Chapter 21: Darker than Black Part 2 (Patreon)

Nymphadora Tonks had been around long enough to know when she was being avoided.

Whether it was because the rumors of being a slut were pushing girls who could have been her friends away and attracting the exact wrong kind of guy, or because she was labeled a freak for the strange faces she would make for fun, it had always been clear to her when and how she was being avoided.

So it was somewhat disheartening that some of the only blood she had left in the world was now avoiding her.

She hadn’t known how to approach Antares Black at the hearing, and afterward, well, she had been more than a little discomfited by his actions, but still, he was family, and that should mean something, and why-

“Hello, Cousin,” a calm voice disturbed her, and she turned to see Lyra Malfoy smiling behind her with the type of smile where butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Tonks straightened, raising an eyebrow, resisting the urge to send it past her hairline. “Lyra Malfoy,” she said quietly, “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Awww,” Lyra’s smile faded a bit. “There’s no need to be like that. I wasn’t the one who kicked your Mother out of the Blacks. Maybe you should ask the new Lord Black to let you and your,” she sniffed theatrically, “Family back in.”

“My Mother is perfectly fine as she is,” Tonks said calmly, not about to let a fourteen-year-old get the best of her, “And so am I.”

Lyra shot her what could be best described as a pitying look. “He’s really not that bad,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “He spends too much time with Potter, of course, but I suppose no one’s perfect.”

Tonks stared uncomprehendingly for a moment at the Malfoy before her brain kick-started and she realized what she was talking about. “Antares Black?” she said.

Lyra nodded, smiling agreeably. “Good you caught up; I suppose a daughter of Black eventually would figure that one out, though perhaps it took you a bit long…” she trailed off, raising an elegant golden eyebrow. “Pity,” she sighed. “And here I was willing to overlook your less-than-stellar…” she trailed off again, and her liquid grey eyes trailed over her in perhaps the single most disapproving look Nymphadora had received since she had told her Mother she was going by Tonks.

Tonks was absolutely baffled.

Who exactly did this sassy child think she was? Tonks was a bloody Auror; she had worked her ass off to get where she was, and this…

Lyra apparently didn’t consider anything she had said to be particularly noteworthy as she sat down next to Tonks, who had been attempting to eat a late breakfast in the hall.

At the Hufflepuff table.

Judging by the looks sent their way from the remaining Hufflepuffs, that social faux pas hadn’t changed since Tonks had been gone and instead was just being ignored by Lyra Malfoy.

Of course, judging by the wide berth that they had made for Lyra, Tonks didn’t expect anyone to be challenging her themselves.

“I’ve always wondered what it’s like,” Lyra began, apropos of nothing in particular, turning to regard her with grey eyes, “What exactly is it like working for a living? I’ve always been curious, in an academic sense, that is.”

Tonks snorted, and against her better judgment responded, “How is it living knowing your only value is producing the next Malfoy heir?”

Lyra raised an eyebrow, and something amused flickered in her eyes. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I’ve always wanted to be a Mother; the only question is whose heirs I will produce.”

She drifted off for a moment, and Tonks watched as her eyes, for an almost infinitesimal moment, flickered to the Gryffindor table, where she noted Antares was eating his own late breakfast with absolutely no element of hurry.

Tonks restrained the first sentence that wanted to make its way through her lips but didn’t manage to stop the second.

“Really?”

Well, it wasn’t so much a sentence as a torn word from her gut.

Lyra sighed, a soft yet somehow dramatic sound. “Well, admittedly, he could stand to make better decisions in his personal life; still, he’s a strong wizard and, most importantly, a Black. There really is no better option for a Lady like me.”

Tonks couldn’t help but point out one salient fact Lyra had left out: “And he’s also your what, second cousin?”

Lyra gave her what was most definitely a pitying look. “Yes, of course he is; as he is yours, that’s why it’ll be even more beneficial to wrap the Malfoy fortune into far more capable hands, don’t you think?”

Tonks looked between them from across the hall as Ares scratched out something with a quill in his book. “Do you even know him?”

Lyra looked befuddled. “I don’t see how that’s relevant. I’m simply an optimal match for both of us; I’m sure he’ll realize that at some point.”

So Lyra didn’t think of pursuing him in the slightest either and expected the boy who was currently narrowly avoiding spilling a goblet onto his robes as he balanced a book open on his lap while he scribbled with a quill to “realize” as well.

Typical pureblood.

“And Iris Potter?” Tonks would have had to be blind, deaf, and potentially mentally incapacitated to not see how that particular pair interacted; the girl right now had draped herself like a silent shadow against Antares’s arm, curled like a satisfied cat.

Lyra’s cheeks reddened, and she turned away. “An unfortunate miscalculation on my part; I believed I could separate them and, in truth, only pushed myself further away. It set me back slightly, but truly, how could I have known he would care so much for Potter?”

Perhaps by having a functioning pulse and room-temperature IQ, as her Father would say, but then again, who was Tonks to judge. She hadn’t even mustered the courage to talk to him yet.

