Constellations of Change

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Several Hours Before Fleur and Fauntleroy’s Duel, Britain, Diagon Alley

Xemerkos Tzogos, commonly known as Xem by his British customers, smiled with satisfaction as he locked up his storefront for the evening. The restauranter had done a swift business that day, and while the work was hard, he was overjoyed to see signs his food was gaining popularity with the locals. With any luck, by the end of the year he’d have made enough to pay off his loan from the goblins.

“I don’t care for that Mrs. Filch,” an annoyed voice said from behind Xem. He turned round to see his wife, Taki, leaning against the counter, her arms crossed and her expression irritated. Taki was by all appearances a spectacularly beautiful woman of Japanese extraction, with cascading waves of ink black hair falling nearly to her ankles, lovely slender proportions, and enticing dark red lips. If it weren’t for her slightly too black eyes, you’d never guess she wasn’t human.

Xem chuckled slightly as he crossed the dining area, his hooves making a soft clip-clop on the wooden floor as he did so. “Old ladies are always a bit crabby, agapitos, and I do believe Mrs. Filch is pushing two hundred and fifty. I wouldn’t pay her any mind.” His speech was ever so lightly accented with the speech of his birthplace on a Grecian island.

Taki scoffed and tossed her hair, but didn’t press the issue. Between the two of them, she tended to have more friction with their overwhelmingly human customers, despite being less obviously inhuman, at least in her current form. If the Jorogumo woman shifted into her giant spider shape, she’d likely get quite a bit more than snide comments from an aging, heirless witch. Walking behind the counter, she set about tallying up the coin they’d brought in that day.

The couple had opened their restaurant, ‘Bacchus’s Hearth’, about six months ago, and while there had been some, skepticism, from some quarters over a satyr and a spider-woman running a restaurant on the magical British high street, bit by bit their little dream seemed to be working. They’d built a little hole in the wall with a cozy atmosphere, the scent of rich Japanese-style curry mixing surprisingly well in the air with roasted spiced meats, which as it wafted out, proved an excellent advertisement to the hungry passerby.

Xem took out a towel from the sporran of his kilt (he quite liked that particular bit of local fashion) and set about wiping down the tables as the couple fell into the easy rhythm of closing the shop up for the day. It might seem unusual for them to choose to open their restaurant in the country notorious for giving rise to an, amongst other things, human supremacist dark lord less than two decades ago, but, on the other hand, after his defeat Britain had entered an ongoing phase of rebuilding that presented opportunities for an entrepreneur willing to take on a little risk. 

Afterall, while the Death Eaters sounded like they had been frightful, the average British Wizard didn’t seem significantly more bigoted than their Grecian counterpart, at least to Xem’s way of thinking. Plus, a mixed marriage like his and Taki’s was always going to make them outsiders to some extent, wherever they chose to settle. So, there hadn’t seemed much point in trying to avoid it. 

As a general rule, most thinking magical beings that weren’t wizards, merpeople, or goblins, didn’t travel or migrate much. They tended to have their own rather insular, mostly geographically static communities in their ancestral homelands and leave it at that, which was why most magical governments, which were almost universally run by witches and wizards, didn’t often even bother to legislate for Beings that didn’t have significant populations within their borders. Some of this tendency was down to the natures of these various peoples, but it was fair to say a significant reason for that lack of movement came back to the humans.

All magical beings, by definition, had a personal magic, but few had anything as vastly versatile as a witch’s spellcraft, and as a result, most didn’t have access to speedy travel over oceans or across continents without relying on wizards or muggles. Goblins had their mega-trains in their tunnels that bored through the earth, and merpeople ruled the seas, but the rest were typically at the caprice of humans, magical or otherwise, to travel further than their own feet, wings, hooves, or fins could take them. 

Unfortunately, for many, like the Vanara of India, the Tengu of Taki’s homeland, or indeed the Centaurs of their adopted country, that step was where they smacked headfirst into the laws governing the Statute of Secrecy. You couldn’t exactly get on a muggle aeroplane if you had two tails and scales instead of skin. The International Statute of Secrecy, unilaterally enacted on the world by witches and wizards, was often a thorny subject for the various non-human magical races, particularly those who could not successfully pass for human. ‘It’s alright for the Goblins and the Mermaids, they’ve got more real estate than even the humans do, but you can’t help but shed a tear for the poor Ciguapas,’ Xem reflected. 

As a Satyr he could get by in muggle areas with a special pair of pants, a false cane, and a hat for his horns, but all that fuss made him more comfortable in a place like Diagon Alley where he didn’t have to hide his goat-like features. 

DING-A-LING-DING-DING-BONG-JINGLE-TING-TING

The sound of the door chime, enchanted by that nice dark-haired werewolf who’d stopped in around yule (Satyrs could feel it in their horns when a predator was nearby, but he of course hadn’t outed the friendly Mr. Lupin) brought him back to the moment. “Tell them we’re closed,” Taki said through a yawn as she removed her apron. 

Xem shook his head cheerfully; his wife was one hell of a cook, but there was a reason he took care of front of house. Weaving his way back through the round rustic tables, he called out ahead, “I apologize my fabulous friend, but we are closed for the-“ his sentence died as he opened the door and discovered to his surprise, Amelia Bones standing on the other side.

Now, Xem was, broadly speaking, a law-abiding gent, but even the most diligent, saintly little old lady who always paid every knut of her taxes would have a moment of panic if the nation’s top copper showed up on her doorstep unexpectedly. Xem swallowed hard and asked “Uh, what can I do for you, Madame Bones?” All the while, his mind raced to try and figure out if they’d broken any import laws or secrecy rules. (If he’d been a muggle restaurant owner he’d likely have been thinking of the health code, but magicals didn’t really have much in the way of sanitation laws, provided you weren’t brewing potions, perhaps a consequence of Healing taking care of almost all non-magical maladies.)

Amelia smiled and held up a hand, “don’t worry, I’m not here on official business,” and indeed, when Xem took a moment to look, the woman wasn’t wearing the stately robes of her office, but rather a practical leather bodice over a white dress. The woman continued, slightly hesitantly, “and I’m sorry for calling so late, trouble at the office, you know how it is.”

Xem did not in fact know how it was, but he knew enough about customer service to nod along like he did. He opened the door a little more and asked, “then how can Bacchus’s Hearth be of service to you, Lady Bones?” He’d studied the etiquette of his new country assiduously and smoothly shifted to address her as the head of a noble house rather than a Ministry official.

“Well, you come highly recommended by a friend of mine,” Lady Bones began (Remus couldn’t stop raving about the place when she’d last seen him), “and I’m looking to have a, party, catered. Not too big an affair, less than thirty people probably. Is that something you could do?”

Taki practically bowled Xem out of the way as she rushed to the door, her eyes gleaming at the prospective business, “of course, Lady Bones,” the exquisite but deadly chef interjected, “however a private affair would incur a few extra costs for travel, specification, the loss of regular business…”

“How does 100 galleons sound?” Amelia asked, cutting her off, then added, “with an understanding that you and your staff will be discreet, before, during, and after the event?” Between Iris, Sirius, and Amelia herself, there were enough people of note hopefully attending to attract interest and she neither wanted her niece pestered, or for every word anyone said to show up in the Prophet the next day.

Xem and Taki exchanged a sidelong glance. The couple of small business owners would have done it for 30 galleons and been happy. For 100, they’d cater a blasted orgy and never tell another living soul about it.

In unison, the husband and wife smiled widely and turned back to Amelia. “That’s a bit below our usual rate,” Taki began, “but I think we can accommodate you.”

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Later that Night, Beauxbatons Headmistress’s Office

Dialogue in French

You could cut the silence with a knife in the tastefully appointed office of Madame Maxime. The towering woman sat behind her sturdy, no nonsense oaken desk, her hands steepled. Opposite her stood four guilty looking teenagers, displaying various levels of contrition, with one occasionally shivering despite the warm furs she’d conjured for him.

“Headmistress, I-“ Pierre started up again, likely trying to once again downplay his responsibility since he hadn’t been one of the ones dueling personally.

Olympe held up a finger, “quiet, I am thinking.” He fell silent again, though his squirming expression suggested he was dying to continue offering excuses. His friend Fauntleroy had a sullen expression, while the girl he’d been dueling had donned the defiant look of someone who knew they were in trouble, but didn’t regret what they’d done to get into said trouble. Poor Sonia de Silva just looked tired, and, well, she probably was given the late hour. 

Olympe rolled the matter over in her head. ‘Breaking curfew, unapproved dueling,..’ there would need to be some consequences to stop at least the latter from happening again, but some of what Madame Maxime had seen at the gazebo had her musing. As an educator she tried her best not to play favorites, but she’d certainly at least had her eye on Fleur Delacour. Setting aside any sentimentality she might have for a girl who had …. similar circumstances to Olympe herself, the blonde was consistently at the top of her classes almost across the board. The Headmistress would be shocked if she didn’t receive excellent results on her final qualifications in two years time. 

Fleur would be receiving the same punishment as Fauntleroy of course, as they’d committed the same offense, but the dueling skills Madam Maxime observed before revealing herself had gotten the older witch thinking. ‘Complex illusion magic, sustaining multiple charms at once, unorthodox tactics for accomplishing a task, powerful use of surrounding elements, artful spellcraft…

The Delacour girl’s birthday would have her literally making Dumbledore’s age cut off of 16 by a day, but the headmistress couldn’t help thinking that Fleur might be one of her best candidates for winning the Triwizard Tournament. Conventional wisdom held that she should bring mostly seventh years for her potential champions, given their relative greater education and experience, but in that moment, she decided Miss Delacour would be accompanying her to Scotland next year to put her name in the cup.

After all, while the Goblet of Fire ultimately chose the champions, it was up to the headmasters who got to put their names in. For Maxime and Karkaroff in particular, there was pressure to bring along a worthy selection of candidates. ‘And I shan't be letting that chauvinistic piece of excrement surpass Beauxbatons on such a grand stage.’  

‘And, on the subject of excrement,’ Maxime thought with amusement before saying, “Sonya, Pierre, you will both serve double detention with Professor Charabia tomorrow. Fleur, Fauntleroy, I expect better of my students than brawling like some common Englishmen; you obviously have two much time on your hands the both of you. So, Monsieur Brown, you will spend the remainder of term cleaning the Owlery every weekend, while Mademoiselle Delacour will be mucking out the stables. No magic for either of you.”

The collective groan was music to her ears. 

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Hogwarts, March, Saturday Morning

As she wound her way down the long spiral staircase of Ravenclaw Tower, Iris had to stifle a yawn. She’d been out late the night before and only gotten around four hours of sleep. Actually, that wasn’t so unusual for her, typically burning the midnight oil night after night until she occasionally collapsed and slept for almost a day; it probably wasn’t the healthiest sleep schedule, but it was one that allowed her to poke around either the restricted section or the forbidden forest out of view of prying professors’ eyes.

It had been the forest that drew her out the previous evening, but not under her trusty cloak. Instead, she’d waited until her dorm mates were asleep, then transformed into her bat form beneath her covers, wiggled her small body out of her bedding and flew out through the open window into the night.

Her Animagus form actually conformed pretty well to her own nocturnal inclinations, and for a bit she just enjoyed soaring over the grounds, feeling the wind beneath her wings. Eventually though, she focused and set out to accomplish her twin goals for the evening.

The first of which had been to use her new ability to fly, in conjunction with her echolocation, to do a bit more top-down mapping of the forest. She’d been exploring it extensively by foot, but wanted to observe it from a different angle to improve her personal maps of the various regions of the massive forest and the creatures that inhabited each part. It was difficult given the space bending dimensions that parts of the forest possessed, but bit by bit her maps were getting better.

Of course, she’d steered clear of what she’d identified as the main centaur territory, as she had been doing ever since her unpleasant encounter with Bane and company. She didn’t think they’d shoot at a random bat, but it was better safe than sorry, considering how famous the horsemen’s aim was. 

Her other goal had been to experiment with speaking with other bats; Sirius had told her he could somewhat communicate with other dogs in his animal form, and she was keen to find out if she could do the same. Unfortunately, the results were something of a mixed bag.

‘I probably had my expectations too high,’ she chided herself as she hopped over the illusory step of the most commonly used hidden passage. She had thought it would be akin to talking with local snakes like she’d been doing for years, but it hadn’t been quite the same. She could communicate with the colonies of bats she encountered, but the communication was very basic. With Parseltongue, her magic imbued common snakes with a bit more intelligence to allow them to speak with language, but her bat Animagus form simply allowed for communication on a normal bat’s level. It wasn’t useless, but complicated concepts were very difficult to get across.

It also hadn’t really solved the conundrum that she’d been tangling with increasingly over the year. Practicing her transformation, utilizing large scale magic, working on mastering bits of magic she sourced from the Restricted Section, there were quite a few lines of study she couldn’t pursue openly. It was a combination of wanting to keep certain skills secret from the wider populace, particularly any Death Eaters who had dodged Azkaban, and simple chafing against school rules. 

Chewing on a piece of bacon at breakfast, Iris had nearly smacked herself in the face when she realized the perfect private place to practice was sitting right in front of her. Or more accurately, it was sitting behind a little tap in the second-floor girl’s bathroom.

Now that Ginny was no longer possessed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Iris was fairly confident she and Sebastian were the only two beings in the castle who could access that place. Sure, it would be a little harrowing going back to a place she’d almost gotten killed, but it wasn’t like she avoided the third-floor corridor after the first year. ‘With the basilisk gone, it’s pretty much just a big empty room with an exemplary lock on it.’

An hour later she was splashing her way towards the main room of the Chamber of Secrets, a satchel bulging with books slung over one shoulder and an eager gleam in her eyes. A beam of blue-white light preceded her, emanating from the tip of her wand, and before long she once again laid eyes on old Salazar’s stony face, and the immobile corpse of his parting gift. Ignoring the latter, Iris found a dry patch of stone to set her pack down on and set about exploring the space. 

While the cavernous stone chamber would certainly serve her purposes for practicing all but the largest pieces of atmospheric magic, she couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. She’d hoped that a careful examination of the secret space made by a Founder themselves when she wasn’t in mortal danger, might yield some exciting discoveries, but so far at least, she’d come up dry.

She’d poked along most of the walls with her wand and several castings of Revealio and tried several dozen different potential code phrases in Parseltongue but gotten no reaction. Given how hidden the chamber itself had been, she wouldn’t be surprised if any further secrets were deeply hidden, but she was still disappointed.

“Then again,” she muttered to herself, “You-Know-Who spent a lot of time here. If old Salazaar had left behind any journals or spellbooks, he most certainly would have taken them with him.” It was what she would have done, a comparison that made her shudder. She didn’t like having any similarities with the murderous Dark Lord. 

Still, what the place lacked in both ancient grimoires and ambiance; it made up for in privacy. No angsty centaurs were going to come stomping in to disturb her and Filch wouldn’t be able to intrude either. It was ventilated in some manner or another, and while the basilisk corpse was a bit disturbing to catch sight of, at least it didn’t really rot like a normal animal. 

She spent the rest of the morning alternating between practicing her atmospheric magic, creating little self-contained storms, and stretching her wings in her bat form. It wasn’t quite as good for practicing either as an open natural space would have been, but it had the advantage of privacy, so she’d take it. ‘At least old Sallzzy built this place to be sturdy,’ she decided after she managed to summon a lightning strike nearly as big as the one that got her in hot water with the centaurs a few months ago, and it didn’t even scratch the stonework. 

Huffing and puffing just a little from the exertion, she turned her attention back to Caliban’s Calling, her latest text on atmospheric magic. She’d come a long way from summoning little jolts, but she was starting to reach a wall barring forward progress. She frowned; the trouble was atmospheric magic was fairly niche, especially these days, and she had more or less devoured all the obviously relevant texts in the extensive Hogwarts Library. Sure, there was bound to be the odd, unexpected footnote, or passing mention in less focused books, but finding those took quite a bit more time.

The Potter heiress had the coin to purchase books for herself, but again, at this point the sort of tome she was looking for wasn’t likely to be found at Flourish and Blotts or an Owl order form; once she started summoning lightning from the sky, Iris had moved into the territory of rare old books, from a day when magic was practiced far more openly, and often a bit more belligerently.

She twirled her silvery-white Horned Serpent core wand in her hand as she considered the problem. ‘Perhaps I ought to switch my focus to another branch of magic?’ It wasn’t like Iris exclusively studied atmospheric magic anyway. Then again, it had become something of a pet subject for her and it would be frustrating to stop progressing with it entirely. 

She stuck her tongue slightly out of the corner of her mouth in thought before an impish smile overtook her features. If she had reached the end of easily found charms, she’d simply have to start making her own! Excitement overtaking her, her hands darted for some parchment and her Arithmancy textbook, muttering, “the first thing I’ll need to sort out is how strong the connection between syllable count and air temperature is….”

Sebastian observed his mistress with a lazy eye while she descended into her experiments. The serpent sat coiled under her discarded cloaks; for all that this chamber was festooned with images of his kind in the stonework, the cold blooded familiar would have preferred if his mistress’s new workshop might have been set up somewhere he could bask in the sun. Iris had offered to light a fire for him, but it just wasn’t the same as the great flame in the sky. 

Still, he preferred her developing new charms or playing around pretending to be a flying morsel to the other side project that had them out in the forest of late with her. Sebastian wasn’t jealous of course. ‘It is a preposterous thought!’ He was the familiar after all and she was just a passing fancy of his mistress. Obviously. 

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Australia, the Village of Forrecks, Around the Same Time

Garland Auberjonois de Talleyrand quaffed a sip of the fermented quandong juice his friend Woolawarre Perkins, or Wooly for short, handed him. Neither man liked these stuffy annual suppers, and they’d been to enough of them to know getting a bit inebriated was one of the better ways to make them pass merely slowly, rather than excruciatingly sluggishly. Granted, alcohol never had much effect on Monsieur de Talleyrand’s mind, but he liked to try.

“Look at it this way, mate,” the well-tanned Australian wizard and unlucky co-host of this year’s conference offered, “this place is already choc-a-bloc with wizards, we’re about to start, and that galah Gilderoy didn’t show this year.”

Garland snorted, “Even the thickest of skulls can only hear a veiled insult so many times before they pierce through to whatever passes for a brain in that pompadour.” The grizzled Swiss Auror had a very low opinion of their association’s honorary member, only slightly higher than his opinion of his foolish brethren who had voted to bestow the honor in the first place. Because, while the boy Gilderoy was a true fool, the latter should have been wise enough to know better. 

Woolawarre shrugged good naturedly, the friendly bruce a good bit less embittered than most of the others in the room. Perhaps that was due to the fact that in a room full of aurors, dark beast hunters, cursebreakers, warders, duelists and warmages, Wooly was just a humble barman. 

Then again, he was a humble barman who had happened to dismantle two separate dark magic cults, participated in one of the only successful Nundu hunts in a century, and personally turned Grindelwald’s chief armorer into a fine red mist, in his free time. He was a barman in the way Albus Dumbledore was a teacher. Naturally, people blessed with a survival instinct didn’t make trouble in Wolawarre’s pub.

Wooly actually wasn’t much younger than Talleyrand, having turned 201 the previous month, but unlike his greying companion, he still had his trademark dark curly locks, even if there were a few crows’ feet around his eyes. Indeed, if one took a survey of the dozen and a half or so members of the Dark Force Defense League, they would discover the group as a whole had no member in it younger than a century, and few younger than two. (Trying to get some young blood for the first time in a long time had been the entire reason Lockhart’s induction had been rushed without proper vetting.)

It was tempting to think of the assorted silver heads in the room as some collection of archmages, the finest masters of the mystic arts or some other tosh like that. They were emphatically not that. They did not count Flamel, de Acero, Hazo, Dumbledore, or Neerav among their ranks. They were neither the wisest nor most powerful wizards in the world. Nor would they have been even if you turned back time to find them in their prime.

Rather, what the DFDL was, was an organization for crotchety old bastards who’d collected the scars and instincts that one accumulated surviving an interesting life. Put another way, it was an old boys club for those who’d seen a bit too much of the world and loved to complain about it. Most didn’t like their fellow members very much, but they liked other people even less.

‘On the subject of people I don’t like,’ Garland thought gloomily at the tic-tac-tic sound of a wooden leg walking into the room behind him. He turned slightly to regard Alastor Moody making his scowling entrance to the hall, the last to arrive as usual. The Swiss wizard and the Scottish wizard hated one another, but it was an old, comfortable sort of hatred that mostly came out in cutting comments rather than drawn wands. (A smart woman might observe that the two retired Auror’s severe annoyance with one another was a classic example of the narcissism of minor differences. A smarter woman would refrain from doing so within their hearing.)

“Perkins, Talleyrand,” Alastor greeted them gruffly. His normal eye steadily met their gaze while his magical one whirled around constantly, checking all the angles. 

“Evening, Alastor,” Woolawarre greeted the English Auror genially, “fancy a drink?” The Aussie knew the answer but still prided himself on his hospitality. Moody grunted and pulled his trademark flask from his pocket to take a swig in lieu of an answer. 

Talleyrand snorted at what he thought of as the performative precaution of the English wizard; if Wooly or his wife, who were hosting this little do in a muggle town hall they’d co-opted, and were providing the drinks, wanted to kill Alastor, they wouldn’t have to use poison. Wooly, a giant of a man with a keen talent for explosion hexes and a century of combat experience was one of the more dangerous wizards alive. And his wife was much worse. 

Tenki Ro-Perkins, Wooly’s wife who was currently offering hors devours to Ulysses Bunyun of Canada, was a slim Japanese woman with an almost permanently calm expression, at a party, or, as Garland had seen firsthand, covered in blood, mud and fighting for her life. The gracefully aging 194-year-old had streaks of silver in her short cropped black hair, and one of white from a close call with a Soul Scouring trap in some tomb. The fact that she was one of the small handful of cursebreakers to have simultaneously been the first to explore major ruins, and live past her first century, spoke to her intense level of skill dismantling curses, wards, and deathtraps. Of course, it also meant she’d had a first-rate education in how one might construct deathtraps, and Talleyrand suspected even Moody’s eye wouldn’t save him if she wished him harm. 

“I see retirement hasn’t changed your unique relationship with time,” Garland snarked at Moody. 

Alastor grinned mirthlessly at him, “If yeh had a bit more recent experience fighting actual dark wizards instead o’ chasing purse-snatchers, yeh might remember that keeping perfectly to a timetable is a perfect way to get yerself ambushed.”

Talleyrand gave him a sharp look. Sure, Garland might not have fought the most recent Dark Lord of any consequence, Voldemort, but he, like most everybody else in the room, was a veteran of the fight against Grindelwald and he hadn’t forgotten a damn lesson from that time. He sniffed, “Voldemort’s been dead for more than ten years, Alastor.”

“Yes,” Moody agreed, “and no thanks to you”

‘And we’re back to this again,’ Garland Auberjonois de Talleyrand bemoaned inwardly as he placed a finger to his temple. Talleyrand knew he could point out that there were quite a few reasons the DFDL and the international community as a whole didn’t intervene against Voldemort, but they’d been through all this before and it never did any good. 

