Decisive Action
Yule.
Narcissa and Asphodel will doubtless be furious with me for skipping over Cissy's wedding and Asphodel's first holiday ritual as a Black, but those were not the events of the day that most stand out in my memory.
Cissy was radiant. The affair was much smaller than she would have liked, and rather rushed — Arcturus did not approve of their haste, afraid that it would provoke rumours that the wedding was prompted by an unplanned pregnancy or the like — but Cissy was sufficiently pleased by the fact that she was marrying her intended, and therefore hadn't put up much of a fuss. Better to get it done quickly before anyone came to their senses, as Reggie later put it. They decided to forgo a post-ceremony celebration entirely, and instead simply attend the Festa Morgana later that evening as husband and wife.
Asphodel was transcendent, and the magic of the ritual was the same intoxicating rush it always was. I felt somewhat less guilty about participating, knowing that the girl would have died that day anyway, and was more comfortable admitting that I enjoyed it in spite of the pain of the darkness of the Family Magic touching my soul — that I might have enjoyed it in part because of the way it burned. Angelos did turn up, somehow managing to not be completely fucking terrifying to all the more distant members of the Family who returned for the holiday, but had no idea who she was. Arcturus definitely recognised her — I was lucky enough to see her skip up to him to say hello, I'm fairly certain he narrowly avoided a heart attack — as did Dru — they exchanged a few words before Druella excused herself after the wedding.
From what I overheard, Bella's mother treated the Everloving Dark with the same cold condescension she did everyone else, which was hilarious, in a slightly terrifying way. She showed up for the wedding, of course. I vaguely recall she had something mocking to say about me staring all doe-eyed at Evans — the same joke that had already been made so many times, about me emulating Bella and finding a de Mort of my own. But she also told me that she was happy for me.
She was in a rather odd mood. I remember that, mostly because I wondered often over the weeks that followed if she'd done the arithmancy — if she was acting oddly sentimental because she knew what was to occur later that night.
What else? The wedding was held at noon; the traditional ritual at sunset. The Festa Morgana began several hours later — a ball and walking banquet, it went on until sunrise, but though we made an appearance at the beginning we didn't stay long. We being Bella and de Mort, Evans and myself. Cissy and Reg stayed, as did Zee, with her long-suffering husband on her arm — I recall muttering to Bella that he looked like he'd like to be put out of his misery, already. It was more their sort of scene.
The rest of us adjourned to the circle of open moor the Death Eaters had ringed with avoidance and muggle repelling charms, before filling it with warmth and fire and music. An altogether less pretentious party, celebrating the solstice in much the same way as anyone else, friends and families gathered to eat, drink, and make merry as they awaited the sunrise — creating an unnatural island of summer in the midst of the Longest Night...
Well, Aster would give de Mort this much: he wasn't an uptight Society twat.
The contrast between the Death Eaters' Solstice Party and the Festa Morgana was stark. The Festa, which Aster had only attended once before (as Sirius, two years ago), was an incredibly tedious affair, straight-laced and proper, approximately one-hundred and fifty per cent Society dragonshite. It wasn't so much a party as an event, and one didn't attend in order to enjoy oneself — one attended in order to be seen attending, which in fact meant enjoying oneself was actively discouraged, because enjoying oneself tended to be undignified.
The Blacks, as a House, had escorted Cissy and Reg to the thing, making a show of public support for their incestuous little lovebirds, and because it sort of had to be announced to Society at large that Bella was Lady Black now, and all the adoptions and alliances she'd instituted in the past month or so, but Bella hated Society dragonshite every bit as much as Aster, especially when she had to be Lady Black and therefore respectable (as opposed to just showing up with a hilariously inappropriate escort to make everyone else horribly uncomfortable and embarrass Arcturus), so they hadn't had to stay long.
The Death Eaters' Solstice Party, on the other hand, was a much less formal affair.
There were three or four times as many people present, including children as young as three, while the Festa was limited to certain Families, and only those fifteen or older. And while the Festa centred on the ballroom and quiet, polite conversations in side-chambers, the Solstice Party was outside, little knots of tables and more open spaces where people were dancing to different music or entertaining each other with stories — illusion-plays and dramatic recitations — and bonfires around which people were talking and laughing, relaxing and catching up with friends and family sprawled across the open moorland, children racing between them in packs, pausing in their games now and again to watch a play or mimic their parents' dances or descend on a table of finger foods before racing off again.
