It would be his turn to speak soon, and James had thought long and hard about what he wanted to say. Or more so. If, he wanted to speak at all.
"There isn't reason for him to speak," Fleamont said grumpily from his side. His Father dressed impeccably in an all white suit. Fingers curled tightly around a gold plated lion's head of his cane. The object gave the man an even more menacing appearance in James' eyes, thinking back to his Father in his prime Auror days. When he was a man you did not want chasing you down, someone who trained Alastor when he was James' age, and a person James wanted to be more than anything. Now the object aided his standing from the nasty injury that put him into retirement, but still it left Fleamont Potter a person not entirely approachable.
The Potter's weren't impressed with tonight's arrangement as a whole. Anger was felt through all three of them. Visibly clear they weren't set on making much conversation with anyone less it be prudent and polite. His mother was also in all white dress robes, with golden accents in expensive family jewels. She looked fierce against the uptight arrangement. James tore his gaze from his mother to look briefly at his uncle Moody, a small smile finding it's way to his lips at the knowing feeling he was probably under with all this attention.
"Myself and all these Order members are tortured by the very people who drink and carry on in public like all is fine. As if they don't ever expect to pay for their crimes or that they can cut into someone against their will and pretend it's acceptable. And the ministry wants me to what? Say, all is well. That I'm confident in the direction of the war?" James narrowed his eyes towards the stand, feeling his mother's hands correcting his lapels, and adjusting his boutineer.
"Sometimes the best threat is one only the enemy hears--" she said with a mischievous glint to her gaze, and it made James laugh a little. Feeling sixteen all over again when his Ma had to pay for his bail and had spoken so kindly to the officers. But every word had cut through her son knowing he was in the deepest shit for his behavior.
"Maybe you should do the speech Ma," James teased, her sneer turning into a frightening smile that was a perfect reflection to his knowing smile.
"Not happening no matter how you try," she teased him back, pulling out his glasses he loathed to wear from his inside pocket and putting them on his nose. Bringing to focus and clarity of the parchment in his hands. "Just read what you wrote-- it will be fine." Fleamount snorted earning himself a firm glare in response before they moved to have a seat and listen to the rest of the speeches.
At his name he walked up, clearing his throat.
"This event is infuriating," he started off, folding his hands behind his back, and squaring his shoulders in a military standing. He looked among the seated guests. Lingering on a few specifically. "It's glamours lies are repulsive and ironically it's masked in intent as our enemies are-- fitting. I have been told on multiple occasions that this isn't the time. Not the time for marriage, family or kids. Not the time to be brash and bold in our attempts to apprehend, because we need every available resource at every given moment. Not the time for parties, or the one I am guilty of the most. Not the time to sleep when there is work to be done. That is what I am told over and over. In every meeting, by every professional. Reading about it in the gossip papers, and hearing it in the halls of the ministry between co-workers. Telling myself.
"'Not the right time' has lost its impact on me," he paused, glancing a second at his parchment before curling his fist around it to resume his stance. "We are losing a generation of magical children to this war. We aren't having families. Were isolating muggleborn children gifted with magic to fend for themselves without a proper education. We are set on building family and friendship pillars upon foundations of lies and betrayal, on hatred and selfish designs that is destroying the integrity of our country.
"If we don't obliterate ourselves now-- even if a side wins. We are setting our future for unrest. All our actions have dire consequences for our children. Nothing stable comes from lies, and those people who find it prudent to hide. To selfishly influence our world without care to the state of our future as a whole country beyond their own gains will destroy much more than physical destruction. Battle will arise again won't it?”
His lips twitched to award the crowd with a cocky grin, "Cowards run rampant. Cowards are the people who think they know what's best for everyone and are making decisions on the war without council. They are detective, juror, and in many cases executioner without repercussions. Cowards can be defeated. They can be apprehended, and dismantled eventually. Because there is no strength in their design, no matter how hard they squint in attempt to see it.” He paused again, but just to take a step away. “Enjoy your night..."
