Autumn's Choice

Pain, sharp and unrelenting, lanced through Aurice Bray's chest as she stood motionless before the gleaming mahogany casket, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the polished wood that now encased the earthly remains of her eldest brother, Kinsey. Around her, the muted whispers of the assembled mourners swirled like eddies of fallen leaves, their hushed speculations about the manner of Kinsey's passing filtering through the numb haze of her grief. Some claimed he had sacrificed himself in a duel with a Death Eater, throwing his body in front of another member of the Order of the Phoenix to shield them from a Cruciatus Curse. Others murmured that the Dark wizard he'd confronted had ensnared his mind with an Imperius, compelling him to leap from a cliff to his death. But Aurice knew, with a leaden certainty that settled like a stone in the pit of her stomach, that it was all meaningless conjecture. The truth of her brother's final moments would likely never be known.

Her last conversation with Kinsey played over and over in her mind, an endless loop of accusation and recrimination. He had discovered her secret - the child growing within her, fathered by the very man they had all sworn to oppose. The revulsion and disappointment that had clouded Kinsey's eyes as he urged the family to conceal any hint of the baby's existence seared itself into Aurice's memory. For an interminable span of minutes that felt like an eternity, she had stared into his face, the scene branding itself indelibly into her consciousness, tormenting her through every waking moment and haunting her fitful dreams.

To her right, her father Dawrius stood ramrod straight, his clenched jaw and sightless gaze betraying the effort it took to maintain his façade of stoic composure. On her left, her grandfather Teeban seemed diminished, his proud shoulders bowed under the weight of his grief, the lines that mapped his face appearing to have deepened overnight. He had aged a decade in the span of days since the Order had laid Kinsey's body on the ancient oak table at their headquarters, his vitality leaching from him like ink from a torn page.

Through the assembled witches and wizards drifted Albus Dumbledore, his sweeping purple robes incongruous against the sea of black. He moved amongst the mourners, offering words of condolence, his half-moon spectacles glinting in the wan light that filtered through the leaded windows. "He fought valiantly for the cause of good," the venerable headmaster intoned solemnly, coming to a halt before Kinsey's casket, "as did Lily and James Potter, who gave their lives so that their son might live to fulfill his destiny."

At the mention of the Potters, a renewed gust of murmurs rippled through the crowd, and Aurice felt the weight of dozens of eyes upon her. But it was Dumbledore's piercing blue gaze that sought her out, seeming to strip away the layers of her carefully constructed façade to lay bare the shameful truth. She looked away, unable to bear the knowing glint in those ancient eyes, and mumbled an excuse as she threaded her way through the throng of black-robed figures. The balcony beckoned, promising a momentary escape, and she sucked in great lungfuls of the crisp autumn air as she fled through the French doors.

Alone at last, with only the muted sounds of the mourners filtering through the glass, Aurice braced her hands on the balustrade and squeezed her eyes shut against the hot prick of tears. But unbidden, another memory rose behind her lids, vivid as the present.

Four years prior - a lifetime ago, it seemed now - when the world had been newer, the shadow of war barely a wisp on the horizon. Her sixth year at Hogwarts, when Tom Riddle had been gathering followers, spoken of in hushed whispers as the most brilliant student to walk the halls of the ancient school in a generation. He had come to her then, eyes alight with revolutionary fervor, spinning visions of the glorious new world they would forge together, with magic unfettered and the old order overthrown. Aurice had been skeptical at first, unease prickling like nettles beneath her skin at his talk of subjugating Muggles and Muggle-borns. But Tom had seduced her with honeyed words and secrets, confided in hidden alcoves and beneath swaying boughs, his voice like spun silk twining around her ankles. 

"Can't you see it, Aurice?" he had breathed against the shell of her ear as they lay entangled in the shadow of the Whomping Willow, their limbs heavy and sated in the aftermath of stolen ardor. "A world where wizards take their rightful place, with nothing and no one to hold us back. Where bloodlines are celebrated, not hidden away like shameful secrets. It's everything we've dreamed of."

She had wanted so desperately to believe him - to enfold his darkness into herself like an oyster enveloping a grain of sand, to soothe with lips and hands and softly whispered devotion the wounds that festered, unhealed, in the chambers of his hidden heart. Because to believe otherwise - to acknowledge, even for a moment, that the boy she loved was not a rough gem in need of polishing but a yawning abyss, fathomless and pitiless - would have been to rend the very fabric of her universe.

