The battle was necessary, and she knew that. It was just harder than she thought it would be.
The battleground was like she had imagined, and Amelia had gripped her wand tightly as she maneuvered through the people, mask secured to her face and keeping her identity a secret from everyone except fellow Janus members. The Death Eaters she fought only graced her mind for a second before she sent spells their way, but they had masks as well. Amelia took pride in the fact that she could suppress emotions when need be, and those masks made it easier for her to do so. Without seeing their faces, they were but another thing in her way, another person trying to stop Janus’ victory.
The Order members, however, were another matter entirely.
None of them wore masks, something she had always found extremely idiotic. They were exposed, in harm’s way, and it just opened them up as an simpler target to find and take care of on the Death Eaters’ end. How many deaths of families had this lead to? All unnecessary. All pointless.
Fighting them was harder, even if Amelia would never admit it. These were people she’d gone to school with, people she’d gotten to know ever since she joined the Order. People that, despite how she’d act otherwise, she cared for. She saw them, but they didn’t see her.
It was best that way.
Her spells didn’t stop once, she kept fighting, but only one person could make her hesitate... and Amelia found herself face-to-face with Edgar, recognizing him but not the other way around. Her blood ran cold and she physically paled as her brother sent spells her way. Amelia would fight everyone else in this field, no matter how close or distant she was from them, but Edgar...
No. She would never fight Edgar.
He’s the only person she’d admit to being afraid of, if she thought about it. Here, as they fought, Amelia could just picture the look on his face if he ever found out she was with Janus. How disappointed he’d be, maybe angry, never understanding...
I’m sorry, Ed.
Dodge.
I have to do what’s best for us.
Dodge.
What’s best for this world. Please understand.
Fall.
Please.
Amelia managed to escape only when he was briefly distracted, but had he not been...what would he have done? Would he have finished her off? She didn’t think so, that wasn’t his personality, but the possibility was still there. She would never find out, she ran when his head turned and they were called for a retreat, but Amelia knew one thing.
She never wanted to fight her brother again.
For so many months she distanced herself from him, estranging the two to the point that they could be strangers. Now, she wanted the opposite. She messed up, but when it came to Edgar, Amelia just hoped she could make this one thing right.
“It hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that cause pain.” — Matthew Quick
They say if you break him open, he’d bleed silver. That there isn’t a cloud in the sky he hasn’t found a silver lining for. Happiness isn’t hard to find for Edgar Bones, at age five, he is a boy with more joy per square inch than the nightsky had stars.
He’s five years old when they find him camped out on the front porch, just out of the reach of the rainstorm except for the sunshine yellow of his wellingtons and the occasional shower when the wind picks up. His face is solemn for once, determined, and his nanny knows better than to ask what he is waiting for.
It isn’t a what so much as a who and any moment now they’re due back from the train station.
Amelia had been shepherded inside within ten minutes, an insistence based on the rain and her age that their nanny had repeatedly tried to use against him but Edgar was old enough now to form full and comprehensive sentences like, “No thank you, maybe later,” and, “I’ve thought about it and I would prefer to wait out here.”
Even at five years old, there’s a stubbornness to his nature that refuses to be shifted by outside forces like freshly baked cookies or the weather.
And so he waits.
A particularly strong gust of wind splatters him with spring rain and he grins in the face of it, because on the other side of that gust of wind the gate creaks open. In a squeak of yellow that splashes through the puddles he is down the steps, zipping past his mother and around his father to tackle Diggory straight off his feet and back into the water that’s collected at the head of the path with a warcry of, “Digger!”
There’s a groan and a subdued splash of water as his older brother drags himself up off the ground, three times his height and with the kind of expression that suggested he was reconsidering coming home for the Easter holidays (just a little bit.)
“Egg,” Diggory replies, the begrudging smile on his face belied by the gleam in his eyes as he stooped to hoist him up from the ground. “Slow down kiddo, you’ll knock us both into orbit.”
—
At seven years old, Diggory becomes another cloud in the sky. Blocking out some small patch of the world as he’d known it with a grey blotch of absence and the first taste of abandonment.
At seven years old, he becomes the big brother in the family.
He carts Amelia around dutifully on his travels, pointing out the birds nest he’d collected from the grass and the ladybugs crawling on the fence. He smuggles kittens into her room when his parents tell him that they need to go home and a baby hedgehog when it loses it’s parents and he doesn’t mind when she blazes past him.
He thinks that if Diggory will be a cloud, then Amelia will be his silver lining.
Clouds were only there to remind you what the sunshine looked like anyway.
“War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." Khaled Hosseini
There’s blood everywhere.
It’s a strange thing to register, the blood on his fingers and in his hair and the heat as it carves streams across the plains of his jaw, splattered like a mist across his face. It’s in his eyes, on his skin. His ears are ringing and everywhere, everywhere the air is filled with heat and danger and searing arcs of rainbow colour, but all he can think is that that it will be a nightmare to get out of his robes.