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.
“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.
Happy memories are scarce for someone with such a tragic life.
Happiness, to Andromeda, is filled with firsts. There’s no other way to describe it other than an artistry of the number one, and Andromeda wouldn’t have it any other way. There are far too many firsts for Andromeda to list, but only five of them can be labelled her happiest, and the last particular first is sure to be Andromeda’s happiest memory of them all.
But let’s get through the others first.
Her first FIRST was a train ride into Hogwarts.
Andromeda wasn’t sure what she’d expected once she’d boarded the train. Bellatrix had already hurried her way and developed a distance between them that Andromeda realized she would have to grow used to, and so the young girl was left to fend for herself. There were hustling bodies surrounding her, once she’d left the safety of her parents’ side, and although Andromeda had never experienced claustrophobia, she was sure that that morning she had come close. Even the train’s halls seemed flooded with students, and suitcases, and pets, and robes, and poor little Andie felt as though she was suffocating with the weight of it all. The only thing that could breathe her air at this point was a little excited boy, jittering in a compartment all by himself.
She asked politely if she could sit inside with him (what was a Black girl without her manners?), and now finally out of the tight train corridors, Andie took a deep breath of the fresh air of the compartment. It seemed it wasn’t the space that was breathing her life however – the little boy sitting across from her was more intriguing than anyone she’d ever met thus far, and his aura nearly choked her with excited oxygen. Sitting across from this boy, this Teddy, as she called him, Andromeda felt so wholly happy, a happiness so much more pure than what she’d ever experienced so far in her life. She didn’t care that he was a muggleborn, despite what she knew her mother would think, and she in fact found excitement in the first within the first – her first conversation with a muggleborn on her first train ride into Hogwarts. The longer she talked to him, the happier she found herself, and a thought dawned on her that afternoon as she shuffled off the train, Ted right behind her—
After Andromeda’s first year at Hogwarts, the middle Black child learnt the horrors she would face were she to continue to interact with a muggleborn boy. Ted Tonks, it seemed, was just too much for this girl to resist, and despite her best efforts, Ted and his two friends, Holly and Tilden, quickly became Andromeda’s best friends at Hogwarts. Her second year, her third year, her fourth year passed, and closer and closer it seemed Andromeda and Ted grew, close enough that even Bellatrix made passing comments on the days where she allowed the two sisters to interact.
By their fifth year, Andromeda and Ted were experiencing feelings beyond the friendship they’d built for themselves.
Secret arrangements were often made so that Andromeda could meet with Ted and his friends and not fear the consequences of a fellow pureblood spotting them. Unfortunately, it seemed, these occasions were scarce, and it felt to Andromeda as though Holly and Tilden were just stuck to Ted’s side. As the group grew older, it became more and more obvious that Andie and Ted wanted time alone, and so another arrangement was made in which Tilden and Holly were pried from Ted’s side so the two remainders could meet in peace.
He brought candles. And dinner. And flowers. Always flowers. The two teens sat at peace on the grass, hidden by the greenhouses behind them, and they laughed and talked and just stared at each other for hours beyond the time they expected. It was once the sun had set and the stars were twinkling above them that Ted stood above Andromeda, held out his hand and said, “May I have this dance?”
And so with no music to assist them, and no dancing lessons behind either of them, the two clumsily stepped around each other in an awkward cohesion that they both called a slow dance. They laughed, and they smiled, and they danced together until their legs could no longer hold them up, and when that time came, they fell on the grass together as a tangle of limbs and rested their foreheads against each other’s.
(Smile, wave, choose, cry, scream, laugh, just keep lying)
Her third FIRST was a kiss.
