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"That’s enough!" shouted Lady Wilkes, his mother, in outrage. She flicked her wand. Bellatrix deflected the nonverbal curse with a sneer, but to do that, she had to stop using the Cruciatus Curse. The young wizard rose from the ground unsteadily. |
"Bellatrix!" ordered Andromeda from the back. The group parted slightly to let the two sisters see each other. "Your "defenders’ are piles of ash on the ground, finally having the dignity in death that you denied them after murdering them! You are alone and vastly outnumbered. Surrender yourself at once." |
Bellatrix did not cast a curse at her sister, but she seemed determined to have her say. "You were prepared for them. That means that this is where my traitorous ingrate of a daughter went," she sneered. She eyed the two brothers without respect. "I see who you are, half-blood bastard-spawn. The truth is written in your faces. And this is what my daughter wanted her future to be! This is what she betrayed her mother for." |
"On the contrary, Adelaide has pleaded for your life," Andromeda said coldly. In the crowd, an exclamation of dismay and outrage came from the area where Neville Longbottom was stationed. Andromeda ignored it. "She came to us because she did not want you to kill others of her blood—your blood, and mine! You have lost your mind, Bellatrix. Surrender yourself to us now." |
"There is no honor in surrender," she sneered. "A pity that my daughter did not see it." |
Andromeda was appalled. What was Adelaide doing outside the parlor? She should have been under the influence of Calming Draught! |
Bellatrix gazed at Adelaide with contempt. "Are you happy with the lot that others have decided for you, daughter? Do you like the idea of sleeping with someone whose blood is impure? Can this be the same girl who wanted to know how to get revenge on a half-blood and Mudblood four years ago for invading the halls of Hogwarts? This castle could have been yours alone if you had remained by my side." |
Adelaide gazed back at her mother, unafraid for herself, but clearly terrified for Bellatrix. "I am very content with "my lot,’" she said slowly. "And no, you are wrong, Mother. It couldn’t have been just mine. You were never going to win this war all alone. Please do as Aunt Andromeda asks!" |
Bellatrix turned aside. "You choose them, then. So be it. Everything I did, I did for you, but you choose them. Very well. I no longer have a daughter, then." With a cry, Bellatrix whirled around, slashing her wand through the air. |
A jet of cursed flame erupted, streaming through the air like a flaming rope. It struck Ginny Weasley. |
She shrieked in shock and pain as her robes and long red hair blazed. Next to her, Neville roared in fury. He did not think twice. As Adelaide cried out in horror at this final insult and atrocity, as the witches and wizards nearby descended to help Ginny, Neville focused his wrath on Bellatrix. |
A violent spell issued from his wand, hitting Bellatrix in the chest. |
In that moment, time seemed to slow down. She gaped for a moment. In the next, a rip in her robes appeared, then a thin red line. Drops of blood appeared as the wound widened. |
It took no more than half a second for the wound to open to a lethal size, exactly where her major artery would be. A splash of vivid, bright red appeared, splattering everyone in the immediate proximity. The look of horror on Bellatrix’s face as she dropped her wand and fell to the floor, dying, would haunt Neville for the rest of his life—but he did not regret what he had just done, even though Adelaide was screaming in the back, restrained by her aunt, who was attempting to force more Calming Draught down her throat. |
Neville gazed upon his handiwork and then shook his head, turning aside. He felt strange. I suppose this is what it’s like, he thought. It really does do something to you to kill, even if it is not murder. |
He turned to Ginny. The others had managed to extinguish the flames, but Ginny’s hair had been shorn and burned away to her ears, and her robes were mostly cinders. Her skin had also been scorched, though they were working on healing that. Still in shock, but aware enough to be embarrassed, Ginny attempted to cover herself. |
"Here," said Lady Greengrass, taking off her own outer robe and handing it to the young girl. Surprised at this generosity from a noblewoman, Ginny accepted it with a brief thanks. She stood unsteadily on her feet and touched the singed tips of her much-shorter hair. |
"It will grow back," Lady Greengrass assured her. "You won’t be able to restore it with magic, since that was cursed flame, but it will still grow naturally." |
Ginny nodded. "It’s all right. It’s just hair, in the end." She turned to Neville. "I didn’t know you had it in you." |
"Neither did I," he confessed. He sighed heavily. "Apparently the ashes of my parents are outside... and those of Rabastan Lestrange. I’ll leave that to others, but I should collect theirs." His voice thickened. "At least I avenged them." |
In the back, Andromeda was pulling Adelaide Lestrange out of the room. She wished that the girl had not seen that. More importantly, she wished she had not heard her mother’s final words—though perhaps, in time, it would be for the best that Adelaide could start over without carrying around any more guilt than necessary. |
That evening, an owl that Ginny recognized arrived at the castle. "Errol!" she exclaimed, giving the bird a treat and taking the letter from it. "This is from Bill." |
