Surpassing Danger
Chapter 57: The Younger Heir of Slytherin (Year 7)
By Anne B. Walsh
Author Notes:
Warnings only for creepy images, since the death is one you've all been hoping for and the other surprises are happy ones. You've had questions, and now, at last, we have answers…
"Why, Draco," crooned a gloating feminine voice in the darkness. "How simply lovely to see you again."
"Draco Black is dead. I killed him to keep myself alive." The words emerged with the flat cadence of a fact too often recited, an attitude to which the speaker held tight. There might, despite the momentary weakness which had finally betrayed him and the deadened senses left over from the magic that had struck him, still be some chance of survival. "Use any potion, cast any spell. You will see I speak the truth."
"Will I?" the witch wondered, a breathy giggle threading through her words. "How clever of you to find a way to fool such things. You must tell me how." Her giggling escalated until she could barely speak. "But you will. You will indeed. You'll take me through everything, won't you."
The whisper of a blade sliding free of its sheath sent a chill down his back. "You'll take me through it all," the witch repeated, her voice suddenly cold and hard. "Since you may have tricked your words into falsehoods, but blood never lies. My blood, your blood, combined and properly spelled. If you are who you have seemed to be all these months, they shall tell me one answer, but if you are the man you deny, they will give me another…"
Fear attempted to close his throat, but he forced it back open. If this was the end, if he could brazen it out no longer, he would still deny his enemies the final satisfaction of seeing him cower. "Take my blood, then," he spat. "Much good may it do you."
"Oh, it will," the witch purred, and giggled again at his hiss when the swift sting of a blade scored his face, reopening his already scarred cheek. "Have you anything to say, any grand declarations to make, before I work my magic and expose you for who you are?"
"Just one." He pressed a hand to his chest, pulling together his courage for this final stand of defiance, then pushed himself upright and squared his shoulders. "My name is Reynard Beauvoi, and your bloody Dark Lord can kiss my arse and—"
Blue fire erupted in front of him, cutting off his final word. Then his eyes adjusted to the sudden light, and he made out the features of the witch who sat across from him, passing the blade of her silver dagger through the flames.
Shock held him frozen just long enough for the fire to die down, and for a small, warm hand to wrap possessively around his.
Die? suggested a mind-voice he had thought he would never hear again. Like you did—or rather like you didn't?
"Neenie," he breathed aloud, before his throat squeezed shut for an entirely different reason than before.
That's my name, the younger witch informed him tartly. Don't wear it out.
But I thought— He bristled as he realized why he'd thought what he'd thought. Dammit, you tricked me! You played up your voice, you kept it dark, all so I would think—
Four months, three weeks, two days, eighteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes, Hermione shot back. That's precisely how long I've thought you were dead. And you want to call me on the carpet about ninety seconds' worth of payback? I don't think so! Besides. Her voice softened, losing its stridency, and he felt her shiver run through body and mind together. I had to be sure. I had to know. Because the only thing worse than losing you in the first place would be thinking I had you back, and finding out too late I was wrong.
You and your sense-making. He swallowed hard, twice, three times. Would you mind if—
Oh, yes, of course. I'm sorry. Neenie's hand tightened around his, and a familiar sinking, swimming sensation washed through and over him. He sank back to the floor, dimly sensing her lying down next to him, as his eyes closed and sleep carried him away—
They stood together in their favorite forested dreamworld, sunlight beaming bright on her joyous face, with its slender marking under her left eye. She stroked her fingers along her jawline, then touched them to his cheek, atop the scar which exactly matched her own.
"Welcome home, Fox," his twin said softly. "I've missed you."
"Luna?" Ginny resisted the urge to rub her eyes, and settled for a surreptitious thump of heel against floor, verifying it was solid and she hadn't been whisked into a dreamworld without her knowledge. "But you're not—"
"I wasn't." Luna held up her left hand, in a motion with which Ginny had become familiar for herself in the past few months. "But now I am."
"The amulet." Ginny stared at the gold ring on Luna's finger with its round red stone, feeling a grin so wide it was practically idiotic spread across her face. "Amanda's amulet, with her blood inside it, to renew her bloodline once the curse was off. It came to you!"
"Who better?" Harry's eyes looked a bit brighter than usual behind his glasses, but his smile matched Ginny's own. "Alex did say we wouldn't have to swear the Oath again with his new Heir."
"And I told you his Heir could maybe be a girl!" Meghan was practically vibrating with satisfaction. "I told you, I told you, I told you!"
"We're gonna wi-in," Ron sing-songed, and Ginny smacked him on the shoulder before launching herself across the kitchen to hug her friend as tightly as she could.
"You're all right," she whispered into Luna's hair, satisfying herself of this fact with her arms, her ears, her nose, as the rest of the Pride closed in around them, all trying to talk at once. "I can't even believe it, you're all right—Merlin's cauldron, Luna, you scared us—"
"I'm sorry." Luna tightened her hug momentarily in token of her apology. "I never meant to. But once I got there, once I Saw what I hadn't Seen before—"
"Yes, how about that?" Ginny broke away to hold Luna at arm's length. "Can we please get some explanations for all of this?"
"I'd love to." Luna nodded towards one of the chairs beside the fire, and Ginny released her, noting from the corner of her eye Neville drawing his wand. A moment later, the floor of the kitchen was covered with cushions like the ones which usually littered the floor of the den room three stories above them.