“Of course,” Lyra continued, “That is why I’m here because we both have need of each other.”

Tonks looked long and hard at the other girl, and despite every part of her telling her that she was better off getting up and walking away, that didn’t really seem to be in the cards for some reason, as she remained stubbornly sitting at the table.

Something victoriously arrogant flashed in Lyra’s eyes before it was submerged. “Here is the fundamental, as I understand it: Antares is, to his detriment, still very much Muggle-raised despite his illustrious pedigree; he was, in fact, raised in one of their orphanages he once told me; therefore, he is thus rather unaware of his duties and responsibilities.”

Something slightly soft flickered through Lyra’s face as she said those words, but it disappeared so quickly Tonks couldn’t be sure it had occurred.

“And what does this have to do with me?” Tonks replied, easily keeping any expression from her face with nary a thought.

Lyra, for a moment, looked a bit uncertain. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said. “I must assume that even though you’ve become an Auror for some Merlin-forsaken reason- "

“It’s called a job,” Tonks interrupted lightly. “You may be unaware of them, but for most Witches and Wizards they’re an unfortunate but necessary part of life.”

Lyra rolled her eyes visibly. “How very droll. As I was saying, you chose a profession that, in the best-case scenario, winds up with you looking like that one Auror,” she frowned in thought, biting her lip, “Mad-Eye Moody, was it.”

She raised a challenging eyebrow at Tonks, seemingly waiting for her to interrupt again.

Tonks was more curious to know where her cousin was going and didn’t bother to defend her erstwhile mentor. “Go on,” she said, putting her chin on her palm.

Lyra, for a moment, looked very hesitant, completely unlike the girl so far. “I think it would be beneficial if you talked to Antares; I think he could use you.”

That hadn’t been what Tonks was expecting at all, the beginnings of Lyra’s plan to place herself as Antares’s center of attention, but this…

“Why exactly do you think that?” Tonks allowed.

Lyra looked befuddled again. “You’re his family. Blacks don’t have much of that anymore; we’re most of all that’s left.”

Tonks was once again taken off guard. Lyra Malfoy looked the part of the spoiled, arrogant heiress of the Malfoy family, but beneath that, well, it wasn’t that the estimation was untrue; it was that it was incomplete.

“My mother and I are still disowned.” Tonks pointed out, pushing her bubblegum pink hair back from her eyes, “I imagine that Sirius has his own reasons for that, and after how we treated him, who could blame him?”

Lyra visibly rolled her eyes. “Sirius Black is simply a busy man; my Father told me he’s started stirring up trouble in the Wizengamot and making things unruly, with legislation regarding werewolf rights, equal treatment of half-breeds, even programs to increase the mud- muggle-born acceptance into the Ministry.”

Tonks didn’t know anything about that honestly; being an Auror was busy enough work. Still, Malfoy seemed rather certain. “I wouldn’t think your Father would appreciate that,” she pointed out.

Lyra shrugged, “Of course not, but my Mother says Father can lose track of the bigger picture. Certainly, his concern is legitimate around the purity of our world. I can’t say I don’t agree with him, but at the same time, as he does, he builds his own coalition, and for the first time in a long time, it is Blacks who have the power.”

Tonks snorted, amused, her lips curling up, “You’re saying that Sirius Black is attempting political manipulation; I wouldn’t say anyone who knew him would put that in his character.”

Lyra raised a pitying eyebrow, “If you can’t understand the genius of it, there may be truly no hope for you.”

Tonks nodded indulgently, “Fine then, tell me.”

What did the teen girl think she understood?

Lyra rolled her eyes and pouted in a surprisingly girlish manner. “If you knew anything about our family, I wouldn’t have to. Really, what did your Mother teach you? Maybe that’s why she was kicked out of the family.”

Tonks merely smiled blandly; Lyra’s words didn’t hurt her in the least, but seeing the girl wound up was a little amusing.

Lyra cleared her throat politely. “Policies that advantage traditional pureblood groups are mainly opposed by other purebloods, otherwise known as blood traitors. It has to be because the representation of the Wizengamot is all purebloods and half-bloods.”

Tonks didn’t even bother to nod at the surface-level overview. “And?” she asked.

Lyra placed her chin on her palm in a rather unladylike gesture as she gazed out across the room. “Simply said, opposition became more relational than logical in the Wizengamot; you oppose legislation more often than not because you have stronger relationships with some wizards than others. Deadlock happens, and truly it takes more gold than it’s worth to disturb it.”

“Your mother said this?” Tonks asked curiously.

Lyra nodded. “Everything worth knowing she had already taught me by the time I was thirteen. In that same sense, the only thing worth knowing about the Wizengamot right now is that everyone wants a favor from Sirius Black. It’s not just financial; he has a son who everyone knows is favored by Dumbledore and is far more adept and powerful than others his age. Whichever way Antares Black decides in the future could very well be the direction our world takes.”

