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Hermione was dueling fiercely and could not aid Severus or Merope. So was Regulus, who was fighting both Rowle and Rosier at the same time. Regulus’s daughter Dora sent her opponent, Crabbe, to the floor in a crushing curse that apparently broke several bones. She sent a quick rejuvenation spell at Merope, who got to h... |
Regulus was holding his own. Indeed—Merope gasped in shock as he sent Rowle crashing against the stone wall, clearly and sickeningly breaking his neck. One enemy down, she thought grimly. |
Selwyn had gotten back up to duel Tom again, and Lestrange had decided to join in—but when he saw Rowle die, he snarled in anger and pulled away from Tom. He cast a lethal green jet in Regulus’s direction, but Regulus saw it coming and leapt out of the way. It hit a banner of House Riddle. The three-headed snake wreath... |
Having at least temporarily dispatched Crabbe, Dora Black was now fighting Goyle. He was a marginally more intelligent duelist than Crabbe, but she was still superior. Unless she had a streak of extremely bad luck, she would not need help. |
Hermione was locked in a fight with Alecto Carrow. To her surprise and pleasure, she was more than a match for the older witch. Alecto was struggling to keep up with either the speed or the magnitude of Hermione’s curses, as Hermione sent yet another one in the woman’s direction. Alecto’s hair caught fire, and she shri... |
"What are you doing, Hermione? Cast to kill!" Tom exclaimed, exasperated. Selwyn, indeed, dodged a curse that would have been lethal had it hit. The spell struck a suit of armor in the hallway, sending it to the floor in a cascade of shattered, melting metal. |
"I quite agree," said a new voice. All heads turned. Remus Lupin, who had spoken, was standing side-by-side with Sirius Black. The two wizards strode forward, already firing spells into the melee. |
Pettigrew was barely fighting, trying instead to avoid the duels and stray spells as best he could. Severus was still down, attempting to heal whatever spell Lestrange had used on him. He cursed under his breath as he observed the proceedings. Pettigrew hesitated, then sent a healing spell at Severus. Instantly the flo... |
However, the attackers were fighting back. The werewolf Greyback was back on his feet and fighting Remus Lupin, seemingly regarding it as a personal insult that Remus was there. Crabbe was back up too, fighting Dora Black alongside Goyle. Rosier was still engaged with Regulus, and Lestrange with Merope. Amycus Carrow h... |
Tom glanced at Sirius Black, who had begun to duel Selwyn alongside him. "Go to her," Sirius said quickly from one side of his mouth. Tom did not hesitate, leaving him to Selwyn and joining Hermione against the Carrows at once. |
Fenrir Greyback glared at Remus. "I’m sick of you," he snarled. He cast a violent curse at the other man’s head, missing by a fraction of an inch, singeing Remus’s shaggy hair. He laughed maliciously and cast another spell while Remus was distracted. Since he had expended magical energy on the first one, this was not a... |
Remus gritted his teeth and cast a dark spell while the other werewolf was distracted. It hit. Greyback gaped for a moment, then fell backward, instantly dead. From a short distance away, Dora Black gave him an admiring look. She returned to her duel with Crabbe and Goyle, smiling in manifest enjoyment as she sent anot... |
"Die, Mudblood!" |
The traitor Carrow struck Hermione in the chest with a curse that looked like purple flames—and fear overtook Tom when Hermione crumpled to the ground, her mouth open in an O of shock. |
A cry escaped Tom’s throat. After everything—after two years of estrangement due to his own actions, after almost losing her to the basilisk of Slytherin, after she herself lost her parents that very day, would she—but no, he would not finish the thought. It was too ghastly. |
Rage filled his body. Tom mustered all his magical energy and cast a Killing Curse at Amycus Carrow. It barely missed. Tom snarled and attempted to replenish his magical energy as quickly as he could. Meanwhile Severus, who had noticed Hermione’s fall, had darted over to defend Tom against the traitorous brother and si... |
Though curses still flew around him, Tom could not concentrate or be functional in a duel until he knew. He bent down quickly and reached for Hermione. Terrified of what he might find, he felt the side of her neck. |
Her pulse still thudded. She had obviously been hit with something bad—a single thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth nearest the floor—but at least she was alive. Tom could not do much for her until the castle was secured, much as he hated to wait even a second. The foul attackers would not take a... |
