He could no longer see any clear target, could no longer feel anything but fear for the woman beside him and the child within her. What other choice did he have? What if it was the end? In any other circumstance, what might he have done? Frank knew that there was no might. He would have said a final prayer. But even though for once, like never before, he listened, there was no relief in the execution of the order he couldn’t help but obey. So many times he had prayed. So many times had he found relief in his faith. This time, the prayer brought no comfort. He thought a single, silent word, refused to hit his knees, and then he got angry.
Taking a chance that came involuntarily, he slammed into the masked man with every bit of physical force he could muster, grasping to strong arms as he pushed upward, relaying the curse away from his wife. Head ducking as the jet of light ricocheted off the building that no one around them would be near now, he felt masses of brick falling around him, clipping his back, his legs, his shoulders with painful precision. “ALICE,” he screamed as his stomach turned with the relief that had come from action over conviction, and he sent curses toward those that remained blindly as he struggled with the man he had hit, unwilling to let go, and unable to get away.
“ALICE, PLEASE!”
To have a chance in the world, Alice was going to have to take a shot with Frank in the middle of the line of fire. He knew exactly what he was asking for, because he had once been in the same position himself. Jack Murray’s desperation ran clear and rampant through his veins, his voice, and it was not himself he worried about, just as Jack hadn’t in his position so many months before.
“FRANK, SHOOT” he had screamed, and just as they did now, Frank’s body shook with adrenaline.
The smell of blood in the air was pungent, invading her senses and causing her throat to tighten. It wasn’t out of disgust, though it wasn’t too far off the list. It was the loss, the pooling red did really nothing more than act as a reminder of what was happening, how things could end, would end. Especially if the Death Eaters had their way. Or close to it. The sloppiness of the male nearest her put to test the theory that all of those who fought with Voldermort were at least trained. Using such finicky spells and offing ones own teammate didn’t exactly show finesse.
It was the last clear though that played through her mind until a new voice made itself known. A voice she was all too familiar with. There was no more wondering about who had taken her, what their goals had been, it all played out. All that stood between her and justice, was– Frank. With her wand at the ready, Alice prepared to fight until the clouds rose up, making it hard to see, much less go acting with guns blazing. Last words.. her anger boiled up, even more so the panic that set in as Frank’s form blurred in and out, the bolt of green just missing him, the voice clear as day met her ears with such urgency. Hearing him use her name so desperately was a fear that had come true, this was their moment, a moment to prove themselves, but a moment to save something so selfishly important. Their family.
Alice had known for a long time of the possibility of using the unforgivable curses, they were the spells that daunted every auror at one point or another. However her hesitation wasn’t from being afraid, it was how ready she was to employ one in that moment. There was truth to the saying, not all souls deserved to be saved. All it took was one last shout of her name and Alice’s hand raised up, aiming for the Death Eater as her lips formed the words that would never be easily forgotten, words that would change her life from there on out.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The jet of green life soared out of the tip of her wand, dancing throughout the air in search for it’s target. Her arm buzzed with a searing pain, one she knew wasn’t there, it was merely her bodies reaction to doing something she’d always thought was not a possibility. What was worse was the feeling of unsureness. All she could do was wait. Wait to see who she had hit, to know if her aim had been perfect, and if it hadn’t, it would be her last act as happily married woman. The thought alone had her stomach clenched up in nerves. Stress be damned, they were fighting to stay alive.
Unsettling--- as all the moments when Evan’s father had gone silent had been, this was no different. Yet, nothing about it was the same. The abrupt absence of his screams had always inspired terror, suspense, wonder at when and where he might appear next. Questions about what weapons he would bring, and how harsh the sting of his cheek would be. Fear of his father, of the impending consequences of never reaching his standards.
Fear for his father was an unfamiliar emotion.
The cloud of dust and snow had begun to clear, leaving a clear count of bodies left. Four forms -- Evan’s included -- stood still among the rubble, so silent that the wriggling and muffled cries of those abandoned on the ground rang clear in the alley, echoing off what was left of the brick. Evan’s eyes jumped automatically the spot he had seen Ivan Rosier last, brandishing his wand and cackling proudly before he had been eclipsed from sight. The man wasn’t just nowhere to be heard, but nowhere to be seen.
What was left of Evan’s confidence plummeted to the heels of his feet.
The silent scream lasted; the shock wore off long before it ended. The stillness of his father’s body was not that of a stunning spell, or any temporary magic. The permanence of death colored his form, weighing his flesh and bones down against the ground.