She never told anyone about Ted Tonks. Not her Slytherin peers, not her sisters, not her mother or her father – the only people who knew were the only ones she’d ever trusted. The only ones she’d ever called friends so easily. Keeping such a big secret, it seemed, was squeezing her dry, and she often came close to spilling over the edges with the fondness she held for Ted and his flower friends. Year after year she’d go home and pretend like nothing had ever happened, but the longer Ted and Andromeda spent time together, the more they fell into their deep, deep feelings. Andromeda’s attraction to Ted could hardly be contained, but she’d did just that, pretending his was but another muggleborn, to her.
Her sixth year ticked around and all she wanted was him.
But suspicion had grown in Cygnus and Druella over the course of the last summer break, and they’d bruised her more than ever in reminding her of the company she should be keeping a Hogwarts. Andromeda was terrified in starting her sixth year at Hogwarts, and despite the fact that her attraction towards Ted had grown to something bigger than she’d ever thought it could, her sixth year was the year she distanced herself. Many nights were spent crying in her dormitory as she ignored and neglected the only three friends she’d ever had at Hogwarts, and she was forced to pretend that Ted and his friends meant absolutely nothing to her for fear of someone mentioning their interaction to her parents.
But something as strong as this bond can’t be broken so easily.
It’s one particular night two months into her sixth year that Andromeda finds herself sitting atop the Astronomy Tower, feet dangling over the edge precariously and tears dropping into the depths beneath her. In that moment in time, she wanted him more than she ever had before, and maybe the gods were looking fondly over them that night, for when she heard footsteps land on the tower behind her, she never expected them to belong to Ted. He knows you so well, Andromeda, he knew that she would be up here, and no words are spoken as he walks to sit beside her, feet dangling and feet tangling as they hang over the tree tops.
“I’m sorry, Ted,” she whispered.
He kissed her.
It was her first kiss with him, it was her first kiss ever, and she’s consumed by his taste, and his lips, and his heartbeat. She bended and folded into his body, slipping into his soft embrace, and her hands tangled in his hair as she deepened the kiss. Her heart was racing, her breath had stopped, but it didn’t matter, because this was Ted Tonks, and these were his lips, and doesn’t it make you so happy to know you’re going to do this more than once.
(Smile, kiss, hold, slap, shout, fight, just hold on)
Her fourth FIRST was an ‘I love you’.
She knows him now. She knows he’s every curve, his every perfection, his every flaw, his every worry. He’s hers, and she’s his, and they want nothing more than just each other. Andromeda doesn’t care anymore that her parents won’t approve. She doesn’t care anymore that Bellatrix allowed her to be tortured again the summer between her sixth and seventh. She doesn’t care anymore because Ted’s lips taste so sweet, and she wants nothing but to explore them every day.
Ted, Tilden, Holly, and Andromeda are once again a foursome to be reckoned with, ignoring the stumbles they get in having to avoid pureblood eye in public, and Ted and Andromeda are so happy in just being with each other, having each other there, holding each other close. Andromeda realizes that soon enough she’ll have a choice ahead of her, but she won’t allow herself to think any further than now, any further than the three best friends she could ever ask for.
It was a stormy night when Ted held her close in the Hufflepuff seventh year boys’ dorm. Holly and Tilden were off planting something in the greenhouses, and Ted and Andromeda had been keeping each other warm for most of the evening. Small, peppermint kisses dotted the insides of their idle conversation, and Andromeda smiled with such a peaceful contentment that she forgot there were any troubles in their beautiful relationship. All she could think about, right here, right now, was the way Ted’s breath blew softly on her neck, tickling the small hairs on the back of her neck and sending shivers up and down her spine that Ted teased her over.
The conversation, as aforementioned, was idle, and nothing heavy (most likely to do with the subject of flowers), and so the three words Andromeda uttered first were so completely unexpected from both of them.
“I love you.”
He loved her too. They loved each other. Nothing needed to be said as he pulled her closer and kissed her hard and rough, mumbling something against her lips that only Andromeda could’ve understood –
I love you, too.