But even as she surrendered to his touch, part of her shrank from the clawed hunger in his eyes when he spoke of the future, of the perfect order he would impose upon the world. It was there in the curl of his lip as he spoke of his Muggle father, in the razor slash of his smile when he vowed that all who opposed him would bend the knee or be crushed beneath his heel. And later, in the corridors of the castle and on the manicured lawns, she had felt the weight of sidelong glances and sly whispers stalking her footsteps like a miasma.

"...consorting with a Mudblood," Brenda Bulstrode had spat, disgust marring her patrician features as she and Bridgette Parkinson cornered Aurice by the Black Lake, their silk gowns glinting in the fading autumn light. "Do you want everyone to think you're exactly like her?"

"You're defying Tom openly," Bridgette had chimed in, her voice dripping with disdain. "If I were you, I'd watch my step. He won't tolerate disloyalty, even from you."

Aurice had swallowed the retorts, clamped down on the part of her that longed to scream that blood purity was a lie, a poison that rotted the soul from within. That Lily Evans, for all her Muggle parents, was worth a thousand of the preening purebloods who clung to Tom like limpets, gorging themselves on the scraps of his attention. But even as the words died on her tongue, she could not blind herself to the chasm that had opened between herself and the boy she loved, his growing remoteness and fixation on the Dark Arts wedging them inexorably apart.

"You can't possibly understand." His voice had been clipped, cold as hoarfrost, his eyes opaque as he waved away her tentative questions, her pleas for him to confide in her as he once had. "There are things I must do, Aurice - secrets I must unravel. One day, when our work is complete, you will see. The world will be remade, and you and I will stand at its center."

The memory dissolved, blowing away like a drift of autumn leaves, and Aurice found herself once more in the cavernous manse the Ministry had hidden them away in, an ocean away from the land of her birth. They played at normalcy here, her diminished family, Transfiguring their robes to mimic the fashions of the Muggles that surrounded their New Jersey home, keeping their wands tucked away while in public, the name of Bray hidden behind the flimsy fiction of "Lewis." And at the center of it all was the secret she carried, the tiny, innocent life they had all colluded to obscure from the world.

Aurice retreated to her chambers, her hands trembling as she unlocked the hidden compartment where she kept Tom's letters, preserved under a stasis spell. With reverent fingers, she smoothed open the first piece of parchment, Tom's elegant script dancing across the page.

"Dearest love," it began, and Aurice could almost hear his velvet baritone caressing the words, "How have you been? I think of you every day, every time I think of perfection. Remember the night we kissed under the Whomping Willow? That was the very definition of perfection. Your eyes sparkling with delight at being with me - that is a memory I will always treasure. In my dreams, I see those eyes telling me that I deserve you. I have never wanted anyone the way I want you, to be with me through all my days. Perhaps it was fate that brought us together that night. You make me forget the darkness that burns within me. We are meant to be, Aurice. I love you, always."

Tears pricked at Aurice's eyes even as a wistful smile curved her lips. With a shaking hand, she reached for the letter she had sent in reply, the parchment faded and brittle with age.

"Dearest Tom," her own girlish script proclaimed. “You fill my thoughts in every moment. Everything reminds me of you, of the way I feel when we're together. I never dreamed someone like you could love me the way you do. My brother is teaching me to duel, but all I can think of is the way you make me feel safe, cherished. Being with you is the greatest magic I've ever known. I am yours, Tom, in this life and the next. Until the very end."

A jagged sob tore from Aurice's throat as she traced the faded words, remembering the innocent girl she had been - the fool, heart so full of dreams, blind to the nightmare unfolding before her very eyes. With a trembling hand, she reached for the next letter, her heart clenching at the mention of Tom's Uncle Morfin.

"Today, I will meet the last living remnants of my mother's family," Tom had written, his usually elegant script spiky with some unnameable emotion. "I wish you could be with me, my love - to stand beside me as I claim my birthright. But I am glad you are safe, far from the darkness that shrouds my past. One day, when I have unraveled all the secrets, purged the taint from my bloodline, we will be together in the light. Wait for me, Aurice - think of me, as I think always of you. You are my heart's truest home."