Dead, dead, dead.
His hummingbird heart propelled Evan forward, then backward--- away, away, away. He threw two curses back across his shoulder--- the first a lethal green; the second a glowing display to claim the mess. Evan ran from the alley into the fresh snow, apparating with his wand to the mark on his arm, in desperate search of the Dark Lord--- the last man who could tell him how stupid he’d been; the last man whose criticism he would actually be able to hear.
He could feel the adrenaline that had erupted into light buzzing through his veins like an electric shock straight to the skin. The tips of his fingers, poised at the ready and willing to bring themselves to his lips to plead his silence shot toward his wife’s hip instead at the same moment he withdrew his wand, and though he never got the chance to say so, he knew exactly why with the cat and mouse. They had been playing with them for so long. Toying for so long, and it had worked. Frank wasn’t always himself. Alice wasn’t always herself. The nightmares still haunted them, and it was cat and mouse had that pulled them wholeheartedly toward unforeseen circumstance. It was the desire to end the circumstance with an ending the masked in front of them had worked toward, and worked toward well. Frank and Alice were predictable, and it showed.
Fortunately, Frank and Alice were also brave. And though that showed just the same, it was that drive which pressed him forward as hard as he could be pressed.
Fight the fire with fire, he had pleaded. Now, he was getting his chance.
He already understood the pain and anger that would come with a killing curse should anyone just outside of their metropolitan alley way decide nose their way into what all the commotion was about. They would kill anyone who crossed their path without hesitance; if, of course, the person who ventured was lucky. No one could see. No one could hear, no one could know, and no one could have any idea of what was about to happen right under their nose. He glanced upon masked faces that he knew were there for not just her but him as well, casting the first of his curses with as much power as he could muster without time for confusion. And Frank, with the speed of the trained and the fright of the damned, turned Rowan north to south, sealing off the alley to the world that lay just behind it.
No more.
The words played over and over inside of Alice’s mind. No more would they play the game behind the lines, it was finally time for their opponent to face them, face them and make it clear why it was them singled out. Sure, she knew that an explanation was highly unlikely, but it was something to think about as she bolted to the left, missing a curse aiming towards her. For years she had trained for the very moment, her skills obvious as she slashed her wand throughout the air with the precision of a composer on stage. There was an elegance to her movements, each thought through quickly until every spell offered more protection as faceless beings were tossed back, her eyes jolting towards Frank for a fraction of a second. Always having to make sure he was fine, because unlike before, he was not just her husband, but a soon to be father. If anything, that would fuel her actions to make sure nothing would end with them at a loss. “Hiding behind those bloody masks…” She snarled, her voice thick with both sarcasm and anger, and she was, angry and on a mission.
“Come on then!” She shouted as one of the Death Eaters aimed her way, their actions predictable, and she had them on their back with a flick of her wand, the wordless casting certainly offered them a leg up, and the dolt behind the mask was tossed back into a nearby wall. Back and forth she moved, not stalling for a moment, never once offering up a clear shot, and they wouldn’t. She was Alice Longbottom, and they would all see why her and her husband had been given their positions, why they continued to be amongst the best of the best. It wasn’t because of skill, though they had plenty, or smarts, which they had in spades, it was because they cared, they cared for the good of others, cared for each other, and saw past the silliness that was prejudice.
With a whip of blonde locks, Alice cleared a path, working around the curses until one nearly clipped her, the blast causing a bit of the wall behind them to blast apart, rubble dancing around her boots like fallen droplets. Knowing they would have to keep the destruction to a minimum, her focus intensified. With Frank finishing up the spells, she bought them a little more time until one weasel of a man tried to take advantage of that. “Petrificus Totalus!” The words shout of her mouth so quickly it was like an added slap as the man fell down like a ton of bricks, hitting the ground, laying forgotten as she went back to fighting. Fighting for three lives to escape.
Evan could hear his father’s shrilly shouted commands as he emerged from the building, bolting towards the alley. He waved his wand, procuring a wave of bright red light that chipped a troll-sized chunk of brick from the top of one of the walls. It collided with a dumpster, smattering smaller pieces across the narrow way. One of their men already laid still on the ground between his father and their opponents; if he had still been alive when Evan had arrived, he wasn’t by the time a hunk of the brick crumbled over his face.
A minor loss and easy sacrifice for what they had to gain; Evan spared no time grieving the causality.
