding both, one in each hand.

“We’ll do it to each other.”

The words landed with quiet finality. He gestured toward the floor where the others lay. “For safety,” he added, though his tone was flat, rehearsed, as though even he didn’t believe the excuse.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. He was already lowering himself down, long limbs folding as he sat cross-legged, then stretching back to rest against the floorboards with the kind of ease only someone who’d already accepted the inevitable could have.

“Lie down,” he said, not an order this time. Not quite. More like an invitation.

For reasons I couldn’t name, I obeyed. The boards were cold beneath my spine. I turned my head, and he was there beside me, holding one syringe in my direction. The black liquid shimmered in the dim light.

My hand shook as I took it.

Mattheo reached for my arm without hesitation, he was so close I could smell the faint scent of sandalwood on his skin. He grabbed my sleeve and pushed it up past my elbow, exposing the mess beneath. The skin was still raw, a lattice of jagged cuts carved into pale flesh, streaks of half-healed scabs overlaid with the faint shimmer of spell-burns. Blood had dried in uneven trails down my forearm, turning rusty brown against the paleness of my skin.

I tensed, waiting for the sneer, the disgust, the biting comment about weakness.

It didn’t come.

Mattheo just looked. His eyes lingered calmly before he pressed his thumb to the inside of my wrist to steady it. He didn’t flinch, nor did he turn away. That silence, that lack of revulsion, burned hotter in me than any insult could have.

“You’re unphased,” I muttered, half accusation, half disbelief.

His gaze flicked to mine, steady. “Nothing I haven’t seen before Nott.”

The words landed heavy. They weren’t kind but they weren’t cruel either. Just overwhelmingly real.

He positioned the needle against my arm. The tip gleamed silver in the dim. My pulse hammered so hard I thought it might burst through my skin.

“On three,” he said, voice flat. “Together.”

The syringe in my hand was slick with sweat. I fumbled to mirror him, holding it poised above the thick vein at the crook of his arm. His sleeve was already pushed up, his forearm lean and scarred in its own ways.

“Ready?” His voice was steady, but quieter now, like something softer had threaded its way in.

I swallowed hard. “Ready.”

“One.”

The room seemed to shrink around us, the shadows thick and watchful.

“Two.”

The air caught sharp in my lungs. I glanced at Aurelia’s still form, then back at him. His face was close, his expression calm but not cold.

“Three.”

The needles slid in almost at once. A sharp sting, a bite of metal breaching skin. His hand was steady. Mine trembled.

Then came the push.

The black liquid moved thick and heavy, colder than anything I’d ever felt, seeping like ice-fire through my veins. It spread too fast, curling through my chest, dragging my stomach down into a void. My vision blurred almost instantly, shadows bleeding into one another at the edges.

Beside me, Mattheo exhaled through his nose, controlled, as though forcing himself to remain composed even as the same blackness tore through him. My fingers slipped around the syringe, dropping it onto the floor with a hollow clink. His arm fell too, syringe clattering beside mine.

The world tilted. My head grew heavy, pressed against the floorboards. Every beat of my heart echoed louder, slower, then muffled, as though someone had wrapped my chest in cotton.

My last sight before the dark closed in was Mattheo’s face, slackening as his eyes drifted shut, yet still turned fractionally toward mine. For one breath, maybe two, he didn’t look like a monster.

 

Then everything went black.

✦

I woke choking on stark light. The floor beneath me was hard, smooth, humming faintly like it was alive. My skull split with pain, the echo of liquor gone sour in my veins, but sharper still was the absence. No soft blur, no dizzy warmth, just the brutal edge of clarity, like my blood had been scoured clean.

I sat up too fast. The walls swam. No, not walls. Glass. Transparent, high and curving, a cage that gleamed like ice, reflecting every ragged breath back at me.

Outside of the glass four men stood in a line, their presence heavy enough to choke the air. Their masks were gone, faces bare in the sterile glow. Rookwood, with his gaunt features, Macnair, thick-necked, brutality carved into his posture, Rowle, broad and silent, his expression a slab of stone and Mulciber, eyes glinting with a cruel amusement that made my skin crawl.

Death Eaters. Not children. Not fractured, starving youths trying to tear each other apart for scraps. No, these were grown men. Killers.

My chest squeezed, breath stuttering in shallow bursts. I felt a tremor starting in my hands, traveling down to my knees. The violent quiver of a body stripped of its poison. I wasn’t drunk. Not even a little. The rawness gnawed at me, teeth sinking into every nerve. Panic clawed up my throat.

“No, no, no, no—” The words rasped out, broken. My nails dug into my palms as if I could anchor myself to the pain. My head spun, not with liquor, but with the absence of it. My heart hammered uneven, a frantic stutter.

I staggered back, shoulders hitting the glass, the vibration singing through my bones. The reflection staring back at me was pale, gaunt, eyes bloodshot and wild. I looked like prey.

Around me, the others were waking. Draco pulled himself upright with his usual stiffness, though his eyes betrayed the disorientation. Daphne stirred, blinking too quickly, her mouth moving with mutters of half-thoughts. Lorenzo sat up with a groan, rubbing at his face. Aurelia shifted beside me, hair falling like silver against the glass, her eyes clouded with confusion before sharpening. Mattheo rose slowly, his posture coiled like a spring, gaze fixed outward on the men waiting for us.

A voice slid into the cell then.

It wasn’t shouted, but still it filled every space, seeping through glass and marrow, curling around the edges of thought.

“My children.”

The air thinned instantly. My heart stopped. Every inch of me froze under the weight of it.

Voldemort.

“You six have been tested,” the voice continued, smooth, deliberate, cutting. “You have killed, you have survived, you have torn one another into sharper blades. You believe yourselves strong.”

The glass trembled faintly, as though vibrating with his words.

“But strength is meaningless without comparison.”

The four outside didn’t move, their stillness heavier than any motion. Rookwood’s eyes flicked toward us with something like disdain, as if we were already corpses.

“My second strike team,” Voldemort said, “has served me longer, killed for me longer, bled for me longer. They are loyal. Ruthless. Skilled.”

A pause, drawn out like a knife being unsheathed.

“And yet, you six have proved just as effective. But perhaps they are more so. ”

My chest heaved, lungs pulling in shallow bursts. The shaking in my hands was spreading, a violent rhythm I couldn’t stop. I pressed them against the glass, leaving smeared prints.

“So.”

That single syllable cracked like thunder.

“I will watch. I will learn. I do not care who lives, or who dies. I care only to see which team is stronger and whichever emerges… will rise higher in my service.”

The words echoed, then faded, leaving silence almost worse than the sound. I pressed my forehead to the glass, the cold seeping into my skin. My chest ached with the weight of it, the realisation settling like lead.

We weren’t meant to survive this.

My gaze dragged upward, locking on Macnair. His lip curled faintly in something between a grin and a snarl, his arms folded across his chest like he was already bored. Rookwood tilted his head, studying us with surgical detachment. Mulciber smirked, tapping his wand idly against his thigh. Rowle didn’t move at all but the stillness was more terrifying than any display of readiness.

Real Death Eaters. Trained. Blooded. Men who’d been killing since before we’d learned how to hold a wand without trembling.

And us?

Two reckless kids, one fraying strategist. Aurelia, beautiful but easily breakable, and Mattheo Riddle for fucks sake who probably wanted all of us to die right now anyway.

And me.

Me, with my body screaming for drink, my blood on fire with absence, shaking so hard I could barely keep my teeth from chattering. I couldn’t breathe. My chest convulsed, gasps tearing out too fast. I slid down the glass, knees hitting the floor, nails scraping against the smooth surface.

“I can’t,” I whispered, broken, the words cracking apart in my throat. “I can’t—I can’t—”

Beside me, Aurelia’s hand caught mine, her grip hot, desperate. Her whisper cut through my spiral.

“Theo, look at me, breathe.”

But I couldn’t. Not when I looked up and saw Mulciber’s grin widening like he’d already decided which one of us he’d kill first. Not when the shaking in my limbs grew so violent I could barely hold onto her fingers. Not when Voldemort’s absence still pressed down heavier than his presence. The glass cell hummed, alive, as though waiting to open and for the first time since the bottle had become my salvation, I wished desperately for the numbness I no longer had.

A sound cracked the air, four sharp pops that splintered like bones snapping, and suddenly they weren’t outside anymore, they weren’t figures looming through the glass, they were inside with us, inside our cage, flesh and breath and dark robes filling the space that had been ours, and there was no pause, no warning, no chance to draw a line between thought and action, because their wands were already raised.

Green light split the air.

The first curse skimmed past my ear so close it burned, the heat of it slicing like a blade, and the world detonated into motions of sparks, screams, bodies twisting out of the way, glass walls humming with ricocheted spells that hissed like snakes against their surface.

My heart was a drum inside my ribs, pounding wild and off-beat, and my hands were shaking, traitorous, soaked with sweat as I fumbled at my wand, the wood slick like it was trying to slip away, and all I could think was:

I can’t do this, not like this, not sober, not raw, I don’t know how to move without the drink softening me, I don’t remember how to fight when every nerve is exposed like an open wound.

Rowle swung his wand and the air split with a slicing curse that screamed toward Daphne, but she moved faster than I thought she could, ducking low and sending back a jolt of lightning that lit the glass walls white, and for a breath, I saw her face, wild and sharp, her teeth bared, eyes burning.

Macnair went for Mattheo, their curses colliding with a boom that shook the floor. Mattheo’s arm slashed the air, fluid and vicious, his jaw locked, his body moving like he’d been waiting for this all along. His shield shattered the first attack, his counter-curse spitting sparks that struck Macnair’s robes and set them smoking, but Macnair didn’t even flinch, his bulk moving forward like a wall, each strike carrying the weight of muscle and rage.

Rookwood’s gaze landed on me.

It was like being nailed in place, like every part of me froze beneath that hollow stare. He flicked his wand, a curse sharp as a knife whistled past my throat, close enough that I felt the skin open in a shallow line, blood sliding warm down my collarbone.

The shock jolted me alive. My breath tore out ragged, my arm jerking upward before I could think.

“Expulso!” The curse erupted, clumsy, too wild as it smashed against the glass wall and rebounded in a spray of shattered light, knocking me backward into the floor. My skull cracked against the smooth stone and the stars exploded across my vision, and the same thought clawed through me.

I don’t know how to do this, not without it. I don’t know how to fight sober, I don’t even know how to breathe sober.

Aurelia’s scream ripped the air, a stunning spell arcing crimson across the room, smashing into Mulciber’s shoulder. He staggered, growled, flung back a curse that hissed green and fast, but she twisted out of the way, her hair whipping like fire in the glow.

Draco was at her side, his wand steady even though his face was filled with strain. His shield absorbed Mulciber’s next strike, the impact ringing through the room like a bell. His counter-curse flared blue and sharp, and for a heartbeat I thought he’d broken through, but Mulciber’s grin widened, his wand slicing the air to carve the spell apart.

The glass cell was a storm. Every flash of light seared my eyes, every blast shook my chest, the air thick with the smell of ozone and sweat and burning cloth. My body shook harder with every second, the tremors jerking my wand like it wasn’t mine, and inside my head it was chaos.

I need it, I need a drink, I can’t think, can’t fight, can’t breathe, I don’t want this, I don’t want to be here, I wish I was drunk, I wish I was gone, I wish I was—

“THEO!”

Mattheo’s shout cut through me like a lash. He was still locked with Macnair, their curses colliding, sparks showering between them. His teeth were bared, his eyes snapping to me just long enough to burn me in place. “MOVE!”

I staggered to my feet, vision tilting, the world spinning too fast. Rowle’s curse streaked past my knees, carving a smoking gash into the floor where I’d been standing. My chest heaved. I raised my wand, tried to force focus through the shudder of my hands.

“Confringo!” The explosion tore toward Rowle, a mess of fire and pressure, but he batted it away with one brutal flick of his wand, like swatting at a fly. His return spell came hard and fast, slicing the air toward me, and I froze, legs locked.

The curse shattered against a shield that wasn’t mine.

I couldn’t breathe. The glass cage spun with light and fire, the floor slick with sweat and blood, and all I could feel was the gnawing inside me, the desperate clawing for something to drink, something to numb, anything to stop the shaking, stop the fear, stop the way every sound and flash scraped against my skull like knives.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to disappear.

But instead I raised my wand again, arm quivering, and screamed the incantation that ripped itself raw from my chest.

“CRUCIO!”

It tore across the room, wild, unsteady, but it slammed into Mulciber’s leg, dropping him to a knee with a guttural snarl. His hand clawed at the floor, his teeth bared, his body convulsing. The sound of his pain split the storm for a heartbeat.

Out of the corner of my eye I was relived to see that Aurelia was still on her feet. Her hair whipped like white fire, her body arched and fluid, curses snapping from her wand with deadly precision. She wasn’t just surviving, she was fierce, holding her ground against Rookwood, her face drawn tight in concentration.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, not even as the fight roared around us. I stumbled toward her, raising my wand with shaking hands, blocking the curse meant for her ribs. It burned against my shield, cracking down my arm like fire. My knees almost buckled but I held it, forced it back.

“Aurelia,” I gasped, voice hoarse, barely mine, “you’re fucking brilliant.”

Her eyes flicked toward me for the briefest second, something like a smile flashing across her mouth, before she spun again, unleashing another barrage. I wanted to collapse. I wanted to drown in her smile, in the way she didn’t seem afraid. But the fight didn’t stop.

Across the cell, Daphne and Lorenzo were locked with Mulciber, and it wasn’t magic anymore, it was raw, physical, savage. Daphne shrieked as she swung her wand like a club into his jaw, the crack echoing like a bone splitting. Lorenzo barreled into him, slamming Mulciber’s bulk against the glass wall with all the force in his body.

The cage shuddered. A splinter shot through the glass, jagged and sharp, racing out like a spiderweb.

Mulciber spat blood, cursed, shoved back hard, but Daphne was faster, her hands clawing at his hair, jerking his head back. She snarled through her teeth, wild and feral, “Hold him, Lorenzo, hold him!”

“Whatever you want darling.” Lorenzo’s grin was wide, teeth flashing, sweat dripping down his face.

He shoved harder, his whole body against Mulciber’s back, grinding him forward into the wall. The splinter widened, cracking deeper. Then Daphne slammed his head into it. Once. Twice. The sound was a sickening crunch, blood blooming against the glass. Mulciber roared, arms flailing, but Lorenzo tightened his grip around his chest, pinning him in place.

The third time, the glass cracked all the way through, jagged shards jutting outward like teeth.

Daphne shoved his skull against it hard and it split open.

Mulciber’s scream gurgled wet in his throat as the glass tore through skin, through muscle, through bone, his face sliding down in a smear of red. The shards punched through the other side of his skull, his body twitching as if refusing to accept death.

Lorenzo pushed once more, hard and final, impaling him fully on the jutting glass. His body sagged, lifeless, blood streaming down the cracks.

Daphne stepped back, panting, her face smeared with scarlet drops, her grin wild and unhinged. Lorenzo looked at her, his chest heaving, and grinned back like they’d just won a game, not slaughtered a man.

For a heartbeat, I forgot to breathe.

Then the sound roared back in, spells cracking, screams echoing, the smell of iron and fire so thick I could taste it. My knees buckled. My head spun. My hands shook so badly the wand slipped, clattering against the floor.

All I wanted was a drink. Just one mouthful, one swallow to quiet the shaking, to silence the screaming inside my skull. I couldn’t bear it. The glass cage, the blood, the burning, Aurelia’s light cutting through the dark, it was too much.

Then a curse came. It streaked toward me, a beam of red fire cutting the air. I saw it, clear and sharp, and something in me snapped.

Let it hit.

I didn’t move.

The blast slammed into my chest like a hammer, throwing me backward. My spine cracked against the floor, breath exploding from my lungs. The world spun, tilting, a shower of glass fragments raining down from the splintered wall where Mulciber’s body still hung. Each shard caught the light, glittering like stars, beautiful, too beautiful for this place.

My limbs went heavy. I let my eyes close.

Knock me out, just for a little while. Let me drift. Let me be free.

But instead of silence, I heard him.

My father’s voice.

Not in the room. Not above me. Inside me.

“Look at you,” he whispered, his tone cutting like a knife through flesh. “You think this is how you escape? By falling? By lying there like a child?”

I tried to lift my head, but my body wouldn’t move.

“I taught you better than this Theodore.” His voice curled into my ear, intimate, venomous. “The boy who can’t live without a bottle. The boy who would rather be unconscious than strong. No wonder you couldn’t save her. No wonder she’s dead.”

My mother.

Her name rose to my lips, but it died there, swallowed by the blood in my throat. He laughed, low and cruel, the sound reverberating through my skull. “This is all you are, shaking, begging, breaking. A curse to our blood.”

The glass kept falling, a rain of jagged stars cutting my skin as it scattered across the floor. My chest heaved shallow, air scraping in and out like knives, but his voice stayed with me, sharper than any curse.

“You’ll never be free. You’ll die like this. Small. Weak. Forgotten.”

I closed my eyes, clutching the words like a wound, and let the darkness press in.

 

Alive, but wishing I wasn’t.

 

DRACO MALFOY

Rowle’s bulk came at me like a wall of stone, his wand carving the air in jagged, vicious arcs. Spells cracked against my shield, heavy, blunt curses meant to break bone, not finesse. He fought like a blunt instrument, a hammer rather than a knife. Easy to read. Easy to exploit.

But my eyes kept slipping.

Not toward the cracks spiderwebbing across the glass, not toward Daphne and Lorenzo’s savagery with Mulciber’s corpse still skewered like a grotesque trophy. No, to the figure on the floor.

Theo.

Sprawled, limp, eyes half-closed, his wand nowhere near his hand. I knew the difference between dead weight and a corpse. He was breathing, but only barely.

Rowle’s curse slammed into my ribs, knocking me a step back. I hissed through my teeth, more annoyed than hurt, and snapped a whip-cord spell across his chest. It bought me half a heartbeat.

I darted sideways, wand flashing, blasting a shield charm to deflect a curse meant for my skull. My free hand grabbed Theo by the collar, dragging his dead-weight body across the slick floor. Blood smeared beneath him, glass cutting my palms as I hauled him toward the edge of the cell.

“Nott, stay with me,” I muttered, shoving him upright against the wall. His head lolled, but his chest rose and fell. Alive. That was enough, and that was all I could give him.

I stood again, dusting blood off my sleeve, and turned back into the chaos.

Aurelia’s hair flashed white across the room, her wand sparking with some half-mad fury. For a flicker of a second, I wanted to see her fall, just drop to the floor, silence the sanctimonious light she carried in her eyes. But even I knew that would do nothing here. Not now. Not with Rookwood still cutting through our ranks like a blade.

Mattheo knew it too.

He raised his wand and his face was nothing but stone. No sneer. No smirk. Just cold, clean precision.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The green light ripped the air apart. Rookwood didn’t even have time to flinch. One moment he was standing, rage written into the lines of his mouth, the next, his body dropped, eyes glassy, wand clattering across the floor.

The cage went quiet for half a breath.

Then Macnair’s curse split the silence, vicious and slicing. It hit Lorenzo clean in the side, a spray of blood painting the floor as he staggered back. His grin faltered, his hand clapping over the wound, red spilling between his fingers. Aurelia screamed his name, rushing toward him. Foolish and predictable. Her knees hit the floor beside him, hands scrambling, frantic, useless.

“Leave him!” Mattheo roared, his voice slicing like steel. “Finish the others off first, he will be fine!”

She flinched, her shoulders jerking, but she didn’t move. Not at first. Not until he stalked forward, eyes blazing, wand cutting through the air as he shielded them both from another curse.

Rowle came at me again, dragging me back into the present. His wand spat red light, slamming against my ribs, searing down my arm. I gritted my teeth, spinning out of the way, sharp and deliberate. Strategy over strength. Cold over heat. I let him lunge, overextend, his weight carrying him forward like the clumsy brute he was.

My countercurse hit him square in the thigh. Bone cracked. He roared, dropping to one knee, swinging his wand wildly. Sparks seared past my cheek, the smell of singed hair sharp in my nose.

“Too slow,” I hissed.

Another spell cut across his chest, tearing through cloth and flesh alike. He bellowed, clutching at the wound, blood soaking through his robes.

Doubt crept up my spine like ice. Was this strength? Was this survival? Or was I just a boy playing soldier, cutting down men older, stronger, until one of them finally cut me open? The thought whispered in the back of my mind, but I smothered it. Doubt was for the weak.

Rowle lunged again. I sidestepped, elegant, and my wand carved one final line through the air. The curse slammed into his jaw, snapping it sideways with a sick crack. He fell, heavy and graceless, blood gurgling at his lips. He wasn’t dead, yet. But he would be.

To my shock, Aurelia was still up, but barely. I could see her white hair sticking to her sweat-slicked face, her wand arm trembling, yet she was still on her feet, firing off hexes with a fury I hadn’t imagined possible from her. My lip curled. I couldn’t help the faint grudging respect curling in the pit of my stomach. She’d lasted this long. Against men like Rowle and Macnair, both seasoned, brutal duelists, she was still standing.

I made a note of it. Not out of sentiment, Merlin forbid, but because survival demanded recognition of talent wherever it flickered.

Rowle’s body advanced again, the long, angular lines of his body cutting across my vision like a predator. He swung a curse at Aurelia, green light slamming against her shield. She cried out, staggering back, her wand flashing wildly.

Daphne, reckless as ever, wasn’t far behind. Her laughter rang out through the cage, a high sound that seemed almost wrong in the thick, bloody haze around us, until a crucio burst from Rowle, hitting her square in the chest.

Her eyes bulged, her jaw clamped, but she tried to force out a laugh. A broken, agonized sound that grated against my nerves. The spell hit her again. She stumbled, limbs jerking, wand flailing uselessly. The laughter died in her throat, replaced by a sound I didn’t want to recognize as anything but real human pain.

I clenched my teeth, forcing myself to stay focused. My hands shook slightly, not from fear, but from the tension, from the constant calculation, from the sick thrill that came with life and death decisions played out in mere seconds.

“Avada Kedavera,” Lorenzo hissed from the floor, bleeding from a wound Macnair had opened, eyes bright and manic with pain and determination. With one ruthless flick of his wand, he sent the curse into Macnair, his body collapsing in a heap of broken robes and blood, wand clattering against the floor. Lorenzo grinned weakly through his own pain before slumping fully, exhausted, and I noted his survival was now in question too.

I couldn’t afford hesitation. Rowle had me. His movements were fast, calculated, the kind that came from years of knowing what his opponents would do before they did it. He aimed a curse at my midsection. I twisted, barely, letting it graze my side, pain flaring sharply, but the momentum carried him off balance. I struck, wand a whip in my fingers, sending a jolt of fire into his chest that made him roar.

Aurelia faltered. One curse too many, exhaustion settling deep into her bones. She hit the floor with a grunt, breathing uneven, hands shaking, wand clattering a few inches from her fingers. She was down.

I sent another jolt at Rowle, precise and sharp, striking his shoulder and forcing a grunt from his throat. Mattheo joined me, moving around him, their coordination cutting the man’s options in half. He swung his wand wildly, desperate now, but their combined precision was too much. Every angle he could use to attack was blocked, parried, or anticipated.

I moved in closer, my wand struck again, his ribs cracking audibly, and I shoved him into the jagged remnants of the broken glass. The shards bit into his robes, and for a split second, I saw his face twist, realizing the danger.

Daphne and Mattheo circled, cornering him. Rowle’s massive fists were useless against the synergy of four opponents converging with speed, precision, and sheer, calculated brutality. I sent a curse into his side as Mattheo struck from above, and then Daphne shoved him violently into the glass again. The pane spiderwebbed under the pressure, cracks lacing across the surface.

His curses went wild, uncontrolled, and one of them slashed against the glass behind me. Shards rained down. Sparks and the acrid smell of scorched magic filled my nostrils, but I ignored it, returning my focus to Rowle, who was now cornered, enraged, and terrified in equal measure.

I moved alongside Mattheo, both of us striking with the kind of precision that didn’t allow Rowle a second to react. Another blow to his chest, another curse searing across his jaw. He staggered, arms flailing, his face a mixture of pain, rage, and disbelief.

Daphne’s hands flew, laughing and cackling, she shoved him into the shards once more, and this time, the glass gave entirely. A jagged panel pierced him as he fell, a crimson spray marking the floor.

Rowle’s eyes met mine, wild, desperate, and for the briefest fraction of a second, I thought he might beg. I did not flinch. I could not.

Another curse struck his temple, not a full killing curse, but enough to make him sag under the weight of his own pain. Mattheo stepped up, finalizing the precision strike, and Rowle crumpled at last, twitching, then still.

The cage fell silent for half a breath.

Aurelia lay on the floor, breathing shallow, exhausted, shaking, but alive. Daphne sat back, panting, adrenaline still surging through her manic body. Lorenzo was slumped on the floor, the life in his eyes dimmed but not gone. I stood there, breathing evenly, though the taste of iron and blood was thick in my mouth, the acrid tang of scorched magic burning my nostrils.

Daphne was the first to react, moving faster than I expected given the chaos, she had Theo against her, supporting his weight as he sagged limply, his chest heaving in shallow, uneven breaths. His head lolled against her shoulder, strands of damp hair plastered across his face, and for a moment she just held him, her laughter and joy gone, replaced by something eerily protective.

“Come on, come on, get up,” she murmured, her voice a low hum as if speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile sense of control they’d barely clawed back.

Mattheo moved with his usual precision, hands firm as he hauled Lorenzo up from the floor, feeling the residual warmth of blood against his gloves. The faint hiss of pain escaped from Lorenzo’s lips, but Mattheo’s grip was rough, the only acknowledgment he allowed being a sharp nod before he assessed the rest of the room.

I hesitated, my instincts refusing to abandon the cold detachment I’d cultivated over years of calculation. Aurelia was still on the floor, pale, trembling, her small breaths shallow but steady. My hand hovered, almost involuntarily, before I bent and lifted her roughly over my shoulder, her slender form heavy but not unmanageable. Her hair fell into my face as I straightened, and I ignored the twinge of something I refused to name.

The echo of a voice stopped us all mid-stride. Voldemort. His voice slithered through the air, cold and commanding, reverberating against the now jagged edges of the shattered glass that had once contained us.

“The wards are lifted,” it hissed. “Return to your place. There is still more to be done.”

The sound made my teeth clench. He wanted us to die today.

The glass had shattered around us moments before, shards sparkling like deadly frost across the floor, but it was the knowledge that our temporary cage of safety was gone that truly set the adrenaline roaring again. Instantly, the six of us prepared ourselves, senses alert, bodies ready, as the familiar surge of magic filled the room.

With barely a word, we apparated.

The sudden rush of movement brought a disorienting pressure to my chest, the cold tang of displaced air pressing against my skin. When the world snapped back into place, the familiar walls of the safehouse rose around us, I didn’t hesitate. My eyes scanned immediately, calculating, reflexive.

Blood. Always blood.

I was at Lorenzo’s side in an instant, pulling the last replenishing potion from the kitchen and tipping it to his lips. His body shook, hands gripping the table for support, but he drank, and I murmured incantations under my breath, letting the warmth of the potion flow into his veins as the tension in his muscles eased, the pallor of his skin slowly returning to something more lifelike.

Daphne moved with the same frantic precision, laying Aurelia down gently on the couch, her own hands still pressed protectively against her, as if willing the girl’s body to stop trembling through sheer force of will. Her voice was quiet now, soft, almost tender.

Mattheo, cold as ever, moved through the room assessing the scene, eyes sharp and calculating. “Efficient,” he said, his voice carrying that quiet, cutting edge of approval he always had. “You’ve all done well.”

Cold, clinical praise. There was no warmth in it, none of the comfort or reassurance that might have made the moment human. But it carried weight. Approval from him was rare, measured, and exacting.

I glanced to the corner, where the shards of glass from our earlier prison still glittered faintly on the floor. Then my eyes moved to the door that led to Granger’s holding room. I froze. My hand instinctively tightened around the edge of the counter as I assessed. There was still more ahead. Another layer of this nightmare waiting, one that promised no mercy.

✦

The house was quiet now, almost eerily so. The faint hum of the fire in the grate was the only sound punctuating the stillness, and the shadows stretched long across the wooden floorboards. I sat at the dining table, quill in hand, the tip scratching sharply against the parchment as I outlined everything we needed. My handwriting was neat enough that even Mother could read it without effort, though the edges of the letters carried the faint tremor of exhaustion I didn’t like to admit.

The list was long. Blood-replenishing potions, healing draughts, Dreamless Sleep Potion, every concoction that could patch torn flesh or quiet a restless mind. I moved carefully around the kitchen, opening cabinets inspecting bottles, noting quantities. Each entry was catalogued, every ingredient cross-referenced in my mind, powdered root of asphodel, phoenix tears, a vial of crushed moonstone. I wrote them down, one by one, careful not to forget a single detail, aware that missing even a single potion could cost us dearly.

Then I noticed it. The Draught of Peace was gone. Completely. I stared at the empty space in the cabinet for a long moment, my quill hovering above the paper. I had only restocked these last week. I could still remember the precise weight of the bottles in my hand, the faint shimmer of the liquid inside. Now, nothing. My brow furrowed, a small tick of irritation forming at the corner of my eye. Where had they gone?

I made a note anyway, adding it to the list with a small underline. The absence was strange, yes, but unexplainable absences in this house were nothing new.

Beside the list, I had begun another task, one far more personal. A letter to Mother. The quill scratched the parchment in softer, gentler strokes than my potion lists. I found myself thinking of her in the quiet moments, her hands folded neatly on her lap, the way she would tilt her head slightly when listening, the faint lift of her brow when she approved of something I’d done.

I admired her. I loved her. Always had. Always would. There was a warmth in these memories that I allowed to linger, the faintest echo of comfort in the otherwise tense night.

By the time I finished, the letter was neat, the list exhaustive. I leaned back in my chair, examining my work with critical eyes, scanning for errors, omissions, anything that could later be construed as weakness. Only then did I allow myself a faint sigh of relief, the first since the chaos of the day. Narcissa would understand, she always did.

For the first time all day, the world beyond the dining room, the screams, the magic, the blood, faded to a distant hum. Here, with parchment and quill, I could breathe, plan, and even remember what it was like to feel something resembling normalcy, even though there was nothing inherently normal about this lifestyle.

The living room was quiet when I finally retreated from the table, the only movement was Lorenzo, slumped across the couch, eyes half-closed, his breathing uneven, drifting in and out of sleep like a storm-tossed boat. Mattheo lay sprawled across the double mattress on the floor, completely still, his chest rising and falling in the shallow rhythm of unconsciousness.

Theo was nowhere to be seen. I paused, registering the absence without surprise. He could be anywhere, likely with Aurelia. It was as much a relief as a frustration, he wasn’t my responsibility right now. My boots made almost no sound against the polished floor as I moved into the hallway.

The girls’ room door were closed. I assumed Daphne and Aurelia were asleep, the faintest whisper of breathing detectable through the cracks in the door. I walked past slowly, careful not to disturb them, but the hallway seemed longer than usual, the shadows stretching unnaturally, almost mocking me with their quiet.

I stopped at the door where Hermione was kept. My hand hovered over the doorknob. Part of me knew I shouldn’t enter, not now, not with my mind still sharp from the fight. But another part of me felt drawn, compelled, as if the room itself demanded I remember.

I paused, taking a steadying breath. The air was thick here, scented faintly with lingering spells and old dust. My reflection caught in the glass of a nearby picture frame, pale, sharp-eyed, jaw set tight. The familiar unease rose in my chest. I wasn’t sure I was in the right frame of mind for this. One wrong step and something could snap, something I didn’t want to see happen.

A sudden sound of the front door opening with a sharp click jerked me fully alert. My muscles tensed immediately, instinct flaring. I could hear the wind rushing in behind it, carrying with it the faint smell of the outside world, wet leaves and cold metal from the latch. My hand tightened on the doorknob of Hermione’s room, but the sound had pulled me down the hallway. My boots made swift, measured steps against the floorboards as I moved toward the front entrance, every nerve in my body vibrating with anticipation.

The hallway was dim, shadows stretching long in the thin light of the moon filtering through curtained windows. My wand stayed raised, hand steady, every muscle coiled, every instinct alert and then the figure stepped into the threshold.

It was Daphne. Her hair was a tangled mess, more so than normal. The faint light caught the smudges of her makeup, mascara running down her cheeks, lips slightly parted, eyes wide but haunted. Her legs trembled subtly, the motion almost imperceptible at first, until she faltered completely.

I hesitated. The wand in my hand didn’t lower, I couldn’t allow instinct to relax yet, but my eyes tracked her movements carefully, calculating. Something was off. Not threatening, not outwardly dangerous, but off. Her gaze met mine for a split second, startled, almost as if she had forgotten I was even there.

Then she collapsed. Not dramatically, not with noise or chaos, but with the kind of silent surrender that makes a room feel suddenly heavy. Her shoulders shook as silent tears streamed down her cheeks, her body crumpling to the floor with a gentle thud. I froze, wand poised, unsure whether to step in or remain an observer.

A faint shuffle from the living room alerted me that Lorenzo had stirred. He appeared almost instantly, as if called by the unspoken tension in the house. His eyes widened the moment he saw her on the floor, limbs trembling, and without a word, he moved toward her.

I stepped back, allowing him room, my eyes still sharp, measuring. Lorenzo crouched beside her, murmuring something low, gentle, a wordless reassurance she didn’t seem to hear, and then he lifted her carefully, noting her trembling legs, her shivering frame.

I watched, silent but attentive, as he guided her to the couch. She leaned heavily into him, the muscles in her arms slack, surrendering entirely. Lorenzo seated her on his lap, careful, as though he was cradling something fragile, and wrapped his arms protectively around her. Her head fell against his chest, still trembling.

I lowered myself onto the couch, careful not to crowd them, letting the faint creak of the cushions announce my presence. Daphne barely registered me, her shivering body was folded into Lorenzo’s lap, head pressed to his chest. She murmured again, barely audible through the tremors of her quiet sobs.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice muffled, breaking. “I… I just…”

She trailed off, overwhelmed, tears spilling freely down her face. Her hair was still a mess, dampened slightly where mascara had streaked, and the moonlight caught the faint tremble in her shoulders. Every part of her looked fragile, vulnerable in a way that made my chest tighten despite myself. I’d always had a soft spot for her, though I’d never admit it, and seeing her like this felt like some cruel intrusion into a space that should have been safe.

Lorenzo’s arms tightened around her, rocking her gently back and forth, whispering soft, low reassurances. “Daph, shh, it’s okay. We’ve got you. Just breathe for us, alright? That’s all we need you to do right now darling.”

Daphne buried her face further, as though trying to disappear into him. Her hands clutched at his shirt, small fists of desperate need. “Everything… it all… hurts,” she whispered again, voice almost breaking entirely. “My head… spinning… I just…”

I shifted slightly, leaning closer without touching, letting her feel the quiet weight of presence around her. “Daphne,” I murmured carefully, voice clipped but soft, “look at me. Talk to me. What happened?”

She shook her head violently, refusing to pull back, curling tighter into Lorenzo’s arms. “I can’t say.” she managed, the words broken, jagged, barely coherent.

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened, the worry in his eyes evident even in the faint moonlight. “It’s okay,” he murmured firmly, though his voice had that undercurrent of desperation he never let anyone see. “You don’t have to say anything right now. Not yet. Just let it out.”

I could feel the strain in her body, the tremors running through her spine, and I wondered if anyone could ever see the way she crumpled under pressure without judgment. She had always seemed reckless, bright, unstoppable even, but here, now, she was so small.

“Daph,” I murmured again, quieter this time, trying to anchor her with my voice, not touch. “Whatever happened, you’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you, nobody can hurt you with us here.”

She made a faint, muffled noise that might have been a sob or an acknowledgment, and her body quivered against Lorenzo. He whispered to her continuously, slow and steady, grounding her in a rhythm only he seemed capable of providing. It took several long minutes, but gradually her trembling eased slightly. Her hiccuping sobs turned into faint, shuddering breaths, her fists relaxing against Lorenzo’s chest.

I ran my fingers lightly through the tangled strands of her hair, careful not to tug or disturb her, letting the motion soothe some of the tension that still rattled through her. Her body quivered slightly under my touch, but she didn’t pull away, she let herself be held by us, letting the warmth of two solid presences anchor her, even for a moment.

Lorenzo laid her down gently and darted off to her room, returning a few minutes later with a small pile of clean clothes. He set them gently on the arm of the couch, then turned back to her with an expression that was somewhere between worry and hope. We both paused for a moment, letting the silence stretch, feeling the weight of the moment.

Lorenzo cleared his throat softly, then spoke in a low voice. “Daph… we, uh… we should probably get you changed. You’ll be more comfortable.”

I found myself nodding, though my throat felt dry. “We’ll help,” I added, the words coming out gentler than I expected. “But only if you want us to.”

Her eyes flicked between us, glassy and hazy, unfocused in a way that made something twist in my chest. For a moment, I thought she hadn’t heard us, but then she blinked slowly, the faintest crease between her brows, and whispered, “You’re asking?”

“Yes,” I said at once, my voice steadier this time. “Of course Daphne.”

She stared at us, as if the thought alone startled her, then gave a tiny, weak nod before letting her head fall back against the couch cushion. Lorenzo and I both stilled. Neither of us moved right away. It was one thing to offer, it was another to follow through, especially with how delicate she looked now. Her chest rose and fell in uneven breaths, her lashes trembling against her cheeks.

Finally, I reached forward, hands brushing the hem of her shirt. My fingers froze almost immediately. The moment I touched the fabric, I saw it, her eyes going distant, glassier still. She wasn’t here anymore. She wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anything but the ceiling as if there was something going on in the paint.

I pulled my hands back like I’d been burned. “No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “She’s not with us. Don’t touch her right now.”

Lorenzo’s hands flew away from where he was about to remove her pants, his face paling. “Fuck, darling, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, over and over, frantic. His hands hovered near her arms but never touched, as though terrified of making it worse.

Her lips parted faintly, but no words came. Her eyes stayed hazy, fixed on some point far away.

I felt something hollow open in my chest. “We shouldn’t… not like this,” I said, softer now.

Lorenzo nodded quickly, voice breaking. “Fuck, I didn’t think—”

“Neither did I,” I admitted quietly, surprising myself. My throat tightened. I wasn’t thinking like I usually did, cold and calculating, I wasn’t weighing outcomes or choosing tactics. I was just watching someone I cared about break apart in front of me.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, lowering my voice so it was steady but gentle. “Daph,” I said, willing her to hear me. “Just rest now, we are right here with you.”

Something shifted in her expression then, just a flicker, a small twitch of her lips, as though my words had reached her through the haze.

Lorenzo’s hand hovered close to hers. “You don’t have to be sorry,” he whispered again, his voice raw. “You never have to be sorry with us. Not ever.”

I nodded slowly, feeling the same truth settle in my chest. “You’re not a burden,” I added. The words surprised me as I said them, but I didn’t regret them. “You don’t have to explain anything right now either.”

For the first time since she’d walked through the door, Daphne’s eyes fluttered closed. Her breathing steadied, just slightly, as though she’d finally given herself permission to rest.

Lorenzo let out a shuddering breath, shoulders slumping. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, his touch feather-light, and whispered, “We’ve got you.”

For a long while, the three of us stayed quiet. Lorenzo sat stiff as stone at first, his hand hovering awkwardly near her shoulder, unsure if touching her would shatter her all over again. Then, slowly, Daphne shifted. With a small, broken sigh, she dragged herself closer, curling into him like she’d done it a hundred times before.

Lorenzo’s breath caught, but he didn’t move away. His arm slid around her, tentative at first, then firmer, stroking her back in slow, steady lines. She melted against him, the trembling in her body easing little by little with each pass of his hand.

I sat beside them, watching the way she clung to him like he was the only solid thing in a collapsing world. For once, I didn’t feel the need to comment, didn’t feel the instinct to sneer or remind them of the mess they were. I just watched. And then, quietly, I stood.

The sound of the old floorboards creaked under my feet as I stepped away. Neither of them looked up. That was fine. They didn’t need me hovering.

The house was still thick with silence, the kind that wrapped itself around your throat if you lingered in it too long. My footsteps carried me down the hallway, the shadows long and thin under the flickering candle sconces.

I stopped when I reached her door. I hesitated only a moment before slipping inside.

Granger was slumped in the chair, her head tilted against the backrest, lips parted ever so slightly. Her chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm, deep sleep softening every edge of her face. No lines of tension across her brow, no fire in her eyes. Just peace.

I stood there, watching her, my hand still on the doorframe.

She looked untouched by it all. Blissfully untouched by the war that had twisted the rest of us into knots of rage and exhaustion. For that moment, she didn’t look like a prisoner or a bargaining chip. She looked like a girl who hadn’t seen horrors and who hadn’t been dragged through blood and fire. Something sharp twisted inside me. Envy, maybe. Or longing.

I found myself moving closer, silent as shadow, my eyes never leaving her face. Her lashes rested against her cheeks, fluttering faintly with some dream I could never touch.

So still. So calm. So far away from the storm outside her door.

I wondered, briefly, what it would feel like to be her, to sink into a night’s sleep without fear of waking to blood on the floor. To breathe without the weight of expectations, curses, and choices heavy on every inhale.

But that wasn’t me. It never would be.

Her breathing changed before her eyes did, the small, quick flutter of her chest giving her away. I didn’t move, standing a few feet away, watching as her lashes lifted and she blinked into the dim light of the room. Her pupils widened when they landed on me, startled, as though she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone in this house, as though she thought she might be safe in her sleep.

“Comfortable?” I drawled, my voice colder than the stone walls around us.

She jerked upright, the chair scraping faintly beneath her. Her lips parted like she meant to speak, but I didn’t give her the chance. My wand was in my hand before she had air in her lungs.

“Legilimens.”

The word cut between us, and her mind cracked open beneath mine. I shoved in hard, no room for hesitation. Images snapped at me like the recoil of a whip, the woods, the tent, the faint echo of Potter’s voice in the back of her skull. The edges blurred, but I forced myself deeper, trying to hold it steady.

But she was fast. Too fast.

Everything folded in on itself like a door slamming shut. My footing vanished. Suddenly, there was nothing but blackness, and a chill crept up the back of my neck.

I realised, with horror, that she wasn’t out. She was in.

Her presence burned like static through my veins, crawling where she didn’t belong. I tried to summon an image but it was all dark, my own thoughts locked away from me like someone else had drawn the curtains. I pushed back hard, teeth gritted, and the connection snapped with a crackle that left my vision swimming.

When I focused again, she was there, clutching the arms of the chair, chest heaving, her face ghost-pale. Her eyes were huge, wild, her lips trembling as though she’d seen the Dark Lord himself.

I tilted my head, forcing a smirk. “What’s the matter, Granger? Didn’t like what you saw?”

But she didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her gaze darted over my face as though searching for something like confirmation or denial, I didn’t know. Her throat worked, and finally, gasping, she whispered, “You—” Her voice cracked, her whole body quivering. “You killed her.”

The words hung heavy in the stale air, strange and jagged.

I frowned, wand lowering slightly. “What the fuck are you babbling about now?”

Her hands were shaking. She shook her head violently, eyes glassy with shock. “What do you mean? How don’t you don’t understand, you killed her. You—”

I stepped closer, snapping, “Killed who? You think I’m going to lose sleep over the dozens of people that drop every day?” My lip curled. “Be specific, Granger. Don’t waste my time choking on your own dramatics.”

She flinched like I’d struck her. The word came out of her mouth raw, broken, like it hurt her to say it.

“Pansy. You killed Pansy Parkinson.”

The name landed like a stone dropped into a still pond, ripples running outwards in a silence so deep I almost heard the blood pounding in my ears.

My grip on the wand tightened until my knuckles blanched.

Pansy.

That wasn’t possible, I’d have remembered. My stomach twisted, but I buried it instantly, clamping down on the flicker of doubt. My face hardened into ice.

“You’ve lost your mind,” I snapped, voice sharp enough to slice through her trembling. “Pansy’s gone, yes. Dead. Like plenty of others.”

But she just stared at me, tears cutting thin tracks down her cheeks, whispering again, quieter this time, like she didn’t care whether I wanted to hear it or not.

“You killed her.”

The words scraped like glass against bone, burrowing under my skin.

I bared my teeth, leaning closer, cold fury wrapping around me like armour. “Shut your mouth. You don’t know anything. Don’t you dare lie to my fucking face.”

But inside, deep where no one could see, something stirred. Something that felt dangerously like doubt.

I left her there, still trembling, still whispering that cursed name under her breath, and slammed the door so hard the frame rattled. My footsteps echoed sharp against the floorboards, each one quick, angry, driven by the need to get as far from that room as possible.

What did she know? Nothing. She couldn’t know anything.

Pansy had died a year ago. Sixth year. An illness nobody could fight. We’d all known it, whispered about it, avoided the topic in hushed tones in the Slytherin common room. I remembered Lorenzo clenching his jaw whenever her name came up. I remembered Daphne crying once, quietly, when she thought nobody saw.

So why the fuck was Granger looking at me like I’d slit her throat with my own hands?

I dragged my fingers through my hair, forcing my breathing to slow, but the memory of her voice clung to me like smoke.

You killed her.

My teeth ground together.

Turning the corner, I nearly collided with Mattheo. He stood in the hall, one hand clutching a folded set of what looked like Theo’s clothes. We locked eyes, neither of us speaking. His gaze flicked over me once, sharp and assessing, but he didn’t ask. Didn’t press. He just gave the smallest shake of his head, unreadable, and brushed past me into the bathroom, closing the door without a sound.

I stood there a moment longer, my pulse still thundering, then forced my legs forward until I reached the dining table. The candle was burned low, shadows long across the wood. I dropped into one of the chairs, hands flat against the table’s cool surface, trying to focus, trying to think.

But my eyes caught on something at the far end.

An envelope. Plain and unmarked. I pulled it toward me, the weight surprising. Thicker than a letter. I tore the top open and froze.

Bundles of paper stared back at me, green, crisp, unmistakably foreign.

Muggle money. Stacks of it.

My pulse jolted, confusion slicing through the fog of rage. We didn’t have this. We couldn’t have this. No one in this house could have gotten this. I sat there, staring down at the envelope in silence, the weight of it pressing against every thought in my head, until even the echo of Granger’s accusation dulled into the background.

 

Something was wrong, deeply wrong, and I was the only one who seemed to see that.

Chapter Text

AURELIA AVERY

When I woke, it was to the heavy warmth of someone's arm draped over me, the steady rise and fall of breath against the back of my neck, and the faint smell of cigarettes and soap tangled in the sheets. For a long moment I didn't move, my body caught between sleep and waking, my mind still somewhere soft and far away where things weren't sharp or heavy or cruel. Then the weight shifted, reminding me, and I turned slightly to find Theo beside me again.

He was sleeping deeply, his face turned into the pillow, lips parted, dark lashes trembling ever so slightly with the rhythm of his dreams. There was something about him when he slept that tore at me because it stripped away all the armor and the sharp edges he tried to carry in waking life, leaving only a boy who looked like he'd never been touched by violence. His hand was splayed across my ribs as though he were holding me there on purpose, and for once, instead of feeling trapped, I felt held.

I should have moved, should have shaken him awake, but the thought of disturbing that rare peace made my chest ache. So I lay there, letting the minutes stretch into each other, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse where his wrist brushed against my side, until the restlessness in me began to hum again.

Carefully, I lifted his arm from around me, inch by inch, terrified of breaking the spell. He stirred faintly, his fingers twitching, but didn't wake. I tucked the blanket around him, watching as he burrowed instinctively into the warmth, and I almost let myself stay.

But the house was heavy with sleep, and my head was too loud to join it.

I slipped quietly from the room, easing the door closed behind me. The hallway was still and dim, the early morning light spilling through the gaps in the curtains like thin silver threads. I padded barefoot through the living room, the scent of smoke and stale liquor clinging faintly to the air, my eyes falling on the bodies scattered across the furniture.

Draco and Mattheo were crammed onto a double mattress on the floor, the sheets half-kicked off, their shoulders pressed together by necessity more than affection, though Mattheo's hand twitched every so often as if reaching for something in a dream.

On the couch, Daphne was curled against Lorenzo, her hair a messy halo around her face, one hand fisted in his shirt. His arm was wrapped tight around her waist, his head tilted into her hair, and for once the boy who never stopped moving was completely still. The sight of them made something fragile stir in me, something I didn't want to name.

I didn't stop to linger. The weight of the house pressed too hard on my chest, and the stillness was beginning to feel suffocating. I pushed through the door and stepped out into the morning air.

The world was washed pale with dawn. The sky hung low and soft, streaked with fragile shades of pink and silver, the kind of sky that made it impossible to believe in violence or cruelty, if only for a second. The air was cool against my skin, crisp with the faint bite of approaching autumn, and the grass glittered faintly with dew.

I sat down on the front steps, folding my knees to my chest, and drew in a slow breath. For the first time in days, the air didn't feel heavy in my lungs.

The thought of the church crept back into my mind as it had every morning since I'd first stepped through its doors, the hushed stillness, the smell of wax and wood polish, the strange comfort of the colored light spilling through the stained glass. The way my body had seemed to recognize something before my mind could even shape the thought.

I wanted to go back.

Not just wanted, I needed to go back.

It wasn't the prayers or the sermons that haunted me, but the quiet in between them, the space that felt like it might actually hold me if I fell. The way the silence had wrapped around me, not accusing or condemning, just there. Like the walls had been waiting centuries for someone to bring their sorrow and lay it down.

I didn't know God, didn't know if I truly believed in Him as much as I thought anymore, didn't know if He had any business in a world like ours. But there was something about the way the priest had spoken, something about the way his eyes had seemed to hold both pity and understanding, that had lodged itself under my skin.

I'd lived so long with only shadows to answer me, with only the Dark as my inheritance. To imagine another presence of one that didn't want to own me, didn't want to use me, was so foreign I couldn't even hold it properly in my hands.

The others would laugh if they knew. Mattheo would sneer, Draco would scoff, Daphne would roll her eyes. But it wasn't about replacing them. It wasn't about filling some hole in me with a name or a ritual. It was about the fact that, for the first time in longer than I could remember, I had felt something that wasn't hollow.

I hugged my knees tighter, resting my chin against them, and watched the world shift into gold as the sun crested higher, each blade of grass lit up as though it mattered, as though the whole world was trying to tell me that there was more than war, more than death, more than the endless cycle we had been dragged into. And maybe that was foolish. Maybe I was clinging to a dream as fragile as the morning light. But sitting there, with the house asleep behind me and the sky opening before me, I let myself believe for just a little longer.

The air shifted before I even saw him.

It was subtle at first, the cool of the dawn pressing sharper against my skin, the silence around me thickening, as though the whole world had stopped to hold its breath. My chest tightened, not with fear exactly, but with the strange anticipation that always preceded him, like the feeling of standing before an altar, waiting for the presence of something divine to finally make itself known.

And then he was there.

Not stepping from shadows, not breaking into the world with sound or force, but simply appearing as though he had always been seated on the low stone wall across from me, his posture relaxed, his hands folded loosely in his lap, his pale face luminous against the softening sky. His dark eyes fixed on me with a steadiness that made my heart lurch, though his lips curved into the faintest of smiles, almost indulgent.

"Good morning, Aurelia." His voice was smooth, silken, curling into the air as though it belonged to it.

My pulse quickened, and though nerves fluttered in my stomach, I found myself smiling faintly, unable to help it. "You came back."

His head tilted slightly, as though the thought of not returning to me had never occurred. "Of course I did. Did you think I would abandon you?"

Heat rushed to my cheeks, shameful in its swiftness. I shook my head, clutching my knees tighter to my chest, though the knot inside me loosened at his words. "No. I just... I didn't know if you would."

Tom's smile deepened, though it never reached his eyes. "You are far too important for me to leave behind."

The words settled over me like a blessing, like a hand pressing softly against my crown. Important. No one had ever said it like that, not like it was truth carved into stone, not like it was a fact beyond question. My throat ached, and I blinked quickly, forcing the emotion down before it could humiliate me.

"I keep thinking about the church," I admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper. "About... about God. About what it meant, what it felt like."

"And what did it feel like?" Tom leaned forward slightly, his gaze sharpening, though his tone remained gentle, coaxing, as though every word of mine was sacred.

I stared down at the dew-slick grass, searching for words that could capture it. "Safe. Like there was something waiting for me. Like the silence could actually hold me if I let it."

His eyes glimmered with something I couldn't name. "And who do you think was waiting for you there?"

I looked up at him, my chest tightening. The morning light caught in his hair, outlining him with gold, and for an instant he seemed untouchable, unearthly, like every painting of divinity I had ever seen but never believed in until now. My lips parted, and the word slipped out before I could stop it.

"You."

The silence that followed was heavy but not suffocating—it was expectant, charged, as though he had been waiting for me to say it. His smile flickered, cold satisfaction beneath the warmth. "At last, you're beginning to understand."

A tremor ran through me, half fear, half relief, though I didn't dare question it.

"You are not like the rest of them," Tom said smoothly, his tone both cutting and consoling. "The weak. The blind. They hide in their rituals and meaningless words because they cannot bear the truth. But you—" He rose slowly, every movement deliberate, his presence towering though he hadn't taken a step closer. "You were chosen for more than that."

The words struck something deep in me, something I didn't know had been waiting to be touched. Chosen. Not burdened. Not cursed. Chosen.

"What do you mean?" I asked, my voice trembling but desperate.

He paced toward me, each step measured, his dark robes brushing lightly against the ground. "Faith without action is emptiness. You have already been given a gift, your suffering, your brokenness, your hunger. They prepared you to be shaped into something greater, something that cannot be destroyed by the petty cruelties of men."

I swallowed hard, my nails biting into my knees. "And what do you want me to do?"

Tom stopped before me, close enough that I could feel the chill radiating from him despite the warmth of the rising sun. His gaze locked onto mine, and I felt as though he were reaching inside me, pulling out every hidden piece and holding them to the light.

"There is two men, Borgin and Burkes" he said softly, almost reverently. "Both foul, wretched creatures who parade through the Alley with false dignity. They pollute the world with their weakness, and the people around them mistake it for strength. Their lives are a lie, Aurelia, and lies are the enemy of truth."

My breath hitched. "You want me to...?"

"To kill him," Tom finished, his tone calm, unflinching. "To deliver justice in its purest form. To show this rotting town that their false idols can bleed, and that truth will not remain hidden."

The ground seemed to tilt beneath me. My stomach twisted violently. "Kill them?"

Tom crouched slightly, his face level with mine now, his eyes burning into me with a terrifying intensity that felt both holy and damning. "Do you doubt me, Aurelia?"

I shook my head quickly, words tumbling out. "No, I just... it feels wrong. It feels cruel."

"Cruel?" His voice sharpened, cutting through me like glass. "What was cruel was what they did to you. What was cruel was the world that looked upon your suffering and did nothing. What is cruel is to let such men breathe, to let them fester and poison everything they touch. And you—" His hand reached out, hovering inches from my cheek though it never touched. "You can end it. You can cleanse it. You can make the world tremble and know that you were not broken for nothing."

My heart hammered, torn between horror and the intoxicating pull of his words. He was wrong wasn't he? He had to be. But the way he spoke, the certainty in his voice, made it sound like truth. And deep down, beneath the revulsion, there was a sliver of something darker, the thought of finally being the one who chose, the one who acted, instead of the one always crushed beneath.

Tears pricked at my eyes. "What if I can't?"

Tom's smile returned, slow and deliberate, like a serpent uncoiling. "You can. Because I am with you. Because I saved you, and because you are mine."

The last words slid over me like chains, cold and heavy, but I didn't pull away. I couldn't.

He straightened then, his presence looming above me again, his eyes never leaving mine. "Do this, Aurelia, and you will understand. Do this, and you will never doubt again. The world will see, and so will you, that you were always meant for more than shadows."

My throat closed, no words left in me. I wanted to scream, to run, to tell him no, but I also wanted to believe him, to believe that the weight I carried could be turned into something more.

And then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone.