Very like. Ginny sank onto her own favorite, her fingers brushing across the missing button she'd worried off one day during a Horcrux discussion. No point in conjuring what you can borrow, I suppose.
"Even better." Luna plumped herself down on one of the cushions as well and sighed happily, running her fingers through her dark blonde hair, which shone, Ginny noticed, faintly red in the light from the kitchen candles. "I've missed you all, so much. And I am sorry, we're both sorry, about having to frighten you the way we did." She nodded, with a grin, at Ron's sudden intake of breath and Meghan's little squeal. "Yes, that means what you think it does. And if I'm going to tell the story in order, it doesn't start with me—it starts with my Consort, with our Fox…"
Neenie the cat lifted her nose and sniffed the air. The emotion-scents emanating from the other half of her furry curl were starting to settle into something approaching calm, and her own curiosity could no longer be restrained. Craning her neck around, she nipped the top of Snow Fox's left ear, dodging out of reach of his retaliating lunge with a feline sniff of amusement.
"You're better now," she said, reverting to human form and sprawling across the cushions of the outdoor den she'd conjured for them. "So, start talking."
"Why should I?" Fox asked with a sly smile as he did the same. "You were mean to me. Doubly mean, when the last thing I remember hearing is my darling Auntie Bella shouting a spell at me." He grimaced. "I forgot who I was supposed to be for a minute there when…"
"When Moony died?" Hermione finished, reaching across to take her twin's hand. "I would have too. It's all right."
"Wouldn't have been, if it weren't for Luna." Fox grinned briefly. "Knocked my dear auntie in the head before she could get the whole incantation out of her mouth." He shivered. "I don't even want to know what she was intending it to do."
"I can tell you what she did do, intentional or not." Hermione smiled at Fox's hopeful look, and conjured a mirror into the palm of her hand. "You've got a bit more hair still in the waking world, but otherwise…"
Fox stared into the mirror, lifting his fingers to brush reverently along the lines and corners of his face.
Quite literally, his face. Hermione didn't bother to hide her smile, as her brother had eyes for little other than his own restored self. The piece of Bellatrix's spell that hit him must have reversed whatever he'd used to look like Lucius, and then I re-bonded us without using the spell to freeze our appearances. She ran her fingers down a strand of her own hair, noting its subtle lightening in shade, the slight relaxing of its unrelenting bushiness. Which means, Fox looks like Fox. The person he always wanted to be, and now the one he can be.
For good, this time.
"Care to tell me what happened with the scars?" she asked lightly, bringing Fox's eyes (still gray, but now a subtler shade than his former startling silver) to her face. "Why mine healed over, but yours seems to have stayed?"
"Did it?" Fox frowned. "I didn't know. Must have something to do with blood—mine changed, yours didn't, so I suppose your half of the bond didn't recognize me anymore? Something like that."
"Your blood changed?" Hermione snapped her wrist to dismiss the mirror. "And while we're on the subject, how about you start explaining to me why you're not dead!"
"From the beginning?" Fox swirled his hand three times in the air, creating a growing spiral of darkness in front of them, which grew until it enveloped them, plunging them into the twilight of a candlelit corridor under Hogwarts. "Last time we saw each other to know it?"
"Yes, please." Neenie scooted over to within arm's reach of Fox, who promptly closed the distance and pulled her in tight. "And don't leave anything out."
Fox raised his left hand, which now bore, Hermione noticed in passing, a handsome golden band with a red stone ornamenting it, worn on the same finger where her engagement ring rested. "Shan't. Pack honor." A waggle of fingers animated the scene, with the dream-figure of Draco Black pacing at one end of the corridor, hand in his pocket. "So, it begins…"
Draco took a deep breath and smiled to himself. "That's right, Father," he murmured, the very stones of Hogwarts echoing his words into the corridors around him, "come and find me. This is where it ends. Only one of us will walk away this time."
"Indeed," Lucius's voice floated back to him. "And I fully intend that one to be me."
"That might be. And then, it might not." Draco laughed softly. "Either way, you'll never hurt my family again. I won't let you."
"Won't you?" The smirk carried clearly through Lucius's tone. "And how will you accomplish this feat—when you are dead?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Draco laughed again, rising to his toes, deliberately angled away from the spot where his father's voice sounded. In the palm of his hand rested the ball of parchment Harry had enchanted with fire, ready to throw. "If you ask me nicely, maybe I'll tell—"
Lucius stepped around the corner behind him, his wand whipping down through the air, his lips opening to speak an incantation.
Draco spun in place and hurled his fiery weapon, his aim as dead-on as at any Quidditch match, the flame growing brighter as it hurtled down the length of corridor between the two.
"Moony's geas, the one he laid on Lucius a couple years ago," Fox murmured, nodding to the shocked and panicked look on Lucius's face as his wand hand was briefly engulfed by devouring flames. "It's why he couldn't get his spell off in time."
Hermione squeezed her brother's arm in appreciation as Lucius snarled, flinging aside the scorched and useless splinters with which he'd been left, and met Draco's charge with physical force. Robes swirled and twisted, blows were thrown and blocked, until at last father and son stood face to face and eye to eye, hands locked around each other's arms, staring one another down with hatred. The battle continued, Hermione knew, within their two minds, as they warred for supremacy in that arena as well, each trying to use the other's thoughts, memories, beliefs, against him. After a few seconds, Lucius began to smile, and Draco's breath hitched in pain.