Bile rose in Aurice's throat as she recalled what had come after - the change in Tom, a final hardening, as if that meeting with his uncle had calcified something within him, transmuted the last glimmer of light to an all-consuming void. And now here she sat, cradling the product of that darkness, the tiny life that should not be, must never be discovered. 

With a shuddering breath, Aurice turned to the final letter, the parchment warped and stained with the evidence of her tears.

"You have given me your heart, your very life, in service of our glorious future," Tom had written, the words searing themselves into her memory. "Even now, a part of me lives on in you, in the child you carry. She will be great, Aurice - an instrument of destiny, the key to unlocking the power I seek. When the time is right, you must prepare her to take her rightful place at my side, as the true heir of Slytherin himself. Only together can we reshape the world as it was meant to be. Serve me in this, and you will be honored beyond all others. Fail me, and not even memory will remain of all we shared."

The letter fluttered from Aurice's numb fingers as she drew great, shuddering breaths, fear and revulsion rising like a black tide within her. In her arms, the baby - Autumn, the name a cruel mockery of the dying world beyond the manse's walls - stirred and mewled, her unfocused eyes flickering between jade green and darkest night. And in their fathomless depths, Aurice glimpsed the seeds of a darkness beyond reckoning, a tainted power that would one day rise to devour all it touched.

She knew then, with a terrifying certainty, that if Autumn was allowed to live - to grow into the weapon Tom intended her to be - that the world would tremble before her. That rivers of blood would flow in her wake, and all Aurice had ever held dear would wither to ash.

But as she gazed down into that tiny face, so innocent, so unaware of the cruel destiny that yawned before her, Aurice knew she could not be the hand of execution. That even if it damned her very soul, she would fight with every last breath to save her child - to preserve the fragile flicker of light within the sea of darkness.

"Madame Bray?" Dorothy Coty's reedy voice cut through the whirlwind of Aurice's thoughts. The aging Squib who had served the Bray family faithfully for decades stood in the doorway, wringing her hands. "Your father and grandfather are asking for you. They...they are talking of...of the babe..."

Aurice surged to her feet, clutching Autumn close as she descended the stairs to find Dawrius and Teeban arguing, their faces cast in flickering shadow by the flames leaping in the grate.

"She must be put down." Dawrius' voice was cold, slicing through the charged air like a blow. "She is an abomination, a viper that will destroy us all if we let her live."

"She is a babe," Teeban retorted, his tone hot with outrage. "Barely three moons old, born of our own blood..."

"Born of his blood!" Dawrius roared, slamming his fist against the mantelpiece with such force that the pokers rattled in their stand. "That foul, twisted creature! Nary a day passes that I don't curse him for sullying our line."

"The sins of the father are not the sins of the child," Dumbledore interjected, gliding forward and waving his wand to infuse the room with a sense of calm. "The girl has a part to play in what is to come. We cannot, must not, let our fears blind us to that truth."

But Dawrius remained unmoved, eyes flashing beneath beetled brows as he rounded on the headmaster. "On your head be it, then, Albus." He stabbed a gnarled finger toward the whimpering bundle in Aurice's arms. "But that creature will never bear the name of Bray. To the rest of the world, she must mean nothing to us. And you, girl," he spat at Aurice, pulling his wand and leveling it at her heart, "you will breathe not a word of her true parentage, on your life and magic."

Aurice swallowed bile, clutching the baby close as she stammered her agreement, feeling the weight of the Vow settle over her like a shroud.

"Then let it be done," Teeban said heavily, extending his arms for the child. Aurice forced herself to relinquish her hold, watching through tear-blurred eyes as her grandfather bent to brush a whiskery kiss against the babe's brow.

"Autumn Jade Lewis," he pronounced, his words seeming to hang in the air between them. "Who you are and all you may become. Hidden, always, by the best of your heritage, and burdened with none of its sin." 

A beautiful lie. But a necessary one, if they were to have any hope of weathering the storm Aurice knew was to come. Because one day, she knew, her daughter's eyes would blaze scarlet, and she would be given over, wholly and terribly, to her father's darkness.

And in that moment, the world would tremble.