The air lightened, the silence thinned, and I was alone again on the steps, the sun now spilling gold across the street, mocking me with its brightness. I buried my face in my hands, torn in two, trembling with both revulsion and longing.

I wanted to do what he said.

Because if he had saved me, if he was who I thought he was, then how could I refuse him?

 

THEODORE NOTT

I woke with the strangest heaviness in my chest, the kind that didn't feel like exhaustion, or a hangover, or even pain, it felt older than all of that, carved into me long before the blood and the bottles and the scars.

Aurelia's bed. That was the first thing I registered. Her pillow still smelled faintly like her, warm, floral and familiar in a way that made my chest ache. The curtains let in a thin stream of morning light, pale and fragile, cutting across the blanket tangled at my feet. My head pounded dully, but nothing compared to the storm usually raging after I drank myself numb. This was quieter, like the ringing left after a bell had been struck too hard.

I blinked, confusion curling up my throat like smoke.

How the fuck had I ended up here again?

My arms were around nothing now, because I shifted, and I froze. My clothes weren't what I had on last night. Someone had changed me again. My shirt was clean, soft, too loose, and my trousers didn't smell like vodka. The realisation made my skin crawl with a strange kind of dread, like I had been stripped and redressed while I wasn't myself.

I sat up slowly, the blanket falling into my lap, and pulled at my sleeves.

The skin beneath was raw. Ugly, jagged gashes still weeping faintly where they hadn't clotted, the edges red and inflamed. My arms looked like a battlefield again, every inch of me torn open by my own hand, though in the morning light it almost didn't feel real. A part of me wanted to vomit, a part of me wanted to cry, but instead I just sat there, staring in disbelief. I remembered last night in the bathroom again, but not how I ended up here once more.

I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself none of it mattered, because today wasn't about scars, or the confusion of who cleaned me up, or why I was still alive when half of me didn't want to be.

Today was December 10th.

Ten years. Ten years since she'd been gone.

The air in the room shifted. Heavy, pressing, suffocating. My chest felt too small for the grief that still burned like it had only happened yesterday.

I lay back down, curling into the pillow, pulling the blanket up over me as though it could shield me from the weight of memory. Ten years ago today, my mother had died. Ten years of silence in her place. Ten years of pretending the world was survivable without her.

I closed my eyes, and the tears came soundlessly, burning trails down my temples into the fabric beneath me. I didn't sob, didn't make a sound. I just let the ache wash through me, the hollow kind that came when I thought about her too long, the way her hand used to smooth my hair back from my forehead, the warmth of her laugh, the safety of her voice.

I whispered nothing, because there was nothing to say. Ten years hadn't dulled it. Ten years hadn't healed it. Ten years had only made me more broken, more lost, more like the man I swore I'd never become.

I lay there silently mourning, as if by stillness I could give her something back, as if she could feel me remembering her, even now.

I dragged myself out of bed with the weight of lead in my veins, every movement heavy, deliberate, as though my body was forcing me to acknowledge that it wanted to stay curled beneath the blankets and never leave again. My legs were unsteady as they touched the cold wooden floor, my arms still aching from the wounds hidden beneath the sleeves, the scars that felt like proof of everything I didn't want to admit.

The door burst open, and Aurelia stumbled in, breathless, her hair wild like she had run through the house without even thinking. I froze where I stood, caught between the pull of my own mourning and the raw immediacy of her presence, until instinct overrode everything else and I was moving forward, pulling her against me without a word.

She melted into me, and I held her as if she were the last thing keeping me from drifting into the void, my arms tightening around her frame, steadying her even as I felt I was the one on the edge of collapse. I pressed my lips to the crown of her head, breathing her in, closing my eyes against the sharp sting threatening to break me open.

"What is it?" My voice was hoarse, almost broken, though I forced it softer, gentler for her. "Tell me what's wrong love."

She tipped her head back, her wide eyes shimmering, her breath catching as if every word she tried to form was a fight against herself. "Tom, he came to me again." Her voice cracked in the middle, and I felt my stomach coil before she even finished. "He needs me to do something. He said I had to kill someone."

I stiffened, my hands flexing against her back as though I could somehow shield her from the request already lodged in her chest like a blade. I wanted to pretend I hadn't heard her, wanted to demand she never repeat those words again, but instead I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep my tone steady. "Who?"

Her lips trembled. "I don't know who they are. Bourgin and Burkes, he said. I've never heard of them. But he told me I had to, he said it was what I needed to do."

The bottom of my stomach dropped so fast it left me breathless, my grip on her faltering only slightly as my mind reeled. "Knockturn Alley," I whispered, almost to myself, before looking back into her face. "That's where they are. The shop, you've seen it maybe, with the cursed things in the window. I'm coming with you."

Her brows knitted together, confusion written across her pale features. "Theo, I don't want you to come with me. It's dangerous. If you go with me, you'll—"

"No." The word came out sharper than I intended, cutting across her protest, and I tightened my hold on her, needing her to feel the weight of what I was saying. "Listen to me. I'm not letting you walk into Knockturn Alley alone, not for this. I don't care what he told you or what he didn't. If you're going, I'm going. Do you understand me?"

Her breath hitched, her hands clutching at my shirt as if she could anchor herself in my resolve. "Theo, please—"

I shook my head, pressing my forehead down to hers so she could see the finality in my eyes. "No. This isn't up for debate, Aurelia. You're not doing this alone. You're not spilling blood in some filthy alley while I'm here pretending I can't stop it. I'll help you. I'll make sure it's done right."

Her eyes widened, her lips parting, but no sound came. She looked as if she wanted to fight me on it, to beg me to stay behind, to keep myself safe, but I could already see the war in her faltering. I hated that she believed she had to listen to Tom, hated the way his name passed her lips like he was something divine, when all I saw was the shadow of a monster binding her to chains she didn't deserve.

Her voice broke into the silence, fragile and trembling. "But what if something happens to you?"

I smiled faintly, though there was nothing gentle in it, only the bitter weight of inevitability. "Something's already happened to me, Aurelia. Every day something happens to me. But if I'm with you, if I'm there, then at least I can say I was exactly where I was supposed to be."

She bit her lip, a tear slipping free down her cheek, and I brushed it away with my thumb, trying to soften the edges of what I had just said. "I'll go with you. I'll stand with you. I'll make sure you walk back out of there again."

She nodded slowly, reluctantly, her shoulders sagging as if a battle had just ended inside her. "You really mean it?"

"I mean it." My voice was low, unwavering, though inside I was unraveling at the thought of what the day would bring. "But we're not rushing into this like fools. We'll leave in twenty minutes. You need to eat something first, keep your strength. I'll meet you then."

She blinked up at me, confused for a moment, as though she wanted to argue but couldn't find the words, and finally she nodded. "Alright. Twenty minutes."

I kissed her forehead again, holding her one last time, wishing I could tell her everything I couldn't, that today of all days my chest felt like it was caving in, that I hadn't the faintest clue how to protect her from Tom or from the world, that all I had was my body and my lies and the bottle I couldn't put down.

When she slipped out of the room, I exhaled shakily, pressing the heel of my hand to my eye. Twenty minutes. That was all I had. Twenty minutes to become what she needed me to be, what I had promised her I'd be.

And I knew exactly how.

I turned toward the bathroom, my steps unsteady but determined, already reaching for the only thing that had ever made me feel strong, the only thing that dulled the shaking in my chest. I told myself it was for her, that I needed to drink to be safe, to keep her safe, to do what Tom demanded without shattering in half.

Twenty minutes. Enough time to drown. Enough time to disappear into glass and fire until I could become her shield.

The first swallow scorched all the way down, and I hissed through my teeth, clutching the edge of the sink as if the fire would burn me alive. But then it spread. That blessed warmth. That release. My chest loosened, the tight knot behind my ribs easing just enough to let me breathe again.

I tipped my head back, gulping more, long and greedy, not caring that it dribbled down my chin. I wanted to drown in it. Needed to. If I was going into Knockturn Alley today, if I was going to stand beside Aurelia while she killed for Tom, then I couldn't be her Theo. Not like this. I needed to be numb. I needed to be someone else.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, the bottle clutched tight in my fist, my legs stretched out in front of me. I pulled up my sleeves again, staring at the angry red gashes and the fresh welts that lined my arms, tracing them with the pad of my finger as though they belonged to someone else.

I lifted the bottle again, swallowing until my vision blurred at the edges, until my heartbeat felt slow and heavy in my chest.

Freedom. That was the word echoing in my skull. Freedom. Every swallow was another step toward it. Freedom from the weight of my mother's ghost. Freedom from Tom's shadow, looming always behind me, promising me I was nothing more than a pawn. Freedom from the grief that never loosened its grip.

And maybe even freedom from myself.

I laughed softly, bitter and broken, pressing the back of my head to the wall. What was freedom, really? Death? Maybe. Maybe that was the only way any of us would ever be free.

Images swam before me, the alley, Aurelia's pale face, the blood she would spill because Tom demanded it. I pictured stepping in front of her, pulling the weight from her shoulders, taking the life myself just so she didn't have to. I pictured dragging her out of there, bloody and shaking but alive. I pictured her face if I didn't come back, the way she might curse my name or weep for me.

The drink twisted those images, smearing them together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. All I knew was the overwhelming desire to let go. To be free. To be done.

I took another pull, choking this time, coughing as it burned through me. The floor seemed to sway beneath me, the walls breathing with me, and I laughed again, louder, reckless, my head spinning.

"What are you doing, Theo?" I muttered to myself, voice slurred already. "What the fuck are you even doing? You think this'll make you strong? You think this'll save her?"

The answer didn't come. It never did. But the drink was easier than silence.

So I kept going. Long gulps, each one heavier than the last, until my hands shook too much to hold the bottle steady and I had to cradle it in both. I was drunk enough to feel invincible, drunk enough to think maybe today wouldn't matter, drunk enough to believe that even if I died in Knockturn Alley, it would be a kind of mercy.

The thought didn't scare me. That was the worst part. It comforted me.

I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall, the room tilting and rocking with me. My lips moved without thought, whispering words I hadn't spoken aloud in years. "I just want to be free, Mother. Ten years. Ten years and I'm still here, still broken, still waiting for you to tell me it's alright." My throat tightened, but the tears didn't come. They never did when I drank this much. "I don't think I can keep doing it. Not like this. Not when everything hurts. Not when I can't even save her."

I raised the bottle one last time, drinking until there was nothing left, the liquid spilling down my chin, soaking my shirt, my chest heaving with the effort. Then I dropped it, letting it clatter across the tiles, the sound echoing too loud in the small room.

Freedom. Maybe today I'd find it. In the alley, in the blood, in the silence that came after. Maybe this was the last day and maybe that was alright.

I dragged myself up unsteadily, gripping the sink for balance, staring again at the stranger in the mirror. His lips were wet, his eyes glazed, but he almost looked alive.

When I finally retreated from the bathroom and into the dining room, I stood there unsteadily, tugging the clasp of my cloak, the heavy folds of black settling against my frame like armor. The mask rested on the table between us, gleaming faintly in the low light. I hadn't bothered to put it on. Neither had she.

Aurelia looked almost ethereal in her robes, the faint flush of morning still warming her cheeks, strands of her hair slipping free from where she had tied it back. She was fastening the last clasp at her throat when her eyes flicked up to me, soft and steady, as though searching for reassurance.

She smiled faintly, small and fragile, and I couldn't help it, I reached out, lacing my fingers through hers. Her hand was warm, grounding, the only thing keeping me together as the room seemed to tilt.

"Ready?" she whispered.

I nodded, though the word felt too big in my mouth, catching on the edges of my teeth. Ready. Was I ready to kill? Ready to die? Ready to be free? My lips curved into something like a smile, though it felt hollow. "Always."

The sound of footsteps thundered from the hall before I could say more, and Mattheo stormed into the room, his voice already raised, sharp as glass.

"Where the fuck are you two going?" His eyes were wide, his hair a mess, chest heaving as if he'd run straight from sleep. He saw our robes, the masks lying there, and his face darkened, fury painting every sharp angle.

Before Aurelia could answer, the air shifted into something cold, electric and suffocating, and Tom was there. Just there. No sound, no warning, only the press of his presence against my ribs like a blade.

"Careful, boy." His voice was silk stretched thin over steel, each syllable vibrating through the marrow of my bones. His eyes fixed on Mattheo, dark and endless, a sneer curling his lips. "Do you presume to question me?"

Mattheo froze, the fury draining into something closer to panic, but he still held his ground. "They don't belong to you," he spat, though the tremor in his voice betrayed him. "You don't get to—"

"Silence." Tom's voice cracked through the room like thunder, and Mattheo flinched, shoulders curling in as though the force of it had struck him across the face. "You forget your place. You forget who allows you to breathe in this house. You are nothing, less than nothing, and you will not speak on this matter unless I grant you leave."

I felt Aurelia tense beside me, her hand clutching mine tighter, but she said nothing. My own head swam, the liquor mingling with the sharp sting of Tom's presence until the edges of the room blurred.

Mattheo's jaw clenched, but he said nothing more. He backed away, fists shaking, his eyes flicking to Aurelia once, desperate, before he turned and stormed from the room.

Tom's eyes lingered on the empty doorway, lips twisting in disdain, before he turned back to us. "Do as I ask, Aurelia, and all will be well. Make me proud."

We nodded, though the world tilted as I did, Aurelia's hand the only thing steady.

Tom's gaze lingered on her, softer now, deceptively gentle, like a serpent coiling close. "You're ready, child. Do not doubt me. Do not doubt yourself."

Then he was gone. Just as quickly as he had appeared, the space where he stood was empty again, the air still heavy with the echo of his presence.

Aurelia and I stood in silence for a moment, the masks gleaming up at us from the table. Her eyes found mine, wide and uncertain, and I squeezed her hand, forcing a smile that felt cracked at the edges.

"Come on," I murmured, though my words slurred faintly, dragged by the weight of the drink.

We took the masks with us, though we didn't wear them, and together we stepped out into the cold. The world warped around us as we Apparated, the familiar crushing darkness pressing in from all sides, and then, Diagon Alley.

It was odd being in Diagon Alley again after the protest, this place was a corpse, as if maybe our work had actually had impact. Boarded windows gaped like hollow eyes, dust-coated signs swung limply in the wind, doors chained and padlocked, posters flapping against every surface. The air was still, stagnant, carrying only the faint reek of mildew and decay.

My breath misted before me, clouding the emptiness. I swayed slightly, the ground tilting under my boots, but Aurelia's hand steadied me, her grip firm, her face pale as she looked down the street.

"It's completely dead," I muttered, the words slipping loose, half to myself. "Like the bones of something left too long in the sun."

She glanced at me, brows knitting faintly, but said nothing. Her silence was heavier than words. We walked slowly, the echo of our steps sharp in the emptiness, every sound too loud. The shop fronts loomed like broken teeth, shadows crawling in the cracks, and I couldn't help but laugh softly under my breath, though it came out jagged.

"What's so funny?" Aurelia whispered, her voice trembling just enough for me to hear.

"Funny?" I tilted my head, grinning faintly, though my vision blurred at the edges. "It's not funny. It's tragic. Whole place... rotting, forgotten."

Her hand squeezed mine tighter, though the warmth of her skin was almost painful against my own. We turned the corner, and the mouth of Knockturn Alley yawned before us, darker than I remembered, a narrow slit of shadow between crumbling stone. The air grew colder, heavier, the silence pressing harder against my ribs.

Aurelia hesitated at the threshold, her breath quickening, and I leaned closer, my lips brushing her cheek as I whispered, "I've got you." My voice was raw, broken, but I meant it. I always meant it.

Together, hand in hand, we stepped into the dark.

The walls closed in, the crooked cobblestones slick underfoot, shadows swallowing every flicker of light. Shuttered windows lined the alley, barred and bolted, and faint graffiti carved into the stone whispered of curses and warnings. The air stank of damp and rot, of old smoke and something metallic, like blood soaked too deep into the earth to ever fade.

I stumbled once, catching myself against the wall, and Aurelia pulled me upright, her eyes flicking to mine with worry. I laughed again, soft and bitter, pressing my forehead briefly to hers.

"You shouldn't be here," I murmured, the words slipping free before I could stop them. "You shouldn't have to see this. Shouldn't have to... do this."

"I'm fine," she whispered back, though her voice wavered. "As long as you're with me."

My chest clenched, the liquor making it ache sharper, heavier. I kissed the top of her head, lingering for a moment before pulling back, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach my eyes.

"Then let's get it over with," I said softly, and we walked deeper into the alley, the darkness swallowing us whole.

The shop loomed at the far end of the alley like a tumour in the brickwork, its windows so caked with grime they were little more than shadows, its sign hanging crookedly, the words Borgin and Burkes half-faded and swaying faintly with the wind. The boards on the buildings around it sagged inward, but this one stood untouched, not abandoned but preserved, as if it thrived on rot rather than life.

I stopped in the middle of the alley, swaying slightly, staring at the blackened glass and the faint outline of shelves inside. My breath fogged against the cold, rising like smoke, my head swimming with liquor and the echo of Tom's voice.

My stomach rolled, but I grinned anyway, lips cracking in the cold. "There it is," I muttered, squeezing Aurelia's hand tight enough that she winced. "Fucking kingdom of filth."

She didn't smile. She just stared at the crooked doorway, her jaw set, her other hand clenching her wand so tightly her knuckles were white. The wind hissed between the alley walls, rattling something loose above us, and I leaned close enough to catch the faint shiver that passed through her.

"Don't be scared," I whispered, though my voice came out too low, too jagged. "I'll burn the whole thing down before I let it touch you."

The door groaned as I pushed it open, the bell above jangling a thin, skeletal sound that cut through the silence like broken glass. We stepped inside together.

The air was thick, choking dust, damp wood, and the faint copper tang of old blood. Shelves lined the walls, heavy with relics that seemed to pulse faintly in the low light. Masks carved from bone leered down at us, jars of liquid glimmered faintly, inside them twisted shadows that almost looked alive, and rows of cursed trinkets hummed as if they recognised fresh prey.

Aurelia drifted toward one of the shelves, her fingers hovering over a bracelet of blackened silver, its surface crawling with tiny thorns that seemed to shift as she stared. Before I could say anything, she touched it.

Her yelp tore through the silence, sharp and panicked, and she jerked her hand back. Blood welled instantly, the thorns still clinging to her skin, burrowing deeper as though alive.

"Fuck—" I was at her side in a second, wrenching the thing free, ignoring the way the barbs bit into my own palm as I ripped it off her wrist. Her blood streaked across my hand as I shoved the bracelet back onto the shelf.

Her breath came fast, her eyes wide, and she tried to shake her head as though to tell me she was fine, but I saw the way her hands trembled.

"Don't touch anything," I muttered, voice rough. "This place will eat you alive."

We both turned then, instinctively glancing toward the counter. Empty. The tall stool was bare, the register closed, the air still. For a moment, I thought maybe the shop itself was dead, only its bones left behind.

But the liquor buzzed in my skull, crawling down my spine, and I felt the heat of it flare into my veins, dragging the fury with it.

And before I thought, before I even breathed, I raised my wand.

"Confringo."

The curse lit the room like lightning. Shelves erupted, glass exploding outward in a shatter of jagged rain, jars bursting into smoke and fire. Masks cracked, spilling blackened dust across the floor, and a cabinet collapsed inward with a groan that shook the whole shop. The air filled with smoke and the shrieks of cursed objects dying.

Aurelia screamed my name, dragging me back half a step, but it was too late.

A door at the back slammed open, and a figure stumbled out, Burke himself, grey-haired, hollow-eyed, his robes smeared with ash and dust. His face twisted as he saw the wreckage, and then his wand was up, quicker than I'd expected.

"You little—"

His curse split the air.

Aurelia pulled me sideways, the green flash missing us by inches, searing a black scar across the wall. My head spun, my stomach lurched, but my laughter cracked out anyway, raw and wrong.

"Come on then!" I slurred, raising my wand again. "Let's fucking go!"

Spells lit the dark shop in violent bursts smashing against the shelves, cracking glass, setting relics aflame. The air grew thick with smoke, stinking of burning parchment and blood, and every blast made the floor tremble under our boots.

My curses flew too close to Aurelia more than once, heat licking her arm as one spell scorched past her shoulder. She screamed my name again, furious, but I couldn't stop. My blood was roaring, my skull a furnace, the drink and the violence clawing me forward.

Burke was fast, too fast, ducking behind a counter, his spells precise, sharp, slicing through the smoke toward us. A streak of red cracked past my ear, searing it raw, but I only laughed, shoving my wand forward again.

"Bombarda!"

The counter exploded, shards of wood splintering into the air. Burke staggered back, blood streaking his cheek, but still standing. He roared something guttural, and a curse shot straight toward Aurelia.

"No!"

I threw myself sideways, my shoulder slamming into her, knocking her out of its path. Pain flared in my chest, hot and sharp, as the spell clipped me instead, sending me crashing into the shelves. Glass shattered under my weight, shards slicing into my skin as I slid to the ground, coughing, laughing, tasting iron in my mouth.

Through the smoke I saw Aurelia, her eyes blazing, her wand raised steady despite the shaking in her hands. She shouted a spell I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears, light bursting from her wand and slamming Burke back against the far wall.

The shelves rattled, cracked, and collapsed on top of him, burying him in curses and dust. The room shook once, then stilled.

The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the hiss of flames still eating through the edges of the shelves, the drip of my blood against the floor, and Aurelia's ragged breathing.

I coughed, laughing again, though it came out wet. "Not bad," I muttered, dragging myself upright, my vision spinning, the room tilting in and out of focus. "Not bad at all."

But inside, under the laughter, under the liquor, I felt it. The slow, crawling dread. The knowledge that we weren't done. That this was only the beginning.

The wreckage groaned under its own weight, smoke hissing upward like the walls themselves were bleeding. Aurelia stood there for a moment, chest heaving, wand shaking in her grip, the glow of her last spell still fading from the air. Then, as if gravity had caught her all at once, she staggered back to me, her breath sharp and broken.

I reached for her instantly, dragging her into my arms, holding her against me while she gasped against my chest. My blood smeared her sleeve, her hair tangled across my face, but none of it mattered. My heart was hammering, not from fear, not even from the fight, but from her. From the way she stood there, alive, unbroken and victorious.

"You did it," I rasped, my words slurring together, my grin splitting too wide across my face. "Fuck, you did it, Aurelia."

She looked up at me, her eyes wild, lips parted like she couldn't breathe, like she hadn't realised until now what she'd done. There was blood on her wrist, soot streaked across her cheek, but she looked like something pulled out of the fire untouched.

And before I even thought, before I could weigh anything, I leaned down and kissed her.

Her lips were hot, desperate, tasting like smoke and sweetness and everything I'd never had the courage to want. She kissed me back with the same fever, breathless, clutching my shirt as the kiss burned, consumingly, and for a second the shop, the wreckage, the war, all of it disappeared.

When we pulled apart, both of us breathing hard, her forehead still pressed to mine, the silence between us said more than anything I could. Her eyes searched mine, wide and adoring, and I almost laughed because I'd never believed in angels until right now.

Then the silence broke.

The hairs on my neck rose before the sound came. A door creaking open. A step. The air shifted, heavier now, and I knew before I turned my head that it wasn't over.

Borgin.

He emerged from the shadows at the back of the shop, older than Burke, thinner, but with eyes that burned sharp with malice. His wand was already raised, his lips curling into a sneer as he took in the wreckage, the fire, Burke's unmoving body.

"You filthy children," he spat, his voice cracked but venomous. "Do you know what you've done?"

I staggered forward, shoving Aurelia slightly behind me though my body swayed, my veins buzzing with liquor. My grin didn't falter. "Yeah," I slurred, lifting my wand. "We cleaned your little museum of shit out. You're fucking welcome."

His curse came like lightning.

The air split, the floor shook, glass and wood rained down as his spell cracked through the shop. Aurelia and I both dove, heat searing past my cheek, shards of wood embedding in my arm. She was back up in a heartbeat, her wand slicing the air, her face set with a fury that made my chest ache.

The duel exploded into chaos.

Spells ripped across the narrow shop, slamming into walls, shattering shelves, setting relics screaming as they died in bursts of smoke. My curses flew wild, drunken, smashing more than they hit, but Aurelia's were sharp, too sharp. She was faster than she had been before, her movements almost frantic, her breath gasping but her aim merciless.

"Keep back!" I shouted at her, but she ignored me, her eyes blazing as she cut through the smoke.

Borgin was stronger. Older, more practised, his spells burned hotter, heavier, each one slamming into the room with enough force to shake the walls. I could barely keep up, every block rattling through my bones, every step staggering as I tried to stay on my feet.

Borgin's wand carved through the air, a curse erupting not at me, but at her. Aurelia's eyes widened, too slow, too stunned. The blast hit before I could move.

The explosion tore the floor apart, flames and splinters erupting under her feet. She screamed as the force sent her flying, her body slamming into the wall before crumpling to the floor, motionless.

For a moment the whole world stopped.

Smoke filled my throat, ash burned my eyes, but all I saw was her, sprawled against the wreckage, blood streaking from her temple. My stomach dropped, my chest caved in, and something snapped in me with the sound of breaking glass.

Borgin was laughing, cruel and rasping. "Pathetic—"

I didn't hear the rest.

My wand was up before I breathed, my voice raw as I screamed, the curse ripping out of me like it had been waiting there all along.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The blast split the shop in two. Green light seared across the smoke, slamming Borgin square in the chest. His laughter cut off in an instant, his body flung back into the shelves before collapsing into stillness. The firelight licked at his robes, painting him in death's glow.

The silence after was heavier than any sound.

I stood there shaking, my wand trembling in my grip, my breath ragged. The liquor roared in my veins, my head splitting, my chest so tight I thought it might cave in and then I stumbled forward, falling to my knees beside her.

"Aurelia—" My hands shook as I touched her cheek, smeared with soot and blood, her hair tangled across her face. Her chest rose faintly, weak, but it was there. Alive. Still alive.

I pressed my forehead to hers, my whole body shaking. "I've got you," I whispered, though the words slurred. "I won't let you go. You hear me? Not now. Not ever."

Her weight was nothing and everything in my arms. Too light, too still, every shallow breath rattling against my chest as if her lungs were made of glass. My head was pounding, the alcohol roaring like fire through my veins, but my arms locked tight around her waist as I staggered through the burning wreckage.

The flames licked closer, greedy, snapping at the wooden beams above us, but I didn't stop. My boots slipped on ash and blood, my body swaying like I might collapse any second, but I dragged her, pulled her, carried her until the door gave way and the cold December air slapped me across the face.

"Hold on," I slurred against her hair, the taste of smoke thick in my mouth. "Hold on, Aurelia, just hold on for me."

The alley was silent, the shops dead and hollow, but I didn't wait. My wand hand shook so violently I almost dropped her, but I twisted on the spot, the world tearing apart in a whip of darkness.

We landed hard in the kitchen of the safehouse.

I nearly fell with her, staggering into the counter, the impact rattling through my bones. My stomach heaved all at once, sonething hot scorching up my throat, and I barely made it to the sink before I was vomiting, my body convulsing, my grip on her loosening only enough to keep her from slipping.

When the sickness passed I screamed, raw and hoarse, my voice cracking through the silence.

"HELP!"

The sound of rushing footsteps filled the air.

Daphne burst in first, Lorenzo at her heels, both of them freezing in the doorway. Mattheo appeared next, his expression shifting instantly, fury and something I couldn't name flashing in his dark eyes. Draco followed slower, his face stone cold as his gaze landed on Aurelia, still limp in my arms, her head lolling against my shoulder.

"She's hurt—" I choked out, stumbling back from the sink, almost dropping her again. "Fuck, she's hurt."

Draco pushed past the others, his wand already out. His face hardened, jaw tight, but his hands were steady as he knelt beside me, gesturing for me to lay her down on the table.

"Put her here," he ordered, his voice clipped, cold. "Now."

I obeyed, lowering her onto the wooden surface like she was made of porcelain. My hands shook so violently I barely managed to let go.

Draco's eyes moved quick over her body, his wand flicking in precise motions, muttering incantations under his breath. A faint glow settled over her wounds, the blood drying, her breathing easing. He didn't look at me, not once, but his focus was so sharp I didn't dare speak.

Finally, he exhaled through his nose, still pale but calmer. "She'll be fine," he said flatly. "But I need more space, and quiet."

Without another word, he gathered her into his arms, carrying her with a gentleness I had never seen before, and disappeared down the hall toward the room where Granger was kept.

The second the door shut behind him, the kitchen erupted.

"What the fuck did you do?" Lorenzo's voice cracked like a whip, his face twisted in horror. "What the fuck did you drag her into, Theo?"

Daphne's eyes were blazing, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Are you insane?" she snapped, her voice trembling with fury. "She could have died, she almost did—"

"I saved her!" I shot back, my words slurred, spit flying. "I carried her out, I killed them, I kept her safe!"

"Safe?" Daphne spat, stepping closer, her face inches from mine. "You got her nearly killed in fuck knows where Theo. You don't even look sober. Merlin's sake, are you fucking drunk?"

"I—"

But the words never left, because Mattheo was suddenly in front of me, his fist connecting with my jaw before I could blink.

Pain exploded across my face, my head snapping back, the metallic taste of blood flooding my mouth. I stumbled, gripping the counter for balance, but before I could steady myself, his fist connected again, slamming into my ribs.

"You fucking idiot," Mattheo snarled, his voice like gravel, his face twisted in rage. "You took her, you let this happen, you let him use her!"

I gasped, clutching my side, my vision swimming, but something like laughter bubbled up in my throat. "She chose," I rasped, my grin cracked and bloody. "She chose to go. She wanted it."

Mattheo's snarl deepened, his arm pulling back for another blow.

And then the air shifted.

The temperature dropped, the room growing suddenly heavier, shadows crawling up the walls.

Tom Riddle appeared in the doorway, his presence flooding the space like black water. His face was calm, almost serene, but his eyes gleamed with that terrible, suffocating light that silenced everything at once.

"Enough," he said softly, though the word rang like a command.

Mattheo froze, his fist still raised, his jaw tight. His eyes darted to Riddle, fury clashing with fear, but slowly, trembling, he lowered his hand.

Tom's gaze slid from him to me.

"Theodore."

My name on his lips was ice. My knees nearly gave out, the drunken haze in my head colliding with a sharp, shattering fear.

"Come," Tom said, his voice soft but brooking no argument. He turned, his robes whispering against the floor, and walked out of the kitchen without looking back.

For a second I didn't move. Then my legs carried me, stumbling, swaying, following him into the garden. The door shut behind us, cutting off the others, the silence pressing in like stone.

The afternoon sun did nothing to warm me, it only made the shadows in the alley sharper, more accusing. My knees were weak from the stumbling, from the sheer weight of the alcohol coursing through me, from the memory of Aurelia's limp form pressed to my chest. I swayed slightly as I followed Tom Riddle down the narrow side street, each step dragging me closer to a reckoning I didn't want to face.

"You let her get hurt," his voice cut through the haze like ice. I blinked, squinting against the light, trying to make sense of the anger in it.

I wanted to speak, to defend myself, but the words came out slurred, a wet, broken sound in my throat. "She's safe now... I got her out..." My voice trailed off into a rasp, the alcohol making me slow, sluggish, incapable of coherent thought.

Tom's gaze didn't waver. His black eyes studied me like I was a puzzle, dangerous yet fascinating in my failure. He didn't dwell on my weakness too long. There was no lecture, no drawn-out condemnation. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, almost pitying, almost calculating.

"I know it is a sad day for you," he said, voice softening, though the weight behind the words pressed down like stone. "Ten years. A mother lost. The day you've carried in your mind for a decade."

I nodded absently, not trusting my voice. The alcohol made everything a blur, the alley, the cobblestones, the way my legs felt like jelly, the way the memory of her, the mother I'd buried in my mind, kept flickering in front of my eyes, impossibly vivid.

"You are weak," he added almost casually, and I flinched, the words slicing through me, but I didn't move. My mind was spinning with guilt and shame, spinning so fast I couldn't remember where I was or why my hands shook so violently.

Then, without warning, he turned his attention elsewhere. A figure appeared from the shadows, stepping forward as though summoned by the sound of my shame. Nott. His face was tight, his eyes dull with sorrow, a man mourning what he had lost. His movements were slow, almost hesitant, as though the grief weighing on him made him wary of every step.

Tom didn't acknowledge Nott's grief. Not really. His eyes, the same inescapable black, swept past the older man, as if he barely registered the human suffering standing beside him. The cruelty was subtle but precise, the manipulation like a knife pressed lightly against my spine.

"You will watch," Tom said to me, gesturing with a slight flick of his hand toward Nott. "Even grief does not excuse failure. Remember, Theodore. Even in mourning, even in pain, the work must continue."

I swayed slightly, my vision tilting as the words sank in, the alcohol blurring the edges of reality. I wanted to vomit, wanted to run, wanted to collapse and hide under the floor, but the sound of Tom's voice kept me rooted, every syllable a tether I could not escape.

Nott's eyes flicked to me for a moment, a shadow of recognition passing through them, perhaps sympathy, perhaps judgment, but he said nothing. His lips pressed into a thin line, his jaw tight. The silence stretched, heavy, oppressive. I could feel the weight of expectation, the weight of failure, the weight of grief mingled with the alcohol, pressing me further into a spiral I could barely control.

Tom's words returned, low and insistent, almost gentle in tone but impossible to ignore:

"Do not let emotion guide your actions. Even now, when your mind wavers, when your body fails, you must act. You will not be free until you understand that the world does not care for your suffering. You, and only you, control what happens next."

It began with a soft pressure at the base of my skull, like someone pushing a finger into a bruise. I barely had time to suck in a breath before Tom's voice wrapped around me, low and calm, almost tender.

"Let us peel it back," he murmured. "Let us see where you came from."

The world went black, then bled into sepia.

A small boy sat on the edge of a sofa, hands clasped in his lap. The wallpaper was peeling where the damp had crept up, curling into blackened edges. The house smelled of dust and Firewhiskey. His legs dangled above the floor, swinging nervously as he listened to the heavy footsteps upstairs.

The boy's father was shouting, words blurred by drink, splintered by rage. The boy flinched at the sound of a glass breaking. Then another. The house was trembling under the weight of it.

A door banged open and a man stumbled down the stairs, red-faced, shirt half-buttoned. He seized the boy's arm with a grip too hard, fingers digging into soft flesh. "Useless," he spat, shaking him. "Useless like her."

The boy whimpered, but didn't cry. He'd learned not to cry. His eyes darted toward the kitchen door. A soft sound, slippered feet.

A woman emerged, her hair loose, face pale. She was beautiful even in exhaustion, eyes a soft green-gray. She stepped between them, her hand gentle but firm as she pried the man's fingers off the boy's arm. "That's enough," she said softly. "Go to bed."

The man snarled but released him. The boy stumbled back, and his mother knelt in front of him, brushing his hair from his forehead, murmuring, "It's okay. It's okay, sweetheart." Her touch was the only warmth in the room.

"No," I croaked, feeling my nails dig into my palms. The smell of that room came back, mildew, sweat, old Firewhiskey. "Stop, please. I don't want to—"

Tom's fingers brushed the air in front of me, and another flash tore me open.

Sunlight slanted through an overgrown garden, dandelions spilling across cracked stones. The boy sat cross-legged in the grass, a wand too big for his hand balanced carefully on his knees. He was laughing, really laughing, his eyes bright, his cheeks pink.

His mother sat beside him, weaving small charms into the air. Birds of shimmering light darted around them like living ribbons. She showed him how to flick his wrist, how to focus, how to feel the magic rather than force it.

"Like this," she whispered, curling her hand over his. Their magic mingled, and a spark of green light rose like a firefly, bursting into glittering dust.

He giggled and she smiled at him, brushing a thumb across his cheek. "See? You're good at this. You'll be brilliant one day."

The garden smelled of lavender. For a moment, the boy believed her.

My throat ripped open with a sound I barely recognized as my own. "Stop showing me this, stop it—" My hands clawed at my face as if I could scrape the images out of my skull. "She's gone, she's gone—"

But Tom's voice was a blade of silk. "You will see."

Darkness. The smell of mold and wood. A child curled in the corner of a cupboard, knees tucked to his chest. His father's shouting echoed faintly through the wood, a storm raging just beyond the thin door.

The boy had been thrown inside for "answering back." His cheek was bruised, a thin cut across his lip. He pressed his forehead to his knees, trying not to cry.

Then a soft knock. The door opened slightly, and a sliver of light spilled across the floor. A hand reached in, a hand holding a plate of food. His mother's voice, a whisper.

"Shh. It's okay, just eat this. I'll be back for you soon."

Her hand trembled as she passed it to him. He took it with both of his, eyes wide, and whispered, "Thank you, Mum."

She brushed his hair with her fingers before the door closed again. Darkness swallowed him, but her touch lingered like a shield.

I was on my hands and knees now, retching dryly, my fingers clawing at the ground until my nails bent back. "Stop it stop it stop it stop it," I chanted, my voice breaking on each word. "Please, I'll do anything, just stop showing me this—"

A boy sat at a long table, a cracked mug of cocoa in front of him. His mother leaned against the counter, hair damp from rain. She was smiling at him.

"Birthday boy," she teased gently. "Make a wish."

He closed his eyes, made a wish he couldn't quite name, and blew out the '7' candle stuck in a large chocolate cake. She clapped softly, leaned down, kissed the top of his head. "Always my clever boy," she murmured.

Outside, thunder rolled. Inside, for a moment, it was warm.

"No more," I begged. My face was wet, my throat felt raw, like I'd been screaming for hours. "Please, Tom, I can't—"

The memories shifted again, but this time slower, as though they were watercolors bleeding across paper. Little snatches of her washing blood from my hair in a kitchen lit only by candlelight, pressing a cool cloth to a bruise on my shoulder, slipping coins into my pocket when she thought he wouldn't notice.

Each one was a knife with a different handle.

The woman was on the kitchen floor. Her hair was matted with blood. Her hands were up, palms out, as if even in that moment she was still trying to soothe him, still trying to make him stop.

The man's face was red, his breath heaving. His fists came down again and again, knuckles splitting against her cheekbones, against her ribs. There was no shouting now, just the sound of impact, a low animal grunt from the man, a choked gasp from the woman.

The boy stood in the doorway, too small to intervene or understand. His knees knocked together as he shook. He reached out a hand, voice a whisper. "Mum..."

Her eyes found his for a moment, and she smiled, just barely, lips bloodied. "I love you," she mouthed.

Then the sound of his father's fist against her skull made the whole room tilt.

I clawed at my temples, rocking back and forth. "Why are you doing this?" My voice cracked on the question. "Why? What do you want from me?"

Tom's reply was a whisper in my skull, but it was everywhere at once. "To see what you are."

I was sobbing now, loud and hoarse. "I know what I am!" I bellowed, the words raw. "I know! I know! Just let me go—"

The boy stood in a narrow hallway, the air thick with the smell of ash. His father's boots were by the door, streaked with blood. The man crouched down to the boy's level, eyes glassy with drink.

"She's dead," he said flatly. "She left. Dead now. Don't cry about it."

The boy's face didn't move at first. He blinked once, twice, his mouth opening just enough for a small sound to escape. It was not a sob, it was a sound like a dog struck in its sleep. His hands trembled as he stared at the boots, at the blood, at nothing at all.

I screamed until my vision went white. "I KNOW, STOP—" My forehead slammed into the floor, a dull, wet thud. My stomach heaved. "Don't make me, don't make me—"

But the next image came anyway, a flash so bright it burned.

The boy was older now, his face sharper but his eyes still wide. He stood at the edge of a river, throwing stones one after the other, his lips moving soundlessly. In the distance, his father's voice rose and fell, calling for him. The boy didn't turn around. He threw another stone. And another.

I coughed, tasting salt. My voice was a whisper now, hoarse and shredded. "It's enough." My body shook so hard my teeth rattled. "It's enough, it's enough, it's enough..."

But the memories kept coming, flickers of her laugh, her blood, her touch, his fists, the belt, the honeycomb, the boots by the door.

I curled into myself, rocking, sobbing. "Stop," I whispered. "Please, Mum, make it stop."

For a moment, before the black behind my eyes swallowed me, I thought I felt her hand on my hair again.

✦

When I jolted awake, the first thing I felt was air refusing to stay in my lungs. My chest rose and fell too fast, my ribs scraping against themselves as if they didn't want me breathing at all. Night pressed down against my skin like a wet cloth. The ground beneath me was cold stone. My palms were slick with sweat.

Tom and Nott Sr. were gone. Only the echo of them remained, like a taste of ash on the back of my tongue. The trees around the clearing bent inwards as if listening. For a second I thought I was still in one of the visions, still that small boy watching from the corner, still waiting for the fist to fall.

But then my own voice broke the air, low and hoarse. "He killed her."

My throat burned. Tears blurred everything; the trees melted into shadows, the stars above swimming like oil in a puddle. My head felt like someone had stuffed it full of broken glass.

"He killed her," I whispered again, and this time it came out a sob. "He beat her to death..."

I staggered upright, the world pitching sideways. Each step back toward the house felt like I was walking through water. My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat a memory, each memory another blow.

By the time I reached the kitchen door, my face was wet and my hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the handle. The light spilling out was dim and yellow.

Draco stood at the counter, sleeves rolled up, a stirring rod in one hand. The smell of potion ingredients filled the room, iron, herbs and something sharp. His face flicked up at me, pale and watchful.

"Has she woken up yet?" My voice cracked on the question.

"No." He said it without looking at me, his eyes fixed on the slow swirl of liquid in the cauldron. "Still out."

Something inside me went cold. "No?"

"She'll be fine," he added quickly, almost mechanically. "She just needs—"

But I didn't hear the rest. The word "no" was all I could hear, echoing in my skull. I backed away from the counter, my heart hammering. "I can't—"

Draco looked up then, brows knitting. "Theo—"

I turned before he could finish, before he could see what was breaking through my face. My hands closed around the first bottle I saw, clear glass, still wet from the cold storage, and I yanked it off the shelf.

He called my name, but the sound blurred behind me as I stumbled down the hallway and out the front door, into the night.

The air hit me like ice. My lungs felt too small, my skin too tight. I didn't stop. I couldn't. My boots scraped the path, stones skittering underfoot. My whole body was shaking as I walked faster, then faster still, the bottle knocking against my thigh.

By the time I reached the edge of the village, my breath was ragged and hot in my throat. The church spire rose ahead, black against the stars. Its bell tower cut the sky like a blade.

I crossed the grounds without even realizing it, my hands clutching the bottle so hard my knuckles burned. The lake behind the church lay still, black as ink. The reflection of the moon trembled on its surface.

I dropped to my knees on the bank, the grass wet and cold beneath me. My fingers worked at the cap with a desperation that felt animal. When it finally came off, I tipped the vodka back, the liquid burning its way down my throat like liquid fire.

I coughed, but drank again. And again.

With each swallow, the images came back, I thought the alcohol might blur them, drown them, make them soft around the edges. It didn't. It only sharpened them.

My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the bottle. "I can't do this," I muttered, my voice slurred already. "I can't..."

Another swallow. Another burn.

The lake rippled once, though there was no wind.

I pressed my forehead to my knees, still clutching the bottle, rocking a little without realizing it. "I thought it would make it stop," I whispered. "It's supposed to make it stop."

The moonlight caught on the glass, making the vodka look like mercury. I drank again, longer this time. The liquid spilled down my chin, soaking into my shirt. My stomach clenched but I forced it down. My head swam. The grass under my fingers felt far away, like it belonged to someone else.

"I want to be free," I murmured, the words slurred but soft. "I just want to be free."

My voice cracked on the last word. Tears slid down my face and I didn't bother wiping them. My hands trembled so hard the bottle knocked against my teeth. I tipped the bottle again. This time the vodka spilled down my wrist, soaking the cuff of my sleeve. My vision blurred at the edges. I could feel my pulse in my teeth.

"I want to be anywhere but here," I slurred, my voice breaking on the words. "Anywhere..."

The grass tilted under me. The bottle slipped from my fingers and rolled a few inches, glinting in the moonlight. I folded forward onto my hands, gagging, but nothing came up. My body trembled with a cold that had nothing to do with the night air. My breath came in shallow gasps.

I stared at the lake. The surface was perfectly still now, reflecting the moon in a single trembling line. It looked like a door.

Somewhere in my chest, something small and tired whispered for me to stop. But it was drowned out by the louder voice, the one that had been growing all day, the one that sounded like both my father and myself.

You'll never be free unless you disappear.

A branch cracked somewhere behind me and for a moment I thought it was Tom again, come to peel another layer of skin off my mind.

But it wasn't. Out of the dark stepped my grandfather again, his robes black as pitch, his expression pinched with disgust and worry all at once. Moonlight cut across his face, making his eyes look like pits.

"What the fuck are you doing out here?" His voice was sharp, but it shook at the edges. "Do you have any idea—"

I whipped around, the bottle still clutched in my hand. "Get away from me!" My voice cracked and came out like a roar. "Get the fuck away from me!"

He froze, just for a second, and I saw something flicker behind his eyes, pity, or maybe recognition.

"Theo," he started, softer now, "you need to—"

"He killed her! Your fucking son killed her!"

The trees seemed to lean in around us. The bottle shook in my grip, the vodka sloshing like liquid light.

He flinched, just barely, but then straightened, face going cold again. "You're drunk."

"I'm everything you and your son made me!" I screamed, the sound echoing off the water. "Everything!"

He stared at me for a long moment, something unreadable on his face. Then, without another word, he vanished with a sharp crack.

The night swallowed the sound. The lake went still again. I dropped to my knees, gasping, the bottle slick in my hand. My head spun so hard the world doubled. Voices began to crowd my skull, my father's, my mother's, Tom's, Aurelia's, all overlapping until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

You killed them. They had mothers too. Burke had a wife. Bourgin had a son. You left them on the floor like dogs.

I pressed my fists to my temples, the bottle knocking against my forehead. "Stop," I whispered. "Stop, stop, stop."

But the thoughts didn't stop. They multiplied, bursting like fireworks.

Aurelia's face swam up in the dark, her hair tangled, her eyes wide with shock, the way she gasped when the bracelet cut her skin, the way her hands shook when she cast the curse. I saw her on the floor of the shop, blood on her mouth, and the memory punched a hole right through me.

I love her.

The thought hit so hard I actually said it out loud, a broken sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. "I love her," I whispered, and the words felt like glass in my mouth. "I love her and I'm fucking poison."

The guilt rose up, I drank to push it down. The vodka scorched my throat, my stomach, my chest.

Burke and Bourgin's faces flickered in my head, though I'd barely seen them, men shouting, spells flying, and then nothing. I imagined their mothers, their wives, their children, the shock when word reached them. I imagined someone pounding on their door to say they were gone, the way someone had told me about my mother.

I gagged, but drank again anyway.

The lake rippled without wind. My reflection stared back at me, blurred and shaking, eyes like empty holes.

I thought of my mother, the sound of her singing, the smell of honey on her hands, her soft laugh, and then her face bloodied on the kitchen floor. The two images clashed and broke and left me hollow.

Another swallow. My head tilted back, the stars spinning above me in dizzy circles.

I thought of Aurelia's warmth that morning, her head against my chest, her hair like silk. The way she didn't wake me, how careful she would have been slipping out of bed. How, for a few seconds, I'd felt like maybe I could be something other than this.

And then Tom's voice in my skull, cold and smooth, ordering us to kill.

I slammed the bottle down on the grass and it rolled, spilling clear liquid into the earth. "I can't do this anymore," I whispered. "I can't..."

My throat tightened. My chest hurt. My vision blurred.

I drank what was left, tilting the bottle until it was empty, the last of it spilling down my shirt. The grass beneath me was damp with vodka and tears.

Thoughts kept detonating in my head, bright and fast. Her face. Their faces. My mother's hands. Aurelia's blood. My father's voice. Freedom. Death.

"I just want it to stop," I whispered, my voice so small it barely reached my own ears. "I just want it all to stop."

I pressed the heel of my hand to my eyes, but the images kept coming. My stomach churned. My head spun so hard I thought I might fall into the lake without moving.

The church bell creaked once in the wind.

I stared at the water, at the dark surface trembling with moonlight, and for the first time I thought about how cold it would be if I just walked in and didn't come back out.

The thought terrified me. The thought comforted me.

"I'm sorry," I whispered again, to my mother, to Aurelia, to the men I'd killed. "I'm so sorry."

My voice cracked and broke. My body swayed where I knelt. My head was full of static and ghosts. My hands shook so hard I almost dropped the empty bottle into the lake.

The stars blurred. The night tilted. And still the thoughts kept coming, sharper and sharper, like knives falling from the sky.

I pressed my forehead to the grass and sobbed, the sound swallowed by the dark.

The world had gone quiet except for the thin whisper of wind through the reeds. I sat there, hands buried in the grass, staring at the black water. The bottle lay tipped over beside me, its last drops sinking into the dirt like blood into a wound.

My head was a furnace and a fog at the same time. Every breath rattled in my chest. My eyes burned. The smell of vodka clung to my skin like shame.

And then, across the lake, I saw her.

My mother.

She stood at the water's edge, white dress glowing faintly in the moonlight, her hair a soft halo around her face. She was smiling at me, the way she used to when I was very small and I'd done something clever. Her hands were open, palms up, as if she were waiting for me to run into them.

I blinked hard. She didn't disappear.

"Mum," I croaked, my voice breaking on the word. "Mum..."

She tilted her head. She didn't speak. But I could almost hear her voice anyway, a whisper sliding under my skull, it's okay now.

Everything inside me cracked at once.

I wanted to be there. I wanted to be anywhere but here, out of my skin, out of my head, out of the noise. I wanted to be warm again. I wanted to stop hurting people. I wanted to stop hurting.

The church bell creaked again somewhere behind me.

My knees moved before I knew what I was doing. I pushed myself up, swaying, the ground tilting under my feet. The lake glimmered like a sheet of black glass.

She was still there.

"I'm coming," I whispered. "I'm coming, I'm sorry it took me so long..."

I stepped into the water. It was shockingly cold, the kind of cold that bites up your legs and into your bones. My boots sank into the silt. My breath hitched.

"I can't do it anymore," I said, louder now, my voice shaking. "I can't. I'm tired, Mom. I'm so tired."

I waded deeper. The water reached my thighs, then my waist. My teeth chattered. My hands trembled so hard the ripples spread out in jagged circles.

"I keep killing people," I whispered. "I keep hurting her. I keep turning into him. I'm so sorry."

She raised her hands again, like she was calling me home.

The water reached my chest. My breath came fast and shallow. My heart pounded against my ribs.

"I love her," I said. "I love Aurelia. Tell her I'm sorry."

My mother's image shimmered, distorted by the ripples, but she didn't go away.

I closed my eyes. The cold felt clean.

For one last moment I hesitated, a flicker of something, fear, maybe, or a piece of me still clinging to the world, and then it was gone as my head fully submerged.

I took a deep breath, lifted my wand with a shaking hand, and whispered a freezing charm under my breath. The spell crackled out of me like a sigh, blue light flickering across the water's surface.

The lake froze over above my head, it was like glass sliding shut.

The shock of the cold hit me all at once, a weight crushing my chest, stabbing into my skin. I sank deeper without meaning to, my clothes dragging me down. The water pressed against me from all sides, heavy and merciless.

I opened my eyes. The world was a blur of black and silver. Bubbles slid past my face. My mother was gone.

I tried to breathe and my lungs filled with icy water. Pain shot through me like lightning. I convulsed, coughing, but nothing came out except more water.

I thought of Aurelia's hair in the morning light. I thought of my mother singing. I thought of how quiet it would be if I could just stay here.

The cold sank deeper. My limbs went numb. The noise in my head dulled, faded, became a low hum. I wasn't thinking in words anymore. Just fragments, flashes. Aurelia's face. My mother's hands. The weight of my father's fist. The sound of my own screaming.

Then nothing.

The lake pressed in, the dark closing over me, the cold blooming through my chest. I felt heavy, and then weightless. My wand slipped from my fingers and sank into the silt.

For a second, everything really did stop. The noise. The guilt. The ache.

Just dark, and water, and silence.

 

theodore nott 1980 - 10/12/1997

Chapter Text

AURELIA AVERY

I woke to the familiar heaviness in my chest, though it wasn’t from sleep, it was from breath. Every inhale shallow, every exhale aching. My limbs felt like stone, weighted and sore, as if my very bones remembered what had happened.

The curtains were drawn, muting the light to a gray glow. My head turned, slowly, and there was Draco at the foot of the bed. Sitting rigid, elbows on his knees, eyes trained somewhere far beyond me. He hadn’t changed clothes. His skin looked ashen, while his expression was unreadable.

I blinked at him, my throat rasping. “...Draco?”

His eyes flickered my way, sharp and cool. For a heartbeat, I thought he might sneer the way he always did when it came to me. But instead, he just exhaled, long and quiet.

“You’re awake.” His voice was flat, but beneath it, something softer lingered. He hadn’t slept. I could see it in the shadows beneath his eyes.

I shifted, trying to sit up, but my body betrayed me, trembling with weakness. Pain flared along my ribs and shoulder, the wounds of yesterday’s duel burning like fire stitched into skin. Draco leaned forward, catching the motion before I could push myself too far.

“Don’t,” he said quickly, sharper than intended. Then softer, “stay down. You’ll tear yourself open.”

“I’m fine.” The lie cracked as soon as it left my lips. My voice sounded brittle, like a snapped twig. I swallowed and tried again. “Where’s Theo?”

For the first time, Draco’s composure faltered. His gaze slipped away, toward the door. His mouth pressed thin, jaw working.

“He’s not here,” he answered at last.

The words pierced something inside me. For the last few days, Theo was always here, he was always there in the mornings.

“He’s usually—” My throat closed around the words. “He’s usually with me in the mornings.”

“I know,” Draco muttered. He rubbed his hand over his face, tiredness bleeding through his sharp edges. “He left last night, I tried to stop him, but he just left.”

The ache in my chest sharpened into something colder. “He didn’t come back?”

Draco met my eyes then, and though he loathed me, there was a flicker of something human, something that almost felt like care. “I don’t know. But panicking isn’t going to help Aurelia.”

I tried to throw the blanket back, desperate to get up, but my body betrayed me again. My legs trembled the moment they hit the floor. A wave of dizziness blurred my vision. Draco was on his feet in an instant, catching me before I collapsed.

“Fucking idiot,” he hissed, his arm steadying me. “You’re barely holding yourself together.”

“I need to find him,” I whispered. The words came out broken, pleading. “Please.”

Draco’s grip tightened before he lowered me back onto the bed, almost carefully. He knelt so we were eye-level, and though his face was set in stone, his voice softened by a fraction.

“Stay here. You can’t even stand. I’ll look for him in the house, he’s probably just in the living room with the others.”

“But—”

“No.” The word was final. He stood, straightening his robes, his posture filled with determination. “You’ll only make things worse like this. Rest now Aurelia. If he’s here, I’ll find him. If he’s not…” He trailed off, jaw tightening again. “Then we’ll cross that bridge later.”

The room felt colder once he moved toward the door. I sank back into the pillow, every part of me aching, not just from wounds, but from the gnawing hollow where Theo should have been.

The silence pressed down heavy. My hands trembled as I clutched at the sheets, staring at the space beside me in the bed.

Empty.

Weakness swept through me, but so did dread. Something was wrong, and I was too fragile to do anything but wait.

The minutes stretched endlessly, heavy as stone pressing down on my chest. I lay there, listening to Draco’s footsteps echo faintly as he moved through the house, opening doors, searching rooms. The quiet that followed each creak and close was unbearable, the silence answering questions I didn’t want to ask.

I tried to calm myself, telling myself over and over that there was no reason to panic. Theo didn’t have to stay with me every night. He was unpredictable at best, erratic at worst. Maybe he had stayed with the others in the living room, sprawled across the couch or curled in some dark corner with a book. Maybe he’d gotten restless and slipped outside for a smoke. That was all. Nothing unusual, and certainly nothing to worry about.

But when Draco returned, the moment I saw his face, my fragile reasoning began to crumble. His expression was pale and drawn, his lips pressed into a line that betrayed unease.

“He’s not here,” Draco said simply, his voice even but taut, like a string pulled too tight.