They repeated it, over and over, again and again, until the words no longer had any meaning to their drunk-on-love minds. They kissed, and they laughed, and they smiled, and they repeated it (I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you), and their limbs were indistinguishable when Tilden and Holly finally returned much later that night.
She’s left them. She’s left them for him. The Blacks are nothing to her if Ted Tonks is still as in love with her as she is with him, and so she’s left them for HIM. She loves him. Merlin, she loves him. She’s 18, and she’s homeless, and she’s mere days in the real world after graduating, but she loves Ted Tonks and she wants nothing more than him. She has a suitcase behind her and a backpack on her back, and she holds more love in her heart than ever before.
He opens the door fast. She repeats the events of last night. He kisses her. She kisses him back. She’s moving in to his apartment.
The kisses are rough, and hard, and nothing of the soft peppers they’re used to giving each other. Everything is so grossly exemplified, and every small action is met by a soft moan. They’re headed towards his bedroom, his bed, she’s lying on his sheets, and the sun is setting as the layers are removed. Nothing can get deeper than their love for each other, and they hardly notice the time pass as they spend their first night together – so, so FREE.
Andromeda loves Ted Tonks – and every memory she has of him is her happiest.
-- When you kill a k i n g, you don’t stab him in the dark.
You kill him where the entire court can watch him d i e.
Smoke wafted over the field, diffusing the light from the spells that were being flung to and fro. It permeated the holes in his mask, filling his lungs and lingering on his tongue. It was carnage - fallen trees and bodies littered what once was an idyllic spot nestled in between the crags and lochs of the Highlands.
Death Eater mask shrunken and discarded in a pocket, Severus made his way across the field, securing his new mask with a sticking charm as he went. He narrowly dodged a curse, sending one back in return. He didn't bother to stick around to see if it had met its target. He had more important things to worry about at that moment in time - Janus were there for a reason and Severus would be damned if he didn't see it through.
The smoke made it hard to distinguish who everyone was, offering another layer of anonymity, all except one. Severus scoffed. He knew he shouldn't have expected anything less of the man. Even in a battle he could not resist swathing himself in brightly coloured robes. Did the old man really believe that he was so indestructible that he didn't need to appear inconspicuous?! The audacity left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The man was a way off yet, a magenta beacon of the old regime. If Severus succeeded in this it would firmly cement his position within Janus. No more hushed whispers, no more suspicious glances. He could only hope that someone else would not beat him to delivering the final blow.
Severus continued to make his way across the field, weaving between spells and people. A curse bit into his arm as he attempted to dodge a cloaked Death Eater locked in a fight with one of his fellow Janus members. He could feel the slow trickle of blood down his bicep but the wound would have to wait until later.
A jet of light from the professor’s wand and the Death Eaters in front of Severus fell. The path was finally clear. His grip tightened on his wand as he barrelled over the rough terrain, his heart thumping in his chest, sending adrenaline careening through his system. This was his moment.
“Sectumsempra!”
Time slowed to an almost painful rate. The sounds around him became muffled as his focus locked in on the man in front of him. Severus’ chest heaved, his wand slashing in the air in front of him as it pointed at the old man’s throat. The movement was familiar, precise. The curse would have sliced open the old man’s neck, cutting into the jugular - he’d be dead within minutes.
The man turned, his eyes struggling to focus on Severus’ mask as blood poured from the wound. Power coursed through his veins as he watched the old man’s beard (or what little of it hadn't been severed by the spell) turn scarlet. A voice at the back of his mind was telling his that he shouldn't be revelling in the life seeping out of the man - that this wasn't who Severus Snape was - but he pushed that niggling thought firmly behind his occlumency shields.
He stared dispassionately down at the man as he crumpled into a pile of magenta robes. Had he always looked that frail? Severus lowered his wand, his eyes following the trail of blood down the front of the other man’s robes. He knew that he should move on and continue fighting but he had to be sure. The old man was desperately clinging to the vestiges of life but there was little but moments left.