Alastor didn’t care that the rest of the world, particularly Talleyrand’s part of it, was still picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild from Grindelwald when Voldemort first appeared. He would conveniently ignore the fact that non-interference was one of the founding principles of the ICW, so much so that wizarding nations had remained static for half a millennium while muggle borders writhed and wriggled all around them. With Grindelwald, he crossed borders and declared war openly, clearly triggering the very small number of conditions that allowed for an international response, while Voldemort had been meticulous in keeping his war within Britain’s borders and in the shadows at that. Most infuriatingly though, Talleyrand knew Moody would just completely fail to acknowledge that the British Ministry had never asked for help, and in fact turned down both the Americans and the Incans when they’d offered to send Aurors. 

Of course, the Swiss investigator understood why; whatever destruction Voldemort was causing, witches and wizards were a prideful lot and no nation, especially not one as historically powerful as the isles, wanted to admit they couldn’t handle their own problems. ‘Besides, half of the rest of us have had would-be successors to Grindewald sprout up in the last fifty years and we’ve managed to handle it ourselves.’

It wasn’t a fair thought, as even Talleyrand would grudgingly admit that Voldemort was another class of threat both magically and politically than the average criminal who decided they were destined to be the next great Dark Lord or Lady, but Alastor annoyed him like no other. However, any further arguing was prevented, or at least postponed by Wooly interjecting, “looks like things are about to get started, gents. Best find yourself a chair.”

Moody and Talleyrand had a moment of mutual despair when they realized most of the comfortable chairs arranged for the meeting, in a semi-circle around a lectern, had already been claimed and they would be forced to sit next to one another. Sure, Wooly also hadn’t taken his seat yet, but both men knew in their bones that taking the empty seat next to Tenki from him would have consequences. Bowing to inevitability, both of the old coppers took their chairs while pointedly not looking at one another. 

There was a rap-a-tap-tap of a wand against a lectern, somewhat quieting the low grumble of the assembled members of the League. The eighteen witches and wizards in the hall, who ranged from getting on in years, to positively ancient were a far cry from the organization’s height. The current chairperson, standing on a stool at the front of the hall, cleared her throat a bit aggressively and finally won the attention of her fellow members. 

Elisa Whakarongomai was a diminutive little witch with a definite stoop, rather swallowed up by the broad brim of her large traditional pointed green hat. She stood only 4’5 now that she was nearing her 300th birthday, and saw the world through butterbeer bottle thick glasses, but any dark wizard who thought her a helpless little old witch would soon find to their horror that the skills that had made the Kiwi the most feared duelist of her generation hadn’t gone anywhere.

“Welcome everyone,” Elisa squeaked. “To the eighty third annual summit of the Dark Force Defense League. As this year’s chairperson I…“

Alastor quickly tuned the witch’s speech out and briefly envied old Talleyrand on his right, who doubtlessly tasked a tiny fragment of his mind with recording the speech perfectly while the rest of it occupied itself with more interesting things i.e. anything. ‘I don’t know why I still come to these blasted things.’

He did know, in a boarded up hidden part of his soul; even Alastor yearned for a bit of human connection. He was finding retirement tiresome. He was innately suspicious of the time he suddenly had on his hands and, well, he didn’t really have anyone to spend time with, not anymore. 

Eventually they got through the tedium of the opening remarks and could move on to the tedium of the rest of it. Truth be told, the world was a bit quiet at the moment; there were no new dark wizarding movements on the march, or unexpected dark beasts rampaging for the members to consult one another about. Alastor hated it. To his mind if there wasn’t a threat on the horizon, all that meant was it was a threat you weren’t seeing. 

So, without a major issue to dominate the conversation, it didn’t take that long for the evergreen matter of new members to come up. “I still say we should extend an invitation to Baroness Elsimia Maskrovka,” Yu-ri opined from across the circle. Yu-ri Yunjin was the second youngest genuine member of their order at a spry 111 (though of course, with magical aging and her active lifestyle, a muggle would say she looked to be in her mid to late thirties). The Korean naturalist was the current preeminent voice in the field of Magizoology, and some argued she’d surpass Scamander in renown in time. When it came to dark beasts and their weaknesses, there was no better expert. “She did excellent work curbing the rogue giant incursion in Finland last year.”

“I am not so sure,” Leon Ocllo de las Mareas of Chile, a herbologist known for collecting and cataloguing the most dangerous examples of magical flora, interjected, “we should be considering admitting anyone until we strike that bobo Lockhart from our rolls.” 

“Please,” Ulysses Bunyun responded, “I know young Gilderoy didn’t make the best impression when last he joined us but you can’t deny his impressive track record-“

“I can deny he actually did any of the toff he wrote about,” Wooly interrupted. “I mean, it all sounds impressive and he can string a sentence together, fair dinkum, but we all knew within ten minutes of meeting him he’s a dolt.”

“Eh, a bolt of what?” Vicenzo Alighieri asked, holding his ear trumpet up. The balding little Italian warmage’s hearing had never been the same since he’d repelled the Siren attack of 1898. Still, he was never the sort to let a complete lack of understanding of what was going on stop him from contributing, so without waiting for an answer he added. “What about young Sirius Black, eh? He has been cleared of wrongdoing, after all, and such a famous name-“

“We are not,” Elisa piped in from the lectern, “a collection of famous names. That’s just the sort of thinking that led us to asking Lockhart to join.”

“Yes, if we’re talking about actual skill then perhaps we should reconsider my boy Ravi-“ the witch on the other side of Alastor, Nithya Ghamandee began only to be shouted down by a chorus of no’s from everyone else in the room.

“Nithya, mate, with the best will in the world,” Wooly patiently explained yet again, “your son’s a fine bloke but…”

“Your accomplishments are not his and his accomplishments are not enough to warrant admittance,” Tenki smoothly finished for her husband. Nithya crossed her arms in annoyance but didn’t push the point. 

Vicenzo tried to use the momentary lull to push his own point, “So, getting back to Sirius-“

“Sirius Black is a hothead who’s greatest claim to fame was getting locked up,” Alastor said sharply, drawing attention to himself. “He’s not a bad lad but honestly he’s no more remarkable than a dozen other junior auror’s I trained, only he’s a decade out of practice.”

“Resisting the dementors your government uses as prison guards,” Ulysess said with veiled judgement, “for all those years is an impressive feat.”

“Let’s just say if that’s a skill you think he can teach, you’re barking mad,” Alastor said with a rough chortle, like he was enjoying some private joke. 

Grumpily, Leon demanded, “if Gilderoy is a fraud, and Sirius unremarkable, who among your countrymen would you suggest, Mister Moody?”

For the briefest of moments, both of Moody’s eyes swiveled to meet the other man’s gaze before he, slightly theatrically, stuck his little finger into his ear as if to clear wax while he thought. After a moment he said, “you could offer it to Amy Bones but she’d just tell you she’s too busy to bother with this malarky just like Albus does everytime you ask him. A wise man indeed.” There were some eyerolls as Alastor continued, “Shacklebolt would also probably turn you down, and the folks that would say yes to yeh aren’t the folks worth having. That said, if you had to pick someone from my backyard, I’d say send your blasted invite to Remus Lupin.”

“Woo-bin, who’s Woo-bin?” Vicenzo demanded. While he got the name wrong, his confusion was shared by the rest of them, as it wasn’t exactly a known name.

Moody shrugged. “Not much of a name,” he said snidely, “like Bunyan and Alighieri want, but he’s a solid enough sort. Apprenticed Caradoc Dearborn for his Mastery before the ol’ duffer tried dueling You-Know-Who on his own.” The mood in the room lowered; Caradoc had been a member before his death. Moody continued, “Not the strongest wizard, but unlike most of the idiots playing at auror these days, he actually understands the value of stealth. A bit tricky to find if he doesn’t want to be.”

Talleyrand, who had been content to let the usual bickering roll along until everyone got tired and they adjourned for another year, was suddenly much more interested. Alastor loved to be cagey about his personal past, just another element of his infamous paranoia. Thinking the name of your childhood pet was some kind of forbidden secret was an exercise in ego rather than precaution, at least to Garland’s not-at-all-biased opinion. In truth, Garland was aware of more of Alastor’s past than most other living souls, in part because he was actually significantly older than the surprisingly young, 154-year-old Alastor, and had been chasing dark wizards for decades before the Scotsman made his mark. 

That was why he was momentarily stunned to hear Moody deliver what amounted to a glowing compliment from him about this kid Lupin’s stealth skills. Few knew that Alastor, between leaving school and becoming an auror, had first apprenticed as a diviner, and while he’d never had the Sight and abandoned that career path, he had become pretty much the specialist when it came to surveillance magic. If he, even grudgingly, said you were good at going unnoticed, you might give the Third Brother a run for his galleons. 

Most witches and wizards, or at least most competent witches and wizards tended to, if not develop a specialty, at the very least discover an affinity for a certain sort of magic. Some intersection of aptitude, inclination, and the tendency to enjoy practicing that which you were already half decent at more than something new led most spellcasters down the path of one particular branch of magic or another. The occasional bright spark might achieve greatness in two or three disciplines, but magic was too vast for any one man to be master of it all. 

‘That,’ Garland thought with a snort, ‘and Magic makes her own decisions ’. It wasn’t like being a Metamorphmagus or Seer, a thing you simply were or you weren’t, but certain sorts of magic spoke to different people, and barely whispered at others. Magic wasn’t like muggle science, not exactly. Oh sure, you could study it, analyze it, try to pin it down with words on a page, but at the end of the day, magic was a living thing. Put another way, if a wizard was a knight, magic was the half-wild stallion that liked to buck from time to time to remind its rider that he was a passenger, not the master. 

In Talleyrand’s case, while he was broadly quite proficient with a variety of magic as any Auror had to be, his area of expertise was probably the least obviously spectacular of any of his fellows in the Association, but damned useful in his career as Switzerland’s top copper. Put simply, Garland was a natural Occlumens, and one who had only honed that subtlest of talents as the years went by. 

It all happened within the privacy of his own mind, but in its way, it was just as remarkable as Wooly’s explosions or Tenki’s deathtraps. Garland Auberjonois de Talleyrand’s mind was absurdly well ordered and capable of functions the vast majority of organic brains couldn’t handle. Rather than the whole point of learning it, for him, the fact that his Occlumency made him incredibly resistant to Legilimency was just a nice bonus.

He wasn’t any smarter than a normal person, but he could think in ways they couldn’t. If he’d bothered at all to familiarize himself with the advancement of muggle technology, he might have likened the way he thought to a computer. He could partition his mind and set different parts upon different tasks, true parallel processing rather than the everyday sort of multitasking where you simply switched back and forth from one line of thought to another very quickly. He had a more or less perfect memory of everything he’d ever experienced, though, to extend a metaphor he wouldn’t have used, if his mind was the film, the photo could still end up blurry if you damaged the camera’s lens, i.e., he got concussed or drank the several handles of firewhiskey it took him to get tipsy. Also, as useful as it was for cataloguing clues, remembering, truly remembering, every stubbed toe, banged elbow and, in worse cases, gut wound you’d ever had wasn’t great and a significant part of why he was such a grump. 

There was a moment while the group as a whole paused to consider the rare recommendation from Moody. It lasted until Nithya broke it by saying, “if we’re considering an unknown like this Remus, I don’t understand why we shouldn’t revisit Ravi’s-“

And then they were back to arguing. 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Slytherin Boys Dormitory, Mid-March

Draco Malfoy sat on his bed, flicking exploding snap cards in the general direction of Zabini’s trunk in the vague hope they might mess up that prick’s things when they went off. They probably wouldn’t, the modern decks didn’t have very dangerous explosions, but it was something to do.

The heir of House Malfoy was utterly bored and also irritated, but the latter was an almost constant state of being for him these days. He felt increasingly sidelined within Slytherin House and constrained in every direction. He still had his powerbase, but with Fiona Rosier’s greater faction ascendent of late, the Greengrass bitch was holding sway in their year. ‘Slytherin is supposed to be the house of the pure, and we’re letting mudbloodlovers like Greengrass run the place? It’s disgraceful.’

That was why he’d retreated from the common room to his dorm that afternoon, not wanting to have to share a space with that blasted girl another second longer. She’d already intentionally tried to make him look bad in Transfiguration that day (by answering a question Draco had been unable to when called upon by Professor McGonagall). Not to mention how the ice queen’s protection of Potter and her misfits kept him from putting the so-called Girl-Who-Lived in her place like he wanted to.

He tossed the deck to the side and rose to his feet, feeling the urge to pace. His father often did so in his study when he was contemplating great matters, and as always, Draco sought to emulate him. ‘Iris Potter’… Draco had actually had relatively little direct interaction with the famous redhead over the last two years. It wasn’t that his animosity for her had gone away, rather that it just had never seemed prudent to confront her head on.

She wasn’t the idiot Weasley was and wasn’t easily baited. Honestly, she seemed content to bury herself in her books, and if she wasn’t who she was, Draco probably wouldn’t even bother remembering her name. Unfortunately he wasn’t so lucky. He hated Iris on principle from the start for her role in destroying the Dark Lord before he could fully cleanse their society of the mudbloods, but he’d had to bear several further indignities at her hands while at school together.

Iris Potter didn’t even need to interact with him directly to vex Draco at every turn. She insisted on showing off and getting top marks in every class along with Greengrass and their pet mudblood. Potter and her sister had engineered some kind of scheme with Dumbledore during first year to steal the house cup away from Slytherin and give it to the useless badgers. Her adoptive mother, the blood traitor Andromeda, had somehow tricked his idiot mother into handing over their servant and now all the food at home was rubbish. (The Bulstrode provided ghoul who had replaced Dobby was not the best chef) Worst of all, the infernal witch had somehow pulled Peter Pettigrew out of her hat and kicked off the chain of events that meant Draco was no longer likely to inherit the Black fortune.

That had been a blow, and though the words were not said at the nearly silent Malfoy dinner table on the rare occasions the family had dined together over the previous holidays, in his heart of hearts Draco felt like his father blamed him for it. Draco and his mother were meant to grant the Black legacy to House Malfoy, and now…

Draco snarled to himself. What he needed was a way to get back at Potter and Greengrass both. He couldn’t act out in the open, Greengrass was too well connected, and Potter too content to sit snugly beneath Greengrass’s protection, but both witches ought to be taken down a peg or two.

A sly grin graced his, by his own estimation, perfect features. ‘Pranking might be a bit beneath someone of my station, but certain people need to be taught a lesson and this might be the best way…’ He’d need deniability, get Crabbe and Goyle to do the legwork, but a scheme was hatching in his mind to properly chastise at least some of those who had dared insult or inconvenience him.

He snatched up his eagle feather quill and fished out the necessary order form from his magically expansive trunk. The heirs of the Potter and Greengrass houses might be too difficult to strike directly, but the third heiress they palled around with might be the perfect target. Plus, he’d get to royally embarrass the niece of the witch who his father was always complaining about, and nobody would be the wiser.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Bowels of Gringotts, Same Time

Griphook was proud to be a banker; twas considered an honorable profession for a goblin, like being a warrior or a miner. A proper banker could expect to accumulate a sizable fortune by the time they retire, after all. However, at this point he was quite a ways from that, still a mere teller and trusted to do little more than deal with the random wizards who wandered in without an appointment.

That’s why he’d been a bit surprised to be invited to a meeting with Senior Executive Smeehold. The older goblin was a big shot, managing the finances of several noble wizarding families and the chief of the Tattered Ear clan, not exactly the kind of company Griphook was used to rubbing elbows with. He could only pray to Belobog that his foolish sister hadn’t caused further upset that would further disgrace their family. ‘If she had obediently married as father commanded…’

He passed various goblins going about their work as he descended deeper into the bowels of the bank, heading for Smeehold’s office. As he stepped by Trapbuilder Strongstench, he couldn’t help shaking his head in mild disbelief. The old goblin, known for biting off the head of any apprentice who looked at him wrong, was whistling. A natural misanthrope himself, Griphook would be pleased when the cheery atmosphere hanging about finally stopped. 

The mood around the bank had been borderline jubilant when Sirius Black was exonerated, and even now, a year later, it hadn’t quite dissipated. It wasn’t out of any love for the wizard himself, but rather a celebration for one of the largest accounts becoming active again. Gold didn’t like to sit still after all; coins liked to move about, rub together and grow ever greater. The 10 galleon bonus given out in celebration hadn’t hurt either. 

While Sirius had been imprisoned, there was no one to approve new investments or sign off on lending schemes. It had been a truly lamentable state of affairs, and Director Morgenfist had cracked a whole keg of Mossbrew for the office staff to celebrate the day Black signed the papers reactivating his accounts and opening his vault. 

Some of his relatives had tried over the years to take control of the main Black accounts, but the goblins naturally wouldn’t budge on ownership, regardless of what any ponce from the human’s ministry said. The rules were clear. Everywhere else on the surface the humans could have their way, but what went on within the walls of the bank was Goblin business. 

Per the terms of the Treaty of Inverness, Gringotts had a banking monopoly in wizarding Britain, and while a few old goblins might complain about no longer being allowed to war on the surface, the arrangement had proved quite lucrative. Wizards might not have a proper understanding of ownership, but they had coin and it turned out getting them to invest it was a tad easier than taking it at sword point. It also, on the whole, happened that wizards made better fighters than they did accountants, which gave the goblins a significant advantage in their new financial field of combat. 

Gringotts wasn’t the only goblin bank, of course, just the one managed and run by the royal Gring family, whose subterranean holdings broadly fell under the British Isles. Their rival kingdoms had their own financial institutions, and some had formed similar arrangements with the wizards that lived above them, though not all. Apparently in Russia a tribe of dwarf-like creatures called Patuljaks handled banking, and in the United States the wizards actually did it themselves. ‘Bah, imagine humans and dwarves trying to manage money.’

He arrived outside the big imposing gold and onyx door that led to Smeehold’s office. Goblins, as a rule, liked big imposing doors; they simultaneously told the visitor that the owner had a lot of coin, and that they weren’t very happy about having a visitor. In this case though, Griphook had been summoned, so he took hold of one of the gryphon beaked knockers, and knocked. 

“Enter!” boomed the short, clipped reply through the solid door, and Griphook hurriedly heaved back on it to open a gap wide enough to wiggle through before stepping inside. The enchanted hinges closed it swiftly behind him with a rush of air and a distinctive thud.

Senior Executive Smeehold wasn’t the sort of wizened old goblin you expected to find in his position. In fact, he wasn’t much older than Griphook himself. Most Goblins would attribute his meteoric rise to his sharp business acumen and drive. Most Goblins also didn’t want to get their heads bashed in for mentioning the word ‘nepotism’ within the hearing of a member of the Tattered Ear Clan.

However, even if Smeehold had gotten a leg up from his privileged background, he’d proven more than up to the job. Goblins who lost money for Gringotts often found themselves reassigned to ‘dragon feeding duty’ no matter who their fathers were. 

At the moment the goblin wore a fine burgundy suit with a smart bronze colored tie and sat behind his impressive burnished luxullianite desk, stacks of parchment neatly piled atop it. At the moment it seemed one particular piece had his attention, and Smeehold glared at the page like he hoped it would cease to exist simply from the intensity of the stare. 

Griphook waited, a tad nervously until Smeehold sniffed in annoyance as he dismissively set the parchment to the side.

“Is there trouble, sir?” Griphook asked.

“Only in so much as my fool of a son throwing good money after bad. Lending more coin to that humbug Bagman, tsk, I taught him better than that,” Smeehold complained. Presumably such a loan must have been from Tattered Ear clan funds, since every goblin knew Bagman was on Gringotts’s blacklist.  

Griphook wisely didn’t comment on the investment sense of his superior’s son, instead deciding to wait patiently for Smeehold to come to explain why he’d been summoned.

The other goblin peered down at Griphook through his pince-nez, “I’ll be brief, Teller Griphook. I have a task that needs doing, and your supervisor’s performance notes indicate that you should be adequate for it,” the words were terse but essentially high praise in the cutthroat world of Gringotts. 

“Whatever you need, sir” Griphook said obsequiously. It wasn’t necessarily in his nature, but if it gave him a chance to advance, he’d brown nose with the best of them. 

“It has come to my attention that the wizards are restarting their Tri-Wizard Tournament next year,” Smeehold explained. The Ministry of course hadn’t bothered to officially inform the Goblins of that via their Liason office, but there were such large preparations lurching into motion for the event that Smeehold’s network of eyes and ears quickly picked up on it. The insurance policies taken out on the dragons would have been enough on its own to tip him off. 

“Hmm, the oddsmakers will be pleased,” Griphook opined. He made a mental note to pen a letter to his brother-in-law Muckheart, who was also his personal bookie, and see what the initial odds were between the schools. 

Smeehold shrugged, “probably, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that the doors of Hogwarts will be thrown open more than they have been in centuries when the spectators flock to watch. I’m sure the human’s Ministry will control who gets tickets, but I’ve enough coin to ensure a block of seats.” He pointed a gnarled finger at Griphook, “you will be attending each event, and using it as cover.” He tossed a rolled piece of parchment to Griphook.

The junior goblin caught the scroll and unfurled it, his keen eyes darting over what turned out to be a list of objects. ‘2 Goblin-Silver goblets crafted by Poundhammer of the Sharptooth Clan in 1128, A full war suit crafted by Tanglerip of the Tattered Ear Clan in 567, Four sets of high-gold dishware crafted by Rockvir of the Golden Eye Clan in 1644….’

It was essentially a long list of missing Goblin artefacts suspected to be in the hands of wizards, with the biggest item right at the top, The Sword of King Bloodbone crafted in 943, or as the wizards called it, the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. Griphook’s eyes widened and his mouth turned into a scowl as he read the letter, asking “Dumbledore hordes all this in his castle?” Griphook had long ago discounted the wizard’s lip-service sermons about cooperation between the magical races, but this was still a long list.

Smeehold shook his head, “likely not all of it. Only a few items, the sword in particular, are known to lie in Hogwarts, but that place has been beyond our sight for so long, I’m not letting this opportunity slip by. There’s a chance all of that could lie within the castle walls, and it falls to you to reclaim all that you manage to find.” The list was taken from the much larger list of currently missing goblin-made items, focusing on those that were last known to be held by a Hogwarts professor’s family over the centuries. 

“I expect you to be discreet in this task,” Smeehold continued, “as much as it pains me, securing most of these objects isn’t worth sparking a new war. If they can be spirited out easily, do so, but if not, simply make a record of where they are in the castle. We can always retrieve them by other means.”

“Yes sir,” Griphook agreed, though his long ear twitched in annoyance at the thought of leaving stolen goblin artifacts in the hands of humans.

“However,” Smeehold added as a parting comment, before gesturing for Griphook to go, “if you find Bloodbone’s sword, you have my permission to beat the life out of any wizard who tries to keep it from you.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch, March, Mid-Afternoon

Daphne loved her friends, really, she did. Despite her cold reputation, she felt very warm indeed towards the handful of people who had come to form her inner circle and was fiercely protective of that same group. Still, in her weaker moments, she could admit to wishing two of her best friends, Tracey and Susan, weren’t so obsessed with the infinitely boring game of Quidditch.

“Whoo!” Sophie Roper cried from her right. Her Slytherin year mate had sat near her in the stands to spectate the end of the friendly intramural match in which Tracey and Susan were playing on the same team. “Looks like Davis spotted the snitch!”