But the Longbottoms were quick, evading even his best reductors. More debris appeared as every object in sight blast apart, flying into the many lines of Evan’s accomplices’ fire. There were five of them left now, standing side by side in the alley without so much as a breath between their curses. Each of them full to the brim with fury, rage, indomitable will---
Yet the Longbottoms had somehow remained unscathed.
No more than five minutes had come and gone, but they had passed like a weary day in battle. Evan was all but seething, heaving as he resorted to the best of the curses still hidden up his sleeve. He would prove to the Longbottom pair that he was capable of damage; prove to his father that he wasn’t there for any name. He was there because he had earned it--- a worthy soldier for the Dark Lord’s army, just as capable and dangerous as any of the rest, if not more so. Unlike the Death Eater who flew past him, colliding fatally, surely, with the ground several yards back. His grip on his wand tightened, so firm that he was sure he could feel the stinger of the manticore burning through his palm with its feisty venom. surging its power through not only the spruce, but his veins.
“Expulso!” Evan shouted, sending the remains of the dumpster flying into the air. He flinched, dodging as one whipped past his head. From behind, there was a gasp; he didn’t need to turn and witness Cramson sinking to his knees to know the metal had found a target, even if not the one he had intended. And then there were three.
A duo of rage and smug pride molted into one, clouding Evan’s vision as it fused with the white-hot fury in his blood. This was some of his best work--- irrefutable by the amount of damage that had been done, and in so little time. The alley smelled of blood, and, yes he delighted in it; but not nearly enough of it belonged to them.
“Enough, Longbottom!” Evan heard his father shout into the midst of hexes as a cloud of smoke rose into the air like dust in a windstorm. “Say your final prayers. This,” he said, posing his wand as the great cloud engulfed them all, obstructing the vision of the last few soldiers standing, “is where you meet your end. Avada Kedavra.”
Reckless abandon wasn’t a concept Frank ever thought he would associate with Alice, and yet, there he stood, watching her radiate it. He thought of the five seconds it would have taken to send his Patronus to Alastor Moody, and frowned. “I agree with you,” he whispered, and he did. Very much so. “If we have the chance we take it but we don’t know what we’re getting into here, Al, we’re–” Frank trailed off stagnantly, grateful that she had at least grabbed his hand, first, and second, hadn’t apparated directly into the alley she was found in. He glanced quickly in both directions as well as over his shoulder, clearing his head of all negative possibility and letting observance flood him as quickly as his eyes narrowed. Now wasn’t the time to argue. Not to mention, though he didn’t like admitting it, there were just as many what ifs on the side of backup.
Now wasn’t the time to argue; now wasn’t the time to chase maybe. Now wasn’t the time to tell her no. Now was the time to act, and to keep himself not worried, but utterly alert; a partner who’s rowan wand lay in wait, clasped tightly just out of sight. So Frank kept his mouth shut, and fell into step beside his wife.
Alice had given up on waiting or doing what was expected, she was tired of fighting and the games. The games being played at their expense. If one could call being kidnapped and then reminded of it for months to come a game, instead of an obvious lack of mental capabilities in a few subjects. She reached out and took Frank’s wrist, unable to think of anything to say and let everything be said through a simple touch. Want at the read and alert, steps were taken, less cautious than usual. For once she didn’t care about protocol, her emotions were winning out which was dangerous. Of course she understood that, there was no denying it. However it didn’t matter. They were being played with, and it was high time she allowed herself to be an active participant and no longer could she avoid the unavoidable.
As they came to the lighted area of the alley, Alice went back to the time she’d been found, thinking of everything that had been done, everything she had went through and now it was back to the forefront. “What aren’t we seeing?” She said finally, glancing over to meet her husbands gaze. “We’re here. Why make us wait, why with the cat and mouse?” Her tone was harsh, a little bitter for the usual soft and cheerful woman. In that moment she wasn’t herself, she was more, she was ready to end everything for once and for all, her wand vibrating as if it was itching to be used.
Never before had time dragged on so immeasurably that it seemed to halt. Evan sat still, congested and cold, with his knees shoved beneath his chin. His mask itched, especially the strap beneath his jawline, though not badly enough to distract him from the endless stream of thoughts flowing through his head. He had begun to suspect, not entirely an hour after his father had arrived and takens his place, that the Longbottoms weren’t really coming after all. His father’s clue had become another failure to pin to their name; of that he was convinced. Even if the had discovered what had been left behind, there was every chance they lacked the cleverness to decode it. He couldn’t be the judge of that, though, not since he didn’t know what the clue actually was. He had been forbidden from going and assigned to guard the deeply shadowed alley instead. In the eyes of Ivan Rosier, Evan was still a child, not nearly as decorated a veteran as his elder, and far more susceptible to error.