I wanted you to know that you have support in your family. Ron and I—and to some extent, your father—understand why you have done what you did, because we do not trust Lord Malfoy either and respect your own wishes for your life. I think the twins may be persuadable in time as well. I am writing to you to let you know that we are on your side, but also, to ask you if you have learned anything from the Riddles or their allies that would contradict Lord Malfoy’s claims. We believe him to be a liar on several of his accusations and would gladly attempt to persuade Mother and Percy if you have since learned anything that proves him a liar. |
There is something else that you need to know. I did not make my bargain with the goblins willingly. I put myself in their power, far away from home, and foolishly underestimated their magic. It was a very human failing, and proves that even those of us who pride ourselves in being open-minded have prejudices. I hope that they do not attempt to follow through. |
Godspeed to you and Longbottom, Ginny. |
She sighed and set the letter aside. It certainly merited a reply. She had identified Bill’s skepticism immediately. Nothing in this would suggest that he was doing the bidding of Mother and Percy and trying to trick her. Bill was an honest man. |
Ginny took up a quill and began to compose her response, telling him what she had learned and what had just happened that day. Bellatrix’s death would certainly prove Malfoy a liar about her working with Riddle, and Hermione had been the one to identify two other statements as lies. |
Castle Parsehall. |
Tom, Hermione, Severus, and Sirius considered what they had just learned from their letters from Regulus and Neville. It was a good thing that Bellatrix was finally dead, though it sounded as though their allies had their hands full, between continuing to hold Castle l’Etrange and dealing with Adelaide. |
"We still need to undermine the Weasleys’ influence on the Muggle king, and somehow kill Malfoy," Tom pointed out. "And we are no closer to learning what his Horcrux is than we were when this all started." |
Hermione sighed. "He might not have told anyone who is still alive," she said unhappily. "We may have to just do something to his body that makes it unable to support life." She grimaced at the thought. "But we can go to the Muggle king. I had an idea of what to say." |
Tom raised his eyebrows in interest. |
"Some of Malfoy’s acts, we must keep within the wizarding community," she said. "It would do no one any good for the Muggle king to know about unicorn blood, or—sorry, Tom—Horcruxes. I don’t think that either he or the Weasleys have told the king about yours, either, for the same reason. We are all better off if powerful Muggles do not know about certain things that magic can do, even the enemies of those who might tell. Muggles like that would regard the very existence of such magic as proof that magic itself was evil. But I think we can tell the king about other things. We can tell him that the person who attacked my parents’ castle was Lord Malfoy himself. He won’t like that at all. We can also tell him about the attack on your castle by Lestrange." |
Tom nodded. "And we should. Are you planning to dirty the Weasleys by association, then?" |
She shook her head. "The Weasleys don’t support that... deed." Her voice became heavy for a moment. "Even the ones who are deceiving themselves about who did it don’t support the act itself. We don’t have to do something that underhanded. What I think we should do is to tell the king about the bargain that they have with the goblins." |
Tom’s eyes gleamed in interest and approval. So did Severus’s. |
"King Stephen is a profligate spender," she said, her words hard and cynical. "His love of riches is well known. I cannot imagine that he would like the idea of magical creatures that are not human making off with gold from English noble houses... and I rather doubt that the Weasleys have told him of that alliance. Based on the letter that we have from Ginny, the brother who lived among the goblins would very much like the deal to be broken off, and I think that if the Muggle king himself says no, that would be sufficient. Goblins may be willing to fight witches and wizards, but are they going to take on Muggles? They would be eradicated if all the humans in Britain took up arms against them, and I dare say they know it." |
Tom was delighted. "I don’t much care about pulling Weasley’s chestnuts out of the fire," he said, "but I think you’re right about the king. If we tell him that—and tell him the truth about Malfoy, of course—then we could get him to back us. Of course... even if Malfoy did not tell him about my Horcrux, he probably told him something against me. We should be prepared to explain whatever it is—or prove it a lie, if that’s the case." |
Severus was pleased overall, but one thing still nagged at him. "The goblins did have a promise. It wouldn’t matter to them that it was made under duress. They don’t treat contracts with humans the same way that they treat contracts among their own kind. They claim that witches and wizards thieve from them, but most of the time that is because they are not honest with their customers about what they expect to happen after the customer’s death. They may send an envoy demanding something, even if it is not what Weasley promised them." |