All around him there are masks, a terrifying cascade of hidden faces wreaking havoc on a blood-soaked battlefield and Edgar can’t hear a damn thing, his wand is slick with blood in his hands and there’s a wheeze of pain as something constricts around his lungs like a fist. He thinks, perhaps, that it’s a spell but he can’t bring himself to look away from the crumpled body on the ground that used to be Albus Dumbledore.
There’s blood everywhere, but it isn’t his.
He trips on a limp arm, crashes into the mud on his knees and he’s never seen — he’s never seen anyone dead like this before. He’d seen his uncle, eyes closed and dark suit and cold, so cold, but peaceful somehow. This isn’t peaceful.
This is blood in his eyelashes and a head two feet south of the rest of it’s neck and blood and blood and blood and Edgar’s breath rattles in his lungs because he can’t seem to catch it and there —
His wand is up, a spell rebounding off of the shield he’d summoned with a thundercrack as he pushes back to his feet, back turned to the crumpled figure behind him and blood on his face. And there — just for a second in the masked figure standing before him, he sees hesitation.
Recognition.
“Who—” he starts to ask, breathless and trembling because none of this is right, Albus Dumbledore is in pieces on the ground behind him and the masked figure in front of him is hesitating like they know him.
Then they move.
It’s curious, how easily instincts take over. How they swat each other’s spells aside like it’s a choreographed dance he’s known since he could walk: they know exactly what is coming, when to duck and when to counter, and he knows — he knows he recognises the way they move, but his ears are ringing so loud he can’t hear anything and nothing makes sense and around him he can see the Order falling back, calling for a retreat as the wave of masks creep in. He ducks another flash of red — stunning spell — and his hand is poised, the spell on his lips one he’s never spoken out loud.
Retreat echoes distantly in his ears, as if he’s underwater.
His wand dips.
Hers doesn’t.
The spell catches him halfway through apparition, a pained gasp escaping his lips as blood pours from his wand arm and he almost, almost drops his wand along the way. It drops with a thump into the grass on the grounds of Hogwarts, and his hand reaches automatically to clamp over the wound.
He blinks, hazily, at the group of students who have stopped short, staring wide-eyed at the nightmare coated in blood before him and hearing them start to scream before his vision blurs and he sways like a marionette who’s strings have been cut, wishing he’d thought to apparate to St. Mungo’s instead before he collapses.
it's so hard to forget pain,
but it's even harder to remember sweetness.
we have no scar to show for happiness.
we learn so little from peace.
For the first few years of Remus Lupin’s life, happy memories are abundant.
Memories of warm afternoons playing outside in the sun until it had slipped down far below the horizon, laughing so hard until it seemed like he might collapse from exhaustion. Memories of Hope sitting him in her lap before reading to him from the dusty storybook of fairy tales, him always knowing how the story would end but begging her to continue until it was over. Memories of listening to Lyall tell the true stories of his latest adventure to a far off land, to capture a great beast and save the innocent civilians from it’s terrors. Memories of trips to the ocean taken with his parents, the smell of the sea air and the lingering breeze everywhere around him. Memories of sitting on his father’s shoulders as they strode through the doors of the Ministry for the first time, of looking on with wide eyed excitement and awe at the fuzzy photographs of these creatures he believed to only exist within the pages of a story book.
For the first few years of his life, Remus Lupin was happy.
It’s strange, because he’s small - still so young, and having so many good memories to hold onto seems like an odd thing. Memories often fade away after childhood, leaving behind nothing but good feelings and a blur of remembrance. A face, a location, a rush of excitement that brings back nostalgia. But ironically things like these have a way of sticking out in his mind. Perhaps because they’re important to him. Perhaps because they meant something to him.
Or perhaps because they’re a stark contrast of normality against the next decade to come.
He’s sitting on his bed, cross legged as he skims the essay that he’s been writing for Herbology for what has to be the third time, before picking his head up and scanning his eyes around the room again. It’s quiet.
Alarmingly so.
With a huff, he turns back to the assignment. James, Sirius and Peter have been gone from the dorms all morning, having mysteriously gone on some sort of expedition and still not having returned despite hours passed. Remus gives a glance at the clock on the bedside table, a vague wonder if they’d managed to get themselves into trouble, before he busies himself again.
A few minutes pass, and he manages to proofread a few paragraphs of the essay, before he looks up again and finds all three of them standing at the foot of his bed, unreadable yet almost giddy expressions on their faces. He opens his mouth, about to ask them what was happening, before deciding against it and returning to what he was doing - he’s not sure he wants to know.
“I’m too busy to help you guys get out of trouble. Maybe later.”