"Not my best moment," admitted Fox as Lucius leaned forward, bearing down with all his weight, laughing under his breath while Draco fought to keep from crying out. "He felt me going after his magic, and got his hooks into mine first. Tore it right out of me, just like he'd done before." He winced. "Which hurts like hell, if I didn't say so already."
"You did." Hermione laid her free hand over the back of Fox's, smiling at the free flow of power between their two souls, the wide-open twin bond in all its fullness, as she knew Lucius had never intended for it to be used. "But then how—"
"Watch." Fox gestured to the figures before them as Lucius, his face filled with sneering glee, went to one knee to loom over Draco, who had slumped to the floor, leaning against the wall.
"How will you stop me now, boy?" the older wizard asked gloatingly, reaching out to caress Draco's face mockingly with one hand. Fox shuddered at the sight, tightening his grasp on Neenie's fingers. "How will you stop me from doing just exactly what I want? And what I want most—"
He yanked Draco's chin towards him and stared down into his eyes once more, silver meeting silver, gray locked on gray.
"There," said Fox, flicking his hand towards the image to dismiss it, leaving himself and Hermione in the warmth of their dreamworld summer afternoon. "That's when I understood everything. Why Luna had the vision, why I had to believe it, why it all had to be the way it did. Because of that moment, right there." He lay back against the cushions, closing his eyes. "Because of what Lucius tried to do to me, and what that meant I could do to him."
"Was he trying to dominate you?" asked Hermione doubtfully. "To make you acknowledge he was stronger?"
"In a way." Fox sighed. "He wasn't sane, Neenie, not by the end of it. He was twisted up inside by the way people he considered so inferior, some he didn't even think of as people, had beaten him so many times and so badly. Toss in a couple bouts in Azkaban, the second one with the werewolf curse added on, and you do not have a recipe for good mental balance. And he pulled together all that crazy anger and hatred and threw it at me, concentrating on how much he wanted me to die. I think…" Opening one eye, he peered up at her. "I think he was expecting that to leave me stunned. Petrified and helpless. Like it would a normal kid my age, who'd never given a passing thought to his own personal death. But that's not what happened."
"Of course not." Neenie snuggled down into the cushions beside her twin. "Because you'd been giving it a lot more than a passing thought, for almost two years now. So he tried to knock you out with that, and failed completely and utterly…"
"And threw himself off balance in the process." Fox nodded. "Like those moves Padfoot taught us in hand-to-hand, where you take the other person's momentum and use it against them. He expected me to be shocked and terrified by what he wanted for me—instead he got shocked, because I wasn't terrified, and then…"
A twiddle of his fingers brought the scene back to life around them. The two wizards, pale-blond, pale-faced, held one another's silver eyes unwaveringly until Lucius broke the contact he'd initiated, shaking his head like a punch-drunk fighter—
Draco lunged, his hand stabbing out from his side in a lightning-fast swipe.
Lucius hissed in pain, clapping his hand to his calf. "What—" he began, then looked down.
Hermione let out a slow breath of triumph as Lucius raised his hand to the level of his eyes, staring in dawning fear at the dark, coarse, powdery substance covering his palm.
"Forget something, Father?" Draco dangled his green-hilted dagger between two fingers, then lifted it to his lips and blew away the ashes which had moments before been blood. "Game over." Returning the dagger to its sheath, he settled himself more comfortably on the floor. "I win."
"No," Lucius croaked, shaking his head convulsively, horror and pain warring for place in his expression as his leg began to blacken and crumble around the wound inflicted by the silver blade. "No—Draco, please—"
"Too late for that now, Father." Draco's words might have been chipped from flint. "Too late for anything. Well, except for me to tell you what's going to happen now. After all, you're never too old for a bedtime story." He leaned forward, starting to smile, as Lucius whimpered in the back of his throat, staring in terror from his son to the ever-advancing line of black moving up his leg. "Once upon a time, there was a Death Eater named Lucius Malfoy, who had a little accident and lost his magic, so he decided to use his mind instead for a while. He came up with all sorts of plans and ideas for his friends, and his Master was very pleased with him. Very pleased indeed."
Lucius's eyes, which had been clouded with pain and confusion, suddenly cleared with a rush of shock and disbelief, and Draco laughed aloud. "That's right, Father. You're getting what you wanted. I'm going to be another you. Only I'm going to be better at it than you ever were. And while your Master tells me how wonderful I am, while he thinks I'm doing everything in my power to lift him up, I'll be doing everything I can to tear him down, him and all his Death Eaters with him. To riddle their every plan with holes." He smirked. "If you'll pardon the expression."
"You—" Lucius panted, open-mouthed, trying to push himself down the corridor away from Draco, though the lower half of his body was now almost entirely gone. "You'll never—"
"Get away with it? Maybe not." Draco shrugged. "Maybe I'll be found out in my first week and die a horrible death. Maybe I'll do no good for my family and friends. But." He grinned brightly. "Maybe I won't, and maybe I will. And there's no maybe about this one, Father." Hermione couldn't remember ever hearing the title rendered with more venom. "You will still be dead." He chuckled dryly. "Courtesy of your own stupidity, and that little present you got from my true father and his lady."
"Lupin." Lucius's voice was garbled, barely audible, the twisted rage in his face robbing it of its last traces of humanity. "Damn them—damn yo—"
The word choked off in his throat as the tide of black surged up through his chest, suffused his neck and head, and raced out to the tips of his fingers. An instant later, the tenuous cohesion of his body ceased, ashes crumbling onto one another with a sound like scrolls whispering together in a bag.