The Greengrass heiress smiled ever so slightly and looked up to see that, indeed, Tracey was diving for a spot on the other side of the field, the opposing Seeker, Dean Thomas, scrambling to follow her. She might not care much for the sport, but she’d always take pride in her friend’s accomplishments. 

It wasn’t a formal house match, and Daphne hadn’t been spectating the whole time. She’d instead arrived only a quarter an hour ago, alongside Hermione and Lavender, who had essentially been inseparable since the latter’s surprising revelation of being a Seer. They were planning to connect with Susan and Tracey after the game to go hangout. Iris was supposed to be joining them as well, but so far, their Ravenclaw friend had yet to show.

In front of her, Hermione was focusing on a large folding star chart she’d brought, quill in hand, making little notations, and frequently muttering,

“When Snakes and Badgers Meet,

What happens won’t smell sweet,

The Beater gets sick,

The Seeker’s a prick

And Grim’s Daughter faces the heat,”

while Lavender occasionally contributed, her own brow furrowed.

The little limerick was the second prophecy Lavender had given, two days ago while she and Hermione were leaving Transfiguration. Based on the reading she’d done on the subject, Daphne knew that was a rather fast frequency for a Seer and had only increased the student body’s fascination with Brown, following her first prediction coming true. 

It had certainly made her the star of Divination amongst the third years, apparently. Daphne wasn’t taking the course, but according to Tracey, some of the students were looking to Lavender more than they were to Trelawney for guidance. However, ironically, finding out she was actually a Seer had made Lavender less confident in her non-prophecy divinations. (Despite the fact that those also tended to be more accurate than the Professor’s).  ‘I suppose once you’ve experienced that kind of accuracy, you’re more skeptical of the vaguer predictions you get from tea leaves.’

Lavender was a mix of excited and unsure about her new talent, but Hermione was if anything more enthused about it. Her Muggleborn friend always liked things to be more concrete than the bulk of divination tended to be, so she’d clung on to Lavender’s demonstrably accurate prophecies like a life raft of certainty in a sea of ambiguity. This new shared interest had only served to accelerate the growing bond between the pair and you now rarely saw one of the lionesses without the other. 

Unfortunately, so far Hermione seemed to have the exact opposite of whatever Lavender’s gift for second sight was. Indeed, it was the only subject where the brilliant girl was running the risk of anything other than top marks, i.e. the Granger version of failing. Daphne felt a pang of sympathy for the bushier-haired part of the Gryffindor pair but had far too much respect for Hermione’s pride to ever express it. 

Still, say whatever you like about Hermione Granger, the girl was never one to back away from a challenge. With tea leaves and palm lines stubbornly refusing to yield to her, she’d steadily over the last few months been applying herself to that mystic subject which somehow managed to both be heavily entwined with ‘wooly’ divination and be so empirical as to nearly be a science: Astronomy. 

Daphne knew Hermione had always been good at Astronomy, top of their class in fact, but ever since Lavender started spewing out prophecies, Hermione had been devouring every astronomical text she could get her hands on. The study of the celestial sphere was one of those things that didn’t really do much in of itself, but which could interact with nearly every other sort of magic in all sorts of ways, and perhaps none more so than Divination. Hermione might lack even the tiniest bit of intuition or prescience but by Jove, she could track the stars. ‘Besides,’ Daphne reflected ruefully as her two friends busily started theorizing on how the movement Canis Major might relate to Grim symbolism, ‘she’s got Lavender for the actual divination bits.’

“There you are!” a voice squeaked from behind and Daphne half turned to see her little sister, Astoria, skittering down the steps towards her. Despite having been there for a full term, Daphne still had trouble reconciling the idea that her tiny little sister was now old enough to be attending Hogwarts. In her head, Astoria should still be playing with dolls, not learning levitation charms; the fact that the girl’s school robes still seemed to swamp her diminutive frame despite top galleon tailoring didn’t help dispel that impression. Astoria came to a wobbling halt, arresting her own momentum just before she tumbled forward down another row of seats. She put her hands on her hips, “was there a letter for me?”

The blonde rolled her eyes and drew a letter bearing their family seal from the pocket of her robes, “you know I wouldn’t need to act as your secretary if you actually arrived at breakfast in time for the owls.”

Astoria, who had never encountered an alarm charm she couldn’t sleep through, just waved her off with one hand while snatching up her letter with the other. The Greengrass girls looked somewhat similar, particularly when it came to their facial features and icy blue eyes, but where Daphne had her grandmother’s pale blonde hair, Astoria had the darker ringlets from the other side of the family. (Astoria was also a good deal smaller and scrawnier, but that was somewhat due to their difference in age.) 

“Hmm, mummy says she asked granduncle Horace for the notes,” Astoria had, embarrassingly, been having some trouble with her Potions coursework and after relating that to her mother, their granduncle was apparently going to do a bit of tutoring by post. 

“You could always let me help you,” Daphne opined.

“No,” Astoria said stubbornly. “I can handle it myself.” Daphne debated pointing out that getting help from granduncle Horace wasn’t exactly doing by herself either but thought better of it. Astoria had a lot of pride and, though Daphne couldn’t fathom why, a growing need to not rely on her big sister for anything. (Daphne was a tad unaware of the long shadow her own academic success cast and her younger sibling’s perhaps natural desire to get out from under it.) She folded the letter up before plopping down in the seat on the other side of Daphne and asking, “did you get a letter as well? Anything interesting?”

Daphne frowned ever so slightly as she glanced down at the letter from her father she was using as a temporary bookmark. “I did, but it was nothing of any great importance.” It wasn’t that she was displeased to receive a letter from home, but rather a single line from the correspondence that was bothering her.

‘I do hope you are identifying potential future prospects, Daphne. This is an important time in a young witch’s life and it would behoove you for the future to take note of your classmates who distinguish themselves.’ Daphne could read between the lines with the best of them and easily understood her father was advising her to start looking for a potential future spouse, something she felt uneasy about.

The Greengrasses weren’t retrograde like the Malfoys or the Carrows, but they were traditional. Sampson and Delilah wouldn’t put together an arranged marriage for their daughters, but they were concerned that both of them eventually made a ‘good match’ that would be a worthy addition to the House of Greengrass. In that way they weren’t so different from Augusta Longbottom or even Molly Weasley.

What was meant by a ‘good match’ was something that varied from family to family. For Daphne’s parents it wasn’t a test of blood purity, so much as it was one of class and perceived excellence. They’d likely happily approve of Hermione, who may be a muggleborn but was also demonstrably brilliant and sure to be successful, far more easily than they would a delinquent dunce like Goyle, despite him technically being the scion of an ancient noble house. ‘Of course, if I made a play for Hermione, I’m pretty sure Lavender would hex my hands off.’

Her mum had actually made a few teasing comments over the summer that Daphne might have a crush on one or multiple of the friends she brought by the manor, and she suspected her father thought she planned to pursue Iris in particular. Daphne loved Iris dearly and thought her friend rather pretty, but ‘we would make a TERRIBLE romantic couple.’

There were things you could indulge in a friend that you wouldn’t put up with in a partner and with Iris, Daphne knew she’d be driven utterly batty by the girl’s habit of disappearing to dive into whatever subject had caught her curiosity that day, regardless of whatever else was going on. Similarly, she suspected her interest in politics and drive to improve their society would bore and irritate Iris the more the redhead got drawn into them. So no, she wasn’t planning on being the lucky witch to marry the Girl-Who-Lived

She felt similarly about the rest of her close friends. She had a great deal of affection for them, but didn’t feel romantic attraction towards them for one reason or another. Then again, it wasn’t like she’d found some wonderful prospect outside her friend group either.

In their year, Justin Finch-Fletchly was rather handsome but almost as narcissistic as Draco if you tried to talk to him. Morag MacDougal was an intelligent witch but had this high whinnying laugh that sounded to Daphne like nails on a chalkboard. Theodore Nott was from a well off noble family not too closely tied to Malfoy’s faction, but the guy was a massive bigot all the same and a jackass to boot. 

So no, Daphne didn’t particularly have her eye on anyone at the moment. There were of course those a bit older and a bit younger than her, but for the moment she really didn’t have a name to give her father if he asked her about it. ‘There’s no need to get married for at least a decade or two anyway, so why must he vex me about this now?’

She knew why; for old pureblood families, continuation of one’s bloodline was everything. Of course, in her family’s case, that meant the antiquated definition of pureblood, a family of all witches and wizards, rather than the newer more extreme one that shunned muggleborns or those with any known muggle relatives. ‘Really, bringing home a non-witch or wizard would probably be the only kind of partner that mummy and daddy wouldn’t eventually accept.’

Eventually the game ended with Tracey putting her mitts on the golden ball, and Daphne muttered “finally” as the handful of spectators descended the wooden staircases. Astoria parted from her, dashing away to meet up with her Gryffindor friend, Derek – something. Daphne just shook her head at her over-energetic sibling and made her way to the little hill overlooking the pitch where she and her friends had agreed to meet after the game.

Hermione and Lavender walked with her and before long Tracey and Susan had changed back into their normal uniforms and hurried up the hill to them. Which meant they were only missing-

“Has anyone seen Iris?” Susan asked, glancing around. 

Daphne was about to respond before pausing when she saw their latecomer ambling up the grounds vaguely from the direction of Hagrid’s hut. Iris’s red hair was easy to spot from a distance, and she had evidently spotted them as well, as she started hurrying over towards the group.

“Lose a fight with a Yeti?” Daphne asked her friend as she approached, her eyes widening ever so slightly in shock, which was basically the always controlled girl's version of letting her mouth hang open. Iris’s long red hair was mussed, tangled, and unless Daphne was mistaking, had at least two twigs caught up in it. The left sleeve of her robe was badly torn, she’d lost her tie, and her whole uniform was covered in mud. She’d have been rather concerned if the Ravenclaw hadn’t been smiling broadly despite her dishevelment. 

Susan, apparently, wasn’t going to trust Iris was okay just because she was in good cheer and was instantly on her best friend, checking her for injuries which Iris dutifully endured. “Not quite. An experiment of mine got a little out of hand, but I think I’m making excellent progress with it.” She fished a pear she’d saved from breakfast out of her pocket and took a bite before asking, “turns out mutton and American jazz is a winning combination. Oh, Lavender, I had a thought about your prophecy. What if Grim’s daughter doesn’t refer to death, but to a dog? I’m not sure if all your prophesies will be food related, but the match is the same day that the elves are baking honey loaves and if a puppy got into the…”

Iris continued walking towards the castle as she spoke and Hermione and Lavender hurried after her, bouncing their thoughts on this latest theory off one another and leaving a bemused and bewildered trio of Susan, Tracey and Daphne behind.

“So, we’re just going to brush past that?” Tracey asked while gesturing to Iris’s partially ruined robes.

“Evidently,” Daphne replied evenly. Susan shrugged and the three followed their friends up the path. 

=

While the coterie of witches walked up the winding path from the Quidditch Pitch to the castle, a trio of wizards lingered around the great wooden structure. Draco Malfoy and his two always present goons, Crabbe and Goyle had slipped behind one of the pitch’s turrets and waited until the rest of the students had gotten out of sight to slip back into the pitch.

“Why isn’t Pansy helping again?” Vincent Crabbe complained as the trio quickly shuffled over to the broom cupboard. 

“Because she’s slipping the potion to Rickett, you thickhead,” Draco drawled. The larger boy took the insult without complaint; his father had impressed the importance of being deferential to the Malfoys since Vincent had been a young child. Besides, staying on Draco’s good side meant he got to continue benefiting from the rich boy’s largesse in the form of sweets, toys and other privileges. Draco had even teased the possibility of getting him and Goyle on the Slytherin Quidditch team next year.

“Right, the Evaporation Potion,” Gregory Goyle chimed in.

“The Evacuation Potion, not Evaporation, you idiot,” Draco snarkily corrected him. He’d filched the potion in question from the Hospital Wing that morning; it was meant to help a patient purge their digestive system, but in this case, it was going to have one of Hufflepuff’s starting Beaters, Anthony Rickett, out sick for tomorrow’s game with severe diarrhea. 

There was an old padlock on the cupboard, but it yielded to a quick “Alohomora” from Draco. The blond boy smirked ‘I wonder if they don’t bother with magic locks because Dumbledore is just cheap, or if they can’t because of that mongrel oaf of a groundskeeper’s inability to do proper magic.’ 

Like many students, Susan Bones kept her personal broom in the shed, rather than having to haul it up and down from her dorm in the castle. It was a Nimbus 2000, obviously purchased by the witch’s cheapskate aunt after the release of the 2001 dropped the price. Not wanting to dally, Draco had Goyle retrieve it from its cubby and pulled out the pot of potion he had hidden under his robes. 

This particular potion, which released the faint smell of burnt toast when Draco took off the lid, took the form of an olive-colored ointment with the rough consistency of shoe polish. He’d gotten it via Owl order from a shop on Knockturn Alley and then made a few adjustments of his own with some ingredients Professor Snape graciously lent to him. 

He handed the pot off to Crabbe, “slather this on the wood and the bristles, make sure to coat it good and proper.” Crabbe dutifully took the foul-smelling substance and started rubbing it on the broom; As it went on it turned translucent and absorbed into the wood, like standard broom polish.

Draco smirked in delight at his own cleverness. The substance was made to emit a cloud of incredibly noxious smoke that was extremely hard to dispel or wash out, after being exposed to natural sunlight for an hour. Bones would get her big chance to play for her house, only to turn into a flying fart during the match; he’d even figured out he could make the smoke green by mixing Fire Crab blood into the mixture.

He'd chosen Bones for the target of his retribution for a couple of reasons. She was, in his estimation, the least clever member of that little coven, and thus the one most likely to fall for any trick. Well, it was her or Davis, but the half-blood was a fellow Slytherin, making Susan seem the better option. It was highly doubtful she’d think to check her broom for foreign substances before the match, and once she was in the air, it would be too late.

More acutely, he knew his father couldn’t stand the girl’s overreaching busybody aunt, and this would be revenge for his family house too. Come tomorrow, little miss holier than thou would be the laughingstock of Hogwarts, and she wouldn’t be able to hide behind her aunt this time.

He smiled in self-satisfaction as Goyle put the broom back and they relocked the door behind them. ‘Greengrass, Potter, and Bones…’ He was going to get back at all three insufferable witches in one stroke and it was going to be hilarious.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

England, Lake District, April, Late Afternoon

It was a bright and lovely early spring day in the picturesque Lake District of northern England. The resort towns were conducting a thriving tourist trade, yet the natural paradise was so vast, many visitors could find spots of peaceful solitude. Along the shore of the long lake Windermere, a young-looking couple walked hand in hand in the dying light, occasionally stopping so either the dark-haired man or auburn-haired woman could skip a stone across the lake. 

“Blast it,’ Sirius Black griped as he saw his most recent skipping stone plunk into the water. He’d thought he’d stumbled on a good one, but not only had he failed to surpass his record of eight skips, he was still one behind the nine Amy had gotten an hour or so ago.

Amelia smiled proudly and put her hands on her hips, “I told you I was still the champion stone skipper.” It was something they used to playfully compete at back when they were Hogwarts students spending afternoons on the banks of the Black Lake. It was strictly no-magic, and something the competitive pair of lovebirds took surprisingly seriously. 

Sirius pouted but couldn’t keep it up, quickly grinning again as he and Amelia continued their stroll. He’d been looking forward to this trip for ages; Amelia had, with a great deal of difficulty, finally managed to get three whole days off in a row from the Ministry. For the past two they’d been staying at a little muggle lodge Ted had helped them book and just enjoying the time together.

It was moments like the one he found himself in now, that Sirius Black could imagine he’d never heard the word Azkaban. The setting sun seemed to give Amy a golden halo, and if Sirius had his tail right now, it would be wagging like crazy. “This place is fantastic! We’ve got to come back with Susan this summer.”

“If you can tear her off of her broomstick,” Amelia replied with a chuckle. Her niece was passionate about winning the beater position that would be opening on Hufflepuff’s team next year. “I swear she loves that Nimbus more than me.”

Sirius barked a laugh, but didn’t contradict her. He’d been mildly disappointed that Iris hadn’t inherited James’s love of Quidditch, but was overjoyed to discover it was a passion he shared with Susan. It had been a major thing for them to bond over as he tried to figure out how he fit back into Amelia’s life. 

An older Asian man in a rowboat going the other way bobbed up the lake and gave them a cheery wave as he passed. The couple waved back, and paused the quidditch talk while the presumed nonmagical person passed. The Lord and Lady of House Black and House Bones were dressed as muggles themselves that afternoon and had managed a better job of it than most purebloods, even if it wasn’t quite perfect. (Amy had borrowed a few items from the Auror Office’s supply of muggle clothing, and it was decent for undercover work, but not entirely flawless, mostly due to not updating at the rate muggle fashion changed.)

Amelia wore a rather short plaid babydoll dress paired with dark woolen tights for warmth and a pair of something called doc martens, that she frankly found a bit uncomfortable. She seriously didn’t understand why most muggles had stopped getting their shoes individually cobbled. It was really just the swatch and colorful jelly bracelets on her wrists that looked like she was doing a partial throwback to the previous decade.

Her partner, meanwhile, had a puffy multi-colored bomber jacket over a plain white tee shirt, which was all fine, but his bell bottom trousers and suede shoes made it look like he’d raided his father’s closet. Ironically, Orion Black wouldn’t have been caught dead having any muggle garments in his wardrobe.

‘I should get a boat,” Sirius decided as the man floated out of earshot.

Amelia raised a skeptical eyebrow, “do you even know how to pilot a boat?” Sirius had always been adventurous but his childhood hadn’t been particularly outdoorsy, and of course his parents were extremely reluctant to partake in anything that even smacked of manual exertion. That’s what servants were for.

Sirius stopped and turned to look out over the water, tracking the rowboat steadily shrinking in the distance. He crossed his arms and smirked cockily, “How hard can it be? I bet you five sickles I have it figured out in under ten minutes.”

“I have no doubt you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, sweetheart,” Amy’s voice came from behind him.

Sirius turned back around to respond, but his quip died on his lips when he saw Amelia was kneeling and holding a ring in her hand. It was silver with a pattern like woven vines, which came together in a Celtic knot. 

“Siri,” Amelia began, “I know you asked and I gave my answer a long time ago, but now it’s my turn to ask you. In all the years between I’ve never met another who makes me feel as loved as you do, and in all those years I never stopped loving you. I’ll always regret the time we lost, but I don’t want to trade away another moment we might have together. So, what do you say, still want to marry me?”

Later, when they were both thinking clearly, Sirius would be told that “Of course I do you bloody idiot!” wasn’t the most romantic response he could have chosen, but it didn’t matter. She’d slid the ring on his finger and lifted the disillusionment hiding the one he’d given her all those years ago, still sitting on her finger. 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Durmstrang Institute, Same Time

(All Dialogue in Danish Unless Otherwise Noted)

Aleksandrina Krum, Drina to her friends (well it would be if she had any friends) tried her best to focus entirely on the chisel in her hands and disregard the dull roar of excited voices that irritatingly penetrated the thick walls of her workshop. She knew her fellow countrymen (Durmstrang had a sizable contingent of Bulgarian students) were excited, and that her school lamentably had plenty of other fools from other lands who would seize any excuse for a party, but all that whooping and hollering hit her nerves like sharp hail on glass. 

It would seem her brother’s little broom flyer’s club was going to be continuing on to their World Cup Final. She’d known they would. That wasn’t due to any sort of sisterly confidence but rather an acceptance of the grim reality that her brother was always going to outshine her. She highly doubted her excellent marks would be worth a passing mention to her parents when summer came, not when there was precious Victor’s glory to bask in. She had very proud parents; she just wasn’t the one they were proud of. 

With unerring precision she lacked in every other aspect of magic, she carefully chiseled the crossed lines of the dagaz rune in the perfect center of the circle of alternating sowilo and jera runes she’d already done. Aleksandrina liked runes. Runes might not care about her either, but they didn’t care about anyone and that equality of uncaring was almost like someone caring about her as much as they did her brother. Almost. 

There was a rap-a-tap-tap from the door to the workshop, which was technically the senior student workshop not Aleksandrina’s personal domain no matter how she personally considered it. Grumbling, the young woman unfolded herself from her workbench and set aside the runic alarm clock she was working on. It wasn’t a particularly difficult project, at least for her, but producing useful little trinkets like this to sell to her classmates was an effective way to earn some personal coin to fuel her own experiments. Of course, her family was rich nowadays due to the gold Viktor earned playing Quidditch, but she’d set herself alight before she asked him for anything.

The woman who stalked across the darkly lit workshop was not classically beautiful, as her mother would say. Aleksandrina on the other hand would bluntly admit she wasn’t beautiful at all. The fifth-year student was gangly with long limbs and would be on the tall side if she ever stood up straight; unfortunately, her torso was as stick-like as her limbs, bearing more resemblance to a bamboo shoot than the hourglass her mother would have preferred. She had a mess of jet-black hair that was often left in a messy thicket that her owlish dark green eyes blinked out of; she had the same strong nose and jaw as her sibling but personally found them less appealing on a feminine face. Her rich red school uniform stood out starkly from her skin, which had a natural olive complexion though one a few shades paler than her famous brother due to the very different levels of sunlight their respective lifestyles exposed them to. 

She tapped the rune key she kept on a leather string around her wrist against the door latch and swung the portal open to reveal the annoyed form of her Ancient Runes Professor, Hemmelig Skriver. The short round-faced Norseman pushed his spectacles up his nose, “How many times do I have to tell you, Miss Krum, that you are not to lock the workshop from the inside!” Aleksandrina was one of a handful of students, and the only one in her year, who had been deemed skilled enough to work alone and trusted to lock up, but they were only meant to do so when they closed the shop for the evening.

The girl replied, “sorry, Professor,” while turning around to hide her slight smirk at the fact the Professor had been stymied by her runic lock. She’d designed it to stand up to most all unlocking charms, but felt a hot flush of pride that the Institute’s resident Runes expert hadn’t been able to disable it. ‘Okay, he probably could disable it given time and just decided knocking was faster. But the fact it would have delayed him is progress.’

The balding little man stomping into the workshop behind her was about as close to a mentor as Aleksandrina had, but it wasn’t like they were particularly close. They esteemed one another as fellow craftsmen, but Professor Skriver wasn’t exactly a warm person and years out of the sun in Viktor’s shadow had made Aleksandrina downright frigid. He cast a quick glance at her partially built clock, which despite its function actually looked like a small clay table roughly the width and length of two fingers together and grunted in approval. “Good work with the astronomical linking; most young etchers forget to account for the influence of Venus and it makes them drift. Shame it’s not adjustable.”

Aleksandrina shrugged, “Lilith did not pay for adjustability. If she wishes to change her wakeup time in future, she can pay to have it adjusted.” Runes, in general, were quite literally written in stone. They did what they did and if you wanted them to do multiple things you needed to start getting complex with your arrays or carving on dials. It was a drawback but also a benefit to Drina’s way of thinking. Runes did as they were supposed to again and again, they functioned on logic, and in general were so much less wobbly than wandwork or brewing. In short, the little mystic sigils were the most concrete, solid form of magic there was and thus the worthiest field of study.

