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"But my lord, I—"
"Or does your obedience depend on knowing my plans first?" he said, his words menacing. "Is your loyalty to your high lord conditional?"
Burke swallowed hard. "My lord... I have always served you. When my lord Arcturus Black died, I learned of the Black family’s attempts to undermine you. I do understand why you...." He trailed off, suddenly realizing what a mistake he had made.
Malfoy’s eyes widened and gleamed the wrong color. "Burke, you dare accuse me of murder?"
"No, my lord! Certainly not! I merely was going to say that I heard of the Black family’s questionable actions after his death, so I understand why you would... think about me." He winced, realizing that this statement was not much better than what had almost slipped out.
"If you are loyal to me, then you will stop being a coward. I almost think that you don’t want to marry Lady Riddle anymore because I expect you to kill her after you have sired a child on her. Lord Arcturus hated the idea of even killing the half-blood and Mudblood, let alone this idea. Is that it, Burke?"
Burke gulped. "My lord, I do think that this plan involves a lot of blood... perhaps more than is truly necessary. Snape, of course, would have to die... but must everyone else?"
Malfoy sucked in his breath abruptly. He turned to Lestrange. "Take him away."
Burke gasped in horror as Lestrange, Selwyn, and Rosier grabbed his shoulders and marched him out of the great hall. He knew, as he left, that he would either be imprisoned—if he were lucky—or more likely, executed in some ghastly way. His heart thumped in terror, and as he approached the heavy double doors, his mind quickly formed a desperate, foolish plan—but it was his only hope.
As soon as he was out of Malfoy’s line of sight, he wrenched his right arm away from Rosier, who held it, and dug into his belt purse for the locket of Slytherin. "I cursed this," he sneered, flinging it in Lestrange’s face.
To his surprise, the gambit worked. Lestrange recoiled in fear of being blasted with a curse, which gave Burke time to grab his wand away from the startled Selwyn, run just past the Apparition boundary—dodging Rosier’s curse—and Disapparate on the spot.
Lestrange was clutching his face, feeling his cheeks and nose all over to attempt to detect curse damage. The locket of Slytherin lay unattended a few feet away. Disgusted and frightened of the wrath that he knew they would all face from Malfoy, Selwyn gingerly approached the locket and cast a spell at it. When nothing happened, he gazed at Lestrange with contempt.
"He lied," Selwyn said bitterly. "The bastard traitor lied. It is not cursed. Take your hands off your face, my lord."
Lestrange froze in horror. His hands slowly fell away from his face, revealing a frightened pair of eyes. "No," he croaked. "We lost him. His high lordship will be furious."
"Yes, he will," Rosier said grimly, reaching for the locket, "but we must face up to it."
The three wizards trudged miserably back into the great hall. Malfoy was visibly startled to see them, but Lestrange could tell from the way his face soured that he had instantly figured out what had happened.
"Rodolphus," he said, his voice deadly dark, "what have you to say for yourself?"
Lestrange knelt and bowed low. "I am so sorry, my lord. The foul traitor tricked us, throwing that locket in my face and claiming it was cursed. He made his escape that way."
Malfoy’s heavy breathing was the only sound audible in the cold castle. As he awaited his fate, it seemed to Lestrange that every second lasted for an eternity.
At last Malfoy spoke. "You have failed me, but you have not been disloyal to me," he finally said. "You have not betrayed me."
Lestrange’s heart leapt at these words. Perhaps he would not be executed.
"Nonetheless, you must bear the penalty of failure. Lestrange... I ordered you granted a divorce from your traitorous hag of a wife. For this boon, you already owed me, and this failure now has compounded your debt."
Lestrange held his breath again.
"I know that you support the plan for the Riddles. I have decided that, due to this failure, you will marry the blood-traitor woman."
Selwyn and Rosier exchanged relieved glances with each other, but Lestrange was not happy. He lifted his head and gaped at Malfoy. "My lord," he sputtered, "I thank you for your mercy, but... Bellatrix still lives, and there are consequences to breaking one’s sworn oaths—"
"She lives now, but we will find her."
Lestrange protested. "My lord, the Riddle woman is a dirty blood-traitor! She has taken a Muggle between her legs—and a half-blood! She consorts with Mudbloods—"
"How dare you," Malfoy seethed. Lestrange lowered his gaze to the floor at once, terrified that he had gone too far. Malfoy continued, "How dare you challenge my decision! Of all people, I expected you to be loyal! I have spared your life and offered you freedom, after a failure that merits severe punishment! And"—he narrowed his eyes—"do not think me ignorant of your conduct. You have had scores of Muggle women."