“He’s a boy,” Tonks said quietly, not sure where the words stirred from in her gut, but feeling the need to say them because she wasn’t blind either. Wizards and Witches talked and talked of Antares Black, who did not cease to be a savior or a villain. Dark Lord or Hero.

It wasn’t that he was powerful; it wasn’t that he was a Black.

It was the fact that the Wizarding World remembered the Girl-Who-Lived, and her own power and influence were already almost unimaginable.

And everyone knew her best friend was Antares Black.

Back in the day before Sirius Black had been disowned by his family, there had been talk of what the future would look like with James Potter and Sirius Black, more wealth between them than they knew what to do with and far too much charisma to be stopped.

Sirius’s own Father had put a stop to that future when he disowned his son. Tonks’s Mother had told her about the relief that had been felt by the Purebloods who supported Voldemort and the reinvigoration of their side.

That, in many ways, had been the inflection point of the precipitous fall of the Blacks to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s sway and what it had led to.

Bellatrix Black-

Tonks immediately turned the thought away, focusing on her cousin.

“So, they’re kids,” she said.

Lyra shot her another pitying look. “It won’t be long before they won’t be. What exactly do you think Ares is going to do if someone threatens Iris Potter?”

Tonks noted in the back of her mind that Lyra had finally played her hand. Purposely using Antares’s chosen name for effect on her. She couldn’t even deny Lyra’s words. She had already seen it. All of the Wizengamot had seen it.

In truth, it was the main reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to talk to the boy.

Tonks grimaced; now she really needed to talk to Antares regardless of her own feelings.

“He’ll remove them.”

-

Bubblegum pink rolled over my tongue with its saccharine unappetizing sweetness, two corridors over and coming closer, like the world’s largest bubble being blown in my direction.

I took two steps back and ducked behind the tapestry of Boris the Bewildered and took the long way to Astronomy tower, which added eleven minutes and three staircases to my evening and was completely and utterly worth it.

I chose not to examine whether this cowardice was starting to become perhaps just a little bit too much of a burden on my daily goings.

The tower was empty and bitterly cold and in that there was a strange familiarity to it, the stars hard and glassy enough to look like they might cut your palms if you reached for them and tried to pick them up

I settled cross-legged on the stone, set my wand across my knees, and considered my problem.

The Patronus Charm was not especially complicated in theory. A wave, an incantation, a happy memory. Any third year with a decent book could tell you as much, and I had read four of them so far.

So I needed a happy memory then.

What happy memory? Suddenly attempting to think of them made them flee before my mind.

I hesitated a long moment before I closed my eyes and reached for the obvious one: Iris. Her smiling on Christmas as I had piled everything I thought she could want beneath the tree.

“Expecto Patronum,” I murmured softly.

Silver mist coughed out of my wand like breath on a cold morning and hung there, thin and uncertain, before dissolving.

Fine. First attempts rarely worked.

Though as far as magic went it was certainly unusual for me to not succeed…

I tried King’s Cross next. Iris’s hand in mine, her grip loosening by fractions as we walked away from the Dursleys, and the moment I had realized she could breathe again and that I had succeeded.

“Expecto Patronum.”

More mist. A little brighter, maybe, but not much more.

I opened my mouth and tasted it, waiting for the flaw to show itself the way it always did, a sour note in the casting, a thread of magic pulled in the wrong direction, the small wrong taste that told me what to fix.

There was nothing.

The wand movement was right. The incantation was right. The magic was clean and bright and warm, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it still was not working.

I tried again.

And again.

I tried the tower, the butterbeer, Iris in my lap asking if I would make her my Queen, and the silver swelled and gathered and almost, almost began to become something before it lost its nerve and blew apart over the parapet in the cool breeze cutting through my robes.

By midnight I had cast the charm forty-one times, and I had not once been able to taste what I was doing wrong.

And a small fear began to grow in my chest.

The second night I tried brute force instead.

If the memory was not strong enough, or perhaps I did not feel enough then I would make up the difference with my own strength.

I flushed magic into the spell until my arm burned, cuts beginning to appear on my skin ripping open in bursts of crimson even as the fabric shredded, until the air around me tasted of hot metal, and the mist that came out of my wand was enormous, a great shapeless cloud of silver that lit the whole top of the tower like a second moon for minutes.

Yet it was still nothing more than mist.

I stared at the billowing white cloud it until it faded, and something unfamiliar and ugly turned over in my chest.

But Iris…

Everything I had ever reached for in regards to the subject had come to me the moment I understood its taste. The animagus transformation had been paint-by-numbers. The basilisk had been a problem of angles. Even the vorpal magic, wild as it was, had only ever needed me to learn where its edges were.

This… Either I felt the right thing, or I didn’t, and apparently I didn’t.

The thought drifted through my mind, cool and dark and it made me want to vomit.

Did I not feel anything for Iris?