"In terrible pain and helpless anger, betrayed by his own treachery," Hermione murmured, watching Draco breathe slowly and deeply, fighting back his urge to be sick. "And knowing that his death serves a cause he hates and hastens the downfall of his beloved Master."
"Seemed like the proper send-off for him," agreed Fox. "And I hadn't really thought about it up until that point, but it all just fell together right then and there, as I was speaking. He was dead, or going to be, so it couldn't have been him in Luna's vision…"
"So it must have been you, pretending to be him." Hermione nodded slowly. "Which makes everything about it make sense. Except one thing."
"Why Luna never realized it was me all along?" Fox chuckled, leaning back to watch his memory-self hurrying along the Hogwarts corridors towards Letha's office. "I wondered about that too. Until I got the chance to ask her, of course…"
"I can't See when I'm already having a vision," said Luna, raising her hands in front of her eyes like blinders. "They both use the same part of my magic, so when it's busy with giving me a vision, I can't See any of the usual things I can. Including whether people are lying or not." She smiled ruefully. "I should have worked that out a long time ago, because I didn't see any kind of animal-shape around the person who looked like Lucius Malfoy, and I ought to have seen one. Either wolf, or fox."
"But then, we wouldn't all have thought Draco was going to die." Meghan grimaced. "Which, I hate that it was a good thing all along, but it was. Because he got himself ready to die, and that's why he lived."
"Exactly." Luna pressed Meghan's hand. "But you have to remember to always call him Fox or Reynard from now on, because he swore an oath that he would never use his old names again. It's how he could tell even Voldemort himself that Draco Black was dead, and it sounded like the truth." She giggled. "And I'm getting way, way ahead of myself. That was after my vision happened, and we aren't even there yet!"
"So, get on with it." Harry leaned back on his cushions, rolling his shoulders luxuriously. "Or rather, get on with it," he added in Parseltongue, and Luna stuck out her tongue at him before twirling her wand three times in the air to reanimate the memory scene of a Hogwarts office she'd summoned for the Pride to watch.
"That's something I'd always wondered about," said Ron, watching the figure of Draco as he withdrew a wad of Muggle money and a magical moneybag from the drawers of the office's desk, then selected a handful of vials and flasks from the potions cupboard on the wall. After taking a swig from one of his chosen ones, he began clearing the shelves of the other samples with sweeps of his hand, crushing those which didn't break on impact with short, sharp jabs of his foot. "Why'd he go to the trouble of making all that mess?"
"So nobody could tell what he'd taken, and figure out from that who'd been there." Luna pointed out the vials with her wand's tip. "Two doses of Animagus forcer, a burning potion, the short-term Body Bind he used on Hermione and its antidote for himself, a couple of potions for using while he waited for the vision's time to come, and then the one that really would have given him away." She shot a shower of red sparks at it. "The Aging Potion."
"It was just that simple." Ginny shook her head in disbelief. "All this time we've been hating Lucius Malfoy and wanting to kill him, he's already been dead!"
"Which was the best cover we could possibly have had, Fox and I," said Luna as memory-Draco pulled the door of Professor Black's office shut, then strode away with his pocketsful of potions, his mouth twisting to one side. Clearly he did not relish the next few tasks on his mental agenda. "The Death Eaters saw you grieving for us, and furious with Lucius, and thought everything was exactly the way it seemed to be." She grinned, looking distinctly impish. "People talk a lot when they think you can't understand them!"
"You become just part of the furniture." Neville waved a hand around his head, indicating his own gift of whispering people invisible. "Part of what they expect to see. So rather than change their expectations, they explain away any little discrepancies to themselves. Which is how you got away with only pretending to be under the Imprimatus for so long, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is. But that's for later too." Luna frowned, glancing up at the image of Draco, which was sprinkling the burning potion onto Lucius's robes, rendering them almost indistinguishable from the remains of the body which had once worn them. "I think we can skip ahead a bit from here. Hermione's already told you what happened in the corridor. Though of course she didn't know who was truly talking to her…"
"I should have known that was you." Hermione punched Fox in the shoulder as they watched the reenactment of their encounter under Hogwarts. "You quoted Joseph at me, the very first thing you did!"
"Guilty." Fox raised his hands in surrender. "Some part of me was probably hoping you'd catch onto it and haul me home by the ear. But most of me knew I had to go through with what I was doing. Not only to avoid a time paradox with the vision, but because we were never getting a better chance to slip a couple of totally unsuspected spies inside the Death Eaters."
"Since no one would dare question a wizard who'd made the two ultimate sacrifices for a pureblood—his magic, and the continuation of his line—but still fought back enough to kidnap and incapacitate a valued member of the other side." Hermione watched the figure of "Lucius" stroll around the corner from her own recumbent self, then slide into the nearest available alcove. "What are you up to now?"
"Getting ready to hide." Fox tapped his fingers against the back of his hand, mimicking his memory-self's motions of counting. "Making sure, absolutely sure, I have everything lined up, because I don't have any backup this time. It's all on me."
Four potion vials sat on the stone floor of Hogwarts, carefully tied into a knotted length of cloth, their lids loose but still fully engaged. The memory-figure raised a fifth beaker to toast them, then drank its contents down.
Hermione laughed aloud as a very familiar shape appeared before her. "Fox!"
"Yes?"
"Not you." She punched him again. "Or yes, you, but you then, not you now. That's how you hid. You used the Animagus forcer to turn into Snow Fox and headed out to the Forest!"