At least that was what Drina thought. An outside observer might note the witch was rather biased in her opinion due to being a near savant when it came to runes and barely average in most other areas. She studied hard and tended to do well on written assignments but her wand work was uninspired, her potions weak, and her innate discomfort with anything involving the outdoors rather hampered her dealings with both flora and fauna. ‘And flying just makes me want to-‘

“Congratulations,” Professor Skriver spoke, cutting through her thoughts. The older wizard was leaning back against his personal workstation. “The headmaster bade me inform you that you have been selected to be among the contingent traveling for the tournament next year.” The students of the three schools weren’t meant to be informed before the start of the following term but Igor Karkaroff had ignored this rule so he could select the students he’d be bringing before the summer break and use the intervening time to heavily encourage them to train like mad before they left for Scotland. 

“I didn’t apply,” Aleksandrina replied flatly.

Skriver shrugged, “it was decided Viktor may be dismayed if his sister were excluded. You are very fortunate, few sixth years will be going.”

Drina wanted to scream and seriously considered picking up Uren’s half constructed senior project, a fire-less oven that was bigger on the inside, from a nearby bench and smashing it furiously against the wall. She hated when people tried to use her to curry favor with Viktor for a lot of reasons but perhaps most of all because it was so damned illogical. That was due to the simple truth that she was fairly certain Viktor barely thought of her at all and certainly wouldn’t care one way or another if she went with them to Britain or not. She could count the number of direct conversations she’d had with him in the last two years on one hand, and those hadn’t been particularly long ones. 

She wasn’t sure why so many bloody idiots wanted to go anyway when only one could be chosen as champion, and that was bound to be Viktor. Drina certainly didn’t want to spend her sixth year away from the fortress and her workshop; Durmstrang was the world’s premiere institution when it came to ancient runes and she was highly dubious of using Hogwarts’ equipment and resources. ‘And just when I thought I was going to have a year away from him and the loudest idiots…’

Still, Drina didn’t react outwardly. She was used to this. Really, she should have known better. The universe was bound and determined that she would never be more than a footnote in someone else’s story, so why should next year be any different. ‘Why there’s a whole castle of new people to think of you as Viktor’s weird sister.’ She bowed stiffly to her professor and muttered, “thank you for telling me,” before snatching up the little clock and stalking out of the room.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Outside Inverness, Stands of the Nimbus Stakes, Private Box, Late April

Lucius squinted through his personal omnioculars, which looked more like opera glasses than the clunky sort hawked to the common spectator, peering down the racecourse. Floating above the beautiful highland countryside and weaving in and out over the rocky coast, was a series of shimmering large metal hoops that formed a circuit that stretched across miles of sky. Rather than a single stadium, there were towers of stands dotting the area below the path for observers, all quickly constructed ahead of the race and heavily warded with muggle repelling charms.

That fact rankled Lord Malfoy, even as the majority of his focus was on watching the progress of his prized thoroughbred. In his forefather’s day permanent stands for spectating the Pegasus races had stood without any care to the filthy muggles who cut up the land with their unnatural roads and gas belching contraptions. ‘If my lord had been successful…’

The Righteous Magus, an Aethonian colt of old Pythonicus’s stud, belonged to Lucius and was making great time as it galloped across the skies, only a few hand lengths behind the leader as they came in towards the final lap. Even with his omnioculars at full magnification, the handsome blonde could only just make out the glint of the horse’s coppery coat and plumage at this distance, but he allowed himself the smallest of smiles. 

“I see your horse is flying well today, Lucius,” Crocus Nott grunted as he retook his seat to Lucius’s left. The other lord had a joint of roasted grouse in one hand, partially eaten, and Lucius grimaced at both the informal manner of address, and the poor table manners. Malfoy was fastidious by nature, and you’d never catch him eating sporting concessions or street food.

Still, it wasn’t enough to dim his joy, “oh, yes, that does appear to be the case.” His tone was perhaps a bit smug, but why shouldn’t it be? If Magus managed to finish in the top three of the derby, he stood to make quite a few galleons on his stud, and if he won…

Lucius needed this after the disappointments of the previous year. His little gambit with the ginger brat may have distracted Weasley but opening the chamber hadn’t even led to a single mudblood being purged from the castle. Then there had been the small matters of his airhead of a wife trading away his servant to her blood traitor sister, and Sirius Bloody Black miraculously getting released from Azkaban. A victory today would taste doubly sweet.

Crocus harrumphed. He was good at harrumphing, had the right timbre for it and the thick mustache and goatee only added to the effect. He was thicker set than Malfoy, but by no means a fat man, with shoulder length sandy brown hair, and wore dark brown robes. “Thought you were having trouble with your jockey earlier in the season…”

“Yes,” Lucius replied smoothly, “Mr. Merryweather was proving to be rather a disappointment. However, following his unfortunate disappearance, I was able to secure Mr. Frusta from Italy as a far worthier replacement. He seems much more willing to use the whip.” 

Crocus snorted in understanding; he too had a certain tattoo under his sleeve and knew exactly what Lucius was capable of. The two weren’t friends, not exactly. It was doubtful if Lucius trusted any of his fellow survivors of the fall enough for that, except perhaps Severus. Still, Nott possessed an intelligence and an independence that Crabbe, Goyle and Parkinson lacked that may occasionally irritate Lord Malfoy, but at least made the other man not incredibly tedious to have a conversation with. 

Out on the course the horses were turning the last bend, coming into the last half of the last lap and Magus was straining, with encouragement, from his new jockey to outpace that blowhard Smith’s horse, Thundering Victoria. Out of the corner of his mouth he asked with forced innocence, “out of curiosity, Lord Nott, have you received any curious mail recently?”

Nott glowered, “ah you too. Blast.” His words were kept to a quiet mutter but there was anger in them. “You think it was Yaxley? Trying to shake the tree to see what fruit might fall out?”

Lucius demurely demurred, “I’m sure I couldn’t possibly comment on whatever letter you received, Lord Nott.” He didn’t completely trust that the letter he had received hadn’t come from Nott himself and this wasn’t all a mind game on the other wizard’s part. It had been a short missive, just one word: Prepare. He’d have tossed it out as drivel, if it hadn’t been written in that very special shade of dark green ink, with a certain skull drawn at the bottom, on paper that burst into black flames a few seconds after reading it.

The last had been a basic enchantment they’d used to destroy any potentially incriminating notes back in the day; their connection through the mark allowed them to apparate to their master regardless of where he was, yet another incredible innovation by the greatest master of the mystical arts Lucius had ever known, but letters like this hadn’t been uncommon for Death Eaters communicating directly with one another. 

‘Which means any and all of my old comrades are a potential source of this distasteful little…. prank.’ Lucius thought. It had to be a prank, otherwise… He banished the lingering thought before it could go too far. Crocus could be right, it could be Yaxley or another of their number whose fortunes had declined in recent years, trying to stir things up and pull the Death Eaters back closer together, so they might profit from a stronger connection to Lucius, Nott, or another of their richer fellows. 

He was about to artfully change the subject to the fact that his horse had just passed Smith’s on the final straight away, when there was a series of snaps and pops, and he soon found a race official bustling over towards him, a concerned look on his face. “Lord Malfoy, I’m afraid there has been an incident…”

In the end he never saw the literal dark horse Umbral Hoof overtake both his and Smith’s horse to win Lord Greengrass the trophy. 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Hogwarts, Quidditch Pitch, April, Hufflepuff vs Slytherin Match, An Hour Earlier

It had started as House matches at Hogwarts usually did, with the two Houses playing that day trying to out scream one another from their side of the stands, while the members of the other two just screamed for screaming’s sake. The only minor oddity had been one of Hufflepuff’s starting beaters getting sick, but his replacement had happily taken the field, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and out for Slytherin blood. Susan Bones wasn’t going to let her chance to prove her mettle go to waste. 

Since her best friend was competing for the Hufflepuff team, and unfortunately, Tracey had still yet to get her chance to earn a position on Slytherin’s starting roster, Iris had eschewed the Ravenclaw section to sit with the badgers. She had a yellow and black flag but had charmed it to wave on its own so she could try to be supportive while simultaneously cramming the potioneering notes her mum had owled her. (Snape was continuing to be monosyllabic and utterly uninterested in actually teaching, so she’d asked for a bit of help understanding why in Nimue’s name Undetectable Poisons were called such, when there were several methods of detecting them.) 

She was sat between her sisters, who were both rather more interested in the game. Luna had charmed a cute badger doll to caper a little jig whenever Hufflepuff scored a point, and Nymphadora was sporting striped blonde-black hair and only slightly disconcerting mustelid-esque black eyes as she whooped and yelled for her House team. Both would occasionally try to get Iris to pay a bit more attention, but throughout the first hour they weren’t terribly successful. All in all, it was a fairly typical Quidditch match, with the Badgers leading 30-10, until suddenly it wasn’t. 

When everything went wrong, it did so quickly. Iris’s attention was drawn from her parchment back to the pitch by the raucous noise of the surrounding crowd shifting into confusion, with a few interspersed gasps. Gazing out into the sky, the cause was immediately apparent; Susan’s boom was emitting billowing clouds of green and black smoke, obscuring the replacement beater’s vision. Iris got just a glimpse of Susan drawing her wand through the smoke, doubtlessly planning to try and dispel the odd vapor, before her best friend’s broom erupted into flames.

The fire spread like, well, fire, and seemed to stick to Susan and the broom perniciously, quickly consuming her form. In the span of thirty seconds, the Hufflepuff beater had turned from a quidditch player into a flying fireball, hurtling largely unaimed across the pitch, while horrified shrieks were heard from the crowd below. 

While some of the players tried to continue the game, Cedric to his credit, once he saw what was happening, instantly broke off from his pursuit of the Snitch to try and rush over and help Susan. He was on the far side of the pitch, so he wouldn’t arrive before others were already at the Bones girl’s side, but he did have the presence of mind to blast the still roaming Bludgers out of the sky with a quick pair of Reductos. Marcus Flint scored a goal while the Hufflepuff Keeper, Herbert Fleet, broke from his post to go help, but nobody was paying much attention to the score by that point. 

In the stands, Iris didn’t stop to think. At the same time Madame Hooch, Dumbledore, Nymphadora, and probably quite a few other spectators, caught the falling body of Susan Bones with ‘Arresto Momentum’, she pointed her own silvery-white wand to the overcast sky and cried “Pluviae Veni!” Making sure Susan didn’t break when she hit the grass wouldn’t mean much if she was burnt to a crisp before she got there. 

The clouds, already a bit heavy that overcast day, condensed into a darker grey under the direction of Iris’s swirling wand tip, before letting loose with a concentrated downpour over the pitch. Her spell drew upon the latent moisture of the nearby atmosphere, and during springtime in Scotland, there was quite a bit of that. The sudden rain quickly drenched everyone there, spectators and players alike, but Iris couldn’t give a damn. 

The summoned rain had the intended effect of largely dousing the flames, and they were extinguished fully by a jet of water from the tip of Minerva McGonigal’s wand. The transfiguration professor had shifted into her tabby cat form to leap down onto the pitch and then back again, making her the first to reach Susan as she finished her magically slowed descent to the ground. Iris saw the older witch arrive just before she turned and ran for the stairs, rushing to get to her best friend.

Part of her mind was consumed with the blind panic that had quickly engulfed most of the onlookers, but another part of her, which sounded suspiciously like her mum was calmly saying ‘Triage the situation. You put the fire out, and she’s on the ground. Determine the greatest danger and the largest injuries. Treat those first. Where did the fire come from, and has the source properly been removed? Are there hostile spellcasters about. Are you the highest skilled Healer on the scene…’

Iris wasn’t a trained healer, but, as she burst out onto the pitch among a crowd of other concerned students before any professor thought to hold the bulk back, she could still tell the burns were bad even from a distance, particularly on Susan’s arms. At least it looked like her best friend’s chest was moving; Susan was still breathing. The broom she’d been so happy to receive on her previous birthday was probably burnt beyond repair, but that hardly mattered compared to Susan’s health. 

Then, Madame Pomphrey was already attending to her, and Iris stumbled to a stop, suddenly unsure of what to do. She desperately wanted to help, but ‘I’m not the most skilled healer here and she’s already being treated. Like a puppet with her strings cut, she fell to her knees at the edge of the pitch staring dumbly ahead. She saw Professor Dumbledore gathering some strange waxy substance from Susan and placing it in a small, stoppered bottle, which she surmised may be the likely fire starter. As she felt Nym put her arms around her shoulders, Iris started to shake. Her friend was getting the best treatment she could at the moment, so there was nothing to but wait ‘and eventually find out which bastard dared to do this…’

=

Later

The little waiting area outside the Hospital Wing proper was filled with huddled, dour figures, all anxious over the condition of their friend within. Unfortunately for them, only Amelia and Sirius had been allowed inside while the Bones girl was unconscious, so there was nothing for her friends to do but wait. All of them were upset, but pure focused rage was almost visibly radiating off of the scarlet haired witch turning a silvery-white wand over and over in her hands. Iris did not like waiting.

Many of her close friends were there, though Penelope had been called out for prefect duties, Cedric was busy being interviewed along with the rest of the Hufflepuff team, and Tracey and Daphne were in their dorms as Professor Snape had recalled all of his House to quarters. 

At least the most recent news was promising. In the end, Madame Pomphrey had been able to treat Susan’s injuries in the Hospital Wing without needing to transfer her to St. Mungo’s. That indicated the fire hadn’t been cursed, or at least not powerfully so, and that was a relief. Magical healing was very effective at handling injuries that weren’t tainted by dark magic. Then again, there had been so many burns…

It seemed the major factor in Susan getting burned quite so much by the sudden fire, had been the fact that the flames sprung from her own broomstick. Auror Dawlish had taken charge of the charred remnants of the stick and was doing further analysis on it now, but it was obvious the broom had been burnt even worse than Susan had. When it had burst into flames, the Bones girl couldn’t do the natural thing of trying to roll away from the source of the blaze, not when she was relying on the burning broomstick to not fall out of the sky. Combine that with the fire-starting substance having infused itself on her gloves, robes and trousers, wherever they touched the broom, and it made for a very nasty conflagration.

“Hey,” Nym said softly, “it could have been a lot worse if you didn’t help get those flames out while she was still in the air. You should be proud, Irey.” The metamorphmagus’s hair was constantly shifting through a mixture of deep red and pale blonde as she sat with one arm around Iris and the other Luna. It wasn’t like she wasn’t upset herself over what had occurred but she was doing her best to keep a cool head and to support her little sister while her best friend was in the hospital wing. Sensing that she wasn’t getting through, Tonks gently added, “and you know Auntie Amelia will get to the bottom of this if she has to put the whole DMLE on it.”

Her sister, hunched over with her hands together in thought, didn’t reply. Certain very dark thoughts were swirling around the head of the Girl-Who-Lived, and it was really only her ongoing concern for Susan’s condition and wanting to be there for her when she awoke, that kept the girl from already seeking revenge on whomever was behind this. 

She knew her big sister meant well, but Iris simply didn’t have the same trust in the rules or the law that Tonks did. ‘Or, more accurately,’ she thought grimly, ‘I don’t trust Dumbledore or the Ministry at large to implement them.’ She loved and respected her Aunt Amelia, but she’d heard enough stories from the woman to know all about how incompetence, politics and corruption could gum up anything the Ministry did. Then there was the vast balance of probability that indicated whomever was behind this was a student, and Iris took a very dim view of the possibility of Dumbledore meting out the kind of justice she wanted to see for this.

At least, that was how she justified the anger boiling within her to herself. While it was true that she had a certain amount of distrust for the Ministry and quite a lot for her Headmaster, deep down Iris did know her sister was right that Amelia would tear the castle apart stone by stone to catch whoever did this to her child, but, well… The truth was Iris Potter just hated having to leave anything important up to anyone but herself, and defending her best friend was very important indeed.

“There’s a strong likelihood this was done by a Slytherin,” Iris muttered half to herself. “I could probably follow Daph into their common room under the cloak and once I figure out who it is, drop a salamander in their-“

Tonks flicked her disapprovingly on the forehead, “no, Irey. Let the professors and the aurors handle it.”

While the sisters were very alike in many ways, it was also true that Nymphadora Tonks was a Hufflepuff’s Puff and Iris a Ravenclaw’s Claw. While the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry was much better known these days, the badgers and the eagles were just as divided in their own way. The former were all about collective action, group consensus and the like, while the latter tended to be the most individualistic and iconoclastic students at Hogwarts. This philosophical difference helped to both explain why Nymphadora was prepared to be a bit more patient in letting the system work, and why Luna instead piped in to suggest that Iris use a feral niffler instead. 

Across from the two birds being restrained by their badger big sister, a pair of lions weren’t in much better spirits. Hermione had somehow managed to get a tome on burn healing from the library and was pouring over it, reflexively researching even though a trained healer like Pomphrey doubtlessly knew the topic back to front. To her left, Lavender tried to write a get-well letter but ended up snapping her quill from frustration. 

“Bloody useless vision,” Lavender griped as she searched her robes for a fresh quill.

“You couldn’t have known that was how the prophecy was meant to be interpreted,” Hermione consoled her. The bushy haired girl’s lips thinned, “Merlin, I analyzed the stanza for hours myself and it just seemed like it was saying Susan was going to have a tough match.” The friends had actually been excited when they identified Grim’s Daughter as potentially being a reference to Susan. Of course, they’d only realized that after Anthony had gotten sick and Susan had been called up. ‘Just another example of prophecy making any sense whatsoever after it’s already happened.’ 

As Hermione wordlessly passed Lavender one of her quills, the doors to the hospital wing finally opened. Iris didn’t even wait for Madame Pomphrey to speak before blitzing past the woman and making a beeline past the healer for Susan’s bed. Her friend, currently framed between Sirius and Amelia at either side of the sickbed, was completely bald, missing her eyebrows, and had some very pink, somewhat tender looking skin where the burns had been but other than that, seemed roughly healthy. She blinked in shock as Iris almost seemed to apparate in front of her and said,

“Iris, thank Morganna you’re here. I need to know and no one will tell me,” her voice was hard and she shot a glare at each of her guardian’s in turn. 

“Is my broom okay?”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

A Different Quidditch Pitch, Same Day

“AND KINGSLEY HAS CAUGHT THE SNITCH, VICTORY GOES TO HOLYHEAD!” The announcer bellowed to the roaring crowd as that afternoon’s Quidditch match came to a close. It had been a rather short game, only going just over an hour, but a fiercely fought one at that.

“Bloody Gwenog’s going to be a menace,” Leona Davis muttered darkly to her teammate, Walter Okoye, flying close to him as they descended towards their locker room. The captain of the opposing team had a reputation for being incredibly prideful, and that Evening Prophet would no doubt bear a bragging and boastful account from her regarding the game.

“Gwenog’s always a menace,” Walter replied in his distinctive South African accent. Professional Quidditch in the British Isles was a small world, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else. Leona felt she’d gotten to know Gwenog Jones a little too well after playing on the English National team with the woman until they were knocked out of contention for this year’s cup early on.

‘But Gwenog’s not really what you’re mad about, is it?’ She asked herself as her boots hit the ground. The loss today was a bitter one as it meant the Tornadoes were very unlikely to win the league. ‘At least if we have to have a bum season, it’s the same year we’re hosting the World Cup. Most of the attention’s going to be there anyway.’

Still, Leona was competitive by nature, and she couldn’t accept the loss as good-naturedly as the easy-going Walter. Today’s failure had her in a foul mood and the sight of an all too familiar beaming blond idiot in flashy yellow and crimson robes, lurking by the entrance to the Tornado’s locker room, didn’t do anything to improve it.

“What, not going to say hello, Davis?” Ludo asked her as she tried to walk past him.

She stopped and looked him dead in the eye. “Hello, Ludo. Goodbye, Ludo.” She tried to go around him but he scrambled to stay in her way.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ludo said hurriedly, “I just want to talk about the Word Cup.”

Leona folded her arms across her chest, “The English team was knocked out of contention in the qualifiers, so I have very little to do with the World Cup. Bearing that in mind, I’m very tired, covered in mud, and not particularly interested in standing around the hallway shooting the breeze with an ex-boyfriend.” 

The Tornadoes’ star’s history with romantic partners was a pretty consistently shitty one. Tracey’s father left when she told him she was pregnant, before she could even get around to telling him she was a witch. Ludo had been a mistake and a half, and far too in love with himself to love someone else. Oscar had just been interested in her minor celebrity, and Delilah’s attempt to set her up with her cousin Magnus had just been awkward. It had all been enough to make her swear off dating for the last several years.

Around her, her teammates all shuffled past to change, Walter giving her a pat on the back as he went past. Ludo’s pomposity was well known in the League, and so long as it didn’t look like there was going to be trouble, all of them wanted to avoid getting dragged into a conversation with the windbag. Ludo sighed and let some of that happy-go-lucky façade he always wore drop, “look, Lee, I need a favor.”

“I am not lending you more money,” Leona said cooly, well aware that after their rocky relationship ended Ludo had owed her 213 galleons, 5 sickles and 3 knuts. She’d counted.

He ran a hand through his thick blond hair, “No, no it’s not that. I’ve actually got a sure thing lined up so I should be able to pay you back once it pays off.” Leona rolled her eyes, having heard that before, but Ludo kept talking. “It’s official business. Hosting the cup is a big opportunity for British Quidditch and we need all the press to be good. Jorkins screwed up getting the muggle permits to reserve the property next to the pitch and campground, and now we don’t have a spot for the Bulgarians to build their dormitory.”

Leona raised an eyebrow in a gesture she’d picked up from her friend Delilah, “you want me to what? Put up the entire Bulgarian national Quidditch team? I have a nice house, Ludo, but it’s not that big.” She knew it was customary for the teams to arrive a bit ahead of the actual match to get used to the local atmosphere and prepare, though, with Ireland being so close, the other competitors likely wouldn’t need to.

Ludo chuckled, “not the whole team, but you’re on to my brilliant scheme to fix Bertha’s error and show how remarkably welcoming we are as a people. I’m going to let each player stay with a different British player and get the Prophet to run a whole series of profiles on it. That way, even though we’re not playing, we can highlight our homegrown broomsmen by connecting them to the Bulgarians.”

“That’s idiotic and going to end horribly,” Leona declared flatly. “You put an irate Bulgarian beater in Flint’s flat and all you’ll end up with is a pair of corpses. Just spend a little money and rent another property a little farther out, or put them up at the Leaky Cauldron, or do literally anything else.”

“Well, one, I’m only going to house them with players I know I can trust not to create any kind of scandal, which is part of why I’m asking you,” Ludo explained, “and two, there’s trouble with alternate accommodations. The Cauldron and the Three Broomsticks aren’t secure and the public will mob them. We can’t ask them to rough it in a tent. Getting a new property to build the dormitories on tangles us up in an insane amount of red tape we’re already struggling to navigate with the ICW regarding secrecy, and we obviously can’t make them stay at a muggle hotel. Please Lee, I know Tracey would get a kick out of it.”

“Don’t talk about my daughter like you know her,” Leona shot back. There were a lot of reasons she’d broken up with Ludo Bagman, but his utter disinterest in getting involved in her, at the time toddler, daughter’s life had certainly been one of them. Still, he probably was right that Trace would go nuts over getting to spend a week sharing a roof with one of the current international stars of the sport, and even if Bagman was a soggy tosser, whoever this Bulgarian was hadn’t done anything to earn her ire.