Something hot and wet beaded at my eyes and I tried to breathe but the air was too thick. I didn’t get anything more done that night sitting at the top of the tower my arms crossed over my knees as I hugged myself, the cold night air pressing in around me without obstacle as I couldn’t bring myself to cast a warming charm.

I eventually trudged my way on weary tired paws back to my dorm and to my bed at three in the morning and did not sleep.

Could not sleep.

Even as the woman who I thought I loved snuggled deeper into my arms seeking my warmth and for the first time in this life a part of me wished that I didn’t exist.

The third night I trudged up the top of the tower and began my practice, I realized I was not alone, had not been alone for some time perhaps, but so wrapped up was I in this work I hadn’t noticed.

I tasted her on the stairs: smoke and warm honey, with the caramel underneath it. I didn’t turn around when she stepped up onto the tower and merely grit my teeth and returned to my work.

She didn’t announce herself, just leaned against the railing to the side of the tower watching me.

Six times. Seven.

On the eighth I snapped the wand down harder than I needed to, and the mist burst outward like a sneeze.

“Are you going to stand there all night?” I asked, without looking at her. It came out sharper than I meant it to, and even more surprisingly did not take it back.

“Perhaps,” Fleur said. “Et es very educational. I did not know you could be bad at anything.”

There was a warm amusement in her voice that made me irrationally angry.

“Neither did I,” I bit out, unwillingly, looking away from her not wanting to give a true impression of my current feelings.

She was quiet for a moment, and then she walked over and sat down on the stone next to me, far enough that our shoulders did not touch, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her, several degrees warmer than a regular witch.

“What es your problem?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I rubbed my forehead tiredly, not wanting to say more but then I was in the dark room again.

“That is perhaps the problem.” I sighed softly letting air gust out of my chest, “I can’t taste anything wrong. It’s clean. It just isn’t enough.” I gestured at the empty sky over the parapet. “And even if I get it, I have no idea if it’ll hold. There’s nothing to test it against. A Patronus that works on a quiet tower and folds the moment something is actually pulling at me is worse than no Patronus at all.”

Fleur considered that, her blue eyes on the place the mist had been, “You are trying to cast the Patronus, it es a very difficult magic already,” she said obliquely and I noted she did not ask why it was so necessary.

“I have to,” I said quietly, “And I have to know it’ll work against Dementors.”

Fleur visibly hesitated “Then you would need something pulling at you like a Dementor,” she said, “Or else you could not be sure.”

“I’m unfortunately fresh out of dementors, suppose I could ask my Dad…” I shook my head tiredly amused despite myself.

Field testing a spell I couldn’t even work right in normal conditions seemed a bad plan, even for me.

“Hm,” said Fleur, which was not exactly an agreement, and she did not say anything else for the rest of the night.

-

The week continued, dragging on by as I suffered through lessons I couldn’t care less for even as my real struggle with magic remained an elusive target I could only approach at night.

Sitting in Flitwick’s class normally wasn’t as much of a chore as other classes, but I found myself fiddling with my quill as I watched the other students work on animation charms, watching their doll make rickety movements, skittering across the desks, though Ron Weasley of all people had managed to engage with Seamus Finnegan in what I could only think of to be an honor duel as their dolls fenced back and forth.

I let a small smile turn up my lips as I felt Iris’s finger jab into my side and I pretended like I hadn’t felt it and was even more amused as I tasted her magic beginning to fizz as I ignored her.

How was this not love?

Something warm trickled down my left hand and I didn’t need to look to know it was blood, I had lost control of my Vorpal magic again.

Joy.

So not only could I not master the Patronus but I was actively becoming a danger to myself and everyone around me.

“Ares,” a soft voice whispered in my ear curling through it, “If you don’t stop ignoring me, you’re absolutely going to find your bed nothing but a smoking ash heap.”

I turned to regard Iris with a raised eyebrow, taking in the dark haired girl who was pouting innocently at me like she hadn’t just threatened to burn down my bed.

“Where would you sleep then?” I challenged idly.

Iris’s cheeks darkened and she looked away for a moment seemingly caught off guard, then amazingly she responded, “We’d just have to share my bed then,” she whispered softly.

A laugh, a real one tore through my chest unexpectedly, and Neville turned looking at me surprised, before a smile appeared on his own face.

Though even as his smile appeared the darkness in my gut surged forth again as I was reminded of how I was betraying my friend.

Neville looked between us and then made a face, “I really don’t want to know do I?” he said lowly.

Hermione sniffed primly, “I’ve at least learned to not ask the question.”

The day drifted on by and when I returned to my tower that night I learned that strangely enough my task was not a solo project anymore, as Fleur stood by the railings staring off into the distance as the wind blew her golden hair in a shimmering curtain around her head.

She merely looked at me with a raised eyebrow but said nothing. She watched as I once again returned to my task seeing as she hadn’t said anything.

I began to subsume myself in practice, my wand rolled for a moment beneath my grip the wood heating against my fingers.

“Expecto Patronum.”

It began a pattern. A pattern that unfortunately became more comforting as time went on.