I sat up too quickly, the movement making the room tilt, my ribs pulling with sharp pain. I tried to breathe through it. “Not in the house?”

Draco shook his head once. “I checked everywhere.”

For a long moment I stared at him, refusing to let the panic rise. Realistically, there were explanations. Theo could be out sleep-walking, he’d done that before. He could be hiding somewhere, avoiding the rest of us. He could be in the muggle town, or at the church. It didn’t have to mean anything more than that.

I forced myself to breathe slowly, to let the air fill me despite the tightness in my chest. “Then… he’s out. Just out for a walk.” The words sounded convincing enough in the air, even if I didn’t believe them. “He’ll be back. Right?”

But my body moved before my mind could stop it. I swung my legs off the bed, ignoring the sharp protest of my wounds, the trembling in my limbs. Draco’s hand caught my arm, steadying me before I fell again.

“You shouldn’t be moving,” he muttered, irritation and concern bleeding together. “You’re still weak.”

“I need to see for myself.”

“Aurelia—”

“I’ll be fine.” My voice was sharper now, fueled by a need I couldn’t quite explain. “If he’s out there, I can find him.”

Draco’s jaw worked, his grip lingering as though he wanted to hold me back. But after a beat, he released me, though his disapproval clung to the air.

Every step toward the door felt heavier than the last. My body was fragile, aching, but my mind pushed me forward. The front door loomed, the old wood cold beneath my hand as I pulled it open. A breath of chill night air rushed against my face, sharp and bracing, carrying with it the faint scent of damp earth and ash.

Behind me, Draco’s voice followed, firm but not unkind. “Don’t push yourself too far Aurelia. He’ll come back alright? I promise.”

But I barely heard him as instinct had already taken me. My feet knew the direction before I did, carrying me down the worn path away from the house. The world was dim, bathed in the silver wash of clouds, shadows stretching long and thin over the grass. My body trembled with each step, but my mind kept tugging me forward, toward something I couldn’t name.

And then I knew.

The church.

It was the only logical option, as if he had gone out for some reason, then he would do so knowing that would be the place I could find him easily, plus it was the only place we had landmarked in this town. Without question, my steps angled toward it. The old stones rose in my memory, dark and weathered, the lake behind it reflecting the night sky like a mirror. My heart pounded with every pace, each breath shallow but determined.

Something in me was certain. That was where he would be. Probably with a book, or just sitting and watching the lake ripple, the thought sounded quite relaxing honestly.

The church was quiet when I reached it, its stone walls looming like a shadow against the pale morning light. No hymns echoed from within, no murmur of voices or scrape of pews. It was empty, the kind of empty that pressed in on me, making the air itself feel heavier.

I lowered myself onto the steps, my legs trembling beneath me, and sat for a while in silence. The cold seeped through my clothes, numbing me, but my mind wouldn’t still. Each breath rattled in my chest, shallow and uneven. Something felt wrong. Not just wrong, hollow, like the world itself was preparing me for something I couldn’t yet see.

I don’t know how long I stayed there before I rose again, forcing my aching body to move. My feet carried me around the side of the church, to the back where the grass dipped toward the lake. The sight stopped me in my tracks.

The water stretched out dark and glassy, ringed in white where frost clung stubbornly to the edges. But the middle had thawed, a black pool swallowing the reflection of the sky. But laying there, in the center…

My body went cold before my mind could even register what my eyes were telling me. A shape. A stillness too heavy to be anything but final. A body, floating face-down.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. My chest locked tight, and the world spun around me, everything narrowing to that single image on the water.

“No,” I whispered, my voice breaking into the silence. My legs moved before I thought, stumbling, running, sliding down the damp bank until my shoes met the icy water.

The shock of it stole my breath, the cold biting through every layer of skin and bone. But I didn’t stop. I plunged deeper, the lake swallowing me as I swam, arms clawing through the freezing water until I reached him.

Theo.

I grabbed him with trembling hands, turning him over, and the sight of his face nearly tore me in two. His skin was pale, lips blue, eyes closed as though in sleep. But there was no rise, no fall, no breath, nothing but the lifeless weight of him in my arms.

A sound ripped out of me, raw and guttural, a scream that shook my chest and tore my throat apart. “THEO! No, no, no, no!”

I clung to him, my arms locking around his body as though sheer force could will him back into life. The water dragged at us, threatening to pull me under, but I refused to let go. My sobs broke in waves, violent, ragged things that made it hard to breathe.

“You can’t—” My words came out fractured, broken by gasps and cries. “You can’t leave me, you can’t—”

The lake was freezing, biting into my skin, but all I felt was the unbearable, crushing weight of him in my arms. My tears mingled with the water, my screams muffled by the open air that gave me nothing back.

I pressed my forehead against his, the cold of his skin shattering me. “Please,” I begged, voice shaking, cracking apart. “Please wake up, Theo, please—”

I tried to kick, to keep us both afloat, but my body was weak, trembling with exhaustion and grief. The water lapped against us, pulling, threatening to swallow us whole. Still, I clutched him tighter, nails biting into his clothes as though I could anchor him to me, to the world, to anything but the darkness that had taken him.

Sobs wracked me, violent and unstoppable. “You promised, you promised me you’d be here, you said you’d help me, you said—” The words dissolved into another scream, shrill and broken, tearing from somewhere so deep inside me it felt like it wasn’t even mine.

The truth crashed into me with the force of a curse. He was gone. Theo was gone and still I couldn’t let go.

My arms ached, my body numb, but I held onto him with everything I had left, rocking him against me as though he were a child, as though gentleness could undo death. My cries filled the empty air, echoing against the stones of the church, against the silent sky, desperate, endless.

“I love you,” I sobbed into his shoulder, the words spilling out without thought, without restraint. “I love you, I love you, I love you, please don’t leave me—”

The water surged against us, cruel and relentless, but all I knew was the stillness of him. No warmth. No breath. No heartbeat. Just silence.

My body shook with grief so violent it felt like it would tear me apart from the inside. I screamed again, throat raw, my voice breaking into sobs that barely sounded human. “WHY? Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this?”

The questions went unanswered, swallowed by the water, by the sky, by the empty world that no longer held him, but I held him tighter, my body trembling, my sobs quieting into broken gasps as exhaustion overtook me. My tears burned hot even as the water froze me, leaving me hollow and shaking. But I couldn’t let go, I wouldn’t let go. So I clung to him, sobbing, screaming, begging, as the lake held us both in its grasp.

The cold had just stopped feeling like cold. My body was shaking so hard it didn’t even register as pain anymore, just numbness, a hollow ache that filled every bone. I was still clinging to Theo, pressing his face into my chest and sobbing into his hair, when I heard voices.

At first, I thought I was imagining them, that they were just echoes in my own head. But then they grew louder, sharper, cutting across the still air.

“Aurelia?”

I jerked my head up.

There, standing at the edge of the lake, was Draco. Followed by Daphne, and Lorenzo. Their hair was messy, their clothes thrown on in a rush, they looked like they’d just been shaken awake. Their eyes widened the instant they saw me.

Draco’s face hardened, anger snapping over his features like lightning. “What the fuck—?” His voice carried across the water, sharp and furious. “What the fuck are you doing out there?”

“Why did you follow me?” I screamed back, my throat raw, the words ragged with sobs. My arms locked tighter around Theo’s body, terrified they’d try to take him from me.

Draco stepped forward, his voice rising, sharp enough to slice through the cold. “Well you’re fucking lucky I did! You’d freeze to death in there, what the fuck is wrong with you, sitting in the middle of a lake?”

“I need help!” The words tore out of me, half scream, half plea. My lungs burned with the effort, but I couldn’t stop. “Please, please help me!”

It was only then that I saw their eyes drop, their faces shift. Lorenzo’s mouth fell open. Daphne’s hand flew to her lips, trembling. Draco froze mid-step, his expression faltering, something dawning on him.

They hadn’t seen Theo until now.

The silence that followed was crushing. It pressed hard around us, heavy, suffocating, the truth settling over them like frost.

Daphne moved first. With no hesitation, she tore off her dressing gown, leaving her in only underwear as she dove into the water almost effortlessly. The splash rang loud in the morning air, startling me.

“No!” I screamed, clutching Theo tighter, thrashing against the water. “Don’t touch him, don’t you dare—”

She swam fast, cutting through the icy black, her face grim and pale. When she reached me, she didn’t waste a breath. Her hands closed around my arms, prying me from him.

I kicked, screamed, fought with everything left in me, my nails raking against her skin. “No! No, please! He needs me, please, he needs me, Daphne let me go!”

“You’ll fucking drown!” she shouted, her voice breaking with strain. “Aurelia, let go!”

“I can’t!” The sob tore from my throat, wild and hoarse. My arms locked around Theo, desperation surging through me like fire. “I won’t leave him, please, don’t make me—”

But Daphne was strong. Stronger than I ever thought she could be. Her arms wrapped around my waist, yanking me back, tearing me away from him inch by inch. My screams echoed across the lake as if the sound alone could keep us together. Theo’s body slipped from my grasp, sinking back into the dark water. The sight ripped me apart, my voice breaking into a howl that burned my throat.

“No! Theo! Please!”

Daphne didn’t stop. She dragged me, kicking and sobbing, her grip unrelenting as she forced us both toward the shore. The boys were waiting, their faces ashen, eyes wide with horror. Draco’s fists were clenched tight at his sides, jaw clenched. Lorenzo had a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking like he was going to be sick.

I clawed at Daphne, trying to twist free, my voice shredding itself into pieces. “He’s still there! He’s still there, I can’t leave him, I can’t—”

Daphne’s voice was fierce, desperate, her teeth gritted. “Aurelia, for fucks sake stop! Please, stop, I can’t have you die aswell!”

The water grew shallower, my feet scraping against the frozen mud of the bank, but I still fought, trying to turn back, to dive toward where I’d left him. My legs buckled beneath me, too weak to carry my weight, and Daphne hauled me the last stretch, collapsing onto the frosted grass with me in her arms.

I screamed again, the sound ripping up into the sky, echoing off the church walls, raw and broken beyond recognition. “Theo! Theo, please—” My chest heaved violently, sobs wracking me until I thought I’d tear in half.

Draco crouched in front of us, his face pale, his voice trembling despite the steel in it. “Aurelia, stop.”

“No!” My voice cracked, barely a whisper, barely a breath. “No, you don’t understand, I need him, he promised—”

Lorenzo stood behind him, his hands trembling violently, his eyes locked on the dark water as if expecting Theo to surface, alive, breathing, smiling. His lips moved, but no words came out. The frost bit into my skin, but I didn’t care. I clawed at the ground, at Daphne’s arms around me, my whole body convulsing with the force of my sobs.

“He’s gone,” Draco said quietly, the words like a knife. His eyes were on the lake, his voice flat and final. “He’s gone.”

The world collapsed inside me. My cries softened into choking gasps, my body sagging in Daphne’s hold. The truth settled heavy in my chest, suffocating, unbearable. Daphne rocked me against her, her own tears falling into my hair, but I barely felt it. All I felt was the emptiness where he had been.

“Mobilicorpus.” Draco whispered.

Theo’s body rose slowly, water streaming off him in rivers, his arms limp at his sides, his head tilted unnaturally, hair plastered to his forehead. The sight made something collapse inside me all over again. My scream broke into sobs so violent I couldn’t breathe, my chest seizing, the frost on the ground biting into my knees.

Daphne had gone silent beside me, her mouth parted, her eyes wide and blank. She didn’t blink, didn’t move, just stared as Theo hovered toward us, pale in the weak morning light.

Lorenzo tore us from the ground. He moved quickly, voice raw, words spilling out like broken glass. “We need to go, we can’t be here—”

I didn’t fight this time when he pulled me up. My body was limp, collapsing into him as if I had nothing left. Daphne, too, sagged against his other side, her legs giving way. For once, she was not strong enough to resist anything.

Lorenzo gritted his teeth, gathering us both against him. “Hold on.”

The last thing I saw before the world spun was Draco lowering Theo’s body to the grass, his wand still steady, his face unreadable, then the church was gone.

We landed in the house with a crack of displaced air. Lorenzo’s arms were around both of us so tightly I thought my ribs might break. He didn’t let go, not when Daphne stumbled, not when I collapsed against his chest, sobbing so violently my whole body shook.

He half-carried, half-dragged us down the hall, his breaths sharp, ragged, furious. He didn’t take us to the couch, or to the beds. Instead, he pushed us through the bathroom door, kicking it shut behind him.

The shower taps screeched as he turned them all the way, steaming water bursting against the tile, the room filling with heat and condensation within seconds. Without saying anything, he pulled Daphne and me fully clothed into the shower with him, the three of us sinking onto the cold tile floor as water cascaded over us.

The shock of the heat against my frozen skin made me gasp, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I curled into myself, knees pulled tight, shaking uncontrollably, sobs tearing out of me in shudders I couldn’t stop.

Daphne sat stiff as stone, her arms limp at her sides, water plastering her hair against her face. She wasn’t crying at first, wasn’t doing anything, just staring at the far wall like she wasn’t here at all.

Lorenzo’s voice broke first, low and raw, choked with something I’d never heard from him before. “Why the fuck would he do this?”

His fist slammed against the wet tile, the sound cracking through the small space. “Why, why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he, fuck!” His voice cracked, and he pressed his forehead against his knee, his shoulders heaving.

The words ripped through me, splintering something already broken. My sobs grew harsher, my chest seizing until I couldn’t breathe. “Because he was hurting,” I gasped, voice strangled and weak, “and I should have, I should have known—”

My hands clawed at my chest, desperate, useless. “He was always with me, always, and I didn’t see it. If I’d been enough, if I, if I—” My words dissolved into another sob, sharp and ragged. “He wouldn’t have left—”

That finally made Daphne move. Her breath hitched sharply, her lips parting, and tears spilled hot and sudden down her cheeks, mixing with the spray of the shower. She folded forward, burying her face in her hands, rocking as if the motion alone could keep her from breaking apart.

Lorenzo’s arms went around both of us, pulling us close against him. His whole body shook, anger and grief warring in his chest, spilling out in jagged breaths. “Don’t you dare blame yourself,” he rasped, voice shaking. “Don’t say that, he loved you, Aurelia, you know he did.”

My sob caught, twisting into something raw and hollow. “Then why wasn’t it enough to keep him here?”

The question hung in the hot, heavy air, a knife none of us could pull free.

Daphne’s voice cracked through the sound of the water, faint and trembling, like it had to be dragged from her throat. “We should have known. We should have seen how bad it was.” Her shoulders shook, her hands digging into her wet clothes. “We all looked away, we all let him—”

“No.” Lorenzo’s tone sharpened, even through the tears thickening it. “Don’t do that. Don’t, you can’t.” He pressed his forehead against Daphne’s temple, then against mine, clutching us tighter. “None of us wanted this.”

“But it happened,” I choked out, pulling at the front of my shirt, desperate to tear something apart, anything. “He’s gone, and I can’t—”

My body folded in on itself, the sobs ripping me apart until I thought I would drown in them. The hot water poured down on us, soaking through our clothes, hiding the streams of tears but not the sound. The three of us sat there, pressed together, our grief spilling into the steam-filled room. Daphne’s sobs grew louder, raw and broken, until she could hardly breathe. Lorenzo cursed into the wet fabric of his sleeve, his hands gripping us tightly. I couldn’t stop whispering his name. Over and over, my lips against the soaked fabric of my sleeve, as if repeating it would bring him here, keep him from slipping away forever.

“Theo… Theo… Theo…”

 

The water beat down relentlessly, hot enough to sting against frozen skin, but nothing could touch the cold inside us now, it was too late. The sound of the bathroom door slamming open jolted me out of my sobbing haze. My whole body jumped against Lorenzo’s chest, my throat raw, my vision fogged with steam and tears.

Draco stood in the doorway, soaked from the rain outside, his usually pristine hair plastered to his forehead, his face flushed with exertion. His chest heaved like he’d been running, but his eyes weren’t soft, weren’t red. They were frantic, yes, desperate even, but not wet with grief. He looked like a man with something heavy clenched inside his chest, like he was refusing to let it show.

“I buried him,” he said quickly, his voice sharp, words rushing out as though he had to rip them free before they suffocated him. “Behind the house, under the big tree. I—” his jaw tightened, his eyes flickered over us, lingering on me, on my shaking form curled against Lorenzo’s side. “I didn’t want you to have to see him. Not like that. Not longer than you already did.”

The words crashed into me, heavy and suffocating. My stomach lurched as if he’d punched me. Buried him. The phrase rang hollow and final inside my skull.

Buried.

Past tense.

Gone.

Daphne finally stirred beside me, her voice cracked and hoarse, barely louder than the hiss of the water. “Is Mattheo awake?”

Draco shook his head, water dripping off his sleeves onto the tile. “No. Not yet.” He glanced at the three of us, broken on the shower floor, then swore under his breath and turned sharply on his heel. “I’ll get him.”

The door swung wide again, letting out a rush of steam, and for a few moments it was just us again, the three of us drenched, shaking, our bodies pressed together as if to keep from collapsing completely.

When Draco returned, Mattheo was half-dragging behind him, barefoot with his hair sticking up in every direction from sleep. His eyes were puffy, his face unfocused, the edges of his voice rough when he muttered, “The fuck’s going on Draco? You better not have woken me up for nothing.”

Draco pushed him into the bathroom, and the second Mattheo stepped into the heat and steam, his expression shifted. He blinked against it, his gaze sweeping the room, taking in the soaked clothes clinging to us, Daphne trembling silently, Lorenzo’s jaw clenched in barely contained rage, and myself, curled and shaking, my body collapsing under grief I couldn’t hold.

For a moment, his mouth opened like he was about to say something cruel, the kind of biting remark he always carried on his tongue. I saw the words flash in his eyes, sharp as glass, but then he swallowed them back down. His lips pressed into a thin line, and his voice, though still hard, came quieter than usual.

“Where’s Theo?”

The question dropped into the room like a boulder into water, sending ripples of silence through us. None of us spoke. The spray of the shower filled the space, the only sound in the heavy air. My breath caught in my throat, the words forming but refusing to leave.

Draco’s voice finally cut through, blunt and brutal. “He killed himself.”

Mattheo froze. His shoulders stiffened, his face went still, and for a moment he looked like he hadn’t heard correctly. Then his eyes flickered but I saw it, not disbelief, not shock, not even confusion. Recognition. Like he had already known this was coming, like part of him had been waiting for it, like he’d seen the signs and done nothing.

The silence broke with a violent sound, Mattheo’s fist slamming into the mirror above the sink. The glass cracked with a sharp, splintering scream, shards raining down onto the porcelain.

I shrieked, clapping my hands over my ears instinctively, but Mattheo wasn’t done. His fists crashed into the mirror again and again, glass shattering in waves, until nothing was left but jagged edges and blood streaking across his knuckles.

“Mattheo!” Draco barked, moving fast, rushing over and shoving my head down into Lorenzo’s chest, shielding me from the flying shards. The glass rained down around us, tinkling against the tile, mixing with the spray of the water and the sound of my ragged screams.

“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” Mattheo’s voice tore out of him splintered in rage and grief. He slammed both fists into the counter, blood smearing across the sink, his shoulders heaving like he couldn’t breathe.

“Why didn’t I, fuck, why didn’t I stop him?!” His words came in shouts, raw and shredded. “I should’ve, should’ve, fuck. I saw it, I saw it in his eyes, I knew he was gone, and I let him—”

He punched the wall this time, knuckles smearing crimson across white tile. “This is my fault, all my fucking fault—”

My sobs broke free all over again, violent and endless. “No, no—” I tried to shake my head, but Draco held me firmly down, his arms shielding me from shards glittering across the wet floor. My tears burned down my face, mixing with the shower water.

Mattheo’s voice cracked mid-curse, breaking into something even more gutting, more human than I had ever heard from him. “I told myself he was strong enough, I told myself he’d be fine but I fucking knew. I fucking knew and I did nothing!”

Daphne finally made a sound, a choked sob that filled the steaming air, her face buried in her knees. Lorenzo’s breathing grew ragged beside me, fury and grief locked in his chest, his arms still around us like he could hold the world together by sheer force.

Mattheo staggered back from the sink, his chest heaving, his hands dripping blood. He pressed both palms against his face, dragging them down until streaks of red smeared across his jaw, his teeth bared in a twisted, grief-strangled snarl.

“It’s on me,” he rasped, his voice broken and low now, almost swallowed by the hiss of the shower. “He was my brother, he was my brother and I let him drown alone.”

The words gutted me, twisting inside my chest until I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to scream back at him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that it was mine, that it was all of ours, but the words wouldn’t come. My voice dissolved into another flood of sobs, my body collapsing against Lorenzo’s hold.

Mattheo staggered toward the door, his fists clenched, blood dripping onto the tile with every step. Draco moved to stop him, his hand on his chest, but Mattheo shoved him back with a snarl, his face twisted with grief and rage.

“I’ll never forgive myself,” he hissed, his voice so sharp it cut through the steam, cutting through me. “Never. Not for this.”

 

He slammed the door behind him, the echo reverberating through the house, leaving behind the sharp tang of blood, the shattered glass, and the unbearable weight of his words.

Lorenzo’s arms slid under me, lifting me as if I were weightless, though I knew my body sagged like stone against him. My legs dangled, my head pressed limply into his shoulder. I didn’t resist. I didn’t even think to. The bathroom, the broken glass, Mattheo’s screams, all of it swirled behind me as he carried me out, the hiss of the shower fading into silence.

I was trembling, though whether from the water or the grief, I couldn’t tell. My fingers curled weakly into the fabric of his shirt, damp against my skin. He murmured something low, soft words I couldn’t hold onto, words that slid off me like water.

A warmth spread across me suddenly as he whispered a drying charm. My clothes went from heavy and soaked to dry and clinging, though they still carried the smell of lake water and tears. He didn’t stop there, he dried himself, too, his dark curls falling against his forehead, his jaw tight.

Daphne stood up silently, her expression unreadable, her face pale. Without a word she drifted toward the hallway. The sound of her feet padded faintly over the floorboards, until she disappeared around the corner.

By the time Lorenzo carried me past the bedrooms, I saw her again, through the crack of our door, already dressed in pyjamas. Her movements were automatic, as if her body was moving without her mind.

I wanted to call her name, to reach out, but my voice was gone. My throat felt like it had been scraped raw by screaming. So I just let my head fall back against Lorenzo’s shoulder, letting the soft sway of his stride guide me.

When he lowered me onto my bed, I blinked sluggishly, trying to keep up with the moment. He crouched down, pulling open a drawer, taking out a folded pair of pyjamas.

“Aurelia,” he said gently, his voice a steady anchor in the storm. “Let’s get you out of these, yeah?”

I nodded, small and slow. My body moved when he guided me, everything careful, jarringly respectful, his touch never lingering where it shouldn’t. The fabric was warm against my skin, smelling faintly of detergent, and for a brief, fleeting second, I let myself imagine I could sink into them and disappear.

But the weight in my chest pressed back harder.

Lorenzo scooped me up again, carrying me toward the living room. My eyes felt heavy, not with sleep, but with exhaustion, the kind that seeped into bone, the kind that would never leave. The light from the living room spilled into the hallway before we entered.

Daphne was there, curled on the couch, her knees drawn to her chest. Draco sat beside her, not touching her, not holding her, but leaning just close enough that she was leaning into him, her head against his shoulder, her body trembling with silent tears. His face was pale and tight, but his hand twitched once, as though he wanted to hold her and couldn’t bring himself to.

Mattheo sat in the armchair, his elbows braced against his knees, his hands clasped so tightly they shook. His dark hair fell over his face, hiding most of it, but when he looked up, just for a second, I saw it.

His eyes. Red. Shining. Wet.

He was crying.

Mattheo Riddle, who never showed weakness, who wore cruelty like armour, who snarled and laughed in the face of pain, was crying. Silent tears cutting raw paths down his cheeks. His jaw was locked like he was fighting it, like he was furious at himself for letting it show, but the grief leaked through anyway, unstoppable.

The sight of it pierced something inside me. My chest cracked open wider. I sucked in a breath that burned, pressing my lips together to stop another sob from spilling out.

Lorenzo lowered me onto the couch nearest to him, the one closest to Mattheo. He didn’t sit me on the cushion, though. He sat down first and pulled me gently onto his lap, his arms steady around me. I sank against him, my head against his chest, his heart pounding beneath my ear. My fingers curled into his shirt again, weak and desperate.

All the while, my eyes stayed locked on Mattheo.

 

He didn’t look away. He didn’t wipe the tears. He just stared back, hollow and wrecked, his chest rising and falling with the weight of something none of us could bear. For the first time, I saw him not as untouchable, not as sharp-edged and unfeeling. I saw him as broken. Just as broken as me, and it hurt in a new way.

When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse and uneven, like it had been dragged out of him against his will.

“You all think you’re the only one who fucking loved him?” His words cut through the room like a blade. None of us answered. He leaned forward, his fists clenching until his knuckles went white. “For the last four nights, I’ve been dragging him out of the fucking shower.”

My stomach turned, my lips parting, but nothing came out.

Mattheo laughed once, bitter and hollow. “He didn’t even know. Passed out cold. Vodka bottle in one hand, wand in the other. Blood everywhere. Not the water running, not the shower on. Just him. Fucking unconscious. And me. Picking him up like some useless caretaker.”

He spat the last words like they disgusted him, but his face twisted with something else entirely. Grief so sharp it hurt to look at. Daphne let out a soft sound, a choked sob into her sleeve. Lorenzo’s grip tightened around me, but he stayed silent. Draco’s jaw locked, his pale face stone cold.

“He was hurting himself, every night,” Mattheo continued, louder now, like he couldn’t keep it inside. His voice shook, his tears spilling faster, but he didn’t wipe them away. “And I knew. I knew, and I didn’t fucking tell any of you. Because I thought I could fix it. I thought—” He broke off, dragging both hands through his hair. “I thought I could carry it. Like it was my job. Like he wasn’t—” His throat closed on the word, his jaw snapping shut.

I could hardly breathe. Theo. Alone, bleeding in the shower. Theo, unconscious with bottles in his hand. Theo, and none of us knew, because Mattheo had been holding it all in secret.

Mattheo slammed his fist against the arm of the chair, making me jump. His voice cracked open. “And then, on missions, of course he was drunk. Of course he was reckless. You all fucking saw it. You saw the way he cast, the way he staggered, like he didn’t give a shit if he lived or died. And none of you thought to question it.” His bloodshot eyes flicked to each of us, sharp as knives. “And me? His best friend?” His voice dropped, breaking. “I let it happen. I didn’t stop him.”

Draco started to say something, but Mattheo cut him off with a snarl, shaking his head. “Don’t. Don’t you dare try to tell me I couldn’t have changed it. I knew. I knew, and I still let him drink himself into the ground. I still let him walk out with a wand in his hand and death in his eyes.”

His chest rose and fell in jagged breaths, his words spilling like open wounds.

“And yesterday—” His voice went quieter, rawer, like glass cracking under pressure. “Yesterday was ten years. Ten years since his mum died. And I didn’t even remember. I didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at him properly. And now he’s gone and it’s my fault.”

My throat burned. I swallowed hard against the sob clawing to get out, but it broke anyway, soft and shaking.

Mattheo’s eyes darted to mine then, wet and furious and pleading all at once. I couldn’t stand it. Slowly, I lifted my hand from Lorenzo’s chest, reaching across the space between us. My fingers trembled as they hovered, then gently closed over his.

His skin was hot, his knuckles raw.

For a long, painful second, he didn’t move. Just stared at me, wide-eyed and broken, like my hand was both salvation and fire. His lips parted, a sound catching in his throat, but no words came.

His gaze locked on mine, desperate, searching, begging for something I couldn’t give.

And then there was nothing. He didn’t squeeze my hand back. Didn’t shift closer. He just looked. Looked at me like I was holding out something he wanted so badly but couldn’t touch.

The moment stretched thin, trembling on the edge of shattering.

Then I let go. My hand fell back to my lap, my fingers curling into themselves.

Mattheo blinked once, his face crumpling in the smallest way before he set his jaw hard. He leaned back, dragging a sleeve across his face roughly, trying to wipe away what couldn’t be hidden.

 

The silence after was thick, filled with the sound of Daphne’s muffled crying, the faint creak of the house settling, the weight of everything unsaid. I pressed my face into Lorenzo’s chest, sobbing soundlessly, while across from me Mattheo’s red, swollen eyes stayed fixed on the floor, as though if he looked up again, he’d break completely.

Mattheo then slouched forward in the armchair, elbows braced on his knees, his hands hanging loose between them. His eyes were fixed on some invisible point on the carpet, but his chest still rose and fell too fast.

Draco was the only one standing. He’d moved to the far side of the room, one pale hand braced on the wall, his back to us, his head bent. The set of his shoulders was rigid but his knuckles were white where they pressed against the plaster.

I could still hear Mattheo’s words circling my head.

Blood everywhere.

Vodka bottle in one hand, wand in the other.

Ten years since his mum.

I didn’t even notice.

The images clawed at me, Theo alone in that cold bathroom. Theo going out on tasks drunk, his wand trembling in his hand. Theo hurting himself and hiding it and all of us too blind to see.

“I should have known,” Daphne whispered suddenly, voice cracking like dry leaves. She looked up from her hands, her face blotchy and wet. “He was off. I saw it. I just didn’t…” She trailed off, wiping her nose with her sleeve, then let out a choked sob. “Maybe I didn’t want to believe it.”

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. His eyes glistened but his voice was low and angry when he spoke. “We all saw it.” He stared down at the rug, not at anyone in particular. “We all saw him spiral and nobody—” His voice broke and he swallowed hard, looking away.

Mattheo laughed again, that bitter, hollow sound. “Don’t you dare start taking the blame to make me feel better.” His tone was harsh but it wobbled at the edges, his tears streaking his face in jagged tracks. “This one’s on me.”

“No,” I croaked before I could stop myself, my throat raw. “No, it’s on all of us.”

Everyone’s eyes flicked to me. I felt their stares but I couldn’t stop now, words spilling out between sobs. “He slept next to me every night recently and I didn’t see it. I didn’t know he was bleeding in showers and drinking himself unconscious, and I just…” My voice collapsed into silence.

Mattheo’s mouth twisted but he didn’t answer.

Lorenzo squeezed my arm, his own eyes shining. “We’re a team,” he said quietly, to no one and everyone. “We should have caught him. All of us.”

Draco finally turned around. His face was pale and composed but his eyes were cold, almost brittle, like a mask about to crack. “Enough,” he said quietly, but the edge in his voice made it sound like a blade. “He’s dead. Picking over what we should have done won’t bring him back.”

Daphne let out a small wounded sound, like his words had slapped her. Mattheo’s head snapped up, eyes flashing. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that,” he hissed.

Draco’s jaw tightened but he didn’t move closer. “I’m not,” he said flatly. “I’m saying this—” He gestured to us, to the circle of crying bodies. “This guilt spiral, it’s not going to save anyone. He’s dead, and we have to just live with it now.”

“No, it’s not a spiral, it’s the truth,” Mattheo shot back, his voice low and shaking with fury. “You stand there acting like it’s some fucking tactical mistake. This isn’t a task, Draco. This was Theo. My best friend. Our friend.”

Draco’s eyes flickered then, just for a heartbeat, something soft and pained behind the hard mask, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

Lorenzo let out a sharp breath, dragging a hand over his face. “We’re all hurting,” he muttered. “We’re all angry. But fighting isn’t—” His voice broke off, rough. “It’s not going to change what happened.”

Silence fell again, heavy and choking.

I stared down at my hands, trembling in my lap. My mind kept circling back to the lake, to his cold skin under my fingers, to the way his head lolled when I tried to hold him up.

“I loved him,” I whispered, not looking up. My voice was so small it barely carried. “I loved him and I didn’t keep him here.”

Daphne let out a broken sound and reached over, her fingers brushing my knee. “It’s not your fault,” she murmured through her tears.

“It’s all our fault,” Mattheo said at the same time, voice like gravel.

I lifted my eyes and met his. They were red and wet and furious and so full of pain it was like looking into a storm.

For a heartbeat, none of us spoke. Just breathed. Just existed in the same collapsing room, a tangle of guilt and love and loss. Then, slowly, the group seemed to fold inward. Daphne moved over and leaned into Lorenzo, her face against his shoulder, crying softly. Lorenzo pulled her close with one arm, the other still around me, his hand rubbing circles on my back. Mattheo slumped back in his chair, his head dropping into his hands at last, his shoulders shaking.

Draco stood by the wall, staring at the floor, his face hard, but his hands were clenched so tight the veins stood out along his knuckles.

We sat like that, the five of us breathing each other’s grief, the silence loud with everything we’d lost. For the first time since dragging Theo from the lake, the reality of it settled like stone in my chest.

He was gone, and none of us would ever be the same.

 

DRACO MALFOY

I couldn’t stand another second in that suffocating room. The sobbing, the guilt, the raw words cutting open wounds over and over, it was too much noise, too much weakness. Theo was gone, and they wanted to drown themselves in it. I couldn’t. If I let myself sit there, I’d go under too.

So I left.

The corridor was dim, shadows stretching like veins across the stone floor. My footsteps echoed, sharp and hollow. I tried to steady my breathing, force it even, but every inhale scraped. Months of watching people break, watching them spiral, watching them go. I thought I’d be immune by now. But my chest burned like someone had shoved hot iron into it.

I stopped outside her door. The mudblood’s room. Granger. She’d been quiet these last few days when I invaded her mind, no shouting, no begging, just silence. It made her easier to forget. But now, I needed something else to look at, something that wasn’t their wreckage or my own reflection.

I shoved the door open.

She was there, just as I knew she would be, slumped in that chair, wrists bound, her hair a tangled mess around her face. She looked up, startled, her brown eyes wide and ringed with shadows. She didn’t speak, I didn’t want words.

My wand was in my hand before I’d even thought about it, the tip angled toward her face.

“Legilimens.”

Her mind opened beneath mine like a floodgate giving way. I didn’t sift through it carefully, I didn’t need strategy this time. I dove, rough, reckless, desperate.

And I found him.

Not Theo himself, but flickers of him, scraps of him caught in her gaze.

A memory of the Great Hall, candles flickering above. Theo tossing a piece of bread at me across the Slytherin table, smirking when it bounced off my plate. I’d sneered, called him a fucking idiot, but the corner of my mouth had twitched in a way only he would notice. He’d laughed loud, and unrestrained.

Another memory, a corridor after class. Theo walking beside me, his bag slung low, talking too fast about some spell he wanted to try. I watched myself as I rolled my eyes, told him he was wasting his time, but I’d slowed my steps to match his. He hadn’t noticed, or maybe he had.

Another of Grangers memories saw Theo leaning close, whispering something obscene and making me choke on my pumpkin juice. I’d glared, elbowed him hard in the ribs, but my ears had burned red. I watched as he grinned, proud of himself.

The memories kept coming. Her eyes had seen everything we thought was ours alone. His arm slung casually around my shoulders as we left the Quidditch pitch. Our laughter echoing through the courtyard when the world was a little lighter. The way he’d shove me when I brooded too long, telling me to “shut the fuck up and live for once, Malfoy.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Each flicker was a knife under my ribs. I felt the corners of my eyes sting, but I forced my jaw tight, my spine straight. Weakness wasn’t allowed, especially not in front of her, not in front of anyone.

But the more I watched, the harder it became.

Her mind showed me the Theo I’d chosen not to look at these past weeks. The hollowness in his eyes when he thought no one was watching.

She only saw him in a way I didn’t get to anymore.

The pressure behind my eyes snapped. Tears blurred the memory, distorted the light of the floating candles, the shape of his face. I tried to blink it away, to force them back, but they broke free anyway, hot streaks cutting down my cheeks.

I wanted to rip myself out of her mind, slam the door shut, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop watching. Because in here, he was alive. Laughing, smirking, shoving me in the ribs. Calling me “Malfoy” like it was something good.

Alive.

My breath hitched. My whole body shook, though I fought to keep my grip steady on the wand. Hermione didn’t resist. She just sat there, eyes wide, lips parted, as if she didn’t understand what I was taking. Why I was searching. But she didn’t push me out. Maybe she pitied me or maybe she knew.

I tore out of her mind, stumbling back, my chest heaving like I’d run miles. The world tilted, vision swimming, and I dragged a sleeve across my face, wiping the tears away before they could betray me any further.

“Don’t—” My voice cracked, rough, alien in my throat. I swallowed hard, forcing steel back into it. “Don’t you dare think this means anything.”

She flinched but didn’t speak.

I turned sharply, pacing to the far side of the room, dragging in air like it could fill the cavern Theo had left. My fists clenched until my nails bit into my palms.

“Stupid,” I spat under my breath. “Weak.”

“What are you doing Malfoy?” I heard her voice as I entered her mind again.

I ignored her. My teeth ground together as I pulled harder, searching for more, anything. I wanted to drown in him. I wanted to see every second she’d stolen with her clever eyes. Every proof that he’d been here, that he’d been real, that it hadn’t all ended at the lake.

I saw Theo falling asleep on his arm in class, head tilted toward me, mouth twitching with a half-smile even in dreams. Granger was sitting a few rows behind us, but her memory was still clear.

“He killed himself.” I spat before I even realised I’d spoken aloud.

The words hung there, cold and heavy. Granger flinched, eyes wide, searching my face like she thought she’d misheard. I wrenched myself out of her mind with brutal force. The room swam back into focus white walls, flickering ceiling light, her pale face staring at me, stricken.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, quiet but steady. There was no defiance in it, no triumph, just soft pity.

The kind of pity that burned, I couldn’t stand it. Without another word, I turned on my heel and left, slamming the door behind me so hard the frame rattled. The corridor swallowed me again, shadows stretching long in the dim light. My chest heaved, my eyes stung, but I refused to let it spill. Not here. Not where anyone could see.

I kept walking. If I stopped, if I let myself stand still long enough, the memories would catch me, and I wasn’t ready to let them.

✦

AURELIA AVERY

I lay in the grass, cheek pressed to the cold earth where Theo had been buried. The stone I’d transfigured into a cross was small, crooked even, but it was all I could do with the strength I had. I carved his name with the sharp end of my wand until my hand shook too much to go on.

I couldn’t move. My body had melted into the ground, into the ache. The frost around me bit into my skin, but I welcomed it. At least it meant I could still feel something, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. My fingers played absently in the grass, tugging out strands, shredding them until they were nothing but limp threads.

I’d thought the tears would never stop, but now they had. All that was left was the hollow, a ringing in my ears that matched the emptiness in my chest. The door creaked open behind me, the faint thud of boots on the grass following after. I didn’t lift my head. I knew who it was before he even spoke.

“You need to come inside,” Mattheo’s voice cut through the air, sharp like a blade, but there was something underneath, not softness, never softness, but strain.

I didn’t move. “I’m staying.”

“You’ll freeze to death out here.”

“Then I’ll die.” My voice sounded distant, like it didn’t belong to me. “At least I’ll be next to him.”

There was silence, just the crunch of his boots as he came closer. I thought he might drag me back inside, or yell at me until I gave in, but instead he stopped. After a moment, I felt him sit beside me, his weight shifting the grass.

“You’re fucking pathetic,” he muttered.

I finally lifted my head, turning it just enough to see him out of the corner of my eye. His jaw was tight, his hands clenched in his lap, nails digging into his palms. He stared at the stone like he wanted to break it and bring Theo back by force.

I swallowed, my throat thick. “Did you put him next to me every night?”

He didn’t answer right away. His shoulders rose and fell, like he had to push the words out. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

He let out a bitter laugh, though it sounded more like a choke. “Because I knew it would make him feel better in the morning. Even if it was only for a few hours.”

My chest caved in. I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, the ache burning through me all over again. “Thank you,” I whispered, not looking at him. “For doing that for him.”

“Don’t thank me,” he snapped, voice cutting sharp. “It wasn’t enough. It never was.”

I flinched but didn’t argue. He wasn’t wrong. Nothing had been enough.

“I loved him, you know.” I muttered, unsure what those words meant anymore. “He’s the only person I think I truly ever loved.”

“Yeah, maybe he was.” He didn’t look me in the eye.

For a while we just sat there, the wind tugging at our hair, the sky bleeding into shades of navy and violet as night fully swallowed the horizon. The little cross I’d made looked smaller with every passing second, engulfed by the dark.

He shifted beside me, pushing himself to stand. “Come inside before you turn into ice.”

“Wait.” My voice cracked as I reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of his jacket. He stopped, looking down at me, his face half-hidden in shadow. “Stay. Just a little longer. I don’t think I’m ready to leave yet.”

He stared at me, eyes red-rimmed, lips pressed tight. For a second I thought he’d leave anyway, spit out something cruel and walk away. But then he sighed, low and ragged, and lowered himself back down beside me. I leaned my head back against the damp earth, watching the stars try to break through the clouds. He stayed rigid beside me, fists still tight, breathing uneven. We sat in silence, staring at the place where Theo lay, the night stretching endless around us.

Chapter Text

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

I pulled the hem of my skirt back over my thighs before he had even finished buckling his belt, because I didn’t like the pause after. It was a strange limbo where the air was heavy and uncertain and I didn’t know whether he wanted to look at me like I was a woman or like I was a sex instrument, and I’d rather have been neither.

The fabric clung to my skin, damp with sweat and the faint chemical tang of spilled drink from the carpet, and I tugged it lower so I didn’t feel so exposed. He fumbled in his pocket, nervous in that sheepish, guilty way men always were when the moment was over, like suddenly they’d remembered they were human again and that this had been transactional, that there was a cost attached to the heat of a body.

I watched his hands rather than his face, because hands told me more about someone than eyes ever could. His fingers were trembling, just a little, when he pulled the folded notes free. I held out my palm without speaking. The notes were warm when they landed against my skin, folded tight, smoothed by sweat and nervous heat.

He hesitated, like he wanted to say something, some little apology, or some proclamation about how beautiful I was, how sad my eyes were, how he wished he could take me away from all of this. They always wanted to say that, and they always choked on it, because they knew how ridiculous it sounded when it was just another night in a club that smelled of cigarette ash and stale perfume.

“Thanks,” I said flatly, tucking the money into the inside of my bra.

His mouth opened, then shut again, and he scurried out. I didn’t watch him go. Instead, I sank down onto the edge of the couch, staring at the smear of lipstick on the rim of the glass on the table, the faint red glow of the neon light outside bleeding through the curtains like a wound that wouldn’t close.

Numb. That was the word. I knew I should have felt something like disgust, or shame, amusement, even pride, anything at all, but it was just blank. A flat line inside me, where once there would have been a roaring tide of electricity. Normally, I was either laughing too loud or crying too hard, but now it was just this hollow quiet, like somebody had ripped out the wires in my chest.

It had been a week since Theo. A week since his body had been pulled out of the water, pale and blue, his lashes clumped with frost like he was just asleep in some other, colder world. Only a few days since I had sat on the bathroom floor with my knees tucked up to my chest and realised I wasn’t going to cry, not the way I’d expected. Just this strange, echoing emptiness.

I worked every night, when the safehouse went still, when Aurelia curled up in her little nest of blankets, when Draco paced himself into madness, when Lorenzo sank into the mattress with the heaviness of someone carrying too many lives on his back, I slipped out. High heels clicking against cobblestones, leather jacket smelling of smoke, I found myself at that club, with its pulsing bass and sticky floors and men with hungry eyes. They handed me drinks, they handed me money, they handed me their loneliness wrapped in cologne and desperation. I handed them my body, my laughter, my practiced sharp tongue that kept them from thinking they were winning anything other than the transaction they’d paid for.

It wasn’t that I liked it. I didn’t think I did. But it filled the hours, and the hours needed filling. If I lay awake in the safehouse too long, the silence pressed hard. If I thought too much, if I let myself imagine Theo’s laugh echoing through the halls, the way his voice cracked when he sang along to songs he didn’t know the words to, then I started to feel the edge of something sharp, something unbearable. I had found it was better to smother it under neon and sweat and the weight of strangers.

The mirror above me caught my reflection, and for a moment I stared at myself. My hair was tangled, my lipstick smeared, my eyes ringed with liner that had begun to smudge. I looked like a painting left out in the rain, blurred around the edges, the colors running into each other. I tilted my head and tried to see if I looked sad. I didn’t. I just looked tired.

I left the room and pushed open the door to the dressing room and the familiar wave of powder and hairspray washed over me. The little bulbs around the mirror buzzed faintly, the glass smeared with fingerprints and lipstick kisses from a dozen girls before me. My chair was littered with half-empty eyeliner pencils, a crumpled packet of Lelia’s gum, and a heel with its strap snapped.

I sat down heavily, the cushion sighing beneath me, and started tugging at the lashes clinging to my lids. They came off sticky, leaving my eyelids sore, and I tossed them onto the counter. The cotton pad squeaked when I dragged it across my skin, the makeup melting into a black-and-red sludge that reminded me too much of blood.

The door clicked open and then banged shut again, quick and careless, and Lelia swanned in like a storm, heels dangling from her hand, her dark curls sopping wet and flat around her face. She smelled like a combination of every drink known to man.

“Daph,” she groaned, collapsing onto the chair beside me. “You would not believe the absolute fucking freak I had to entertain.”

I smirked at her reflection in the mirror, wiping away the last streak of mascara from under my eye. “Please tell me he didn’t try the foot thing again. You’ve had like three of those this week.”

“Oh, no, better than that I think.” She tossed her heels onto the table, eyes wide with exaggerated horror. “He just wanted me to pour drinks all over myself. I mean, full-on, down my hair, my dress, everything. He said it made me look like… what was the word he used? Fuck, yes ‘a drowned goddess.’”

I snorted so loudly I nearly choked, the cotton pad slipping from my fingers. “A drowned goddess?”

“Apparently.” Lelia rolled her eyes so hard it looked like they might get stuck. “I told him I charge extra for the dry-cleaning but the motherfucker paid. I smell disgusting, no amount of hair washes is going to get this smell out and my bra’s going to be sticky for a week. I should have charged him more for inconvenience.”

The laugh burst out of me before I could stop it, loud and sharp, and for the first time in days it didn’t feel forced. Lelia joined in, the two of us cackling until my stomach ached, until I had to clutch the edge of the desk to steady myself.

“We’re fucking tragic,” I gasped, dabbing at my eyes with the clean edge of the cotton.

“Speak for yourself,” she said, grinning. “I’d rather be tragic with you than boring with anyone else.”

Her words settled in me, warm and steady, like the burn of liquor spreading through my chest. Lelia always had that effect. She had plans, for medical school, a future carved out of all this mess. Still, somehow, she made space for me in her world, like I was worth more than the crumpled notes stuffed into my bra.

“So,” she said, pulling her legs up onto the chair and sitting cross-legged, her tights laddered but her posture unbothered. “Were you heading home now? I could give you a lift. My cousin’s waiting outside.”

I shook my head, leaning back in my chair. “Nah. I’ll walk. It’s not far.”

Her smile faltered just a little. “You sure? It’s late. Or early. Whatever. And you look—” She bit off the end of the sentence, but I heard it anyway. Tired, worn, like I was being eaten hollow from the inside out.

I waved a hand, casual, brushing it off. “I’ll be fine. The walk clears my head. And it’s not like anyone’s stupid enough to mess with me.”

I leaned back in my chair, arms crossed, while Lelia stared at me like I’d just told her I enjoyed running headfirst into traffic.

“You’re seriously going to walk again?” she asked, incredulous. “Daph, come on. You know this city. You remember when I told you men tried to follow me, even to the car.”

I shrugged, tugging my lipstick-stained cotton pad into a ball. “Yeah. But you’re sitting right in front of me aren’t you?”

“That’s not the point.” Her voice sharpened, almost maternal. “You can’t keep tempting fate like this. I get my cousin to pick me up for a reason. He’s a big guy, not fat more like rugby-player big. Anyone so much as looks at me sideways, he’s there.”

I smirked, tilting my head. “What, am I supposed to borrow him too?”

Her nose wrinkled. “You’re impossible.”

“Mm. That’s what they tell me.”

Lelia muttered something under her breath, then stood abruptly, her chair scraping back. She went to her bag, an oversized leather one she hung on the hook by the door, stuffed with fuck-knows-what. I watched her rummage with growing curiosity until she pulled something long and heavy free.

At first, I didn’t even register what it was. All I saw was the gleam of metal under the dressing room bulbs, the hard, clean lines of it. My breath hitched, not out of fear, exactly, but out of recognition that this thing didn’t belong here. It was wrong and jarring and beautiful in its own sharp way.

It took me a few beats to realise what I was looking at. A gun. A shotgun, to be precise, though the word felt clumsy in my mouth. I’d never seen one before, not outside of the shitty muggle action movies Lorenzo used to sneak into the common room late at night.

“Take it,” Lelia said simply, holding it out like she was offering me an umbrella.

I blinked. “You… what?”

“You heard me.” Her face was dead serious now, all traces of playful banter gone. “If you’re going to insist on walking alone, then you’re going to take this with you.”

The weight of it registered when I wrapped my fingers around the cold metal. Heavier than I’d thought. Solid. It sat awkwardly in my hands, but I held it steady, unwilling to betray that I didn’t know the first thing about how to use it. Magic would have been faster, easier, but I couldn’t say that. Not here.

“You just… carried this around in your bag?” I asked, my tone deliberately dry.

“Sometimes.” She leaned against the table, folding her arms. “Look, I’m not stupid, Daph. Men are dangerous. And girls like us…” She gestured vaguely at herself, at me, and the glitter-stained room. “We’re targets. I’d rather have it and never need it than need it and not have it.”

Her logic was disarming. I found myself nodding before I could think. “Fair enough.”

Lelia studied me carefully, like she was expecting me to laugh it off, to push it away. But I didn’t. I cradled the weapon against my lap, the way I’d cradle a cat, running my thumb along the smooth barrel. She blinked, thrown off by my lack of shock.

“You’re… taking this weirdly well,” she said slowly.

I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “What do you want me to do, fucking scream? It’s practical.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t press, and I was glad for it. I could feel the questions brewing on her tongue.

Who are you really, Daphne Greengrass? Why do you look at a shotgun like it’s just another lipstick tube?

But she swallowed them down. That was another thing I liked about her, she didn’t push when she sensed the line.

Instead, I shifted the subject. “What about you? You sure you’ll be okay without it?”

She grinned and lifted the wad of cash she’d earned tonight, fanning it out dramatically. “Please. I can buy another. Besides, I’d rather have my best friend alive to keep me sane at work than walk in tomorrow and find out something happened to you.”

The word best friend landed heavier than the shotgun. It thudded in my chest, real and solid, and for a moment I didn’t know what to say. My throat tightened, a prickle behind my eyes threatening to give me away.

“Thank you, Lelia,” I muttered, softer than before.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, smirking. “But make sure you keep it hidden.”

We fell into silence, not an awkward one, but something gentler, the kind of silence you could only have with someone you trusted. I looked down at the gun in my hands, at the reflection of the vanity lights gleaming along its surface.

It was mine now, and strangely, I didn’t mind.

Lelia stretched, yawning, the spell breaking. “Alright. My cousin’s probably honking his horn like an idiot by now. See you tomorrow, yeah?”

I nodded, slipping the shotgun carefully into my bag, its weight grounding me. “Yeah. Promise.”

She squeezed my hand once, quick and fierce, before grabbing her heels and heading for the door. Just before she left, she glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes shining under the harsh bulbs.

“Stay safe, Daph.”

“You too,” I said, and even managed a smile.

When the door clicked shut behind her, I was left alone with the weight in my bag, heavier than all the cash I’d ever stuffed into it, and for the first time all week, I didn’t feel completely hollow.

I snapped back into the safehouse like I always did now and landed in the bathroom with a soft hiss of displaced air that smelled faintly of bleach, old soap and the lemon-scented handwash Lorenzo liked to keep by the sink. The tiles were cold under my bare feet, slick with the faint residue of other people’s showers, other people’s grief, and I stood there for a beat, letting the adrenaline and neon unwind into something flatter, less bright, until the room stopped tilting.

I scrubbed at my face in a single rhythm, cleaning away whatever I could physically see of the night's work. Steam wrapped itself around me like a thin cloak and the hot water sluiced down my shoulders, and for a few minutes I let the torrent wash me into another state where the edges softened and the world blurred into the sound of water on tile.

I thought of Theo once, then I thought of the gun tucked away in my bag, of Lelia's earnest face as she shoved it across to me as if it were nothing more than a coat. Those two images did not fit together, and the mismatch made my skin prickle in a way that felt almost like excitement.

I rinsed quickly, I had learned the ways of movement each night, quick showers, quicker exits, the softest tread to to avoid waking Aurelia in her fragile, restless sleep. The first night I'd come back, I'd made the mistake of arriving at the door like an idiot, letting the world reassert itself in the most obvious way. Draco had been up and saw the worst of it and I couldn't let that happen again.

When I stepped into the bedroom, the light was nothing but a thin rim around the curtains. Aurelia’s breathing was small and even, the way it settled into the mattress with the rhythm of someone trying to hold herself together. I watched her for a long moment, feeling the bottom of my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the gun in my bag and everything to do with Theo’s absence in her bed and the jagged emptiness that sat where some enormous noise used to be.

My feet made no sound against the rug, I folded my jacket and left it on the chair then I slid beneath the covers with her, careful to tuck myself in on the far side so that the mattress dipped most where she lay. If she murmured I didn't hear it, if she turned I didn't startle. I held my breath until my lungs burned, letting the silence charge around me until it sat heavy and safe.

The shotgun lay in my bag like a proof of a life I was only beginning to understand the edges of. When I finally uncurled enough to take it out, I did so with the reverence of someone handling a relic rather than a weapon. Metal was cold against my fingers, heavier than it looked, the weight of it a small, comforting gravity.

There was a simplicity to it that felt obscene. With magic you had to climb yourself inside people and tear their guts out with names and promises and old words, you had to expend yourself like an animal flayed open, and every time it took something back. It left people gasping and drained. A gun asked only for proximity and intent. The idea of the cold, uncomplicated resolve of point, fire, end made a small part of me thrill with terrible approval.

I imagined not the whir of spells or the sickening aftertaste of a hex that reached too far and pulled more than it needed but the finality of a shudder and then nothing. It was a selfish thought, but it was a neat thought. It was an exhausting thought because it required no explanation and yet my mind kept explaining it to itself in a thousand small excuses that sounded reasonable in the dark.

Aurelia shifted and I froze instantly. Her eyes blinked open and she looked at me for a heartbeat with that strange mix of gratitude and fear.

“Daphne?” she asked, voice small and uncertain.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep Auri.”

She exhaled, satisfied, and tucked her head deeper into the pillow. I lay there with her for a while, the gun cold against my palms, listening to her breaths and the muffled outside.

I didn't sleep right away. Instead I lay awake running my thumb along the edge of the gun's case through fabric, feeling the ridged line like a pulse. I told myself the gun was nothing more than a tool, a weight, a thing to hold onto in a wobbling world. I told myself that Lelia had only been practical, as she always was, saving for medical school, thinking in numbers and lists, making sure the people she loved made it to another morning.

In the small hours, with the sky outside paling into a shy, bruised blue, I let the world be complicated and dangerous and tender all at once. I got up slowly from the bed and slid the gun into the back of the wardrobe where it could not catch the light and lay my hands flat against the blanket until they stopped shaking. The house breathed, the town beyond it began to stir with the first distant, impatient noises of a new day, and I let myself drift between numbness and the thin, sharp thread of something like hope, anchored by the cold, bluntness of the object I had accepted into my life.

The kitchen smelled faintly of oranges and coffee when I dragged myself through the doorway the next morning. Aurelia had already joined the others in the kitchen, Lorenzo was leaning too close to her with a plate of sliced melon, his voice soft but insistent as he tried to coax her into eating. Mattheo sat across from them, his shoulders hunched forward, eyes fixed on some invisible spot in the wall like he was trying to bore through it. Draco was quieter than the rest, methodically picking seeds out of a watermelon, his jaw tight in that way he had when he was pretending nothing was wrong.

I didn’t say anything when I came in. I didn’t have the energy. My body felt like it had been scraped out from the inside, muscles heavy, brain fogged, my limbs carrying me forward out of sheer stubbornness. I let myself collapse into the nearest chair, the wooden legs scraping against the floor.