It wasn't quite the same mood as a Gryffindor House party, or even the smaller celebration Zee had arranged for Aster's birthday last month, though it shared a certain relaxed character. It was less...wild, she supposed. Not particularly restrained, but there were far fewer drugs, and fewer people drinking to the point of open debauchery. There were a few people slipping away here and there, of course — with seven-hundred attendees, it would be shocking if there weren't — but it wasn't exactly Walpurgis.
It was more relaxed, with no sense of pretence about it. No pervasive sense that anyone needed to pretend to be anything other than what they were. De Mort and Evans had abandoned their glamours. Bella abandoned her fae-inspired ball gown in favour of duelling robes, and somehow still managed to look like she'd stepped out of a fae court in a tale.
It was something about the way reality seemed less real around her, magic and potential practically burning in the air, dark and dangerous and playful, as she illustrated the Fall of Atlantis for a blond storyteller or took a turn playing a folk song on a fiddle so the fiddler could dance, laughing at the general astonishment of the Death Eaters who hadn't known that she actually knew any folk songs, much less would deign to admit it. (Which was hilarious, because Bella probably knew bawdy tavern songs in bloody Gobbledygook, it just wasn't appropriate most of the time for Lady Blackheart to be seen having fun.)
Casual might be the word she was looking for. It was a very casual gathering. Just hundreds of people hanging out, having a good time together while they whiled away the Longest Night.
And it definitely was a Longest Night Party, a celebration of the Solstice and the turning of the year, more than Yule as Aster had known it growing up. Yule was a very isolating holiday, with a strong us versus them feeling to it, celebrating the fact that the House of Black was absolutely not just another British Noble House, but that every one of them was a monster, and they revelled in it.
If she'd been asked before she returned to the fold what she'd expected of the Death Eaters' party tonight, or the ritual de Mort had planned for the holiday, she supposed she would have expected it to be something in that same vein, an opportunity to make his followers feel special and strengthen the bonds between them at the cost of weakening their bonds to outsiders — the usual creepy dark cult shite.
That would definitely have been more in keeping with the side of him she'd seen at the Blacks' ritual, openly embracing the darkness of the magic and the act of sacrifice with no sign of any internal conflict whatsoever, and every sign of enjoying himself. He and Bella had disappeared afterward with Angelos, and when they'd shown up to accompany the rest of the House to the Festa, there had been blood under his fingernails. Aster had very pointedly not asked what they'd been doing and de Mort hadn't volunteered the information, though she knew he was eavesdropping — he'd vanished the evidence right after she noticed it. (Plus, he was always eavesdropping.)
The weird thing was that he seemed just as much in his element here as he was at the Keep, watching with a proud little smirk as Evans cut that poor girl's throat. Like he was genuinely enjoying being a part of such a very communal ritual just as much as he had the celebration of selfishness earlier. Bella, Aster thought, clearly belonged more at the centre of the Family Ritual than she did here — part of her unapologetically enjoying herself here was...making the world around herself a little darker and more dangerous, even when she was in a lighthearted, playful mood, as she clearly was. And Evans was a little more comfortable here than she was at the Keep. Though in all fairness, that wasn't really anything to do with the character of the magic. Evans just wasn't accustomed to Society dragonshite, and was clearly relieved that the second fancy dress event was over. This very casual, much more common gathering was much more her speed. (Not that Aster blamed her, Society as a whole had a giant stick up its collective arse.)
It did seem weird, though, that de Mort would so clearly revel in the Dark, that he had a personal relationship with It (Evans had mentioned that if Angelos didn't show up to participate in the Family Ritual, he might be possessed by It, which implied he was even more fucked in the head than Aster had already known.) and yet be able and willing to (apparently) set that aside to talk about the turning of the year and the waxing and waning of the Dark and the Light like a bloody Druid or some shite.
After a few hours, as midnight approached, people started drifting away from their individual entertainments toward the largest clear area, where the largest group of musicians had been playing for the greatest number of dancers — including Snape, whose company had been claimed by one of Cissy's Rosier cousins, Lori or Linda or something like that. Aster hadn't asked, but she was certain he was glad he'd taken her up on the dance lessons, even if he hadn't finished "thinking about" whether he wanted her to help him with his utter lack of experience in bed yet.