Severus was fighting the Carrows. The spell that Lestrange had used on him had sapped his energy badly, and although he would have been more than a match for them in better times, he was losing. Blood dripped from his nose after a punching hex that Alecto Carrow had sent at his head. On the sidelines, Pettigrew, the da... |
As soon as he thinks we might actually win, Severus thought sourly as the wretch joined him to fight against the Carrows. But a wand was a wand, and Severus knew he was going to lose without someone helping him. If they did have victory, he wanted everyone to be able to enjoy it. He really hoped that Lady Hermione was ... |
Lestrange seemed to realize that the tide had turned as well. His unattractive face grew sour and bitter. He snarled at Merope, who was holding her own against him. "Blood-traitor whore! You and your pack of curs, vipers, and mongrels might have won this day—but you cannot defeat Lord Malfoy!" He thrust his hand into h... |
The sound of the language of the Normans caught Tom’s attention, in a very negative way. He watched as time seemed to slow down. Lestrange, the monster, the filthy rapist, finished speaking, his mouth breaking into a malevolent smile. |
In the next moment, Merope tumbled to the ground lifeless, the object that Lestrange had pinned to her still attached to her clothing. |
"Let us go!" he exclaimed. "Retreat!" He gazed across the hallway, remembering Malfoy’s final command to him, and took a deep breath as he focused on Peter Pettigrew. |
The surviving attackers drew back from their duels as best they could. Rosier broke away from Regulus, Selwyn from Sirius Black, Goyle from Dora and Remus—picking up Crabbe as he did—and Alecto Carrow from Severus and Tom. |
Amycus Carrow made to leave too, but Tom was not going to allow that. He wanted to kill the bastard for what he had done to Hermione, but perhaps it would be better to question him first. That was the thought that passed through his mind in the fraction of a second between Carrow’s breaking away from his duel and the m... |
Pettigrew had just sent a spell at Alecto to stun her when Lestrange’s curse, a horrifically violent one, struck him. Blood erupted from his mouth, his nose, and his ears as he tumbled to the floor. As the six escaping attackers fled, Lestrange turned back, laughing. |
Regulus and Sirius pursued them, continuing to shoot curses at them. Remus and Dora hesitated before deciding to stay. |
Severus was attempting to stop Pettigrew’s bleeding, but the curse was too intense. Tom seemed frozen, torn between going to his mother and going to his wife. Both were down. |
Remus gave Dora a fleeting look before joining Severus as he attempted to save Pettigrew’s life. They cast spell after healing spell at the wizard, but he grew paler by the second. |
"Need to say something," Pettigrew muttered, his eyes fluttering rapidly. "Potter. He and—Longbottoms—and Weasleys." |
"They are allied with the Muggle king-pretender," Severus finished. |
Pettigrew looked up, apparently disappointed that his last secret was not one at all. "They’ve promised him everything. Anything. Anything he wants. James... betrayed me... long ago... ’s why I told Malfoy." |
"Told Malfoy?" Severus said sharply. |
"About Godric’s Hollow. Shouldn’t have, but I was angry about... Morfin." He took a heavy, shuddering breath, mustering his final strength. "I never wanted her harmed. I hope... she’s all right." |
Severus and Remus exchanged shocked glances as Pettigrew went limp before them. |
Tom had paid little attention to Pettigrew’s death. As far as he was concerned, this was Pettigrew’s fault in the first place. If he had not managed to get himself killed in the fighting, Tom was quite determined that he would have executed Pettigrew anyway even if the latter had changed his mind at the last minute. To... |
Severus drew away, silently easing next to Tom. Scared of what he might find, he felt Merope’s wrist for a pulse. |
It was slow and faint, but it was there. |
The tasks of picking up the pieces after the battle were grim. As outsiders to the family, the Blacks and Lupin decided that they would dispose of the enemy dead. Dealing with the bodies of Rowle and Greyback was a task that neither Severus nor Tom would want to do right now, with their wives seriously injured and in u... |
Pettigrew, Sirius and Remus had decided—with Severus’s consent—would have an actual funeral and a tombstone on the grounds. Not this very moment, of course. For now, they would clean up his body, put a preservation spell on it, and lay it out across a table in one of the rooms. But despite all his treacheries, in the e... |