She sighed, “Fine, I’ll take them. What’s their name?”

“Viktor Krum.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Hogwarts, Headmaster’s Office, Later that Night 

Albus sighed as he pushed his half-moon spectacles back up his nose to stop them from slipping. It had been a long day and it wasn’t quite over. Fawkes gave a mournful little trill from his stand, and the headmaster gave an appreciative half-nod to his faithful companion. Today had not been a good day, but it could have been far worse and it was worth remembering that.

Waving his wand, he stoked the flames of his fireplace to banish the evening chill as he sat down. It was an almost automatic gesture, one he’d performed countless times, but for some reason his gaze caught on his own wand. ‘Well, mine for the moment,’ the silver headed man reflected ruefully. It was the fate of those who claimed the Elder Wand to someday have it wrested from their hands by the next owner.

It was strange how he could sometimes forget for a time that he possessed one of the very mythical Hallows he’d dreamt of collecting as an arrogant youth. He shouldn’t really, as the little stick enhanced every aspect of his already impressive magical ability. ‘I suppose wonder often fades with time and familiarity, a pity.’

Thoughts of the wand, when they did come, always turned to thoughts of the Hallows, and thoughts of the Hallows always turned to thoughts of Gellert. Albus’s first love had owned the wand before him and taking it from him had taken everything Albus had.

It would shock the magical populace if it were publicly known how close he once was to the most infamous Dark Wizard of the modern era. Of course, when he’d known Gellert, Dumbledore hadn’t been the august, lauded leader of the light he was now seen as. Back then, he’d just been dirt-poor, self-conscious young Albus with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He and Gellert would both change so much by the time they met again in 45 with explosive results.

Back then though, in the early 19th century, in the village of Godric’s Hollow, the pair hadn’t been so different. Both of them were geniuses and all too aware of it. Both boys had been ashamed of their families and humble origins. Most of all though, Gellert and Albus each shared a feeling, nay, a certainty that they were meant to make great changes in their society.

Meeting Gellert had been the first time Albus met someone his own age who could keep up. Gel was just as bright as he and the duo could talk for hours about magic, politics, dreams, everything; he’d likely fallen in love with the other boy’s mind before he’d even acknowledged the physical attraction. It had been wonderful, but it had also drawn him further into his own delusions of grandeur as Aberforth had been all too happy to point out.

Among their many points of commonality, had been their ideas regarding muggles and the conviction that the current situation needed to change. They opposed the Statue of Secrecy and the separate society it had created. Muggles and magicals were meant to live side by side as a united society and it felt like Gellert and Albus alone had the vision to see this.

In the end, they would eventually reach very different conclusions over what that united society should look like, but at the start they were finishing each other’s sentences. Dumbledore wondered, in another world where that fateful three-way duel never occurred, if Gellert would have eventually learned humility as Albus had, or if he’d have been pulled down the same path as his boyfriend, making the name Dumbledore as reviled as Grindelwald. Some nights he couldn’t help but wonder if together, they might have won.

The headmaster pushed the memories of his youth to the back of his mind to once again focus on the here and now. (A certain skill with Occlumency was marvelous for letting one seize control of their own thoughts.) Gellert lay in his cell in Nurmengard as he had for years and Albus had put his own dream of collecting the other Hallows far behind him. ‘And it’s not as if the Elder Wand, for all its power,’ he reflected wryly, ‘will aid me in any way whatsoever with the current situation.’

What should have been a fun day of quidditch to temporarily distract students from their looming exams had turned into a catastrophe when Susan Bone lit up like a Ridgeback’s burp. They’d acted quickly and the girl would recover but the sight of a witch going up in flames chilled every magical watching with ancestral fear. Suffice to say, when the match resumed many hours later after the area had been examined and all the other brooms checked, it had been the most subdued match Hogwarts had seen in years. 

As awful as the event itself was, who the victim was, and who the perpetrator turned out to be made things infinitely more complicated for him. If Terry Boot had set Hermione Granger on fire, it would still be horrible, but Albus could have handled matters himself, rather than needing to once again delve into politics. 

Dumbledore was of course aghast at the injuries one of his students had sustained and furious such a thing had occurred. Luckily the flames weren’t cursed, so Miss Bones could be easily healed, but the danger to her life had still been real and unacceptable. It wouldn’t have mattered who had been on that broom, this was always going to be a serious event. However, the fact that it was the heiress to a nearly extinct noble house, with a particularly protective guardian who just so happened to be the head of the DMLE, that had caught fire out on the pitch didn’t help matters. 

Albus respected Amelia Bones, even if their methods of fighting the Dark differed and their priorities diverged in the specifics. Still, he would prefer if this regrettable incident could have been handled by the school rather than involving the ministry, but with Susan being Amelia’s niece, that was never a likely possibility. The Bones woman had shown up flanked by Aurors before Albus could even notify her. (Daphne had been the one with the presence of mind to immediately make a dash for a fireplace and use her emergency pouch of floo powder, something students technically weren’t supposed to have, to contact Susan’s aunt.)

It wasn’t that he wanted to sweep it under the rug, far from it, rather that he thought the discipline of students was the province of the headmaster and, well, it didn’t look great that aurors had needed to be called to the castle two years in a row. He believed in the former mostly because Albus was a great believer in redemption, and the letter of the law could be rather draconian. The latter was simply a matter of political pragmatism. 

Many accused him of being lenient compared to his predecessors, but Albus hadn’t expelled a single student since he took his post for a reason. Once you expelled a student, you cut them loose into the world with very few options; not only was this cruel, but it could also very easily lead them further down a dark path. With their wand snapped and no further guidance, many would simply steal a new wand and turn fully to the Dark. 

However, Amelia, even if she kept ironclad control over herself while she’d spoken with Albus earlier that afternoon, hadn’t been in a very lenient mood herself. Albus hadn’t needed to be a legilimens to know she wanted to rip someone’s head off, and he took it as a blessing from the gods that Sirius had stayed in the hospital wing with Susan. He was considerably more hot headed than his partner, and on top of that, Albus still hadn’t been invited to speak with the former prisoner after his exoneration and the current circumstances would have cast a shadow over that already likely to be tense reunion.

Still, as irksome as negotiating with a furious Amelia Bones had been, it was the discovery that Draco Malfoy was the one who’d masterminded sabotaging the broom that was the bigger problem. Not only did it mean the pre-existing animosity between the children’s parents had to be navigated, but Lucius’s political connections meant any plans to discipline Draco would be met with stiff opposition. Tomorrow was sure to bring a very tense meeting between Madame Bones and Lord Malfoy that Albus would have to try and referee.

For the moment though, he needed to get a full picture of how this had been allowed to occur. After Malfoy’s accomplice, a tearful Ms. Parkinson, turned and spilled the beans, they knew most of it, but there were a few dangling details Albus wanted to understand before he spoke with Lady Bones and Lord Malfoy the next morning. A creaking of his door as it opened signified the hopeful source of those answers had arrived.

“You wished to see me, Headmaster?” Severus drawled as he swept into the room.

“Yes, take a seat, if you would, Severus,” Albus offered. “Sherbert Lemon?”

“No thank you,” Severus replied stiffly. 

Albus sighed but pulled his bowl of muggle candy back. Nobody ever wanted to try his sherbert lemons. “I was hoping you could shed some light for me on how Mr. Malfoy was able to create such a dangerous potion under our noses.” 

“You can’t expect me to personally supervise every potion brewed within the walls of the castle,” Snape cooly countered. “Every child arrives with supplies of their own, and any attempt to harshly regulate that will be unacceptable to the families, a detriment to their ability to study and improve, and above all, nearly impossible to enforce.”

Albus gave a slight nod and conceded the point. This was hardly the first mishap with a potion within the walls of Hogwarts, and it wouldn’t be the last. That was simply the nature of the beast. Magic was as dangerous as it was wondrous and a certain amount of risk came with its study. “I understand that, Severus, but I also know it is going to be pointed out to me tomorrow that you have been known to indulge young Malfoy in your capacity as Head of House. I believe there was an explosion of Mr. Longbottom’s cauldron in class a few weeks ago for which he received no punishment despite the attestations of an eyewitness.” The fact that Draco was behind the ‘prank’ had somehow already worked its way into the Hogwarts rumor mill by the end of the day, and quite a few students were suddenly eager to report other infractions by the lad. 

“You were the one who directed me to maintain close relationships with other former associates of the Dark Lord,” Snape shot back. “Showing Lucius’s son a little leeway keeps me in Lord Malfoy’s good graces and maintains your best pipeline of information to the de facto leader of the remaining Death Eaters. If the Dark Lord does return, as you suspect, that connection will be invaluable.”

Albus closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. Severus was right, unfortunately. Maintaining his spy’s access was more important than the education of one boy. (It could perhaps be argued that this line of thinking, while a calculus understandable from the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, wasn’t necessarily appropriate from an educator and demonstrated the conflicting priorities that stemmed from Dumbledore’s many jobs.) He held out hope Draco could be guided away from his father’s bigotry, could retain the innocence of youth and become a better person during his time at Hogwarts, but he understood it might be impossible for Severus to accomplish that while keeping Lucius’s favor.

Snape stood stiffly, “I don’t know why you bother with this farce of a conversation. You and I both know why things are the way they are, and that there are greater things at stake than some brat’s minor injuries. Injuries, I will remind you, since everyone seems to be forgetting in their hysteria, that were already successfully treated. Besides, I trust, given the public nature of this event, that Draco will be punished now?” Any such punishment wouldn’t jeopardize Snape’s relationship with Lucius, so he honestly couldn’t care one way or another about either of the mewling younglings. It was a fact Albus didn’t like acknowledging, but his duty as a Headmaster would always be secondary to his role as the Leader of the Light, and both men knew it.

“Perhaps, if we’re lucky, this accident will be the wakeup call young Draco needs,” Albus hoped aloud, ignoring Severus’s barb. His mind drifted back to that duel in Godric’s Hollow; he knew all too well it sometimes took a shock of going too far, to mend one’s behavior. However,… his thoughts flitted back to the other participant of that duel, the face of handsome young Grindewald shifting to the embittered older man he’d dueled a second time in northern France. ‘Sometimes the shock isn’t enough.’

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Banaldorf, a Small Muggle Village, Bavaria, The Next Morning 

Albrecht Hauser looked up from his vegetable garden with curiosity at the hooded figure walking down the lane that wound past his house towards what amounted to the city center of their little rural village. Banaldorf didn’t get much in the way of visitors, so the ones they did get always drew a bit of notice. This one wore dark clothes, a scarf wrapped in such a way that it concealed their face, and what looked like a baby sling hung around their shoulders. The old pensioner braced his legs and hobbled to his feet, dusting the dirt from planting rutabagas rather fruitlessly off his hands as he rose. He took a step towards the road, intending to greet the traveler and ask what brought them to town.

He still had a welcoming smile on his face when he fell lifelessly into his own vegetable patch, a curious flash of green light being the last thing he saw. That final rictus would still be there when his concerned neighbor discovered him later that afternoon. 

Barty Crouch Junior sneered behind his scarf as he stowed his wand back up his sleeve. As far as he was concerned, he was on what amounted to a holy mission, and no muggle was going to delay him with useless niceties. Of course, if there had been others around, he’d have sadly had to remain incognito, but as the old man was the only one in sight, he was able to take care of the muggle in his preferred method. 

He hurried along towards his destination, careful not to rock his precious cargo overmuch. He was working off of secondhand directions from decades ago, but then again, with his master in his current state they couldn’t apparate anyway. The temporary vessel of Lord Voldemort was too fragile for that sort of magical travel. After creating the homunculus back in Albania, his master had directed him towards this seemingly insignificant point on the map, and they’d had to travel by foot or muggle transport for the most part.

“23 Fröhliche Herzgasse Lane, Banaldorf,” Barty muttered the address to himself as he passed through the village center, ignoring the handful of muggles about. He steeled his mind and prepared for a confrontation. Barty would never question the orders of his Lord, he couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness. 

Meanwhile, in the sling, Voldemort was deep in thought. After setting this plan in motion there had been little more to do than think while he waited for Crouch to ferry him to this meeting. One thing you could say for the Dark Lord, he wasn’t a worrier. What would be would be, and there was no sense wasting brain space stressing over how his entreaty was going to be received.

Still, while he might not be stressed about the upcoming summit, he loathed the fact that he was reduced to seeking their help and was mortified that he would have to ask for it. If he must consort with these relics, it should be from a position of supreme strength, not his current ignominious position. Lamentably, the facts of his current weakness were what they were, and he’d have to accept that if he hoped to reclaim his true glory. ‘Junior alone will not be enough.’

His trouble stemmed from the unforeseen state he had existed in for the past decade. The Horcruxes were meant to anchor his soul, or, should it somehow be destroyed, act as backups. He hadn’t anticipated persisting as a formless wraith, and knew it was something the child had done, reversing his curse to shatter his body but leave his soul untouched, that was to blame.

He'd raged about that for years, but at the moment he was considering it in practical terms. A Horcrux was supposed to be able to feed on the soul of anyone who came into its orbit and in doing so reconstitute itself; however, because he, Lord Voldemort, still remained, none of his Horcruxes should be awakening and he himself was incapable of doing the same, due to the lack of a proper ritually prepared container.

Luckily, he wasn’t entirely on his own anymore, as one of his most loyal acolytes had unexpectedly returned to his side. With Barty, he had options again, and he wouldn’t follow the same fruitless path he’d followed with Quirrell. Junior wasn’t so squeamish about getting his hands dirty and was a good deal more skilled than Quirinus had been, which opened up new possibilities. 

While his current circumstances were novel, regaining his physical form shouldn’t be impossible. Voldemort was a genius, the greatest wizard of the age, destined to rule the rest. In the time since the catastrophe at Godric’s Hollow and especially when he’d been able to use Quirrell to further his research (it helped having hands to turn pages), he’d determined three possible methods of restoring himself to corporeal existence and his full towering power.

The first, and the simplest, would have involved using the Philosopher’s Stone. The Elixir of Life would have formed the base of a potion that would, with some modification, allow him to regenerate his body and magical core. Unfortunately, that path closed for him when Magnus-be-damned Dumbledore destroyed the stone. The obvious fear his old teacher felt at the prospect of the Dark Lord’s return was gratifying, but the loss of the stone was very irritating.

The second method would require the retrieval of one of his hidden horcruxes; he thought he’d worked out a method where he could essentially consume the fragment he’d left there and then he could feed on a soul just as a horcrux was meant to. By Koshei, Barty would probably even willingly be the sacrifice. 

However, several considerations held him back from doing this for now. The most minor was that it would be a waste of his most reliable remaining Death Eater. Of course, he would gladly sacrifice Barty if it were the only option, but he’d prefer to preserve the useful tool if he could. More troublingly, consuming one of his own fragments would break the sequence of seven. 

He'd created five before his fall, the ring, the diadem, the cup, the diary, and the locket. The death of the Potter girl had been intended to power the creation of his last one, which would have left him with 7 pieces including his remaining soul. If he destroyed one of his own fragments, he’d never be able to have those perfect 7 equal pieces, as even if he finally made another horcrux, his remaining soul would be an uneven 8th rather than a perfect 7th, and the whole scheme would fall out of balance.

All of that led him to the method that seemed to be his best option, Raczidian’s Ritual of Regeneration. Raczidian was an ancient figure, and one a young Tom Riddle had studied avidly as an adolescent, even if only fragments of history remained. Raczidian had been a dark warlock who had lived in the hinterlands of Bohemia sometime during the 800s, and he was arguably the greatest master of soul magic in the centuries between Herpo the Foul and Voldemort himself, at least in Europe. 

So much of his work was lost, destroyed by lesser minds who feared his power, but some facts were known and one tome had survived. He had never crafted horcruxes, but he had mastered other manipulations of souls and spirits, notably having been the first wizard to tame Dementors. The old master had created the ritual in question to restore the body of some village girl he’d become infatuated with who’d foolishly gotten herself crippled trying to escape him. Voldemort found such a motivation petty, but the ritual, which Voldemort found in said hidden tome during his years of study before returning to Britain, would serve his purposes admirably.

Once completed, it would return him to his full glory, but its requirements were somewhat stringent. It would have to be finished when conditions were right, at a symbolic location prepared ahead of time with several ritual chants and drawn sigils. A cold-forged silver knife would need to be obtained for the final ceremony, which would have to happen beneath the full moon closest to the summer solstice.

That was all doable, but the crux of the ritual was a particular potion that was somewhat more difficult to complete. The list of ingredients was long and obscure, but at the end of the day, nothing that couldn’t be acquired with coin and determination, save for the final three pieces that had to be added at the moment of regeneration, the bone of the father, the flesh of the servant, and the blood of the enemy. ‘The last of those will be slightly harder to secure’

As much as he hated to even think about his muggle father in passing, the fact that he was a relatively unknown muggle, long dead by Voldemort’s hand, meant the first wouldn’t be hard to get. The only trouble was that the bone could not be removed from the grave until the night of the ritual, but that was easy enough to accommodate by simply completing the ritual in the graveyard. 

The flesh of the servant would be almost facile to provide, as Barty was more than willing to make the donation. The only trouble he foresaw was ensuring Barty could be by his side for the completion of the ritual, but if it came to it, there were other servants that could be freed or reclaimed to serve that purpose. ‘Goyle could certainly use to lose a few pounds’

It was the final requirement that would be the true test, the blood of the enemy, forcibly taken. It was the last catalyst and had to be taken, as the ritual words implied, by force at the final moment of the ritual. It could not be stolen unknowingly or drained from an unconscious or deceased foe, it had to be taken from one who was actively resisting and taken while they were within the designated ritual space.

Now, Voldemort had no shortage of enemies, but just as seven horcuxes would be the most powerful configuration, there was an obvious choice of enemy, Iris Potter. The girl of prophecy would provide the most potent blood for his new form, save perhaps for the blood of Albus Dumbledore, but between the two, hers would be much more readily obtained. 

Yes, Raczidian’s ritual came with certain obstacles, but it was the surest path back to greatness. He could have pursued it with Quirnius, but the stone had been a tempting easier option and frankly he didn’t trust the stuttering fool to be capable of either capturing Iris Potter or sacrificing his own flesh. Well, not willingly, and Raczidian’s notes were irritatingly specific on that point. Now though, with Junior, he had an agent who should be able to do what needed to be done.

The Crouch boy had already succeeded in creating the rudimentary homunculus Voldemort currently inhabited while they traveled and prepared for the ritual. Doing so required a tricky bit of alchemy, even with Voldemort walking him through it. He could have shared Barty’s body as he had Quirrell’s but that would drain Barty while he needed the man to focus on preparing the ritual. (It would also put Voldemort in close proximity to Dumbledore before he was ready and though he’d never admit to it, the spirit still feared his old teacher, at least while he was like this). 

‘All of which brings us to Her door,’ The diminutive Dark Lord thought as Barty tapped his wand on the unassuming door of their destination. It was a charming little cottage, really, with a cozy old Bavarian style, all done up in cheery colors. It wasn’t quite the place you expected to find a woman who had once been called ‘The Scourge of Europe’ and ‘The Butcher of Paris’, but then again, that was rather the point.

“Oh Henrietta, open the door,” a wizened voice called out in English, “let’s at least hear the little Englishmen out before you kill them.”

The door creaked open, to reveal an equally charming interior of dusty pinks and dark wood, but more to the point, a bespectacled woman with her grey hair in a small beehive, training both her wand and an enchanted crossbow on Barty. The Death Eater scowled at the latter weapon, a relic from a bygone era when a wizard was more likely to enchant their neighbor muggle’s weapon to fight against foreign magicals, than stand with their foreign brothers against the muggle menace. 

That was perhaps the starkest difference between the Death Eaters and Grindewald’s Acolytes; they both knew the simple truth that wizards were superior to muggles, but they disagreed on countless minor details beyond that. For instance, the former quite liked the insular wizarding community formed by the Statute of Secrecy (Voldemort, when he bothered to consider Muggles at all, thought them more easily controlled from the shadows) while abolishing it was the major stated goal of the latter. 

There was a sigh from behind her, “put your weapons down, Schatze.  We have nothing to fear from them.” The statement could be interpreted as one of friendship, but Voldemort suspected it was a backhanded comment on his reduced state and Junior’s skill.

Grumbling, the old woman stepped back to reveal another older lady sitting on a divan further inside the house. She was slimmer, with a slightly darker complexion than her more aggressive companion and offered a wan smile to Voldemort as Barty hastily shifted the sling around so the Dark Lord could face the women.

“Still trigger happy after all these years?” Voldemort drawled in the general direction of the crossbow wielding woman, identified as Henrietta. He paid no attention to whatever reaction the underling had and focused back on the seated woman. He took a long rattling breath before saying “It is a shame to see one such as you reduced so. The world once trembled at your name, and now you hide amongst the filth; my my, how the mighty have fallen?”

“Then why do you come to consort with us lowly peons?” Henrietta growled with obvious sarcasm. “Surely the great Lord Voldemort has better things to do than bother us, like getting your nappy changed?”

A sharp hiss from Voldemort stopped Barty from responding to the insult with wandwork, but the tension still hung in the air. He chose to continue ignoring Henrietta for the moment, but did file away an intention to flay her alive once his more urgent needs were addressed. “I have deigned to come to you because I believe our interests have aligned and we might assist one another.”

“You have come to me because you have nowhere else to turn,” the calmer old woman said bluntly in her lightly accented English. She crossed to the other side of the room and casually waved her wand past the window, drawing the blinds. Another flick closed the door behind the visitors. She turned back to Barty and Voldemort, “of course, if you had deigned to work with us during your first attempt, you never would have found yourself in such a pathetic situation.”

“You dare-” Barty began but quieted when Voldemort held up one shriveled hand. 

Turning on the charm that had served him well in his early years he said, “you may be right, Mademoiselle Rosier, but we cannot change the past. I am coming to you now, and you know as well as I, that I am the only chance your master has of breathing free air again before time takes him.” He couldn’t afford to offend these women, but he wouldn’t grovel. He’d remind them they needed him as much as he needed them. 

As deplorably ignominious as the fact was, he would need a certain amount of nurse-maiding to keep this temporary body alive. He would have to rely on another to move and need someone to prepare and feed him the necessary potion derived from unicorn blood and Nagini’s, who was currently tightly coiled under Barty’s cloak, venom every other day. Barty would almost certainly need to travel from his side for their goals to be accomplished, so someone else would have to take up the task. 

He could contact others among his Death Eaters for this purpose, but didn’t dare thought it unwise. To see him as he was now would damage the mystique, the image he had worked so hard to build, and it wasn’t a risk worth taking with any but his most diehard loyalists. Unfortunately, the minions he’d place in such a category were all either dead or in Azkaban, save Barty. 

Henrietta scoffed, “as if you care anything for Gellert. You are an upstart and a-”

Vinda Rosier turned on her companion, “silence, Henrietta.” It was clear she was the leader of the pair, just as Voldemort was for their opposite number, which was a lucky thing since, left alone, Junior and Henrietta would have likely tried to kill one another by now. She turned back and gave the diminished Dark Lord a long look, seemingly mulling things over in her mind.