"My lord, they’re women—"
"They are also Muggles, and you are a wizard! I have not spoken against your actions, but do you suppose I did such things in my youth? You should control your lusts better than a filthy Muggle, Rodolphus—but I suppose some of us are weak, and others are strong. You are fortunate that I recognize your weakness for what it is and overlook it because of your loyalty." The final words were pointed.
Lestrange gulped. "My lord, I thank you again."
"You will replace Burke in this role. You will kill Snape, Riddle, and the Mudblood. Whoever Lady Riddle may have had before, it does not change the fact that she herself is a pureblood—so after you have a new pureblood heir, you will remove her too."
Lestrange was still appalled at what his lord was demanding that he do, but he did not dare protest any further. "Yes, my lord," he said subserviently. Rather than focusing on the act of marrying the blood-traitor, he thought instead about the killings, the acts of vengeance against all of those who had defied and undermined his high lord’s rule, who had set in motion a chain of events that had torn apart his family, who were dirtying the wizarding world by their very existence. "I will kill every Riddle I can get my hands on, and then I will kill that filthy snake of theirs, and after they are all dead, I will piss on their graves."
Caractacus Burke banged hard on the doors of Cygnus Black’s well-concealed manor house. He had sent a messenger bird to Cygnus, a distant cousin of his, and hoped against hope that he would be granted sanctuary.
The family house-elf opened the door and bowed to Burke. "Master and Mistress have been expecting Burke." The elf urged him inside and closed the door behind him.
Burke had not been in this manor house since he was a young man. Like all of the Black properties, it bore numerous banners with the family’s canine heraldic device. The menacing teeth of the dog gleamed in the torchlight.
Cygnus Black waited in his high seat, his wife Druella beside him. Although they were both silver-haired now, she remained an extremely attractive woman. Cygnus himself had the good looks of most of the Blacks, with a well-trimmed beard and a fine head of hair. He gazed down at Burke appraisingly.
"I am well aware that you have been doing Malfoy and Lestrange’s bidding," he said abruptly.
Burke bowed. "Yes, I have—but they go too far. They would have me marry a woman only to murder her son, daughter-in-law, and then the woman herself after I had sired a child on her. And now, I would have to murder her current husband."
"You are speaking of Lady Merope Riddle. As I understand it, you would have had to do that before as well."
"Her first husband was a Muggle," Burke explained. "She is married to a wizard now."
Cygnus considered this before nodding. "You do make a good point."
"So, cousin, that is what his high lordship Malfoy would have me do now. Killing all of her remaining family, and finally, the woman herself! That is too far for me. Marriage creates a bond of family, and those who betray their own families... well, it is a grave crime, even if his high lordship does not choose to consider it so when it’s one of his enemies."
Cygnus nodded again. "I am to understand that Lord Malfoy has also involved my brother-in-law Rosier in his sordid business." Beside him, Lady Druella scowled.
"Yes, he has, though Lord Lestrange is still his right-hand man." Burke smirked to himself at the thought. As the one nominally in charge, Lestrange would bear the brunt of Malfoy’s wrath at the escape. Perhaps the bastard was even dead now.
"My brother is responsible for his own actions," Lady Druella said tautly. "I, however, am more concerned for my daughters. Bellatrix is in hiding, I know not where. Andromeda and her husband are surely on Lord Malfoy’s list of enemies, simply because they are Blacks. Narcissa and her husband are definitely in danger. I realize that Lord Malfoy is also trying to wipe out the Riddle family, since their schemes started all this. I have come to agree with my husband’s family that they should be let alone, but I would not be interested in fighting purely on their behalf. I am concerned about my own children. My lord husband and I could potentially lose all three of our daughters."
Burke bowed his head. "I would not have such a terrible tragedy happen."
"You have lost your manor. We can provide you shelter, but what can you offer us?" Cygnus asked.
Burke considered. "I can offer you my wand, of course—and I will tell you everything I know from my time plotting with Lord Malfoy and Lord Lestrange."
Cygnus and Druella exchanged smug grins with each other.
Castle Parselhall.
Peter Pettigrew crumpled the letter that he had received today from Amycus Carrow and closed his eyes, wincing. He was in a bind, and no mistake about it.