My head dropped forward before I could stop it, forehead resting against the cool wood of the table. The bowl of fruit from a recent supply drop was close enough that I could smell the ripeness of the grapes, the faint sharpness of citrus peel, but it all made me feel slightly nauseous rather than hungry.

“You alright?” Aurelia’s voice was small, hesitant, but it cut through the quiet.

I turned my head sideways so I could look at her without lifting it. She looked pale, her hair a curtain around her face, there was something fragile about the way she was sitting that I couldn’t place.

“Just tired,” I muttered, letting my eyes fall shut again. My voice came out rougher than I meant, but I didn’t have the will to smooth it over.

Lorenzo gave me a quick glance, then went right back to Aurelia, pushing a grape toward her with a forced, desperate cheerfulness.

“One bite. Just one. Please Aurelia, you need to eat.” His tone was light, but his hand lingered near her plate, and I could feel the tension humming beneath it.

Across from him, Mattheo hadn’t moved. He was still staring at the wall like the rest of us didn’t exist. The angle of his jaw was harsh in the morning light, his expression blank in a way that unsettled me more than any scowl could have. I wanted to say something sharp to snap him out of it but the words stuck in my throat.

Draco ate in silence, his fork moving with sharp, unhurried motions. He didn’t look at anyone, didn’t speak, just methodically separated the watermelon from rind. The wood of the table was cool beneath my skin, and I focused on that sensation, tried to anchor myself in it. I felt Aurelia’s eyes on me, lingering longer than they should, but I didn’t lift my head. If I met her gaze, I might have to offer more than I could give.

“I’ll be fine,” I said after a while, though no one had asked again. The words came out muffled against the table.

The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the scrape of utensils and the faint sound of Lorenzo coaxing, Aurelia resisting. I wondered how much longer we could all sit here like this, pretending fruit and morning light could stitch us back together.

My eyelids grew heavier, and I let myself drift a little, the voices around me blurring into background noise. The world felt far away, softened at the edges, and for a moment, head down on the table, I let myself exist there, not explaining, not confessing, just breathing in the quiet with the others, all of us holding on in our own strange, silent ways.

Mattheo’s voice was the first to slice through the silence.

“We’ve got one last family on the list.” He didn’t look at any of us as he spoke, still fixed on that damn patch of wall. His tone was flat, but there was weight in it, enough that everyone’s heads turned toward him. “Mother, father, one kid in our year. We’ll finish them off.” His gaze shifted then, sweeping over us one by one, and his jaw twitched. “But… we don’t have to do it today. If you’re all not up to it.”

For a moment, no one spoke. It was almost laughable, hearing him offer that crumb of mercy, like he’d remembered how to be human for a breath. My exhaustion burned off just enough for my mouth to catch up before my brain could stop it.

I lifted my head from the table, squinting at him. “Merlin, how thoughtful,” I said, my voice cutting sharper than I meant it to. “Who knew you had it in you to consider other people’s feelings for once?”

His head snapped toward me, eyes narrowing, all that false softness gone in an instant. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, I think I will,” I shot back, sitting up straighter. My exhaustion was still there, dragging at my bones, but it burned into irritation and defiance. “You act like you’re our leader, like you’re keeping us all together, but you’ve been sitting here staring at that bloody wall like a ghost. And now suddenly you care if we’re tired?”

“Because I’m not fucking stupid Daphne,” he said flatly, his voice low, dangerous. “I know what happens when people aren’t ready. They slip, and they get killed.”

“Or they kill themselves,” I snapped before I could stop myself. The words hit the air like shrapnel, and for a moment the whole room froze. Mattheo’s expression barely shifted, but I saw it in his eyes, that flicker, that tightening, like I’d driven a knife straight into him.

Lorenzo cursed under his breath. “Daphne, don’t.”

But I was already moving, leaning forward across the table, my voice rising. “Don’t act like you’ve done a thing to stop this from happening! You push and push and tear everyone apart, and then you sit there looking hollow and silent like you’re the only one allowed to feel anything. You don’t get to play saviour, Mattheo. You don’t get to act like Theo’s death wasn’t on you.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, his tone quiet now, which was somehow worse than yelling.

“Or what? You’ll kill me too? Slam my skull into floor?” My laugh came out sharp, brittle. “Do it. At least then you’d be doing something instead of rotting in that chair.”

“Enough!” Lorenzo’s voice cut through, loud and desperate. He slammed his hand on the table, but neither of us looked at him.

Draco shifted in his seat, voice calm but tight. “You’re both being ridiculous. This isn’t—”

“Ridiculous?” I snapped, turning on him too. “What’s ridiculous is all of you sitting here pretending we’re fine, eating fruit like some happy family, when we’re not even a family at all. We’re just circling each other, waiting to fall apart and at least I’m not lying about it.”

“You think you’re the only one who feels that way?” Mattheo’s voice cracked then, louder now, venom laced through every word. “You think I don’t wake up every night hearing him? Seeing him in the shower? You think I don’t carry that weight? You don’t know a fucking thing.”

“Of course I do!” I screamed, pushing to my feet so fast my chair screeched across the floor. “You never actually gave a fuck until it was too late.”

His face twisted, rage and grief in equal measure. “You don’t get to say that.”

“I just did.”

“Daphne!” Draco’s voice came harshly, but I didn’t turn to him.

“No, let her run her mouth,” Mattheo said, rising to his feet now, both of us standing off across the table. “She wants to blame me? Fine. Blame me. But don’t pretend you’re any better. You curl up on that fucking couch and cry every time this shit gets a little hard. You think you’re strong? You’re weak, Daphne. Weaker than the rest of us combined.”

The words should have hurt. Maybe they did, but all I felt was the adrenaline thundering through me, filling the numbness I’d been choking on all week. I laughed, a wild sound that didn’t sound like it belonged to me.

“Weak?” I said, my voice steady in a way it hadn’t been in days. “You want to see weak? Watch this.”

I snatched the slip of parchment from his hands before he could stop me, the one with the names, the last family. My hands shook, but I gripped it tighter, crumpling it in my fist.

“I’ll do it myself,” I said, my voice sharp and ringing. “Since you’re all too pathetic to get anything done.”

“Daphne!” Lorenzo pushed up from his chair, his face stricken, reaching across the table toward me.

“You’re exhausted,” Aurelia’s voice cracked, softer but no less desperate. She stood too, reaching out like she could anchor me with her words alone. “You can’t. If you’re tired, you won’t be able to do it properly—”

“Don’t worry about me,” I cut her off, backing toward the hallway, the crumpled paper burning in my hand. “I’ve got it handled.”

“Daphne, fucking stop—” Draco’s voice, cold, commanding.

But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Their faces blurred in my vision, voices colliding around me, and all I knew was the electric current in my veins, the pulse of something close to exhilaration. My footsteps echoed too loud against the floorboards as I stormed toward my room, my chest tight but my mouth smiling with a strange, brittle kind of triumph.

I slammed the door behind me and immediately felt the dizziness hit, a sharp rush to my skull, a ringing in my ears. For a moment I thought I might black out. I flopped back onto my bed, my head sinking into the thin pillow, staring up at the ceiling. My chest heaved, shallow and frantic.

Fuck, I was tired. Too tired. My whole body was begging me to just close my eyes, to let sleep drag me under. But I couldn’t, not after that. Not after I’d grabbed the parchment out of Mattheo’s hands like a challenge and declared myself stronger.

I forced myself upright, blinking until the room stopped spinning. The closet doors sat half-open, the dark folds of my Death Eater robes spilling out like a shadow. My hands moved before my brain caught up. I pulled the fabric toward me, tugged it over my shoulders, fastened the clasp at my throat. The familiar weight settled against me, heavy and suffocating, like a shroud I’d chosen.

As soon as I caught my reflection in the cracked mirror above the dresser, regret stabbed at me. I looked ridiculous, bloodshot eyes, hair tangled from sleep I hadn’t taken, robes askew. I wasn’t ready. Mattheo was right, being this tired meant slipping, faltering and probably dying. My body was screaming no, but pride, anger, stubborn fire drowned it out.

I collapsed back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling again. The parchment crinkled in my hand, damp from sweat. My breath shook. I couldn’t back out now.

Then my eyes drifted toward the gun shoved at the back of the closet.

The memory flared of Lelia’s voice last night, that strange mixture of softness and steel as she pressed it into my hands, promising my safety.

I slid to the floor, tugging it out. My fingers closed around the cool, hard metal. When I lifted it into the light, the gun gleamed dully, heavier than I remembered, but I understood enough. It was power that didn’t drain your magic, didn’t sap your bones, didn’t burn your veins raw like the Killing Curse. All you had to do was pull a trigger.

The thought throbbed through me, intoxicating and terrifying.

If I was too tired for magic, too frayed at the edges, this could be the difference between me slipping and me surviving. I wouldn’t fall apart like Theo. I wouldn’t collapse under the weight of exhaustion or grief. This would keep me alive.

The decision rose up inside me with the kind of clarity I almost never had. I stood, straightened my robes, and opened the door. The dining room fell silent when I stepped back in. Their voices, their arguing, even Mattheo’s simmering fury, all of it stopped.

Because in my hand, I held the gun.

For a second, nobody moved. I felt the chill sweep through the room, saw the way Lorenzo’s eyes widened, Draco’s fork paused in midair, Aurelia’s breath caught.

“I found it,” I said lightly, forcing a half-smile. “On the floor. Must’ve been lying around somewhere.”

It was a lie so stupid even I wanted to laugh at it, but the words hung there, sharp and brittle.

Lorenzo was the first to speak. His voice was unsteady, but laced with a memory. “That’s… that’s a gun. I’ve seen one before. In those Muggle action films I used to sneak into Hogwarts, remember?” His eyes didn’t leave the metal. “But I didn’t think they were real.”

“They’re real,” I said, curling my fingers tighter around it. The weight of it steadied me somehow. “And this one’s going to keep me safe.”

Nobody breathed.

Aurelia’s voice cracked first, small, uncertain. “Safe? How?”

I let out a dry laugh, raising the weapon just slightly, though not pointing it at anyone. “Because this doesn’t take magic. Doesn’t drain me. I don’t need to be rested, I don’t need to be strong. I just need to pull a trigger.”

Draco’s lip curled faintly. “You think that’s better? Trading curses for Muggle toys?”

“It’s not a fucking toy.” My voice came out sharper than I meant, my fingers flexing around the handle. “It’s faster. Cleaner. Easier. You don’t understand how tired I am, and this means I won’t slip. This means I won’t fail.”

Lorenzo shook his head, looking between us. “Or it means you’ll fail in a different way. You don’t even know how it works. None of us do.”

Mattheo finally spoke, his voice low and dangerous. “Put it down, Daphne.”

I met his stare, my heart hammering. “Why? You want me weak? You want me collapsing halfway through another mission? Because I won’t. Not again. I’m not ending up like—” I caught myself before saying Theo’s name, teeth digging into my tongue.

“You don’t know what you’re holding,” Mattheo pressed, his tone colder now, his eyes dark. “You think it’s safety? It’s not. It’s just another way to bleed.”

My laugh came out wild, cracked. “Maybe. But at least it’s my choice. At least I don’t have to drain myself into the ground to feel strong.”

Aurelia flinched at the bite in my voice, her hand half-reaching across the table as though she could soothe me. “Daphne—”

“Don’t,” I snapped, cutting her off. “I’ve already made up my mind. This—” I lifted the gun slightly, feeling the pull of its weight, the strange promise in its steel. “This keeps me safe. This keeps all of us safe. You’ll see.”

The silence after was suffocating. I could feel all their eyes on me, the cold shock, the unease rippling through them.

“I’m using it,” I said finally, breaking the quiet. My voice came out steady, even though my insides were buzzing like a storm. “I’m taking this with me on the mission and none of you can stop me.”

“No, you’re not.” Draco’s tone was ice, every syllable measured, precise. His grey eyes pinned me like daggers. “That thing doesn’t belong here.”

I tilted my head at him, mock-sweet. “And what does belong here, Draco? Oh, right. Legilimency, cruelty, straight fucking abuse? Merlin forbid I carry something that doesn’t suck me dry every time I use it.”

“Lorenzo’s right, you don’t even know how it works,” he snapped. “You could kill one of us without even meaning to.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” I shot back, heat rising in my chest. “Granger probably wishes she was dead right now.”

Mattheo finally stood, his chair screeching across the floor. “She’s not taking it.” His voice was final, clipped, a slash of steel through the room.

“Fucking watch me,” I said, smiling now. My hands shook slightly on the metal, but it felt good, that weight anchoring me. “I’ve already decided. You don’t get to control this.”

“You’re not in control,” he snarled, stepping closer. His eyes burned with that hollow fury I’d seen a hundred times before. “You’re tired. You’re reckless. You’re fucking spiraling.”

“Oh, and you’re the picture of stability, aren’t you?” I laughed, bitter and sharp. “Drowning in silence, pretending you don’t feel anything. Tell me, does shutting down keep the nightmares away? Or does it just make you weak in daylight too?”

His jaw tightened. I saw the flicker, the crack in his mask, and I pressed harder, words spilling out fast and cruel.

“You think you’re a leader? You couldn’t even lead Theo out of a muggle bottle. You sat there and watched him sink, just like you watch the rest of us rot, and now you want to take this from me? No. Not this time.”

Lorenzo tried again, desperate, his hand raised like he was stepping between wild beasts. “Enough, both of you—”

“Stay out of it, Enzo,” I snapped, eyes still locked on Mattheo. “This is between me and him.”

Mattheo’s voice dropped low, venom laced through every syllable. “You want to blame me for Theo? Fine. Blame me. But don’t you dare pretend this is strength, Daphne. It’s pathetic. You want to fuck around with a Muggle weapon? That’s not strength. That’s desperation.”

The words stung, but I let the anger burn hotter. “Better desperate than dead. Better desperate than you.”

He lunged. Not with a curse, not with words, but with his hand, reaching for the gun.

And I didn’t think.

My finger jerked, and the trigger gave under the pressure.

The sound shattered the room, like thunder exploding right next to my skull. Smoke curled sharp and acrid in the air. Mattheo staggered back with a roar, clutching his side.

Blood bloomed, dark and heavy, soaking into his shirt.

The world froze.

Aurelia screamed, high and broken. Draco’s chair clattered to the floor as he sprang up. Lorenzo bolted forward, trying to catch Mattheo before he collapsed.

My own breath tore out of me in ragged gasps. The gun felt impossibly heavy now, the ringing in my ears drowning out their voices. I hadn’t even aimed, hadn’t thought, but the red spilling between his fingers was proof enough.

Mattheo’s eyes found mine, wild and furious through the haze of pain. He opened his mouth to curse me but his knees buckled before the words came.

“Daphne!” Lorenzo shouted, reaching for me now, not just to steady Mattheo but to drag me back from myself. His hand caught my arm.

I tore it free, shoving him hard. “Don’t touch me!” My voice cracked, wild. “I told you, I’m not weak!”

“Look at what you’ve done!” Draco’s voice was venom, his wand out, his face white with fury. “You shot him! You—”

“I saved myself,” I screamed, though my throat burned with the lie. “He’s fine anyway, it’s just his shoulder. I only did what none of you had the guts to do, I took control!”

Aurelia’s sobs cut through, pleading, broken. “Please, just stop, please—”

But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. The sound of the shot still echoed in my skull, a hollow ringing that filled every corner of me. My chest was tight, my blood electric.

“I won’t die like him,” I spat, backing toward the door. “I won’t waste away while all of you watch. If I have to burn the world down to prove it, I will.”

“Daphne, don’t you dare walk out—” Draco’s voice was a snarl.

But I was already moving with the gun heavy in my hand, my robes clinging to me like shadows, I shoved past Lorenzo’s outstretched arms, past Aurelia’s broken pleas, past Draco’s fury and Mattheo’s anger.

The door slammed behind me. Their voices rose in chaos, muffled now, distant.

And I ran.

 

Ran with the gun clutched tight, the smoke still clinging to my hair, the taste of iron thick on my tongue. Ran because if I stopped, if I looked back, the weight of what I’d done would crush me.

My feet pounded the pavement for half a block before I stopped dead in the middle of the road, chest heaving. The gun was still in my hand, sticky warm with the memory of what it had just done, my ears still ringing.

I fumbled in my pocket, pulling the crumpled paper Mattheo had tried to guard from me. Boot. The name blurred and sharpened as my pulse roared in my head. My fingers shook as I smoothed the parchment against my thigh.

I closed my eyes, focused on the name, the place. A crack split the air, and the world bent.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing at the edge of a neat suburban lane. Too neat. Too quiet. All the houses lined up like polished teeth in a smile that wasn’t real. The Boot family’s home sat at the end, lights glowing soft behind lace curtains. It looked warm, and safe in a way that made me sick.

I didn’t walk up the path, I stormed, my boots sank into the garden soil where I cut across their beds of pansies, trampling the softness underfoot. My hand was already tight around my wand when I reached the door.

“Alohomora,” I hissed, though the wood didn’t move for me. I snarled, raising my wand again. “Bombarda.”

The blast split the air, splinters flying outward as the door cracked open in a shriek of hinges and shattered frame. Then I did something strange, even to myself. I shoved my wand back into my robes. My fingers curled tighter around the gun instead.

The hallway smelled faintly of stew and polish. Shoes neatly lined up by the door, coats hanging in rows, a row of smiling photographs watching me from the wall, little Terry Boot at eleven with his Hogwarts letter, his parents with their arms around him. Muggle smiles, open and unguarded.

The floor creaked beneath me as I moved toward the sound of voices that were soft and muffled by clinking dishes. I pushed the kitchen door open with my shoulder and they were there. Mr. and Mrs. Boot, middle-aged, ordinary, the kind of people you’d pass in Diagon Alley and never notice again. They looked up from the table, confusion flaring into horror the second they saw me.

And then I raised the gun.

For a moment, they froze. I saw their eyes flicker to the object in my hands, not a wand, not magic, something else. Almost instantly, to my shock, they obeyed my non-existent command.

Chairs scraped violently back, dishes clattering. They dropped, knees to the tile, hands up, palms shaking in the air. No fight or even defiance. Just instant surrender.

My breath caught. I hadn’t expected this.

When I held my wand at people, there was always resistance, pleading, begging, sometimes curses thrown back in desperation. Always something. But now? They looked at me like I was death itself, no questions asked.

The sight rooted me to the floor.

Why? Why were they so quick to fold, to crumble? Didn’t they know magic was deadlier than any lump of Muggle metal? Didn’t they know what I was?

But their eyes weren’t on me. They were on the gun. Terrified. Wide and wet with panic.

My grip tightened. My stomach churned. Something about it unsettled me, though I couldn’t name it. I wanted to laugh, to sneer at them for cowering at this, when a simple curse could end them faster. But I didn’t, my tongue stayed heavy in my mouth.

I kept the barrel steady, forcing myself to breathe evenly.

“Where’s your son?” My voice came out lower than I intended, husky.

Mrs. Boot’s lips trembled. “P-please… don’t…”

“Where. Is. He?”

“In his room,” she whispered, tears already tracking her cheeks.

I nodded once. But I didn’t lower the gun.

They stayed on their knees, trembling while I stood there, looming over them, and something cold pressed at the edges of my thoughts. This wasn’t power, not really. Power was the way magic thrummed through me, bending the world at my will. This was different. This was something else.

This was fear distilled into obedience.

They didn’t even know if I could use it. They didn’t even know what it could do. But they submitted anyway. The weight of that realisation pressed into me, confusing, twisting. I told myself it was good. That this was what I needed. That this would keep me safe, keep me strong. That if they feared me more quickly like this, it meant less struggle, less waste of magic.

But beneath it all, something hollow gnawed at me.

Because if fear alone could break people, fear of this object in my hand, fear of the possibility, then what did it say about the world? What did it say about me, holding it?

The silence grew unbearable, all I could hear where their shallow breaths, the creak of their knees on tile, the drip of stew bubbling faintly on the stove. I wanted to scream just to fill the air.

Instead, I stepped closer, the gun still fixed on them. Their shoulders flinched, shrinking smaller, as if trying to vanish into the floor. I felt a strange, sour swell in my chest again. It would be so easy. So quick. No incantations, no energy burned. Just a squeeze of my finger.

So easy it made me dizzy.

My finger twitched.

The sound tore through the kitchen like the world itself had been ripped open. Louder than a curse, louder than any spell. The blast rattled the cabinets, shook the dishes, made my ears scream with ringing.

Then there was blood.

So much blood.

It splattered across the linoleum, the table, the chairs still pulled out from their places. Mr. Boot crumpled sideways, a horrible wetness spreading across his chest, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, but no words came out. His wife shrieked, a ragged, broken sound that was cut off almost instantly as the second shot left the barrel.

Two. That was all it took.

I stood frozen, the gun hot and vibrating faintly in my hands, the smell of smoke thick in my nostrils. My stomach lurched as I stared down at their bodies twitching, then stilling. Their blood slicked the floor, thick and heavy, not the clean finality of green light, but something messy, something raw.

It was too real. Too physical.

I wanted to gag.

This wasn’t like the Killing Curse. Avada Kedavra left no mark, no wound, just the emptiness of a body robbed of its spark. This was violence in flesh and bone, ripped open and bleeding out onto tile. I pressed my hand over my mouth, the other still gripping the gun so tight my knuckles ached. The metal felt heavier than before, like it had absorbed the weight of what I’d done. Before I could think, before I could stop myself, I bolted.

The stairs loomed at the end of the hallway, and I charged them two at a time, my breath coming in ragged, uneven bursts. My ears still rang from the shots, my vision tunneling as I moved. I didn’t even try to be quiet, the gun barked again, and again, deafening as I fired blindly into the dark hallway upstairs.

The recoil jolted through my arms each time, bruising, numbing, but I didn’t stop. My shots ripped holes in wallpaper, shattered picture frames, tore gouges through the wood of the banister. The hallway filled with the acrid stink of gunpowder, sharp and chemical, burning my throat.

I wanted everything silent. I wanted everything gone.

Finally, my eyes found a door with a crooked wooden letter nailed to the front. T.

Terry.

I stumbled forward, my pulse pounding in my ears, drowning out thought. My hand slammed against the doorknob, shoving it open with a crash.

The room smelled faintly of parchment and sweat. Books stacked messily along the walls, a trunk half-open at the foot of the bed. Terry Boot was only halfway out of bed, hair sticking up in panic, eyes wide.

“Who—”

The shot cut him off.

His body jerked violently, slammed back against the wall. Blood spread across his chest, soaking into his thin shirt, dripping down onto the carpet. His eyes stayed open for a moment, shocked, uncomprehending, and then glassy.

It was over before he had time to scream.

I stood in the doorway, chest heaving, the gun lowering slowly in my grip. The silence after the shots was unbearable. My ears rang, my arms shook from the recoil, but the silence was louder than anything else. Terry’s body sagged on the floor, a mess of blood and stillness, so different from the calm emptiness of magic’s kill.

I had done it.

But why didn’t it feel the same?

I backed out of the room, my shoulder smacking the doorframe. My eyes flicked down the hallway, bullet holes gaping in the walls, plaster dust hanging in the air, frames shattered on the ground. The house reeked of blood and smoke, violence etched into every surface.

I couldn’t breathe.

I stumbled down the stairs, slipping slightly on the slick patch of blood pooling at the bottom where the parents lay. My boot left a red print on the tile, marking me as I pushed past them and out through the blasted front door.

The morning air hit me cold and sharp, but it didn’t clear the smell, didn’t clear the heaviness clinging to me. My hands were sticky, my clothes speckled with tiny flecks of red. The gun still weighed down my grip, heavier now, unbearably so. I stepped into the garden, nearly tripping over the shards of door still scattered across the path. My breaths came shallow, ragged, as I forced my feet forward.

But the unease wouldn’t leave me.

This wasn’t power. This wasn’t clean. This was blood and gore and mess. It had been fast and I’d done it almost without thinking. My body had moved, my finger had pulled, and the world had ended in an instant for them.

I wrapped both hands around the gun, holding it tight against my chest, trying to steady the shaking in my limbs. It was supposed to make me feel safe. It was supposed to make this easier. But all I felt was the stickiness of blood drying on my skin, the ringing in my ears, the bitter taste of smoke in my mouth.

And confusion.

Why had they surrendered so fast? Why had the shots felt like thunder splitting me apart inside? Why did this feel more like destruction than control?

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe, to block out the sight of the broken house behind me. Then I turned on the spot, the world cracking open once again as I disapparated, leaving behind the blood, the bodies, and the unease gnawing sharp at the edge of my chest.

The alley I landed in was damp and narrow, hemmed in by crumbling brickwork. The kind of place nobody looked twice at, which was exactly why I chose it. I leaned back against the wall, the gun clutched against my chest, still sticky, still warm from my own hand. My breathing came in sharp pulls, and I tried to tell myself the shaking in my arms was just adrenaline, not weakness.

It’s fine. You’re fine. You did it. And it was fast. So fast.

That was the point, wasn’t it? To make it easier, to save strength, to not slip when I was too tired for spells? My head spun a little, but I pressed my forehead into the cold brick, grounding myself in the chill.

It makes me feel safe.

I whispered it under my breath, like if I said it enough it would root itself into truth.

“Safe?”

The voice cracked through the air like a whip.

I jerked my head up, clutching the gun tighter, and there was Rosier Snr, stepping out of the shadows as if he’d always been there, his face pale and sharp, the aristocratic cruelty etched in every line of his mouth. His eyes, cold and disdainful, swept over me and the weapon in my hands with something between disgust and fury.

“What the fuck,” he drawled, venom dripping from each word, “do you think you’re doing?”

I straightened from the wall automatically, though my knees felt unsteady. “I handled it. The family’s dead.”

He took another step forward, his long coat brushing against the wet ground, the smell of decay and earth following him like a shadow. “Don’t you dare insult me by pretending you handled anything. I saw it. I saw you with that—” He jabbed a finger toward the gun, his lip curling. “—that filthy Muggle contraption. Pointing it around like a common criminal.”

My grip tightened. “It worked.”

“It worked?” He laughed, but there was nothing warm in it, only scorn. “Listen to yourself. Do you even hear how pathetic you sound? You, a Greengrass heir, clutching a Muggle toy because you can’t stomach the spells you were bred to wield.”

“It isn’t like that,” I snapped, the words rushing out too fast, too defensive. “I wasn’t, I didn’t, I just—”

“You just what?” he snarled, cutting me off. His face was inches from mine now, though his body didn’t cast a shadow on the wall. “Too tired to pick up your wand? Too weak to finish what you started properly? Is that what you want me to believe? That my relic holder is someone so gutless she hides behind Muggle machinery?”

The words hit like slaps, sharp and stinging, but I forced my chin up, even as my throat burned. “You don’t understand. You weren’t there.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Rosier hissed, his voice dropping low, dangerous. “I understand that you’ve abandoned everything. The art, the craft, the power of our magic, for that.” His gaze flicked again to the gun, his mouth curling as if the sight of it alone disgusted him. “Do you know what you looked like? A whore with a weapon she doesn’t deserve to touch.”

My stomach twisted at the word, but I swallowed it down, nails digging into the gun’s cold metal. “It made it easier. That’s all.”

“Easier?” He spat the word like venom. “Do you think war is meant to be easy? Do you think killing should come with no cost, no burden? That’s the point, girl. That’s what separates us, the strong from the weak, the pure from the diluted. Killing should take something from you. But you—” He sneered. “You want shortcuts. Quick fixes. A bullet instead of facing the weight of your choices.”

I wanted to scream at him, to throw the gun at his ghostly face, to tell him he didn’t know what it felt like to be drowning in exhaustion trying to keep everyone alive and fed by selling my own body every night. But my tongue felt heavy, my chest too tight.

He saw the silence, and his grin sharpened. “Pathetic. You couldn’t even hold your family’s standards if they were sewn into your skin. Do you think your father would have looked at you with pride if he saw this? A daughter replacing centuries of legacy with—” His eyes raked the weapon again, and his voice dropped to a hiss. “—cheap steel.”

I shook my head, breath coming faster. “No. No, you’re wrong. I did it. I killed them. Quicker than I’ve ever—”

“Quicker, yes.” His voice was almost a purr now, though the cruelty threaded deeper. “But do you know what that really means? It means you didn’t even feel it. You didn’t taste the curse on your tongue, didn’t feel the strain of your own soul pulling as you forced life out of a body. You pressed a finger, and the world did it for you. Where is the discipline in that? Where is the strength?”

I pressed my back harder into the wall, the damp bricks biting into my skin through my clothes. “It keeps me safe.”

“Safe?” His laughter was sharp, brittle, echoing off the walls. “Is that what you tell yourself, to sleep at night? Safe? Safety is a word for the pitiful. Safety is for people who hide, who cower, who cling to weapons they don’t understand because they can’t stand on their own legs. Safety,” he spat the word again, “is weakness.”

Something in me snapped, thin and fragile. My voice came out harsher, louder than I expected. “You think I want this? You think I wanted to feel the blood on my hands, the mess, the noise in my head? I did it because I had to! Because if I don’t find a way to keep going, I’ll break like—”

The words choked off in my throat.

His eyes narrowed. “Like Nott?”

The silence between us pulsed. My jaw trembled, and I hated that he could see it, that he could taste the crack in my voice.

Rosier leaned in closer, his voice dropping, cruelly soft. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You saw him drown, and you’re terrified you’ll follow. So you grabbed the nearest thing to hold onto, and it just happened to be a Muggle’s gun. Tell me, girl, does that make you feel proud? Clutching a coward’s tool while the rest of us rot in the earth, laughing at you?”

“Shut up,” I whispered, though it came out thin.

“No. You’ll listen.” His words lashed like whips. “You’re weak. You’re tainted. You’re no holder of mine. And one day, that pretty little machine will slip, and you’ll end up killing the only people you have left. Then tell me, will you feel safe?”

The alley pressed tighter around me, the weight of his words thick in my lungs. I wanted to hurl the gun away, to scream until he disappeared. But my fingers stayed curled around the cold steel, trembling, desperate.

I forced my chin up, though my voice shook. “I’ll survive.”

Rosier tilted his head, that cruel smile cutting deeper into his face. “We’ll see.”

 

Just like that, he dissolved, leaving me clutching the weapon like it was the only thing holding me together, even as it threatened to pull me apart.

✦

I apparated just outside the wards and slipped back through the door of the safehouse. My ears still rang faintly from the gunshots, the echo lodged deep in my skull, as if my own mind was firing again and again. It was still morning, the sun was high but not yet unforgiving, pale light spilling into the windows. The air inside smelled of smoke, fruit, and a faint trace of blood.

Through the kitchen window I caught sight of Aurelia, sitting cross-legged in the damp grass, her head bent toward Theo’s grave. Her lips moved quickly, quietly. The sight tightened something inside my chest, but I looked away.

Lorenzo was at the counter, cutting up an apple. He looked up as I passed, his knife pausing mid-slice. Our eyes met for one beat too long. Neither of us said a word. His jaw clenched, and he looked back down at the apple, the blade crunching through it harder than necessary.

My boots creaked against the floorboards as I moved into the living room. Draco was kneeling by the couch, his sleeves rolled to his elbows as he pressed bandages against Mattheo’s side. Mattheo lay half-propped, his shirt undone, his skin pale under the dim light. The bloodstains were already seeping through.

Draco’s eyes flicked up when I entered, sharp, narrowed. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, but Mattheo’s eyes found me instantly.

“I killed them,” I said. The words tumbled out before I could arrange them neatly. “The Boots. They’re gone.”

Draco’s jaw tightened, his hands stilling over the bandage. Mattheo just stared, his gaze unreadable and heavy.

“And…” My throat closed up for a moment, the taste of iron still clinging there. “I’m sorry. For shooting you.”

Silence stretched long and thin. I wished one of them would say something, anything to tear it apart.

Mattheo finally laughed, but it was humorless, broken, bitter. “Sorry?” he repeated, his voice rough with pain. “You shot me, Daphne.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t mean to?” His voice rose, the growl cutting deep. “You point a gun at me, you pull the trigger, and you think sorry is going to cut it? I could have been fucking dead right now.”

My pulse hammered in my ears. I stepped closer, fists clenching. “You tried to take it from me. You wouldn’t let me do what needed to be done—”

“What needed to be done?” Mattheo snapped, struggling to sit up despite Draco trying to hold him down. His face twisted, pale and furious. “You think parading around with that thing makes you strong? Makes you safe? You’re reckless, Daphne. You’re fucking dangerous.”

I flinched, but anger snapped back harder than the sting of his words. “Dangerous? Look who’s talking. You’ve been dangerous since the day I met you. You’re all too righteous, thinking your way is the only way.”

“This isn’t about me,” Mattheo shot back, his voice breaking. “It’s about you, losing control, running around with a Muggle weapon like some lunatic—”

“Don’t you dare call me that.” My voice cracked with fury.

“No, Daphne.” Mattheo rasped, his eyes blazing. “You think you’re so untouchable with that thing in your hand. But you’re a coward, Daphne. Too tired to use your own power, so you cling to a piece of Muggle steel and think it makes you untouchable. Pathetic.”

My nails bit into my palms so hard I thought they’d draw blood. “Pathetic?” I whispered, venom burning the back of my throat. “At least I get things done. At least I don’t hide behind excuses, behind orders. I went out there and I killed them. Fast and clean may I add. While you sit here, bleeding, whining, blaming me for everything.”

“You think clean is watching blood spray across the walls?” Mattheo barked, his voice breaking into something ugly, pained. “You’ve lost it, Daphne. You’ve lost yourself.”

“I haven’t lost anything,” I snapped back, my vision blurring with fury. “I’ve found a way to survive. To keep us alive. You just don’t like it because it isn’t your way.”

The room pulsed with silence again, except for Draco’s quiet, strained breathing as he tried to keep the bandages tight. His eyes flicked between us, but he didn’t speak.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Mattheo hissed, the words low but searing.

I froze. The word cut sharper than I expected, sharper than any curse I’d ever taken. My fingers twitched around the gun, my skin buzzing hot with anger and shame all at once.

“Don’t,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Don’t call me that.”

But he didn’t stop. His lip curled, his face pale and tight with pain, but he pushed through anyway. “It’s what you are. Look at yourself. All I see is a mess. You lash out at everyone, you cry in bed when it suits you, or you’re out torturing people. No wonder why nobody can handle you, you’re insane, Daphne.”

The words rattled me to the bone. My vision sharpened, the edges of the room darkening, closing in. Before I could think, I had lifted the gun again, pointing it straight at him. My hand shook violently, but I steadied it with the other, desperate to keep it from betraying me.

Draco swore under his breath, shifting closer like he might leap in between us, but Mattheo didn’t flinch. He just stared at me, his chest rising and falling, defiant.

“Go on then,” he spat, his voice cutting, cruel. “Do it again. Prove me right. Put a bullet in me because you can’t handle hearing the truth.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, tears burning my eyes, blurring my sight. My hand trembled harder. “Shut up!”

But he leaned forward, straining against Draco’s hands as though to get closer, his voice lowering into something that was somehow worse than the shouting. “Maybe you should just go back to Paris.”

The gun nearly slipped from my hands.

The air left my lungs all at once. My ears roared, louder than any gunshot, louder than any scream. The world tilted. My knees wobbled beneath me, my heart cracking wide open.

How did he know?

No one knew. No one ever said that word to me, not like that. Not in this place where I’d buried every trace of it, where I’d kept it hidden under laughter and lies.

“W-what did you say?” My voice was raw, trembling, unrecognisable.

Mattheo’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer. The silence pressed down on me like a suffocating weight. My thoughts scattered, spiraling, how did he know, who told him, what did he mean, why would he say that, how could he know?

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head so hard it made my vision spin. “No, no, no—”

The gun slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor, but I barely heard it over the roaring in my head. My body folded, knees buckling as I collapsed to the ground. My hands clutched at my hair, my nails scraping my scalp as I screamed the word back at him, at myself, at the universe.

“No! No, no, no!”

The sobs tore out of me, violent and choking, like something was being ripped from my chest. I curled forward, pressing my forehead to the floor, shaking uncontrollably. My throat ached, raw, as the word tore from me again and again, each one louder, sharper, a dagger into the silence.

Draco’s voice reached me, faint, panicked, calling my name, but it was distant, blurred, like I was underwater.

Mattheo didn’t move. Or maybe he did, I couldn’t tell, my vision was smeared with tears, the floorboards spinning beneath me. My palms slammed against the ground, fists pounding as if I could break through it, as if the whole house might swallow me up and end this unbearable sound in my head.

I screamed until my voice broke, until it was only gasps and whimpers, my chest hitching uncontrollably. “No, no, please, no…”

The word meant nothing anymore, just a hollow cry, a desperate plea to stop something that wouldn’t stop.

My body shook so hard it felt like I was coming apart. My breath hitched in jagged gulps, choking on tears, spit, snot. My hands clawed at my face, covering my eyes, trying to shut it all out.

How did he know?

How could he know?

The thought looped in my mind, strangling me, pressing me deeper into the floor. My head spun, my ears rang, my chest heaved until I thought I’d suffocate.

“No,” I begged, not even sure who I was begging to. “No, don’t, don’t say that, don’t, please, please—”

I curled tighter, a ball on the floor, shaking violently. My sobs cracked through the room, shattering the silence, dragging everything with them. The floorboards beneath me blurred with tears, my cheek pressed to the wood. My body hurt, my throat raw, my eyes burning.

Lorenzo came crashing in through the kitchen doorway, his footsteps pounding against the floor. He froze when he saw me on the ground, curled in on myself, my voice breaking apart into ragged cries that didn’t sound human anymore. I could feel his shadow fall over me, hear the sharp hitch in his breath as he took in the scene, the gun lying useless on the floor, Mattheo hunched against the couch pale and wounded, Draco’s hands halfway between holding him back and holding me together.

“Merlin,” Lorenzo breathed, his voice tight, shocked, his eyes flicking between Draco and me. “What the fuck happened?”

Draco didn’t answer him, jaw set, eyes like stone. His gaze darted to the gun and I heard the scrape of wood as he shifted suddenly, grabbing it with quick, purposeful hands. The cold sound of metal meeting skin cut through the air. He looked down at it with something like disgust, like it was a piece of rot he couldn’t believe he had to touch.

His face twisted, fury and fear colliding, then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, muttering under his breath. The door slammed against the wall as he left, and I could hear his footsteps disappearing down the hall.

“Daph,” Lorenzo said quickly, crouching down beside me. He reached for me, but I lashed out without thinking, my arms flailing wildly, pushing him away. My sobs tore out of me in sharp bursts.

“No, no, no, don’t, don’t—” My voice cracked, and I scrambled against the floor, but he caught me with strong hands, pinning my wrists down gently but firmly against the wood.

“Hey, hey, it’s me,” he said, his voice urgent but soft at the same time. “It’s just me, Daphne, I’m not gonna hurt you, I swear.”

I thrashed under him, my lungs burning, my vision blurry with tears, the sound of my own wailing still crashing in my ears. My whole body wanted to escape, to run, but he leaned over me, holding me steady, not harsh but immovable.

“I’m sorry,” Lorenzo said, his voice breaking slightly, closer to my ear now. “I’m sorry I have to hold you like this. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself. Or someone else. Just breathe, please, Daphne, breathe.”

The word breathe cut through the fog just enough to make me gasp, sucking in air too sharp, choking on it. My chest rose and fell in frantic jerks, like it couldn’t keep up with the demand. My wrists twisted in his grip, but he didn’t let go, his weight keeping me pinned until slowly, I lost the energy to fight him.

“Good,” he whispered when my movements stilled, sweat dampening the back of my neck. “That’s good. You’re okay. You’re alright.”

I shook my head violently, tears spilling hot across my cheeks, my throat raw from screaming. “No, I’m not, I’m not—”

But he didn’t argue, he just looked down at me with eyes too soft, too full of worry, and it broke something deeper in me. My body sagged against the floor, shuddering.

“C’mon,” Lorenzo murmured, voice low and warm now, as if he’d found a different register just for me. He shifted, sliding one arm under my back, the other under my knees, and lifted me off the floor. I whimpered at the movement, clutching at his shirt with trembling fingers, my face pressed against his chest. His heart hammered against my cheek, almost as frantic as my own.

“I’ve got you,” he said, steady but strained. “I’ve got you, Daph.”

The room spun around us as he carried me down the hall, my sobs echoing against the walls, every step making the air feel heavier. He kicked the door to mine and Aurelia’s room open gently with his foot and lowered me onto the bed, his hands careful.

I curled into myself immediately, knees to my chest, fists to my mouth, rocking slightly without realizing it. My cries came softer now, hiccuping, strangled, the exhaustion setting in from the violent storm that had torn me apart.

The door clicked again, and Draco entered. He didn’t slam it this time, but the tension in his body was visible, wound tight like a bowstring. His hands were empty now, but I knew where the gun had gone. Somewhere not far enough away.

He stood by the edge of the bed for a moment, watching me, his face unreadable. Then, with a sigh that sounded like defeat, he sat down at the end of the mattress, his elbows resting on his knees, his head hanging low.

Lorenzo remained at my side, one hand on my arm, rubbing slowly, rhythmically, like he was trying to ground me. “It’s alright,” he said again, though his voice trembled now, betraying how not-alright he was. “You’re safe. No one’s gonna touch you.”

“I didn’t—” I choked on the words, shaking harder, my voice splintering apart. “I didn’t mean—”

“We know,” Lorenzo said quickly, cutting me off before the guilt swallowed me. His hand tightened on my arm. “We know you didn’t.”

But Draco lifted his head then, his eyes burning into me with a sharpness that made my stomach twist. “Didn’t you?” His voice was quiet, but edged with something lethal.

“Draco—” Lorenzo warned, shooting him a glare.

“No.” Draco’s tone hardened, his shoulders squaring as he turned to face me fully. “We can’t just pretend this didn’t happen. She pointed it at him, Lorenzo. At Mattheo. And then she pulled the fucking trigger.” His voice cracked on the last word, sharp as a whip.

I flinched violently, burying my face deeper into the pillow, muffling my sobs.

“Enough,” Lorenzo snapped, his own voice raising now, protective, defensive. “She’s not in her right mind, Draco, can’t you see that? Look at her.”

Draco’s jaw clenched, his hands curling into fists, but he looked anyway. He looked at my shaking body, my tear-soaked face, the broken sounds still slipping from my lips, and his expression faltered. For a heartbeat, his mask cracked, and I thought I saw fear there. Not of me, but for me.

“Then what do we do?” he asked finally, his voice quieter but laced with desperation. “What the fuck are we supposed to do, Lorenzo? She’s dangerous. To herself, to us—”

“I don’t know,” Lorenzo admitted, his own face pale, his thumb still brushing circles against my arm. “But yelling at her isn’t gonna fix it.”

Silence stretched thick between them, the weight of it pressing down on all of us. My sobs had softened to a steady stream of tears, my body trembling with each shallow breath.

Draco scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaling sharply. “Merlin’s sake.” He looked at me again, softer now, though his eyes were still clouded. “You can’t keep going like this, Daphne. You’ll tear yourself apart. You’ll tear all of us apart.”

His words sank into me like stones, heavy and suffocating. I wanted to scream at him again, deny it, push him away, but I couldn’t. The sobs came quieter now, exhausted, worn thin.

Lorenzo shifted closer, brushing hair from my damp face, murmuring something I couldn’t quite catch, a string of meaningless comfort words. His presence was warm, anchoring, the only solid thing in a world that had just split beneath me.

 

I clung to his sleeve, clutching it tight, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have anything left to say. The fight in my chest slowed to a dull, uneven thrum. My hands were still clutching at Lorenzo’s sleeve, knuckles white, but even my grip weakened as the sobs pulled me under, leaving only raw breath and the ache behind my eyes.

Lorenzo stayed there, crouched by the side of the bed, one hand steady on my arm, the other smoothing my hair back from my face as if that could somehow undo the wreckage. Draco lingered at the end of the bed. He hadn’t left, though I half-expected him to. His silhouette was sharp against the light leaking in through the curtains, his spine straight, his fists pressed against his knees. He was watching, not intervening, his jaw tight, eyes dark with thoughts I didn’t dare name.

The room quieted into a strange hush. No one spoke. The weight of everything that had just happened still clung to the air, thick and sour, but exhaustion blurred the edges of it for me. My body shook less and less until all that was left was the occasional tremor.

My breathing slowed. My eyelids dragged down, heavy as stone. I fought it at first, afraid of what would wait for me when I closed my eyes, but the fight bled out of me just like everything else had. The world dimmed in soft waves, blurred voices and blurred light.

I felt Lorenzo shift, easing me down fully against the pillow, pulling the blanket up to my shoulders with careful hands. He whispered something I didn’t quite hear, maybe my name, maybe just rest.

Draco stood then, the mattress dipping as he rose. I felt the movement more than I saw it, the faint brush of air as he stepped back. He didn’t say anything, not even a sharp parting word. Just the faintest sound of his breath, then silence.

The last thing I knew before sleep swallowed me was the weight of Lorenzo’s hand, still there, still steady, anchoring me against the dark.

Chapter Text

DRACO MALFOY

Lorenzo was already sitting up when I stood. He looked half-asleep, eyes heavy but mind sharp in that quiet way he had when he was thinking too hard about something he wouldn't say out loud. His voice cut through the quiet, low and certain.

"I'll talk to her in the morning, about the gun, and everything I guess," he said, his hand resting lightly on Daphne's shoulder.

I nodded once, though the movement felt automatic, disconnected from thought. Daphne was asleep, or close to it, her face half-buried in the pillow, her breathing uneven. The tear stains on her cheeks caught the overhead light like pale salt lines. Lorenzo brushed a strand of hair from her face and then climbed into the bed beside her, careful not to wake her. His arms went around her the way someone might reach for something fragile.

"I'll handle it," he murmured again, quieter this time.

I didn't answer. I just stood there a moment longer, watching the rise and fall of her back. I wasn't sure if the feeling in my chest was relief or resentment. Maybe both.

Then I turned away.

The floorboards creaked under my steps as I walked out. The house was silent now, the kind of silence that pressed against your ears until it felt like pressure instead of peace. My pulse was still racing, not from fear, not exactly, but from the memory of the gun. The way it looked in her hands. The way it looked aimed, even for a moment.

It wasn't magic. That was what unsettled me most. Magic was predictable. Guns weren't. They were blunt, stupid things that didn't require power or lineage or training, just a finger.

I'd hidden it badly, shoved it into a cabinet in the corner of the kitchen, wrapped in one of the old rags that still smelled faintly of smoke. I knew she'd find it again eventually. I could already picture her, pale hands shaking, rifling through the drawers until her fingertips brushed metal. The thought made me nauseous, but I told myself it would be okay for now, and that Lorenzo would talk her down from it.

The corridor stretched out ahead of me, long and dim, the walls lined with shadows that looked deeper than they should have been. I walked slowly, hand grazing the rough walls, counting each step because it gave me something to focus on. The rhythm of it kept me from thinking too much.

At the end of the hall stood the door. The one room in the house that still felt foreign, even though I used to sleep in that very space. The door hadn't been opened for a week. I stopped a few feet away and just stared at it. It wasn't just the wards, though they hummed faintly, a kind of static that prickled at the edge of my mind, it was what waited on the other side. The memory of her voice, calm and cutting, the way she'd looked at me after his death like she could see straight through my skin. Like she'd seen the worst part of me and wasn't surprised.

I drew in a breath, let it out slowly. My hands were cold. My head ached. I told myself I was just going to check on her, nothing more. I needed to see how she was holding up. She was a prisoner a bargaining chip, at most, but that didn't mean she was disposable.

That was what I told myself, at least.

The truth was less clean.

The truth was that I hadn't been able to look at her since that day we found him because she'd seen me when I stopped pretending. I didn't like people seeing me without the armour, but still, I reached for the handle. The metal was cold. The wards buzzed once, like a warning, before they yielded to me. I pushed the door open.

The smell hit first, stale air, sweat and old dust. Hermione sat exactly where I'd left her, still tied to the chair, head bowed, but her hair was now matted. She didn't move when the door opened, but I saw the twitch in her fingers, the small, involuntary reaction of someone who hadn't seen another human in too long.

I stepped inside, the wards sealed behind me with a hiss. Her head lifted slowly and her eyes adjusted to the light and then fixed on me. I'd seen that expression before, the mix of fury and exhaustion. She was thinner now, her skin pale under the grime. There was something frighteningly deliberate about the way she held my gaze. Defiance as a form of survival.

"You're back," she said hoarsely. Her voice was cracked from disuse. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten I existed."

"Wishful thinking," I said, and shut the door behind me.

She huffed, a bitter sound that might have been a laugh if it had any strength left in it. "Well, I wouldn't put it past you."

I ignored that. My boots made a soft scrape on the floor as I crossed to the small nightstand in the corner that I had put back into the room. On the wood, was a jug of water, untouched since I'd brought it over a week ago. I picked it up, poured some into the tin cup beside it, and set it down within her reach.

She looked at it but didn't move.

"Go on," I said. "You look like hell."

She didn't move, and I realised her wrists were raw under the ropes, she wouldn't be able to lift the cup without pain. For a second, I hesitated, then crouched and held it out myself.

She blinked at me. "Why the sudden kindness, Malfoy? Feeling guilty?"

"Fuck off." My tone was flat. "You're no use to anyone dead."

Her jaw tightened, but after a beat, she let me tip the water into her mouth. Her jaw trembled as she drank, spilling some down her chin. When I took it back, she wiped her mouth with her shoulder, glaring at me like she wanted to bite through the air between us.

"You know," she said, "I thought about you while I was sitting here. Wondered how someone like you sleeps at night."

I smiled faintly, the kind of smile that wasn't really a smile. "Poorly."

That made her pause. She wasn't expecting honesty.

I leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "You can stop trying to get under my skin, Granger. You're not the first person to call me a monster, and you won't be the last."

"I didn't call you a monster," she said, eyes narrowing. "I called you a coward."

That landed harder than I wanted it to. My throat tightened, but I kept my voice level. "Brave words from someone tied to a chair."

She didn't rise to it. She just looked at me, really looked, and for a second I saw the person she used to be, all sharp edges and impossible conviction. Then the exhaustion seeped back in, softening everything.

"Why are you here?" she asked finally.

I almost said I didn't know. But that wasn't true.

"Because you're going to tell me what Potter's planning," I said instead, keeping my tone steady . "And because I'm the only one who can make you do it."

Her mouth twisted into something between a smirk and a grimace. "You sound like your father."

That hit harder than it should have. I felt the old reflex, the anger, the need to defend, to correct. But it flickered out before it reached my tongue. I was too tired for pretence.

"My father's in Askaban. Dead." I said quietly.

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut through the air. Her eyes softened for half a heartbeat, just enough to be noticeable, then she looked away.

"I know," she said. "Theo too."

That name made the room tilt slightly. I turned away before she could see it. My chest felt tight again, that same dull pressure I'd been carrying for days. I walked to the far corner, pretending to check the wards, needing distance.

"Don't," I said under my breath.

"Don't what?"

"Say his name like that."

Her voice was gentler now. "He didn't deserve to die."

I stared at the wall. "Most of us don't. But that doesn't stop it, does it?"

I heard her shift against the ropes, the sound of fabric dragging against wood. "You were friends."

"I was a lot of things," I said. "That doesn't make any of them matter now."

There was a long pause.

When she spoke again, her tone was careful, like she wasn't sure if she was pushing too far. "You blame yourself."

I laughed once, dry and hollow. "Of course I do. Everyone does. That's the trick of it."

She watched me for a moment, then said, "You could at least stop pretending you don't feel anything."

I turned back to her, slow, deliberate. "You think I don't?"

"I think you hide behind words because they're easier to control than people."

That earned her a real reaction. A sharp, almost involuntary laugh. "Coming from you, that's rich."

Her lips twitched. "Maybe. But I'm still right."

I didn't answer. I just stood there, staring at her, at the bruises on her wrists, the dirt on her cheek, the faint tremor in her hands. She looked fragile, but not weak. Maybe that was what bothered me most, because I wasn't sure which one of us was actually trapped.

The silence stretched until it felt unbearable. I turned toward the door. "I'll bring food tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" she echoed. "You make it sound like you plan to keep me alive for a while."

"That depends on you."

Her gaze followed me as I reached for the handle. "And what about you, Draco?" she said softly. "How long do you plan on keeping yourself alive?"

I froze.

The wards hummed again, faint and electric, waiting for me to leave.

I didn't answer her. I didn't look back. I stepped into the hall, shut the door behind me, and leaned against the wall, eyes closed.

For a long moment, I just stood there, breathing.

The silence of the house felt different now, like it was holding its breath with me. Somewhere down the corridor, Daphne was asleep, Lorenzo too. Everyone else was still.

I ran a hand through my hair and forced myself to move.

Every step back to the main area of the house felt deliberate, as if I were trying to convince myself that I was still in control. That the walls weren't closing in. That the image of Theo's body wasn't burned permanently behind my eyelids. But when I reached the living room and looked back down the hall, all I could think about was the sound of Hermione's voice, the way she'd said my name like she wasn't afraid of it.

I shut the door behind me and sat down on the edge of the couch, looking out to where Aurelia was at his grave, Mattheo alongside her, the two of them just sitting there silently. They weren't talking. Just sitting there, opposite sides of the cross, their bodies rigid in that kind of mutual silence people share when there's nothing left to say. Aurelia had her knees pulled to her chest, her hair hanging forward, and Mattheo was hunched over slightly, his fingers pressed to his shoulder where the bandages still peeked out from under his shirt.

I watched him clutch the wound like it might remind him he was still alive. The light hit the grass, making the dew shimmer like glass. The cross caught it too, a thin silver edge that made it look freshly cut, raw. I hated how neat it was, it didn't suit him, lying still under something so clean.

I tried to look away, but my eyes kept finding their way back.

My chest hurt in a way that wasn't physical, though part of me almost wished it was. I could handle pain if it came with something to point to, a wound, a scar, a reason. But this? This was just weight. Unshaped, unending weight.

I leaned back against the couch and exhaled sharply. The sound felt too loud in the empty room.

It had been a week, the days had blurred into each other, a rotation of sleepless nights and empty mornings. I told myself I'd been busy, that there were things to handle, missions to plan, people to keep alive. But really, I'd been avoiding this. Avoiding feeling anything.

Theo's death had been a line I wasn't ready to cross. Yet, here I was standing on the other side of it, looking back like the world before it still existed somewhere I could reach.

I'd told myself I didn't cry. That I was above that kind of weakness. The truth was, I didn't even know how anymore. Somewhere along the line, I'd forgotten what it felt like. The tears never came, not even when the guilt did. They just sat there, behind my eyes, under my skin, pressing outward with nowhere to go.

I rubbed a hand over my face. My reflection in the glass looked tired, older somehow.

Aurelia reached forward in the garden, brushing something, maybe dirt, maybe grass, from the edge of the grave. Mattheo didn't move. He just stared down, fingers tightening against his shoulder until his knuckles whitened.

Suddenly, all the air seemed to drain from the room.

It hit like it always does, without warning. One moment I was sitting, breathing, pretending to be fine, and the next, the memories flooded in, merciless.

I should have known.

I should have known what it meant, the tremor in his hands as he shot spells with reckless ease, the vacant look that lingered a moment too long, the way his laughter had started sounding more like coughing.

But I didn't.

I didn't because it was easier not to. Because I was too wrapped up in my own mess, too busy trying to hold everything together with sharp words and tighter plans. I'd convinced myself that if I just kept everyone moving, no one would have time to fall apart.

It was easier to be furious than broken, and I'd stayed furious. At Theo, for leaving. At Daphne, for the gun. At Mattheo, for bleeding. At Aurelia, for still being here. At myself, most of all.

I'd spent years learning how to survive. But no one ever teaches you how to live after someone else doesn't.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them together until the tremor stopped. Outside, Aurelia shifted slightly, her arm resting on her knees. Her face was blank. Mattheo said something and she didn't respond. It wasn't comfort they shared. It was something heavier. Recognition, maybe.

I swallowed hard and looked away.