"I’ve thought about that too," Hermione said. "If they make a demand for the return of some of their items, we should ask them to produce a list of artifacts that did have contractual clauses for their return to the goblins after the first buyer died. If it wasn’t in writing, they cannot hold their customer to it. But it’s also possible that some people really did steal from them, and if that’s the case, the goblins have a right to have their own back." Her face hardened. "And if it turns out that they don’t have as many of those clear cases as they’d like, they should start changing how they conduct business with wizards in the future." |
Lucius’s face was permanently set in a sour expression. Narcissa was bitter and angry, refusing even to share his bedroom anymore. That hurt. Although their marriage had been set up by their families like that of most nobles, they were very fond of each other and always had been. He loved her. It was not his fault that Bellatrix had run away from Godric’s Hollow and acted like a madwoman. It also wasn’t his fault that Grandfather refused to let him even see the Mudblood Lily Potter in the dungeons where she was held. |
He knows why I had her captured, Lucius thought bitterly. He scowled at the silver goblet that held Lord Armand’s "tonic," that accursed mixture of unicorn blood and other ingredients that the old man believed improved his health and mental acuity. |
Do I bear the curse now? Lucius wondered morbidly. I have never slain one of the creatures, fortunately, but it’s only a matter of time before he makes me do it. But I have definitely handled their blood now, and I have mixed this potion. Am I cursed? |
He remembered seeing the pen where his awful grandfather kept the unicorns. He was somehow able to breed them, despite being neither a woman nor a virgin. The creatures were sad and miserable, and Lucius could see the pent-up rage lurking behind the eyes of one of them, a young foal. It’s just waiting for the opportunity to gore someone with its horn, he thought, quickly hurrying away from the site that day. |
Lucius stirred the foul silvery potion with a stirring rod, making sure never to touch it under any circumstances. |
Draco is acting very strangely too, he thought, recalling his son’s latest letter from Godric’s Hollow. It was evasive and spoke in a very friendly way of the Riddle-Black alliance. Lucius did not blame him for that at this point. I think he is having a romance with a girl. I hardly care at this point, as long as she is pureblood. |
His grandfather’s few remaining house-elves were terrified and cowed, yet loyal in the cowardly, backstabbing way that often appeared among downtrodden people who had no way to escape a tyrannical master. Such people turned against each other, telling tales about each other—or a stunning truth, whenever that "delightful" possibility presented itself—to the master that they all feared and hated. It was the only form of power they knew, and these remaining elves were exactly that sort. Lucius did not trust them. |
At least Grandfather no longer thinks that I was ordering a house-elf to spy on him, Lucius thought. After he had discovered one doing just that earlier this year, he had ordered the elf killed and believed that it had been reporting to Lucius. He no longer believed that. What Armand did believe was that it had reported to one of the Blacks—probably Regulus, though it could have been almost any of them at this point—and had been able to visit both Malfoy and Black residences because it technically belonged to Narcissa as much as to Lucius. |
The Weasleys were hiding something from their new "ally." Lucius and Narcissa—and, unfortunately, Armand himself—all believed that it was that the Weasley girl had run off. If she had gone to some property held by the Riddle-Black alliance, she might even be wed to Longbottom by now. Secretly, Lucius hoped that she was—and that he was correct about Draco. If both members of the would-be couple presented spouses of their own, that ought to be the end of it. Even Armand Malfoy, kinslayer and filicide, would surely not kill the only Malfoy who could carry on the line. |
Unless he killed Narcissa and forced me to take a younger wife, Lucius thought suddenly, tasting bile in his throat. He would not put that past his grandfather for a second. Women were nothing to him except breeding vessels, and Narcissa was a Black. |
Lucius finished stirring the accursed potion and picked up the opal-studded silver goblet. Beneath his hands, the object tingled with magical power. Lucius scowled at the sensation. Ever since he and Narcissa had come here, Armand had insisted upon drinking his evil potion from this cup exclusively, for Merlin knew what awful reason. He claimed that he thought the potion would be more potent in this goblet, and Lucius did not care to know why. He found that his thoughts were darkened and soured whenever he handled the thing. If this continued, he would start wearing gloves. That is not a bad idea anyway, he thought. Anything to provide an extra layer of protection from its contents. |
Gingerly he picked up the goblet and carried it into the adjacent room where Armand awaited him. |
Narcissa’s eyes were wide with fury and frustration. "You think what?" she hissed at Lucius. |
Lucius cast a spell quickly to be certain that the room was sealed against the outside. If his grandfather heard this.... Fortunately, the spell detected nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief. "I think Draco is carrying on a... flirtation," he said. |