She also hadn't asked whether he realised that Lori or Linda, or whatever her name was, was being very clear about her intentions, and would probably be very disappointed if he didn't invite her to a more intimate gathering over Christmas or New Year's. Yes, she was only fourteen or fifteen, but Aster had also seen them chatting earlier, probably about potions or mutually bemoaning the fact that there was no library to hide in or some shite (the Rosiers were notoriously nerdy, and she couldn't imagine that the usual polite small-talk had convinced Snape to stop imitating an extraordinarily awkward statue near one of the snack tables), and there were enough Rosiers they weren't all expected to marry back into the nobility, or even to stick to purebloods. Lord Rosier could probably be convinced to let her marry a half-blooded commoner if he was clever enough, which Snape definitely was.
And he cleaned up decently well, too. Surprisingly so, honestly. Reggie had flatly refused to allow him to attend his wedding looking like a commoner, much less stand up with him, so had dragged him off to buy proper dress robes. Aster could only imagine that conversation had gone something along the lines of Reg telling Snape that he had to get a fancy dress for the wedding the same as Evans; Snape pointing out that he was a commoner and had no money; and Reg telling him that was no excuse for looking like one and the Blacks had all the money, did he honestly think that Reg expected him to pay to stand up as a witness? That had probably been followed by Snape being completely blindsided by his role in the impending wedding (which wasn't terribly surprising to Aster, since Reg had about as many actual friends as Cissy, and considerably fewer cousins), and too shocked to resist being apparated to Reggie's current favourite tailor.
All of her habitual mockery of his greasiness aside, his hair wasn't actually that bad. With a few charms to give it a bit of volume, it detracted nicely from his nose, and even Snape couldn't look sallow by firelight. She wouldn't exactly call him a catch, but then she wasn't an enormous nerd.
She'd have to remember to tell him that Miss Rosier almost certainly wanted him to—
Damn it! She still hadn't applied for her Apparation License! She'd owled the Ministry for the forms to schedule her test right after the full moon and filled them out as soon as she'd gotten them, but then gotten distracted by something (Evans) and they were still sitting on her desk under a pile of holiday homework she'd accidentally-on-purpose 'forgotten' to bring home.
Maybe she should just go tell Snape right now that Linda (Linda sounded more right than Lori, she thought) wanted him to court her. They could bond over Aster being an embarrassing twat as well as the fact that there was no library out here so they might as well dance. Otherwise, she'd probably forget and Snape would be too awkward to follow up, and Linda would probably end up married to someone even more boring, while Snape...continued to be slightly less boring than Linda's future husband? followed Evans around like a pet bat for the rest of his life? (Not that Aster could really judge on the matter of following Evans around, that was currently her post-Hogwarts plan, but still.)
No, I don't like this one, either.
Not that Sev and Carol aren't completely perfect for each other (Her name is Carol, Linda is her older sister, I just couldn't remember that at the time. Sorry, Carol.), just...this is the third time I've tried to write a transition here, and I keep running up on—
I can't do it. I can't keep writing everyone being all happy and unsuspecting all the while knowing that in ten minutes, five, two, one—
I thought I could, but I can't. Not so close to it like that. Not when it was all my fault.
It was, you know. All those lives are on my hands. Evans and Bella and even de Mort would say it wasn't, but I was the one who told Dumbledore that they were having their Yule party out on the moor. It was my fault they knew where to look, where to strike, when it was absolutely unexpected. I thought I could help, that I could save lives, convince him to end the war, that there was no harm in trying to drive home exactly how screwed the Light were with actual numbers and—
I just can't.
I'm sorry.
For now, this account will have to stand with all the others in its cold, distant recounting of the Great Yuletide Massacre.
Out of all the atrocities committed in the course of the war, on both sides (admittedly more of them on ours than theirs), the Yuletide Massacre is by far the most egregious.
In the moments before midnight on the twenty-first of December, Nineteen Seventy-Six, the forces of the British Ministry and the Light attacked a peaceful holiday gathering of seven-hundred and thirty-two individuals in the Elenydd moorlands. More than half of them were non-combatants, including more than one-hundred children under the age of fifteen.
The attack was officially unauthorised, led by Albus Dumbledore under the flag of his Order of the Phoenix, but it included well over half of the Aurors and Hit Wizards employed by the British Ministry of Magic as well as an unknown number of mercenary warlocks and British vigilantes, and could not practically have been accomplished without the knowledge and compliance of highly-placed officials within the British Department of Law Enforcement.