Every night without fail Fleur appeared and sat by the railings seemingly keeping me company though it was a quiet sort of company. I couldn’t find it within myself to shoo her away both because I imagined then she would just tell Iris and also because…

Well I didn’t know.

The fourth night changed that dramatically Fleur despite all my expectation brought a dementor.

Well at least something like a dementor.

Which was nice as I hadn’t made progress all week and judging by the looks Iris was shooting my way my girlfriend was very aware I wasn’t coming to bed until very late or very early, depending on how you looked at it and I imagined I had a couple more days before I would be explaining myself to her pleasantly smiling face.

A face that as I looked at I couldn’t help but worry.

Did I not love her?

Fleur smiled placidly at me, “Are you ready Ares?”

I raised an eyebrow, before I shrugged then nodded.

I tasted it before she raised her wand. It was a Cheering Charm, or it had least once been one: the same light, fizzing sweetness I had thrown through my black dust weeks ago, only turned inside out, the sugar curdled, the fizz gone flat and cold, a hollow pulling taste like the moment before you realize you have forgotten something important.

“You made that spell,” I said slowly, and for a moment my heart thundered loudly in my ears as I regarded her.

“I took it apart,” Fleur corrected, “and put it back together facing the wrong way. It was relatively easy because in many ways it resembles our own usage of Veela charm. A Cheering Charm pushes the emotion joy into someone. This one pulls it out.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug that did not quite manage to be careless but was a close enough approximation. “Et es not a dementor. But et es close enough to practice against.”

It was beautiful work, something that I wished I had been able to create. It was also, unmistakably, the kind of magic that the Ministry would write very stern laws about.

Not that either Fleur or I cared much about that.

I looked at her more closely, something edging at my conscience. She was paler than usual, a faint grey under the gold tan of her skin, and the honey in her magic had thinned perhaps?

“You tested it on yourself,” I said, it was a statement, not a question.

“Of course I did,” Fleur said. “I was not going to aim et at you without knowing what et did.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I took my black dust out of my pocket and set it on the parapet, far out of reach, because it would have eaten her charm the moment it touched me and that would have made the whole thing rather pointless, and I pointedly ignored the feeling that when I looked at her that I had caused this.

My fault.

Fleur watched me do it and did not comment, and I contemplated for a moment being a bit more honest with her.

“Ready?” she asked.

I raised my wand. “No.”

She cast it anyway.

It did not hit like a curse there was no flash of light that only other magic could have reacted to. It was like an ocean wave sweeping your feet out from underneath you all at once. The cold crept in from the edges of everything, and the happy memory I had been holding went thin and distant, like something seen through dirty glass. In its place came other things:

My quiet grey room in an orphanage where no one bothered me because I had pushed them all away. My fault. My first glimpse of my Father’s face at the trial, thirteen years too old. My fault. The forest, the red light, Iris screaming my name. My fault.

And then, worst of all, a picture that had never happened and never would because it couldn’t because if it did-

Iris lying very still on cold stone with her beautiful emerald eyes open and nothing behind them as her hair splayed widely about her head in a curtain that should have been beautiful.

“Expecto Patronum,” I desperately tried to force the words out.

The mist barely cleared my wand before it guttered out as my magic began to sear through my limbs finding itself overcome and I felt the skin on my knuckles split slightly as uncontrolled vorpal magic ran over them.

I came back to myself on my knees with Fleur’s hand on my shoulder as she kneeled next to me something like worry carved across her beautiful face and the charm already lifted, or at least I thought it had to be because I was no longer feeling its effect.

My heart was going much too fast and my hands were trembling against my will and I ignored the voice that chastised me for how weak I was.

“Again,” I said quietly, but unable to remove urgent need from my voice.

She looked at me for a long moment, then stood up and walked back to where she had been standing and she raised her wand, its tip igniting.

So it continued for five nights in a row, the same tower, Fleur’s impassive expression as she cast her spell on me over and over, not slipping once.

I would like to say I improved but I wasn’t one for blatant dishonesty.

I didn’t.

The mist was far worse under her charm than it had been on the quiet tower which should have been obvious but was quickly becoming unbearable as the days down to Winter Break continued to count.

I could feel a part of me slowly shredding and even when I held Iris in the early mornings it didn’t help or stop my hands from becoming colder and more clammy during the day as I moved like a ghost between classes, only waiting to return to the tower.

I had pushed myself well past my limits I realized on some fundamental level, but also in a way very distantly at the back of my mind. It was like my creation of the antidote from basilisk venom but somehow it was worse.

She didn’t come the next night. For whatever reason, a loss of faith, a show of kindness, I couldn’t spend the time thinking as to which because all I really felt was relief I wouldn’t spend my night the same way.

Along with the strangest bit of loneliness.

The tower was empty and freezing the cold light of the stars glimmering in the sky above. I sat on the stone, set my wand across my knees, and for once I did not reach for anything at all, I was too tired, too aching lonely in a way that had yet to fade.