Narcissa’s nostrils flared. "With whom?" she demanded. "It had better not be one of those peasants in Godric’s Hollow!" |
As it happened, Lucius had actually formed an idea. "No worries, my dear—at least on that score. I actually think it is the younger Greengrass daughter." |
Narcissa sat down in a chair and stretched her arms over the arms of the chair, looking very imperious as her wide sleeves draped over the armrests. "What makes you say that?" |
"Intuition. During his betrothal to his cousin Lestrange, she complained about that young lady all the time." |
"That family is allied with the Black-Riddle faction," Narcissa said. "Her older sister is betrothed to one of Riddle’s other allies’ sons. Were it anyone else—anyone noble, at least—Draco presumably would not have a reason to keep that secret from us." |
Lucius nodded. "Precisely." |
"But that means that he thinks we are on your grandfather’s side!" she exclaimed. "He thinks we support this "alliance’ that your grandfather has made with the Weasley family! Otherwise he would tell us her name." She rose from the chair in agitation. "We must act, Lucius. This has gone on long enough. He has forced you to handle that—that blood." |
"I have never touched the blood itself," Lucius said, "but I do not know how the curse works. I have certainly acted as an accomplice to the consumption of unicorn blood, albeit under orders... but since it is not the Imperius Curse or something like that—since I am acting of my own accord—it may have taken effect anyway." |
Narcissa sighed. "You have not drunk it, nor have you slain one of the creatures or harvested the blood. If you are cursed, surely it is not with the full, unbreakable one." |
"Let’s hope." |
"Your grandfather has no right to force others to risk that. And you think it is even possible that he will kill Draco and me." |
"I would not put it past him," he acknowledged reluctantly. "He murdered his own son. If he gives up on the idea of marrying Draco to the Weasley girl, he might decide that it is time for a new Malfoy heir. If Draco decides to elope, that could be the trigger for him—and we will not know about it in advance. We will have no way to prepare." |
"Then you know what must be done. I am at a loss as to why you haven’t done it already." |
Lucius held out his hands, open and empty. "But I don’t! I know what I would like to do, but I have no idea what the artifact is!" |
Narcissa shook her head in amazement and regarded him as tolerantly as she could manage. "You don’t? Truly, you have no idea?" |
Lucius opened his mouth to repeat his assertion of ignorance, but he shut it at once as the truth hit him. |
Castle Parselhall. |
Hermione set another book atop the stack that had accumulated to her right. She picked up the next one from the left stack and opened it. |
She was fascinated with the Athame of Morgana. Although she was aware in the back of her mind that she should think about defeating Armand Malfoy and persuading the king to abandon his current magical allies, she could not let go of this. |
Harry had not been happy about it. "You’re going to do what?" he had exclaimed that morning when she stated her intentions of doing magical and historical research into the subject. "My mother is still a captive in Malfoy Manor—if she is even alive anymore!" |
Hermione had felt terrible about it, but if Harry’s mother was alive, she was locked in Armand Malfoy’s dungeons, most likely. There was nothing they could do about that until Malfoy himself was killed, and Hermione felt strongly that the athame of Morgana had some relation to accomplishing that. It made little sense to her, but she had given up. Her reason told her that it was a distraction, an insignificant matter, but her intuition—the same part of her that could detect magic in the air—said otherwise. |
What kind of curse would not affect the wielders of an object? she mused as she skimmed through the book. Why would any witch or wizard curse a magical blade to remove its magic? Though I suppose it is not actually removed, she thought. It is suppressed. Why? By whom? And how can this curse be lifted? |
Hermione sighed and continued her reading. She had taken every book about Celtic and Old English magic that she could find in the Riddle library, but so far, she had examined half of them, and they had contained no information about this. The very existence of a magical blade that had belonged to Morgana le Fay seemed to be a complete secret, and the books contained no information about a curse that would suppress magic from a charmed object. It did not seem to be something that wizards and witches had considered doing. If they wanted to remove an enchantment, they would just do that. That made rational sense to Hermione, but it was still frustrating. Someone had certainly cursed this blade long ago. |
As the hours grew late, Hermione leaned back in her chair in frustration and defeat. There was nothing. Whoever had done this was long dead, and if they had made a record of their magic and the reasons for it, it had not survived the ages. Unbidden, Hermione’s thoughts drifted to the dark altar in the vault, where the basilisk slept in a magical repose. I wish, in a way, that Ceridwyn’s grandson had not banished her ghost through the Veil. She placed the blade in the sea cave. She might have known what was done to it and why. |