Witches and wizards lived a long time and aged at a reduced pace to match after finishing puberty. A sixty-year-old wizard didn’t look that different from a twenty-something muggle, but they still aged eventually. Unless of course you went in for the various age abating potions, and many did, which had the effect of turning back the external effects of the passing years quite successfully. They wouldn’t stop it forever, but, as the advertisements said, they could come pretty damn close.

Vinda Rosier had not chosen to go down that route, and, if anything, the two-century old witch looked like she’d aged a great deal since her heyday as one of Grindelwald’s poster girls decades ago. Her glossy black hair had gone white, wrinkles distorted her once sharp features, and she now walked with a small but noticeable stoop. ‘Then again, for all I know, she’s actually prematurely aged herself on purpose with a bit of transfiguration to throw off anyone potentially recognizing her,’ Voldemort reasoned.

Vinda Rosier was still technically one of the ICW’s most wanted, even if the general consensus was that she was long dead. There weren’t active investigations looking for her, but she should probably still be careful. Afterall, Barty had been able to find her; well, more accurately he’d been able to find her at his master’s direction.

In the time between leaving Hogwarts and launching his campaign against magical Britain, Voldemort had traveled far and learned much. This included learning that Grindelwald’s top lieutenant had survived the war and how to find her. However, their previous interaction, all those years ago, had been rather acrimonious. Put simply, he had not needed her; ‘and once Potter is dealt with, I can discard this relic once again.’

“We will help you restore your body, and in turn, you will free Gellert,” Vinda decided, her words landing with finality. “And I will be wanting an Unbreakable Oath, of course.”

“Agreed,” Voldemort hissed. So long as he was careful with the wording, such an oath would prove no hindrance. It was an alliance he needed, and unlike him, Grindelwald was a victim of the dreadful passage of time. He needn’t fear such an old man as a rival, and if it worked as he plotted, he may even be able to cannibalize what remained of the failed Dark Lord’s movement to accelerate the resurrection of Voldemort’s own. 

Vinda rose to her feet, and to Voldemort’s eyes, something seemed to change. She stood straighter, moved more sharply. Nothing physically had changed; she was still the wizened old woman she’d been when they arrived, but suddenly the quiet old gran was gone, replaced with the greatest general of the Dark Lord who had once brought Europe to its knees. 

“Henrietta, write to Simeon, and tell him it is time to stop playing with broomsticks. Use the third code and have him meet us at the old port. We’ll solidify our plans,” she gave a sidelong glance to Barty, “and collect any necessary items along the way from the old safehouses. Now, Lord Voldemort,” she spoke with a respect she’d previously not shown, slightly surprising the Dark Lord, “let us discuss what must be done to restore your constitution, and how we might accomplish it, yes?”

After that the two dark spellcasters settled into a surprisingly productive discussion of their next moves, with occasional input from their more hot-headed servants. Not for the first time, Voldemort found himself mildly surprised that someone like Vinda, who was quite the dark witch in her own right and obviously could command the loyalty of lesser wizards, had chosen to subordinate herself to another. Still, it was no matter; her weak emotional devotion to the failure Grindelwald gave Voldemort leverage he was all too happy to take.

By the end of the night, Voldemort and Barty’s collection of needs and goals had started to coalesce into the beginnings of a plan. Vinda’s news, learned Merlin knew how, of the resurrection of the Triwizard Tournament provided an opportunity that was too good to pass up. It would take careful planning to achieve the necessary infiltration and Voldemort rankled at how much he would have to rely on the two witches, but when all was said and done, he would be whole once more.

And the world would quake with terror.

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Hogwarts, Monday After the Burning Incident 

That morning the Great Hall buzzed with whispers, murmurs and the occasional plain shout, as the Hogwarts gossip mill whirred into full gear. It had taken a grand total of six hours before the culprits behind the attack on Susan Bones were rumbled, and while no official announcement had been made, the news was out. It turned out when you lit the niece of the head of magical law enforcement on fire, the response was immediate and thorough. 

In the end, it had been Parkinson who broke under the grilling by aurors and professors. Pansy might be rather sycophantic towards Draco, but it seemed she wasn’t quite as blindly loyal as Crabbe and Goyle, and in the end, her own sense of self-preservation had apparently won out before Saturday was over. Sunday had seen the arrival of Lord Malfoy to the castle for a hushed conversation in the headmaster’s office, and by yesterday evening, most of the students had heard who’d been behind the burning of Susan Bones and what the punishment would be.

At the various tables students debated just how just that punishment was, and whether it would have been more severe if Draco’s father wasn’t on the Board of Governors and a sitting member of the Wizengamot (Not to mention the fact that he had long ago more or less bought and paid for several other sitting members of the Wizengamot). Ron Weasley for one could be heard muttering that if he had pulled a stunt like that, he’d have gotten expelled, but nobody could know for sure. 

Draco and his cronies had at least been able to argue that they didn’t intend to set Susan on fire, and that what occurred was partially a result of Draco’s own hubris and incompetence. Some reckoned that may have well been the saving grace that kept the ringleader from being expelled, no matter who his father was.

In the end all four students were given double detention every weekend until the end of term. Their parents would all be informed, and collectively they had lost 400 points for Slytherin. Additionally, Draco was kicked off the Slytherin Quidditch team and barred from playing for the remainder of his time at Hogwarts and he, Crabbe and Goyle, would have their Hogsmeade privileges revoked indefinitely until the headmaster chose to restore them. 

There were to be a few consequences on the Ministry side of things as well. Draco had narrowly avoided getting charged with assault, instead having it termed a negligent accident, so he wouldn’t be having to go to trial with the deal his father and Madame Bones had agreed to. There would be a significant fine of restitution, both for the destroyed broom, and emotional damage, and Draco was placed on essentially a year’s probation where any further major offenses could result in harsher penalties.  

Sitting among her friends at the Hufflepuff table, the recently recovered Susan knew her Aunt Amelia and Sirius had to hate compromising with Lord Malfoy, but it probably boiled down to a simple reality of how connected Lucius was, especially to Fudge. This couldn’t be swept entirely under the rug, but the Malfoys had certainly done their best to minimize it. 

Indeed, while Draco was conspicuously absent at breakfast that morning so far, his victim had walked in at her regular time and was getting her fair share of stares and whispers. It was a testament to Madam Pompfrey’s skill that Susan was already back on her feet after only two nights of bed rest, and the girl was doing her best to act like things were back to normal. 

Ignoring the stares, Susan filled her plates with toast, a few sausages, and a slice of roast pumpkin. Suddenly finding herself on fire in the middle of a quidditch match had been harrowing, but she refused to show weakness in public. Really, as momentarily painful as the burns were, it might have been the public spectacle of the attack that bothered her the most; she hated feeling like an object of pity. ‘Besides, if we’re talking about terrifying events, this didn’t hold a candle to the Basilisk.’

Those first minutes zooming up and down the pitch had been exhilarating. Darting in and out of the Chaser’s formations, feeling the vibrations through her arm as her bat made contact with the bludger, reveling in the satisfaction of seeing her shot make contact with the tail of Flint’s broom, sending him spinning, all of it had been heightened compared to every Quidditch match she’d ever played, because she’d been playing for her House. The hopes of her fellow Puffs flew with her and filled her with pride, until that moment of confusion when the smoke started to pour off her broom handle… 

She brushed back a loose strand of hair, still not quite used to the new cut. For years she’d become accustomed to having her coppery locks tied back in a long plait, and the absence of its weight was still strange. Susan had been given a hair growth acceleration potion to regrow the hair that had to be shaved off, not because it had all been burned but because the stink of the smoke couldn’t be removed despite multiple washings and charms. However, she hadn’t returned her light red hair to its previous length, opting instead to keep it shorter, ending about at her chin when loose and currently styled in a ponytail.

There had been no major permanent scarring, with the only visible ones being small splotches on both her palms where she’d been holding the broom. They could potentially be removed with further treatment, but it would take time, and Susan had wanted to return to school as soon as she could. ‘Besides, who looks at someone’s palms anyway?’

She was just glad there hadn’t been more long-lasting damage, and particularly happy her face was largely untouched. ‘For one, damage to the eyes would have been a lot harder, possibly impossible to heal,’ she reflected grimly, and ‘for another, as much as I love Iris, I don’t want to share a facial scar.’ She knew it was the dark magic that had caused the initial injury that stopped Iris from getting her lightning bolt scar removed, even as it had faded considerably over the years.

Speaking of the girl with hair a darker shade of red, she was sitting across from Susan at breakfast that morning and glowering into her kippers like they’d bitten her. Actually, most of Susan’s friends were crowded around the Hufflepuff table at the moment, regardless of their house, and her housemates themselves were clustered in a way she knew was meant to be protective but frankly felt a little stifling. It had been frightening, yes, and painful too, but she was fine now.

However, it was her best friend who held her attention at that moment. They’d known each other since they were six years old and could read one another better than most. Iris was slow to anger, but once you got on her bad side, she could hold a grudge like nobody else Susan knew. The handful of people who’d ended up fully in her bad books could expect little in the way of forgiveness from the Girl Who Lived, and it was more than probable Draco had just forever shifted himself from the minor irritant category into the mortal enemy one with Pettigrew, Bellatrix and the Dursleys. ‘And unlike Pettigrew, there are no Dementors between her and any vengeance she’s probably, no, definitely, already plotting on Draco…’

“Iris, I need a favor,” Susan said slowly. 

“Anything,” Iris replied, snapping from vengeful to fretful as she worried her still recovering friend was hurting.

Susan spoke plainly, “I need you to promise me you’re not going to get revenge.”

“Wha-“ Iris blurted, rather surprised by the request. Of course, she was planning to exact her own retribution on Draco and his gang of bullies for what they’d done to Susan; the official punishment was far from sufficient in her eyes. Personally, she’d have liked to see Malfoy hung off the battlements by his ankles, but she’d have settled for expulsion. That hadn’t happened, so obviously it was up to her to right the scales. She hadn’t settled on a plan yet, but luring the blighter into the Acromantula colony in the Forbidden Forest was a tempting option. 

“I’m serious, Irey,” Susan said in a no-nonsense tone. “You are not in any way to try and get back at the prat.” Her words were directed at Iris, but partially intended for other friends at the table too, who all seemed to absorb them with differing degrees of acceptance. Luna looked nearly as reluctant as Iris, but Tonks and Hermione at least seemed to understand where she was coming from. Tracey and Lavender nodded along, while Daphne simply … listened, her face utterly impassive in a way that worried Susan nearly as much as Iris’s furrowed glower did.

Iris screwed her face up in consternation, frustration and reluctance flashing across her features before she seemed to deflate a bit and just whined “but, whyyyy?” She would do what Susan wanted, but she wasn’t happy about it.

Susan let out a small bark of laughter at her best friend’s change in demeanor from a fierce guardian to a petulant little sister. “Well, for one, I’m fine. Yes, it was painful, and yes it was frightening, but I’m not some damsel in need of saving. If anything, it was an interesting chance to see how burn healing works.” Really, in contrast to her friends and family, she was more or less satisfied with the punishments doled out. The prank was cruel and rash but she acknowledged the worst of it had been caused by Draco’s recklessness, and didn’t want to see anyone, even Malfoy’s, life ruined over it. 

Iris stared at her friend flatly over her untouched breakfast, “you are not going to spin getting viciously attacked as a learning opportunity. Besides, you’re forgetting you could have been hurt much worse or even killed if things had gone differently.”

“But it didn’t,” Susan stressed. “Also, Irey, and I need you to understand this; I care more about keeping my best friend than getting back on some idiotic pissant, who I might remind you, hurt me mostly through incompetence rather than malice. Going after Draco not only risks you getting in trouble, it lowers you to his level. The Malfoys may have no respect for the rule of law, but we’re better than them.” Unconsciously, as she spoke the younger Bones girl adopted a cadence very similar to her Aunties when speaking before the courts.

The Potter girl opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again as she considered what Susan was really saying. ‘We both lost Sirius for a decade because he prioritized revenge…’ She let out the longest sigh of her life and consigned her plan of feeding Draco to a giant spider to her daydreams. She probably wouldn’t have actually let him get eaten in the first place but scaring the hell out of him would have made her feel better. 

Soon enough Susan and her friends finished that first awkward breakfast after the incident and stepped along towards class along the path towards normalcy. Indeed, as the sand in the hourglass ticked by the time for breakfast was drawing to a close and there were only a few stragglers and older students with no morning courses still in the Great Hall when Draco Malfoy, for once without his omnipresent henchmen, stepped into it and a hush fell over what remained of the early morning din. 

The blond sniffed and strode to the Slytherin table, refusing to flinch or bow his head. He met the stares of the students he passed with a sneer down his nose, daring them to say something. However, despite his outward defiance, he felt a sinking in his stomach when he caught a nasty look from Davies over at the Ravenclaw table, and it grew much worse when the Slytherins he sat near slid down the table away from him. Treacherously a voice in the back of his head whispered that it might have been better to skip breakfast like Goyle and Crabbe had. ‘At least they’re still sticking with you unlike Parkinson…’

Draco had expected animosity from the Puffs, who stuck together like some sort of eerie hivemind even in defense of the most worthless of their number, and he knew the idiot Gryffindors would always take any opportunity to seem self-righteous or antagonize a Slytherin, but the cool reception from the Ravenclaw students and worse, his own house, disturbed him. Didn’t they see that Dumbledore had blown this all-out proportion? It was just a prank after all! ‘Everyone’s so happy whenever those idiot Weasleys pull one, and yet I’m treated like some sort of criminal.’ He'd always known he couldn’t trust Dumbledore, but the formal punishments didn’t make his skin itch half so much as the way his fellow classmates were looking at him. 

It was fair to say that Draco did not at first understand that his disastrous and dangerous prank had turned almost the entire student body against him, but it was quickly dawning on him that it had even if he didn’t understand why. 

The answer to that wasn’t complicated but it was layered. There was the obvious distaste for him hurting another student, and sympathy for Susan of course (Malfoy’s own underdeveloped sense of empathy kept him from fully grasping it in others), and as he’d rightly observed, house politics at play, but that didn’t account for how universal the wall of disdain for Draco had become.

Even those who might have tried to defend him as having been merely trying to pull what should have been a harmless prank, were put off by the fact he’d done so during an official quidditch match. Taking out an opposing player and then setting up his replacement to be surrounded by noxious, vision obscuring smoke in the middle of the game was pretty blatant cheating before you even thought about how it had gone wrong. Everyone who took Quidditch seriously was incensed, and at Hogwarts that was a lot of people. Roger Davies was plotting to curse all of Draco’s quills to add misspellings, and perhaps the only person in the castle as angry at Draco as Iris Potter was his own Quidditch Captain, Marcus Flint. To be fair, Flint was less upset that Draco had cheated than he was that Draco had cheated so obviously, but Marcus was a fourth generation legacy broomsman. If Draco’s little unauthorized scheme somehow screwed up Flint’s reputation and stopped him from joining the Montrose Magpies after graduation, like his father, grandmother, and great grandfather had done before him, then the former seeker would probably need to start keeping his eyes peeled for flashes of green.

Draco scowled and filled his plate with a deliberate lack of speed. He’d probably be late for History of Magic, but he refused to twitch and jump like some frightened rabbit. He glanced over at Millicent, the only other third year at the table, and gestured beneficently for her to come sit with him. The toad of a girl just gave a short shake of her head before rising and walking away. ‘The absolute nerve!’

Even with the ire of Flint and some of his other former teammates, Draco had expected his fellow Slytherins to close ranks around one of their own. However, in doing so he failed to realize just how bad the optics were, particularly among other purebloods. Witch Burning was a touchy subject and a potent symbol of wizarding persecution at the hands of muggles. Setting a pureblood heiress on fire just looked bad whichever way you sliced it. Compound that with Marcus more or less being the current leader of the blood purist faction within Slytherin, and pretty much all support for Draco had evaporated within his own house.

Draco stewed there for a time, eating but not tasting the cold rashers he shoved into his mouth automatically. This was so unfair, so unreasonable. His father would be hearing of this, oh yes! He’d put the fear of Malfoy back into the ungrateful whelps of families who owed everything to their gold. Yes, that’s just what he’d do. He stood bolt upright, knocking aside a glass of pumpkin juice for the House Elves to pick up. He had to get to the owlery to pen a letter to his father.

Binns could wait. 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Beauxbatons, Last Day of Term, June

All Dialogue in French

Fleur tossed her shovel aside with a mix of exasperation and triumph; the striking of the clock signified the end of her last day of detention, and the last day of her having to muck out the Pegasi stables without magic. A dun filly in the nearest stall bristled a bit at the thud of the shovel hitting the ground, and Fleur instinctively reached out to pet her neck. “There, there Comette,” she said soothingly; after several months spending her weekends in the stables, she’d gotten to know the horses quite well.

Honestly, as far as punishments went, it hadn’t been so bad. The work was largely solitary, and once she’d gotten the hang of it, her mind had plenty of time to wander; she’d actually managed to devise a new spell for manipulating underwater currents while feeding a particularly fussy gelding called Frederick his evening hay. Still, even if her detentions had been something horrid like shucking oysters in the kitchens every weekend, she wouldn’t have regretted standing up to Fauntleroy.

She’d say this for Brown, he actually had left her and those who associated with her alone after losing the duel. Whether that was because he saw it as the honorable thing to do, didn’t want to antagonize her further after she demonstrated she could handily trounce him, or just didn’t wish to risk getting in further trouble with the faculty after all the detentions Madame Maxine had already assigned him, she couldn’t know for sure. Regardless, it was the result that mattered, and as grimy and sweaty as her Saturdays had been for the last several months, the lack of his odiousness arguably made up for it. 

“A-ha, our favorite stable hand has finally emerged,” Jean-Luc called out cheerfully as Fleur exited the stables. The scrawny lad stood with Sonia and Marceline, the three of them all uniformed and standing amongst their luggage as they waited for Fleur before heading for the carriages. The part Veela girl, who wore only a white blouse and a pair of work pants, rolled her eyes fondly before gratefully taking a clean uniform from Marceline and stepping into the circular modesty curtain Sonia conjured to change. Her friends, despite her repeatedly telling them it was unnecessary, had been waiting for her after detention every Saturday and by now their post-stable routine was well practiced.

‘Friends’, that was still such a strange thought, but one Fleur had trouble continuing to deny. Sonia had long been the sole owner of that title in Fleur’s life, but after the duel, Marceline and Jean-Luc had managed to worm their way through her walls. It made her uneasy; she kept people at a distance for a reason after all, but maybe a part of the ice queen of Beauxbatons also felt much warmer than she had in years.

“You know,” Sonia called from the other side of the curtain, “it is patently unfair that after two hours sweating in a stable, you still somehow smell like a fresh bouquet.” 

Fleur, buttoning up her pale blue silk uniform blouse, snorted. “I’m surprised you can smell anything with all the cologne Jean-Luc has drenched himself in,” she teased.

“Hey!” she heard the voice of Jean-Luc protest while Sonia and Marceline giggled. “I’ll have you know Une Goutte de Basslic is a very popular fragrance!”

“Yes, and a very strong fragrance,” Marceline replied. “The clue is in the name, Jean-Luc; you only need a drop, not half the bottle.” 

Fleur, properly dressed once more, including hat since she’d be traveling, stepped out from the curtain, which was quickly stowed by Sonia with a wave of her wand. “Marcie,” the nickname still felt unfamiliar in Fleur’s mouth, “how did..? That is to say, what was the..” Fleur inwardly cursed her awkwardness; she was really out of practice talking about personal matters with anyone she wasn’t related to, not named Sonia, but Marceline and Jean-Luc had been consistently reaching out to her and she’d be damned if she didn’t rise to the challenge. She took a breath, “how did your conversation with Monsieur Murmure go?” 

Graciously, Marceline didn’t comment on Fleurs verbal stumble as the foursome walked back towards the palace. “It went as well as it could, I suppose. We agreed we weren’t really working as a couple and said there were no hard feelings, but I don’t expect us to easily slide back into being friends again anytime soon.” Dan Murmure was a handsome young wizard in Marcie’s year who she’d started dating a few months ago, but their honeymoon period hadn’t lasted long.

“That is the way of things,” Sonia opined with a shrug, “if nobody is hurt by a breakup they didn’t care about the relationship in the first place.”

Jean-Luc coughed something that sounded suspiciously like “so dramatic,” which made Fleur grin while Sonia glared at the youngest spellcaster. 

“Thank you for asking, Fleur,” Marceline added. The blonde wish felt a flush of pride and smirked a bit triumphantly. She’d successfully navigated talking about a friend’s romantic relationship while being supportive and not even once letting slip that she thought the wizard in question was an oily slimeball. 

It didn’t take them long to arrive back at the palace, but they didn’t enter, instead joining most of the student body that had begun gathering on the front lawn. They weren’t the last to arrive but they weren’t the first, and Sonia and Fleur had to quickly say their goodbyes to Marceline and Jean-Luc before lining up with the rest of their year group. Fairly soon the Great Carriage would be arriving (Fleur had actually helped bridle the Abraxans that would draw it across the sky to Paris) in a short time and they needed to be prepared to board.

Unfortunately for the part-Veela girl, they were instructed by the professors overseeing things to line up alphabetically, which meant she and Sonia stood right next to Arabella Dennenboom. Fleur always felt awkward around the other witch because, while she was one of the worst offenders when it came to spreading baseless rumors about Fleur, (She had half considered just yelling at breakfast one morning to the student body at large that she had zero romantic interest in men, but knew that would to nothing to stop the accusations that she was behind every breakup that happened in the Academy) she was also undeniably just Fleur’s type physically. Shorter than her, big expressive eyes, busty but still slim with long thick dark hair, all of which led to the vexing situation of feeling attracted to someone she absolutely loathed. 

“Well, if it isn’t the Ice Princess of Beauxbatons,” the Dutch witch said stiffly, turning to face her.

Fleur raised a sculpted eyebrow, “I do not call myself that, but as your paramour could tell you, I am quite accomplished with glacial magic.” Fleur somewhat expected the other girl to snap at her for the slightly barbed comment but that wasn’t what happened. 

“Listen, and listen well,” Arabella spoke quietly so only Fleur and Sonia could hear her, “you may hide behind your glamours but they do not work on me and I know you for what you truly are Fleur Delacour. You Veela are nothing more than street trash who pollute our cities and bewitch our men to perpetuate your vile breed. You are a whore,” she spat the word, “a rutting animal, and I will waste my breath attempting to converse with neither beasts nor harlots.” 

Fleur stood there stunned as the shorter girl turned sharply around. She wasn’t so much surprised by the sentiment as she was by the brutal directness. ‘This is what you get for letting your guard down,’ her own thoughts mocked her. She was used to anti-Veela bigotry but after a morning letting herself relax among her friends, Arabella’s words felt like a sucker punch.

She froze up for a moment before her hand snapped out automatically to grab Sonia by the wrist before her friend could hex Dennenboom. “Don’t,” Fleur said quietly. Her best friend rounded on her, her face a mask of fury. She was clearly furious on Fleur’s behalf but thankfully she caught the expression on Fleur’s face and left Arabella to continue blithely chatting and giggling with Roxanne Debonaire. Fleur gently pulled her friend back, creating a small gap in the line to have some space between them and Arabella. 