You had best come to the right decision about your loyalties. We are losing patience. You can let others into Castle Gaunt—for now. But if you continue to make mistakes, your blood-traitor liege will revoke access to you, and she might do worse. My sister and I had hoped that the magical implements that she gave to some of the villagers would be useful, but if she has all the Muggles in Hangleton kissing her robes, then you are on your own. You had better devise a way to allow others in secretly, and soon. If your presence at Castle Gaunt proves to be useless, it will end. I doubt that even you can explain away telling his high lordship about the treason of the Godric’s Hollow rabble. The blood-traitor witch would not like that, would she?
Pettigrew set fire to the note. Before he had returned to the castle, Lady Riddle had declared it treason to correspond with the Carrows. She had not blamed him for receiving the previous note, in which Carrow ordered him to investigate the Muggles, but she would blame him for this. He was on thin ice and he knew it.
What could he do? Carrow—on behalf of Lestrange and Malfoy, obviously—wanted him to find, or create, a way to let people enter Parselhall undetected until it was too late. He wanted a surprise attack. If Pettigrew persisted in stalling, Carrow would find a way of informing Lord Severus and Lady Merope about what Pettigrew had done in 1130, and he was quite right that Pettigrew doubted he could explain that away. Pettigrew supposed that he could tell them first, and throw himself on their mercy, neutralizing the blackmail... but they would consider his deed a severe offense and an indication of loyalty to Malfoy. He probably would not be executed—Severus would want that, but Lady Merope was merciful—but he would spend a long time in their dungeons, probably in a dark cell with a magically sealed window, to prevent him from escaping by transforming into a rat.
Pettigrew wished he had never gone to Lord Malfoy that night. It had seemed like the only thing to do then, of course. He had loathed the Gaunts—the males, the father and son whom he served, were mad and wicked—and he had also been very angry with Prongs and Padfoot. They could have saved him—and his mother—but they refused.
"But Peter, we cannot possibly shelter you in our little house! It is not a grand castle like the one you live in."
"I don’t live in the castle. My mother and I have a manor home on the grounds."
"Still, that is far grander than our place. We do not have room for you unless you live as a rat."
"I would do that."
James shook his head. "I won’t permit it, Peter. And then what about your mother? Lily and I will surely have children, and we’ll already have to house Sirius. Would you ask us to turn him out to make room for your mother, when she already has a house far better than ours? Don’t be so selfish."
That was it. Pettigrew was convinced, from that night, that his "friends" from Hogwarts cared nothing about him. He had told them the kinds of things that Lord Marvolo and Lord Morfin did. It had not mattered. They had really believed that, as a scion of a knightly family, he could avoid the vile conduct of evil nobles. James in particular had not listened when he had protested that this was his liege lord and so it was difficult for him to avoid anything.
There they would stay, safe and snug in their little cottage, James and Lily and Sirius, so confident that nothing could touch them no matter what they did. Risk was for lords and knights, like his family. Or so they had thought.
That night, Pettigrew made certain that his friends would never again remember that he, too, was an Animagus. If they would not be loyal to him, he would not entrust them with his greatest secret.
Now, he wished he had never turned to Malfoy. Lady Merope was not like her brother and father. She had given him several chances now. The Pettigrews had served the Gaunts for ages, and he would have gladly served her.
But... she had also married Snape. He had detested Snape as a fellow Gaunt vassal. They had gotten along reasonably well as boys, but when he made friends with Sirius and James, and they had started to harass and bully Snape, Snape had blamed him for it as well—and Snape apparently held a grudge for years. Pettigrew seethed as he thought about Snape’s behavior to him lately. He has never trusted me, he thought angrily. He made me take Veritaserum the first night I was here! I did not come here on Malfoy’s orders. I wanted to return to the family I had served. That perhaps he did not deserve trust did not occur to Pettigrew.
He then thought of Lord Thomas, Lady Merope’s son. The young man had had little to do with him so far, and Pettigrew did not know exactly what he got up to anymore—other than, apparently, reading books about forbidden Celtic magic and bedding his betrothed all the time—but he had spied on Lord Thomas as a rat in those early days before the girl took in that cat as her familiar. Lord Thomas was obsessed with his ancestry in those days, Pettigrew thought darkly, and that boded ill. Though he was far less inbred than most of the past Gaunts that Pettigrew’s ancestors had served, and did not bear the surname, he had all the signs of being just like the worst of the Gaunts. A streak of violence and madness ran through that blood.
He may not inherit, Pettigrew reminded himself. It might end up being one of Snape’s twins. They think that they can someday change that law, but even if they did, Riddle could still be challenged. Lady Merope is a good liege... but her son could be a menace, and if he isn’t her heir, then her heir will be a child who is part Gaunt and part Snape. That is no better.