There’s hushed whispering coming from the end of bed, followed by a scuffle, and when Remus looks up again, James is standing right next to him, grinning and holding out a piece of parchment in his hand. Remus gives him a look, eyeing the paper nervously, before looking back again at James and slowly taking the paper.
“You’re all being very weird. Well. Weirder than usual,” he mumbles as he looks down at the paper, still waiting for something to happen. It’s a piece of parchment, which includes a ridiculously long list of instructions. He stares at it, none of it making sense - it’s long and complicated and will most likely end with them being suspended or expelled or dead. This only leads him to furrow his brows, before pushing the piece of paper back at James. Refraining from rolling his eyes, Remus turns back to his homework instead. “Whatever you three are planning, I’m not helping,” he answers matter of factly.
Like that’s going to work. He’s fairly sure that’s his answer to most things. And yet, he usually ends up helping.
“Who said you had to help?” James retorts with a laugh, starting to fold the paper up before waving it in his face. “You mean to tell me you haven’t figured it out yet? Someone hasn’t been paying attention in Transfiguration class. And to think I copied off you last exam!”
Remus’ pen stops mid letter, his eyes glued on the paper as something seems to click with what James has said and one of the lessons that they learned just a few weeks ago. “Give me that,” he spits, throwing his stuff off of his lap onto the ground and grabbing the paper from James’ hand, furiously opening it up and rereading the supplies and the steps on it once again. He stares at it, the blood rush in his ears the only thing he can hear for a few moments as it suddenly makes sense. Despite the whirlwind of frenzied feelings that seems to have opened in his chest, he somehow manages to calmly fold it up and tuck it into the pocket of his jumper where he’ll dispose of it later, before slowly looking up at the other three. “You’re all mad. No. No way. I won’t let you.”
Peter’s already clamoring, brows knitted with worry as he tries to tell Remus to understand, but James talks over him instead, reaching over and crowding his space where he quickly plucks the piece of parchment from where it’s been tucked away in Remus’ pocket. “You don’t get a say, Lupin. We were just telling you out of courtesy. But it’s already been decided. We voted, and it’s happening,” he replied with a shrug.
He blinks, completely overwhelmed by a mess of confusion and guilt and desire to tell them no - but he can’t. “You can go to Azkaban for becoming an unregistered Animagus,” he tries weakly, sinking back down onto his mattress, his finger twisting nervously into the hem of his sweater.
“All worth the risk.” James is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, a look that he usually wears with a smug expression about doing something dumb - but it’s different today. It’s meaningful with good intentions - and it’s making it even harder for Remus to argue with him.
He thinks, trying to come up with something else. “I could hurt you. Any of you. All of you.”
With a shake of his head, Peter is frowning. “No. You can’t. Animagi are safe to be around werewolves. That’s why we’re doing it.”
The room falls into silence, and he can’t think of anything else to say, but he has to. There must be something, there has to anything else he can find that will make them rethink this crazy scheme they’ve come up. His mouth opens and closes, trying to find the words, but he eventually stops as he feels a hand on his shoulder.
“Remus. It’s okay,” Sirius says to him, giving him a small smile. “We all know the risks, and we all still want to do it. We voted, and we all said yes. You shouldn’t have to go through this alone, so we’re going to be there with you.”
At that point, he’s run out of idea to argue with them over, because despite his own hesitations and his own worries, he wants this. It’s selfish, but to think of a full moon - no, every full moon - and to think of himself going into it and coming back with someone there around him, rather than waking up alone before Madam Pomfrey comes to collect him.
He can’t say no to this.
He doesn’t want to.
Dragging a hand over his face, he looks away, the overwhelming amount of emotions swirling in his chest feeling like it might spill forward at any moment.
He’s never had friends like this. Hell, he’s never had friends at all. But to finally have friends and ones who are like James and Sirius and Peter - he’s not sure what he’s done to deserve ones like these. Ones who have not only been willing to look past what he is and see him for who he is instead, but have now also decided to put themselves at risk of a multitude of things. Just so he doesn’t have to be alone.
The room is still quiet, and when Remus finally looks up, they’re still standing there - because if there’s one thing he’s come to realize, it’s that when they get an idea, they don’t let go of it.
“Okay.”
He should be saying thank you, pouring out his gratitudes for this unbelievably selfless thing that they’ve all decided to take on, but he’s knows a simple thank you isn’t enough. Probably never will be. Instead, he inhales shakily, before he clambers off of the bed and to his feet. He doesn’t say anything when he awkwardly tries to fit his arms around all three of them only to fail completely, but he doesn’t think he needs to.
"A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul... Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged."
Bellatrix Lestrange wasn’t a patient person, and if it weren’t defeating the whole purpose of her visit she would have already set fire to the library.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, slamming shut yet another empty book. Where the hell were her answers? Did she have to ramp up the desperation to get the damned place to take pity on her? She’d already been here all of two hours, not counting the ones that had been spent trying to track down the infamous library-on-wheels. What else could she do?