Regulus Black had hauled Amycus Carrow’s unconscious form into the dungeons of Parselhall and locked him securely in the darkest, smallest cell he could find. He did not envy Carrow his fate, especially since Tom Riddle would certainly blend justice with vengeance to the maximum extent that he could stomach, but that w... |
Lady Andromeda would return to the castle with baby Eileen and Padrig as soon as Severus was able to care for them. Regulus had sent word to her that it was safe and that they had managed to repel the attack—and to prepare to the long-awaited war. The Muggle Grangers, the parents of Lord Thomas’s wife, were dead, he ha... |
Regulus and Dora, Sirius and Remus—they all remained at the castle, standing guard against a repeat attempt. Severus and Tom were too preoccupied right now to be effective. |
Of the two women, Hermione had the more severe set of injuries. The curse that ailed Merope had not caused any detectable physical damage to her, either external or internal. Her unconscious state was certainly grim and disturbing, though, and Severus had made certain to immediately detach that brooch that Lestrange ha... |
Tom sat by his bedside, his dark eyes wide and fixed upon the sleeping form of his wife as Severus poured a colorful mix of potions down her throat. He clutched his battle prize—his weregild, or so it would have been if he had managed to kill anyone—in his hands. It seemed cold and hollow now. He was glad it was back i... |
"She will be all right in a couple of days," Severus said in a low voice. "It’s a good thing that Carrow cast that curse silently. She probably would have died if he had cast it verbally." |
Tom grimaced, clutching the locket closely. "He will pay for it," he said darkly. "He will pay for everything he has done. He is in our clutches, and at last I can exact justice upon him. I only regret that it won’t be Lestrange himself who I—" He broke off at once. "You say that Hermione will be "all right.’ When will... |
"She might wake up tonight," said Severus. "However, she shouldn’t leave her bed, and one of those potions will make her legs too weak to walk, so she can’t. It’s for her own good." |
Tom almost did not want to know the answer to his next question, but his anxiety would kill him if he did not ask. "And—our prospects for children in the future?" he croaked. "Was it—did it harm her there?" |
Severus gazed at the young wizard gravely but compassionately. "It came close," he admitted. Tom’s face fell, and Severus quickly continued. "But no, those organs were untouched. The damage was mostly to her lower lungs. It may take several years for her to recover her physical strength fully. She will be unable to exe... |
Tom sighed heavily. He set the locket aside and reached for Hermione’s right hand, which lay on top of the bedspread. "I’m so sorry, Hermione," he whispered. "I don’t know—I don’t think I could have done anything differently during that one moment—but perhaps...." He closed his eyes and kissed her hand, then gazed up a... |
Severus nodded. "If she does, you should be here for her. She will still remember everything that happened, including to her parents." |
"Of course," he said at once, cringing as he thought about how horrible that would be for her. He would definitely stay by her side. He took another deep breath. "And—what about Mother?" |
Severus looked away. His expression darkened even further, and he was silent for a moment. "Your mother was cursed by something extremely foul and wicked. It is a curse that was, to my knowledge, never used in Britain or Ireland—it’s a Frankish curse—which is to say, now—" |
"A curse that only the Normans would use," Tom said viciously. "I see. Of course they would devise something so evil that you are uncomfortable even speaking of it. People slander my ancestors the Celts for their magic of the earth, the soul, and the Otherworld, but I have always assumed that the invaders were guilty o... |
Severus gazed at the young lord with concern. He had not heard this type of comment from him in a while. He had thought that his reconciliation and marriage with Hermione had put such thoughts out of Tom’s head... but he himself had raised the subject, and he knew he could not get out of explaining it fully now. "As yo... |
"Yes," Tom said impatiently. "That is one thing that these Normans want to change, and have already begun to do so with their law about blood status and inheritance." |
"Do not mistake me, Tom—I think that our own native custom is the best one. But in their defense, it could—in some cases—be in the interest of family peace to have inheritance settled by outside factors, rather than by the word of a parent. And among the Saxons, both wizard and Muggle, there were many violent family di... |