Error; that, they simply could not afford.
And so the hours had passed, each as dismal and quiet as the last, and Evan had sat mostly quiet in the janitor’s closet of one of the alley’s buildings, located in the basement, peering through a small window conveniently placed between the ground and the floor above. Until Cramson’s knee flinched behind him, digging at Evan’s vertebrae; he cursed under his breath, turning, fist high and mighty--- the only threat he could manage without ruining the grand surprise. The strap he had grown to tolerate not long after his service to the Dark Lord had begun. His comrade’s knee, on the other hand---
“They’re here,” Cramson hissed. He grabbed Evan’s head and twisted it around. He watched as two pairs of feet, clad in shoes he did not recognize, shuffled past cautiously. The aches of cramped muscles disappeared as adrenaline flushed through Evan’s body. He watched in anticipation, knowing that his father’s anti-disapparation spells were in place--- knowing, even more importantly, that the Longbottoms had no clue---
And then alley was filled with lights, flashing in every color, and Evan was running from the room, eager to take his place on the front lines.
The high of the day plummeted to an all time low when Evan’s head kissed a concrete pillar, knocking him to the foyer floor. If he hadn’t grown up seeing the crack in the ground grow, spreading from wall to wall at a slothful place throughout his childhood, he might have thought his collapse had caused it. He rolled over, his muscles coiling and r e t r a c t i n g until his lungs could do the same. He squinted at the shadowy figure above him, the light from even the dullest of candles pricking his eyes and spearing through his brain in waves.
“Where were you?”
“Squibs,” was the only word Evan’s tongue could grasp hold of. He coughed it up like drowning man., and wished, for a moment, that he had spent longer in the throngs of the confused, powerless, dirty things, perpetuating the chaos that had come from their little gathering rather than walking into the chaos that greeted him whenever he returned home. “Squib riot. Whole fucking lot--- had to--- had to---OOF!” His father’s steel toes pressed pause on his breath, and Evan rolled onto his side, coughing and wheezing. A tear escaped his left eye; he clenched them both shut and smacked his temple against the floor to wipe it away it.
“No business being there,” Ivan Rosier sneered. “No fucking bus--- The Dark Lord didn’t tell you to go, you little bitch!” he screamed, shattering a mirror on the wall behind him with his fist. “He didn’t tell you to go. I didn’t tell you to go. We have other things to do, you worthless sack of shit.”
The trickling of stale whiskey into the last of the crystal glasses sounded distant and underwater until Evan finally swallowed. He watched, chest heaving beneath the w e i g h t of his battered body, as his head burned scarlet with the increasing pressure of corked words he knew better than to spill in front of his father.
“We have an assignment,” Ivan reminded him, his voice dull and even between swigs of his drink. “And we’ve got steps to take. To prod our puppets forward. Steps we could have taken today, if you’d had common sense enough to mind your own business.”
It took a great, concentrated effort to process all that was going on in Evan’s head. Never had he been capable of making room for more than one emotion at once -- not unless he was under the direction of his father -- but especially not with stars twinkling in front of heavy eyes. Guilt and shame crept from the tips of his ears and digits, diluting the all-encompassing resentment he felt for the man over his lecture. Yes, he should have been available. He should have been waiting to accept orders readily instead of jumping at someone else’s. But---
“So that’s my choices. It’s vengeance for Vincent, or wiping out all of that dirty blood---” A hyena’s laughter sprang from Evan’s lips. “That’s all on the agenda. Which would you have chosen, father?”
The backlash was instantaneous--- another series of kicks that he didn’t bother shielding himself from.
“Stupid. Imbecile.” A dragon-like snort gushed through Ivan’s flaring nostrils. “Do you think he was that important? Idiot Vincent? If I’d had my way, he’d have been banished to your Squib lot the day he was born. Always knew he was a little idiot. Deserved nothing more than his kind.” He drained the crystal glass in his hand before he dropped it to the floor beside Evan’s head. “The Dark Lord would never waste his efforts on your brother. If it had been any other way, he’d have sent you a floral arrangement for what happened to him.”