There was a glass of water on the table in front of me. I reached for it, but my fingers hesitated halfway. My reflection wavered in the surface, pale, hollow-eyed, jaw set too tight. I used to pride myself on control. On never letting anyone see me unravel. But lately, I couldn't tell if I was holding myself together or just afraid to admit I'd already come apart.

The glass hit the table too hard when I set it down, the sound sharp enough to make me flinch.

I stood up, pacing a little, because sitting still felt unbearable. Every time I stopped moving, I could feel the grief pressing in. It wasn't tears, I still couldn't cry, but it was something close. The kind of ache that makes your chest feel too small for your lungs.

I hated it. I hated feeling this much.

I wanted to go back to being numb, to being cold and clever and untouchable. But there's something about grief, once it finds a crack, it pries everything open.

I pressed my palm to the windowpane. The glass was cool. Outside, Aurelia had reached over the grave now, tracing the carved letters with her fingertips. Mattheo's head was bowed, his dark curls falling forward, his whole body tense.

For a moment, I imagined walking out there and saying something, anything. But what could I possibly say? That I was sorry? That I'd been wrong? That I missed him too? That this wasn't fair?

None of it was fair.

Because that was the thing about war, fairness had never been part of the deal. You made choices, and people died, and you told yourself it was inevitable. You told yourself you were doing what had to be done. And then you sat here, watching the grass grow over a grave and wondering when exactly you stopped believing your own excuses.

The outside light shifted slightly, throwing my reflection back at me again. I looked exhausted, drawn in a way that no sleep could fix. I used to think grief made people softer. But it doesn't. It just sharpens everything. Turns sadness into anger because anger's the only thing that feels like control, and I was so, so tired of control.

I sat back down, elbows on my knees, and let it happen. Not crying, not in the way people think. Just letting go. Letting the anger bleed into sorrow, letting the guilt stop hiding behind sarcasm. Letting myself feel what I'd spent the entire week swallowing down. The ache in my chest spread, dull and hot, until I thought it might crack something open. My throat burned. My vision blurred at the edges.

One moment, I was still on the couch, the sound of my own breathing loud in the silence, and the next, I was walking, fast, aimless, hands shaking like I'd been drugged. My body moved before my mind caught up. The corridor blurred past, the floorboards creaking under my feet, and then I was standing outside that door again.

The air here was colder, sharper somehow. My hand closed around the handle. It felt heavier than it should.

"Back so soon? To what do I owe the pleasure."

Something in me snapped at the sound of her voice, not because of what she said, but because of how she said it. Calm. Tired. Like she'd already seen everything that could hurt her.

"You think this is some fucking game?" I heard my voice before I recognised it.

She tilted her head, meeting my gaze. "No," she said softly. "But I think you're the one who needs saving."

That shouldn't have hit me. It shouldn't have meant anything. But something twisted in my chest, sudden and deep. I wanted to say something cruel, to end the conversation before it began. But instead, I just stood there, trembling.

"You know nothing about me," I managed.

"I know grief when I see it."

The words landed like a curse.

My jaw locked. "You don't—"

Hermione didn't look away. "You blame yourself."

"I told you—"

"You think you could've stopped him."

"Stop talking!"

The shout tore out of me before I could stop it. My hand moved, wand raised on automatic instinctive. A reflex born from too many years of fear. I wanted her to shut up. I wanted the noise in my head to stop. I wanted the guilt and all these feelings that were closing in on me to go away.

"Crucio!"

The magic left me violently, a pulse of red light that filled the room, swallowing the air, shaking the dust loose from the ceiling. Granger gasped, her body seizing against the ropes, but even then her eyes stayed locked on mine. I stumbled backward, the anger came rushing back before the horror could stick.

"Why didn't you stop him?" I was shouting now, at her, at myself, at the walls. "You were his friend too, weren't you? You saw him every fucking day, why didn't you—"

As the curse wore off, she didn't scream anymore, she didn't beg. She just looked at me, her gaze unflinching, and then somehow she reached me. Not with words, but with thought. A sharp, sudden presence slid against my mind, not invasive, but knowing.

Legilimency.

For a heartbeat, I resisted, pushing back with instinct. But she was stronger than I was in this moment. The connection snapped open like a door in a storm and suddenly, I wasn't in that room anymore.

I was seeing flashes again. Theo in the Great Hall, laughing so loudly that half the table turned to stare. His voice echoing off the stone, careless and bright. Theo in Potions, tossing a quill at Hermione across the bench, whispering something under his breath that made her roll her eyes and smile despite herself.

Theo on a broom warming up before a match, hair flying, sunlight in his eyes, yelling something at me before darting out of reach, a streak of silver and green against the sky.

Each image hit the same as they did a week ago, like glass under skin, sharp, fast, impossible to stop.

Theo walking beside me down a corridor, the two of us arguing about tactics, his laughter cutting through the tension like air. Then another, but it was darker this time. Hermione watching from across the courtyard as he sat alone on the steps, the world moving around him, his head in his hands, what looked like a letter in his lap.

The guilt hit me like a physical thing.

I staggered backward, clutching at my chest.

"Stop," I rasped, but she didn't. Her memories kept coming relentlessly.

Theo laughing again, the sound bright, almost innocent.

Theo, alive.

Theo, alive.

And then nothing.

The room snapped back into focus. The silence was deafening.

I was on my knees. The wand had fallen from my hand, clattering against the floor. My breathing came in ragged bursts. Hermione was still there, slumped in the chair, pale and shaking but watching me, not with hatred, but with something impossibly close to pity.

"I didn't do it to hurt you," she said quietly, voice hoarse. "You did this to me yourself before, and I did it to remind you."

I stared at her, chest heaving. "Remind me of what?"

"That he was real," she whispered. "That he lived. Not just the way he died."

The words broke me.

I felt a shift, subtle at first, like a seam tearing open somewhere inside my chest. The thing I'd been holding back all week, all month, maybe all my life, finally gave way. The anger drained first, seeping out of me in trembling breaths until there was nothing left to hold onto. Then came the grief, raw, unbearable and shockingly endless.

I tried to breathe, but the sound came out wrong, a choked, broken thing, neither breath nor word. My hands trembled against my face, as if I could hide from it, as if pressing hard enough could stop the flood. But it was no use. The tears came anyway.

It wasn't graceful. It wasn't quiet. It was years of repression tearing loose in a single, ugly, human sound.

I cried.

Not just for Theo. But for me.

For the boy I used to be, sharp-tongued and arrogant, with a name that still meant something and a future I thought I understood. For the boy who thought cruelty was strength and obedience was love. For the boy who believed he could control everything if he just stayed composed, stayed clever, stayed perfect.

I cried for the man that boy became. The man who thought power was the same as safety. Who thought cruelty would make him untouchable. The one who stood in a corridor at sixteen years old, terrified out of his mind, and pretended he wasn't. Who did what he was told because he thought that was what made you worthy and because his father said so

I cried for my parents, for my father's coldness that taught me how to build walls instead of bridges, for my mother's love, she spent her whole life trying to protect a family that was already doomed. She'd walk through fire for me, and I used to think that made her weak. Now I know it was the bravest thing in the world. I cried for the way they made me into something I never wanted to be, and for the part of me that still loves them for it anyway.

I cried for Lorenzo, because he's still trying to save us all when we're beyond saving. Because he hides his exhaustion behind jokes and I let him. Because he'll break one day, and I'll have to watch. I cried for Daphne because she's burning herself alive and calling it light. Because I've seen that same look in the mirror too many times. For Mattheo, even with all his anger and chaos, because beneath it all he's just another boy who never got to grow up properly, another soldier trying to make sense of a war that never ends.

And somewhere in all of that, I cried for her.

Not with pity, I don't pity her. It was recognition. Hermione Granger, tied to that chair, starving, alone, still managing to look at me like I'm human. I could almost laugh at the irony of it. Both of us trapped, but only one was physically.

We were the same kind of ruined, her by resistance, me by allegiance. Two sides of a mirror cracked right down the middle. And as much as I hated her, I couldn't really. Because she understood. She saw the cost. What the war had done to us all and what it had made of me.

The sobs came harder then, shaking something loose I didn't even know was still attached. It wasn't just sadness anymore. It was everything.

The nights I spent pretending I wasn't terrified.

The memory of Theo's laugh, fading faster each day.

The memory of all of our laughs, to be exact, before the war.

The endless ache of trying to be the son my father wanted and the man I could live with.

The silence after each task, the kind that filled my head until I thought it would split.

The loneliness that came with survival.

I pressed my forehead to the floor and let it happen. Let the sound tear out of me until it didn't sound like a sob anymore, but like some strange kind of freedom. For the first time in seventeen years, I wasn't pretending, I was just feeling. But it hurt. Fuck, it hurt. But underneath the pain there was something small and honest, the faint, impossible pulse of being alive.

When the shaking finally slowed, when the sobs thinned into shallow breaths, I lifted my head. The room was spinning, my eyes raw and swollen. Granger was still watching me, not cruelly, not even cautiously. Just watching. Like she understood that this wasn't really about her at all.

It hit me then, the unbearable, human truth of it all. We were both ghosts sitting in the aftermath of something no one else would ever understand. She might have been chained, but I was the one imprisoned and she knew it.

"I don't know who I am anymore," I heard myself whisper. My voice cracked mid-sentence. "I keep thinking I do, and then—" I gestured vaguely, to the air, to the emptiness between us. "And then I see what's left."

Granger's gaze softened, tired but steady. "Then maybe start there," she said. "With what's left."

I almost laughed. It came out broken, quiet. "There's not much."

"There's enough," she said simply.

I didn't thank her, I couldn't. But I held her gaze for a long moment, long enough that she'd know I meant it. That somewhere, under the guilt and ruin, I was still capable of meaning something at all. When I finally stood, the air felt thinner, clearer somehow, like the storm had passed.

Granger didn't speak again, she just sat there, watching, her expression unreadable.

"You can hate me," I said, voice cracked and uneven. "You should."

She shook her head faintly. "I don't," she murmured. "I wish I did, because it would make being here easier, but all I've realised is that I just wish you'd stop hating yourself."

I almost laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. "That's not how it works."

"Well he wouldn't have wanted this." she said.

The words echoed long after she fell silent.

I sat there for a long time, the air thick with dust and salt. My wand lay forgotten on the floor, and for once, I didn't reach for it. Outside, I could hear faint movement, Aurelia's voice, distant, calling for someone.

But something inside me had shifted again. The room felt different now, less like a prison, more like the aftermath of a storm. The kind that leaves everything ruined but clean. I stood slowly, legs unsteady, wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. Granger watched but didn't move. I opened the door and paused, looking back just once.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

She nodded. "I know."

The words hung there, soft but heavy, like smoke refusing to clear. I didn't know what to do with myself. My body felt drained, my hands still shaking slightly, my throat raw from everything that had just come out of it. The room smelled of magic, the bitter aftertaste of the Cruciatus still hanging in the air like burnt iron. I wanted to leave, to be anywhere else, but my legs wouldn't move. Instead, I sank down against the wall across from her, my back sliding against the cold plaster until I hit the floor.

For a long time, I just sat there, staring at her. She was studying me in that way she always had at school, dissecting everything, my words, my expression, my hesitation, as though she could see straight through me.

"Don't look at me like that," I muttered finally.

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like I'm still... worth looking at."

Something flickered in her expression, pity, maybe, or regret. I didn't want either. She shifted in the chair, grimacing slightly as the ropes bit into her arms.

"You came in here to feel sorry for yourself," she said. "Not to get answers."

"Don't think about flattering yourself, Granger," I snapped. "I didn't come in here for you."

She gave a quiet laugh. "No, you didn't. You came in here because you needed someone to break, and I'm the only one you're allowed to."

I clenched my jaw, looking away. She wasn't wrong, and that made it worse.

I could feel the air between us thickening, pressing down on me. Outside, the wind rattled the windows, and for a second I thought I heard laughter, not real, of course, just a ghost of memory. It twisted something sharp in my chest.

"You think you understand any of this?" I said finally. My voice came out harsher than I meant it to, brittle and jagged. "You don't know what it's like."

"I do, actually," she said calmly. "You're not the only one who's lost people, Malfoy."

I laughed bitterly. "Oh, please. You have no idea what it's like to be forced into this, to grow up surrounded by death and expectation until you can't tell the difference between loyalty and fear."

Her expression didn't change. "And you think that excuses it?"

"I'm not asking for excuses." I met her gaze. "I'm asking for comprehension. There's a difference."

"Understanding doesn't make it right," she said quietly.

"No," I murmured, "but it makes it bearable."

She looked away then, toward the floor, and for a long moment neither of us spoke. The silence stretched thin, humming with unspoken things.

When she finally looked back up, her voice had softened. "You think if you punish me enough, it'll undo what happened? To Theo? To Pansy?"

I felt my throat tighten, the old anger rising again, the instinct to strike, to deflect, to shut her up before she could dig any deeper.

"They were your friends," she said. "I know that."

"Don't." My voice broke, just a little, and I hated myself for it. "You don't know anything about them. Or me."

"I know you're hurting," she said simply.

I laughed again coldly, shaking my head. "Brilliant deduction, Granger. You should've gone into Divination."

She sighed. "Why are you here, really?"

"You're still not telling me anything."

Her chin lifted, stubborn as ever. "No."

"You realise you're only making this harder for yourself."

"I've been through worse."

I almost smiled. "I doubt that."

She raised an eyebrow. "You'd be surprised what people survive when they don't have a choice."

Her words hit me harder than I expected.

"I could end this," I said quietly. "All of it. Right now."

"If that's what you need to feel like you've won."

The defiance in her voice stung, but beneath it there was exhaustion, the kind that went bone-deep. I saw her tremble slightly, saw the way she tried to hide it. She was still human. Still strong. Still her.

I wanted to hate her for that. But I didn't.

"I don't need to win," I said, barely above a whisper. "I just don't know what losing means anymore."

She didn't answer, and for a moment I thought she wasn't going to. Then she said, "Maybe it means you finally stop fighting ghosts."

"I can't," I urged. "If I stop fighting, then they win."

"Who?" she asked. "Your father? The Dark Lord? Or yourself?"

I looked up at her sharply. "You talk too much."

She gave a faint, bitter smile. "And you listen too little."

The argument should've continued but I didn't have the strength. My anger was a thin veil now, slipping apart at the seams. All that was left underneath was exhaustion.

After a while, I just let my head fall back against the wall and closed my eyes. The ache in my chest dulled into something manageable, not gone, just quieter. I could hear her breathing across the room, uneven but steady.

"Why do you even care?" I asked suddenly.

Her voice was soft when she answered. "You're looking at me as if I have anything else to do in this state."

It wasn't the answer I wanted. It wasn't even one I understood. But for some reason, it made the silence that followed less unbearable. We stayed like that for what felt like hours, two people who hated each other, too broken to move, too tired to keep fighting. Eventually, my eyes drifted shut, and for the first time in what felt like years, I didn't dream of fire or screaming or the sound of someone dying.

Just quiet and her, breathing.

✦

When I finally stood, the room was still. Granger didn't look at me. I didn't say anything. The air between us was thick, too heavy to breathe through, too fragile to break. I turned toward the door, the boards groaning under my boots, and left her there.

The corridor outside was dim, lit only by the faint, flickering glow of the sconces along the wall. My body felt heavier than it should have, every muscle trembling faintly with exhaustion, and yet my mind was racing.

Pansy.

Her name had been echoing inside my head ever since Hermione had said it just then.

Pansy had been sick, I remembered that much, some curse she'd picked up. She'd been in St. Mungo's for weeks, pale and trembling, her laughter turned to coughing. I'd visited once. She'd smiled at me and told me to bring her alcohol, told me she was fine. And then she was gone. That was it. That was all.

Except, the memory was slippery, like trying to hold water in my hands. I could remember her eyes, her perfume, the way she'd always loop her arm through Daphne's when we walked through the halls but the end of it all was blurred, smudged.

I pressed my hand to my temple as I walked down the hallway, trying to force the noise out. The safehouse creaked and sighed, old wood groaning under wind. There were soft murmurs spilling from down the hall, Daphne's was awake again.

Inside, Daphne was sitting on the edge of her bed, hair messy her eyes red and bloodshot. Lorenzo was next to her, an arm slung lazily around her shoulders, his thumb tracing the side of her arm absentmindedly. For a moment, I just stood there watching them. The sight made something twist in my chest. Then, before I could think, I stepped into the room.

They both looked up at once.

"Draco?" Daphne said, her voice soft, tired. "You all right?"

I ignored the question, my heart pounding suddenly for no clear reason. "Do you remember Pansy?"

She frowned, confused. "Pansy?"

"Pansy Parkinson," I said. "Our friend. From school."

Lorenzo blinked, straightening slightly. "Who?"

I felt a prickle of unease crawl up my spine. "Don't fuck around, all right? Pansy. Black hair, loud voice, always used to sit next to you in Potions, Daphne, for Merlin's sake, she lived with you for nearly six years."

Daphne's confusion deepened. "Draco, I think you might be mixing her up with someone else. I don't know anyone by that name."

My stomach turned.

"You don't, what the fuck are you talking about?" I stepped closer, staring at her as if I could force the memory back into her head by sheer will. "She was your best friend. You and her and Aurelia, you were inseparable. You would always go shopping in Hogsmede together, you cried when her father died in fifth year—"

Daphne shook her head slowly, her brows knitting together. "I don't remember anyone named Pansy Parkinson. Did she... did she go to Hogwarts?"

The air left my lungs. "Did she go to Hogwarts?" I repeated, a sharp, panicked laugh breaking through my voice. "Yes, Daphne, she went to Hogwarts! She was with us! She fought with us, she died—"

My throat caught. I didn't even know how to finish the sentence.

Lorenzo stood then, his expression wary. "Draco," he said carefully, "you're not making any sense."

I ignored him, grabbing Daphne by the shoulders roughly. "You have to remember her. She was one of us."

Her eyes widened, fear flashing in them. "Draco, stop it, you're hurting me—"

I hadn't realised how tightly I was holding her until Lorenzo shouted, "Get your hands off her!" and shoved me backward, hard enough that I stumbled into the dresser.

I froze, breath coming quick, staring at the two of them. Daphne's hand was pressed to her arm where I'd grabbed her, eyes wide and wet. Lorenzo's arm shot out in front of her, shoulders tense, ready to fight if I moved again.

"She was our friend," I said, voice shaking. "Pansy Parkinson. How the fuck can you not remember her?"

"Because she doesn't fucking exist," Lorenzo snapped. "We've never known anyone by that name, Draco. You need to calm down."

"She does exist!" I shouted, voice cracking on the word. "She was real! She was real!"

My chest heaved. My mind was spinning, flashing through a hundred disjointed images of Pansy laughing in the courtyard, her arm hooked through mine, her voice echoing off the Slytherin walls, and then nothing. Like someone had cut the reel of a film halfway through.

"Her laugh," I whispered, my voice breaking. "You don't remember her laugh?"

Daphne's expression softened, uncertain. "Draco, I'm sorry," she said gently. "But I don't think that person ever existed."

I stared at at both of them, my heart pounding so violently it hurt.

"She did," I said again, though the words barely came out. "She did, she did, she did—"

My hands were shaking. I pressed one to my temple again, the way I had in the hallway, but this time it didn't help. There was a ringing in my ears, a low, crawling panic rising in my throat.

"I talked to her," I muttered. "I remember her. She was alive. She was sick, she—" I looked up at them, desperate. "How can you not, how can no one—"

Lorenzo took a small step closer, voice careful. "Draco, you've barely slept all week. You've been through a lot. Maybe you're confusing things—"

"I'm not confusing anything!" I barked. "I know what I saw. I know who she was!"

The room was spinning now. The air felt too thin. I could see Daphne whispering something to Lorenzo, something I couldn't make out, and the pity in her voice made my blood boil.

"Don't look at me like that," I said hoarsely. "Don't you dare look at me like I'm losing my mind."

"Draco," Lorenzo said, "maybe you should sit down—"

"I don't need to sit down! I need you to remember!"

My voice cracked again, echoing off the walls. For a long moment, no one said anything. Lorenzo was breathing hard, jaw clenched. Daphne was watching me with something like fear.

I took a step back, running a hand through my hair, trying to think, to piece together what was happening.

If they didn't remember her, if none of them did, then what did that mean?

Had I imagined her?

No, that wasn't possible. Granger saw her in my mind.

Except I couldn't remember a single thing clearly. I didn't even see what she saw. All I could remember were fragments. Just her voice, her perfume, the feeling of her next to me. Nothing solid. Nothing that would stand if I reached for it.

"She was real," I whispered again, almost to myself.

Neither of them answered. I turned toward the door, unable to stand their eyes on me any longer. Outside, the hallway was cold, the boards whispering beneath my steps. I felt like I was walking through water, the air thick, my thoughts slipping away faster than I could hold them.

At the end of the hall, I stopped and looked back. The door to Daphne's room was still open, a crack of light spilling out. Inside, I could hear their voices, low, worried, murmuring my name like it was something fragile. I pressed my palms to my eyes and let out a breath that trembled all the way down. For the first time in my life, I wasn't sure what was real anymore, and that terrified me more than anything else ever had.

✦

AURELIA AVERY

The sky was the colour of ash, threatening snow. I sat in front of Theo’s cross, my knees pulled up to my chest, the hem of my cloak damp with frost. The grass had hardened in the cold, silvered around the edges, and when the wind came, it bit straight through the fabric of my sleeves.

Across from me, Mattheo sat on the opposite side, his back against the old tree that cast a shadow over us. He hadn’t said a word. Neither of us had. The only sound was the wind, and every now and then, the quiet shift of his boots against the earth.

It was strange, the silence didn’t bother me anymore. Not like it used to. I was too tired for noise. Too tired for anything.

The grief had dulled now, worn itself down to something hollow and still. I couldn’t even cry anymore, the tears had run out days ago. What was left was a kind of emptiness, a faint echo of what used to be pain. Like a wound that had scabbed over too soon, still tender beneath, but numb on the surface.

Theo’s name was etched unevenly into the stone, carved by my wand. I traced it with my fingers, the cold biting through my skin.

“Theodore Nott,” I murmured under my breath, as if saying it aloud might keep him here a little longer.

Mattheo didn’t move.

I looked at him then, at the way his shoulders were hunched, his hand resting absently over the bandage on his shoulder where Daphne had shot him. He’d been pretending he was fine ever since it happened, but I could see the way he flinched when he breathed too deep, the way he avoided looking at her when they crossed paths.

He hadn’t looked at me much, either. Not properly, and I hadn’t tried to make him.

I tilted my head back, looking up at the sky. The clouds were thickening, heavy and bruised. The first flakes of snow would come soon. I could smell it, that sharp, clean scent that meant the world was about to turn white for a little while.

I pressed my palms together, my breath fogging between them.

“Father,” I whispered, not sure who I was speaking to. “Hear my prayers, please let him rest. Please don’t let him be cold.”

It was barely a prayer, more of a habit. Mattheo stirred then, the sound of his boots crunching in the frost pulling me back. He looked at me, his expression harsh, then down at the cross again.

“It’s getting cold,” he said finally, his voice low, rough from disuse. “You should go inside.”

I shook my head. “I’ll stay a bit longer.”

He sighed, pushing himself to his feet. The movement was stiff, like it cost him effort, and for a second he swayed, pressing his hand to his shoulder.

“You’ll freeze,” he muttered.

“I don’t feel it,” I lied softly, eyes still fixed on his name. “Not really.”

He didn’t reply. I could sense his frustration, the way he wanted to argue but didn’t have the energy for it. He lingered a moment longer, and then turned toward the house. His footsteps faded over the grass, through the snow-crusted earth, the sound growing smaller and smaller until it was gone.

The quiet came back heavier than before.

I let out a long breath, closing my eyes. My thoughts wandered, as they always did, back to the church. The echo of the organ. The candles burning low. The way Theo’s voice had cracked when he’d laughed about us being too far gone to ever be saved.

It had been almost beautiful, that moment. Fragile and wrong, but human. I wondered if he’d believed, even then. My eyes burned, but no tears came. Just the ache, always the ache nowdays.

The door to the safehouse creaked open behind me after a few minutes, and I didn’t turn around. Footsteps again, softer this time. Then the sound stopped beside me.

Something heavy brushed over my shoulders.

I looked down to see Mattheo’s jacket being draped across my body, its weight surprising me. It smelled faintly like smoke and his cologne, sharp, dark, and almost bitter. The fabric was warm from being inside.

I looked up at him slowly.

He was standing above me, his expression tight as ever. His eyes flicked over my face, then down to the grave.

“Keep it,” he said after a moment. “I don’t want it back now that you’ve touched it.”

The words stung, but not enough to hurt. They were too familiar, too expected, another wall he was building just as quickly as he offered anything close to kindness.

I didn’t answer.

He turned and started walking back toward the house before I could say anything, his figure retreating into the dim light spilling from the kitchen window. For a moment, I thought he’d stop. Turn around and say something else. But he didn’t.

When the door shut behind him, the silence fell again, deep and unbroken.

I pulled the jacket tighter around me, feeling the warmth slowly seep into my arms. It was too big, the sleeves falling past my hands, the collar brushing my chin. I could almost pretend he hadn’t meant what he said, that it wasn’t cruelty, just a kind of self-defense neither of us knew how to stop.

The sky had turned darker now, almost violet, and snow had started to fall. The flakes were soft at first, small and slow, melting as they hit the stone. I watched as one landed on the “T” in Theo’s name, then dissolved into a droplet that ran down like a tear.

My fingers trembled slightly, though I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or from everything else that lived under my skin.

“I love you,” I whispered.

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of winter and smoke. For a moment, I thought I could hear something in it, laughter, faint and ghostly, like a memory half-remembered. I closed my eyes, letting the sound wash through me. It didn’t bring comfort, not exactly. But it felt like something. A reminder that I was still here, even if he wasn’t.

I stayed there until the light began to fade, until the snow settled into my hair and the frost crept through the edges of Mattheo’s jacket. Until the world was quiet enough that I could almost believe I’d disappeared too.

The snow had already started to stick by the time I finally stood. It clung to my boots and hair, melted down my neck in icy streams. Mattheo’s jacket was heavy on my shoulders, the fabric damp now, but it was the only thing keeping the cold from gnawing straight into my bones.

When I pushed open the door to the safehouse, the sound hit me first, the low crackle of the fire, the quiet hum of tense voices. Warmth bloomed against my skin, sharp and sudden after the chill outside, and for a second it almost hurt.

Everyone was there.

Daphne and Lorenzo were sitting close together on the couch, their heads bent toward each other in the way people did when they didn’t want to be overheard. Daphne’s hands were shaking in her lap, though her face was composed, Lorenzo’s arm was slung protectively around her shoulders, his thumb tracing small, nervous circles against her sleeve.

Draco stood near the mantle, posture rigid, his eyes unfocused. There was something brittle in his expression, a kind of sharp tension that made the air around him feel breakable. His jaw was tight, and when he glanced up as I entered, his eyes were wild for just a second before he blinked and looked away.

Mattheo was the only one seated apart. He’d taken the armchair nearest the fire, body sunk deep into it, one elbow resting against the armrest while his other hand still hovered near his shoulder. His gaze was fixed on the flames, but it wasn’t the kind of look you give something when you’re seeing it, more like staring through it, into a place far away and dark.

No one spoke when I came in.

I shut the door quietly behind me and hesitated in the doorway, the warmth from the hearth meeting the cold still clinging to my clothes. The air felt thick, full of something I couldn’t quite name.

“What happened?” I asked softly, after a moment.

No one answered.

Lorenzo looked up at me briefly, his expression tight with concern, though not for me, I realised. He glanced sideways at Draco again, who was now pacing a little, running his hands through his hair.

“Nothing,” Draco said finally, voice too sharp, too quick. “It’s nothing.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it, which meant it wasn’t nothing at all.

I didn’t push. I just walked past him and dropped into the spot near the fire, close enough to thaw the numbness in my fingers. The jacket was still draped over my shoulders. It smelled like him. I pretended not to notice Mattheo’s eyes flicker toward me for a moment when I sat down.

For a long time, it was silent again. Only the fire spoke, its crackle echoing against the old wooden beams. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have moments that quiet, that close to peace, until the voice came, cutting through the room like a knife.

“Listen closely,” Voldemort’s voice hissed, serpentine and commanding, reverberating through the air and into the marrow of my bones. Every head in the room snapped up.

“A group of witches and wizards, eight of them, have been located in an abandoned building north of Bristol. They are to be retrieved immediately and brought to Riddle Manor. Untouched. Unharmed.”

No one breathed.

“Coordinates are being sent. You are not to wear uniform. You are not to raise suspicion, only provide them with safety. There has been… a mistake.”

The word mistake lingered longer than the rest, stretched and strange, like even he didn’t quite believe it.

Then the voice was gone.

The fire hissed once, a sound like a sigh, and the silence that followed was worse than his voice had been.

Lorenzo was the first to move. “What the fuck does that mean, a mistake?” he muttered, glancing around the room.

Draco didn’t answer. He just stared into the flames, the light turning his pale face almost translucent. “He doesn’t make mistakes.”

Mattheo shifted in his chair, finally leaning forward. “Maybe someone else did. A Death Eater task gone wrong?”

Daphne frowned, her voice unsteady when she spoke. “But if he needed something done why didn’t he send us in the first place? Why not send a patrol squad If it’s just retrieval—”

“Because he doesn’t trust anyone else,” Draco cut in sharply. “Or he wants something done a specific way. Which usually means something’s wrong.”

There was a note in his voice that made my stomach twist.

I looked around the room again. Everyone was tense, not just wary, but uneasy in a way that settled under the skin. We’d all heard the tone in that voice before. The kind that didn’t leave room for questions. Then, as if on cue, the fire flared. Sparks hissed, scattering across the hearth, and a folded piece of parchment flew out of the flames, landing on the floor at Draco’s feet. He bent down, picking it up carefully, eyes scanning the scrawled coordinates written in black ink.

“It’s real,” he said quietly. “He’s not testing us.”

“Could be a trap,” Lorenzo muttered. “Or a setup.”

“They’re all traps,” Draco replied. “That’s the point.”

The parchment trembled slightly in his hand, not because of magic, but because of how tightly he was gripping it. He passed it to Mattheo, who unfolded it further, scanning the letters. His brow furrowed.

“This address—” he said slowly. “I know this area. It’s all muggle factories and empty lots. No one lives there.”

“So why would they be there?” Daphne asked, her voice small, her hand gripping Lorenzo’s sleeve.

“Maybe they were caught hiding,” I murmured. “Maybe the Death Eaters found them and didn’t finish the job.”

Draco gave me a look, not cruel, but sharp. “You think he’d leave them alive by accident?”

I didn’t answer.

The room felt colder despite the fire.

Mattheo stood, wincing as he adjusted his shoulder. “We don’t have a choice. If we don’t go, he’ll know. If we do, and it’s something else—”

“Then we improvise,” Draco finished for him.

Lorenzo exhaled, a low, tense sound. “What if they’re civilians?”

“They won’t be,” Draco said. “He said there was a mistake. That means they’re marked for something. And if he wants them safe…”

His voice trailed off, and I could feel everyone thinking the same thing.

We weren’t rescuing them.

We were delivering them to their deaths.

No one said it aloud. But we all knew.

The fire flickered, throwing harsh shadows over the walls, over their faces. Mattheo’s jaw tightened. Daphne looked down at her hands, white-knuckled. Lorenzo rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something under his breath. Draco just stood there, unreadable again, though his eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them.

Finally, Mattheo spoke. “Everyone outside in two minutes. No uniform, but put something warm on.”

There was no argument. Everyone rose slowly, the sound of boots on the wooden floorboards filling the room as they went to prepare. The tension in the air was almost unbearable now. I stayed by the fire, still wearing Mattheo’s jacket. My hands were warm now, but I didn’t feel any of it. Something in me whispered that this wasn’t a rescue. That whatever waited for us out there was something far worse. But like everyone else in that room, I knew we didn’t have a choice.

The parchment still lay on the table, the ink glinting faintly in the firelight, and for a moment I imagined the people on the other end of those coordinates, trapped, waiting, probably terrified, believing that whoever came for them was their salvation. I almost wished that were true.

✦

The air outside was brittle and sharp, the kind that stung the throat when you breathed too fast. Snow had started to fall properly now, not the light dust that came and went with the wind, but a slow, steady descent of pale flakes that clung to coats and hair and boots.

The five of us stepped into the open street, each exhale fogging faintly in the cold. Mattheo moved to the front of the group, his wand already drawn. The rest of us followed, silent, shadows among shadows. The snow muffled everything, our footsteps, the wind, even the whisper of breath.

Then, without a word, he stopped, closing his eyes briefly before holding out his arm.

“Hold on,” he said, his voice low but steady.

The pull of Apparition was immediate and nauseating. The street melted away, replaced by the sharp, twisting rush of pressure, that unbearable feeling of being squeezed through something too small. My lungs burned, my mind went white. Then it was over.

We landed hard on cracked pavement, the air colder here, thinner. I stumbled slightly, boots scraping against the wet concrete.

We were standing in another street, but this time it was darker, emptier and lined with abandoned lots and warehouses just like Mattheo had said. Half the lampposts here didn’t even work, the few that did cast long, skeletal shadows that reached far across the broken road.

The sound of the wind whistling through the gaps in the metalwork was the only thing that moved.

Draco stepped forward, wand raised, scanning the row of buildings. “How many?”

“Six,” Mattheo replied, his tone clipped, but beneath it there was an unease, a note of something he couldn’t hide.

He turned, pointing down the street as he spoke. “Berkshire, Greengrass, take the first two on the left. Check the basement levels if there are any. If you find them, signal immediately, no noise. Just the flare spell.”

They both nodded, wordlessly. Daphne’s hand was already trembling where it gripped her wand, but Lorenzo squeezed her shoulder once before pulling her toward the first building.

“Malfoy,” Mattheo said next. “You take the last two, far end of the street. Use Legilimancy to alert us.”

Draco didn’t respond, just flicked his wand once in acknowledgment and started walking, coat flaring behind him, his figure cutting a long shadow across the snow.

“And me?” I asked.

Mattheo’s eyes flicked to me, cold and steady. “No. You’re with me.”

Of course.

I said nothing, just followed as he turned sharply and strode toward the two warehouses nearest the intersection. They were tall, blackened with soot, the metal walls groaning under the cold. The windows were all shattered or boarded shut, and snow had begun to gather along the ledges like dust.

The silence between us was deafening. It had always been.

He stopped outside the taller one, his wand held up, murmuring a charm under his breath. The lock clicked, a small metallic sound swallowed instantly by the wind.

He glanced at me once, eyes darker than usual. “You take the ground floor,” he said. “Check every room. Don’t leave anything untouched.”

“And you?”

“I’ll take the upper level. If you find them, flare me and I’ll alert the others by Legilimancy.”

His tone left no room for argument.

Still, something in my stomach twisted. “And if there’s danger?”

“What the fuck do you want me to say Avery? You’ll handle it,” he said, before pushing open the door and disappearing inside.

The air that spilled out was stale, smelling of rust and something sour. I hesitated for a second, just long enough to feel the cold settle through the fabric of his jacket, and then I stepped in after him.

The inside was a graveyard of forgotten machinery. The kind of place that had once been full of sounds like grinding gears, shouts, the hum of life, but now was just the echo of all that gone. The floor was littered with scraps of metal, half-rotten crates, tools left to decay. My breath came out in small white puffs as I raised my wand.

“Lumos.”

The light spilled outward, harsh and sterile against the concrete walls.

I started to move. The first corridor was empty. I could hear the creak of old beams overhead, the sound of Mattheo’s footsteps fading as he climbed the upper stairs. The walls were covered in peeling paint and rust marks that looked like veins. A single door hung off its hinges to my left, I pushed it open, and a dead bird fell out from behind it, its feathers grey and stiff.

Something in my head started to pulse.

It was faint at first, like a dull ache behind my eyes. I rubbed at my temple, blinking hard, and kept moving.

“Anyone here?” I whispered, voice low but steady.

No answer.

I stepped over an old chain on the floor, wandlight trembling slightly as I moved deeper into the warehouse. My breath echoed soft and rhythmic, too loud in the silence.

The ache grew sharper.

It wasn’t just a headache. It felt deeper, like pressure building somewhere behind my eyes, pushing, splintering. The kind of pain that wasn’t physical, but inside somehow.

I leaned against the wall for a moment, shutting my eyes.

“Not now,” I muttered. “Please, not now.”

But the pain didn’t listen.

It came in flashes, quick, disorienting bursts of light and sound that weren’t there. A flicker of red. A sound like someone screaming from very far away. The smell of smoke. I gasped and steadied myself against the wall, the rough concrete scraping my palm. The world tilted for a second and then it was gone again, leaving behind only the throb in my skull.

“Keep going,” I whispered to myself, forcing my feet to move.

But every few steps, the pain pulsed again. It was like something inside me was trying to claw its way out, through bone and thought and sense.

I tried to focus on the task.

The next room was larger, dust drifted in the air like ash. I swept my wand around slowly, scanning corners, the spaces behind crates.

Empty.

Only the echo of my own breathing.

I started toward the staircase. Maybe Mattheo had found something upstairs.

A sharp pain cut through my skull so suddenly that I dropped to one knee. The wandlight flickered violently, stuttering like a dying flame.

“Stop,” I hissed under my breath, pressing my hands against my temples.

It felt like a thousand voices whispering at once, not loud, not even coherent, just a low, rhythmic sound that didn’t belong in the world. My vision blurred, warped around the edges. I could feel something heavy pressing at the back of my mind, a hand, almost, trying to open something.

“Aurelia!” Mattheo’s voice from above rang in my head.

I forced my chin up, the pain still pulsing in my skull like electricity. “Over here!” I called, voice rough.

His footsteps pounded down the stairs a moment later, fast, deliberate. When he appeared at the bottom, wand raised, his eyes went immediately to me crouched near the wall, one hand gripping the floor to steady myself.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, crossing the space in a few quick strides.

“I—” I started, but the words tangled in my mouth. “Just a headache.”

He stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, though his jaw was tight. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press it either. Instead, he turned, scanning the room again. “There’s nothing upstairs. No sign of anyone. No sound, no movement.”

“Same here,” I said quietly, trying to keep my breathing even.

He frowned, lowering his wand slightly. “Then where the fuck are they?”

I didn’t answer.

The air in the warehouse felt heavier now, almost suffocating. The sound of the wind outside had faded entirely, replaced by a kind of stillness that didn’t feel natural.

Mattheo’s eyes narrowed. He glanced toward the ceiling again, then back at me. “Something’s wrong.”

The ache behind my eyes throbbed again, sharper this time, so strong that I winced.

He noticed. “Aurelia—”

“I said I’m fine.”

He stepped closer, his hand half-raising as if to steady me, then stopping himself. “You don’t look fine.”

 

I wanted to tell him to stop talking. To leave me alone. To just let me breathe. But all that came out was a shaky exhale.

He made a sound under his breath and then his hand caught my arm, firm and unrelenting. “Come on. We need to move to the next one.”

The grip was rough enough to sting. My boots scraped against the floor as he half-pulled me toward the door.

“Mattheo—”

“Save it,” he said sharply. “You’re pale as death and we’re wasting time.”

Outside, the cold hit like a wall.

The air burned my throat, colder now than before, the snow heavier, thicker, falling in wide, slow flakes that glittered under the sparse orange streetlights. The sky was the color of ash.

Mattheo didn’t let go of my arm. His hold was iron, meant to steady me, but it hurt. His fingers were digging into my sleeve, dragging me through the snow-strewn street. I stumbled once, twice, boots catching on uneven pavement.

“Let go—”

“You can barely walk straight,” he muttered. “Stop fighting me for once.”

His tone was all venom and edge, but underneath it was something else, something trembling and uncertain. He was scared, I could feel it in the way his hand trembled when he tightened his grip, as if letting go meant something worse might happen.

The next warehouse loomed ahead, its walls slick with frost, its door sealed shut with rust and old magic. A broken sign hung from a single chain, swinging gently in the wind.

Mattheo stopped just short of the entrance. “Unlock it.”

I blinked at him. The world felt hazy, distant, like I was standing just outside my own body. “What?”

“The door, Aurelia.” He sounded impatient now, almost desperate. “Unlock it. Alohomora. Do it.”

Right. Alohomora. I knew that.

My hand twitched toward my wand, fingers stiff with cold.

I raised it shakily, pointed it toward the door, but the word wouldn’t come. It was there, right there on my tongue, but it wouldn’t form. All I could think of was white noise, a blank space, where the spell should have lived.

“Come on,” Mattheo said through his teeth. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t—”

“Say it!”

But the word was gone. Every spell I’d ever learned felt suddenly unreachable, like my mind had been scrubbed clean. My thoughts tangled, breaking apart before I could grasp them. The headache surged again, blindingly sharp.

His jaw clenched. “For fuck’s sake.”

He shoved past me, flicking his wand. The lock splintered instantly, the metal screaming as the door blasted open and slammed against the inside wall. The echo rang down the street like a gunshot.

“Useless,” he muttered under his breath, not loud, but it cut just the same.

He caught my arm again, lowering me roughly onto the ground beside the door. The cold seeped through my clothes at once, biting into my skin.

“Stay here,” he ordered, voice low but fierce. “Don’t move. I’ll check the inside.”

“Mattheo—”

“Stay.”

The word cracked like a whip.

Then he was gone, boots echoing against the concrete as he disappeared into the dark.

I pressed my hand to my head, breathing hard. The ache pulsed again, heavier now, deep inside my skull like something alive. My vision blurred at the edges, the world shifting between light and shadow, shape and haze.

I don’t know how long I sat there, seconds, maybe minutes, until I heard a voice.

“You’re not dying, Aurelia.”

I froze.

When I turned my head, he was sitting beside me as though he’d always been there.

Tom Riddle.

He looked impossibly clean against the decay of the street, dark robes untouched by snow, posture relaxed, expression soft in a way that felt wrong. The snow didn’t touch him. The light didn’t quite touch him either.

My throat tightened. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re not well, and I can’t have you breaking apart yet.” He said gently.

I stared at him. “I’m fine.”

He smiled faintly. “You’re lying to both of us.”

“I don’t—”

“Your mind hurts,” he said, as if reading it straight from me. “But I’ll fix it. Do you understand? You’re not sick.”

The words didn’t make sense. None of it did.

He leaned forward slightly, voice a low hum. “I can make it stop.”

I wanted to tell him to go away, but the pain was unbearable now, pulsing so violently I thought I might pass out. He reached out, his hand cool, almost soothing, and pressed his fingers against my temple.

Instant silence.

The pain stopped just like that. The relief was so sudden I nearly sobbed.

“There,” he murmured. “Better?”

I nodded weakly.

“Good.” His tone softened further. “You’re stronger than they think. Don’t let them make you doubt that.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were,” he interrupted. “But it doesn’t matter now. For now, stand.”

He held out his hand and I took it. When he pulled me to my feet, the world felt stable again, too stable. The fog in my head had cleared completely, leaving only that dull hum of his magic beneath the surface, steady and familiar.

The door to the warehouse groaned open behind us, and Mattheo’s voice cut sharply through the air.

“What the fuck is this?”

He was standing in the doorway, wand raised, eyes wild. His expression shifted from fury to confusion to something close to disbelief.

Riddle didn’t move. “You’re late,” he said smoothly. “She was unwell.”

Mattheo’s hand trembled on his wand. “Get away from her.”

“I fixed her,” Tom said simply. “You should be grateful.”

“Fixed her?” Mattheo repeated, his voice breaking with incredulity. “What the fuck are you playing at, if anything you’re going to kill her.”

“I’m the reason she’s alive,” Tom stated simply. “You can decide for yourself which is more important.”

“Don’t,” Mattheo said desperately like the sound of someone holding himself back from breaking. “Don’t talk to her.”

Tom turned his gaze on him fully now, eyes gleaming faintly in the dim light. “I can talk to whomever I please.”

Mattheo’s jaw clenched. His breathing was fast, uneven. “You’re not real.”

He smiled faintly. “Then what are you so afraid of?”

The question hung there heavy and poisonous.

Before Mattheo could answer, something shifted. A ripple through the air, a pulse of pressure that made my wand hand twitch instinctively. Draco’s voice tore through all of our minds at once.

I found them. My second warehouse. Everyone come now.

The Legilimency cue burned against my thoughts like a spark, forcing me to gasp. Mattheo’s eyes flicked toward me and for the first time since we arrived, I saw something raw behind the anger. Fear.

He turned back to Tom. “Stay out of her head.”

Tom inclined his head slightly, almost amused. “You really think you can stop me?”

But Mattheo wasn’t listening anymore. He caught my wrist again, less rough this time, but still urgent. “Come on.”

“Mattheo—”

“Now.”

I stumbled after him as he pulled me toward the center of the street, where the others would already be converging. Snow fell harder now, sticking to our hair and shoulders, the wind picking up in mournful howls between the empty buildings.

Behind us, for a brief moment, I thought I saw Tom still standing by the doorway, still and unbothered, watching me close. Then he was gone.

I shivered, though it wasn’t from the cold.

 

Mattheo didn’t look back. His hand was still wrapped tightly around mine as we ran through the falling snow, toward the place where Draco waited and whatever waited with him.

The air in the warehouse was heavy with the smell of damp concrete and old rust that made my stomach twist as soon as we stepped inside. The place was dim, lit only by the pale glow from a few shattered windows high above, where the last of the afternoon light struggled to get through the grime.

There were eight of them just as Voldemort said. Eight witches and wizards. All bound, all bleeding, all terrified. They were slumped against a cold brick wall, their wrists raw from rope, faces streaked with dirt and tears. A few flinched when we entered, too weak to scream but desperate enough to try. Lorenzo was the first to move, dropping to his knees beside a wizard with a deep gash along his cheek.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly, his voice almost trembling. “We’re here to help you, alright? You’re safe now.”

But we all knew safe was a lie. None of us said it aloud, it sat there between us like smoke, clinging to our lungs. Daphne followed close behind, her wand cutting through the ropes sharply, muttering charms to stop the blood where she could. Mattheo didn’t waste a second either, his expression blank, detached and scarily efficient. His jaw tightened each time a victim whimpered, but he didn’t stop, didn’t soften. He just worked.

Draco moved silently, scanning the bodies. He crouched by an older wizard whose leg was twisted, whispering a healing charm under his breath. His hands were steady, but his eyes were wild, flicking to every sound, every breath. He looked like he was trying to outrun his own thoughts.

I knelt beside a man who couldn’t have been much older than I was, shaking so hard that his teeth chattered. His wrists were purple from the ropes. Lorenzo pressed his hands over the marks and whispered, “Episkey,” watching the bruises fade into pale skin.

He looked at us with wide, fearful eyes. “They said they’d come back,” he stammered, his voice cracking. “They said if we screamed, they’d kill us.”

My throat tightened. “Who said that?”

“The ones in black cloaks.” His lip quivered. “They brought us here.”

Across the room, Mattheo froze. His wand lowered a fraction. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and there it was, the knowing. The quiet, wordless horror of understanding exactly what that meant.

Death Eaters.

The very people we were sent by.

“Keep working,” Mattheo said roughly, like forcing the words out before they could taste of guilt. “Don’t scare them.”

Daphne’s eyes flicked toward him, sharp and questioning, but she didn’t argue. She just moved to another captive, whispering soothing words, her hands trembling faintly.

Lorenzo’s sleeve was stained with someone’s blood. “They’re in bad shape,” he muttered. “Whoever tied them up didn’t care if they lived or died.”

Draco let out a bitter laugh, cold and humorless. “Does anyone ever?”

No one answered him.

For a while, the only sounds were the flicker of wands, the low murmurs of healing spells, the quiet cries of the people we were supposed to be saving. The room felt like it was shrinking, pressing in on us, too many bodies, too much fear, too much truth we couldn’t say.

I tried to focus and to keep my hands steady, to remember what it felt like to be human. The boy I was helping gripped my wrist suddenly, his nails digging into my skin.

“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t take us back to them.”

“I won’t,” I lied, the words barely a breath.

Mattheo glanced over. He heard me but he said nothing. His jaw was locked, his eyes somewhere far away.

Then one of the older witches, a woman with streaks of blood down her neck, lifted her head weakly. “Who sent you?” she croaked, voice trembling. “Who told you we were here?”

The question hung there, heavy and dangerous.

Daphne looked at her, then at me, and then at Mattheo. “We just got a message. From the Order.” she said quietly. “You’ll be safe now.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly, flickering between us, as if she could see right through the words, into the parts we were trying to hide. Draco went back to healing. Lorenzo murmured something I couldn’t hear. Daphne wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and didn’t look at anyone.

I sat back on my heels, exhausted, cold, my heart pounding with something that wasn’t fear but wasn’t courage either.

For a long time, none of us moved. We just stayed there, the five of us and the eight strangers, in that rotting warehouse, the light outside dimming, the wind howling through broken windows.

We were supposed to be rescuers. Heroes, even, if you listened to the way Voldemort dressed it up. But as I looked at the faces in front of me, the trembling hands, the haunted eyes, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were just messengers of something far worse.

That this wasn’t a rescue at all.

It was a delivery.

Mattheo stood finally, brushing the dust from his sleeves. “We need to move them,” he said flatly. “Get them ready to Apparate.”

Each of us had someone clinging to our arms. They were weak, trembling, but still alive — still believing.

Mattheo held two, one on each side, their hands gripping his coat as though he were their saviour. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hollow.

I’d reached for one of the injured witches, but before I could steady her, Mattheo took her arm himself. He didn’t explain why, just moved in front of me, murmured something like “I’ve got her.” And then I had no one. My hands hung empty.

The air cracked around us as we Apparated, the sound sharp as a whip before silence swallowed it whole. The cold, rotting scent of the warehouse vanished, replaced by something far worse, the sweet, heavy perfume of Riddle Manor. It clung to the air like oil, thick and suffocating, coating the back of my throat.

We landed just beyond the wrought-iron gates. The moon hung low over the estate, pale and distant. The manor loomed like a mausoleum, all sharp edges and dark windows, its spires cutting into the night.

Their voices filled the air as we started walking, a chorus of disbelief, gratitude, relief so pure it almost hurt to hear.

“Thank you,” one of them whispered, voice cracking with exhaustion. “Thank you, you don’t know what they did to us—”

Lorenzo didn’t answer. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, his expression pale and unreadable.

Another witch, limping beside Draco, managed a weak smile. “We thought you’d never come.”

Draco’s hand twitched slightly at his side, but he said nothing. His lips were pressed so tightly together that they’d gone white.

Mattheo’s hand flexed against the arm he was holding. “You’re safe,” he muttered without looking at him. “You’ll be alright.”

The gates of Riddle Manor creaked open as we approached, silent magic obeying Voldemort’s will even from a distance. The path leading up to the grand stone steps shimmered faintly under moonlight, wet from earlier rain. Our footsteps echoed against it, the sound hollow and strange.

I walked behind the rest of them, the cold air burning through my lungs, my mind fogged with something like nausea. The people kept talking softly amongst themselves. About their homes. About their families, about how the worst was over. They believed it and none of us stopped them.

The front doors of the manor opened before we even reached them, the hinges sighing under their own weight. Warm light spilled out from the foyer, golden and inviting, hiding everything monstrous beneath it. The moment we stepped inside, that warmth turned suffocating.

The marble floors gleamed like water. The portraits lining the walls whispered faintly as we passed. The grand staircase ahead curled upward into shadow.

The rescued group stood just inside the threshold, looking around in awe, as though they’d entered a sanctuary.

“This place…” one of them whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

Mattheo’s hand tightened on his wand, still hidden in his sleeve. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “It’s something.”

The wizard beside me smiled at me, a small, broken smile that twisted something deep inside my chest. “Is this where the Order meets? Is this the safehouse?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

Daphne stepped forward before I could answer. Her voice was soft, careful. “Yes,” she said, each word deliberate. “Stay inside. They’ll take care of you here.”

The boy nodded, relief flooding his face.

Lorenzo cleared his throat. “We should… uh, check the perimeter,” he said quickly. “Just to be sure it’s clear.”

Mattheo’s eyes flicked toward him, a silent understanding passing between them. Then, to the group, he said, “Stay together. Don’t open any doors.”

The witches and wizards nodded obediently, some sitting on the marble floor, others leaning against the walls. One of them began crying quietly, but it was glistening tears of relief this time.

Mattheo was the first to leave, pushing through the heavy doors. I followed, the night air slapping against my face as soon as we were outside again. Draco came next, his shoulders tense, Daphne close behind him. Lorenzo was last, glancing once over his shoulder before letting the doors close. The sound of them shutting echoed through my bones.

Draco ran a hand through his hair, his voice low, raw. “They think they’re safe.”

Mattheo didn’t look at him. “They won’t be for long.”

Daphne swallowed hard. “Do you think—”

“No.” Mattheo’s tone cut her off, sharp as glass. “Don’t think. We’re not supposed to.”

Lorenzo turned his head away, his jaw tightening. “That’s easy for you to say.”

I stood there, silent, staring at the manor. It’s tall windows were gleaming faintly in the dark. I could still see them through the glass, the faint movements of the people we’d brought here. The flicker of their shadows as they waited, trusting, unaware.

They were going to die and we had just delivered them.

The ache behind my eyes pulsed again, faint but steady, like a heartbeat somewhere deep in my mind. For a moment, it drowned everything else out.

Draco was pacing now, his voice rising. “I looked into one of their minds, their Order followers, every single one of them. He must think that they have some kind of information that was worth staging this rescue for.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Daphne pressed her palms against her eyes. Lorenzo just stood still, looking between them both, his face drawn tight with exhaustion. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. The guilt felt too large, too heavy to fit inside my body.

Mattheo finally straightened, his breathing uneven. “We’re done here,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

He turned on the spot, disappearing into the dark with a crack. Draco followed, then Daphne, then Lorenzo, each of them vanishing one by one, leaving nothing but the faint hum of the wards behind. For a moment, I stayed where I was. The manor stood before me, vast and silent, its windows gleaming like open eyes.

 

Inside, I could almost hear them, the voices of the ones we’d brought were nothing but soft, and grateful, unaware of what was coming. I wrapped Mattheo’s jacket tighter around my body, the fabric cold against my skin, and then finally, I turned on the spot and disapparated.

Chapter Text

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

The fire was low, hissing the way it always did when the wood was damp. The whole house smelled of kindling and old fruit. Lorenzo was beside me on the couch, legs sprawled, his long fingers turning a cigarette between them as though he wasn’t sure if lighting it would ruin the mood. Across from us, Draco sat rigid in the armchair, eyes half-lidded, posture impeccable as ever even in this ruin of a house. Mattheo was in the corner, half in shadow, elbows on his knees, face sullen.

It was Lorenzo who said it first. “I just realised,” he murmured, voice breaking the crackle of the fire, “it’s Christmas tomorrow.”

I blinked, looking toward the window where a thread of wind hissed through a crack in the pane. Christmas. The word didn’t fit here. Not with the mould on the ceiling and the faint smell of rot.

“Really?” I asked, trying to sound surprised.

“Yeah.” He offered a crooked smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. “Feels weird, doesn’t it? Feels like it was summer yesterday.”

Draco gave a quiet scoff.

“Shutup,” Lorenzo said, stretching, “remember what we used to do? Malfoy Manor, the parties, your mother and those ridiculous floating trees in the ballroom.”

Draco’s expression flickered at the mention of Narcissa. I saw a brief softening, quickly buried.

“She still does, probably,” he said. “Though this year will be different.”

I tilted my head. “Different how?”

He didn’t look at me when he answered. “I’m going tomorrow. Alone. Mother wrote last week and said she wanted to keep things small. Father’s imprisonment, all the Ministry eyes, she wants it quiet.”

“Oh.” I tried to mask my disappointment with politeness. “That’s… nice. That you get to see her, I mean.”

He shrugged, but I caught the faintest tremor of longing in his jaw. “I suppose.”

Lorenzo leaned forward. “So we’re not invited this time?”

Draco glanced at him, a shadow of his old smirk tugging at his lips. “Apparently not. Mother’s decided the rest of you tend to be liabilities.”

Lorenzo chuckled, shaking his head. “But she loves me. She used to call me charming.”