Pettigrew glanced at the ashes of his letter again and shuddered. He did not want to betray the witch he served. Lady Merope had been kind to him, even when others had urged her not to. He was worried about what Carrow might write to her to tell her, but he would just have to keep an eye on the incoming owls. And perhaps urge her to put up a ward blocking any from their enemies. Letters can carry curses, he thought, rising to his feet. That is a logical reason to block them. I’ll advise her, and even though it’s really to protect me, it will sound good to her.
Hogwarts, two months later.
Hermione and Tom made sure that no one was watching them on May Eve as they fled the castle. It was true that all celebrations of Celtic holidays were illegal, but they both rather doubted that a Yule log or some Imbolc candles would be quite as brazen an affront to Armand Malfoy’s awful law as a Beltane fire—or the deed that they had in mind to follow it.
Or a Samhain ritual, perhaps, Tom thought as he entered the edge of the woods. I want to do that, and since we will not be at Hogwarts by then, perhaps I finally can. My ancestors could open doors to the Otherworld. Tom recalled, as he hurried into the woods with Hermione, that the means that his ancestors had used to do that were rather atrocious... but perhaps there was a better way. It was another thing to read about this summer.
They reached the clearing where, three months ago, they had lit the Imbolc candles. This was already a magical site because of that, so it was a good choice. Together they laid out kindling into a circle, a magically powerful shape, then stepped away from it. The time was almost midnight.
The endeavors that they were going to bless were the same, and they were—Tom understood now—the most appropriate type of activity for this holiday of fertility and growth. Two years ago, when it was still allowed to celebrate this holiday openly and the Masters of Hogwarts had made a ritual fire, Tom had scorned the idea of blessing a romantic relationship. He had instead charmed his political ambitions. It had worked, he had to admit; that summer, he had finally managed to make some useful alliances. However, it had come at a terrible cost to his relationship with Hermione. He realized that this likely did not mean that the Beltane magic inherently raised one goal to the detriment of something else, but rather, this outcome had been a reflection of his own sneering dismissal of Hermione’s importance to him. The magic truly had acted on his own feelings and values. Casting the charm now to bless their relationship—in a month, their marriage—would not hurt his other goals. Their relationship was mended now, but knowing the power of Beltane, Tom rather looked forward to the effects this ritual would have.
Together he and Hermione began to cast the spell in Gaelic. Green and gold sparks showered from their wands, falling on the kindling. They continued to chant until, at last, the wood burst into flames. For the most part they appeared as natural wood fire, orange and gold, but at their heart they were green.
They raised their wands and cast into the air the symbols of magic, eternity, and each month of the Celtic year. Hermione was enchanted, her eyes glittering with the colors of the fire as she watched. Tom realized, with a pang, that she had never seen this before. She thought she would not get to do it, he thought. After Malfoy banned it, the Masters of Hogwarts of course stopped recruiting pupils for this, so she would have assumed she just would not get to do it—unless we did it later, after she was no longer at the school.
Tonight there would be no sacrifice of fruit. They were going to do something that Dumbledore would never have permitted for the official school Beltane fire that he used to have. Hermione had been unsure about it, but ultimately she had agreed that this was not a malevolent use of blood magic. They drew blades and cut their palms open, letting a few drops fall onto the flames. What greater physical sacrifice was there than of one’s own vital fluid? The fire roared, contrary to logic—but in perfect accord with magic.
They turned to each other with potent, meaningful looks on their faces and cast the bits of parchment bearing their expressed goals—goal—into the fire. It accepted them, and immediately, the fire crackled as if in satisfaction and approval. Flames danced upward, entwined and seemingly knotted together. Sparks flew into the air. Tom suddenly recalled how, two years ago, he had seen the symbols of ravens and serpents, and perhaps even a crown. Then he remembered something else. In the heart of one flame—a flame that, uniquely that night, burned red—there had been the image of a person, furious and distraught. Tom had not thought about it since then, and he had not seen it long enough to identify who it was—but he knew now.
That was my face, he thought. He gazed into the fire, wondering if it would show him anything of the sort tonight—but this fire did not.
Tom and Hermione held hands by the circular fire as it burned into the night. Soon the hot, intense crackling had subsided to a steady burn, and the flames decreased in both height and intensity. The pair turned to each other as the fire reached its steady state. Almost involuntarily, they fell into each other’s embrace. Their lips met, their faces damp with sweat from the spring night and their own proximity to the fire.