"I did, sister-lady, I did indeed." Fox bowed from his half-reclining position. "With the intent, which I carried out, of using the other dose the next day to get back to human form, then changing my looks with a time-delay brew and taking the Knight Bus to Godric's Hollow to meet up with Luna and fulfill the vision. Which is why I had to be so careful about where I was putting all those potions, because if I'd slipped that vial of forcer inside my robes by accident…" He gulped mock-nervously. "No way back. At least, not any easy one."
"What would you have done then?" asked Hermione, watching the brown fox with its potion-holding sling scuttle out of a secret passage and bound towards the welcoming trees on the other side of the Hogwarts lawns. "To get back to being human?"
"Probably flagged down one of the Pack-parents after Dumbledore's funeral, and talked really bloody fast to convince them this was a good idea. Once I could talk again, of course…" Fox shut his eyes, his face stilling in the way Hermione associated with overwhelming emotion. "I let him die, Neenie," he said softly. "No, not even that. I helped." His lips and throat worked, as though he were fighting once again not to be sick. "I held him still so he could be murdered." A tired, humorless laugh escaped him. "What is it with me and father figures? Padfoot better watch out for himself…"
Changing forms, Neenie insinuated herself onto her brother's lap, and laid a paw on his arm. Do you want me to go through all the reasons why it's not your fault, she asked silently, or would they not matter right now?
"Wouldn't matter, but thanks for offering." Fox exhaled shakily. "And you haven't even heard the worst bit yet."
Neenie curled up into a ball and began to purr. I'm listening.
"I know." Fox's hand stroked gently behind her ears. "It's just so hard to say it…" Another trembling breath, in, then out. "Neenie, he knew. Moony knew. I can't put my finger on when he picked it up, but at some point he worked out who I was." His voice quavered, and Neenie purred louder, letting her love and the sorrow they shared sweep through both of them with the sound. "I know he knew before…"
Shaking, he rolled onto his side, holding her close, tears forcing their way past his closed eyelids. Why? he demanded, even his mental voice thickened with grief. Why this, why now, why us?
Rather than try to answer the unanswerable, Neenie nuzzled his face, then washed away the tear tracks with her raspy tongue. Tell me how you know he knew, she said when the worst of the chaos in his mind had begun to calm.
Like this. Fox's hand, which had been rhythmically stroking her side, paused long enough to press down three fingers in order, thumb, ring, middle.
Marauder sign? Neenie frowned, her whiskers twitching down and back. I don't understand.
You will. Within the mind-space they shared, Fox brought up a memory. He stood at its center, in his guise as Lucius, holding Moony in front of him, clasping his arms. Moony, one of his small and patient smiles on his face, had wrapped his own hands back around "Lucius's" wrists. See that?
Yes, I do now. Neenie watched as the memory came to life, as Moony's fingers pressed down the same code Fox had used to her only moments before, sending a message her father would surely never have intended for Lucius Malfoy. And you know he meant that. Without a question, without a doubt, without any blame or anger attached. He loved—he loves—you, and me, and all of us. She cuddled against his chest, purring once more. And just like I never stopped loving you, I'll never stop loving him either.
"Like I said before. You and making sense." Fox laughed shakily, his fingers trailing warmth down Neenie's furred back. "Only difference is, I didn't really die…"
I didn't know that, not for sure. Delicately, Neenie planted her teeth around Fox's chin, bearing down hard enough to make her point. And enough strange things have happened in this war that I'm not going to give up hope just yet. Are you with me?
"Might as well be." Fox sighed, nestling further down into the cushions. Then Neenie felt his senses pop back to alertness. "Wait a minute. 'Not for sure'?"
Long story. Neenie cat-snickered. Tell you later.
"Oh, come on! You can't leave it there!"
Watch me.
Fox groaned aloud. "And to think, I wanted to come back to this…"
"I can't believe we never saw it before." Ginny shook her head wonderingly. "That vision makes perfect sense, as long as Fox is the person you're talking to, and Lucius is the one who's dead!"
"'Did you love him so much, the one who lies buried here?'" Luna quoted, with a giggle. "No, as a matter of fact, I didn't like him very much at all. But we have to go back to the funeral for one second before we get to the vision, because I did something there I don't think any of you saw." A swirl of her wand brought that scene into focus. "While I was putting my letter in the box of permission, I was also taking something out."
Harry squinted at the letter half-hidden in Luna's dainty hand, in the act of vanishing up her sleeve, as he dimly remembered Ginny teaching her how to do. "Is that Danger's writing? Why did—" His eyes widened as a thought raced across his mind. "Merlin's pants. I forgot. How could I forget? Danger's been attacked!" He scrambled to his feet. "There's a spy, someone here at Headquarters, who was supposed to go after Danger with poison, the kind that's not just to kill her, but any Healers who try to help her—"
"Harry, calm down!" Luna caught Harry's arm, stopping him before he could Disapparate. "She's alive, I promise!"
"You're sure?" Harry winced as the words left his mouth. "Never mind, stupid question. Of course you're sure. But something must have happened to her, or Moony wouldn't have reacted the way he did." He thumped the heel of his hand against his forehead. "God, how could I forget about that?"
"Watching one of your dads get killed, finding the younger Heir of Slytherin we've been looking for, and having a close encounter with Voldemort?" Ginny suggested, tugging him back down to a sitting position. "I'm guessing on the last one, but isn't that usually what happened if the blood-bond between you and Mr. Moony got cut off?"