At some point my eyes must have drifted closed as I found myself in the realm of half-sleep, the cold air pressing around me as my mind fumbled with possibilities.

It went to the dark behind my bed curtains.

Iris’s fingers on my chest, her weight curled across me, and my own voice, flat in the dark: “I killed another person today.” I had felt her take that in. She didn’t stiffen and she didn’t pull away. She relaxed, warm and boneless against me like a large cat settling in her owner’s lap, and asked:

“Did anybody see you?”

I didn’t say the incantation so much as exhale it.

“Expecto Patronum.”

Silver exploded out of my wand and finally it was not mist, no it was thicker far more substantial, searing down my limbs.

It surged across the top of the tower in a wave of light so bright I had to squint, and in the middle of it something landed on four feet, solid and certain. Long legs, a thick ruff at the throat, a lowered head swinging toward me with open glaring eyes that were nothing but light.

A wolf.

It paced once around me, slow and proprietary in an all too familiar way, and I should have stopped there. I should have let go of the magic and been satisfied, but the magic that had been blocked was now singing, burning through my limbs out of my control.

The spell was still pouring out of me, and my mind kept going without asking.

A red-lit room. Strings of photographs. A cold corridor afterward, torchlight, my back against the stone. A warm palm against my temple, exactly where the pressure always built, heat seeping in until my breathing evened. Smoke and honey on my tongue.

“It will be like this, every time. But you must, Ares. You must.” Soft lips on my cheek. “I am proud of you.”

The light at the end of my wand split, and something in me split with it.

It didn’t hurt the way a curse would have hurt. It was no cruciatus certainly but it wasn’t pleasant. It was like a joint wrenched the wrong way, a door forced open on a hinge that had never been built to swing that way.

Something tore free of the wolf’s shadow and rose, wings first, enormous and pale, trailing light like sparks off a fire. It wheeled once over the tower and settled on the parapet, exactly where she had stood the prior nights, and folded its wings to watch me.

Two.

How were there two?

And the spell kept pulling, prying at the edges of the new opening, looking for the next one. A third thread crawled out of my wand, thin and wavering, curling toward a shape I couldn’t make out.

My nose was wet with something warm and sticky. My vision whited at the edges as it blurred.

I dropped my wand and cut the magic harshly.

All three collapsed at once. Wolf, bird, and the half-formed thing broke into mist and blew away over the parapet, and I was on my knees on the freezing stone, breathing like I had run up every staircase in the castle one after another, warm blood dripping off my lip onto my robes, splattering across the stone with gentle fat drops.

I sat there until my breathing evened out, massaging my chest with a free hand as I breathed hard.

Then, carefully, I tested inside myself, the way you would test a wrenched ankle, putting the smallest amount of weight on the limb to test how bad it was.

I thought of someone putting a hand on Iris. The familiar pressure rose behind my eyes at once, patient and certain, the cold thing under my occlumency lifting its head.

I felt a burst of relief, overwhelming relief.

I hesitated. Then I thought of someone putting a hand on Fleur.

The same pressure. The same cold thing, turning its head the same way.

I gritted my teeth and fell back against the stone, even in my own head it felt unnatural.

I knew what I was, what I was willing to do for one person.

It had been easy where there was one person.

Now there were two.

Dimly I realized the promise I had made so easily was now most definitely broken.

It didn’t change anything really. I had told Fleur I wouldn’t kiss her, and I wouldn’t. What I felt was my business to manage, not hers to carry, and I had managed worse and I couldn’t bear to put the burden of my existence on her.

She could never know. That seemed like the least I owed her.

I wiped the blood off my lip, sank back into occlumency, and set the third thing aside. It was still there, half open, waiting and I didn’t even want to think what it might indicate.

Regardless.

Two would be enough for Azkaban.

I retrieved my black dust from the parapet, stood, steadied, and became a black cat, slipping into the air with ease.

-

The model of Azkaban had grown since I’d last seen it.

My Father had apparently discovered (or, considering the Marauder’s Map, always had) a predilection for building magical objects. Combined with the fact that he’d never been a man to do anything by halves, that apparently extended to miniature prisons.”

Though miniature was doing hard work in that sentence.

The dining room table had been taken over in its entirety by a massive triangular fortress of grey stone, dark blue sea water lapping at its base even as that same water refused to spill out over the table.

Beside three cells were inscribed three red numerals indicating our targets and about the prison floated small grey wisps that drifted lazily around the upper tiers like smoke off a dying fire.

Dementors. Judging by how even now Sirius avoided looking at them in a strange glassy way I worried about returning with him to the place that had been his nightmare.

Instead I attempted a joke, “Are those supposed to be dementors?” I asked.

“Cotton wool,” Sirius said without looking up from the grey stoned prison. “Charmed. Took me three tries to get them drifting right. The first lot kept clumping together like they were gossiping on the best varieties of human soul to dine on.”