“She used to call you trouble,” Draco corrected.

“Same thing.”

Mattheo still hadn’t said a word. He sat on the floor near the fireplace, one hand on his knee, eyes trained on the flames like he was trying to see something inside them. The light cut across his face in sharp planes, the wound still evident from where I’d shot him. The silence around him was thick and heavy.

I wanted to say something, but nothing fit.

So instead, I turned back to the others and forced a smile. “I’m going home tomorrow too,” I said lightly. “To my family.”

Lorenzo’s head whipped toward me. “No fucking way.”

The surprise in his voice almost made me laugh again. “Of course. They’re expecting me.”

“Oh.” He nodded, buying it easily. “That’s… good, Daph. I didn’t think you were still in touch with them.”

“I am,” I lied smoothly. “We write sometimes.”

The truth was I hadn’t seen them since I was seventeen, and I had no intention of starting now. I’d be working the Christmas shift at the club. I’d fake a smile, let men talk at me until my ears rang, and maybe drink with Lelia after closing. At least she’d be there.

Lorenzo leaned back and sighed. “It’s funny,” he said quietly. “Every Christmas used to feel like the world was standing still. Like everything outside stopped just so we could breathe for a while. And now…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely toward the boarded windows, the peeling paint, the damp floorboards. “Now it feels like the world’s ended and no one told us.”

His words hung in the air.

Last year at Christmas we’d been at the Manor, wearing expensive robes and dresses. I’d danced with Lorenzo until my heels broke, Theo, Aurelia and Mattheo had been drinking firewhisky straight from the bottle, teasing Draco about his dress robes. The night had felt endlessly warm.

Now Theo was buried in the frozen ground behind the safehouse, Aurelia spent most days kneeling by his grave, and everything smelled like mildew.

“It’s strange,” I said softly. “How quickly things change.”

Lorenzo turned to me, eyes warm. “You miss it?”

I nodded. “All of it. Even the stupid parts.”

Draco snorted again, though it sounded more like a sigh. “Nostalgia is dangerous,” he said. “Makes you forget how awful things really were.”

“Some things were fucking awful,” I agreed. “But some weren’t.”

He didn’t answer.

“We could still make it feel like Christmas, you know. I could charm some candles, bring in a tree from outside. We could find something resembling cake your mother made that one year.” Lorenzo said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Or,” Draco said flatly, “we could not.”

Lorenzo laughed under his breath. “You’re no fun, Malfoy.”

Mattheo finally stirred then, dragging a hand through his hair. His voice, when it came, was rough and low. “You two can decorate all you want,” he muttered. “Won’t change anything.”

The tone killed whatever warmth had flickered in the room.

Draco glanced at him, wary. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Mattheo didn’t look up. “It means it’s still war. He’s still dead, and we are all stuck.”

No one replied. The silence pressed in, heavy and thick, the kind that makes your heartbeat sound too loud. Draco got up from his armchair, heading into the kitchen, muttering something under his breath I couldn’t catch.

Lorenzo looked like he wanted to argue, but his shoulders sagged instead. “Guess you’re right,” he murmured.

Mattheo stared into the fire again, the orange light burning in his eyes. “Doesn’t feel right to celebrate anything.”

I watched him quietly, the way his hand clenched around his knee, the way his jaw locked and unlocked like he was holding something inside. Guilt, maybe. Or anger. Probably both. Still, something in me rebelled against his hopelessness. Maybe because if I didn’t keep pretending, I’d fall apart completely.

“It doesn’t have to be celebrating,” I said gently. “It could just be remembering.”

He looked up then, and for a second his eyes softened. Just a second.

“Remembering doesn’t bring anyone back,” he said.

“I know.”

The fire cracked again. I leaned back on the couch, feeling the exhaustion seep into my bones. Lorenzo lit his cigarette at last, the smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling. It smelled sharp and familiar, and for some reason it made my chest ache.

The floor creaked behind us. I turned and saw Aurelia as she stood in the doorway, still in the oversized jumper she slept in, her hair half-tangled and her eyes dull with fatigue. The shadows under them were almost purple. She looked like someone who hadn’t eaten or slept in days, which was probably true.

“Hey,” I said softly.

She blinked at the room, as if surprised to see anyone there. Lorenzo quickly ground out his cigarette in an empty mug and rose to his feet, gesturing toward the couch. “Here, take my spot.”

She started to protest but he was already steering her gently forward, his hand light on her shoulder.

“Sit,” he insisted. “You look like you’re about to faint.”

Aurelia smiled faintly and sank onto the couch, curling her legs under the blanket I’d been using. She leaned into me without thinking, her head finding my shoulder, the contact startled me for a moment, then something inside me loosened. I slipped an arm around her, holding her closer.

She was cold. Always cold lately.

“What were you all talking about?” she murmured.

“Nothing important,” Lorenzo said, still standing, watching her with that half-worried, half-brotherly expression he always wore around her.

I tightened my arm around her shoulders, trying to sound brighter than I felt. “Guess what day it is tomorrow.”

Aurelia blinked, frowning slightly. “Tomorrow?”

“Mm-hm.” I smiled at her, trying to coax some spark of life into her face. “What day?”

She tilted her head, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I don’t even know what month it is.”

I laughed softly. “Take a wild guess.”

Her eyes searched mine uncertainly. “October?”

That made Lorenzo laugh the first real laugh I’d heard from him all night. “Fuck. Not even close.”

“It’s Christmas, Auri,” I said gently.

She stared at me, and for a long moment her expression didn’t change. Then something flickered across her face, faint recognition, disbelief, and then, finally, a fragile sort of wonder.

“Christmas,” she repeated quietly.

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Can you believe it?”

Aurelia gave a tiny nod, her lips pressing together. Then, suddenly, she smiled, not her usual sad one, but a real, small one that made my throat tighten.

“That’s… nice.”

“Nice,” Lorenzo repeated, grinning. “That’s one word for it.”

“Do you remember last Christmas?” I asked, watching her eyes light up faintly. “At the Manor?”

She nodded slowly. “Barely. There were lights and Draco’s mother gave us those silver charms. Mine broke. But my brain feels all foggy, like I can barely remember anything.”

“I still have mine somewhere,” Lorenzo said. “Probably under a pile of rubbish in my room.”

Aurelia smiled again, but it was fading already, exhaustion tugging at her features. Her eyelids drooped.

“Go back to bed and rest,” Lorenzo said softly, crouching beside the couch. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep sitting up.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

“You should,” I said gently. “It’s freezing in here and you haven’t been well the last few days.”

“I don’t mind.”

He reached for her hand, his touch gentle. “Come on, Auri. We’ll sort everything out tomorrow.”

She hesitated, then nodded faintly and let him help her up.

“Goodnight,” she murmured to me.

“Night, love,” I whispered back, watching as she followed Lorenzo down the hall.

The sound of their footsteps faded, then a soft click of the bedroom door.

For a few moments I just sat there, staring into the fire. It was burning low now, the wood collapsing in on itself, turning to blackened curls of ash. The air felt heavier without her in the room. When Lorenzo came back, he looked tired but softer somehow. There was ash smudged on his fingers where he’d touched the firewood earlier, and his curls were falling into his eyes. He dropped back onto the couch beside me, exhaling a long breath.

“She asleep?” I asked.

He nodded. “Out like a light. Barely made it to the bed before she collapsed.”

“She’s been getting worse,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

We both stared into the flames for a while, the silence settling between us like a blanket.

After a few minutes, he tried to lighten it again. “So,” he said, nudging my knee with his. “Since it’s Christmas, where are all the presents?”

I snorted. “You’re sitting on it.”

He feigned offense. “A couch? That’s it?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Unbelievable.” He shook his head, mock-serious. “I pour my soul into friendship and get this shit in return.”

“You should be grateful,” I said, grinning despite myself. “You could’ve gotten nothing.”

He leaned back, hands behind his head, pretending to think. “Hmm. Maybe there’s still time for Santa to break in through the chimney.”

I rolled my eyes. “Santa would kill himself if he saw this place.”

“Fucking hell, he’d probably skip us entirely. We’re on the permanent Naughty List.”

“Understatement.”

I leaned back, watching the flames dance low, feeling their warmth crawl lazily across my legs. For a second I almost let myself imagine it differently, the same room, but bright and full of laughter, the table set, presents under a tree, Theo alive, Aurelia smiling. Me, whole.

It was such a beautiful lie that it hurt to look at.

“Hey,” Lorenzo said suddenly, breaking the quiet. “When this is all over, I’ll get you a real present.”

I laughed softly. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

I turned to look at him. “What would you even get me?”

He thought for a moment, pretending to study me. “A dress. Red, maybe, you always look good in red. Or one of those ridiculous perfume bottles you used to collect. But something beautiful.”

I smiled. “That sounds nice.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Then it’s settled. You get a dress. Aurelia gets… I don’t know, something shiny. And Mattheo gets coal.”

That made me laugh, properly this time, the sound echoing around the room. “Perfect.”

He grinned, then his face softened again. “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

I looked at him, surprised by the sincerity in his voice. “You too.”

We fell quiet again. The fire was nearly gone now, reduced to glowing embers. The smoke curled in thin threads toward the ceiling, fading into the dark. Something strange stirred in me, a little pulse of energy in my chest, faint at first, then sharper, electric. The kind of spark that made the world feel suddenly possible again.

I straightened, looking around at the cracked windows, the blankets thrown over the armchairs, the warped floorboards. We looked like ghosts haunting our own house. It made me ache to do something, anything, that might remind us we were still alive.

“You know what we should do?” I said suddenly.

Lorenzo glanced at me, wary but curious. “What?”

“We should go out,” I said, sitting up properly now. “Buy presents for everyone. Something small, stupid, doesn’t matter. Just something.”

He blinked. “Now?”

“Yes, now!” The words tumbled out faster than I could catch them. “It’s Christmas Eve, the shops will still be open for a while. We could go into Muggle London, blend in, nobody would notice us. It’d be fun.”

He raised an eyebrow, a grin starting to form. “Fun. That’s a dangerous word.”

“Exactly,” I said, my pulse quickening. “We deserve something dangerous that doesn’t end in blood for once.”

From the kitchen came the sound of a chair scraping. “You’ve lost your mind,” Draco said flatly, stepping into the doorway. He had a cup of tea in hand and that infuriating air of superiority he always wore when he thought everyone else was being stupid.

I turned toward him, smiling too brightly. “Fuck off, even you have to admit it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t,” he said simply, taking a sip. “We’re barely surviving as it is, and you want to go Christmas shopping?”

“Exactly,” I said again, words spilling over themselves. “We’re barely surviving, Draco. That’s the point.”

Lorenzo leaned back on the couch, arms folded behind his head, watching the exchange with that lazy amusement he got when Draco was annoyed. “I kind of agree with her,” he said finally. “It’d be nice to do something outside that doesn’t involve killing.”

“Exactly,” I said, grinning at him. “See? Lorenzo gets it.”

Draco frowned, glancing between us. “You can’t just waltz into Muggle London—”

“We’ve done worse,” Lorenzo interrupted.

“That’s not an argument,” Draco said sharply. “You’ll get caught, or someone will recognise you, or—”

“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes. “We’re not going to get caught buying fucking wrapping paper, Draco.”

Lorenzo laughed. “Yeah, mate. Relax. We’ll get you a scarf or something, but only if you’re good.”

“I don’t want a scarf.”

“Then gloves. You need something for that cold attitude.”

“Lorenzo—”

Draco’s glare could’ve melted ice.

“Fine,” Draco snapped finally, setting his cup down with a thud. “If it’ll stop you two from behaving like children, go buy your idiotic presents.”

Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “That’s a yes?”

Draco sighed heavily, rubbing his temple. “It’s a fine, not a yes.”

“Close enough,” I said, jumping up from the couch. “We’re doing it.”

Lorenzo looked pleased, but then frowned suddenly, patting his pockets. “Wait. We don’t have any muggle money.”

That stopped me for a second. I couldn’t bring out my money now, how would I even explain it’s presence.

Draco smirked, clearly satisfied. “See? Problem solved.”

But Lorenzo wasn’t finished. “We could wait till midnight. Shops’ll close, we could just raid.”

“Absolutely not,” Draco said sharply. “We’re not stealing.”

Lorenzo shrugged. “It’s not stealing if no one’s there.”

“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is.” Draco snapped.

I sighed dramatically, about to argue again, when Draco’s expression changed. Something flickered behind his eyes.

“Wait here,” he said suddenly.

He disappeared down the hall, and Lorenzo and I exchanged puzzled looks. A minute later, Draco returned holding a white envelope.

“I found this a while ago,” he said, tossing it onto the table. “On the counter. No idea who it belongs to.”

It landed with a soft slap, the faint weight of it unmistakable.

My heart skipped.

He opened it and tilted it so we could see inside, stacks of crisp Muggle notes, folded neatly.

Lorenzo whistled low. “Bloody hell. Where’d that come from?”

Draco shrugged. “It was just sitting there. Thought maybe Mattheo left it, but he didn’t say anything. I was going to use it for supplies.”

I stared at my envelope the one from my first day of working, I had left it on the table after coming inside. For a split second, panic flared in my chest, the hot, sharp kind. But then, just as fast, it turned into something else. Something wild and giddy. The absurdity of Draco unknowingly holding one of my club payments like it was some mysterious gift from the universe was too much.

I laughed.

They both looked at me.

“What?” Lorenzo said.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, still smiling. “Just, nothing.” I moved toward the table and snatched the envelope out of his hand before he could react. “I’ll take this. Put it somewhere safe before one of you idiots loses it.”

“Where’d you even get that?” Lorenzo asked, leaning forward.

“I told you,” Draco said, annoyed. “I found it—”

“Mm-hm,” I cut in, already halfway to the door. “And now it’s going in my purse. You two can thank me later.”

I could feel Draco’s suspicion on the back of my neck as I left the room, but I didn’t care. My heart was beating too fast, my cheeks hurt from smiling.

In the dim little room, I dropped to my knees beside the wardrobe, tugging open the doors quietly, not avoid waking Aurelia. I shoved aside the old jumpers war and reached for the back. My fingers brushed something cold.

The gun was there again.

I stared at it for a moment, black metal against old wood, small and perfectly obscene. I’d forgotten how heavy it felt. I’d stolen it back days ago, when Draco had been interrogating Granger. Everyone had been too busy watching him to notice me slip it out of the kitchen.

I didn’t even know why I’d done it. Maybe because I couldn’t stand the thought of it sitting there, waiting for someone else to use it. Maybe because I liked knowing it was mine again, that there was still something in this house I could control.

I dug through the back of the wardrobe until my fingers hit paper, another envelope. This one was heavier, a week’s worth of work from the club, crumpled at the edges where Lelia had folded it too fast. I opened it and thumbed through the notes, that soft whispering sound of money that had started to feel almost intoxicating.

I shoved it into the bag alongside the first envelope, telling myself it wasn’t selfish to keep it secret, as they’d never understand where it came from anyway. Draco would sneer, Lorenzo would be worried, and Mattheo would look at me like I was something broken.

No. This was mine. This was me trying to do something good.

I pulled my boots on, the leather stiff and cold against my skin. My hands were shaking a little, not with fear, just energy, like every nerve in my body was waking up again.

The bag was heavy when I slung it over my shoulder, the envelopes shifting, I paused by the door, glancing back once at Aurelia. I felt a brief pang of guilt that she was sleeping through all this, missing the moment, but it passed quickly, replaced by a bubbling excitement that was too big to contain.

The hallway was cold. My boots thudded softly against the warped floorboards as I made my way back toward the light of the living room. Draco was by the window now, wand in hand, checking the wards with the kind of grim precision that made me want to ruffle his perfect hair just to see him lose control for a second. Lorenzo was sprawled on the couch again, flipping a lighter between his fingers, humming something off-key.

Lorenzo looked up, grinning at me. “So, what’s the plan, darling?”

“Easy,” I said. “We Apparate into London, find somewhere busy enough that no one looks at us twice, split up if we have to, buy whatever we can find before it gets dark.

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is going to end terribly.”

I ignored him, already walking toward the fireplace. The cold from outside was creeping in through the windowpanes, turning the air brittle and sharp. I could feel the thrill of it gathering in my chest, that peculiar brand of certainty that everything I did tonight would somehow matter.

“We’re not using the Floo,” Draco said quickly. “Too risky. We’ll Apparate to Diagon first, then walk out to the Muggle streets.”

“Perfect,” I said, clapping my hands once. “Let’s go then.”

“Now?” he said, exasperated.

“Yes, now. Before I change my mind.”

Lorenzo laughed, standing and grabbing his coat. “You heard the her.”

Draco muttered something about impulses but moved toward the door anyway.

The air outside the flat was sharp enough to sting my cheeks, I tightened my grip on the bag, the weight of the money grounding me in a strange, thrilling way.

Draco turned to me, expression unreadable. “You’re sure about this?”

“Never been surer,” I said, my voice steady, eyes bright.

He studied me for a moment longer, then nodded once. “All right. On my count.”

 

The world shifted then, three sharp cracks splitting the air as we vanished into the night, the sound swallowed by the wind.

✦

Snow fell like sifted flour over Muggle London. The air was sharp and glittering, alive with colours. Red and green lights strung across rooftops, lampposts were wrapped in tinsel, store windows were painted with frost and reindeer. The world looked like it had dressed up for a holiday none of us remembered how to feel.

The moment we emerged from Diagon Alley, I felt something loosen in my chest. It was cold, but for once, the world wasn’t grey and dying. Children ran through the streets in thick coats, red scarves trailing behind them like ribbons. A little boy crouched beside a lamppost, packing snow into a ball while his sister added a carrot nose to a lopsided snowman. Their laughter sliced clean through the hum of carols playing faintly from somewhere down the street.

Lorenzo tipped his head back, snow catching in his hair. “Fuck,” he breathed, his voice low with awe. “They actually make it look… magical.”

Even Draco looked halfway enchanted, though he’d never admit it. His hands were in his coat pockets, chin tilted up at the twinkling fairy lights strung from one lamppost to the next. “It’s gaudy,” he muttered. “But well executed.”

We walked down the crowded pavement, the three of us tucked close together like some strange version of a family. Muggles bustled past us carrying shopping bags, a brass band played carols on the corner, their instruments gleaming in the lights.

We reached the shopping centre’s huge glass doors under glowing letters. The inside was even more surreal, gold garlands looped across every railing, giant Christmas trees dripping with baubles, an enormous reindeer made of lights standing in the atrium. The warmth hit us immediately, a rush of cinnamon and sugar and too many perfumes blending into one dizzying sweetness.

“Let’s find something for everyone. We’ll do proper presents this year.”

“Fine,” Draco said, already scanning the crowd like he was casing the place. “But I’m not carrying your things.”

We passed a line of Muggles waiting to take photos with a man in a red suit. A little girl squealed, “Santa!” and ran toward him. Draco’s brow furrowed. “Who is that?”

Lorenzo clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t wanna know, mate. Just don’t hex him.”

“He brings presents. You’d get coal anyway.” I added.

Draco rolled his eyes but said nothing, following us into a clothing store where the mannequins wore sequined dresses and sleek wool coats. Everything gleamed under warm lights.

I stopped dead at the sight of one coat, a long, dark one that hung perfectly from a silver hook near the front. Black wool, high collar, lined in soft grey fur. Elegant but rugged, the kind of thing that would look perfect thrown over Mattheo’s shoulders when he was standing in the cold pretending not to feel anything.

“This one,” I said immediately, pulling it down. “For him.”

Draco raised a brow. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

Lorenzo chuckled, leaning on a rack of scarves. “Exactly why he’ll get it.”

We pooled a few notes from the white envelope, and Lorenzo snatched the coat from my hands to inspect it. “Merlin, this thing’s heavy. He’s going to look like a hitman.”

“Perfect,” I said, grinning. “He already is one.”

Draco let out a sharp laugh, surprising even himself. “At least he’ll look less homeless.”

As we walked toward the counter, I caught sight of a display of lighters, silver, sleek, glinting under a soft spotlight. One of them had a small engraving of a serpent curling around the center.

“Look,” I whispered, picking it up carefully.

Lorenzo smiled, faintly, almost sadly. “Careful. he may actually like that.”

Draco gave a small nod, eyes flicking to the lighter, then to me. “If it keeps him from stealing mine, I’ll fund it myself.”

We paid without too much trouble, Lorenzo joking with the cashier about “our annoying friend who wears lots of black.” The girl smiled politely, clearly charmed by him.

When we left the store, Lorenzo spotted an abandoned shopping cart near the entrance, its wheel squeaking faintly as it rocked back and forth. His eyes lit up like a child’s. “Oh, this is happening.”

Before I could protest, he was pushing it toward me. “In. Now.”

“What?” I laughed. “You’re insane.”

“Get in,” he said again, eyes gleaming. “We’re making Draco push.”

Draco looked positively offended. “You’re joking.”

I hopped in anyway, legs dangling over the edge. “You heard him, Malfoy. Push.”

Lorenzo grinned wide enough to show teeth. “Yeah, Draco. For morale.”

Draco scoffed, but started pushing us anyway, muttering under his breath. The cart rattled across the polished floors, nearly colliding with a rack of handbags. I threw my head back laughing, hair flying, the sound echoing over the Christmas music overhead.

“Left!” I shouted. “That way!”

“No, right!” Lorenzo barked.

Draco groaned, but he was laughing now too, his usually perfect composure cracking as he steered us wildly past shoppers who glared or laughed themselves. A group of Muggle teenagers cheered as we zoomed past. When we crashed to a stop near another display, Lorenzo nearly fell onto the floor, gasping with laughter.

“I haven’t felt this much energy since—”

“Since when?” I teased.

He hesitated, grin fading slightly. “Since before.”

Before the war.

Lorenzo clapped his hands suddenly, breaking the moment. “Alright! Next stop, something for our girl.”

 

I caught as Draco rolled his eyes but pushed the cart again, slower this time, through the twinkling maze of lights and people. Somewhere above, artificial snow began to fall from vents in the ceiling, catching in my hair, melting against my cheeks. The air inside the mall felt warm and electric, and I couldn’t stop smiling, the kind that made your cheeks hurt.

Draco pushed the cart ahead, muttering something about ridiculous Muggle contraptions, while I looked at Lorenzo, his hair dusted white from the fake snow. He looked at me just then, his grin wide and boyish, his eyes catching the light. It wasn’t the smirk he wore when he was charming strangers or teasing Draco into fights, it was something simpler, unguarded.

A snowflake landed on the tip of my nose.

He reached out without thinking, brushing it away with a finger, his touch feather-light. “You’ve got something there,” he murmured.

I wrinkled my nose, laughing. “Do I?”

“Not anymore,” he said, smiling like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The warmth that bloomed in my chest startled me.

Draco stopped suddenly, turning the cart toward a brightly lit storefront. “What in Merlin’s name is that?” he muttered.

The shop was glowing blue and white, its window filled with sleek glass rectangles, glowing screens, strange silver devices. Draco scowled, as if it had personally offended him.

“Tech store,” I said, grinning. “Oh, this is going to be good.”

Draco’s curiosity had officially overridden his disdain. He pushed us straight through the doors. The blast of cold, conditioned air hit my face, followed by the low hum of screens and the faint buzz of pop music. The room gleamed. Walls of televisions played the same advertisement, snow falling over a family hugging beside a fireplace. Rather brick looking phones and box computers lined the counters like spellbooks from another dimension, I recognised the phones, as they were the same as Lelia’s.

Draco released the cart and stepped forward slowly, eyes narrowing at the rows of phones. “These are… communication devices?” he asked, inspecting one like it might explode.

Lorenzo snorted. “You make it sound like they’re cursed.”

“They are cursed,” Draco muttered. “They can’t possibly work. Where are the wires? Where’s the—”

He tapped a button on one, and the screen lit up, startling him so badly that Lorenzo and I burst out laughing.

“Fucking hell,” Draco hissed, pulling his hand back. “It’s alive.”

“It’s not alive,” I said between laughs. “It’s Muggle magic.”

Lorenzo leaned over, swiping through the icons. “Oh, this is brilliant. Look, you can take pictures, listen to music, talk to people without Floo or owl. Muggles are basically cheating.”

Draco leaned closer, fascinated despite himself. “That’s impossible. This kind of power without magic—” He trailed off, brows furrowing. “Unnatural. But impressive.”

“Unnatural,” I repeated with a grin. “You sound like my grandmother talking about trousers.”

Lorenzo chuckled, tapping buttons until he stumbled onto the camera. He turned the phone toward Draco. “Smile, Malfoy.”

“Don’t you dare—”

Click. The camera flashed. Draco blinked, blinking spots out of his vision while Lorenzo howled with laughter.

“I told you to smile!” Lorenzo said, flipping the screen to show him.

Draco stared at his reflection, baffled. “Why does my face look like that?”

“It’s just your face,” I said. “Sorry.”

Lorenzo and I were nearly doubled over, laughing so hard it echoed off the glass walls. Even Draco cracked a reluctant smile before shoving the phone away. We drifted deeper into the store, drawn to the glowing screens and neat rows of devices. Every few steps, Lorenzo picked something up, examined it with exaggerated awe, then set it down again as though he might break it.

Then he spotted it.

A small display near the back, digital cameras, lined up on black velvet stands. He grabbed one, holding it up. “Now this,” he said, “this I understand. Pictures. Memories. Proof.”

He started fiddling with the buttons, but an employee, a young woman with a ponytail and bright pink nails, hurried over. “Hi there! Need some help with that?”

Lorenzo turned on his charm immediately, his grin turning roguish. “Actually, yes. I was hoping someone could show me how to capture my good side.”

She giggled. “Oh, that’s easy.” She took the camera from his hands, switched it on, and lifted it. “Ready?”

He posed dramatically, chin tilted, one eyebrow raised. The flash went off, and she showed him the screen.

“See?” she said. “Perfect lighting.”

“Perfect photographer,” he said, his voice low and smooth.

Draco groaned from across the aisle. “He’s going to propose next.”

I rolled my eyes, grinning. But as Lorenzo handed me the camera to look at the photo, something fluttered inside my chest.

The picture was warm and alive, Lorenzo’s grin too wide, his hair tangled with melted snowflake residue. He looked happy. Actually happy.

I thought suddenly of Aurelia and how depleted she’d looked earlier.

“I’m getting this for her,” I said softly.

“For Aurelia?” Lorenzo asked, surprised.

I nodded. “She should have something like this, I think she would enjoy it.”

We started snapping photos on the display model while Draco browsed nearby, pretending not to care but glancing over every time we laughed. Lorenzo pointed the camera at him, whispering, “Smile.”

Draco looked up, deadpan. “If you take that picture, you’ll regret it.”

Click.

The flash went off again. Draco blinked, then exhaled sharply through his nose. Lorenzo turned the camera on me again. I posed exaggeratedly, he took a few shots, and then one where I wasn’t ready, laughing mid-sentence, hair wild, eyes bright. He showed me the screen.

“That one,” he said softly. “That’s you.”

I looked at it for a long moment. I barely recognised myself.

The girl in the photo looked alive.

“Alright,” Draco said, clearing his throat. “If we’re done terrorising muggle electronics with your faces, can we please move on before someone calls security?”

Lorenzo saluted him mockingly. “Yes, sir.”

I grinned, handing the camera box to the cashier. The woman with pink nails smiled as she scanned it, oblivious to the way my hands still trembled faintly from the cold.

The air hit us differently when we left the technology store, warmer somehow, full of spice and sugar and sound. People brushed past us with bags and red cheeks, their laughter rising and falling with the swell of music from a nearby caroller’s stand.

I didn’t climb back into the shopping cart this time. I felt too restless for it, my mind buzzing with a hundred small thoughts, ideas spilling over one another like foam. My pulse thrummed, the air too bright, the lights too much. Everything shimmered, alive and electric.

I opened my bag, slipping Mattheo’s lighter safely into it beside the camera box, and draped the dark coat over my arm. I pictured Mattheo in it, his head bowed, cigarette between his lips, snow collecting in his curls. Lorenzo balanced the cart’s handle, steering it idly through the crowd as we wandered down the next corridor of shops.

“Alright,” I said, breathless with the thrill of movement. “We’ve got Mattheo covered. And Aurelia. Now we need more presents.”

Lorenzo glanced at me sidelong. “We?”

“Yes, we,” I said. “We’re doing this properly.”

He grinned. “Then I call dibs on getting yours.”

I shook my head immediately, laughing. “No, you don’t need to get me anything.”

“Too late,” he said easily. “You’re not getting out of this one darling.”

Even Draco nodded, though he was pretending not to listen. “For once, he’s right. It’s Christmas after all.”

I sighed dramatically, rolling my eyes. “Fine. But keep it small. I mean it.”

Lorenzo smiled mischievously. “As my girl wishes.”

“I don’t believe you for a second,” I said, handing him a stack of folded notes from the purse. “Here. Go find something decent. And get cookies.”

Draco frowned, holding up his hands. “Cookies?”

“Yes, Draco. Cookies.”

“Do I look like someone who—”

“Cookies,” I repeated firmly, grinning.

He sighed, defeated. “Fine. Cookies.”

Lorenzo grabbed his arm before he could protest further. “Come on, Grinch.”

“What’s a Gr—”

“Just shut the fuck up and follow me.”

And then they were gone, Lorenzo half-dragging a reluctant Draco into the crowd, both of them bickering all the way down the corridor. Their voices faded beneath the music, swallowed by the hum of shoppers and bells.

For the first time all day, I was alone.

The mall glittered around me, garlands draped over the bannisters, gold lights shimmering off glass walls. My heart raced faster than it should have. I felt buoyant, almost weightless, like I could float if I wanted to. I wanted to buy everything, for them, for me, for no reason at all.

That was when I saw the jewellery store near the far end of the corridor. The display sparkled with white-gold necklaces and diamond earrings, the kind of finery that felt untouchable. For a moment, I just stood there, watching the reflections of light ripple across the glass. Then I pushed through the door.

The shop was warm and quiet, the air heavy with the scent of polished wood and perfume. A man in a black suit greeted me with a polite nod. “Evening, miss. Looking for something in particular?”

I smiled faintly. “Gifts.”

He gestured toward a case near the back. “We have a selection of men’s silver pieces, rings, cufflinks, bracelets.”

I leaned over the display, my breath fogging the glass. The rings caught my eye first, silver bands, simple but elegant. One had a faint serpent engraving, subtle enough that only someone like Draco would notice. Beside them lay a thin chain bracelet, delicate and precise.

“I’ll take those,” I said softly.

The man nodded, wrapping them in velvet with steady, graceful hands. I watched the way the metal glinted in the light and thought of Draco. He’d never admit it, but he liked beautiful things. They reminded him of a world that used to make sense.

When the man asked if there was anything else, I hesitated. My gaze drifted to a nearby display, rows of gold pendants catching the faintest light. One of them reminded me of Lelia. I swallowed hard. She’d been the only one who never made me feel ashamed of who I was. Of what I did.

“I’ll take that one too,” I said, pointing.

The man nodded again, his voice quiet. “A gift?”

I smiled. “Something like that.”

He wrapped it in soft paper, the colour of champagne. When I left the store, I had three small boxes in my bag, and for some reason, I felt steadier. I walked, following the hum of faint music until, ironically, I found myself in front of a music shop.

The display was all guitars and vinyl records and blinking string lights shaped like notes. My pulse jumped. I remembered Lorenzo’s dorm in sixth year, the smell of dust and old parchment, the quiet hum of his record player he’d stolen in a shop from when we would go off and visit muggle London sometimes. He’d sit cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, mouthing the words to some muggle song I had never heard.

That record player had gone up in flames during one of our more disastrous nights. I’d always meant to replace it.

The shop was nearly empty. The walls were lined with shelves of records, CDs, and at the back were small stack of portable players. I picked one up, a sleek black model with gold trim. It looked fragile, like something that could hold a memory.

A clerk came over, smiling. “Anything I can help you with?”

I smiled back, “I’ll take this one,” I said, then turned to the racks of records, letting my fingers skim the sleeves. I didn’t recognise most of the names, but I picked a handful anyway, drawn to the covers, to the colours.

Lorenzo would love it. Even if he’d forgotten how to love anything lately, maybe this would remind him. I stepped out of the store. My boots clicked softly against the tile as I made my way back toward the tech store.

I spotted them before they saw me.

Lorenzo was grinning like an idiot, juggling several shopping bags in one hand while Draco tried to keep his coat collar from being tugged out of place by a paper sack full of boxes. They looked absurdly human, standing there beneath the giant tree at the centre of the mall.

“You’re late,” Lorenzo called when he saw me, voice bright with triumph.

I raised a brow. “You two look busy.”

Draco gestured helplessly at the tower of bags in his arms. “He’s lost his mind.”

Lorenzo laughed, shifting his load proudly. “We got everything. And I mean everything. Food, sweets, supplies, the lot. And, get this, some Muggle bloke showed us these things called gingerbread house kits.”

He held up a box with a cartoon cottage on the front.

I blinked, then burst out laughing. “You bought one?”

“Five,” Draco said flatly. “Enough to feed a village. Or drown in sugar.”

Lorenzo grinned wider. “We’re going to build a gingerbread empire.”

Draco adjusted the bags, glancing toward the doors. “We should go. I’m nervous as to what he will make us buy next.”

We started walking toward the exit, our arms full of colour and warmth and too many bags to count. Every few steps, Lorenzo made a joke, Draco muttered but smiled, and I couldn’t stop humming some half-remembered carol under my breath.

 

The glass doors slid open, letting in the cold rush of London air. Snowflakes drifted into the mall, catching in Lorenzo’s hair again, in the fur trim of Draco’s coat, in the folds of the paper bags we carried. The three of us slowed as we walked, our arms weighed down with shopping bags, our breath visible in little clouds. For a moment, none of us said anything. We just looked. It was strange, seeing the world still so alive when ours had gone so quiet.

Then Lorenzo flicked a handful of snow at me. It hit my coat, dusting the wool with white.

I gasped, half-shocked, half-laughing. “You did not just—”

He smirked, backing away with that careless tilt of his head. “Oh, I did.”

I scooped up a handful and threw it straight at his chest. He ducked, but not fast enough. The snow splattered across him, sticking to his jacket. Draco, watching with mild amusement, didn’t move until Lorenzo retaliated, this time hitting him square in the face.

For a second, everything froze. Then Draco blinked, his pale lashes wet with melting flakes, and calmly bent to collect a handful of snow.

“You’re dead Berkshire,” he said.

The next ten minutes were chaos. Snow flew in every direction, Lorenzo dodging and laughing so loudly he startled a couple walking by, Draco shouting about how his scarf cost more than ‘this entire fucking street,’ and me shrieking as they both teamed up on me. I slipped backward, landing in a pile of fresh snow with a muffled whump.

“Pathetic,” Draco said from above me, brushing snow off his gloves. “Truly.”

Before I could get up, he bent, grinning in a way I hadn’t seen in ages, and lifted me effortlessly by the waist, then tossed me straight back down into another mound.

“Malfoy!” I screamed, laughing, my hair covered in frost.

Lorenzo threw himself into the pile beside me, his laughter spilling into the cold air. “I think she likes it,” he teased.

“I think you like being hit,” I muttered, shoving a handful of snow into his face.

Draco groaned. “Children. The both of you.”

But he was smiling. I saw it even as he turned away, shaking his head. His cheeks were flushed, his shoulders relaxed. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked so happy.

We must’ve stayed like that for a while, rolling in the snow, yelling over each other, collapsing in tangled heaps on the pavement. The world around us was nothing but colour and light. I felt dizzy from laughing, from the sharp sting of cold on my skin.

When we finally stopped, the three of us lay in the snow, breathing hard. My hair was soaked through, my gloves stiff with ice. Lorenzo’s curls were full of snowflakes, glittering faintly under the streetlights. Draco was lying on his back, eyes half-closed, a small smile curving his mouth.

“Alright,” he said eventually, exhaling steam into the night. “Enough sentimentality. I’m freezing.”

“Good,” I said, smirking. “Maybe it’ll teach you to stop throwing people.”

He stood and offered me a hand, rolling his eyes. “Come on. Before the Muggles think we’ve escaped from an asylum.”

I laughed, taking his hand and brushing snow off my coat. Lorenzo stood too, shaking himself off like a dog. We gathered our shopping bags, boots crunching on the frost as we stepped into the alley to Apparate. The street behind us was still glowing, the laughter of children fading into the wind.

When we landed back in the safehouse, the contrast was almost jarring, the dim warmth of the old house swallowing the outside brightness. The fire had burned low, but it was still glowing, a soft orange light spilling across the wooden floor.

Draco sighed, brushing snow from his hair. “I’m taking a shower before I catch pneumonia,” he said, already heading down the hallway.

“Enjoy,” I called after him.

He raised a lazy hand in farewell and disappeared.

I hated to admit that the house felt quieter without him. Lorenzo dropped the bags on the couch, still grinning, his curls damp and wild. “Alright, wrapping time,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

I nodded, still catching my breath. “I think we have some paper somewhere, you did get some right?”

He found it in one of the bags, rolls of red and gold paper, crumpled but usable, hidden in one of the kitchen drawers. We dragged everything into the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor near the fire. Wrapping paper, scissors, and tape spread around us like we were setting up for battle.

“Don’t look at mine,” Lorenzo said, turning his back dramatically as he started folding something far too large for its paper.

“I’m not looking,” I said, trying to keep the paper from sticking to itself.

He peeked over his shoulder. “You are looking.”

“I’m not!”

“You are.”

“I swear I’m not!”

He twisted suddenly, trying to block my view, and we ended up laughing again, half the gifts forgotten. The room smelled of smoke and pine and warm paper. For once, it didn’t feel like a place people hid in, it felt like a home. Draco’s faint humming drifted from the bathroom, something low and unfamiliar. The sound made me smile. I finished wrapping Aurelia’s camera and leaned back, exhaling softly.

Lorenzo was quiet beside me now, his hands still working the paper but slower. I turned my head, watching the firelight move over his face. The shadows softened his features, his eyes glinting amber in the glow.

Without thinking, I leaned against him.

 

He didn’t speak. Just shifted slightly, wrapping one arm around me and pulling me closer. His body was warm, his heartbeat steady under my cheek. I could smell smoke and snow and something faintly metallic from his rings. The fire cracked again, sending sparks dancing up the chimney. Outside, the snow was still falling, but neither of us moved. The house creaked, the embers dimmed, and for the first time in what felt like forever, safe enough to close my eyes fully.

✦

AURELIA AVERY

I could feel the cold biting through my coat as I walked, though it was muffled by the blanket of snow on the streets. Each step was heavier than the last. My head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache that had been following me for days now, creeping behind my eyes like a shadow I couldn’t shake. I didn’t know why it hurt, sometimes it felt sharp, like the at the warehouse, but mostly it was just a persistent weight pressing against my skull. My body felt weak, drained, every movement a little effort.

I reached the church and paused at the steps, breathing heavily, my chest rising and falling as my legs shook under me. The doors loomed, tall and dark, decorated with garlands and faintly dusted with snow. My hands, trembling, clutched the straps of my coat. I wasn’t sure if I should go in. The last time I had been here, the cold water had been around my shoulders, my lungs full of pain and terror. I shook my head, trying to banish the memory, and pushed the door open.

Inside, the warmth was immediate, but not entirely comforting. The air smelled of wax and pine and old wood. Light from the candles flickered across the walls, casting shadows that seemed almost alive, dancing across the pews and the altar. My steps echoed softly against the stone floor as I moved forward. My knees felt weak, and I had to pause twice, pressing my hand against a pew for balance.

The priest was there, arranging something on the altar, a cloth, perhaps, or some candles. He looked up as I entered, and his eyes softened, though surprise flickered across his face.

“You’re here,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying in the stillness. “I wasn’t expecting anyone so early. Christmas mass isn’t until midnight.”

I nodded, my throat tight. “I needed to come.”

He stepped aside, gesturing for me to approach the altar. “Of course, my child. Come, you seem weary.”

I shuffled forward, each step feeling heavy, my chest tight, the ache in my head refusing to let me ignore it. I leaned slightly against the altar for support, feeling the smooth wood beneath my fingertips. The priest approached, his hands gentle as he laid them briefly on my shoulders.

“Would you like a blessing?” he asked softly.

I swallowed, nodding. “Please, I haven’t been well.”

He murmured words I didn’t entirely understand, though the tone was soft, soothing, almost like a lullaby. My shoulders loosened, my body felt lighter, though not entirely. My head still throbbed, my memory still frayed at the edges, slipping like sand through fingers I couldn’t close. But the tension, the immediate anxiety that had been coiling in my chest, loosened slightly.

“You feel calmer,” he said. His voice was low, steady. “But something troubles you. Tell me.”

I hesitated, unsure if I could voice it, unsure if words existed for what I felt. Then I whispered, my voice small and fragile. “I want reconciliation, for someone else.”

He tilted his head, eyes searching mine. “Someone else? Who?”

I closed my eyes, shaking slightly. “Theo, my friend, he…” My words faltered. I could feel the grief again, raw and tight in my chest. “I want him to be forgiven. So he can rest and so he can be at peace.”

The priest’s hands rested lightly on mine now, steadying me. “You carry a heavy burden. But to wish forgiveness for another, that is a blessing in itself. Tell me why you feel this way.”

I swallowed hard, the memory of the lake surfacing unbidden. The cold water, the despair, the finality of it all. “He suffered. I can’t make sense of it. But I think if he is forgiven, if someone prays for him, he might find peace. And maybe I could rest too.”

He nodded slowly. “You can ask, you can pray, you can hope. But peace comes from within him now, and from God.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But I want to do it anyway.”

He placed a hand lightly on my head, leaning down slightly. “Then we will do it together. Pray with me, child. Ask for him to find rest. Ask for him to be forgiven, and allow yourself to let go of the anger and grief that ties you to the pain.”

I bowed my head, closing my eyes tightly. My chest shook with the weight of it all. The ache in my head seemed to pulse with each heartbeat. My memory, already faltering, brought snippets of moments.

“Forgive him God,” I whispered, barely audible. “Let him rest. Let him be free. And let me be free too.”

The priest murmured prayers alongside me, his voice calm and steady, a gentle current pulling through the quiet church. I felt the warmth of the candles and the stillness of the place seeping into my bones. My shoulders sagged, my hands unclenching, my breath finally slowing. I could feel some of the tension leaving me, the anxiety retreating just slightly.

After a while, he asked gently, “What else troubles you, child? Why else do you come here tonight?”

I hesitated, feeling the fog of forgetfulness tug at the edges of my mind. Names and faces slipped in and out of focus, events blurring together. “I feel weak. Tired. My head hurts, like it did… before. I can’t remember…”

“Memory can falter when the heart is heavy, when the body is weak. You are carrying too much. You must rest, Aurelia. And yet you come here, seeking solace. That is courage.”

I nodded, tears pricking my eyes. “I wanted to feel… safe, even for a moment.”

He smiled softly. “And you are safe, here. God loves and watches over you, always. And your prayers for Theo, your love and remembrance, they honor him.”

I could feel the priest’s hand still warm on mine as he guided me closer to the altar, the candlelight flickering across the stone walls and throwing long shadows that danced like ghosts. My hands were trembling, my chest tight, but I tried to focus, grounding myself in the quiet of the church.

“Now,” he said softly, “if you are ready, you may speak. Tell me of Theo’s sins, anything you wish to be cleansed. Speak freely. No one here will hear, and I swear by the oath I have taken, these words remain between us and God.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. My throat felt dry, my voice fragile. “I… I don’t know where to start,” I whispered. “There’s so much I remember, and some things I barely understand.”

He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Start where you feel you must. Let it come, and trust that the light here will carry it.”

I closed my eyes and drew in a shaky breath. “Theo drank too much. He hurt himself, he cut himself, he was reckless. He wanted to die. And… he did. He killed himself.” My voice cracked, a sob catching in my throat. “I want him forgiven for that. For all the ways he tried to punish himself and for all the ways he failed to see his own worth.”

The priest nodded slowly, murmuring words of assent, his eyes gentle. “That is heavy, but it is not unforgivable. God’s mercy is endless.”

I swallowed and pressed my palms to the altar, trying to steady myself. “There’s more, I…” My chest tightened, a strange, clenching panic rising. “He hurt people. He killed people. He did things I can’t bear to say. But I want him forgiven.”

The priest’s hand tightened slightly on mine, a faint hesitation in his eyes. “Forgiven for taking life?” he murmured.

“Yes,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “Even that. He did things, bad things, but I want him forgiven.”

He looked at me, confusion shadowing his face, his brow furrowing. “Aurelia, you speak of murder? Killing?”

I swallowed hard, my hands tightening on the altar. My head spun slightly. “Yes. He killed people and hurt others. I still want him forgiven. So he can rest, and so he can be at peace.”

The priest’s expression shifted from confusion to unease. His hand left mine, hovering in the air. “Aurelia, the Church, this goes beyond what I can—”

I swallowed, my pulse quickening. “Please, I’m not asking for judgment. I’m asking for reconciliation. Please.” My voice wavered, and for a moment I was afraid I had overstepped, that the oath didn’t cover this.

He stepped back slightly, rubbing his temples. “Aurelia why did you not tell me sooner? These are serious acts. I need to understand. You must explain to me—”

“I can’t explain it all,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “I don’t want him to be damned for them. I just I want him forgiven. Please.”

He hesitated, eyes wide, swallowing. “Forgiven for murder, for cruelty…?”

“Yes,” I said, my words almost a plea. “I thought God’s forgiveness was endless?”

He looked at me, unease spreading across his face, the warmth of the church dimming in the flicker of candlelight as if the shadows themselves were thickening. “Aurelia I…” His voice trembled slightly. “I cannot, this is beyond what… I—”

Before he could finish, his knees buckled, and his hands gripped the altar as his body sagged forward. I blinked, my mind not catching what had just happened, and then he collapsed completely, his face hitting the stone floor with a muffled thud.

I screamed, my voice cracking and echoing through the empty church. “Father! No! Father!” My hands shook violently as I reached for him, my fingers brushing the cold, lifeless flesh. Panic clawed at my chest, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. “Please, wake up, please…”

And then, I felt it. The presence behind me. My body stiffened, my breath catching in my throat. I turned slowly, terror rooting me in place.

He was there.

Tom Riddle.

 

The world seemed to tilt, the candlelight flickering against his pale, perfectly composed face. His dark eyes glinted in the dim glow, a eerie patience in their depths. The warmth of the church and the priest’s presence evaporated, replaced by a cold, creeping dread that slithered into my bones.

“You sought forgiveness,” he said, tilting his head, his dark eyes locked on mine. “You asked that this man,” he gestured vaguely toward the priest, now lying inert on the floor, “could grant you what you desired. Do you truly believe he could? Could he really carry such a weight? Could he truly forgive all that burden?”

I swallowed hard. “I thought he could. He was supposed to help me.”

Tom shook his head gently, a patronizing, almost kind movement. “But you see, there are things he cannot do. There are limits to the comfort of others. And you—” his gaze sharpened, cutting through the trembling in my chest, “you need more than comfort. You need certainty. You need me.”

I shivered involuntarily, the cold of fear and the pull of his words entwining in my mind. “You can forgive him?” I asked, my voice small, wavering. “Theo, you can make him at peace?”

“Yes,” he said softly, kneeling slightly to meet my level, his expression warm in a way that made the fear twist tighter in my chest. “I can. But you must listen to me. You must trust only me. This church, do you truly believe it will grant you salvation? That these words, this man, this one God can give you what you seek?”

I swallowed, trembling, trying to keep my voice steady. “Jesus, he died for our sins. For all of us.”

He shook his head slowly, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “Who else died for your sins, Aurelia? Who else?” His gaze sharpened, dark and piercing. “Did you ever think… that someone else, someone who is no longer among the living, might still walk with you? Someone who watches over you now?”

My breath hitched, confusion and fear coiling in my chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said softly, almost tenderly, leaning closer so the shadows from the candles flickered across his face, “that I am here. I am with you, right now. I am present, and I have always watched. I have always known you, Aurelia. I have always guided you in ways you cannot yet understand.”

I swallowed again, my heart thundering, trying to reconcile the warmth in his voice with the cold that had begun to seep through my chest. My fingers flexed against the altar, trying to anchor myself. “I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“I saved you again,” he murmured, leaning closer so I could feel the chill in the air that clung to him. “Every day you have survived, every moment you have lived, that was me. I guided you, protected you. I kept you safe. And now you must trust me completely. There is no other way, Aurelia. You must obey. You must follow.”

For a brief moment, my chest constricted, and my mind felt tangled, caught in the web of his words. His form flickered slightly in the candlelight, almost unreal, yet impossibly present. He reached out, picking up a chalice from the altar, his movements calm, deliberate.

“See this?” he murmured, holding it lightly. “It is a vessel. It can carry life. It can carry death. It can carry the essence of what matters most.”

I felt a strange pulse in my chest, a mix of dread and awe, and I nodded faintly, unsure what he wanted of me.

He knelt beside me, and with a precision that made me flinch, he dragged his finger along the underside of my wrist, letting it slice the skin just enough to draw a thin line of blood. My arm quivered, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. The droplets fell into the chalice, and I watched, horrified and mesmerised.

“You see,” he murmured, “every drop of life carries meaning. Every action leaves a mark. Even the pain you feel, it is a connection. You are tethered to me, Aurelia. You are tethered to him. And through this, you will see, you will understand.”

I shivered again, a mixture of fear and fascination knotting my stomach. “I don’t know if I—”

“You do,” he said softly, cutting through the panic with a calm certainty that rooted me in place. “You always have. You survived when you should not have. You made choices when no one else could. I saved you then, I save you now. And you will listen. You will obey. You will follow, because only I can guide you to what you seek. Only I can grant him forgiveness. Only I can give you clarity. Do you understand?”

I swallowed, my head pounding, my vision swimming slightly. “I understand.”

He smiled, gentle, almost tender, and I felt a strange relief, even as terror still gnawed at my chest. “Good,” he whispered. “You are mine, Aurelia,” he murmured, his words a soft thread winding around my heart. “And I am yours. Do not fear. Do not doubt. All that you seek, all that you love, will remain safe if you listen.”

His hands closed over mine, cool and steady, the weight of them heavy. My trembling stilled as his long fingers wove around my own.

“Close your eyes,” he murmured, his voice low, velvet and commanding. “Breathe.”

I obeyed almost instinctively, my eyelids fluttering shut. The chill of the church faded, and I inhaled shakily, then again, slower. The tension in my temples, the dull, pounding ache I had carried for days, began to loosen, like a rope cut free. The pain ebbed until it was gone entirely. My body felt light, my chest warm. For the first time in days, I felt whole.

“That’s it,” Tom said softly. “Just breathe. You’re safe now. You’re whole again. Do you feel it?”

“I do,” I whispered. The words felt strange on my tongue because it was true. My strength was returning. My head was clear, steady, almost blissful.

“I see,” he said, his hands tightening imperceptibly on mine. “This is what it feels like to be under my care.”

Somewhere deep inside, a tiny flicker of unease stirred, but it was small and muted compared to the warmth rising through me.

“Aurelia.” His voice dropped lower, steady, deliberate. “Will you always listen to me?”

“Yes,” I whispered automatically.

“Will you always do what I ask?”

“Yes.”

His thumbs brushed once across my knuckles. “Say it again,” he said softly. “Say it knowing what it means.”

I swallowed. “Yes. I will.”

The warmth in my chest flared brighter, but at the same time, something heavy and strange settled over me, a faint pressure at my back, like someone standing just behind me, unseen. My breath caught, but my eyes stayed closed, his command still echoing in my head.

“That’s good,” Tom said quietly. “That’s very good.”

For a heartbeat, the air around us shifted. It wasn’t sound, exactly, but a low hum under my skin, like two forces brushing against each other and fusing. My palms tingled where his hands held them.

“You’ve done something sacred tonight,” he murmured. “Something binding. Something that will protect you. And him. And all that matters.”

The pressure behind me intensified, and for a moment I thought I heard a faint whisper, like breath against the nape of my neck. I almost turned, but his voice anchored me.

“Keep your eyes closed.”

I obeyed.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the weight lifted. His hands slipped from mine. I opened my eyes, blinking, the candlelight swimming back into focus. My fingers tingled with cold where his touch had been.

Tom was watching me, his dark eyes glinting with quiet satisfaction. “You did well,” he said. “I am proud of you.”

I nodded slowly, my throat tight. “I feel… better,” I whispered.

The sound of movement behind me made me turn. A tall, pale figure stepped from the shadows at the edge of the altar. Abraxas emerged almost like he had been there all along.

I stared, my pulse quickening, but he gave me a faint, polite nod, as though acknowledging a guest in his home.

Tom stepped closer, his voice soft but edged with authority. “You should go home now, Aurelia. You’ve done what you came to do.”

I glanced at the priest’s still body on the floor, dread creeping back into my chest. “But—”

Tom’s expression remained perfectly calm. “Abraxas and I will take care of it. There will be no scandal, no whispers. Nothing will touch you. You are innocent in this.”

My lips parted, but no sound came. The sight of them together, Tom’s composure and Abraxas’s silent, glacial presence, made the church feel impossibly small. I nodded instead, slowly, still dizzy from the rush of warmth and the strange ceremony that had just taken place.

“Go home,” Tom said again, more gently this time. “You’ve done enough for one night. Rest.”

I swallowed hard, gave one last glance at the priest, then at Abraxas, who remained as still as a statue. Neither of them moved. The candles flickered once more, casting their long shadows across the altar. With trembling hands and a hollow heart, I turned and walked away, each step echoing in the silent church. My body felt light but my soul heavy, as though I had left something behind on that altar, something I could never take back. Behind me, their low voices blended with the flicker of candlelight, already fading as the church doors closed.

✦

I slipped into my pyjamas, the soft fabric comforting against my skin, the warmth of the fire still lingering faintly in the air. My muscles ached slightly from the walk to the church, but for the first time in days, I felt truly better. Glancing toward the empty bed beside mine, I noticed Daphne wasn’t there. For a moment, a flicker of worry pricked at me, but I remembered that she had been by the fire with Lorenzo when I left. My shoulders relaxed.

I padded over to my bed, the wooden floor cold under my feet, and climbed in carefully. That’s when I noticed a small, neatly wrapped gift sitting at the edge of the mattress. I blinked, unsure if I had simply imagined it, but the crisp edges of the paper, the delicate silver ribbon curling across the top, told me it was real. No name was written anywhere.

Curiosity overtook me, and I picked it up. The wrapping paper was smooth, slightly textured, and I ran my fingers along it, careful not to tear the delicate folds. Gently, I peeled back the ribbon and lifted the paper, revealing the gift inside.

It was a music box. White, with silver detailing etched along its edges, delicate filigree that caught the soft glow of the firelight from the other room. Inside, a little angel spun slowly, wings unfurling gracefully with each turn, and the faint sound of classical music floated from the mechanism as I turned the key.

I held it in my hands, marveling at the craftsmanship. The song tugged at some vague corner of my memory, a distant familiarity I couldn’t quite place, and for a moment, it felt as though the music itself was a quiet, warm embrace, threading through my chest and into my heart.

I smiled softly, a gentle warmth spreading through me. I didn’t know who it was from, maybe someone had left it while I was at the church, maybe it was just for me. But it didn’t matter. It was beautiful.

 

I set it on the bedside table, letting the soft music play, and laid back against the pillow. The angel spun slowly, delicate and perfect, and I closed my eyes, letting the familiar melody wash over me. I let my breathing slow, matching it to the rhythm of the music, and drifted into a fragile, gentle sleep, the angel twirling endlessly beside me, its song lingering in the quiet room.

✦

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

The morning light filtered weakly through the curtains, pale and soft against the worn walls of the safehouse. I stirred slowly, still half-wrapped in Lorenzo’s arms, the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath me making it almost impossible to leave the warmth of his chest. My cheeks flushed when I realised he was waking up, his eyes opening slowly, meeting mine with that bright, genuine smile I’d come to love even more recently.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered, his voice rough with sleep but warm.

I grinned, looking up at him and blinking against the soft light. “Merry Christmas, Lorenzo,” I murmured, as he pressed a light kiss against my cheek. The simple gesture made me feel safe, and ridiculously happy all at once.