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Sonia demanded.

“No,” Fleur lied, pleading to her friend with her eyes. Of course it hurt. She’d put up walls, learned not to show her pain, but it always hurt. It was a reminder that no matter what she tried or how much she excelled, there would be those like Arabella for whom she would never be good enough. She would never be a remarkable witch, merely a Veela whore acting above her station. 

It stung all the more because Fleur was proud of her Veela heritage just as she was proud of being a witch. Her lineage was not something to be ashamed of, whatever Arabella might think, and Fleur would not hide it. She was a witch. She was Veela, and she wouldn’t apologize for either. 

Still, she knew Sonia hexing Dennenboom wouldn’t help her or Veela in general. Sonia, Nimue bless her, saw things in black and white, right and wrong and just wanted to protect Fleur, but the Delacour girl had grown up learning diplomacy at the foot of her father and she’d grown up as a half-Veela; she understood things were complicated. She knew publicly retaliating against Arabella would just play into the hateful narrative she espoused. It wasn’t fair, but she had to be the better woman. 

The thought made her blood boil and her hair bristle. Fleur was incapable of transforming into an avian form given her majority witch blood, but when her anger flashed like this, she felt some echo of the sensation her grandmama described shifting forms to feel like. Hard learned control slammed down like a prison of ice over the roiling flames of her anger and she turned back to lock eyes with Sonia.

“Everything is fine.”

=

Later, Chateau Delacour

The eventual boarding of the larger-on-the-inside Grand Carriage and journey home had been thankfully uneventful. They were only forced to be near Arabella till they boarded and after that they swiftly found a carriage with Marceline, and Jean-Luc. Sonia and Fleur said nothing of the interaction with Dennenboom, though it was obvious the Spanish witch was dying to.

Twelve great Abraxan Pegasi, the size of elephants soared across the summer sky, pulling the carriage behind them. It was as big as a house on the outside, and inside much bigger still, an absolute marvel of Extension Charms and creative spatial magics. They journeyed north from their alpine school towards the heart of France, dancing in and out of clouds on the well-worn skyroute to Paris. Though enchantment concealed them within a moving cloud, the magic was such that they could see out through the false cloud and catch glimpses of the rolling French countryside below as the dying light from the setting sun steadily diminished.  

Still, even with the cloud and copious attention deflecting magic, they couldn’t land in Paris or the Place Cachee itself without arousing muggle notice. Instead, their destination was fifty kilometers to the north of the great city, the Château de Chantilly, or more specifically, its grand stables. As it always was on nights like this, the grounds were clear of muggles, and before long, the excited students of Beauxbatons had streamed down from the carriage steps to meet their waiting families and set off for home by broom, floo, or other means. 

Fleur had admittedly retreated behind her walls for much of the trip and offered her friends only a cordial brief farewell before stepping smartly over to join her parents. Her Papa had Fleur’s Silver Arrow broom in hand and the family were very shortly in the air soaring northward. Fleur’s things would be delivered by a Beauxbatons elf. 

Now, as she set foot on the lawn of her family home, Fleur finally let herself relax again. She was still rattled by the confrontation with Dennenboom but refused to betray that fact to her family; today was meant to be a happy reunion and she’d be damned if she let some stroppy girl, lashing out because her boyfriend got a little embarrassed, ruin it.

“How do you think your final exams went?” her father asked casually. Rene Delacour held no doubts regarding his eldest daughter’s academic excellence, as she’d been consistently at the top of her class but knew from his own school days that the girl was likely still unwinding from exam stress. 

Fleur gave a so-so gesture, “the vanishing practical gave me a little trouble but, in the end, I think Professor Prospero was satisfied with my performance.” She frowned slightly, “it may be good enough for now but I should practice vanishing multiple objects more this summer. It is bound to come up on the B.A.C.”

Unlike Hogwarts, Beauxbatons did not have a two-tiered examination system a la OWLS and NEWTS, and instead students sat a singular exam at the end of their schooling. They had a choice of four B.A.C, standing for Bacchanale Auguste Conjuration, exams to sit, BAC A, BAC B, BAC C or BAC D, which divided the standard subjects into linked groups with some overlap. (For instance, potioneering skill would be assessed as part of both the C and D exams but form a larger proportion of the grade in the latter.)

Like most of her peers at this point in their education, Fleur had more or less settled on which qualification she was aiming for, and thus the subjects that would be assessed by the BAC C exam, including Charms, Runes, Transfigurations, and elements of DADA and Potions, were the ones she fretted over the most.

“I’m sure you did better than you think you did,” Rene said affably. He finally had a bit of time off after a hectic period with his department, and the diplomat was obviously in a good mood.

“Just to warn you,” Apolline added, “Monsieur Acjor finished your sister’s wand last week and she hasn’t stopped using it since. It’s mostly sparks and the odd flash of light so far but she is getting close to managing the Levitation charm.”

“She also managed to set the rug in the tearoom on fire,” Rene added, though there was no reproach in his voice. In fact, he sounded almost proud.

Fleur giggled behind her hand, “did you manage to get any other shopping done on your trip, or did Gabi drag you straight home?” Most witches and wizards who didn’t live in Paris liked to conduct multiple errands when they journeyed to the Place Cachee. 

Apolline smiled enigmatically, “oh, we managed to make one more stop to place a special order.”

“What special order?” Fleur asked.

“Oh nothing,” Rene replied smoothly as they reached the steps of the Chateau Delacour’s front entrance. 

Fleur was suspicious. Now that she thought about it, her parents had been oddly coy when they picked her up from the carriage drop off, and the broom flight home had failed to shed any light onto why. Still she let it go for the moment, just glad to be home.

“FLEUR!!” 

The instant she opened the door her little sister came rushing into the foyer, a crooked snakewood wand in one hand and a big box tied with a bow under her other arm. The silver-haired hellion skidded to a stop in front of her sister and thrust the box out in front of her, before beaming up at Fleur. “We got you a present.”

“Oh?” Fleur said carefully as she took the box from her sister’s hand. It shook slightly and she raised an eyebrow. She glanced over at her parents but her father just hummed as he closed the door behind them and her mother continued to smile that mischievous smile she’d had since they picked Fleur up. Bracing herself for a prank, (out of character for her papa, but absolutely something her mother would do, and something Gabrielle would gladly help with) Fleur opened the box, only for a ball of fluff to leap into her arms and start licking her. She found herself holding the most adorable little blonde puppy, with two wagging tails.

“A Crup!?” Fleur exclaimed, her eyes flashing with delight. She’d wanted a Crup for ages, but French law required you to be 15 before you could legally own one; Fleur had been planning to pester her folks into taking her to adopt one later that week but hadn’t expected them to have one waiting for her. 

The remainder of the evening passed in a blur of joy as Fleur came to know her new companion. He was a spirited little fellow with seemingly boundless energy, running around in little circles as he waited for Fleur to throw his ball. In terms of appearance he looked like a small muggle Scottish Terrier with a wheaten coat and the distinctive forked tail crups were known for. Fleur liked to think even without that obvious sign, she’d have known from the intelligent glint in the adorable fluffball’s eyes that there was something magical about her puppy.

An hour after Gabrielle had reluctantly gone to bed, Fleur lay on the couch with her puppy curled up on her stomach, snoring softly. She was in that sleepy state where she knew she should go to bed, but she was too tired to get up from the couch. The pup had been the perfect balm for her soul after the situation with Dennenboom and the disagreement with her best friend over how to handle it. ‘He makes the world seem so simple...’

She glanced over to see her mother, who had changed into her bed-robe at this point, pad into the room with a yawn. The older witch smiled at the sight of her daughter with her new familiar, “have you decided what to call him?”

Fleur glanced down, and saw that her puppy had raised his head at the noise and was looking her in the eye. The name came to her lips directly without needing to travel via her conscious mind.

“Gavroche, your name is Gavroche.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Room over the Three Broomsticks, Last Week of Hogwarts Term

Soon to be ex-Professor Remus Lupin had been feeling gloomy as he trod the well-worn path from the castle to the village of Hogsmeade. While his students were buzzing with the joy of exams being finished, and holidays soon to come, none of it reached him. ‘I guess… I just rather enjoyed being a professor.’

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be feasible for him to continue, as much as he might like to. The parchment slipped under his door two nights ago had been fairly blunt. Either Remus resigned voluntarily, or he’d be outed as a werewolf to not only the Board of Governors, but the Prophet, which, of course, would end with him getting sacked, so he’d be leaving the castle either way.

He was a realist, and already submitted his resignation to Dumbledore. He didn’t bother confronting the almost certain author of the note; it was clear by now that Severus couldn’t see past their past, or his own prejudice and tattling to Albus wasn’t going to change things. ‘One thing you can say for Dumbledore, he’s a loyal sort,’ Remus reflected darkly as he knocked at the private room Rosmerta had directed him to. Snape could probably do anything short of murder and the Headmaster would continue to shelter him. 

“Remus, thanks for coming,” Amelia said with a tired smile as she got up from the table at the center of the room to give Lupin a quick hug. He hadn’t seen his best friend’s fiancée since she’d been at the castle following the attack on Susan, and it was good to see her in a comparatively less frenzied state. Her coppery hair was back in a professional bun, and her monocle dangled from her ear, but she wore sensible black working robes, rather than the ornate plum and black set she wore at the office. 

“I’m always happy to help a friend, Amy,” Remus said truthfully. He cherished his few friends more than anything in his life and after failing James, Lily, and Sirius, he’d be damned if he let one down again. He offered a smile despite his dour mood, “you were pretty vague with your letter – do you and Siri need something for the wedding?” Lupin would be acting as Sirius’s best man at the small ceremony and he’d been helping out here and there with the organization.

Walking back to the table and gesturing for Lupin to sit down, she shook her head ruefully and said, “no, I think we’ve just about got everything managed. To be honest with you, I’ve let Andi handle most of the planning with how busy I’ve been at the office. I feel bad, the only things I’ve done for my own wedding were picking my dress and booking the caterer.”

Lupin poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the tray Rosemerta had left for them and took an experimental bite of an interesting looking pastry. Having better manners than the groom in question, he swallowed the peppermint and almond confection before saying, “don’t worry about it, Ames. Frankly, you and Andromeda could rely on Sirius a bit more for that; he’s dying to help, and unlike you two, doesn’t have a job to balance.” Sirius hadn’t sought employment since earning his freedom, which was totally understandable given his need to focus on his recovery, and luckily had the familial wealth to not really need to.

The Bones woman snorted, “oh believe me, my mutt is plenty involved. I’m just leaving picking the decorations to someone who isn’t colorblind.” Her expression grew more serious and she said, “unfortunately, that’s not the favor I need…”

Amelia pulled a folded piece of parchment from her cloak pocket and spread it out on the table for Remus to see. It was a pencil sketch of a youngish man, rather handsome but with slightly manic looking eyes. The drawing moved, as most wizarding pictures did, but rather than do so of his own volition, he instead regularly turned to show his front view and then either profile.

“If I asked you who this looked like to you-“ Amy began before Remus cut in.

“It’s Barty Crouch Junior.” Remus cupped his chin in thought, “though I’m curious why you’re showing me a sketch of a dead man.” Lupin’s former schoolyard antagonist hadn’t lasted long in Azkaban and supposedly passed on the prison island many years ago.

“So am I,” Amelia replied, before explaining the sighting of a man with a dark mark and how the sketch that had eventually been produced bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead Death Eater. 

“There’s more to this,” Remus observed calmly. He knew Amelia well enough to know that A, under her professional calm demeanor she was hiding anxiety and B, that it would take more than a whisper of a surviving uncaptured Death Eater to make her anxious.

Amy nodded and wordlessly passed over a series of photographs, copies Remus assumed since the originals would be locked up in evidence. He flicked through them slowly and, as he did so, his curiosity curdled into dread. Now he perfectly understood why a report of Barty Junior being seen alive would rattle Amelia.

Put bluntly, and death was always blunt in Remus’s experience, the photographs showed the desiccated corpse of Barty Crouch Senior. The former Ministry official was reclined in an armchair by the fireplace, an open book on his lap. It seemed that by the time he was found he had withered but not rotted in the way corpses tended to do; the man appeared almost like a mummy without the wrappings. His chest had been wrenched open, a huge wound on his breast, but most curiously, there was none of the copious blood staining you would expect to follow such an event.

“There was no blood on him or in him,” Amelia informed him grimly, guessing his question before he could ask it. “Near as we can tell it was all removed at the moment of death. Rufus thinks it was a vampire, maybe a group of them.”

“It wasn’t a vampire,” Lupin thought aloud as he mulled over the crime scene photographs. The once-great man had certainly been exsanguinated, but none of the rest of it matched. Vampires never drank all your blood, unless they were turning you into a vampire yourself, and that didn’t work on wizards. Besides, it was pretty clear the blood had been drawn from the gaping chest wound, not the neck, and the nail in the coffin, (pun intended), was that whoever had drained Barty hadn’t left a single drop behind. Vampires were never that neat. 

‘So, what or who DID do this?’ Lupin considered. He wished Amelia had brought him to the actual scene, but these photographs would have to be enough for the moment. There was enough intentionality to the manner of death, to the way he was posed just so in the armchair by the fire, to discount any non-thinking beasts. No, this wasn’t a vampire, and this wasn’t one of the more esoteric blood sucking beasties. This was done by a wizard.

“What about the book?” Remus asked, since there wasn’t a good angle on it in the pictures. This had been done by a wizard, and one who had wanted to send some sort of message. They’d taken their time, and they’d made it painful.

Amelia pulled a slim volume from her inner pocket and handed it over to Remus. “It’s not the same copy, that’s in evidence, but it wasn’t too hard to find another in my family library.” The rich burgundy leather cover held the title in golden leaf, A Father’s Duty, By Roderick Gryffindor. Remus frowned in thought as he flipped through the pages absently.

It wasn’t the Tales of Beedle the Bard, but the memoir was hardly obscure. He’d read it himself, half a lifetime ago, on a lazy afternoon spent in the Hogwarts Library, preparing an essay for Binns (Remus might have been the only student in the last several decades who actually liked Binns). It was a firsthand account of one of the last major Goblin Wars; Sir Roderick had been a frontline commander writing letters to his young son, and after his untimely death, said son, Godric the Third, AKA, Godric the Unready, had collected the letters together in this very book.

“I’ve got a few people who think there has to be a goblin connection, but I don’t see it,” Amelia said doubtfully, crossing her arms. “It’s not their style; he still has all his limbs. Besides, Crouch was the sort to pay his banking fees promptly.” 

Remus shook his head, “no, that’s overthinking it. Whoever did this…. I think they pre planned it a little, but I’d expect they took the opportunity presented. Look, there’s two empty firewhisky bottles, he’d just been sacked; his guard was down. This is just a guess, but I don’t think they brought the book with them. They just used the most, ah, fitting one at hand on Barty’s bookshelf.”

The auburn-haired woman smiled slightly as she nodded and Remus matched her gaze flatly. “All of which you of course already realized, I’m assuming?”

Amelia’s smirk grew, “I have been a copper for a while, Remus. Besides, there's a gap on the bookshelf. I think you were along the right lines; the title is the message.”

The man cupped his chin in thought and absently took a bite of one of Rosmerta’s scones. “Yes, stands to reason. Someone was wearing Junior’s face and sending his own son to Azkaban was Crouch’s claim to infamy before what he did to Pads became common knowledge.” He looked up, squinting suddenly in suspicion. “If you’d already figured out all of this, why have you come to me? Just testing your friends’ deductive abilities for fun?”

The woman laughed mirthlessly, “I don’t have that kind of time, Moo-I mean Remus.” She blushed slightly, the hardened investigator very temporarily disappearing to reveal the private, playful Amelia Remus was more used to dealing with. Clearly living with Sirius was rubbing off on her.

“You know, I actually don’t mind if you call me Moony,” he said kindly. “You are essentially marrying into the Marauders, after all, and Merlin knows we’re short a few members.” After a beat he added, “Lily did.”

Amelia opened her mouth to reply then bit her lip instead, uncharacteristically unconfident. Remus felt like kicking himself; ‘Why do you always have to put your paw in your mouth?’ Not only did mentioning a woman famously murdered by Voldemort drop an uneasy weight on the conversation, but Amelia hadn’t even been particularly close to Lily either. They were more friends of friends. She’d been in a different house and a year ahead, and after graduation, the war hadn’t allowed for much socializing between them.

Remus looked up at the feel of Amy’s hand on his shoulder to see an understanding smile. He cleared his throat, “so, you were saying?”

She nodded, shifting the conversation back into the cool comfort of professionalism. She proceeded to explain how the body had been eventually found by a petty thief a concerned citizen and their best guess of how long he’d been left their, which had an uncomfortable overlap with the timeframe in which someone who looked suspiciously like Barty Crouch Junior had been seen in Knockturn Alley. That same walking dead man had also been briefly seen, based on some admittedly sketchy reports from a selkie stoolpigeon, boarding a ship in Southampton bound for the continent. 

Mundungus Fletcher’s gruesome discovery at the Crouch home had been so far successfully kept from the press. Theoretically the career criminal was keeping quiet in return for not being tried for breaking into a Wizengamot member’s home, but Amelia suspected some amount of coin may have also changed hands between the grubby fellow and her boss. Cornelius Fudge could always suddenly discover new room in the budget if a headline was at stake. 

It would be interesting to see what the public reaction was when the news of Barty’s death finally was released. For all that he’d once been on track to be Minister of Magic, he hadn’t been the most popular guy for sometime. Privately, Amelia hated her former superior and previous holder of her current post. It was difficult to have warm feelings towards a man who threw your fiancé in jail for a decade without trial on bogus charges after all, and Crouch’s draconian legacy left her with a shitstorm of a department she’d had to spend most of her time as Head cleaning up. 

‘Still, it’s hard not to feel a touch of sympathy for someone going out that way,’ Amelia admitted to herself. She shook her head and, now that all the evidence was laid out, glanced back at Remus. “Thoughts?”

“Personally, I’m most inclined to think this is someone using Barty’s image as a disguise, potentially to send some sort of message,” Remus thought aloud. “Maybe one of his fellow Death Eaters who managed to avoid jail time, out for a bit of revenge against Senior for condemning his own son.”

“Whoever this is,” Amelia said firmly, “I want to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, as it stands the trail, such as it is, leads off the Isles. I can’t send my Aurors into another country without approval, and Fudge refuses to let us contact our ICW partners to get permission or have their aurors pick up the investigation.” The last words were bitter on her tongue.

“Why?” Remus asked, sitting back against the table. “Cornelius has no love lost for the Crouches.”

Amelia scoffed, “he has even less love for bad press. Honestly, it’s getting to the point of paranoia. He doesn’t want even a whisper of renewed Death Eater activity to leak to the international press ahead of the World Cup Final. Whoever this was left the country, and apparently out of sight, out of mind is good enough for our dear minister.”

Remus hummed in thought, “I can certainly see the pickle you’re in, but why bring this to me? I’m happy to help, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do to change the politics of the situation.” He hesitated for the briefest of moments before saying, “I can ask around the packs, to see if they’ve smelled anything.”

“Remus, no,” Amelia replied definitively before softening her tone, “I appreciate the offer but I wouldn’t ask you to do that.” She knew Remus had infiltrated the darker half of werewolf society during the last war, and exactly what white haired old Machiavelli had bid him do it. “I want you to investigate this. However, I’m not looking to hire Remus the wolf, I’m looking to hire Remus the man.”

Lupin gave her a tired, slightly pained smile. “I appreciate the sentiment Amy but you know I’d never get through the DMLE hiring checks without my condition becoming public and I’m not interested in becoming a test case.” He felt like a coward, unworthy of his old house for saying it, but if he could, Remus would prefer not being known publicly as a werewolf to acting as some sort of poster child for lycanthrope rights. ‘Besides, trying to hire me as an auror is more likely to get Amelia sacked than change anything for werewolves.’  He shook his head, “besides, even if you could hire me into the DMLE, you yourself just said Fudge won’t let you have the department pursue this.”

The auburn-haired woman smirked, “well, turns out having to know the entire legal code pays off. I can’t send an auror or a hitwizard, and frankly I haven’t got a man to spare right now. However, there’s a provision under Du Lac’s law that allows for the appointment of a special investigator at the discretion of the Head of the DMLE, namely me. I can’t give you any legal standing outside of Britain, but as long as you don’t run afoul of local authority, you can travel wherever you have to for the mission.”

It was a very old law, harkening back to a time where there was less of a standing DMLE force. Often in the past it had been used to essentially appoint a posse to deal with a specific threat, be it a dark wizard, a muggle warlord, or a rampaging dragon. That said, it had actually been invoked not all that long ago when her predecessors had used it to temporarily deputize non DMLE Ministry personnel during the Voldemort crisis. 

“And this doesn’t run afoul of Fudge’s order not to continue the investigation past our borders?” Remus asked doubtfully, his hands steepled. “I imagine he won’t be happy to learn of this.”

The DMLE Director locked eyes with him, “that’s why he’s not going to learn of this. Nothing in the law says I have to alert his office that I’m hiring a Special Investigator, and his memo explicitly said that I wasn’t to devote any of my aurors, hitwizards or office staff to the task. You aren’t any of those things so technically we aren’t breaking any laws or disobeying any orders.”

Remus considered making a comment on the extreme lengths Amelia was going to do something rather sneaky without actually breaking the law but thought better of it. He knew the witch wasn’t Sirius and didn’t break rules easily even when she wanted to. ‘Because, either the rules matter or they don’t. Your foes disregarding the law doesn’t mean you should lower yourself to their level’ Remus vaguely recalled a younger Amelia saying in an argument with Sirius when both had been junior aurors. Remus had been crashing in their flat for a weekend, temporarily coming in from the cold of spying on the packs – it had been the last visit he’d had with Sirius before that Halloween.

“Look,” Amelia said with a sigh, “maybe Fudge is right and I should just let this go, but a man, however unpleasant he may have been, has been murdered and he deserves some justice. Just as importantly, you", she pointed at Remus, “are far too useful a resource to be wasted working odd jobs out in the countryside.” Apparently, Sirius had let slip to his partner that Remus was getting the sack from Hogwarts. “And no, before you try and guilt trip your way out of this, this isn’t a pity offer. This isn’t some cushy appointment; the salary is modest and the job’s not going to be any fun. I need someone capable; I need someone I can trust and that’s you.”

Amy admittedly told Remus one little white lie when she outlined her plan to him. Namely, she was omitting the fact that in addition to not having an auror to spare to send on this potential crumple horned snorkack hunt, she really didn’t have the budget to hire an outside investigator. Well, she didn’t without formally asking for the funds, which would bring the clandestine investigation to Fudge and Umbridge’s attention, defeating the whole point of keeping it quiet. 

Remus would be getting the salary she promised, it just wouldn’t be coming from the Ministry’s coffers. See, while perusing the old laws regarding the deputizing of a Special Investigator, she discovered a clause that allowed for any noble house to donate to the investigation. They couldn’t initiate one themselves, that duty fell as she’d mentioned to her office, but they could put as many galleons to the cause as they saw fit, another remnant of noblesse oblige. 