A gurgled rasp of breath. An outstretched arm falling limp to the bloodstained ground.
The tap drips, unbearably loud from two rooms away, hammering into his skull amidst the muted purring of Cat (most at home in a sea of chaos) nestled into the tattered ruins of the months of research left scattered across every surface.
Fabian’s door is open.
There’s a draft creeping through it, stirring the scraps of paper on the floor. He’s never felt so cold.
“You just wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he breathes in, breathes out, his fingers tremble as they clench into fists and laughter stutters out of him as he watches his knuckles turn white and crimson crawl down his palms. His lip is torn, bleeding, but still he worries at it with his teeth. “You never got it, did you? Why I didn’t want to fight. Why I wanted—”
Sand and sun and heat so violent it felt like it might boil his blood. Air so harsh it might scour his lungs clean. All he’s ever wanted is escape.
“It was all so pointless. Such a fucking waste, you knew it — you knew why I couldn’t do this and still—”
Still the letters came. Name after name after name, crosses through yearbook photos. Housemates. Friends. Rivals. Then her.
“It was cheap.”
He looks up from his fingers, meets the impassive eyes that stare right back at him, unmoved.
“I hated you for it.”
His reflection smiles.
“I hate you.”
Cat’s purring growls like a chainsaw as he turns his head to clamp his teeth into the flesh of Gideon’s hand and Fabian’s booming laughter echoes through the ruins of their flat. Gideon hisses and draws his hand back to his side, peering down at the teeth marks needled into his hand.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Fabian’s laughter slows, simmers into a wide gleaming grin, a vivid gash of white amidst the waxy grey of his skin.
"You’re never alone.”
—
They say that time is a circle.
It’s a battered golden watch stopped at 8.53am, October the 22nd, hanging off his wrist. It’s a red-haired girl spinning in her white dress, her husband’s adoring smile bestowed on every pirouette while a crowd watches from the edge of the dancefloor. It’s a lonely man arguing with ghosts in the wreckage of his empty flat. It’s a battlefield on the cusp of winter, frozen ground steeped in blood so thick the trees will drink it for years to come. It’s two boys chasing their sister into the freezing water at the pier and listening to her shriek until they follow her in for solidarity.
Time is a circle that we never escape. It repeats and repeats and repeats. Different lives, the same outcomes.
Sometimes it happens this way.
Two brothers walk out of a crowded pub in their hometown with a notion of violence headed their way. They’ve known it for a while now, the shadows stalking their footsteps. Their friends have been hunted down like rabid dogs for going on a year now, it’s only a matter of time before their timer hit zero.
There’s five of them, melting in behind them like they’ve been waiting all night and Gideon can tell by the wild gleam in Fabian’s eyes that he likes the odds. Gideon does too. Three weeks ago they’d danced with Marlene in a rundown dive bar because there was a jukebox and she’d had the audacity to call them old. Two weeks ago they’d buried her.
What comes next only a man behind the mask will remember. It’s broken bones and spitting blood. When they fall it’s together, not like stars but meteors, and the impact takes a few with them. When they unearth the photos, years later, brush their fingers fondly over the faces of the dead they’ll say, “That’s Gideon Prewett, it took five Death Eaters to kill him and his brother, Fabian. They fought like heroes.”
And sometimes it happens like this:
Fabian has a target on his back.
There’s an irony there, if you thought about it. Identical twins, fighting back to back, but only one in the crosshairs — he imagines it wouldn’t matter much to them which they got in the end, so long as it kept them in line. Neither of them have ever been much for staying inside the lines.
There’s blood in his mouth and blood pouring from Gideon’s arm, more of it surrounding them than he’d ever thought possible and the sharks are circling, but it isn’t the Death Eaters this time. This isn’t a battlefield, it’s a slaughterhouse and he watches, the very foundations of his faith shaken as the sacrifices are made: Frank burns, Caradoc breaks and Dumbledore — Dumbledore falls.