He shifted slightly, wrapping his arms a little tighter around me. “You’re warm,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I smiled faintly, though the excitement in my chest made it impossible to stay still for long. “I have to,” I whispered, pulling myself his chest carefully so as not to disturb the bubble of comfort we’d built around us. “There’s stuff to do!”

He laughed softly, letting me go but still keeping one hand near mine. “Fine, but hurry back. I might miss you.”

I padded across the floor, the cool wood biting at my bare feet, and made my way to the mattress on the floor where Draco and Mattheo were still lying. Both of them groaned in protest as I approached, the corners of their mouths twitching.

“Wake up, you two!” I exclaimed, bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet. “It’s Christmas morning! Get up!”

Mattheo grumbled, his arm flopping across his eyes. “Daphne, it’s too early, fuck off…”

I didn’t listen. “No! You’re coming up! Everyone’s getting up now!”

Draco groaned, rolling onto his side, rubbing at his eyes. “Why are you always so annoying in the mornings?” he muttered, but I caught the hint of amusement in his tone.

“I can’t help it, it’s Christmas!” I said, practically vibrating with excitement. “Now get up!”

They both finally groaned in unison and sat up, hair in wild disarray, still half-asleep and entirely unprepared for my level of morning enthusiasm. I couldn’t help myself. The grin on my face stretched wider.

“Now… Aurelia!” I practically bounced toward her room, not giving them a chance to protest further. “You’re coming out, come on!”

I gently knocked at her door and peeked in. “Aurelia? It’s time! Come on, everyone’s up!”

She emerged slowly, looking pale but better. Her hair tumbled softly over her shoulders, her pyjamas hanging loosely on her frame. Her expression was fragile at first, but when she saw me, her eyes brightened in that way that always made my chest squeeze with relief.

“I’m… I’m okay,” she whispered softly, the faintest smile tugging at her lips.

“You look amazing!” I exclaimed, spinning lightly in place before wrapping my arms around her in a tight hug. She stiffened for a second, then hugged me back, squeezing as tightly as she could. “I was so worried, but you look healthier now, you must have slept very well.”

Lorenzo appeared behind her, giving a gentle, supportive smile. “Good morning, Aurelia,” he said softly, offering her hand to steady her.

I released her and turned back toward the others, practically vibrating with excitement. “So! Last night, Draco, Lorenzo, and I went out and we got things for, well, everyone!”

Aurelia’s eyes went wide. “You did?” she asked, voice catching in wonder. She took a small step closer to me, and I felt her fingers curl around mine, tugging me closer. “Oh Daph, thankyou so much, truly.”

I couldn’t help myself. I hugged her again, tight and full of warmth, laughing softly at the joy in her expression. “I knew you’d like it, I wanted to make it special. I mean given the circumstances. There’s not much, but there’s something.”

Mattheo’s brow furrowed, his arms crossed over his chest. “You risked safety,” he said flatly, though his voice carried that familiar edge of restrained frustration. “You didn’t need to—”

I spun to face him, unable to contain myself. “Yes, but we did! And it’s Christmas! It’s supposed to be fun. So you can sit here and ruin everything or you could actually engage for once. Fun won’t kill you Mattheo.”

He looked away, jaw tightening, but there was a faint lift at the corner of his mouth, betraying his annoyance-softened gratitude. “I appreciate it,” he said, more quietly. “Thank you. For… the thought.”

Aurelia’s gaze swept over all of us, resting finally on me, and her smile widened. “I’m so glad you did this,” she said softly, a note of awe in her voice. “It’s perfect.”

I handed Mattheo his gift first and watched as he carefully tore open the wrapping on his coat, the black fabric folded neatly inside, soft and heavy in his hands. Next, he lifted the smaller box, his fingers brushing against the smooth surface before opening it to reveal the silver lighter, a coiled snake etched along its side, its eyes catching the light like tiny, malevolent rubies.

His face didn’t shift much, as usual, cold and reserved, unreadable, though his eyes flickered with something almost imperceptible. “Huh,” he murmured, turning the lighter in his hands. “Not bad.”

I leaned forward, grinning. “Not bad? There’s a snake on the lighter!”

He smirked faintly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Maybe now I’ll forgive you for shooting me,” he said dryly, holding up the lighter for effect. Then, without another word, he draped the coat over his shoulders. The transformation was instant, even sitting down, he looked taller, more imposing, the familiar aura of authority and danger sharpening around him.

Aurelia, meanwhile, had practically lunged at her gift that was on the ground, lifting it with wide eyes. Her fingers trembled as she unwrapped it, revealing the shiny black digital camera the lens gleaming under the soft light.

“Oh!” she whispered, holding it delicately. “What is it?”

Lorenzo and I both leaned over to show her the buttons, how to focus, how to snap the pictures, and Aurelia’s grin grew with each instruction. She clumsily aimed it at me first, snapping a few shots that caught me mid instruction, and then we posed together, pressing ourselves close so she could frame us properly. The excitement in her eyes, the small squeals when she got a photo just right, made my chest ache with happiness for her.

“I love it,” she said softly, eyes shining as she hugged the camera to her chest. “Thank you, thank you all so much.”

Lorenzo’s grin was soft, filled with quiet satisfaction. “You deserve it, Aurelia.”

Draco opened his gifts next, the small velvet boxes revealing the silver rings and delicate chain bracelet I had picked for him. His fingers lingered over them for a moment, running along the smooth metal, appreciating the craftsmanship. His eyes widened slightly, a rare glint of genuine surprise flickering across his usually reserved expression.

“These are excellent,” he murmured, almost to himself. Then he slid the rings onto his fingers, one by one, the bracelet following in a slow, deliberate motion. It fit perfectly, as though it had always belonged to him.

I leaned back, watching him with a smile, and before I realised what I was doing, he turned and pressed a quick, light kiss to my forehead. It wasn’t dramatic or romantic, it was gratitude and acknowledgment, the kind that made the simplest gesture feel monumental.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, a rare softness in his voice. “Really.”

I felt a rush of warmth in my chest, the kind that only comes when you know someone truly appreciates the effort behind a gift. “You’re welcome, Draco,” I said softly, watching him grin faintly at the others, the faintest spark of mischief returning to his eyes.

I pointed toward the pile of presents on the floor, my excitement bubbling over again. “And that one’s for you Lorenzo!” I said, bouncing slightly on my heels. “Go on, open it!”

Lorenzo’s eyebrows shot up, a curious grin spreading across his face as he snatched up the neatly wrapped package. The paper crinkled under his fingers, and he tore it open, revealing the record player I had chosen along with the stack of carefully selected records.

His face lit up immediately, eyes wide and sparkling. “No fucking way!” he exclaimed, lifting the record player gently as though it might shatter under his touch. “You remembered! The old one…” He trailed off, shaking his head, a laugh escaping him that was half disbelief and half pure joy. “The one that got set on fire, you remembered.”

Before I could react, he spun around and swept me into his arms, lifting me off the floor in a sudden whirl of motion. I let out a startled laugh, my arms wrapping around his shoulders instinctively as he twirled me around, careful but exuberant. The room spun slightly, but the laughter I felt spilling from both of us anchored me in the moment, a reminder of why this mattered, why small joys, small gestures, could still exist in a world that often tried to crush them.

“Thank you, thank you, fucking hell thank you!” he said, setting me down finally, though his hands lingered at my waist for a fraction longer than necessary. His grin was infectious, and I couldn’t help but grin back, cheeks flushed from laughter and happiness.

“And now…” he said, reaching into another bag with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “Your turn.”

I watched curiously as he handed me a slim, long box, neatly wrapped. I hesitated for a moment before sliding off the ribbon and peeling back the paper. My breath caught at the sight inside.

A bottle of perfume, delicate and perfectly elegant, sat nestled in soft velvet. The scent was immediately intoxicating, a mix of warm vanilla, soft jasmine, and something faintly woody underneath, the kind of combination that made your chest lift in an unexpected, unexplainable way.

I turned to him, wide-eyed, and he gave a small, pleased shrug. “I knew you would like the bottle,” he said softly, almost shyly, as though the effort mattered more than the words.

I could barely speak, my fingers brushing over the smooth glass, inhaling the fragrance again. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered, voice thick with gratitude. “Thank you, Lorenzo.”

But that wasn’t all. I peeled back the next layer of wrapping paper, and my eyes widened further at the long, flowing red dress inside. The silk shimmered faintly under the light, soft and fluid, falling in graceful lines. Unlike the shorter dresses I sometimes wore at work, this one was elegant, timeless, and it made me feel seen as though I was more than only a disposable body.

I turned to Lorenzo, then Draco, who had been watching silently with a faint smirk of amusement, and hugged them both tightly, surprising Draco into a small step back. “Thank you,” I whispered, voice choked with emotion. “Thank you both, for remembering, for caring, for… everything.”

Lorenzo squeezed me gently, resting his chin on my shoulder for a brief moment before stepping back, still grinning. “I wanted you to have something beautiful. Something that reminds you, even for a moment, that life can still be beautiful.”

Draco, for his part, looked entirely bewildered by the sudden display of gratitude and physical affection. He cleared his throat awkwardly, and I laughed softly at his expression.

“You helped pick it, too,” I said gently, nodding toward him. His eyebrows rose, and he gave a small, almost reluctant smile. “I did,” he admitted, in that quiet, measured way he always did, as though saying less somehow made it more meaningful.

I hugged him quickly, careful to be respectful of his boundaries, feeling the warmth of shared understanding, the acknowledgment that even the smallest acts could matter in ways we sometimes didn’t realize. “Thank you, Draco,” I murmured, my heart swelling with gratitude that didn’t quite fit into words.

 

The room felt impossibly bright, despite the walls of the safehouse and the lingering shadows of recent chaos. The laughter, the smiles, the careful exchange of gifts, it was all a kind of magic I hadn’t realized I had been craving. Even Mattheo, standing slightly apart, gave a brief nod of approval, the corners of his mouth twitching in a way that almost suggested pride.

Lorenzo suddenly clapped his hands together. “Alright, people!” he announced dramatically, the sound echoing off the walls. “It’s time.”

Draco looked up sharply. “Time for what exactly?”

Lorenzo grinned like a man unveiling a grand secret. From behind the couch, he dragged out an enormous plastic bags. “Behold!” He dumped them onto the floor, spilling out bright red boxes covered in pictures of smiling families and elaborately decorated gingerbread houses. “The muggle woman at the store told me these were essential for Christmas. Gingerbread house kits.”

I blinked at him. “I thought you were joking when you said you brought them.”

“Nope.” He tore one open proudly, scattering icing packets and little candy buttons everywhere. “Anyway, the Muggle woman told me, you build these little biscuit houses… then you eat them.”

Mattheo frowned, skeptical as ever. “You build a house to eat it?”

“That’s the spirit!” Lorenzo said cheerfully, tossing him a box. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

I turned to Aurelia, who was already giggling, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Let’s make ours the safehouse,” she said, as though we were undertaking an architectural feat of national importance.

I grinned. “Deal. We’ll make it perfect.”

Draco groaned. “I’m not making some sentimental replica.”

“Fine,” Lorenzo said, already tearing into another kit. “We’ll just make the one on the box. Easy.”

“Nothing with you is easy,” Draco muttered darkly, but still pulled the box toward him.

Within minutes, our already crowded living room was transformed into a chaotic construction site. There were gingerbread slabs, icing tubes, gumdrops, and candy canes strewn everywhere. The air filled with the smell of sugar and faint frustration.

Aurelia had the camera propped on a pillow, snapping pictures between laughing fits as I tried to balance two roof pieces that absolutely refused to stick together.

“Hold it steady!” I hissed, pressing the icing tube like it was a weapon.

“I am!” she said, though her laughter made her hand shake. The roof slid off again, collapsing into a heap of sugared rubble.

Lorenzo snorted from across the room. “Looking great girls!”

“Shut up, Lorenzo,” I said, glaring at him through icing-streaked fingers.

Draco was already scowling at his own project. “This icing doesn’t stick,” he grumbled, pressing the walls together with profound intensity. “What kind of foolish design is this?”

“It’s supposed to be fun,” Lorenzo said with a grin, placing a candy cane at a crooked angle.

“It’s infuriating,” Draco muttered.

I heard a faint crunch and looked up to see Lorenzo eating half a wall. “You’re supposed to build with that!” Draco snapped, swatting at him with the icing tube.

“I’m testing quality control, what if the Dark Lord had these cursed, you should actually consider thanking me right now.” Lorenzo replied, mouth full. “Also, this icing is delicious.”

Draco gave him a look that could have killed if ingested.

Aurelia snorted beside me, nearly dropping her candy roof tile. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but houses usually have four walls?”

Draco ignored her, muttering under his breath as he tried once again to balance the roof. The piece promptly slid off, taking the gumdrops with it.

“Fucking hell!” he shouted, slamming the icing tube down so hard it burst open and splattered across the table.

Lorenzo burst out laughing. “Calm down, it’s just gingerbread!”

Draco turned on him, eyes flashing with irritation. “You’re eating half the construction materials, and this 'house' is fucking shit.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing so hard that I had to brace myself on the edge of the table, tears welling in my eyes. Even Aurelia was doubled over, holding her stomach.

Draco glared, icing smeared across one of his rings. “Glad my suffering’s amusing,” he muttered.

“Oh, it is,” Lorenzo said, wiping a tear from his own eye.

Meanwhile, Aurelia and I were attempting to salvage our “safehouse.” Our roof leaned dramatically to one side, the icing refusing to cooperate. I had resorted to using candy canes as makeshift support beams.

“It looks like it’s melting,” Aurelia pointed out, snapping a photo as it slid further.

By the time we were done, both houses looked like they had survived a blizzard and a small explosion.

Draco stood back with his arms crossed, staring at his and Lorenzo’s creation with barely concealed disgust. “It’s crooked,” he said flatly.

“It’s charming,” Lorenzo replied, popping another candy into his mouth.

“It’s structurally unsound.” Draco corrected.

“Maybe it’s a metaphor,” Aurelia offered helpfully.

“For what?” Draco snapped.

I smirked. “Your patience.”

Draco rolled his eyes and stalked off toward the fire, muttering under his breath. Lorenzo, unfazed, admired their handiwork proudly. Aurelia laughed again, snapping another picture of him posing beside the lopsided gingerbread house like it was a prized architectural marvel.

Then, from the kitchen, Mattheo’s voice drifted in, low and unimpressed. “You’re all pathetic.”

I turned around to see him leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, amusement tugging faintly at his lips.

“Oh, really?” Lorenzo said, eyebrows lifting. “Let’s see what you managed.”

Mattheo tilted his head, a small, smug smile curving on his mouth. “Fine.”

He motioned for us to follow him.

We trailed behind, half curious, half mocking, until we reached the kitchen table.

There, in perfect, impossible detail, stood a miniature gingerbread Hogwarts.

I froze. So did everyone else. The spires were made of delicate, stacked biscuits. The icing traced every window, every bridge, every archway. Tiny trees dusted with powdered sugar surrounded the Great Hall, and a chocolate lake shimmered under a faint dusting of edible glitter.

“Oh my god,” Aurelia whispered, her camera already lifting.

Lorenzo’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking. You didn’t, how—”

Draco just blinked, for once entirely speechless. “You made that out of these?”

Mattheo shrugged, feigning disinterest, though the faintest trace of pride tugged at his expression. “Was bored, figured I would give it a go.”

I burst out laughing. “Bored? That’s a masterpiece!”

Draco nodded slowly. “You are intolerably talented.”

Mattheo gave a small, dry smirk. “Told you yours were pathetic.”

We all burst into laughter again. Even Draco cracked a reluctant grin. As the laughter died down, Aurelia snapped one last photo of the table, the Hogwarts gingerbread castle gleaming under the lights, surrounded by our disasters of houses and icing explosions. I looked around the room, at Aurelia smiling softly behind her camera, Lorenzo grinning like a child, Draco’s faint smirk, and Mattheo’s quiet satisfaction, I realised that this was the closest thing to peace we’d had in a very long time.

✦

DRACO MALFOY

The air outside the Manor was sharp, biting against my skin as I stood there for a moment, staring up at the windows that loomed like pale eyes in the snow-dusted dark. The iron gates behind me had closed with their usual heavy finality, the sound echoing through the frozen air. I hadn’t been home in over a month. Time didn’t move properly anymore. It just folded over itself, long stretches of silence and battle and sleepless nights all blending together until you couldn’t tell one from the next.

Now, though, the world was still. Christmas lights lined the hedges, and the faint outline of the peacocks shimmered silver beneath them. It looked almost beautiful again, the way it used to. I exhaled slowly, forcing my shoulders back before stepping forward, boots crunching on the gravel path. The front doors opened at once, as if they’d been waiting for me.

The entrance hall smelled like pine and polish, and the warmth that met me was jarring after the cold outside. For a moment, I just stood there, letting the scent of home hit me, the faint musk of old wood, of fires burning somewhere deep in the house, of perfume I’d never forgotten.

Then I heard her.

“Draco!”

My mother’s voice broke through the stillness, and before I could even think to react, she was there, sweeping across the floor in a flurry of pale silk and perfume. She looked radiant in a way that almost startled me. Her hair, as pristine as always, shimmered in the candlelight. She reached me and immediately threw her arms around me, clutching me like she might never let go.

I froze for half a second, touch always caught me off guard, but then I allowed it, the tension easing just slightly from my chest. Narcissa Malfoy was the only person in the world I ever let hold me like that.

“You’re freezing,” she murmured against my shoulder, pulling back just enough to look at me. Her eyes, sharp and soft all at once, scanned my face. “You look tired, my darling.”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically, my voice flat, too quick. I wasn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.

Her lips quirked, half amusement, half disbelief. “Of course you are.” She brushed invisible lint off my coat, her fingers lingering for a moment on the lapel. “You came home.”

“Yeah.” I hesitated, then softened slightly. “Wouldn’t miss Christmas, would I?”

The way her smile broke through made my chest ache a little. There was something so gentle, so painfully genuine about it.

We stood there for a moment in silence, just looking at each other, the weight of the last few years sitting heavy between us. Then she reached out, fingers brushing the new silver rings on my hand.

“These are new,” she said, curiosity lighting her tone.

I glanced down at them, the firelight glinting off polished silver. “Gift,” I said simply.

“From whom?”

“Daphne,” I replied. “She found the only good use for Muggle shops, apparently.”

Her brow arched faintly. “Ah. Daphne Greengrass. I thought so.”

The silence after was warm, comfortable in a way I hadn’t felt in too long. The Manor itself felt alive again, lights glowing from distant rooms, faint carols floating down from somewhere upstairs. But beneath it all, there was something else. Something electric, strange. My mother’s eyes darted toward the dining hall every few seconds, her lips pressed into a tight line that couldn’t quite contain a smile. She was nervous, excited, even.

I frowned. “What is it?”

Her gaze flicked back to mine. “What?”

“You keep looking toward the dining hall like there’s a something waiting in there.”

Something bright sparked in her eyes. “Come with me,” she said softly, her voice trembling with barely-contained joy.

Without waiting for an answer, she took my hand gently and began to lead me down the corridor. The marble floors gleamed, our footsteps echoing faintly off the walls. The candles lining the hall flickered as we passed, their flames bowing in the slightest drafts that swept through the house.

When we reached the doors to the dining room, I stopped her. “Mother—”

“You’ll see,” she whispered, eyes glimmering.

The doors creaked open, and I followed her inside.

The room was softly lit, a long oak table, a fire crackling in the grate. For a heartbeat, I saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the familiar trappings of a Malfoy Christmas pared down to something intimate. Then movement caught my eye.

Someone was sitting at the far end of the table.

My breath hitched.

Lucius Malfoy lifted his head.

He looked older. Not just by time, but by something deeper, like whatever was left of his spirit had been wrung out and hung to dry. His hair, still pale as bone, was thinner now, his face drawn and shadowed. But his eyes, those same cold grey eyes I’d inherited, met mine, and for a second, the years between us vanished.

“Father,” I said quietly.

“Draco.”

My voice felt foreign in my throat. “You, how—”

“It was the Dark Lord,” my mother said softly beside me, her voice trembling with joy. “He arranged for Lucius to be released. Only for a short while, but—”

She didn’t finish. The relief in her tone said everything. I stepped forward slowly, my pulse thudding in my ears. Lucius stood to meet me, his movements deliberate but weary. And then, to my shock, he opened his arms slightly hesitant, as if he too wasn’t quite sure of the gesture.

I froze for half a second. Then I stepped into the embrace.

When we pulled apart, I looked at him properly. “You look… well,” I lied.

He gave a dry chuckle. “You, my son, have learned to lie convincingly.”

I smirked faintly. “I learned from the best.”

Something flickered across his face, amusement, pride, maybe even affection. It was hard to tell anymore. We sat. The table was modest by our standards, though still lavish by anyone else’s. My mother poured the drinks herself, humming faintly, unable to stop smiling.

“You’ve been well?” Lucius asked after a while, his tone measured, testing the weight of the question.

“As well as one can be right now,” I said. “He keeps us busy. We try to survive. You know how it is.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard things. About you.”

I tilted my head. “Good things, I hope.”

“The Dark Lord seems pleased,” he said carefully. “That is rare.”

A flicker of bitterness curled in my chest. “Yes, well, I’ve had to do a lot of work to make him see our family as equals again after the task last year.”

Lucius’s expression darkened, the faintest shadow of guilt passing behind his eyes. “You shouldn’t have had to.”

For a moment, silence. Even my mother’s hands faltered slightly as she set down the decanter.

Then she smiled again, forcing brightness back into the room. “Enough of that. It’s Christmas, and my family is together again. That’s all that matters.”

I glanced between them, my mother, still luminous despite the years, and my father, pale and hollow but alive. A part of me wanted to believe her, to let the moment stretch on forever.

I reached for my glass, the silver bracelet Daphne had given me catching the light. The metal was cool against my wrist. “To family,” I said, lifting the glass.

Lucius followed suit, his voice low and steady. “To strength.”

My mother smiled faintly, eyes glistening. “To hope.”

The fire crackled softly. For once, I let the quiet linger. I didn’t believe in hope. Not really, but I let her have it. I sipped my wine and let the warmth spread through me, glancing down again at the silver on my hand. The rings gleamed faintly, a reminder of the morning of laughter and sugar and chaos, of Daphne’s bright eyes and Lorenzo’s grin.

The conversation had moved from pleasantries to more serious things. The war, as it always did, crept its way into every sentence like smoke curling through cracks.

“We’ve been told it won’t be long now,” Father said softly, his tone precise but weak. “He’s winning, Draco. Finally. The blood traitors are being hunted again, justice is being restored.”

His words should have stirred something in me like pride, relief, some trace of the old loyalty that used to course through our veins like tradition. But all I could think of was Theo’s face. The pale blue lips. The sound of his mother screaming when she found him.

Narcissa, perhaps sensing the shift in my expression, touched my hand gently. “We were so sorry to hear about Theodore, darling,” she said softly. “He was always such a polite boy. Always one of my favourites, and you were always close.”

I nodded faintly, keeping my voice flat. “Yes.”

There wasn’t much else to say. “Close” didn’t mean much anymore when the person you were close with had no pulse.

They asked about the others, Mattheo, Daphne, Lorenzo, even Aurelia, and I deflected each question with ease. Busy. Sick. Spending Christmas elsewhere.

The lies came quickly, neatly, like second nature.

In truth, I hadn’t invited them this year.

Narcissa frowned faintly but didn’t press further. She had that rare talent of knowing when to stop asking, a gift I sometimes wished I’d inherited.

After a moment, she reached beneath her chair and pulled out a small box wrapped in silver paper. “I want you to give this to Aurelia.” she said softly,

I blinked, caught off guard. “Aurelia?” I repeated, unable to keep the disdain from my voice. “Why her?”

Narcissa smiled faintly, though her expression was wistful. “Because this was always a piece of mine she always admired, and I figured that she should have it rather than I. She was always a sweet girl and I hope that she hasn’t been too deeply effected by all this and loses that about her.”

I clenched my jaw, the faintest flicker of irritation prickling through me. “She’s not—” I started, then stopped. What was the point of arguing? My mother’s compassion was incurable. “Fine. I’ll give it to her.”

“You promise Draco?”

“Of course Mother.” I lied. I took the box, slipping it into my coat pocket, already planning to destroy it later. Whatever sentimentality lay inside, it wasn’t worth keeping.

Narcissa beamed faintly, her eyes shining. “Good.”

I didn’t ask what it was. I didn’t care.

After another half hour of polite conversation, Father ranting quietly about plans, Mother trying to soften every cruel word he uttered, I excused myself. Claimed I wanted to gather some of my old things. Narcissa kissed my cheek and told me to take as long as I needed.

The air in the hall felt colder than before. My boots echoed against the marble as I climbed the grand staircase, trailing my hand along the carved banister. Dust had gathered in the crevices, catching on my fingertips.

My old bedroom door creaked when I pushed it open. Everything was frozen in time, the bed perfectly made, the books lined on the shelves in perfect order. The reflection of my sixteen-year-old self stared back at me from the mirror on the wall.

For a moment, I thought I saw something move behind it. Then a cold hand clamped around my wrist.

I barely had time to draw my wand before the air around me folded in on itself, a violent rush of pressure, like being crushed through glass. The corridor disappeared. The world blurred into dark smoke and static, and when it cleared, I was standing in an old bedroom.

My pulse hammered against my ribs as my eyes adjusted to the dim lamplight. I instantly recognised the room. It was like stepping into a memory that had been taxidermized. Standing in the centre of it all, with the same calculated stillness as ever, was Abraxas Malfoy.

He looked precisely as he had the last time I’d seen him, silver hair slicked, expression cut from marble, robes immaculate despite the faint shimmer of unreality to his figure. The air around him hummed faintly, like magic struggling to contain itself.

“Still so jumpy, even after all this time,” Abraxas said, releasing my wrist. His voice was calm, measured, but there was always a venom just beneath it, a reminder that every word he spoke was deliberate. “Relax, boy. You’re among family.”

I swallowed the instinct to snap at him. “You could’ve knocked,” I muttered, rubbing my wrist where his grip had burned cold into my skin. “Or, I don’t know, not forcibly apparated me across the fucking manor.”

He ignored that, turning toward the looming bookcase on the far wall. “Do you know what your friends found the last time they were here?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “They found me.”

Abraxas continued, plucking a thick, leather-bound volume from the top shelf. Its spine was cracked with age, its cover darkened by something that looked unnervingly like dried blood. Strange runes were etched across the leather, faintly glowing red under the lamplight.

He held it out to me. “You will take this back to the safehouse.”

I stared at the book, not moving to touch it. “And what exactly is it?”

Abraxas gave a short, amused breath. “A book.”

I shot him a glare. “You know what I mean.”

He turned to face me fully, the lamplight flickering through the ghost of his form. “Blood magic,” he said at last, voice soft, almost reverent. “It’s older than Hogwarts, older than the Ministry, older than the pathetic politics that plague our world now. It’s power bound by lineage, our lineage.”

My stomach turned. “And what, you expect me to just take that thing home? Walk into the kitchen with a cursed book under my arm and tell the others it’s for light reading?”

His expression didn’t waver. “You will take it,” he said, tone low but absolute. “And you will not open it.”

I hesitated, then reached out. The leather was cold against my skin, colder than it should’ve been. The faint pulse of magic beneath it made my fingertips ache.

“Why me?” I asked quietly.

Abraxas’s gaze sharpened. “Because you are the only one left capable of understanding restraint.”

“That’s debatable,” I muttered, slipping the book under my arm.

I glanced around the room again, trying to shake off the feeling of being watched. The heavy clock above the dresser caught my eye, ornate, gilded, still beautiful. But something about it made my skin crawl. The minute hand was frozen. The second hand too. Stuck, perfectly, at ten o’clock.

“Why’s it not moving?” I asked, stepping closer.

Abraxas’s head turned sharply. His expression didn’t change, but the air shifted into something heavier, colder. “It’s been like that for a while now.”

I turned to him, narrowing my eyes. “Why?”

His calculating eyes found mine. “Someone,” he said slowly, “wouldn’t like if you heard that information.”

My pulse jumped. “Who?”

Abraxas tilted his head, studying me with an expression that almost bordered on pity. “You’ll know when you’re meant to.”

I looked at him, but he was already fading, his form flickering like a candle about to gutter out.

“Bring the book,” he said one last time, voice slipping between echo and whisper. “Do not read it. And Draco…”

He paused, just long enough for the silence to feel deliberate.

“Merry Christmas.”

 

Then he was gone. The air snapped, leaving me alone in the dead quiet of his old bedroom, the book heavy in my hands, and the clock on the wall still frozen.

✦

Snow was still falling when I apparated back to the safehouse. The world was dim and quiet, just the faint hum of the wards vibrating against my skin, the air sharp enough to sting my lungs. I stood there for a moment, in the shadow of the trees, the manor’s ghost still clinging to me. The book was heavy in my coat pocket, dragging at me with every breath.

Then I remembered the box in my other hand. The one Mother had pressed into my palm so sweetly, smiling, saying it was for Aurelia.

I stared at it for a long time, small, neat wrapping, soft like everything my mother touched. She’d said it was something she’d always loved. Something she wanted Aurelia to have.

Even thinking her name irritated me.

I crouched beside the hedge, drew my wand, and flicked it lazily toward the gift.

“Incendio.”

Flame caught instantly, white, clean, and hot. The paper curled in seconds, ribbon shrivelling to smoke. It burned faster than I expected. A gift destroyed, like it had never existed.

Good.

The satisfaction that came with it was thin, brittle, but it was something. Still, the weight of the book in my pocket remained. I didn’t know what Abraxas wanted with it, why he’d needed me, to bring the book, or what the fuck any of this meant.

But there was someone who could probably help.

I exhaled, the decision solidifying. Then I stepped forward, boots crunching through the snow toward the front door. Inside, the house was silent. The others must have gone to sleep, the fire in the living room was only embers now. The air smelled of gingerbread and pine. I conjured a plate and stacked a few gingerbread pieces on it and the remnants of whatever sugary chaos we had made earlier. Then, taking a steadying breath, I made my way down the hall to the last door at the end.

The room was dark except for a faint flicker of candlelight. Granger looked up when I entered. Her eyes were wide for a moment, startled, then relaxed just slightly when she saw it was me.

“It’s Christmas,” I said dryly.

She blinked. “Is it really Christmas already?”

“Yes, Granger.” I kicked the door closed behind me, setting the plate down on the table. “You lose track of time when you’re a prisoner, I suppose.”

Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Something like that.”

“I brought you something to eat,” I said, sliding the plate toward her. “Gingerbread.”

She eyed it suspiciously. “Did you poison it?”

“Not this time. But I will on request.”

That earned a faint huff of amusement. “You really know how to spread holiday cheer.”

I sat down opposite her, reaching into my coat. “I didn’t come here to celebrate. I came to ask for something.”

Her gaze flicked to the book as I set it on the table between us. Her expression shifted immediately, showing interest.

“What is that?” she asked quietly.

“Something old,” I replied. “Something I’m not supposed to read.”

That caught her full attention.

She leaned forward as much as the ropes would allow, her eyes glinting in the candlelight. “And why bring it to me?”

“Because you’re not me,” I said simply. “You might as well make yourself useful.”

Her brows rose slightly. “Useful,” she repeated.

“Don’t take it personally,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Be grateful I’m giving you something to do, especially after you prove uselessness time and time again in form of defiance.”

She hesitated, eyes flickering down to the book again. “What do I get out of this?”

I stared at her for a moment, then drew my wand. The ropes around her wrists fell away, slithering to the floor.

She flexed her hands, rubbing the raw skin, but didn’t move to stand. “You’re letting me go?”

“Hardly.” I tilted my head toward the door. “There are strong wards, I wouldn’t recommend testing it but by all means, be my guest.”

For a few seconds, there was only the sound of her breathing, the faint crackle of the candlewick. Then she reached for the plate, breaking off a corner of gingerbread and chewing thoughtfully.

“I suppose it’s better than starving,” she said finally. Her fingers brushed the cover of the book, lingering over the strange runes. “You really don’t know what this is?”

I shook my head. “Something about blood magic. It belonged to my family.”

“And you don’t want to open it yourself?”

“I’m not suicidal.”

She sighed, but I could see a faint excitement creeping in. “Fine,” she said finally, resting her hand on the book. “I’ll take a look. But I’ll need time.”

“You have it,” I said, standing. “And I expect you to tell me what it means. Every detail.”

Her eyes lifted to meet mine. “If it’s dangerous?”

“Well, your existence isn’t really an aspect of my concern.” I turned toward the door, pausing only once. “Merry Christmas, Granger.”

Her voice was quiet when it came. “Merry Christmas, Malfoy.”

As I stepped out into the hall, the sound of the candle flickering behind me, I felt the first faint pulse of the book’s magic through the wall, as if it was already awake, already waiting. For the first time all night, I wasn’t sure whether I’d done something very clever, or something very, very stupid.

✦

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

I barely noticed the clock on the wall as I let the door click shut behind the last man. The room smelled faintly of cologne and alcohol, a perfume of other people’s needs and fantasies, and it made my chest ache. He handed me the bills, crisp and fat in my hand, and I watched him nod before he disappeared down the hall.

The silence that followed was suffocating. I leaned back in the chair, letting my body slump against the velvet cushions, suddenly aware of how tired I was. I poured myself a glass of water, trying to wash away the lingering taste of dick before the next. My hands shook slightly, not from work, though they always did that, but from the weight of everything I hadn’t faced yet.

I thought about Draco. Of course I did. He was with his mother and father, sitting around a bright, warm dining table, laughing at some old story or another. They had their arms around him, pressing their love into him, making him feel wanted and safe. I had none of that. None of it. I had this room, this work, and the fleeting cash from men who probably didn’t even care what I felt, or even existed beyond their own pleasure.

A strange mix of relief and grief twisted in my stomach. Relief that I was finally free from my own family, free from their control, from their whispers and their constant comparisons. But grief, too, for the parts I’d loved, the parts I’d still loved, even if I couldn’t allow myself to admit it. My sister, Astoria. I closed my eyes and tried to see her face, the way she used to laugh when I told her stories in the great hall after nights out, or when we’d sneak out to steal chocolates from the kitchens at home. The memories were sharp and painful, like a piece of ice lodged in my chest. I’d left them behind, and yet, in moments like this, I missed them all the same.

I felt the anger rising next, sudden and bitter. Draco had them. He had their warmth, their attention, their love. He got to feel safe in the world while I walked through it like a ghost. A ghost who everyone wanted in some way, but no one loved in the way that mattered. Jealousy bubbled beneath the surface, sour and hot. My hands itched to throw something, to break something, just to feel something other than this hollow ache.

Then came despair. It seeped in slowly, filling the corners of my mind with grey. I thought about every man I’d served tonight. Every smile I’d forced, every moment of submission, every laugh and moan that had been nothing but performance.

I felt pity for them, almost absurdly so. What had driven them here? Money, loneliness, boredom? Maybe even desperation. They were pieces of the same world I was trapped in, each of us circling some private hell, pretending it didn’t exist, distracting ourselves with fleeting pleasures.

My legs curled under me, my arms hugging myself tightly as if I could squeeze the sadness out. My chest felt hollow, my head light, and for the first time in hours I just let the tears come, sliding silently down my cheeks.

I hated crying here, in this room, with the faint smell of aftershave and desire clinging to me, but I couldn’t stop it. I let myself feel everything I hadn’t allowed myself to feel since leaving the safehouse this morning. The gaping distance between what I wanted and what I had. The unfairness of it all, and the small, bitter reality that I would keep going through it, over and over, until the world finally swallowed me.

 

I sat there for a long while, letting my body shake, letting the tears fall, letting the silence press against me. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to go back to the floor of the club or the next client waiting for me. Eventually, I pressed my palms to my face, trying to steady my breathing. I wiped my tears on my sleeve. I knew I couldn’t stay like this forever.

I pressed a mint to my tongue, my fingers lingered on the pack, brushing over the smooth surface where it lay in my bag, right beside the gun. I pushed back the wave of exhaustion and forced myself into the mask I wore every night, the smile, the sway of my hips, the playful glint in my eyes. Sexy, alluring and untouchable. But my heart was hammering, not from the music or the attention, but from the trembling under the surface.

I approached a man, who I had seen with Lelia many times, he was wide-eyed, probably here for the thrill and nothing else. He looked over. I could feel his gaze, roaming over my body, I knew he was imagining all sorts of depraved things. I moved to where he was seated, sliding onto his lap with a languid grace that belied the chaos inside me. My hands ran down his shoulders and shirt slowly, hips grinding in rhythm with the music.

He watched, transfixed, as I leaned back and arched my spine, pushing my chest out strategically. His hands slid up my sides, his fingers splayed wide as he mapped the curve of my waist. They slid further, enough to grope my breasts, squeezing them through the thin fabric of my dress. I felt as his hips thrusted up sharply into me, I allowed my head to fall back, emitting a fake gasp.

My mind was somewhere else entirely. I focused on the way my weight shifted, the way my body moved over his, trying to bring myself to the physical setting, anything that would keep the rest of me from falling apart.

I remembered Leila, laughing, showing me how to do this, the curves, the sway, how to catch the eye, how to hold someone’s attention. The absurdity of the way she had done it to me first, making me giggle uncontrollably, pushed back some of the panic, letting me find a tiny edge of control. I could breathe. I could keep moving.

As we moved into the room, I let myself be led this time, letting the crowd blur behind me. I felt the sofa beneath me, the music muffled but pulsing through the floor. I kissed him because it was expected, but inside I was trying to anchor myself even more. His hands found my thighs, his lips on mine, and I tried to lose myself in it, to focus on something external rather than the hollow ache gnawing at my chest.

Then he stopped, pulling back slightly, confusion furrowing his brow. “Why are you here, on Christmas? You look young, don’t you have a family to be with now love?”

The question hit me like a dagger I didn’t see coming. I froze mid-kiss, mid-motion, feeling the weight of every holiday, every family gathering, every celebration that had been twisted into something horrible. His words were harmless, innocent even, and yet they pulled the crack in my chest wide open.

I looked at him, tried to smile, tried to say something witty, something that would keep the illusion intact, but it all crumbled. The act of being perfect, of being unbroken, failed me in that moment. I saw myself, lonely, bruised, exhausted and trapped. The memories were flooding back like staring into a mirror I’d been avoiding for months.

“I…” I started, voice trembling, trying to swallow it back, but the dam broke. Tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable. I couldn’t hold them in. I pressed my face to his chest, shaking, sobbing in a way I hadn’t let anyone see in a while.

He froze at first, startled, then softened. His hands hesitated on my back, unsure, but gentle. He murmured something, apologies, questions, I couldn’t catch them over my own gasps, but the sound of a human being trying to reach me, even this stranger, only made the tears come harder.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out between sobs, “It’s not you… it’s me…”

His fingers trailed through my hair, awkward, tentative, offering the smallest comfort he could. I let myself collapse against him, letting all the despair, the jealousy, the longing, and the exhaustion pour out in one raw, uncontrolled wave. My hands gripped his shoulders, holding on to him, while the rest of me felt like it was falling into a void I could no longer fight.

It was humiliating, terrifying, and yet somehow, I didn’t care. For the first time tonight, I wasn’t pretending. I wasn’t performing. I was just me, and I was breaking, and it was the only honesty I had left.

He whispered something again but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t hearing him. I was hearing the crack of my own heart, the echo of a thousand Christmases gone wrong, the laughter I would never hear from Astoria again. The pain was too sharp, too consuming. I cried until my chest ached, until my knees and arms were trembling, until the room spun gently.

I felt his hands on me, tilting my chin up gently, his touch careful but firm. “Hey,” he said softly, “it’s okay. You don’t have to do anything now.” His words were simple, unassuming, but they carried a weight I hadn’t realized I was craving. I blinked through my tears, unable to respond, my throat too tight to form coherent words.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small card, sliding it into my palm. “My sister’s girlfriend is a psychologist. She sees clients who go through this kind of thing a lot. People in your line of work, they come here sometimes. You don’t have to—” he paused, giving me a pointed look.

I stared at the card, the print blurring slightly as fresh tears welled up again. My fingers trembled around the smooth cardstock, the edges cool against my hot skin. “Thank you,” I whispered finally, my voice breaking, almost apologetic. “Really… thank you.”

He gave me a small, understanding smile, one that didn’t ask anything in return. It was rare, that kind of patience, and I felt it wrap around me like a fragile shield against the weight of the night. He stood, straightening, and handed me a stack of bills, thick and heavy in my hands. I flinched slightly. “You don’t have to do that,” I said quickly, trying to push the money back toward him, feeling ridiculous and undeserving.

“You need it more than I do love,” he said with a shrug, a soft chuckle in his voice. “Just take it. Go home. Go to your family tonight, if you can. Have a real Christmas.”

I hesitated, staring at the stack. The money was absurdly generous for the simple service I had provided, and yet the gesture wasn’t just about the money. It was the implication, the hope that I could exist somewhere other than in the grind, in the routine of the club, in the constant façade. He wanted me to exist outside of it.

“I… okay,” I murmured, tucking the cash into my bag and clutching the card as well. “I… I’ll think about it. Thank you, and I’m sorry.”

He nodded, giving me a slight bow of his head, then turned and walked away. I didn’t even watch him leave. My gaze stayed glued to the floor, the worn carpet beneath me. The club’s thumping bass still filtered in from the main floor, a constant heartbeat, but in that moment it seemed distant, like it belonged to another world.

I sank further into the couch, letting my body fold into itself, the exhaustion of the night crashing over me all at once. My chest felt tight, heavy with the raw weight of everything I had pushed aside, loneliness, grief, guilt, the endless parade of men and expectations, the constant balancing act between surviving and performing. The tears didn’t stop, they rolled freely down my cheeks, each one carrying a fragment of all the things I had buried.

Anger bubbled beneath the sadness, twisting and turning like a coil tightening in my chest. Anger at the unfairness of it all, at the world that demanded I sell myself just to feel something and keep the people I loved happy, anger at my own heart for feeling longing for something I had never truly had, a family that cared, love that was uncomplicated, a sense of belonging that wasn’t earned through fear or obedience. My hand went to my temple, pressing against the ache that had been growing steadily all night, trying to tame the spinning chaos in my head.

I swallowed hard, feeling the bitter taste of tears and mint on my tongue. The gun was there in my bag, a cold, metallic weight that reminded me that I was in control, that I could survive. But control wasn’t the same as safety, or love, or warmth. I let myself collapse completely, letting the sobs shake my body, letting the heat rise and fall in uneven, jagged waves.

The room felt impossibly small, the muted lights casting long shadows across the walls. I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the soft fabric of the couch. I let the tears run freely, let the trembling of my body continue, let the exhaustion and despair and rage mingle until they were indistinguishable.

The sound of the club, the laughter, the music, the clinking of glasses, the muffled thumping of bass all faded into nothing. There was only me, raw and exposed, and the small, improbable comfort of a stranger’s kindness, a card with a name and a profession, a promise that I didn’t have to endure everything alone.

I apparated back into the safehouse bathroom, the cold air of the hall hitting my skin, but it didn’t bother me. I barely noticed anything anymore, the sadness still clinging, bubbling beneath my skin, a constant, gnawing weight.

The bathroom was quiet, dimly lit, steam curling lazily from the shower. I stepped in, letting the hot water cascade over me, washing away the grime of the night but leaving the residue of everything else, everything that I had carried, that I had forced myself to ignore. My hands ran over my arms, over my shoulders, gripping and releasing, trying to make sense of the ache in my chest. I closed my eyes, letting the water pound against my back, as if each droplet could hammer some semblance of control back into me.

I thought about the money, the card, the stranger’s gentle insistence that I didn’t have to endure everything alone. I wanted to believe it, but the thought was quickly drowned by the emptiness inside me. Would anyone ever see past the masks I wore? Would anyone ever really love me for me, not for what I could give, or the performance I could put on? The thought hit me hard, a sharp, jagged pang that left me clutching the tiles for balance.

The water ran cold as I stepped out, wrapping myself in a towel, dragging my mind reluctantly into the present. I changed into pyjamas, soft and loose, letting the comfort of the fabric settle over my skin, but the warmth was hollow. My reflection in the mirror looked back at me, eyes bright but hollow, mouth pressed into a line that didn’t want to smile. I didn’t know how to fix it, or if it could ever be fixed.

I padded softly into the living room, trying not to disturb anyone, or maybe just not wanting to acknowledge the reality of them seeing me like this. Lorenzo was sprawled across the couch, his head propped up on a pillow, a lazy, contented smile stretching across his face as soon as he caught sight of me. “You’re up,” he said softly, his voice gentle, a small spark of relief threading through it. “I couldn’t sleep… too much sugar, I think.”

I gave a small laugh, soft and brittle. “Same here I think,” I admitted, my voice quieter than usual, more honest than I expected.

He shifted slightly, patting the space beside him, outstretching his arms. “Then come here,” he said. “Come lie with me.”

I hesitated, the emptiness in my chest warping the warmth I felt at his words. But the invitation was simple, unassuming, a gesture free from expectation, and it drew me in. Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself onto the couch, letting my body fold against his. I rested my head on his chest, feeling the steady, even rise and fall of it beneath me. His warmth seeped through the fabric of my pyjamas, a weight that reminded me that someone existed who didn’t demand anything from me tonight.

He leaned his head slightly, looking down at me with a softness I wasn’t used to, a quiet adoration in his eyes that made my chest ache in a new, strange way. His hands came up, brushing gently through my hair, fingertips threading through the blonde strands with care and reverence. The gesture was tender, deliberate, and it made the tightness in my chest loosen, even if only a fraction.

I closed my eyes, letting myself feel it, letting the moment exist without analysis or intrusion. The warmth, the gentleness, the simple act of being held, it was foreign and yet familiar, a small, fragile comfort that made the night feel a little less heavy. I realized, as his hands moved over my scalp and my breathing slowed against the rhythm of his chest, that maybe this was what love was.

I felt some of the tension in my body melt away, the hollow ache softening into something closer to peace. My fingers twined loosely in the crook of his arm, the steady beat of his heart under my ear a silent reassurance that I was not alone. I hadn’t expected this, hadn’t let myself hope for it, but here it was, fragile and unspoken, and I let it fill the spaces inside me that had been empty for so long.

The world outside was still chaotic, still unkind, still impossibly complicated, but here, in the quiet warmth of the couch and the soft protection of Lorenzo’s arms, I allowed myself to breathe and my body rest. I was not safe, not healed, but I was breathing.

Chapter Text

LORENZO BERKSHIRE

I stood by the door of the interrogation room, my hand resting on the hilt of my wand, watching Daphne circle the woman strapped to the chair. The Order member was shaking, half-delirious, wrists flayed from the ropes she'd tried to burn through. Her eyes darted between us to Daphne's sharp silhouette and my stillness as if trying to decide which one of us was worse. She should've picked Daphne, she always should.

Daphne had that look again, the one that belonged to fire. Hair loose, pupils too wide, like her soul had been wired directly into the current of the universe. Every movement of hers was too fast, too bright. She was beautiful like an explosion.

"Where is he?" Daphne asked, voice too light for the words.

The woman flinched. "I told you. I don't know."

"Liar," Daphne said sweetly, and dragged the blade across the woman's arm in one practiced motion, the blood beaded instantly, running in thick rivulets across her skin.

"You know," I said, leaning against the wall, "you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just tell us what we want to hear. She's in a good mood tonight, and that doesn't last."

The woman's breath hitched as if hope and horror were tangled together.

Daphne tilted her head toward me, grin slipping into something wolfish. "You talk to her, Berkshire. You're better at this, I'll just make a mess."

That was Daphne's way of saying she was bored. Dangerous, that boredom. It made her reckless, not cruel, just curious about how far people could bend before they broke.

I sighed and pushed off the wall. "You sure?"

"Mm. She likes you better anyway," Daphne said, tapping the knife against her palm slowly. "Everyone does."

I crouched in front of the chair, careful not to step in the puddle beneath it. The woman's chin was tilted toward the floor, hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and blood. I could see the tremor in her neck, the way her pulse jumped whenever Daphne moved.

"Hey," I murmured. "Look at me."

Nothing.

I brushed a knuckle under her chin, barely a touch, and lifted her face until her eyes met mine. "There we go."

They were green, not the brilliant emerald of Daphne's eyes, that undid me time and time again. No, her eyes were a cloudy, terrified green. The kind of eyes that used to belong to good people before the world taught them otherwise.

I smiled soft, almost kind. "You look like you've been through hell."

She didn't answer. Her breath rattled out between cracked lips.

I let my gaze linger, gentle but unblinking, and spoke lower. "Tell me what I want to know, and she'll stop. You have my word."

"You'll just kill me," she rasped.

"Maybe I will," I said. "But I'd do it nicely."

That earned a laugh from Daphne. I didn't look back, I could feel her grin. She liked when I did this, when I went quiet and calm and let my voice do the cutting. The trick was never the words. It was everything else, the rhythm, the pauses, the warmth that wasn't warmth at all. I'd learned that once. Learned it deep enough that it rewired something inside me.

"See, she's already bleeding for us," I said softly. "That means you don't have to. You could make it easy."

"I don't, I really don't know where he is," the woman stammered, shaking her head. "Please."

I exhaled through my nose, slow and deliberate. "You're a terrible liar."

She started crying then, the small, quiet sobs made her whole body tremble. Somewhere behind me, Daphne hummed like she was enjoying the music, but I leaned closer. Close enough for her tears to land on my wrist.

"It's funny," I said. "You people talk so much about love and light, but when it comes down to it, you'd let anyone die to protect your precious hero. Even yourself."

"I'm not—"

"Not loyal?" I asked, tilting my head. "Then prove it."

Her eyes flicked toward Daphne again with an instinctive, hopeless plea.

I followed the look, smiled faintly, and whispered, "She likes pain, but I like truth. Only one of us can stop the other."

"Berkshire," Daphne said suddenly, her voice sing-song. "You're making her fall in love with you."

"Is that a problem?" I said without turning.

"Only if she dies before you kiss her."

That made the woman flinch harder than any blade.

I chuckled, low in my throat, and met her gaze again. "See what I mean? She's jealous already."

I hated this part, the way this was the power that worked far more than any torture or magic, and how easy it was.

I leaned in a little closer, until she could feel the warmth of my breath. "Don't make me choose between you."

She blinked, tears catching the dim light, and I knew she was almost there, not because she wanted to talk, but because she wanted me to be the one she talked to. That was the point. People don't confess out of fear, they confess out of attachment. That was what power looked like. Not pain, but proximity.

My hand brushed her cheek in a slow, torturous motion. "You smell like rain," I murmured. "Where were you stationed last? Somewhere coastal?"

Her lips parted. "Cornwall," she whispered before she could stop herself.

"Good girl," I said, and immediately hated the words, the taste of them.

Daphne laughed again, high and delighted. "Oh, she likes that. You should see her face, you've got her floating."

I looked at Daphne finally and something inside me twisted. There was blood splattered along her collarbone, glinting like jewels in the lamplight. She looked like everything I wanted to protect from the world and everything the world had already ruined.

"You having fun?" I asked.

"I'm having a great time," she said. "You're like—" She gestured vaguely with the knife. "Like poetry."

I laughed under my breath. "I'll take that as a compliment."

She smiled, sharp as glass. "It was."

The woman started whispering again, desperate now. "Please, I don't know where Potter is. They don't tell me. I swear—"

I held up a hand, silencing her. Then I stood, turned toward Daphne, and said quietly, "She's telling the truth."

Daphne blinked. "How do you know?"

"Because she believes she's lying," I said. "And no one's that good an actor when they're bleeding."

"Fuck," she said, shrugging. "If you say so."

I watched her wipe her hands on a rag from her pocket, casual as a painter cleaning brushes. Then she walked past me, fingers brushing my sleeve, a tiny contact that she probably didn't even notice.

When the door closed behind her, the room suddenly felt too big. I looked back at the woman, now slumped in the chair, sobbing quietly. I didn't feel sorry for her, pity was a useless emotion. But I did feel something heavier, that hollow echo that came after you win a game you wish you hadn't played.

"You'll live," I said finally. "For now."

She didn't look up.

I turned toward the glass, I knew there were people watching, maybe even the Dark Lord himself. I smiled faintly, raised a hand in mock salute, and pulled my own rag out from a pocket to scrub blood of my fingers. The fabric bloomed red almost instantly and for a moment, I wasn't in the room anymore. I was fifteen again, learning the language of power in the worst possible classroom. Learning that people could make you want what you hated.

That was the real trick, not dominance nor cruelty. Just knowing which part of someone to touch, with words or silence, to make them give you what you needed. Daphne thought I was good at this because I liked it, she was wrong. I was good at this because I remembered.

I pushed open the door and stepped into the corridor, chest heaving from the adrenaline still coiled around my ribs. The chill of the manor wrapped around me like a wet cloak, sharp against my flushed skin. Daphne was leaning against the wall a few feet away, knife sheathed at her side, shoulders squared, blood streaking her forearms and the front of her uniform.

In that moment, I could have sworn the world had narrowed down to her. The way her hair caught the torchlight, curling around her face in wild golden spirals; the faint flecks of crimson that clung to her cheeks, the tilt of her chin that suggested both pride and challenge. She looked like something alive and dangerous and untouchable all at once. Beautiful, in the way you'd call a storm beautiful, terrifying if it struck you, but impossible to look away.

She caught my eyes then, and the grin she offered me was feral and unrestrained. "Took you long enough," she said, voice sharp, alive. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me."

"Me?" I wheezed, finally managing to draw breath past the burn in my lungs. "Never, I'm just... careful."

She laughed, loud and ringing, and the sound made the hairs on my arms stand on end. "Careful, sure. I can see it in your eyes, calculating, planning, trying to make her squirm. That's the only thing you're good at anyway."

Her head tilted, considering, and I could see her calculating even in that playful pose. I loved that, loved that fire in her mind as much as I loved the wild pulse of her energy.

"So," she said, letting the knife fall with a soft clink onto the floor, "we're just going to pretend Draco is making a dent in Granger's head, are we?"

I chuckled. "I don't think he's denting anything. He's poking with a spoon while she's in full steel-mode. Honestly, I think he might feel bad for her."

Daphne barked a laugh, catching me off guard with how unrestrained it was. "Bad for her? Draco? He's in love!"

I raised an eyebrow, smiling. "You really think so?"

She leaned toward me, eyes narrowed, mock-conspiratorial. "I do. I don't even have any reason to believe think so, but he's totally in love."

I shook my head. "I don't think that's good news for anyone involved."

"Especially Granger," Daphne said, mock-glaring at an invisible Draco, "because he's a fucking idiot. Either he loves her, or he can't do anything right."

We were talking, laughing quietly in that corridor of shadows, when a sudden pop of air made me freeze. A figure shimmered into existence a few feet ahead, small, with eyes black as ink and a smile that never reached its thin, pointed face.

The house-elf of the Riddle family.

Daphne straightened instantly. "I don't think anyone's expecting you here," she said cautiously.

"I am not here to expect," the elf said, voice high, yet carrying the weight of authority. "The Dark Lord commends your work."

I glanced at Daphne, noting how her pupils dilated, a mixture of pride, awe, and that subtle thrill that always made me wonder if she would burn the world just to see someone blink.

The elf's head tilted, thin hands clasped in front. "The disposal of the girl in the chair will be handled personally. You are to return to the safehouse immediately."

We nodded in unison. I offered the elf a quiet, "Thank you," and Daphne inclined her head slightly. The elf's presence was almost liquid, as it shimmered again before disappearing.

Then, in the same voice, echoing as if from nowhere, the elf added, "Happy New Year."

Daphne blinked. "Wait. What?"

I frowned, glancing at her. "It was Christmas, wasn't it?"

"Was it?" She grinned wide, teeth flashing, cheeks flushed. "I think we lost a few days in a blur of raiding and..." Her hands waved vaguely. "Everything."

I exhaled slowly. My pulse caught on the sudden awareness. The last few days had been a continuous stream of blood and fire and adrenaline, with little thought to calendars or seasons. And now it was New Year's Eve. Daphne's laugh erupted then, not small or quiet, but big and unrestrained, echoing off the walls.