With an annoyed huff Bellatrix sunk into her seat, tipping her head back and inhaling slowly. Tearing the place apart would get her nowhere; for once violence really wasn’t the answer. Instead her thoughts regressed to the familiar, rehearsing the mundane details of her quest for what felt like the fiftieth time that day as if it would do her any good.
The diary you got from Lucius. The cup you already own. Nagini was murdered. The locket. There’s a locket. Where’s the bloody l o c k e t...
There was a definite method to this madness. A pattern she could use as her trail of breadcrumbs if the books would only nudge her in the right direction. House pride. The cup, the locket - it couldn’t be a coincidence. The Dark Lord was meticulous in his work and this was no different. If there were tokens from both Slytherin and Hufflepuff, then there had to be one from Ravenclaw at the very least. Gryffindor she felt more inclined to write off, though not entirely. As far as Bellatrix could remember the only relic she’d ever associated with Ravenclaw house was a fabled tiara Gideon had once mentioned to her in passing before quickly going off on a tangent about how Ravenclaw’s real treasure were their countless quidditch victories.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a lead and she was in no position to be passing those up at the moment. All she needed was a sign that she wasn’t wasting her time. Her hands came together in an unconscious gesture of supplication, eyeing warily an untouched book she’d yet to try her luck with.
Please - just please give me something, anything. She needed him here, at her side, now.
Not next month, not next year, not whenever this bloody library decided to give her the time of day --- N O W
Bellatrix flexed a hand, slowly working off her nerves, and inched the book in her direction.
Tentative fingers reached over and lifted the cover to reveal ------ a blank page.
... Fuck me.
An angry, petulant screech broke past her lips and Bellatrix furiously swiped at the contents of the small desk she’d been occupying, sending books and quills and ink wells alike flying. They met the floor with a crash, black ink splattering wood as the library creaked along its intended path, uninterested in her petty ire. “Fine. Fine.” she muttered bitterly, gathering her belongings. “Well, fuck you and your infinite wisdom, then.” A foot lashed out in childish fury and kicked aside a thick, leather bound book that hit the wall and splayed open. Bellatrix’s heart leapt to her throat. There - there’d been writing in it.
She scrambled for the book in question, very nearly losing her balance as the library’s wheels caught a bump on the road, and dropped to her knees amidst the havoc she’d created mere moments before. Frantically, she leafed through the yellowed pages, a slow grin spreading across her face at the sight she was now being offered: maps. Maps of... Hogwarts?
Hogwarts. There had to be half a dozen notebooks strewn across her desk filled with endless scribbles and theories; snippets of conversations with him that she’d forced herself to recall, bulleted lists of every far-fetched possibility she’d mulled over... but Hogwarts. Hogwarts had made only casual appearances in her notes, overlooked in favor of what could be considered uncharted territory. She supposed it made sense on both a sentimental and practical level. You didn’t entrust a fraction of your soul to a place of little worth; you kept it somewhere that mattered to you. Hogwarts was home for him. It was personal and safe, heavily guarded in ways that put even Gringotts to shame. Of course there’d be one at Hogwarts and it caused her no shortage of grief to know she’d neglected such a possibility. The fleeting question of “is it really the diadem, then?” was quickly put to rest with the contents of the next page - a diagram of a beautiful tiara with an encrusted sapphire.
The corners of her mouth twitched. Now they were getting somewhere.
Bellatrix reached for her bag and dug around for a notebook to jot down an overview of the map - come to think of it she’d never stumbled upon the Room of Requirement before - seemingly thinking the better of ripping out the book’s pages and keeping them for herself. Somehow she doubted the library would repay her too kindly. A sharp exhale brought on by nerves and jittery anticipation left her as she snapped the notebook shut. Perhaps she’d be pressing her luck by asking more of the same library she’d just finished trashing in a fit, but arrogance and something rather more naive and hopeful drove her to pose the next question: “Where’s the locket?”
Every printed word suddenly began to dissolve from the pages, diagrams and maps gradually melting away into nothingness. Bellatrix scowled, a sour taste in her mouth, when just as suddenly letters began to etch themselves into the parchment. She felt a flutter in her chest and watched on with bated breath as a single word was slowly formed ---
KREACHER
Brows knit together in confusion. Kreacher? What did a ruddy house elf have to do with any ----
Bellatrix’s blood ran cold as realization dawned on her. Kreacher.
Regulus had loved that elf. Regulus who’d stolen a Horcrux. Regulus who’d betrayed them. This was what he’d taken from the Dark Lord - this was what he’d died for.
And he’d left it in the hands of a house elf.
Bellatrix rose to her feet, an uncomfortable knot building in the pit of her stomach. It was time to talk to Severus.