“Do Dementors gossip?” I asked raising an eyebrow

“Who’s to say,” He finally looked up and grinned at me but it was a facsimile of a smile, “I certainly never asked.”

I let the topic hang in the air calmly regarding my Father, providing without word the moment if he wanted to finally say something.

He didn’t

I let it pass and turned back leaning over the table.

“Walk me through your plan,” I said. “From the water up.”

Sirius tapped a squat stone hut on a separate spur of rock at the base of the island. A tiny lantern glowed in its window. “The landing. The Ministry keeps a garrison here: six wardens out of the DMLE, rotating every fortnight. It’s usually trainees, not current Aurors, unfortunately for the Ministry most Aurors who see serious action stop handling Dementors very well. They receive the transport ships, maintain the wards on the approach, and sign for the supply boat on Thursdays.”

“And they never go inside?”

“Never past the gate,” Sirius said. “The dementors don’t care what colour your robes are. The wardens keep a Patronus rota and enough chocolate to rot every tooth in Britain.” He paused, his finger still on the little hut. “I used to smell it on the wind when the boat came in and when I had taken my form as a dog to take the edge off the Dementors.”

“So they’re the only living people on the island who aren’t prisoners,” I said.

“Depends how you count the prisoners, I certainly wouldn’t say they were much happier than us, they just got to leave.”

“Fair.”

I studied the little hut for a moment, turning it over in my head.

“So,” I said. “The wardens.”

“We could kill them,” Sirius offered, in the tone another father might have used to suggest a walk after dinner.

I considered it honestly, because it deserved consideration. Six men, isolated, on a rock in the North Sea in December, with nobody expecting them to report anything but boredom. It would be very clean.

“No,” I said finally. “We need them.”

It was a lie but the pale blue eyes in a red lit room were bothering me so I didn’t have anything else to say.

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

“Someone has to discover the Lestranges are gone,” I said. “Someone has to find the empty cell, follow the tracks down to the water, and send a panicked owl to the Ministry at three in the morning. If the wardens are dead, the story is that somebody broke into Azkaban, and then the Ministry starts asking who could. If the wardens are alive and frightened and absolutely certain of what they saw, the story is that two Death Eaters broke out, and the sea took them.”

Sirius stared at me for a long moment, and then a slow grin spread across his face, wide and delighted.

“Witnesses,” he said. “Your Mother used to do that. Build the lie out of other people’s honesty. Nobody believes a story like they believe one they constructed themselves.”

“Dead wardens are a story,” I said. “Confused wardens are a Thursday.”

He barked out a laugh, sharp and genuine, the kind that seemed to surprise him, bursting out of his chest without conscious thought.

They had been more common after Apolline but I couldn’t say for certain she was the actual reason

“And if one of them sees something he shouldn’t?” he asked once he’d recovered.

I shrugged. “Then we revisit that part of the plan.”

“Getting there,” I said, moving on. “You think we should swim?”

He gestured vaguely at the charmed sea. “Freezing. Black as pitch. I don’t recommend it.”

“Good, because I’m not swimming.”

“You’re a cat.”

“Exactly.”

Sirius snorted. “Then the supply boat. It comes out from a fishing village up the coast every Thursday, crewed by two bored Ministry boatmen who’ve stopped looking at anything but the horizon. Nobody searches a Ministry boat for a stray dog and a cat.”

“There’s a joke about the Ministry’s security somewhere in there.”

“There’s a whole comedy career in there,” my Father said, and moved a small carved boat gently floating it across the charmed water with the tip of his wand until it bumped gently against the landing.

We went piece by piece up the island from there, cell by cell. Sirius spoke calmly the entire time speaking of his own recollection with what he had purchased.

Which corridors the dementors drifted through and which they lingered in. Where the stone sweated and where it didn’t. Which stairwell had a step missing two-thirds of the way up, so that a large black dog had to jump it every time they moved him for inspection.

He told me all of it in the same easy, practical voice he used to discuss gutters and roof tiles, and I tasted his magic going thinner and colder with every tier we climbed.

On the top floor his finger stopped over a cell and stayed there.

“That’s mine,” he said then blinked seemingly confused. “Was.” He corrected almost absent mindly.

The cell next to it had a small grey pebble sitting in its centre that I had put there myself, weeks ago.

“And hers,” I said, unable to keep the heaviness out of my voice.

“And hers.” Sirius looked at the pebble for a long moment. “Thirteen years and she never said a word. Not to me, not to anyone. I used to think it was madness. Now I think she just didn’t have anyone left worth talking to.”

He didn’t mention that it was something he could relate all too well too, none of us needed to discuss how this entire operation was more an exercise of guilt and sorrow then anything rational.

Even if we did retrieve Bellatrix I wasn’t confident there was someone who could be saved at this point, between my Mother and Azkaban she might be nothing but a shell.

But it was the shell that I was betraying Neville for.

I hesitated, then asked the question I had been carrying around since McGonagall’s office.

“Tell me something about Mum,” I said. “Something with Bellatrix in it.”