"A family in which siblings are not deterred by the bond of blood from killing each other," Tom finished. |
Severus nodded. "In that case, a male primogeniture law would be an inducement for younger sons to try to murder their brothers. It would also be an inducement for an ambitious, amoral man to kill all the brothers and male cousins of a woman so that, at last, the family fortune would revert to her—and he could then for... |
Tom’s jaw dropped in horror. "But—Mother—the twins—and Hermione and I—" He broke off, too appalled and outraged to continue. |
"They called the curse "the Killing Frost,’" he said. "All plant life above the surface dies except the roots, and the plant does not grow again until spring. For a time it was quite popular, for a dark curse, being set in dozens of pieces of jewelry and other items. They usually bore the image of a dead tree... which ... |
"How vile," Tom snarled. He reached for his wand in his right hand and the locket of Slytherin in his left. He fingered the gold of the locket for a second before something occurred to him. "But there is usually another way of lifting a curse. You kill the caster." He stared ahead. "Maybe I should wait until I can get ... |
Severus gazed out silently, staring at the wall on the other side of Hermione’s bed. He did not reply to Tom, and Tom instantly felt that something was very wrong. |
"Severus?" he said hesitantly. "That will work, won’t it? With this curse? Killing the caster will work, right?" |
Severus gazed at Tom, his expression bitter. A chill crept down Tom’s body at that look. |
"Yes, it will work," Severus said, his voice ragged and cold. "That was a way of breaking such curses in the eighth century. But I examined that foul thing, and Lestrange was not the true caster of the curse. Armand Malfoy was." |
After Severus revealed to Tom that the true caster of the curse that afflicted Merope was Armand Malfoy, Tom insisted on a further explanation of what the magic was and how it worked. The details were grim. |
"It’s as though it freezes time for the person, rather like Petrification in that regard. She won’t have to eat or drink. Someone cursed could stay "asleep’ for decades and not age while in that condition. There were several witches—and it was devised for use against women—who remained youthful maidens for years, just ... |
"Of course it was devised to use against women," Tom muttered. "Consider what group of people invented it first." He scowled. "And Armand Malfoy has created a Horcrux. I’m certain of it. Since he cast the curse on that brooch, that fact makes it even worse." He explained to Severus how the man had been shot in the eye ... |
"It’s possible that he was on the verge of death from that wound but had not actually died," Severus pointed out. |
"Possible,’" Tom repeated. He forked an eye at Severus. "I would not stake my life on that possibility." |
"What do you mean?" |
Tom hesitated for a moment. "I mean that we should act with the assumption that he is deathless." He changed the subject at once. "That Muggle hated magic, but his little son is a wizard. We should send someone to protect that castle better. They will certainly make a repeat attempt, especially now that the raid on Par... |
Severus nodded, glad to have something—anything—to take his mind off Merope’s condition. "I will tell Sirius Black to do it. After that...." He sighed deeply. "I should go to Canis Manor and retrieve my children from Lady Andromeda. They will have to be nursed." He grimaced. "I’ll need to find a Muggle woman in the vil... |
Tom had a feeling he knew what Severus was about to talk about, and he instantly became wary and alert. What has Mother done? he thought. She might have named me as her regent in case of her own incapacity, but she could have named him instead. |
"Your mother had a legal document detailing what should happen if she were ever unable to rule," Severus said. "I have looked at it—it is on the table in her private study for you to examine as well—and in short, she names you the Regent of Hangleton in that case." |
Tom nodded. That was how it should be, he thought. |
"However, the document also says that you are to confer with me and with Lady Hermione about all decisions affecting the barony and the family." |
Tom met Severus’s eyes with his. "I would do so anyway. What does it say about... personal decisions? Decisions that only affect me, but that might relate to the war?" |
Severus studied Tom for a moment. Although Tom knew that the older wizard was not a natural Legilimens like he was, he still became uncomfortable under that black gaze. |