Dumbledore falls and the Order falls with him, they scatter on the wind like the ashes of their failing resistance.
Gideon does not run.
And sometimes ..
You line them up, side by side. A scar on his lip. A freckle beneath his eye. The way he crinkles his nose when he laughs or he always keeps his wand tucked up his sleeve, just in case. Ravenclaw. Gryffindor. Restraint. Fearlessness.
Which one are you again?
Sometimes ..
Fabian does not run.
The phoenix has burned alive, the world is in ashes around them but there’s a madness in the Prewett line: neither of them easily stomach the taste of defeat.
He likes their odds. Gideon does too.
His name means destroyer. His is the name of emancipated slaves. The call for retreat rings like wardrums in their ears and he hears Gideon laugh.
It’s the most alive he’s sounded in months.
Green is the colour of death, it’s carried in on angel’s wings, but today it’s only here for one of them. There’s blood in his mouth, blood on his hands and the roulette wheel is spinning. Love or death. Death or —
It’s a sacrificial knife meant for his back, but he takes it in the chest.
— Love.
Time is a circle. It repeats and repeats and repeats but in every life he’d make the same choice.
—
They fall apart.
One peacefully, like death suited him just as well as life had.
The other recklessly, because it isn’t death that’s waiting to catch him but the frozen, blood-soaked ground.
They both fall, but one rises.
—
Blood is beading crimson in the bite marks left behind on his hand, smeared across his skin with careless disregard. There’s always blood on his hands these days.
“I never blamed you, you know,” his reflection says.
“I know,” he replies, thumbs the torn edge of his lip where a scar might be and watches it come away crimson. “But I do.”
Their retreating figures was difficult to watch, and the curious boys at your sides (and in your arms) fidget uncertainly, the younger ones asking questions while the older three (because the five year old was smarter than you’d expect) had a vague understanding on what, exactly, was happening. The oldest understands the most, understands the war that was going on, and quickly takes away his brothers to a different room while explaining the best he can what was going on. He knows that look; you wear it often lately, more and more as the intensity of the war grows. A battle was happening, and three of the most important men in your life were about to participate in it. The thought of one, two, or all three of them not making it out alive sends an intense shiver through your entire body, and absently a hand drifts to your stomach. If you weren’t expecting, would you be out there with them? Maybe, but the thought of your five children tells you otherwise. No, you wouldn’t be, because why would you leave them alone? There would be no one to watch them, for starters; briefly, you think of trusting them with your father, but that thought is dismissed immediately.
There was no way you would trust him with five children. It was was a wonder that he had been trusted with three, albeit at a younger age and in a more sane state of mind.
The most you can do at this point is sit and wait, and the thought of doing just that puts you on edge--more so than you already were. You couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, but there is nothing else you can do. The only thing that you can do is go distract the boys upstairs, thus distracting yourself, so that is what you do instead.
Two: losing the baby.
The Healer that your oldest calls it pseudocyesis, or hysterical pregnancy, but most of you doesn’t even care about that part of it. You remember feeling faint, the dizziness overwhelming you slowly as you walked around the kitchen after the twins as they played. The dizziness had led to fainting, and when you woke up you woke to the crying of your children and Bill leading the Healer to look over you. Something felt sticky, and a wave of nausea washes over you when you realize what it is: blood. It’s your blood, and your hand immediately drifts down to your stomach, to the bump that is no longer there. Panic strikes you next, and as you try to sit up the Healer pushes you back down. You are too weak to be upright, anyway, or so the Healer reasons.
But what about my baby? you ask desperately. Something happened, what happened to my baby?
You are met with a pitying frown, and even as the Healer explains, you are unable to believe it. The baby you and your husband had been looking forward to for the past five months was never a real child to begin with; it had simply been a figment of your imagination, one that was so strong that even your body had believed it to be true.