Sirius sucked in a small breath and he didn’t answer right away. I watched his eyes go unfocused, and I tasted the faint shift of occlumency moving through him, the way he had told me he spent nights teasing memories free from the fog the dementors and her spell had left behind.

“Cards,” he said finally. “It was one of the first memories I found again. Exploding snap, at the McKinnons’ one summer. Lena cheated. She always cheated, and badly, couldn’t keep a straight face to save her life some awful half smile spread across her face like she knew more than you did. And Bella, who once hexed a Ravenclaw seventh year for looking at her too long in a corridor, sat there losing hand after hand on purpose and pretending she hadn’t noticed.” He smiled faintly. “Lena knew. Bella knew Lena knew. Neither of them ever said anything. I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen.”

He was quiet for a while.

“I think if at the time I had realized it was love I might have done something,” he said softly. “I didn’t recognise it then. Didn’t have the eyes for it.”

“Like what?”

Sirius looked befuddled, then seemed to realize giving me a small smile, though it was remarkably real, “I blame myself,” he admitted, “Not just for what Bellatrix felt she had to do but for leaving in the first place, I should have reached out more, been more of a family,” his lips twisted upward bitterly, “I hated my Father but he was right when he kicked me out, I had forgotten what it was like to be a Black.”

Sirius cleared his throat and straightened, the moment falling away into the cracks of the floor. “How’s the Patronus?”

“I can cast it.”

He blinked. “Already?” his eyes crinkled upward, “First try?”

“Not quite.” I hesitated, and then, because I had promised him months ago that we were in this together, I told him the truth. “But I did cast two of them.”

My Father went very still.

I tasted it before I saw it on his face. His magic didn’t flare or recoil. It stopped, the way a dog stops when it hears something in the dark that it doesn’t recognize, its ears perking up and alerting.

“Two,” he repeated.

“A wolf and a bird.” And then because that was incomplete, “I started a third before I cut it off.”

“Iris?” he asked.

“The wolf.”

He nodded slowly, as if that one had never been in doubt. “And the bird.”

The air was again heavy between us.

I didn’t answer.

Sirius closed his eyes, and a short laugh escaped him with no humour in it at all. “Apolline’s girl,” he said. “Merlin, son.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He opened his eyes and looked at me properly, the way he didn’t often let himself. “Blacks don’t-”

“Have more than one,” I finished. “I know, Dad. I’ve lived with you for a year and a half, I’ve lived as a Black my whole life- I.”

I didn’t know what to say.

He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his face, there was surprise and some parts grief and something that could have been mistaken for pride all tangled together.

I realised he had never said it out loud and I hadn’t either. Not once.

“Then you know it isn’t supposed to be possible,” he said.

“It hurt,” I admitted. “Like a joint going the wrong way.”

Sirius looked down at the little island, at the cotton-wool dementors drifting around the tiers.

“Mine was a dog,” he said. “My Patronus. Big shaggy thing, same as me. I haven’t been able to cast it since the night she died.” He paused. “I used to think it was Azkaban that took it. Now I think it just didn’t have anywhere left to go.”

And I had two. Three, nearly.

“Be careful with the second one,” Sirius said quietly. “One person, you can arrange the whole world around, it makes sense to us. That’s the trick of it; that’s what makes it simple. Two...” He shook his head. “The world’s too complicated.”

“Because if they want different things…” I finished trailing off.

My Father was quiet for long enough that I thought he wouldn’t answer.

“Then you’ll find out if your way is possible,” he said.

The words sat between us on the table next to the little grey pebble.

Then Sirius exhaled and stepped around the table and ruffled my hair hard enough to knock my head sideways, and grinned a grin that was the same as mine.

“Right,” he said. “Wolf and a bird. Can either of them keep a dementor off your ever so handsome Father?”

“As long as he doesn’t get himself into too much trouble.”

“Then you’re already more useful than I am, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.” He tapped the landing with his wand again. “Thursday after term ends. You’ll need an alibi for the night.”

“Dumbledore’s handling it.”

“Course he is.” Sirius snorted. “And the Auror at the school, the one sniffing around your Zabini business? Andromeda’s girl?”

“She’s avoiding me.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Fine,” I said shaking my head. “I’m possibly avoiding her.”

“Blacks,” my Father said, with enormous feeling. Then, thoughtfully: “I’ll reinstate Dromeda after this is done. Can’t have the Auror cousin back on the family tree the same month we rob Azkaban. People will talk.”

“People are going to talk about this for awhile,” I remarked contemplating the prison again.

“Yes,” he agreed cheerfully, “but it really has been too long since I planned a prank like this.”

I looked down at the model, at the small carved boat bumping against the landing and the six little lanterns in the warden’s hut. Six men who would wake up on a Friday morning absolutely certain of something that had never happened.

I reached out and nudged the grey pebble a fraction to the left, out of the centre of Bellatrix’s cell, just to see how it looked there.

It looked like an empty cell.

Good.