“Then those aren’t His orders,” Evan snarled, all but frothing at the mouth as he squirmed angrily against the cold marble. To ignore the Dark Lord’s orders for his own satisfaction--- had Ivan Rosier lost his mind? “They’re yours. And I. Choose. His.”
This time, Evan braced himself for the blow... But it never came. He peeked through swollen eyelids, wondering if that was the signal his father was waiting for. Still, nothing came. Nothing but the sound of the old phonograph c r e a k i n g to life across the room, its rusty parts protesting as Ivan put them into place. Evan’s breath slowed, the great difficulty of making his body work when his consciousness was fading, his vision turning to shadows. They silenced themselves, overcome quickly by a tune Evan hadn’t heard in a very long time.
The winter of seventy-seven came to him a flurry of memories, flashes of orders and demands Evan had executed on his father’s behalf--- all at the hands of the song that had played over and over until he had ground the last of his sanity away between his teeth two years prior.
“The Longbottom girl’s song,” he murmured, clenching his fist.
“You’re right, Evan,” Ivan cooed mockingly. “Those aren’t the Dark Lord’s orders.” He crouched down beside his son, crushing the mirror’s shattered crystal to dust beneath his feet. “But His are the ones we’re following. The Longbottoms have taken in too many of our men. And it’s our fault, don’t you realize?” He placed his hand to his chest. “My fault. We set the bitch free too soon. We didn’t destroy her.”
Anger consumed Evan once more--- wholly. All their hard work had gone to the dogs if the Longbottom girl was still a threat. The wasted nights spent slouched in front of the entrance to her makeshift holding cell, the threatening letters he had taken such a thrill from composing...
And it had all gone down the drain.
“They’ve taken long enough to solve our puzzle in Cardiff,” Ivan said gravely. “The Dark Lord is growing impatient. We must push them in the right direction. They must be erased from the picture. Do you understand me?”
He felt like his head was being hammered into the floor; yet, Evan managed to nod once. Ivan grinned wickedly.
“Tomorrow, then,” Ivan said brightly, though his voice came in fuzzy. He stood, pointing his wand at the phonograph, flooding the house the with dreaded notes. “We bring our prey one step closer to their fate.”
Fate, thought Evan bitterly before the numbing darkness of unconsciousness swallowed him whole.
The dense sound of wood c r a c k ing down the middle was oddly, yet unsurprisingly, soothing, s a t I s f y I n g. The lost crusade of nursery rhymes falling in sweet, dulcet notes on Evan’s ears as his ax plummeted into the old oak tree on the edge of the Rosiers’ land. He swung again.
THWACK.
Two weeks. Vincent had been gone for two weeks. Beulah had cried and bit and beat for two weeks--- no, seven days until Cora couldn’t take it anymore and shut her up with sedatives and gum-gluing toffee, and then tied her to the bed--- double doses for today, marking the incarceration of her firstborn son.
“Sick bitch,” she’d sneered the afternoon of the trial, flinging Evan so hard at the dining room doors with her wicked hex that they’d shattered under the force of his weight. “I don’t have time for this, Evan. I don’t have time for this family. She’s your mess now.”
His mess. The Rosiers’ mess. That’s right, Cora was a Crabbe now, with a little heir for not-the-Rosiers brewing in her womb. The Rosier l e g a c y meant nothing to her now. She, unlike Evan had escaped the curse. The curse of being so named, (trapped) among a family of failures, as evidenced by Vincent’s imprisonment. Red-handed failures. That’s all they were anymore.
It was no wonder his mother, trapped by youth’s poor decisions, had finally cracked. The latest upset had cracked Evan, too--- right down the middle. Of all the pure families to be born into. His was anything but. He pulled his ax from the rotting tree and swung again, and again, and again, and again, and a---
Crrrraaa-CK.
His lips s t r e t c h e d, tight across his face, a contented grimace that nearly resembled a smile—only nearly. The tree hadn’t fallen yet. His bones were still whole, hollow, impatient, whole, not yet ground to dust by the magnificent trunk.
“Fall,” Evan commanded the tree. “Stupid—FALL!” He kicked the tree with the bottom of his foot and swung low.
THWACK.
“CURSED MONSTER OF A WEED, GOD DAMN YOU, FALL OV---“
Thump.
He was only vaguely aware of the ground as it met his head, infinitely more conscious of the blinding light shining between the backs of his eyelids. And then the p a i n, dense as the tree trunk, taking root at the base of his skull and spreading, wrapping its vines around him, through the h o l l o w of his bones.