It’s referred to as hysterical pregnancy, Mrs. Weasley. Your baby was never really there. I’m sorry.
You shake your head and sit up when the Healer lets you, staring at the floor in shock. You feel numb, and the Healer answers all your questions thoroughly. The stress of war possibly caused the blood flow and dizziness. The condition was very rare, and normally happened when a woman wished to be pregnant. You ask to be alone, and the woman lets you be for a few moments, leaving you sitting where you were.
You had wanted a daughter.
Three: losing your brother.
You had expected to grieve when the three men who had left returned home, but that wasn’t the case.
Instead, one came home, and you look at your husband numbly as you take in his look of shock. How else would you have expected him to look, anyway? You were still covered in blood, there was a Healer that you could possibly not afford in your home, and the children were upstairs asking loudly if their mummy was okay. He had been in an actual war zone, but you had your own war zone at home; in fact, you bore the scars right this instant. You watch him kneel down beside you, and without missing a beat you go straight into his arms, body wracking with silent sobs as your arms hold him in a vice grip.
What happened, Mols?
I’m sorry, Arthur, you say in response, and you are so very grateful to have him. I... The baby, the baby was... I lost the baby. I failed, I’m sorry...
While you cry the Healer explains, and you feel his arms tighten around you that much more. He says it isn’t your fault, but you think otherwise, because who’s fault would it be, then? It isn’t until after you calm down enough that you ask where your brothers were; certainly they would have come by to show that they were alright. The expression your husband wears, however, says otherwise, and your body grows cold as he speaks:
Fabian died on the battlefield, Molly. I’m so sorry.
Months into the future you’ll still question if the sound you make now is entirely human, but at that point you do not care. The children upstairs hear it, but you don’t even register that. All you know is that you’ve lost your child, you’ve lost your brother, and if you knew your remaining brother--which you thought you did--you were going to lose him as well.
After today, you would keep any agony at bay in fear of the children hearing you like this again, but for now, you cannot bring yourself to care. All you can do is sob in your husbands arms, feel tiny arms wrap around you one by one, and simply wish for this nightmare to finally end.
He’d bought it on a whim; a mask in the window of an antique shoppe deep in London, paid seven sickles and twenty knuts and left five minutes later with a paper bag in his arms. An ornate white masquerade mask with gold embellishment and scratching paint. A mask with three faces.
(a mask with a certain level of memorability)
His first time trying it on was at the Battle of the Highlands, when he had deftly swapped the metal of his Death Eater mask for clear white porcelain before stepping back out into the battle, felt his lips curve into a smirk that would have been oh so clearly visible to anyone looking at him.
Anyone who saw him that day would have remembered that mask. It would have been hard not to. The twist of Rabastan’s lips, the tint of his skin- hidden by the shadow of his hood but just about recognizable, and just about unrecognizable- tantalizing to viewers as the only flash of his expression visible. His unknown identity, so close at hand and so utterly impossible to guess at. It had given him a thrill of adrenaline, facing against the opponents he knew- the opponents who knew him just as well and yet could not place whom exactly the mysterious man was.
The white and the gold was a shock against the red and black that was the battle, the three faces leering and unnerving- everything about it unmistakable in its ornateness, eye-catching to its spectators, even. It was for that reason that he chose it; so that it would be remembered.
Vanity certainly played a role in his decision, Rabastan wasn’t even completely sure why he chose that particular mask instead of some better, nondescript version of it, but he had realized that there was a pleasure one could take from being so distinct in a crowd, to be marked out and identifiable. He wanted to be remembered, after all, and toeing the fine line between the mask and the identity was fun. He had seen it in that glass window, paused beside the display and gazed at the thing for several seconds, and the sole thought that had run across his mind that it would be perfect. Speak nothing for his regard for metaphors, but he had thought the many-faced symbolism was particularly apt for someone like him.