"Yeah." Harry exhaled. "And this one was weird. Tell you about it later, though. So Danger fought off the spy, whoever it was? She's going to be all right?"
Luna closed her eyes. "She was not killed outright, but the poison flows even now in her veins," she said in a distant tone. "And her last waking thoughts were of those she loves, of keeping them safe from the fate she could not evade. She has used the gift of my House to ensure no Healer can touch her, for she knew that to do so would be to invite their deaths along with her own." Opening her eyes, she looked around at the shocked expressions of the Pride. "Those deaths are what Voldemort intended," she said, her voice returning to a more normal cadence. "That with one strike, he would kill not only Mrs. Danger, but Mrs. Letha and Meghan as well. And since he always meant to do this once he'd captured Mr. Moony…"
"Like taking somebody's queen and both their rooks, and a bishop just for good measure, all on the same move." Ron scowled, pounding a fist against an unoccupied cushion. "Bloody coward. Couldn't fight fair if he tried."
"He thinks those are our weaknesses." Neville guided Meghan's hand to the pocket containing his handkerchief. "Believing in fair play and justice, and caring for each other so much, or even at all. But it didn't work the way he intended, did it?" he asked Luna, then grinned briefly at her. "Blood-sister?"
"No, it didn't." Luna giggled. "Blood-brother. Isn't that funny, how even such a silly little thing as that moment on the train those years ago had a part to play!"
"I gave her a bloody nose by accident just before we got to Hogwarts, our second year, her first," Neville reminded the rest of the Pride. "And she scratched my cheek with a butterbeer cap and mixed the blood together, and said that made us blood-siblings. It was supposed to be a joke, but I guess enough of the magic from the Pride-bonding was still hanging around that it actually ended up happening a little."
"And all those connections make us stronger, not weaker." Ginny laid her hand beside Harry's, and smiled when he slid his fingers into hers. "Even when some of them break. What happens now, Luna? Or don't you know?"
"If nothing interferes," said Luna quietly, "Mrs. Danger will not live out this present month."
"All right, then." Harry sat up straighter. "Something's going to have to interfere."
The Pride turned to look at their alpha. "Like what?" asked Ron after a few seconds of silence.
"I don't know yet. But I'm through with sitting back and watching people I love get hurt or killed without being able to do something about it. And Seers don't say things without a reason." Harry looked sharply at Luna, who returned his look levelly. "So you wouldn't have said 'if nothing interferes', if nothing could. Would you?"
Luna shook her head slowly. "All the information you need," she intoned, "is already within your grasp."
Meghan lifted her face from Neville's shoulder, revealing her eyes bloodshot and watery but her lips firmly set. "Can we please hear more of the story, Luna?" she asked, her breath hitching once on her friend's name. "I'm sorry, but I need something good. Something happy. Please." She squeezed her eyes shut tight. "Otherwise I'll just sit here and think, and think, and think, about Moony being dead, and Danger poisoned and dying, and how I can't do anything—"
"What would you do, Pearl?" asked Harry, a faint chord of memory chiming at the back of his mind. "If you had the chance."
"That's not nice." Meghan glared at him. "When we already know I can't."
"It isn't about being nice. I think it might be important." Harry glanced at Luna, and got only a calm look in return. "Just tell me. What would you be willing to give, or do, if it meant Danger wouldn't die?"
"Anything," Meghan whispered, leaning into Neville's arms and shutting her eyes again. "You know that."
"Yes, I do." Harry leaned across to brush a kiss onto her cheek with his fingertips. "But I'm pretty sure you had to say it anyway." Remind me later, he signed to Neville, who nodded. "Now, I'm with you. Let's get back to the story." He sat back on his cushion. "I've got a feeling we're about to hit the really good part."
"I think so." Luna smiled, waving her wand in three tight circles to move the scene along. "But then, I'm biased. So yes, I took Mrs. Danger's letter from the box of permission, and came back later and met my Fox at the grave, and said I would go with him, just the way I'd Seen it happen before. And he walked away with me, until we were out of sight, and then…"
Starwing the owl mantled her wings, forcing the wizard on whose arm she perched to stop. Pushing off from her place, she transformed in midair, standing up as Luna Lovegood once more. "I have something for you," she said softly, reaching into her pocket. "Something very important…"
Before she could put her hand on the item she meant, her companion had his fingers wrapped around her arm tight enough to bruise (though she doubted he realized it) and was bending over her so close that the hood of his cloak blocked out the afternoon light, his hungry gaze claiming her as the rightful prize for his victory. She sighed a little, entirely contented to be so claimed, before she closed her eyes and let go her self-restraint, the better to satisfy the ravenous nature of his kiss.
"No fair," she whispered when they broke reluctantly apart. "I wanted to do that to you first."
"Of course it's fair." Draco pulled back and grinned at her, his true face easily visible to her Seer's eyes through the mask of the Aging Potion. "We're in love, and we're off to fight a war. What could be fairer than that?" Worry mounted into his eyes. "Though I still think you're crazy for coming out here, Luna. What if it hadn't been me?"
"Then…" Luna drew his dagger from her other pocket, waggling the blade at him. "I would have done what we always planned on doing. The potion came together perfectly, and now we have it if we ever need it." Reversing the dagger, she held it out to him. "I can think of a few Death Eaters where the Imprimatus might be an improvement."