"LORENZO!" she shouted, spinning in a circle, hands raised. "We need to go out! We need to do something! Everyone! All of us!"

I stepped toward her, gently taking one of her bloodstained hands in mine. She didn't resist, just laughed harder. "Daphne," I said, voice soft but firm, "everyone else is probably exhausted. They've been running themselves ragged. But we could—" I hesitated, feeling the truth twist warmly in my chest, "we could still go out. Just you and me."

Her eyes narrowed playfully, scanning me for the catch. "Just me and you?"

"I will provide you with nothing short of a good time."

She laughed again, a sound that made my chest ache in a good way. I grinned, letting her energy wash over me.

"I mean it," I said, giving her hand a light squeeze. "We'll step out, make sure no one recognises us, just breathe for a little while. Enjoy the night. New Year's Eve isn't something you get to ignore."

Her grin softened into a rare moment of clarity. "Fine," she said, mock-sighing. "As long as we see the fireworks."

"You have my word."

I let her step back slightly, careful not to let the exhilaration tip her into recklessness, and glanced at the hallway ahead. Dark, cold, faint torchlight flickering against the walls.

"Ready?" I asked.

Her hands twitched slightly toward her wand, and then she shook her head, letting it fall to her side. "Ready," she echoed, voice trembling just slightly, but triumphant.

I nodded. "Safehouse first, let's get this blood off," I said.

We moved together toward the grand doorway, the corridor stretching behind us like a memory already fading. I could hear her heartbeat in the echoing silence between us, rapid and light, a rhythm that made me grin despite myself.

I glanced at Daphne, took her hand again, and whispered, "Hold on Daph, I'll apparate us."

We stepped out together into the hall, the chill of the night brushing our faces. The cold had never felt so good, while the world had never felt so ours. The world felt different the instant we hit the safehouse. The cold of the night clung to my clothes, freezing the last traces of adrenaline into the fabric of my jacket, but inside, the warmth of the fire in the living room struck me first.

Draco sat cross-legged on the couch, teacup balanced in his hands, eyes fixed on the fireplace like the flames held some secret only he could read. He didn't acknowledge us, didn't even glance up as we stepped through the door. I felt the old rhythm of our home settle around me, familiar, quiet, safe in its own way, though heavy with shadows none of us could shake.

Daphne's voice broke through first, bright and teasing. "Do you think Granger also drinks tea, Lorenzo?"

I turned to see her laughing, she darted past me, her laughter echoing off the walls as she disappeared down the hall toward the showers. I watched her go, the red splotches on her clothes already forgotten, her presence commanding the space like it was made to orbit around her.

I drifted toward the kitchen instead, letting the warm lamplight wash over me. Mattheo sat in his usual spot, elbows on the table, staring blankly at a piece of parchment as if it contained the answers to questions he had long since stopped asking. I didn't speak. He didn't look up.

I wiped the sweat and grime from my arms with a clean rag, noticing the faint tremor in my fingers. I busied myself with washing a pile of dishes that had built up over the last two days, the warm water and clink of porcelain against metal a meditation of sorts after the adrenaline of the mission.

Then came the soft rustle of fabric from down the hall. Daphne appeared, stepping into the kitchen in her dressing gown, her hair slick and straight from the shower, skin glowing under the warm lights.

"What do I wear?" she asked, eyes bright, glancing between me and the kitchen cabinet where the boys' clothes were stacked.

Her tone held a teasing lilt, but there was genuine uncertainty beneath it. I smiled softly, washing a plate with slow strokes, letting the suds bubble between my fingers.

"Whatever makes you feel beautiful," I said without hesitation, eyes briefly meeting hers. There was no charm in my words, no manipulation, just a simple truth.

Her lips curled upward, but she didn't linger. She darted toward her and Aurelia's room, laughter rising again, leaving me to rifle through the cabinet. My hand settled on one of Draco's suits. It was dark, sharply tailored, the kind of thing that carried a quiet authority without drawing attention. I stole it, tucking it under my arm, and made my way to the bathroom, letting the door click softly behind me.

The mirror reflected a man who had just stepped out of chaos, soot and water still clinging to his skin, but the lines around my eyes had softened in the warm light. The suit was stiff in my hands, but once on, it draped over me perfectly, the sleeves brushing my wrists, the jacket falling neatly over my shoulders. I adjusted the tie, straightened the collar, and let my reflection sink in.

And then she appeared.

Daphne stepped into the bathroom, the long silky red dress I had bought for her at Christmas cascading to the floor. She paused mid-step, hands brushing at the fabric, her hair catching the light as it fell in soft, polished waves. The sight of her made me catch my breath. Not because I was flustered, not because my usual flirtation schemes had any place here, but because everything around me was suddenly reduced to her, and nothing else mattered.

She looked radiant. A force of life and light and raw, untamed energy distilled into a single human form. Her eyes caught mine, wide and gleaming, and there was a flash of wonder there, almost vulnerable, unaware of the effect she had. I had to step back slightly, just to take it all in. My mouth went dry, my chest ached in that sharp way it did when something genuinely struck me.

"Wow," I breathed.

She laughed softly, twirling slightly so the skirt fanned out around her. "Wow?" she echoed, teasing, but there was a softness in her eyes that made me know she wanted me to mean it.

I stepped closer, voice low, steady. "Yeah. Wow. You look incredible. I don't even think there's a word for it. It's... you."

She paused mid-twirl, tilting her head at me, curiosity flickering in her gaze. "You mean it?"

I nodded, carefully. "Completely. Every time I see you, it's like my world rearranges itself around you."

Her cheeks colored slightly, though she tried to mask it with a playful smirk. "You're being too nice," she said, though her voice held a tremor of warmth. "But thank you."

I stepped closer, closer enough that our hands almost brushed. I stopped myself, letting the pause linger. This was about her, not me. She deserved to feel admired, seen, unpressured.

"You're beautiful Daphne," I added quietly. "Not just because of the dress, but everything."

She tilted her head, studying me, and then she laughed a small, delighted laugh that made the light shimmer differently. "You really know how to ruin someone," she said, stepping closer, brushing the edge of her hand against mine in the softest touch. "But I think I like it."

"I meant every word," I said quietly, letting her words sink in. "You don't have to like it. You just have to know it's true."

She spun again, the silk swishing around her, and I could only stand there, completely enthralled. Not by manipulation, not by flattery, but by her. By Daphne. By the fire and life and storm that existed solely because she did.

Finally, she turned back to me, hands on her hips, eyes gleaming. "Well, then," she said, voice tinged with mischief, "I suppose we should go before we miss the fireworks."

I nodded, chest still tight with awe. "After you," I said, stepping back, allowing her to lead.

We stepped out of the bathroom, leaving the warmth of the fire and the lingering scent of the safehouse behind us. The cold winter night pressed against our skin, crisp and real, a reminder of everything beyond these walls. But I didn't care about the cold, didn't care about the shadows. All that mattered was her, the way she moved, laughed, shone, the silk of the dress catching the glow and turning her into something unreal.

I walked beside her, hand still lightly brushing hers, silently promising I would keep this moment for both of us. As we stepped toward the door leading out to the night, ready to apparate into the city, I felt that rare pulse of life that comes from seeing someone you care about in all their glory.

✦

The streets of London hit us like a wave the moment we apparated. Bright lights glittered off the pavements, signs reflecting in puddles, people staggering and laughing in clusters, glasses raised in drunken celebration. The smell of roasted chestnuts and smoke mingled with the faint waft of spilled drink, and the noise roared in my ears.

I swallowed hard, feeling my chest tighten. Nights like this weren't meant for us but here we were. Daphne walked beside me, the hem of her dress brushing the tops of my shoes, her hand lightly grazing mine. I was nervous.

I loved her.

That wasn't the problem. I'd known it for months, though she didn't, and I didn't dare say it aloud. My stomach twisted with anxiety because I didn't know if she felt the same way, if she wanted this, or if she would see tonight as some sort of romantic gesture when it was just me trying to keep her happy.

What if she hated it? What if she hated me for trying? What if I made it awkward, made her feel trapped in a moment she didn't really want? My mind raced, every step heavier with imagined missteps, every laugh around us echoing like a warning bell.

I was so lost in my own spiraling thoughts that I didn't notice when she took my hand.

Her fingers slid into mine, firm, confident, intertwining as though they belonged there. My gaze dropped automatically. She was smiling wide and bright, the kind of smile that made the chaos of London fade and that made me feel steady again.

I blinked, and the knot in my chest loosened. Her hand was warm, anchored, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't feel like I was holding her up or pushing her somewhere she didn't want to go. She wanted this.

"You okay?" she asked, voice soft but teasing.

I nodded, gripping her hand a little tighter without thinking. "Yeah," I said, voice a little rough. "I'm... fine."

We wandered through the throngs of people, stepping carefully around drunk pedestrians, the city was alive in a way that made me ache for a life that was just simple and safe. But I couldn't let myself dwell on that.

Eventually, we stumbled across a building that caught my attention. It was a sleek, modern structure with a rooftop bar, glass walls glowing with golden light, a spiral staircase inviting us up.

"This looks fancy," Daphne said, her eyes gleaming with excitement. "We have to go up."

I swallowed again, but I didn't hesitate. She was already bounding up the stairs, practically and I followed, matching her pace as best I could. My mind swirled with caution and fear and hope all at once.

When we reached the top, the view stole my breath. The city stretched endlessly, lit up in a glittering expanse, fireworks already being launched somewhere off in the distance, the first bursts of color exploding across the skyline. The crowd inside was lively, murmuring with soft laughter and clinking glasses.

We slipped past them, finding a small table near the edge, where the lights of the city framed us perfectly. Daphne perched on the edge of the chair, leaning forward on her elbows, and I sank into the seat opposite her, hands folded loosely on the table.

"So," Daphne said, tapping the tabletop with her fingers, "plan for tonight. Fireworks. Definitely from a roof. We'll see the whole city, every last burst of color. Perfect view."

I chuckled softly, trying to keep my voice steady even as my pulse quickened. "Whatever you want darling," I said.

She grinned, standing abruptly. "I'll be back in a flash, you want anything?"

I hesitated, alcohol would make me less careful and I didn't want to risk any overstepping, any impulsive words or touches that she might misread. I forced a casual shrug.

"No alcohol," I said simply. "But you can surprise me." My words were calm, easy, but inside I was calculated, every thought a silent promise not to let this night slip into chaos.

She arched an eyebrow, a mischievous smirk curling on her lips. "No alcohol? How boring," she teased, and I smiled faintly, letting her play without breaking the tension I'd built for myself.

As she moved further from our table, I watched her silhouette, the way her hair caught the golden light, the way her dress moved like liquid silk, and my chest tightened with a feeling I couldn't quite name.

Then the air shifted.

The warmth left.

A chill crawled up my spine, and I realised before I fully understood what was happening: the chair across from me scraped the floor. A shadow settled into it, I stiffened, eyes narrowing.

Dolohov's silhouette resolved first, harsh and precise, his seventeen-year-old form unnervingly solid despite its ghostly shimmer. He slouched in the chair like he owned it, arms crossed, eyes cold and sharp. He hadn't said a word, hadn't made a sound, but the weight of his gaze pressed down, accusing and cutting. I wanted to stand, to tell him he wasn't real, that he had no right to be here, but the air felt heavy, almost physical, and my limbs refused to obey.

Dolohov's lips curved into a mocking smirk. "You're pathetic," he said softly, venom dripping from every syllable.

I swallowed, my throat tight. "I'm not—"

He cut me off with a sharp laugh, a sound that seemed to echo across the rooftops, though no one else reacted. "You think you can love her?" he asked, voice low and mocking. "You think she's yours? Lorenzo, she will destroy you. You don't even know what you're doing, do you? You can't even see it coming."

I clenched my fists under the table, jaw tight. My heart was hammering, not from the thrill of the city, not from the fireworks already cracking somewhere distant, but from the weight of his gaze. The memory of the first time I'd felt powerlessness flared sharply. I could feel it in my chest again, that hollow ache of being used, of not being allowed to feel safe with the one person I actually wanted to protect.

"You're not real," I said, though even as I did, a part of me knew he was more than just an illusion. "You're not—"

Rosier's voice cut through before I could finish, smooth and sharp as broken glass. "Ah, but he is real, Lorenzo. You're the one who activated the relics in the first place, because of you, we're permanent."

I felt my chest tighten further, a cold, sinking weight, and I tried to breathe through it, focusing on nothing but the table between us, the small glass of soft drink still half full in my hand. But they weren't giving me a moment.

Dolohov leaned forward slightly, eyes boring into mine. "You really do love her, don't you?"

I didn't answer.

"I can see it," he continued, voice almost a hiss. "You think it's strength. You think it's courage. You're pathetic." His smirk widened. "Love? Love is weakness. She'll eat you alive. You'll crawl to me crying, begging for anything and you'll deserve it."

I gritted my teeth, feeling the surge of anger, but also the old ache behind it, the ache of knowing he was right in ways I didn't want to admit.

Rosier's shadow fell across the edge of the table, leaning over as if to peer inside my chest. "Do you really think she sees you the way you see her?" he asked smoothly. "Does she care that you want to hold her, protect her, make her happy? Or are you just another boy she'll charm, amuse herself with, and leave behind when the night is over?"

I wanted to scream. I wanted to reach for her, to tell her, but she wasn't here. The city, the bar, the lights all seemed unreal, like a fragile mask over a darker reality, and I felt trapped in it.

Dolohov's smirk became sharper, crueler. "You remember, don't you? You remember what happens when you care. You remember how it feels to give yourself to someone, to think it means something and then it burns. That's what she'll do. That's what life does. That's you. You're weak because you want her, because you actually care."

I felt the heat rise in my face, a mix of rage and shame. My hands curled into fists on the table, but I couldn't move them. My body was betraying me.

"And don't look so surprised," Rosier added, his tone silky and dangerous. "You're no better than you were at fifteen, Lorenzo. The world hasn't changed. You haven't changed. You're just... cleverer at hiding it."

I took a shaky breath, trying to push back against the surge of panic. I could hear her laughter, faint, still in the distance as she chatted with someone at the bar, completely unaware. I tried to anchor myself there, on the reality of her life, the soft brilliance of her being.

Dolohov leaned back in the chair, folding his arms like he owned the room. "Oh, you'll try to protect her, won't you? You'll try to hold her close, keep her safe, keep her from falling. And she'll slip past your hands every time."

Rosier's shadow drifted closer, coiling along the floor like a snake. "You're not meant to be happy. You're not meant to win. You're meant to flinch, to stumble, to doubt, to wish for something you'll never have."

I pressed my palms against the edge of the table, forcing my body to stay present. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. Every word, every look from them, every cruel accusation dug into my chest, but I couldn't let it reach her. Not yet. Not while she was out there, laughing, alive and radiant as ever.

"You're wrong," I said through gritted teeth, voice tight. "I love her. I'll protect her and I'll be here. Even if it's the last thing that I do." My own words sounded fragile even to me, but I couldn't let them see me falter completely.

Dolohov snorted, a sharp, bitter sound. "Love. How quaint. You think it's love. You think it gives you strength. It doesn't. It only opens you up. It makes you vulnerable and she'll exploit that."

"And you'll let her," Rosier said softly, almost kindly, but the words were daggers. "Because you're too weak to walk away, too afraid to claim anything for yourself. You can cling to her all you want. You can worship every part of her. You can think you understand her. But she is chaos and she will unravel you. And you'll deserve it, for thinking yourself strong enough to stand beside her."

The room felt impossibly tight, the city outside impossible to reach. My chest ached, my hands trembled slightly on the table. The air flickered and Dolohov and Rosier simply dissolved, like smoke caught in a sudden gust. Their mocking faces fragmented into the warm city light, gone as though they'd never been there.

I sat there frozen, staring at the empty chairs across from me. My pulse was still hammering in my throat, the echo of their words clinging like ash. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. The clatter of glasses, the murmur of laughter, and the music all felt far away, muffled by the weight pressing on my chest.

Then I heard her.

Daphne's voice pulling me back to present.

She was smiling as she approached, holding two tall glasses filled with some bright, iridescent liquid that shimmered in the city glow. Her cheeks were flushed from the walk back, and her hair caught the light like spun gold.

"Two of the most ridiculous drinks I could find," she announced, setting them down with a grin. "They're called Shooting Stars. I have no idea what's in them, but the bartender said they sparkle when you stir them, and I thought that's very us."

Her laugh was soft and genuine, and I forced my lungs to steady. "They're... glowing," I said, eyeing the drink like it might explode.

She sat down, not in the chair across from me, but right next to me, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of her perfume. The chaos in my chest began to quiet, the ghosts finally dissolving under the reality of her.

We both lifted our glasses. The liquid inside shimmered with flecks of gold and pale blue, catching the rooftop light. "To...?" she prompted, raising her eyebrows.

I hesitated, thinking of all the things I could say, to survival, to her, to the fact that we were still breathing after everything, but I only murmured, "To tonight."

She clinked her glass against mine gently. "To tonight."

The drink fizzed against my tongue, surprisingly sweet, with a sharpness underneath. I wasn't sure what was in it, but I didn't care. We sat for a moment, the sounds of the city below us rising like a heartbeat, laughter, sirens, the low thrum of passing cars. London was alive tonight, vibrant and glowing, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the world didn't feel entirely cruel.

"Thank you, Lorenzo. For all of this, and for the dress. You didn't have to."

"I wanted to," I said simply. "It suits you."

Her smile deepened, the faintest blush colouring her cheeks. "I can't believe I almost didn't wear it. I thought it was too much."

"It's not too much," I said quickly, and then softened my tone. "It's perfect. You're... perfect."

She laughed at that, tossing her hair over her shoulder. But there was a genuine smile on her face that warmed me more than the drink did. Then, her tone shifted slightly softer more curious.

"Hey, speaking of presents, I saw something on Aurelia's nightstand the other day."

I blinked. "Yeah?"

"It was a music box," she said. "I've never seen it before. It looked expensive, too expensive for something she would have bought herself."

I frowned slightly. "I didn't get it for her."

Her brow furrowed. "Then who did? Because Draco wouldn't bother, and Mattheo..." She trailed off, lips pressing into a line. "He wouldn't either."

"Tom?" I suggested quietly, though I already felt a strange discomfort saying it aloud.

Daphne's mouth twisted thoughtfully. "Maybe. Or Avery Senior. It couldn't have been her parents as I saw it before Aurelia went home to see them."

"That's strange," I said.

"Strange," she echoed. "She said she's been hearing music at night even after its closed. I thought it was the wireless, but maybe it's that thing still. It's beautiful, though."

"Maybe it's cursed," I said lightly, trying to make her smile again.

She shot me a look. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

We both fell silent for a moment, the question hanging there unsolved between us. Then, Daphne tilted her head, her tone easing again. "We should check it when we get back."

"Yeah," I agreed. "But lets worry about it tomorrow. Tonight, we don't think about Riddle, or curses, or the Knights. Deal?"

She raised her glass. "Deal."

We drank again, and this time I let myself actually enjoy the moment. The city was glowing, laughter spilling from nearby tables, the air cool but not biting.

Daphne sighed contentedly, leaning back in her chair. "Remember last New Year's Eve?" she asked.

I grinned instantly. "When Draco got so drunk he started being nice to people?"

She laughed so hard she nearly choked on her drink. "Fucking hell, you said he told Mattheo he was his 'favourite brother' and then tried to hug him."

"Mattheo shoved him into the fountain."

"Right! And didn't Theo throw in a Galleon and made a wish."

I grinned at the memory. "He wished for Draco to drown, if I remember correctly."

She snorted, still laughing. "Merlin, I wish I'd been there."

I hesitated for just a heartbeat before replying lightly, "You weren't?"

She froze, then quickly recovered with a soft laugh. "Oh, right, I was... away. Family stuff."

I nodded, but caught a flicker in her eyes, a shadow that vanished beneath that effortless, radiant smile. I didn't comment, just let it linger in the quiet between us.

"Anyway," she said, shifting slightly closer, "you always manage to get into trouble without me. What was it last year?"

"Snuck into Hogsmeade," I said with a grin. "Stole butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks' cellar. Aurelia nearly got us caught because she couldn't stop laughing."

Her laugh, light and genuine, made my chest tighten in that familiar way. We slipped into the rhythm of old stories, like breathing in a room we'd known all our lives. Late-night escapades to the Astronomy Tower, sneaking ingredients from Snape's stores for secret potion experiments, mattress sliding down the grand staircases, each memory more vivid than the last.

"I forgot how much I loved this," she said softly after a while, her gaze wandering toward the skyline.

"What?" I asked, leaning a fraction closer.

"Laughing with you," she murmured.

Her words weren't dramatic or heavy, but something in the quiet between them landed on me. I had missed it too, missed her.

"Me too," I said simply, letting the sincerity hang there.

She turned her face back to me, playful now. "You remember the Yule Ball?"

"How could I forget? You practically dragged me onto the dance floor before I even finished my drink."

"You were sitting alone!" she teased. "And you never sit alone, I thought I was saving you."

"You stepped on my foot four—" I began.

"Five," she corrected, arching an eyebrow. "But you still looked like you were having fun."

"No, I was terrified."

She laughed, a little softer this time, and shook her head. "You're hopeless."

"And you're impossible," I shot back, a teasing glint in my eyes.

She leaned closer, eyes sparkling in the rooftop lights. "Perfect match, then," she said, voice light but with a warmth that made my chest skip.

We froze for half a heartbeat, the words settling between us, playful yet somehow charged. She smiled, but I caught the way her lips curved just a little differently, a little softer. My chest tightened again, and I looked away first, focusing on the city lights below, pretending the flush in my face came from the drink.

When she reached across the table to brush a drop of drink from my sleeve, her fingers lingered a little longer than they needed to. Neither of us commented.

We left the bar sometime near eleven, our cheeks flushed from the warmth and laughter. The air outside was cold enough to sting, the kind that made breath visible and hearts beat faster. London was alive, music pulsing from open doorways, fireworks crackling in the distance, crowds spilling through the streets wrapped in glitter and scarves.

Daphne walked beside me, clutching her little bag against her hip. The streetlights painted her skin gold, and her red dress stood out like a flame in the sea of black coats and sequins.

"How did you even pay for those drinks?" I asked as we headed down the stairs, genuinely curious.

She turned her head slightly, her smile curving. "Don't worry about it."

I shook my head, laughing softly. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting," she said, brushing past me with a little skip in her step that always seemed to pull the world along with her.

For a moment, I hesitated, watching her weave through the crowd, small and glowing and alive, something in my chest ached. It was protective, not possessive. An instinct to keep her close before the world could touch her the way it had touched me.

So I caught up and, without thinking too much about it, slipped my arm around her waist.

She looked up at me in surprise, not startled, just surprised, then her lips softened into a smile that felt like warmth itself. She didn't move away. If anything, she leaned in slightly, letting her hand rest on my forearm.

The streets narrowed as we turned into a small park lined with fairy lights. The hum of the crowd dulled to something softer, the laughter more contained. And there, in the centre, surrounded by white fencing and glowing lights, was a pop-up ice rink. Music drifted from hidden speakers. People spun clumsily under the lights, their joy contagious. I felt Daphne's lean even more against my side.

"Lorenzo," she said slowly, her eyes widening. "Look."

I followed her gaze, already smiling. "Don't even say it."

"We have to," she said instantly, almost bouncing on her toes.

"Daphne—"

"Please," she begged, and I was already gone.

"You realise I've never skated before," I warned.

"Neither have I," she said brightly.

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

She practically dragged me toward the booth where they were renting skates, her excitement infectious. The woman behind the counter gave us a once-over and handed us two pairs of skates. Daphne sat on a bench, pulling off her heels and slipping the white boots over her feet. I knelt beside her, wrestling with my laces. When we finally stepped onto the ice, it was chaos. She clung to the railing with one hand and my arm with the other, her eyes wide with fear.

"Oh Merlin, this was a mistake," she gasped as her feet slipped again.

"I tried to tell you," I said, gripping the wall beside her.

"You didn't try hard enough."

"Because you wouldn't have listened."

She looked up at me then, strands of hair falling into her face, and laughed. "You're right."

We pushed off the wall together, the cold biting at our cheeks as we shuffled hesitantly across the ice. She stumbled, and I caught her, the warmth of her hands brushing against mine sending an unexpected jolt through me. I lost my footing next, and she caught me, laughing breathlessly. We fell into a rhythm, tumbling, clinging, laughing, until the fear of slipping gave way to the exhilaration of movement.

"Okay, okay, I think I've got it," she said after a while, gliding a few feet ahead of me with a confident tilt of her chin, only to wobble immediately.

I darted forward, wrapping my arms around her waist before gravity could claim her.

Her hands pressed into my chest, holding me steady as we froze, faces inches apart. Our breaths mingled, warm and sharp in the crisp air, her perfume faint but intoxicating beneath the scent of ice and winter.

"Got you," I murmured, though I wasn't sure if I was comforting her or myself.

She looked up, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. "You always do."

The words hit me, deeper than intended. I smiled, though I could feel my heart thrumming in my throat, and gently steadied her on her feet.

"Come on, darling," I whispered faintly. "Let's try again."

Her lips curved, a flicker of mischief dancing in her eyes. "You're on."

This time we let go of the wall entirely, moving side by side, cautious at first, then finding a rhythm. The rink sparkled beneath strings of golden lights, each reflection dancing across the ice like scattered stars. A soft, orchestral tune drifted through the air, and for a moment, the chaos in my chest eased.

She laughed every time I wobbled, and I made a show of swaying dramatically, just to hear it again.

"You're supposed to be good at everything," she teased, her voice light, though the sparkle in her eyes was impossible to ignore.

"I never said that," I countered, grinning, the words half-joking. "Draco claims that title."

She giggled and lost her footing again. I caught her hand, this time deliberately, holding it a little longer, feeling the warmth against mine. She didn't pull away, and I felt a subtle shift in the air between us.

We moved past couples, families, and groups of teenagers, the world around us fading to a blur of laughter and light. At one point, she turned to skate backward, gripping both my hands, her eyes flashing with challenge.

"Bet I can do it longer than you," she said, her grin teasing and daring.

"I'll fall if I try that," I warned.

"Then you'll have to trust me," she said, voice softening just enough that I knew she meant more than the game.

"I do," I said quietly, and she smiled without hearing the weight behind it.

For a few precious seconds, she glided backward, pulling me along, hair whipping around her face, her laughter bubbling over. Then her heel caught the ice, and we collapsed together, tangled limbs and all. The ice was sharp beneath us, but we were laughing too hard to care.

"Fucking hell," she wheezed, trying to sit up.

"This was your idea," I laughed, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek.

"Best idea I've ever had," she said, eyes bright, cheeks still flushed.

We stayed there a moment longer, side by side on the ice, letting the world swirl around us. Time felt suspended, the cold a distant concern.

"Midnight's close," she murmured eventually, glancing toward the sky, her voice quieter now, more thoughtful.

I nodded, pushing myself up and brushing the ice from my palms. "Come on," I said softly, offering her my hand.

Her fingers slid into mine, soft and chilled, and I pulled her up carefully, steadying her as she wobbled slightly. She laughed that little half-apologetic, breathless laugh I knew so well, leaning into me instinctively. Once she was upright, I held her close, not letting go.

We moved again, slower this time, no rush, no tricks. Our hands stayed linked, her other hand finding my waist, mine resting lightly on hers. The rink around us shimmered under the fairy lights, gold and white reflections bouncing like tiny constellations. The music softened, a tender melody that seemed to pull the chaos from my chest, leaving only the warmth of her beside me.

Every now and then, she'd glance up, those bright eyes catching the lights. My stomach twisted in that familiar, helpless way. The hand she'd placed in mine fit perfectly, and the warmth of her body against mine grounded me. The world, for once, wasn't sharp or dangerous, it was just us, gliding together.

As the song drew to a close, we drifted toward the rink's edge. I kept a careful hand on her waist, and she leaned into it, just barely, but enough that I felt it, enough that it sent another jolt through me.

At the rental booth, we unlaced our skates, trading them for shoes. The clerk wished us a happy New Year, and Daphne's voice, soft and warm, thanked her. The sound made me smile, a small, genuine smile, because despite the chaos of the last weeks, despite everything, she still carried this lightness, this ability to find joy.

Outside the park, the city pulsed with colour and noise. We wandered down the path, not rushing anywhere. The path curved past a row of tall apartment buildings, their windows glowing gold against the midnight blue of the sky. Daphne tilted her head, smiling faintly.

I followed her gaze, the rooftops flat and dark under the stars, and before I could ask which one, she slipped her hand into mine again. "That one."

"Are you sure?"

"Have you ever known me not to be?"

I sighed, smiling despite myself. "Hold on, then."

The world folded in on itself with a soft crack, and the cold hit us again when we landed. The roof was broad and flat, edged by a low wall, the city stretching out beneath us in every direction, lights, rivers, roads, all spilling into the horizon.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The sound of the city was distant, muffled by the height. It felt like we were standing outside of everything, the air so still that even the hum of magic seemed quieter.

Daphne stepped closer to the edge, wrapping her arms around herself. Her hair fluttered in the wind, catching the light from below.

"It's beautiful," she whispered.

"Perfect," I said. We were talking about different things.

She turned her head slightly, catching my gaze. "You're not even looking."

"I am," I said softly.

Something flickered across her face, a tiny shift, barely there, but I felt it like a heartbeat. I pulled my wand from my coat pocket and, with a quiet flick, conjured two small pillows on the rooftop floor. They appeared side by side, white and soft against the concrete.

I lowered myself carefully not to crease Draco's suit, sitting down on one. I patted the other. "For you."

But she didn't move toward it.

Instead, she stood there for a long second, looking at me with that curious, unreadable expression, like she was trying to decide whether to trust whatever was tugging at her. Then she crossed the small space between us and, instead of sitting on the second pillow, lowered herself onto my lap.

The breath left me.

Her weight settled lightly against me, warm through the fabric of her dress. She smelled faintly of vanilla and fruit, and her hair brushed my jaw when she tilted her head to look at me.

"This one's better," she said quietly.

I laughed under my breath, trying to sound casual, though my pulse had picked up so hard I could feel it in my throat. "I can't argue with that."

Her hand rested on my chest, fingers tracing absent shapes against the fabric of my shirt. It wasn't deliberate, or maybe it was, but it felt like electricity anyway.

"Cold?" I asked, though my voice came out lower than I intended.

"A little," she admitted.

So I did what felt right. I brought my arms around her, pulling her gently closer, letting her lean against me. She didn't resist. If anything, she exhaled like she'd been waiting for that warmth all night.

Her head rested against my shoulder, and for a moment, everything slowed. The noise of the city, the wind, the ache inside me all went quiet.

"You always do that," she said softly after a while.

"Do what?"

"Make things feel safer than they should."

I smiled faintly. "I'll take that as a compliment."

I looked down at her then, really looked at the faint freckles near her eyes, the slight red on her nose from the cold, the way her lashes caught the light. The city glowed behind her, but it was nothing compared to the light in her eyes.

"Daphne," I said quietly, her name almost a confession.

She looked up at me, her lips parted slightly, her breath visible in the chill. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The world seemed to tilt closer, until I could feel her heartbeat through the fabric between us.

Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "What?"

I hesitated, there were a hundred things I could have said, and all of them were dangerous.

Instead, I just smiled faintly. "Nothing. Just... you look happy."

That made her smile, the kind she rarely let anyone see. "I think I am."

She reached up then, brushing a strand of hair away from my face. Her touch was light but certain, and it made every thought scatter.

"I like seeing you smile too," she said softly.

It shouldn't have been such a simple thing, but it felt like gravity shifted when she said it.

The wind picked up, carrying the sound of the city below, the laughter, the faint countdown beginning somewhere distant. But up here, time felt like it was holding still.

She shifted slightly in my lap, turning so she was facing me fully now, her knees bracketing my hips, her hands resting lightly on my shoulders. It wasn't bold, not in the way Daphne usually was. It was careful.

Her eyes searched mine, and I knew that if I leaned forward even slightly, she wouldn't pull away. I wanted to say something, anything, to break the tension, but the words wouldn't come.

So I didn't speak.

I just lifted my hand and brushed my thumb along her cheek, slow, careful. Her skin was cold, but her breath hitched like I'd touched fire.

"Lorenzo," she whispered.

The way she said my name, it wasn't teasing. It wasn't playful. It was soft, like a question she was afraid to ask.

I swallowed, my thumb still tracing the curve of her jaw. "Yeah?"

She leaned in slightly, her forehead almost brushing mine, her breath warm against my lips. We stayed there, suspended in that single heartbeat of almost, the city spinning silently beneath us, the countdown echoing faintly from far away.

Ten seconds until midnight.

But neither of us moved.

Her hand slid up to the back of my neck, fingers curling lightly against my skin, and I knew if she closed the distance, I'd let her. If she didn't, I'd stay here forever anyway.

The lights of the city flickered against her face. In her eyes, the reflections looked like tiny fireworks waiting to burst. She was truly the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Not just her face, or her voice, or the way she fit so perfectly in my arms. It was everything. The laugh she fought back, the strength that made her kind, the way she let the world hurt her and still looked up at it like it could surprise her.

"You're staring," she murmured, her lips almost touching mine.

"I know," I whispered back.

"Why?"

"Because I can't not."

For a moment, I thought she might close that last inch. But she didn't. She just stayed there, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her breath, the rapid rhythm of her heart.

Then, somewhere far below, the clock tower struck midnight.

"Happy New Year darling," I whispered, the words barely audible against the distant thunder of fireworks.

Daphne smiled faintly, her lips curving just enough for me to see the reflection of gold light dance across them. "Happy New Year, Lorenzo," she murmured back, her voice softer than I'd ever heard it.

Then she turned fully in my lap, her legs curling to one side as she sank back into me. My arms found their place around her automatically, holding her close, her head resting against my shoulder as the sky erupted in colour.

For a long while, neither of us spoke. We just watched.

The fireworks bloomed in slow motion, great arcs of gold and silver, cascading ribbons that painted the clouds with light. The sound came a heartbeat later, deep and echoing through my chest. Every burst scattered across her face like shards of stars, and I thought again how impossible it was that something could look like that.

She turned her head slightly toward me. "We should get some of these," she said suddenly, her tone playful again. "Set them off at the safehouse one night. It would be fun."

I shook my head but smiled anyway. "Alright then. I'll help you pick them out."

She tilted her head back, eyes half-closed as the light washed over her. "Promise?"

"I promise," I said, and meant it because in that moment, it was easier to promise her anything than to face what it meant to want her this much.

The sky kept bursting open. Red, gold, green, like the whole city was exhaling after a long year. She leaned further into me, her body soft and warm against mine. My hands rested on her hips. I could feel her heartbeat through the silk of her dress.

"I'm glad it's with you," she said suddenly.

I blinked. "What?"

"This. Tonight." Her voice was quiet, almost swallowed by the noise above us. "I'm glad I'm here with you."

Something tightened in my chest, that strange, impossible ache I'd learned to live with. "I'm glad too," I said softly.

She shifted, turning in my lap again, this time facing me fully. Her knees pressed against my hips, and her hands came up to rest on my chest. Her eyes searched mine for a long time, and I could feel the city pulsing beneath us but it all faded when she looked at me like that.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"For what?"

"For everything, I guess." She gave a small, crooked smile, as if embarrassed by her own sincerity. "For being here. For not giving up on any of us."

I exhaled slowly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "You don't have to thank me for that."

"I do," she said, more firmly this time. "You're always holding everything together, even when you shouldn't have to."

Her words hit deeper than she knew. I wanted to tell her that I wasn't strong, that most days, I was just pretending to be, but instead, I smiled faintly and said, "Then thank you too. For reminding me what it feels like to breathe."

She went still then, her expression softening. The fireworks reflected in her eyes again, and for a moment, it looked like she was crying, but she wasn't. She was just shining.

"Lorenzo," she said quietly, her voice catching on my name.

I swallowed. My heart felt too big for my chest. "Yeah?"

Her hand came up to my face, thumb brushing lightly over my jaw. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

She hesitated, her eyes flickering down to my mouth and then back up again. "Can I stay like this? Just for a bit longer."

I smiled, though my throat tightened. "You can stay like this for as long as you want."

She smiled too, that soft, disarming one that always undid me, and leaned her forehead against mine. I could feel her breath, warm and quick.

The next words left my mouth before I could stop them. "Can I kiss you?"

Her breath hitched slightly, the tiniest sound, and then she nodded.

That was all the permission I needed.

I leaned in slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. But she didn't. She met me halfway, her lips brushing mine in a feather-light touch that sent every nerve in my body spiraling. It wasn't desperate. It wasn't even sudden, it was right. She tasted like something I hadn't realised I'd been starving for.

When she kissed me again, it was deeper, her hands sliding into my hair, her body pressing closer. I pulled her in by the waist, gentle but sure, and she melted against me, a soft sound escaping her throat that felt like it cracked the night open.

The fireworks still thundered above, but they were distant now, nothing compared to the sound of her breath, the warmth of her, the steady rhythm of her heart against mine. Her lips moved with mine in a kind of unspoken language, a push and pull, soft and slow and then not slow at all. Her fingers traced the side of my neck, the curve of my jaw, like she was memorising it.

I'd been kissed before, out of convenience, curiosity and even need, but never like this. Never with so much care, so much quiet knowing. This wasn't conquest, it was surrender.

When we finally broke apart, she was still close enough that I could feel her breath on my lips. Her eyes fluttered open, glassy and full of light. She leaned forward again, pressing another kiss to the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, then back to my lips, each one softer than the last.

I kissed her back the same way, with every ounce of gentleness I had, with every promise I couldn't say out loud. My hands framed her face, my thumbs brushing away the cold from her cheeks.

When we paused again, she laughed quietly against my mouth, a breathless, content sound that made something inside me loosen.

"What?" I whispered, smiling.

"Nothing," she said. "Just... this feels impossible."

"Maybe it is," I said. "But it's still happening."

She exhaled a shaky breath, her forehead resting against mine again. "Then let's not question it."

I nodded, barely moving. "Deal."

Then she kissed me again, not hurried, not searching, just soft. Her lips lingered, her hands in my hair, mine against her back, holding her steady as the night roared with light above us.

The last of the fireworks lingered in the air like ghosts of colour, curling into the night until the sky swallowed them whole. The sound still echoed faintly between the buildings, each distant crack fading into silence, leaving just the whisper of the wind and the hum of the city below.

Daphne stayed tucked against me, I could feel her breathing slow, the rhythm matching my own, the warmth of her body seeping through my shirt. I leaned down and press soft, open mouthed kisses across her collarbone, and her shoulders, the silk of her dress rustled softly as I moved my hands down her sides, my fingers tracing lazy circles against her hip bones. I didn't know what I was doing, only that I didn't want to stop.

"You're beautiful," I murmured, not meaning it in the shallow way people usually said it. It wasn't about her body or her dress. It was all of her smiles, her radiance, everything she was, even the parts she thought were too sharp.

The words hung between us, unforced and fragile. I didn't need her to say anything back, it wasn't about that. It was about her knowing. About her hearing it, at least once, from someone who truly meant it.

Her fingers reached for mine, tangling together like it was the most natural thing in the world. She turned a little in my lap, enough that I could see her face again, her eyes shining faintly with the reflection of the last bursts of light still flickering on the horizon. She smiled, slow and tired and so genuine that it hit something deep in my chest.

"I think," she said, leaning her forehead against mine, "this might be my favourite New Year's ever."

"Yeah?" I asked softly.

She nodded. "Yeah. Because it's quiet and because it's you."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I just held her tighter, letting the quiet fill the spaces where words couldn't. I pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, another to her temple, and a few down her neck and felt her relax completely in my arms.

Below us, the city buzzed with life, music, laughter, and shouts of celebration rising from the streets, but up here it felt like we were somewhere else entirely. Just her and me, suspended in a moment that didn't belong to anyone else.

She rested her head against my chest again, and I wrapped my arms around her fully, closing my eyes. The night was cool but not cold, and I realised I could have stayed like that forever, her heartbeat pressed against mine, the city humming beneath us, the smell of fireworks and winter in the air. For the first time in a long while, it felt like peace. Not the kind you find in silence, but the kind that comes from knowing you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

We stayed like that for a few more moments, just wrapped up in each other. I pressed gentle kisses to her forehead, her temple, the curve of her cheek, and she shivered softly, pressing herself closer. Every time I tried to pull back even a little, her hands would find me, anchoring me to her. I kissed her again, lips brushing, soft and slow, and she leaned into it with the same hesitation and need I felt. Neither of us wanted to let go, but the world outside our little bubble insisted on its presence.

"I think we should at least go for a walk before heading back," Daphne murmured against my chest, her breath warm and soft.

I nodded, though my chest tightened. "Of course," I said. "Anything you want."

Carefully, I slid my hands under her arms and lifted her slightly, holding her by the waist to steady her on her feet. She wrapped her arms instinctively around my shoulders, leaning against me with that perfect trust that made my chest ache all over again.

"Pass me you're bag, I'll take care of it," I said gently, trying to sound casual, even though the small weight of responsibility made me nervous.

She shook her head quickly, almost too quickly, a little spark of defiance in her eyes. "No, I've got it."

I frowned slightly, uncertain. I didn't want to overstep, but my instinct to be protective had me offering again. "Are you sure? I don't mind."

She paused, meeting my gaze with something like reluctance, and finally nodded. "Alright, fine," she said, her voice softening. "You can hold it. Just be careful."

I smiled faintly and took the bag from her, noting how easily she clung to me as we moved a little further from the edge. She leaned over slightly, peering down at the city below, eyes wide and glittering in the light of the streetlamps, and a low, delighted laugh escaped her.

"It's amazing," she said, pointing at the tiny, scuttling lights of Muggle cars and taxis, the way they twisted through the streets like liquid fire. "Everything's so small from up here. I love it."

I watched her, entranced, and offered a soft, teasing comment, but I could feel my heart racing, not from the altitude or the view, but from the way she looked absolutely adorable and I pressed a hand a little more firmly to her waist.

As she leaned closer to the edge, something felt off. Not about her but the bag in my hand. It was heavier than it should have been. I shifted it slightly, trying to make sense of it, my curiosity flaring. When she turned back toward me, still glowing from excitement, I hesitated only a moment before opening it carefully, as if it were a fragile treasure.

The cash spilled out in a neat, somewhat chaotic heap, the Muggle bills rustling in the soft night air. My brow furrowed, she had more money than she had claimed, but it was what I saw at the bottom of the bag that froze me in place.

The gun.

I blinked, looking from it to her, my mind racing faster than my heart. A cold, weighty reality that didn't belong in this glittering, magical night. I looked at her, and everything shifted for a heartbeat. Her face was still bright with excitement, still lit with awe at the city below, completely unaware of the storm she'd just brought into my hands.

"Daphne..." My voice came out ragged, choked, almost trembling. I didn't move the bag, couldn't. My hands felt like they were betraying me, shaking as I gripped it. My pulse thundered in my ears.

She looked up at me, a flash of curiosity in her eyes, still smiling like nothing was wrong. "Yeah?" she murmured, tilting her head.

I took a step back, not wanting to scare her but needing to make her see. "Why... why do you have this?" I asked, my voice breaking. I swallowed hard, trying to keep it steady, but the panic was clawing up my throat. My gaze flicked from her to the bag and back again, as if seeing it again would make it less real.

Her brow furrowed, and I could see her hesitation. She was measuring, thinking. I could feel it, and it made my chest squeeze harder.

"I... just for safety," she said finally, almost too casually, as if she didn't realise the storm she'd unleashed in me.

"For safety?" I repeated, voice rising despite myself, trembling with the edges of fear and fury. "Daphne, do you understand what this is? That you're carrying this around after Draco took it from you after you, after you shot Mattheo?" My words came faster, harsher than I intended. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? Especially in the Muggle world."

Her hands pressed against my chest, trying to calm me, but it didn't work. I wanted to step back, to run, to shake the thought from my head, but I couldn't. I couldn't stop the panic, the terror that maybe she'd thought I couldn't protect her.

"I didn't want you to worry," she said softly. "I didn't mean—"

"Daphne," I said, my voice breaking a little, "I'm not mad at you. I'm—" I couldn't even finish. My hands tightened instinctively on her waist, holding her close, pressing her into me. "I'm terrified. That you felt that you needed this. That you didn't feel safe with me."

Her lips pressed gently against my chest, but she didn't speak. She just let me hold her. I could feel her heartbeat against mine, steady and warm, and it both soothed and tormented me.

"I... I would never... ever..." I choked on the words. "I would never, Daphne. I wouldn't—"

"I know," she murmured softly, looking up at me now. Her eyes were earnest, and she pressed her forehead against mine. "I know you wouldn't."

I wanted to believe her, I wanted to calm the knot of panic and self-recrimination coiling in my gut, but I couldn't. Not yet. My hands moved up slightly, gripping her arms, needing contact, needing proof. "But you didn't tell me." I swallowed, voice trembling. "Did you think I... that I might try, or that I'd... take advantage."

She flinched slightly at the words, but then laughed quietly, a nervous, soft sound that made my chest ache even more. "Lorenzo, I wasn't thinking anything like that," she said, shaking her head, still pressed into me. "I trust you. You're not that kind of person. You've never been that kind of person."

She hesitated, glancing down at the bag, her hand brushing against it like it could anchor her. Then she met my eyes again, steady and unwavering. "Don't say anything to anyone. Not a word," she said, voice firm but quiet, a warning hidden beneath the calm. "And you trust me, right?"

I felt my stomach drop further, a sickness twisting in my chest. "Trust you? Daphne I don't even know how to feel right now." My hands tightened on the bag, on her waist, anything to hold onto something real. "You shouldn't have this. Not after everything that happened. Draco took it from you because it's dangerous. Because you shouldn't have it. And yet—" I gestured helplessly at the bag, at her, "here it is. In your hands and I can't do a fucking thing about it."

Her hands pressed firmly to my chest, tilting my head up to meet her gaze. "Lorenzo," she said softly, and even that one word made my stomach seize, "I'm not saying you can't protect me. I'm saying this is for precaution. For me, not because of you. I trust you. You've never hurt me. Never. This is my choice."

I swallowed hard, trying to catch my breath. Every fiber of me wanted to scream, to throw the bag to the edge of the rooftop, to tear it away, to make this fear vanish. But I couldn't. All I could do was hold her, my chest pressed against hers, my hands trembling against her silk dress. "But you shouldn't have to make that choice, Daphne. You shouldn't—"

"I know," she interrupted softly, placing her hands over mine on her waist. "I know. I didn't want to. I didn't want to make you feel like this. I swear."

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against hers, trembling with every heartbeat. "I can't believe you thought this was safer than just telling me."

"I didn't," she whispered, shaking her head. "I didn't think. I just had to have it. For now. Please, Lorenzo, just trust me. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

Her plea, the quiet power in her voice, cut through the panic in me, but didn't erase it. I wanted to fight, to argue, to protect her from this, from the weight of it, from the darkness that always seemed to linger around her, but she wasn't asking me to. She was asking for trust, and that's all I could give her. For now.

I pressed a soft kiss to her temple, trembling against her, holding her tight. "I trust you," I whispered, my voice cracking.

I didn't want to let go, the weight in my chest didn't feel entirely suffocating. It was still there, yes, sharp and heavy, but so was her warmth, her presence, her trust pressed into me.

After a while, I suggested, voice hoarse and raw, that we just head back to the safehouse. Daphne, still clinging to my warmth and presence, hesitated, a flicker of disappointment crossing her face.

"Yeah... yeah, let's go back," she said, the reluctant softness in her tone making my chest ache with the dual pull of guilt and relief.

We apparated without another word. The rush of air and instant displacement brought us back to the familiar quiet of the safehouse, the smell of old wood and lingering warmth a stark contrast to the chaos of the streets. Everything was still. Everyone was asleep. Aurelia, tucked safely in her and Daphne's room, Draco and Mattheo sprawled across the floor on the mattress.

I let out a shaky sigh, my body sagging as I sank into the couch. My hands rubbed my face, trying to loosen the tight coil in my chest, but the fear and panic still clung to me. From the faint echo behind the bathroom door, I could hear Daphne's soft footsteps and the muted splash of the shower. For a moment, I just sat there, listening, feeling the soft rhythm of her presence, the steady assurance that she was safe now.

I stripped off Draco's suit, the stiff jacket and perfectly tailored pants a weight on my shoulders and slipped into my own pyjamas. The familiar cotton against my skin was a small comfort. I sank back onto the couch, clasping my hands together, staring at the dark wood floor and letting my thoughts spin out of control.

The door creaked softly, and I looked up, heart skipping. Aurelia stepped out, blinking against the dim light, the shadows of the house stretching around her. I didn't even hesitate, my body moved before my mind caught up. Arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, my chin resting on the top of her head. She was small and fragile against me, and the warmth of her skin, the way she pressed against me without resistance, made a hollow ache thrum through my chest.

"Where were you?" she murmured, voice barely above a whisper, the words tentative, like she was testing if I would respond calmly.

My gaze fell immediately, heart stopping, to her collarbone. Dark, angry bruises marred her skin. I could feel every pulse of my blood hammering in my ears. "Aurelia..." I breathed, choking on the word, my hand moving to cup her back. "What happened?"

She shrugged slightly, but the weight of the silence, the implication hanging thickly in the air, cut me deeper than any blow ever could.

"Nothing," she said softly, and I knew that nothing meant everything.

The tears came fast and without warning. I pressed my face into the top of her head, inhaling the faint scent of her hair, feeling the tremor of her small body against mine. I could hear my own sobs, low and ragged, echoing in the quiet of the room.

I had left her here. With them. Alone. I had abandoned her while I wandered through streets and rooftops and ice rinks, laughing, letting her be left with two people who hated her with everything they had.

"I... I wasn't here," I whispered, voice cracking. "I should have protected you. I—" I broke off, choking, the weight of failure pressing down until it felt like I couldn't breathe. "I left you here with them. With Mattheo and I wasn't here. I wasn't here, Aurelia, and, fuck—" My hands gripped her tighter, heart hammering, shaking from the sheer force of the guilt.

She leaned into me, small and quiet, but her presence didn't calm me yet. Not entirely. I could still feel the hot coil of anger and helplessness twisting inside me. I buried my face against her hair, letting the sobs come, finally letting myself unravel in the safety of holding her.

"I'll fix it in the morning," I choked out, voice breaking. "I'll sort him out, I promise. I won't let him, he won't, he can't—" My words faltered into nothingness, but the promise was there, solid and desperate, pressed between my lips and her hair.

She didn't speak at first, just pressed closer, letting me cradle her in the silence. My chest heaved against her, my tears soaking the sleeve of my pyjamas.

"Go back to bed," I whispered finally, voice rough, trembling. "Go. Don't worry. I'll handle it. I swear, Aurelia. Just go back to sleep."

She nodded slowly, and I let her pull back just enough to meet my eyes. I could see the quiet understanding in her gaze, the unspoken forgiveness, and the tiny flicker of trust.

She stepped back, still hesitant, but I could feel the shift in her posture, she was safe, at least for now. I watched her retreat toward the warmth of her bed, and my chest tightened again, not with fear this time, but with the lingering ache of love, protection, and desperate guilt.

I stayed on the couch, alone with the silence, letting the tears dry and the storm inside me simmer. I barely noticed her approach at first, the soft padding of her bare feet across the floor drowned out by the pounding of my own thoughts. By the time Daphne settled next to me on the couch, I was still sitting rigid, head bowed, tears running unchecked down my cheeks. She was quiet and I could feel the faint tremor of her presence, like a gentle pulse pressed against the jagged edges of my own.

She reached out before I could respond, wrapping her arms tentatively around me. I felt the warmth of her body, the softness of her embrace, and yet, instinctively, I pushed gently against her shoulders.

"I'm... I'm fine," I murmured, voice raw and ragged, though I knew she could feel the lie radiating off me. My hands, still slick with tears, found her wrists, holding them softly but firmly. Not harshly, just enough to create a space, a fragile barrier between us, a reminder that my heart was still too raw, too full of everything I hadn't protected Aurelia from tonight, to let myself lean entirely on someone else in that moment.

Her eyes, wide and glimmering, didn't waver. She tilted her head, brushing a stray lock of hair from her face.

"Do you still—"

"Yes," I whispered immediately, voice thick with emotion, "I always have. I always will." And even as I said it, I knew she could see it in my face, in the tremor of my hands, in the damp streaks of my cheeks. I wasn't making a promise to be romantic, just a declaration of care, of constancy, of the unshakable gravity I felt for her.

Her lips parted slightly, a faint shadow of guilt crossing her features. She looked at me, eyes glistening, and I could see the guilt, the weight she carried for my pain even when I was the one carrying the guilt of Aurelia and fear of my own self.

Even sad, she was so beautiful to me in that moment, in the soft glow of the firelight, even as her expression twisted with sadness. I wanted to tell her she didn't have to feel guilty, that it wasn't her fault I was unraveling, but my throat was tight and raw. My words wouldn't come.

She moved back slightly, disentangling her arms from mine, standing now at the edge of the couch.

"I want to stay with you tonight again," she said softly, voice firm but vulnerable. I watched her, heart hammering.

"Wait here," I said finally, voice low but determined. "Just stay here. I need a moment. I want to... say happy new year to Theo." Even speaking his name made the ache bloom wider in my chest. I rose slowly, feeling the pull of grief and responsibility tighten around me.

I stepped outside into the cold, the night pressing against me with sharp, crisp edges. The snow had melted into wet patches along the stone paths, and the chill seeped through my thin pyjamas, sharpening every memory, every regret. I moved toward the grave, seating myself silently in the snow beside it. My hands rested on my knees, frozen in place more from tension than the cold.

The world had contracted to this one moment, to the ache of absence and loss. I thought about Aurelia curled up in her room, about the way I had failed to protect her, about the bruises that would fade but the memory would not. I thought about Daphne and the gun, how she was unaware of the full extent of my panic and fear tonight.

My mind flickered back to every moment of failure, every night I had walked away, every time I had believed I could protect the people I loved and fallen short. Each memory, sharp as a blade, twisted in my chest. Minutes passed. Snowflakes drifted lightly across my shoulders, melting against my skin, and still, I didn't move.

The cold was sharp but tolerable, a small distraction from the emotional storm that raged inside me. My fingers flexed and curled, gripping at my knees, gripping at the weight of everything I couldn't undo.

A soft rustle behind me drew my attention. Daphne slid down beside me, her warmth immediately pressing against mine. Her head rested lightly against my shoulder, and I felt the quick pulse of her heartbeat against mine. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, to bury myself in her warmth and never let go, but the memory of the gun, the tension of earlier, and the fractured chaos of the night kept my hands frozen.

We sat like that for a long while, silence wrapping us up as tightly as her arms around me. I could feel her small breaths, the way she pressed herself closer in subtle shifts, and the warmth was almost unbearable in its sweetness. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me, how much I needed this, needed her, but every word seemed inadequate.

Instead, I let my head rest lightly against hers, feeling the weight of her trust and presence. My thoughts raced, spiraling through everything I had failed to protect, everything I had yet to fix, and yet there was a delicate thread of comfort in her closeness, her small, quiet assurance.

I could hear her murmur softly, "Happy... New Year, Lorenzo." The words were like fragile glass in the still night, simple, but somehow carrying all the weight of everything unsaid. I responded, barely audible, "Happy New Year, Daphne."

We leaned into each other more fully then, as if the cold and the grief and the fear could be absorbed by the other, our bodies pressing together, offering warmth and reassurance. My hands eventually slid around her, holding her close, careful not to hurt, careful not to overstep, letting my heart speak through touch rather than words.

Minutes passed like this, the world around us falling away. I let myself simply be present with her, my thoughts quieting into a single thread of gratitude and love that was fierce, desperate, protective and intimate in its depth.

She shifted, pressing her forehead against mine, and I whispered against her hair, letting the words drift on the night air, "I've got you. Always."

She didn't answer, her body spoke for her, pressing into me, holding me back even as I wanted to spill every fragment of emotion into the night. For a moment, the snow, the city, the house, the failures, the bruises all fell away. There was just this warmth, this fragile, perfect connection that held us steady against everything we couldn't control.