He gently lowered her to the ground and began to kiss her. A moan escaped her lips, and she reached aggressively for his dark hair as he pulled up her robes and trailed intense, bruising kisses down her face and neck.
They reached for each other everywhere, hands clutching and caressing, lips crashing together in a fog of heat and breath. Somehow their robes found their way to a pile well away from the fire, even as Tom and Hermione themselves remained close enough that the flames heated their bare bodies. The grass here was dry, but they rolled just a bit and found themselves in a dewy bed. The heat of the Beltane flames lessened but did not disappear.
Hermione gazed upward at the starry sky, her chest heaving, her legs splayed wide. "Tom," she gasped.
He was hovering over her, the angles of his face accentuated by the firelight that continued to flicker behind them. "Yes?" he said in a voice that was almost a hiss.
"I took my potion, and it is not really the right time for my body anyway... but the magic of the day... what if...." She trailed off.
He gazed at her, her skin appearing golden in the firelight. The idea of Hermione carrying his child, her body fertile and ripe, made him want to take her right then and not even answer her. And that will happen someday, he realized. Perhaps even this summer. She will. We will.
"If it happens, then we will be parents eight months after our wedding, and my mother’s twins will have a niece or nephew less than a year younger than themselves," he said, his lips curling upward in a moment of wry humor. He held her hips. He wanted her so, so badly. "Don’t worry about it, darling. It’s all right now."
She considered that for a moment before wrapping her arms around the back of his neck and her legs around his waist.
The fire burned down to the forest floor. Hermione and Tom stayed in that spot, clad only in the night sky and the powerful magic of the rite, till the flames were embers.
Hermione walked quickly with Tom to the patch of woods behind Hogsmeade. A small stone ruin of a structure with classical columns and a crumbling foundation lay hidden in the trees. In its glory days, it had been about the size of a small room, surrounded on all sides with columns. A squat, rectangular stone bin stood in the center. The ceiling had long ago collapsed, leaving some of the columns broken and an open view of the sky for anyone standing inside.
"This is ancient," Hermione remarked, examining the columns. "It must date from Roman times."
Tom nodded. "Yet another round of invaders. However, their architecture outlasted them. They must have used it originally as a temple, but my friends and I have met here whenever we could manage to escape the castle. It was greatly enjoyable to plot the reclaiming of our country in the crumbling ruins of defeated invaders." He grinned.
Hermione managed to return the smile. Evidently, Tom’s specific form of patriotic sentiment had emerged from the sea cave with little alteration. He was better; he no longer regarded everyone with Norman blood as untrustworthy, perhaps partly out of awareness that the British Isles had seen wave after wave of invaders over the centuries. He also treated her as his equal. The potion that he had drunk had made him see how he had acted towards her and his mother, and he had changed his behavior drastically in that regard. Additionally, the passage of time had made him understand that his specific goals—wearing the crown and sitting on the Muggle throne—were unrealistic. But his general opinions about what the law and culture of the wizarding population should be, and who should govern it, had not altered that much.
Interestingly to Hermione, she realized that hers had. She was able to see with clear eyes that Malfoy and Lestrange were introducing destructive policies to the wizarding population, in the name of promoting their own ancestry as superior to the "churls" and "barbarians." It hardly mattered to Hermione that she shared that ancestry in part. What they were trying to do to wizards and—especially—witches in Britain was appalling, and now that Tom did not regard people as potential enemies based purely on their national background, she was in agreement with him about the government of the wizarding population.
The two of them stood hand-in-hand at the center of the Roman temple, watching and waiting. Tom’s friends—the "Lords of Beltane," as they had called themselves—would arrive soon. In a minute, the pair started to hear footsteps. Then people started to emerge through the trees: Theodore Nott, Marcus Flint, Rob Wilkes, Edgar Fawley, and Cormac Avery.
"My friends and allies," Tom said formally, welcoming them as they stepped onto the cracked stone surface.
Edgar Fawley gazed at Hermione, then Tom. "We missed you last night, my lord."
Hermione noted that the young man still spoke to Tom with a noble address. He did not, however, call Tom by a royal title.
Tom nodded. "I was with Lady Hermione. We lit our own fire. I did tell you that I was going to do that."
"You did," Fawley agreed. "I just wondered... ours, the fire that the five of us lit, did not burn as brightly as I think it would have if you had been there to help it along. Your magic has always been... superior."