Draco accepted the dagger, ran a finger along the flat of the blade, and dropped it into his own pocket. "I," he said with a grimace, "can think of more than a few."
"I'm sure you can." Luna giggled, and produced the envelope she'd originally been reaching for. "Here. This is what I brought for you."
"So it is." Draco frowned, sliding his finger under the flap and drawing out the single folded sheet. "Who could—" He stopped as he glanced down the letter at the signature. "Luna," he said carefully. "Did you know this was from Amanda?"
"Yes." Luna nodded. "I didn't know what it was, but I knew who it came from. Why?"
"Er." Draco looked at her sideways, then shrugged. "No reason. Let me see here…" He held the parchment where she could see it. "Seems to be a map. Map of…" He glanced around. "Yep, right where we are. Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Because you know Amanda could See things, like I can?" Luna suggested, tracing the dotted line on the map with her finger. "It shows us where we need to go next. Right into the old part of the graveyard."
"Also not surprising." Folding up the parchment, Draco tucked it away. "My lady, will you walk with me?"
"Kind sir, I would be delighted." Luna tucked Draco's hand through her arm, and they set out together.
The gravestones around them grew gradually more weathered and worn as they walked from evening into night, until by the shining of the first faint stars they stopped beside the grave to which Amanda's letter had directed them. Luna tilted her head, invoking her power to See the all-but-invisible carvings on the headstone. "William Beauvoi," she read aloud. "Cousin and friend. Here he waits for the curse to end—"
"And a ruddy long time you've been about getting here, too," said an irritable voice, as a shimmer of light solidified over the grave into the form of a slender, scowling wizard with a familiarly pointed cast of face, his robes unfastened to reveal a loose-collared shirt and breeches. "What're you staring at, boy?" he demanded of Draco. "Never seen a revenant before?"
"Actually, no." Draco drew Luna a step back, closer to him. "I've heard one a few times, usually inside my head—that would be your ancestor Dafydd, if I've traced the family tree correctly—"
"You did." William nodded once. "And you're descended from that bloody murdering bastard Lucius Malfoy. What've you got to say for yourself?"
Draco's lips thinned. "That I'm not him," he said deliberately. "That I make my own choices and live my own life, and that includes throwing everything he believed in off the carpet." He smiled suddenly. "Whichever of him you're referring to. Yours, or mine."
William laughed aloud, slapping a hand against his leg. "Well said, young sir! I approve! And what're you doing here, missy?" He swung around to face Luna. "Following your laddie, wherever he may go?"
"Following my fate, and my duty to fight evil by every means I possess," Luna countered. "And if that fate and that duty took me away from him, I would be faithful to them instead of him." She laced her fingers through Draco's. "I wouldn't like it, but I would do it. Because it would be right."
"Very well said." William nodded, a grin very like Draco's most puckish expression creasing the sides of his face. "I rather like you, young lady. And I believe this pair will do," he added towards the headstone, where two more gleams of light were beginning to flicker. "Yes, I believe they'll do quite well indeed."
Opening his mouth to ask another question, Draco closed it rapidly instead as the newcomers' forms were revealed. Amanda Slytherin, her face flickering every few moments into that of Amanda Smythe, smiled at him and took two gliding steps forward, William moving respectfully aside for his many-greats-grandmother. "Thank you," she said to both him and Luna, her hands reaching out but stopping short of them. "Without your help, I would never have found my way home."
"You're welcome." Draco shook his head bemusedly. "But what did we do?"
"You reminded me how strong love truly is, and what it's capable of." Amanda glanced back at her Dafydd, who leaned against a corner of the headstone, watching her patiently. "I sustained myself all those years with my hatred and anger, and never once realized how they were eating away at my soul, how near I was to becoming the very thing I professed to be fighting against. Cold, rigid, ready to condemn and destroy anyone who might be my enemy, rather than look back at my own principles and admit there could be faults in them. But then I met you."
Amanda's robes fluttered around her as she looked between Luna and Draco. "You, and your Pack and Pride with you, refused to let war, or grief, or even a vision of death and betrayal break you to pieces forever. Instead you trained, and learned, and used what you felt to make yourselves more ready. You helped one another, and accepted that help, as hard as that sometimes was for you. And where you broke down one day, you built up the next, and refused to hold that failure against one another. Or against yourselves." Her insubstantial eyes shimmered with tears. "Thank you, more than I can say, for helping me to remember that where repentance is true, true love can always forgive."
Luna squeezed Draco's hand. "You're welcome," she said, dropping a little curtsey. "So is your soul healed, then?"
"Yes." Amanda turned in a circle, raising her arms above her head. "Yes, it is. I can finally move on—we can move on," she corrected as Dafydd coughed politely. "Since my love, with his usual pigheaded stubbornness, swore that he would never do so until I could go with him, if it took me a thousand years. Which it very nearly did."
"Ah, but the changes from the world we knew have made for fascinating watching." Dafydd came forward to his lady's side, his hand closing over Amanda's as naturally as Draco's had over Luna's earlier. "And since William's day, I have had the added responsibility of seeking those who might be willing to let our bloodlines be born again in them, who were also worthy of that great honor." He smiled. "I believe that search is at an end. Grandson, if you would?"
"Gladly." William turned to face the living pair. "Draco Regulus Black, son of Narcissa," he said formally. "Do you wish to become a son of the house of Beauvoi? To take that ancient and honorable name for your own, and live so as to bring it new honor every day?" A familiar one-sided smirk crept onto his face. "To destroy forever the name and bloodline of a traitor and kinslayer, who deserves to be remembered only in shame and infamy?"