Finally Severus spoke. "One can argue that, as a member of a family and the regent to a barony, there is no conceivable decision that affects only you," he said gruffly, "but I take your meaning: decisions that only affect you directly. In that case... you do what you must, Lord Thomas. As we all shall in war." He turn... |
It had been quite some time since Severus had called him by his title and full given name. The formality was a bit disconcerting. Had Severus read any of his thoughts? Tom did not know, but he supposed, as Severus left him alone to watch over Hermione, that it did not matter. |
Tom was greatly tempted to go to Carrow’s cell and begin his interrogation. He truly did want information from the man; the point of the interrogation would not just be to inflict pain and vengeance. Carrow had been in Lestrange’s confidence for several years and had sworn an oath to him on Hallowe’en about three years... |
However, Carrow was not going anywhere. Tom was eager to take his vengeance on this traitor to his family, this malicious wizard who had tortured him and almost killed Hermione—but he would not risk being absent when Hermione awakened. She had suffered so much, with the sudden loss of her family. She would be even more... |
Tom stayed by Hermione’s bedside for the rest of the day, taking his meals there and brooding over the locket of Slytherin. As he had expected, it opened by a command in Parseltongue. The inside was untouched, each side untarnished and highly reflective on the inside. Tom could use it as a mirror if he wanted. |
That evening, he retrieved a certain book from his bookcase and read over it again. He had done so before—years before—but it was always a good idea to refresh oneself, to make sure that one had not missed anything. |
A large part of Tom did not want to do what he was contemplating. A few years ago, perhaps—but he had been immature then, he realized, and had not thought seriously about many things. This was terribly dangerous, and if he succeeded, it was horrifyingly, chillingly permanent—or so he assumed, from what he read in his b... |
This is war, Tom thought, attempting to banish those thoughts. Armand Malfoy has an unassailable advantage right now. And even though Pettigrew is dead, and presumably Parselhall cannot be breached again, I did not think it could be breached in the first place. The wards allowed a traitor to lead other people through. ... |
This war must be fought, and I must take a lead part in fighting it. And if I die... Hermione will have no one. She will be alone, and the line might even end. The twins could yet die. I cannot assume they will survive to adulthood, especially in a time of war—and even more so when their mother has been cursed with an ... |
And if I die... who will fight this war in my stead? There are our allied families, but will they protect Hermione if they win? I cannot assume that, either. I do not know what terms they would demand for people like her. My "friends" from Hogwarts are loyal to me because of my royal bloodline, and they probably only r... |
He gazed at the book again and sighed. He reflected, idly, that he was sighing a lot lately.... |
Hermione stirred in her bed. Tom’s heart skipped a beat. He set aside the book and locket and reached for her hands, hoping that this was not just an involuntary movement— |
Her eyelids fluttered open. Tom released her hands and stared at her face, watching, waiting— |
She needed a few moments to clear her vision, as her gaze slid from side to side, taking in her surroundings. Her warm brown eyes settled on Tom at last, and he could tell that her facial muscles visibly relaxed at the sight of him. It sent a rush of warmth through his body, and he felt bad about what he would have to ... |
Tom could also detect the exact moment when she remembered that her parents were dead. Her face suddenly crumpled. From there the realizations piled on, and she began to speak aloud to him. |
"Tom," she said, her voice weak and hoarse, "what happened? I remember seeing a purple fire hit me, and then...." She trailed off. "What about—your mother and Severus? And the little ones?" She held her breath, not sure she wanted to know the answer. Tom’s face had twisted in pain at the mention of his mother. |
"They are all alive," he said abruptly. He cursed himself for sounding cold with her at this moment. "She took the twins to Andromeda Black. He has probably retrieved them by now and is searching for a Muggle wet nurse." |
"My mother... was cursed," he said. He reached for her hands as she gasped, caressing her palms as he explained what Severus had told him about the curse. |
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