She’d have potentially run afoul of the law if she used her own money as the head of House Bones, but legally speaking, it was perfectly acceptable for Lupin’s new salary to come essentially straight from the coffers of House Black, and that’s what she and Sirius had set up. ‘I just need to keep that fact to myself to avoid Remus getting too proud and rejecting a wage because he perceives it as charity from his friends.’ It wasn’t that; the job was real and Remus was the best wizard for it, but her old friend could be rather prickly around anything that even smelled of a handout. 

Remus drained his coffee as he made his decision. “I’ll set off tomorrow.”

“No,” Amelia countered, a slight smirk returning to her features. “You’ll leave after the wedding.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Ministry of Magic, The Next Day

The uneasy air of anticipation permeated the drawing room and wrapped itself snuggly around the seven occupants. This particular drawing room, one of a dozen held within the Ministry’s sprawling subterranean offices (it should be noted that the space-time magic employed to prevent, say, the patent application office from intersecting with nearby basements, cellars, bomb shelters, and the London Underground, was very clever.) was known as the Constellation Room, so called due to the vaulted midnight blue ceiling that had various star formations drifting across it throughout the day. Fiona had at first centered her attention on the course of Ursa Major as she waited, but found she had to look away to avoid getting dizzy from the accelerated movement. (When Cornelius had taken office, he’d apparently decided the room’s sky moved too slowly and fired off a memo, having them speed it up. The current result was celestial sigils whizzing across the ceiling like a hundred snitches)

She smoothed her long green skirt and turned her attention back to the other six people in the room. Like her, they were the lucky accepted applicants for the Ministry’s Advanced Apprenticeship program, by and large considered the best steppingstone to an illustrious future career. The selection criteria were said to be very competitive, and theoretically, the seven recent Hogwarts graduates represented the best and the brightest of their class, or at least the best and the brightest interested in one day becoming Minister of Magic. Public Service. 

‘Of course,’ the young Rosier woman thought as she let her gaze drift around the room, ‘according to father, it’s more or less a year of fetching coffee and taking dictation. And it hardly pays anything.’ Fiona had little interest in becoming some sort of secretary but, considering who they’d be doing this trivial work for, it would be worth it. The seven of them were about to become the personal assistants to the seven Heads of Department, and that was the sort of position that let you make connections. 

They’d already gone through their little welcoming ceremony, which was five minutes of Fudge making a rambling speech before shaking their hands for the photographer from the Prophet. After that they’d been handed off to his Undersecretary, who then promptly handed them off to one of her own subordinates, who then led them to this room where they’d been waiting for the better part of the hour for their new bosses to come pick them up. 

“Would you stop fidgeting, Perce?” Grazia Dippet asked languidly. The chestnut-haired former Gryffindor Prefect was perhaps the only person in the room who seemed completely unconcerned in stark contrast to her male counterpart, Percy Weasley, who was going to wear his hat down to threads if he kept wringing it in his hands.

“I’m not fidgeting,” Percy snapped at her. Prefects always came in pairs, a boy and a girl, and Grazia and Weasley were well known for being an odd couple. Put simply, he took everything seriously while she seemed to float through life; Fiona mused that this probably had something to do with Grazia Dippet being the granddaughter of old Armando and about as well connected as you could possibly get in wizarding Britain, while the Weasley name was about as prominent as the stone Sphinx’s nose. He’d gotten on much better with Osbourne after he’d been elevated to head boy, and not so coincidentally, once they were making the patrol schedules, he and Grazia had never been put together again. 

Fiona’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she glanced at her, for lack of a better term, rival. Dorothy Osbourne’s clothes weren’t unprofessional, but they were about a century out of date and made from cheap material to Fiona’s eye. ‘Not necessarily surprising, being a muggleborn,’ the Rosier girl conceded. The American ex-pat, who had her nose in a little book Fiona couldn’t catch the title of, probably got her dress and robes from a secondhand shopkeeper who took advantage of her complete lack of style to offload some old rags.

It was perhaps a slightly mean thought, but Fiona didn’t much care for ‘Dottie’, who was very much the female counterpart to Weasley. She was hopelessly literally minded, seeing everything in black and white, lacked even a basic understanding of subtlety, and was dull as dishwater to actually try and carry on a conversation with. Her animosity, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with a resentment towards the other young woman for stealing the Head Girl position out from under her. Not at all.

“Let’s all keep calm,” Tara Shacklebolt instructed from the seat next to Dottie’s, “there’s no need to squabble.” The handsome, athletic former captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team had her black braids pulled back in a pseudo-ponytail and wore, a bit untraditionally for a witch in a formal setting, trousers instead of a skirt or dress. Indeed, she had on a pinstripe suit and tie with shiny black shoes that might be unconventional, but was, Fiona had to admit, a look the other girl was absolutely pulling off. 

There was silence after that as they all settled back into wait. Well, mostly silence. There was the occasional chewing noise as Watson Belby snuck a Bertie Bott Bean out of his robes about as stealthily as an elephant with bells on. Ovis Zonko, the terminally serious son of the joke shop owner, grimaced next to him but said nothing. 

“Right, which one of you is Belby?” a gruff voice asked as the door to the room swung open. A grizzled-looking wizard, missing part of his nose, jabbed his finger towards the boy when he nervously raised his hand. “Yer with me. Name’s Beauregard Malmola, but you can call me Mr. Malmola. I’m the head of Magical Accidents. Come with me back ta’ the office and don’t touch anything!”

They watched their former peer go, and before long the rest of them were being claimed. Amelia Bones, in a kinder manner it had to be said, collected Tara. ‘No surprise there,’ Fiona thought, considering the girl’s uncle was pretty high up with the DMLE. Percy started talking a mile a minute at his new boss, Porter MacMillan, the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, the moment he introduced himself. Fiona rather suspected he’d quickly be fobbed off on an underling if he didn’t learn to be quiet, judging from MacMillan’s annoyed expression as they left.

 Fiona suppressed a grimace when Bertha Jorkins bumbled into the room and selected Dottie to be her assistant. Fiona dreamed of working as a diplomat and now Dottie was stealing away yet another opportunity from her pursuit of that goal. Still, she’d learned to control her emotions long ago, so she didn’t betray any anger and instead shot a friendly smile towards her rival and Ms. Jorkins, hoping to stay on good terms with the head of the Department.

Ovis was collected without a word exchanged by the grey robed head of the Department of Mysteries, and Grazia happily joined her godmother, Honoria Travers, at the Department of Magical Transport. This left Fiona alone in the Constellation Room and she ended up casting tempus a few times as the stars zoomed by, steadily getting more impatient. 

Finally, almost an hour after Grazia had left, the door flew open once again to reveal a grinning blond man in flashy scarlet and puce robes over a lime green suit that made her eyes water. Ludo Bagman snapped his fingers and pointed towards himself, “Who has two thumbs, is incredibly handsome, and is your new boss? This guy!” He paid no attention to the somewhat stunned Fiona, instead checking his watch, “now hurry up, Bertha and Amelia keep sending me all this paperwork for some reason and I need you to handle it while I, uh, see to other important department business. Well? Don’t just sit there, get your broom in the air!”

Fiona felt something in her brain careen off the rails and crash into a heap. ‘This is going to be a very long year.’

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Megaron Hall, June, Mid-Morning

Considering all the time that they’d already waited, Amy and Sirius had decided to have a fairly short engagement period and get hitched over the summer. In fact, they hadn’t even waited a whole week after Susan returned from Hogwarts.

Despite technically being the heads of two noble houses, they’d opted for a small ceremony. Part of that came from the pair never going in that much for tradition, and part of it came from a natural desire not to have to share their special day with the Rita Skeeters of the world. There was an officiant from the Ministry, a kindly old druid called Corwyn, but other than that it was mostly close friends and family congregating at Megaron Hall that morning.

They’d opted to have the wedding at their friend’s property rather than the Bones estate or one of the several Black properties Sirius still hadn’t gotten around to cleaning out or even visiting since he’d been freed. It was a decision mostly born from a desire for security and privacy, as the Tonks had made their home as secluded as they legally could to protect their famous daughter. (That and it meant they could stick Ted and Andi with the cleanup)

It was a clear sunny day (Iris may have snuck a bit of underage magic the day before to make sure of that) and the ceremony would be held outside. White wicker chairs sat either side of a little path leading up to a floral arch Ted had conjured, and the meadow was dotted with various flowers Andromeda had encouraged to blossom. Remus stood next to a fidgety Sirius under the arch with old Corwyn, and the small number of guests had all found their seats as they awaited the arrival of the bride.

It was a short list. The Tonks family were there naturally, including a beaming Luna, as well as Amelia’s friend Charlotte Abbot and her daughter Hannah. A few of Amy’s work colleagues were included like Kingsley, Rufus and Wendy, but her old mentor Moody had, not unexpectedly, turned down the invitation. The idea of inviting her current boss hadn’t even been brought up. Sirius had joked about sending an invitation to his blonde-haired cousin, but the death glare he’d gotten from Amelia let him know the Malfoys were still too touchy a subject to joke about.

In years past Sirius probably would have asked Dumbledore, Minerva and Hagrid along, but he was still a bit bitter at the part the three of them played with the abuse his goddaughter experienced during her early years. He was trying to get over it, but forgiveness was a process, and not always a smooth one. Indeed, Emmeline Vance, Hestia Jones, and Sturgis Podmore were the only members of the Order of the Phoenix who had been invited. 

There was a bittersweet element to the day, when one considered the absent chairs where lost loved ones should have sat. Edgar, Eleanor, Amy’s parents, Marlene, Dorcas, Caradoc, Lily, James, Rick, Pandora, Alice, and Frank, all should have been there to toast their nuptials. Their whole generation had holes like that, but due to actively defying Voldemort, Sirius and Amelia had lost more than most. That said, in Sirius’s case, even if Regulus, Orion and Walburga were still alive they probably wouldn’t have gotten an invite.

Golden morning light filled the meadow as the guests who were there quieted after Corwyn cleared his throat. Well, in the case of Iris and Luna, who had gotten into a fascinating conversation about the mating habits of Cerberuses, after a pointed glare from Nymphadora, who looked rather like a younger female clone of her favorite ‘uncle’ that morning. 

Amelia looked simply radiant as she walked down the path towards her husband-to-be, clad in a body-hugging white wedding dress decorated with golden embroidery. Her auburn hair was completely loose for once, falling in burnished wild waves down past her bare shoulders; here among those close to her, she could freely reveal the young woman she still was, rather than the formal image she tried to project. A half step behind her on either side were her bridesmaids, Andromeda and Susan in gold and black dresses, the former looking like she was trying not to cry and the latter bouncing with excitement. 

While often surrounded by much pomp and circumstance, the actual wizarding marriage ceremony practiced in Britain was fairly simple. However, as they were their own heads of house, there was no one to give either of them away and the ceremony had a few minor differences from the standard one. Druid Corwyn gave a short speech before singing the traditional chant in the old tongue while Sirius drank from the Bones Cup, and Amelia drank from the Black one. They then spoke the formal vows and exchanged signet rings, which were transfigured with a wave of the druid’s wand into ones with split arms of Black and Bones. Andromeda declared Amelia to be a witch of good heart and true spirit and Remus in turn pronounced Sirius a wizard of kind soul and strong honor. Then, with the formalities satisfied, it was time for the final step, the personal vows.

“Sirius Orion Black,” said Amelia while looking up into his eyes. “I fell in love with you when I was seventeen years old, and despite my own foolish efforts, never managed to fall out of it. I would say you stole my heart but no thief has ever treated their prize so lovingly. You are courageous. You are selfless. You’re a bit of an idiot, but you’re my idiot.” There was a slight chuckle from the audience at that. She continued, “but above all that you are gentle, loyal and kind. In a world where I had to forge myself into rigid steel to survive, you were the flame that could melt me and despite what you may fear, your warmth hasn’t gone anywhere. It will be my everlasting honor to share our lives, and my eternal joy to be your wife. I love you Siri, and I do marry you.”

“Ames-“ Sirius said hoarsely before clearing his throat. He smiled apologetically and began again, “Amelia Rowena Bones, I never thought I’d fall in love and I certainly never expected to want to get married. My parents hated each other nearly as much as they hated everyone else, and I swore up and down I’d never get trapped like them. It wasn’t until I lived with the Potters that I understood a happy marriage was possible, and it wasn’t until you that I finally got what people meant when they talked about falling in love. When I was a wild young pup I chased my fair share of girls, not to mention a few blokes, but it only took a week together with you for me to know I never wanted to stray again. You’re the strongest person I know, Ames, not to mention the prettiest.” He flashed a cheeky grin that brought a blush to Amelia’s face. He continued, “I’ll never understand why you chose me, but I’ll spend the rest of my life working to be worthy of that choice, to be the man you and Susan need me to be. I love you like crazy Amy, and of course I do marry you.”

Corwyn then cried in a booming voice you wouldn’t expect from such an unassuming man, “this witch and this wizard have declared themselves wed! No other may deny the bond they have forged before us. I beseech the gods, the spirits, fate and magic to bless Sirius and Amelia of Houses Bones and Black.” He cast his wand heavenwards as he spoke and suddenly the sky grew dark with a temporary night descending on the meadow. Then, a conjured blast of tiny multicolored stars exploded from the wand tip to float down over the guests before drawing back together to orbit Sirius and Amelia then finally fade away. He grinned broadly as the pair kissed in the dying starlight mixing with the steady return of the natural morning sun.

With those last words, it was done. Sirius Black and Amelia Bones were husband and wife and, judging by the delirious smiles on their faces when they finally broke for air, they were rather happy about it. 

An hour or so later, after receiving the congratulations of their guests and having Xem and Taki bring out the food, it was time to dance. With a nod shared between them, Ted, Andromeda, Kingsley, and Charlotte worked together to conjure a great dance floor crafted of swirling stained glass, which hovered just an inch or so above the meadow. Remus gave his violin a few experimental plucks, Nymphadora spun her drumsticks and Wendy blew a low rumbling note on her bagpipes before the trio lurched into an upbeat lively wedding jig accompanied by a self-playing enchanted piano they’d dragged out for the occasion. 

One thing you could say for a traditional Pureblood education, it turned out some excellent dancers. Amy was a blur of spinning skirts as Sirius twirled her this way and that, the pair seeming to skip across the air as they shared their first jig as newlyweds. After that, the day’s musicians slipped into a reel and other couples joined the pair upon the floor. Ted practically scooped his wife up as he hopped up to dance with her and Rufus Scrimgeour and his husband, Hugh, an energetic looking wizard with dark curly hair, also joined in albeit a touch more sedately. Hestia dragged her husband, Phil, a muggle originally from Hong Kong, onto the floor, and Emmeline and Sturgis, currently in one of the ‘on’ periods of their long ‘on again off again’ relationship also joined the dance.

Not that single people were barred from dancing. Kingsley extended a chivalrous hand to Charlotte Abbot, who accepted with a curtsey. Susan led Luna, who was still learning, through the moves of the dance, and since her girlfriend was occupied playing the drums, Katie shot her a playful wink before stepping out to dance with her sister, Iris. Finally, Hannah Abbot surprised nearly everyone by walking over to the buffet and pulling away a baffled young satyr, Rodokorna, who was helping out his uncle Xem for the summer. Soon the clip-clop of hoof beats joined the tapping of human shoes. 

Eventually though, even those animated by love needed to rest their feet, and Amelia and Sirius stepped off the floor. The flatter made a beeline for the house to attend to the call of nature, while Amelia went straight for the buffet where Taki was smilingly serving out some delicious wrap combination of eggs, spinach and roast potatoes. Andromeda, wiping some sweat from her brow, walked over to her. “Enjoying the food?”

Amelia, who had just stuffed a whole wrap into her mouth chewed and swallowed. “We barely got to stick a fork into our roasts before Remus started tuning up,” Amelia said as she grabbed a pickled pineapple wrapped in bacon. “I’m starving, Andi.”

Andromeda chuckled while snagging an eel roll for herself. She gazed out over the crowd and said, “pretty good turnout, I thought.”

The bride nodded, “yep. Only Alastor was a no show and we pretty much expected that.”

“Augusta is going to give you hell when she finds out you snubbed her,” Andromeda mused, referring to the absent Longbottom matriarch.

“Augusta Longbottom can get stuffed,” Amy replied, sounding nothing like the formal, ever diplomatic head of the DMLE, and very much like the feisty girl Andromeda had first met at school. It wasn’t like the snub was personal; they really were trying to keep things small with just very close friends. Even the Greengrasses and the Clearwaters hadn’t been asked along, since they were closer with Andromeda than the workaholic Amelia, and the Abbots arguably only got the invite because their home was nearly next door to the Bones and it would have been awkward to exclude them. 

The musician trio eventually had to call it quits from exhaustion and that broke up the formal dancing but the reception continued on, now scored by the enchanted piano alone. That said, there was one more dance before they vanished the floor, as Nym insisted on taking Katie for one little walz herself.

There wasn’t a huge crowd to vie for it, but Amelia still followed the tradition of tossing the bouquet behind her. She may have been trying to angle it towards the long-widowed Charlotte Abbot, but in the end, it was Iris Potter who caught the flowers. She smirked in triumph at making the catch before taking a sniff of the silver, yellow and blue bouquet. 

After that the reception at last began to break up, with various guests making their farewells to the happy couple. There was an awkward moment when Sturgis passed on a letter from Dumbledore to Sirius, but Amelia smoothly took charge of it and hid it away; they could deal with whatever Albus wanted on some day other than their wedding day. Before they too left, Kingsley, Hestia and Rufus gave Ted some extra wands cleaning up, and the two caterers looked almost happier than the bride and groom after Amelia settled up with them.

=

A few hours later a smaller party had retired back to the Hall, Sirius parted from his new bride for just a bit to step over towards the table that Ted was manning as an improvised bar. Dobby had put his hands on an excellent vintage of elderberry wine and he had an aim to fill a new pair of goblets for him and Amelia.

The libations were swiftly secured, along with yet another congratulations from Ted, and Sirius set out back towards Amy on the other side of the party, moving a bit slower to avoid spilling the drinks. As he walked through the smiling guests, he ended up walking behind the pair of chairs where Iris and Luna sat talking, and what he overheard made him slow to a stop.

“I think three years seem the most likely span of time,” Luna announced airily.

Iris shook her head, “nah, I give it one, one and a half at the most.”

Luna tilted her head to the side in thought, unconsciously mirroring Iris’s habitual gesture, “hmm, I don’t know. Perhaps we should ask Lavender for her opinion?”

“What are you lasses talking about?” Sirius asked with a nervous chuckle, “not betting on how long the marriage will last, I hope.” He knew his own reputation, or at least what it had been before he went to Azkaban, as a bit of a rogue, but he hoped his own goddaughter had more faith in his ability as a partner.

“Oh, no,” Luna replied, “we were debating how long until Susan has a little sibling.”

Sirius, who had made the poor choice of taking a sip of his drink at that moment, sprayed a mouthful of Dobby’s delightful wine out in shock. Luna looked confused but Iris just started cackling like a madwoman. (It wasn’t unlike the laugh of one of Iris’s aunts that they never talked about had been when she was young, before it turned truly deranged and cruel)

Iris wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, “I mean… Susan’s sleeping over tonight at our place for a reason, right Uncle Pads?”

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Selected Excerpts from Analysis of Dark Beast Ecologies and Territorial Habits, A Master’s Treatise by R. Lupin, Submitted by Three-Part Assent to the Western Symposium, 1981.

… It may be useful to first take a step back and try to define what a dark beast is. Handling such creatures is a significant proportion of what the subject of Defense concerns itself with, but why do we make an academic distinction between a bowtruckle and a boggart? Those who argue that our discipline is a chimeric one, would say that this is an example of how Defense Against the Dark Arts as a field of study straddles several other, theoretically ‘purer’ subjects, but I do not accede to this point. There are, in my estimation, clear grounds for defining certain creatures as dark, but they are not obvious nor entirely agreed upon.

It might be tempting, given the purpose of our studies being the Defense of witches and wizards, to ascribe relative danger as the line of demarcation, but even a cursory study will show this not to be the case. Dragons are some of the most dangerous beasts around, but they are not inherently held to be dark. On the other hand, most would agree that a poltergeist is nothing more than a nuisance, rated quite lowly by our Magizooligist colleagues in terms of danger, but they are often denoted as dark in various texts on the subject. (Appleby 34)

This question of course touches upon the larger one of defining Dark magic itself, which has vexed scholars and legal experts for centuries. Mortimer Crabbe famously wrote “I cannot satisfactorily lay downe wordes to define magicks moste dark, but it is known to ye when ye see it.” (Crabbe 1148). These words ring true centuries later, as the definition of dark magic is often colloquial, entangled with the idea of illegal magic, and muddied by perception. I do not propose to solve this broader debate in my humble thesis, but I do believe I can articulate a satisfactory definition for dark beasts alone. 

I put forth that a Dark Beast is defined by intent, namely, whether that creature is magically predisposed to actively attack or prey upon humans by their malicious nature. Let us re-examine our earlier examples. Dragons certainly will kill a human who wanders into their territory, but this is the result of nesting instinct. When other prey is available, natural Dragons almost always prefer it to eating humans, and in general, avoid areas of dense human settlement like most animals do. Alternatively, while the danger posed by a poltergeist isn’t great, they are compelled to pull pranks and tricks on witches and wizards, demonstrating an innate hostility they do not have for say, a niffler. I recognize there are edge cases that challenge this definition, as there always are when speaking so broadly, but it should serve our purposes in defining the sort of creature I will be analyzing in this treatise…

… To understand how various dark beasts interact with the surrounding flora and fauna of their environment, we must first consider the two sorts of dark beast that exist, the natural and the sorcery-born. Natural dark beasts are those that, whatever their suspected initial origin, are capable of reproducing or self-manifesting. Creatures like acromantulas and grindylows obviously belong to this category, but so do werewolves and poltergeists, despite their less conventional methods of self-propagation. A sorcery-born beast then is a constructed creature that can only come to be or increase in number through the intervention of outside magic. There is a marked difference in how these two varieties of dark beasts interact with the natural world that is key to our understanding of their territorial habits. 

As it is the smaller category, I shall address the latter first. Sorcery-born creatures are inherently rarer due to their inability to self-propagate and are also, broadly speaking, more rigidly bound to singular behavior by the magic that gives them life. There are sorcery-born creatures we would not define as dark beasts, such as golems, but many if not most do fall into the dark category, such as basilisks, mummies, minotaurs, inferni, tilberi, vengence sprits, and cursed puppets. 

Worth noting here is that while several of these beasts, basilisks, minotaurs and tilberi, have been known to enjoy eating, it is believed that none must eat to sustain life as an ordinary animal might. They experience hunger, but they will not starve and this too heavily plays into the way in which they interact with their environment. Sorcery-born creatures' territories, if they have one, are defined entirely by their animating magic rather than a need for food, proximity to a magical nexus, mating partners, or room to rear their young. This often means these creatures, absent the influence of a dark wizard to command them, are often very sedentary and can lurk in a singular spot for decades. This provides a boon when dealing with them, as while they should be destroyed if possible, it is safe to quarantine them when discovered without fear that they should wander into nearby regions. 

This plays into my proposed approach to handling…