Hermione sighed deeply again. The Celtic day of the dead, Samhain, supposedly was the day when the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest. However, that day was several months away—and the ritual to open that door involved blood sacrifice. Hermione was not particularly inclined to do that. Tom might, she thought, but she did not want him to dabble with any more of that kind of magic. |
She picked up the last book in her stack and began to skim its chapters. It was a translation of a much more ancient codex, which Hermione wished still existed—but the translator had made a note that the original document was falling apart and could not be preserved. She hoped that this translation was accurate. |
Half an hour later, her eyes were wide in surprise. This was something that she could do. She could even involve Tom. In fact, she felt that she was morally obligated to tell him, since it was a magical ritual that involved something of his. |
If it works, it might be good for him, she thought. This might be exactly what he needs to make sure that he does not follow any further along a dark path. The thought crossed her mind that it might also have the opposite effect, but she was willing to risk it. |
"This is what I found," Hermione said to Tom a bit later after she had located him and ushered him into her reading space. She sat down and opened the book to the place she had marked, paraphrasing from its text. "There is a ritual to open a gateway to the Otherworld at any time of the year, not just Samhain—in fact, it recommends against using it on Samhain, because that could create a door that is too wide and porous to control." |
Tom smirked. "Though unleashing spirits on the world would, I suppose, be one way to deal with our enemies. Perhaps not the wisest, though." |
"Perhaps not," Hermione agreed. "The history section says that the ancient Celts—yes, Tom," she said with a smile as he looked up sharply in interest, "the ancient Celts created this ritual after the Roman Empire brought certain Greek magic to their culture. Yes, Tom," she said again as his eyes lit up. "It’s what you think. The ritual requires a Horcrux, which I suppose is why Ceridwyn’s grandson did not use it, but instead waited until Samhain to banish her ghost through the traditional means. A Horcrux can open that door with this ritual because a part of it—the crucial part, you might say—is not of earth, but instead, is of the stuff of the other side. The fragment of soul provides that link." |
"My people were masters of spirit magic," Tom said proudly. "They understood it in a way that no one in these islands since then has done. Leave it to them to develop such an advance to something that others exported to them. Since their decline, there has been so little advancement in the area, I suppose to avoid offending the Muggle churches, but I suspect it has also been suppressed and forgotten because the peoples that invaded these islands after the Celts did not have as much interest in the subject in the first place." |
She smiled. "Well, it has not been lost to us. The question remains as to whether you want to try it." |
Tom considered what Hermione had just described to him. He stared straight ahead in his chair, thinking hard, before finally turning to her. "You are certain that it doesn’t harm the item?" |
"That is what the book says. It is not a curse against the Horcrux. It just takes advantage of one of its properties. However, if you are worried, you have the right to say no. Your soul is more important than my curiosity about this athame." |
"I trust your intuition about the blade," he said. "I detect magic too, but I cannot use it. When I first picked it up in that cave, I felt—odd." He frowned. "I almost felt as though I should not even handle it. At the time, I assumed that was merely my own conscience, telling me that this blade was to go to you because it symbolized letting go of a goal that could have destroyed me—and had destroyed our relationship—but I wonder now if it had some connection to this curse." |
"Do you think it could have to do with the bloodline of Ceridwyn?" |
"It might," he said. "You don’t feel anything like what I described?" |
"No," she said. "If anything, I’ve felt the opposite." She grinned. "I have felt as if this blade compelled me to research this, even though we are at war!" |
Tom chuckled. "Well," he said, "there you have it, then. I trust magical intuition. This is a mystery we should solve. We can do this ritual, and according to that book, it will do no lasting harm as long as the soul that we seek does not escape back through and become a ghost." |
"She might," Hermione said darkly. "She was certainly reluctant to leave in her lifetime—and her ghostly life." |
"Then I will awaken the basilisk," he said darkly. |
Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Can a basilisk harm a ghost?" |
"I think it can send one unconscious. With any luck, she will have been on the other side long enough that she has let go of some of her anger, and she won’t try anything. If she placed the blade in the cave because of its curse, she should be willing to help us lift it." He pulled the book describing the ritual of interest close and examined it once again. "The theory makes sense. All right. Let’s do it." |
Gathering up the book and the locket of Slytherin, they made their way slowly down the tunnel to the vast, darkened vault. Hermione shuddered at the sight of the sleeping basilisk. |
"It won’t awaken until it is told to," Tom said in a low voice. |
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