They waited until midnight, when any traditionalist could have told them that the solstice gathering would be celebrating the Turning Point, the deepest part of the Longest Night, coming together to raise power in acknowledgment of it, though with no intention of using that power, for good or for ill. Most of the Death Eaters were not traditionalists, and they were largely unfamiliar with ritual magic. To be honest, most Avalonians today aren't terribly familiar with serious ritual magic. Yes, de Mort has his public holiday rituals, but like the one he was leading that night, they tend to be...less specific — less powerful and less potentially discomfiting — than most Families' rituals. More a recognition of magic and the cyclical nature of the world than an invocation of or sacrifice to a specific Aspect, or even a Power as a whole.
The sort of thing a second-generation witch who works in a shop and has never lit a candle for Samhain, much less spoken directly to a god, might be comfortable attending in the company of one of her more politically-minded friends, or a younger son of a Noble House which doesn't really hold with any "gods and Powers nonsense" would be comfortable bringing his children to.
They weren't doing anything malicious, or even illegal, for that matter, is what I'm trying to get across, here.
We weren't hurting anyone.
Yes, Bella and de Mort had hurt people, I personally had participated in a human sacrifice ritual with them only hours before, but the people who died that day, they hadn't done anything wrong. They were, by and large, civilians, no more responsible for the Death Eaters' crimes than the families of the Aurors who attacked us — celebrating the holiday at home throughout the country while their parents or siblings or children "worked late, on call" — were responsible for the crime committed that night by their loved ones, and those Death Eaters who died that night died defending their families, friends, and allies from a clear and present danger.
No matter what British propaganda claims, the Statute was never threatened; the power we raised was never going to be put to any use, save to acknowledge it (which the attackers knew: if we had been working a serious ritual, interrupting it as they did would have been suicidal); the gathering was not primarily Marked Death Eaters; and the attack was not an open assault against an actively hostile force.
They convinced a Seer to provide coordinates — they must have, there's no other way they could have made their attack so precisely — and dropped a bomb into the centre of our ritual circle, knocking most of the strongest potential defenders out immediately, or tying them up dealing with the effects of cantrips, generally sowing chaos, into which Aurors, Hit Wizards, mercenaries, and vigilantes apparated, killing indiscriminately. If they murdered fewer children than might have been expected, based on their representation in the crowd, I suspect that it was only because a spell aimed at centre of mass on an adult is far less likely to strike a much shorter child crouching and hiding or running for their lives.
Of the two-hundred and seventy-eight casualties on our side, only thirty-one were children, say those scholars who try to defend the attackers as not deliberately targeting the most vulnerable, easiest marks they could — as though that makes it better that even one was caught in the crossfire. I find it far more telling that out of those two-hundred and seventy-eight, only fifty-four were Marked Death Eaters.
I imagine most people who read this account will be Avalonian. Most of you probably know survivors. I don't imagine most of them talk about it much.
It was hell.
Bloody, violent, chaotic hell.
For many of them, I imagine it was the worst thing they had ever experienced, being in fear for their lives and watching their friends and family fall to the enemy's wands, when only moments before they were safe and happy, celebrating magic in the most innocent way possible.
In the moment, I loved it, the rush of being in a real battle for the first time, fighting and killing people who absolutely would kill me if I slipped up even for a second. I love fighting. It's one of the many things Bella and I have in common. But I hate seeing my people die.
Looking back on my first battle in the cold light of day, it's sickening.
If there were anything I could do to go back and change it, to save all the lives needlessly lost that night, I would. I swear I would. I don't care if certain cold-blooded bitches look at the cost and the consequences and say it was worth it, it wasn't. Not to me.
I now know the answer to that question I wondered about so often in the weeks that followed, and yes, Druella absolutely did know what was going to happen. She let it happen anyway. I don't think I'll ever be able to entirely forgive her for that, for refusing to divert the runaway trolley I had inadvertently set in motion, to fix what I still consider to be the single greatest mistake I ever made, no matter how much I love the world we've built out of the ashes of that sacrifice.
Perhaps it makes me unfit for leadership, but if I were given the chance to warn everyone, or to keep that knowledge to myself and let a few hundred people die to fan the spark of our revolution into a flame which could no longer be smothered, I don't think I could do it. I wouldn't be able to look the survivors in the eye, much less insist that I was right to let their loved ones die for the sake of a better future.
If it were up to me, there would be no New Avalon, and I honestly can't say whether I'm proud to say that, or if it's the most shameful thing I've ever admitted.
Fortunately for all of us, it wasn't up to me.