A prism of bright flashes swapped colors back and forth in his head. Mulciber’s taunting advice to “look after your brother” and Beulah’s one hundred and thirty-seven mournful screams since the day he’d gone--- they echoed in rounds in his head.
“Get up, you filthy shit.”
But Evan was frozen--- not by fear, no. It had been fear that had frozen Evan in his father’s presence as a child. Fear that had made him behave for his parents on the rare occasion that they required him to. Fear – of thick palms, splintered swatches, the o v e r f l o w i n g bathroom sink and its puce-tinted water, its contamination aged three weeks – had kept Evan subdued in his youngest years. Fear had taught him to hide in dark corners, to cringe back from the places and things his father forbade. Fear was fleeing--- an urge so unlike the one that pounded from heart to veins as his body reset itself, wired to move the moment his muscles forgot this new suppressant and managed movement again.
Evan knew fear, and he knew that this was not it.
But, shock was not – never had been – in Evan’s vocabulary. Quick to act, swift to move, bold and instinctual—no, careless and impulsive. He sat, w a i t i n g, impatient as it drained from his veins too s l o w l y, watching the burly silhouette of his attacker moving onward in the distance. Decidedly, unquestionably, he detested this inhibitor. Just as his childish fear had generated a thick layer of immunity against itself over his skin, the foreign source of his paralysis had already rolled away, slicked like rain down from his muscles to the dewy grass beneath him.
Evan knew it was his father, but his body refused to accept the reality until he had followed him into the house. He stood just under six feet. Had his hair been gray before? It was white now, nearly, beneath the dim light of the foyer’s lamps, close enough to the shade consider it so. For a man who had spent the past two years on the run, he was exceptionally composed--- for now. Evan tread into the room lightly as he pulled off his gloves, finger by finger.
"Embarrassing,” Ivan Rosier scoffed, loudly. “Embarrassments. Bloody bastards. Bringing shame to my name---”
“Your name?” Evan barreled forward, caution forgotten. "You think we want your putrid name? You, who can’t show your face in public, too scared of being captured--- Your name was a disgrace before we even had it.”
For now. A red jet pummeled Evan to the ground.
"My name was at the top of the Dark Lord’s list!” the senior Rosier bellowed. “And you petty criminals have soiled it. Childish, petty murderers. All my hard work destroyed by idiots--- and for nothing.”
Destroyed? For nothing? After months of avoiding the world outside of Knockturn Alley and his home; after the questioning, the inspections, the security and stability his father’s presence had once provided gone--- and taken by his mistakes, not Evan’s.
Evan’s rage sprung like a leak, frothing quickly to an eruption.
“Your fault,” he hissed, pouncing forward. ”A l l your fault. You couldn’t have have been here two weeks ago? You came back just to rub our noses in it, how we’re nothing without you.” He sneered, fist colliding with the old man’s eye socket. “It’s been over,” Evan yelled. “You’re too late. Fucking failure. YOU’RE the failure! It’s over. Murderous fucking---”
“SHUT UP!”
His head rebounded off the wall thrice, but Evan only heard the echo of his skull cracking on the corner of the side table. Fuck. You FUCK-ing---”
“STOP!” Ivan’s heel dug into his son’s chest until his breathing evened, still shallow and swift. He leaned down to his ear, the heel of his palm shoved against Evan’s windpipe. “It’s not over yet.”
“It... is.”
Ivan scoffed. He pressed his wand to Evan’s temple.
“You’re going to learn, Evan, that this business -- our business -- is never over until you finish it.” His well-oiled lips slicked into a grin. “Until you finish them. And finish any fucking fool---” his grasp on Evan’s throat stiffened “---that stands in your way. Even if I have to waste the Dark Lord’s time to teach you myself. I didn’t put your brother in prison. I didn’t send him to his death. I’m not seeking out reasons to put our soldiers in Azkaban.” He tapped his wand once, twice, thrice against his head. “Don’t waste your time attacking me. Finish off every last fool who’s dared to cross you. ”
The elder Rosier let up, barely, just enough for Evan to speak. He was right; his father was always right. It hadn’t been a choice to go on the run. It hadn’t been him to put Vincent behind bars. The Rosiers weren’t so disgraced after all. It was only the Aurors’ opinion anyway, wasn’t it? He took a shallow breath.
“How?” Evan gasped. Ivan allowed himself a final dig of the heel against his son’s chest.
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