"I do." Draco spoke the words firmly, without a trace of uncertainty or regret. "But I do have one proviso." He gestured at his face and body. "I will need some way to keep my appearance intact until I am no longer needed as a spy among our enemies. Can that be done?"
"It can, and will," said Dafydd, nodding in approval. "The blood you take will not alter how you look until the effects of your disguising potion are counteracted. Should you need to wear another face for a time, turn the ring until the stone sits against your palm, and only the gold band is exposed. While it lies so, you will bear the face and form of the one whose blood you have taken, mine for you, my lady's for yours." He smiled. "No doubt you can find certain uses for such an appearance, in a household so full of the foolish and superstitious."
"No doubt." Draco nodded his thanks and stepped back.
"Luna Marie Lovegood, daughter of Anita and of Gerald." William turned to her. "Do you wish to become a daughter of the line of Slytherin? To raise that name to the greatness it has always sought, but walking hand in hand with good rather than with evil? To join the gifts you already possess to the inborn gifts of that bloodline, and become thereby the greatest Seer of your generation?"
"I do." Luna bowed her head, smiling to herself.
"Very well." William gestured towards the headstone, which settled a little with a groaning noise. On its top edge, two small compartments opened, revealing a matched pair of gold rings, beautifully crafted to resemble snakes twined together, red gemstones clasped between their mouths. "Come forward, receive what you have accepted, and be welcomed into your new family."
"Not yet." Luna tightened her grasp on Draco's hand as he started forward. "There's one other thing we ought to do first."
From her pocket, she drew out Mrs. Danger's letter of permission, and handed it across to him.
Draco read through the few lines once, then twice, before looking back at her with narrowed eyes. "You're trying to propose to me, aren't you, Miss Lovegood?" he inquired.
"I have permission too." Luna displayed the note she'd had her father write on her brief trip home. "Besides, it only makes sense. Two rings, three witnesses…"
"A change of name." Draco sighed, looking back towards the grave where they had met. "I might as well go all the way and change the rest of mine. It'll help throw off any spells that might be looking for me." He winked at Luna. "Besides, I've never much liked mine anyway. I've even got a new one in mind already."
"But you still haven't answered me." Luna pulled a long face. "Don't you love me after all?"
Her beloved looked over at Dafydd and William. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it?" he asked.
"Wise beyond your years, young Fox." Dafydd raised an eyebrow blandly at Amanda's indignant huff. "But it does make sense. Rejoining the two lines at their new foundation, so that Beauvoi is the name of the Heirs of Slytherin once again."
"A very fitting name," Amanda added, relenting enough to smile at her husband. "To remind those who love ambition that they must always keep beauty and goodness in their sight as well."
"Well, then." Fox reached over and picked up the two rings, handing the heavier of the two to Luna. "Shall I start things off?"
"If you like."
Fox wiggled his eyebrows at her. "I do," he said, making her smile, and raised her fingers to his lips before continuing. "I, Reynard Beauvoi, formerly known as Draco Regulus Black," he added with a glance towards the letter of permission where it lay open on the ground, "take you, Luna Marie Lovegood, to be my lawful wedded wife. This day I swear to hold your hand through sunshine and storm, to guard your heart through joy and through pain, and to live my life by your side, forsaking all others, so long as it is granted me to do so. In token of which, before these witnesses, do I give you this ring." He slid the slimmer, more delicate band onto her finger, stopping just before it reached the juncture with her palm.
"I, Luna Marie Lovegood," Luna took up the ritual, "take you, Reynard Beauvoi, to be my lawful wedded husband." The ring on her finger warmed to her touch as she spoke, and pulsed faintly in time with her heart. "This day I swear to stand by your side through good times and bad, to treasure your love through happiness and tears, and to join my life unto yours, forsaking all others, so long as it is granted me to do so. In token of which, before these witnesses, do I give you this ring." She slipped the broad, ornate ring onto his finger, stopping, as he had, before it quite settled into place.
"As you have spoken, as you have intended, so let it be done," said Amanda, raising her hands. "From this day forth, where once there were two, now let there be one." She smiled at Fox. "You may kiss the bride."
Fox smiled back at her, then turned his full attention to Luna. "Going to be a hell of a ride," he whispered as he laced his fingers with hers, sliding their two rings home. "Think it'll be worth it?"
Luna drew a long breath of wonder as she felt Amanda's blood slip into her veins, running swiftly through her body to mingle with who she already was. "It will be," she said with certainty. "I know."
Leaning forward, she kissed her new husband, and was kissed by him, with all the love and promise two lifetimes could hold.
When the kiss at last broke off, the Beauvois stood alone by a silent, ancient grave. Above, the stars shone brightly down, twinkling as though they too wished to bear witness to the compacts spoken and sealed in this place.
"Come, my dear Starwing," said Fox, assuming the manner of Lucius Malfoy as though he were swirling on the villain's cloak for a Christmas pantomime with the Pack. "You will hail the Knight Bus, and transform me so that I may ride within your cloak, and together we will return to the home of my ancestors to show the Dark Lord what manner of present I have brought him."
Luna curtsied deeply, burying her giggles under a flood of calm and confident joy, and drew her wand to begin her masquerade without delay. The elder Heir of Slytherin, after all, deserved a chance to greet the newest member of his family.
Even if he won't know who I really am until it's far, far too late.
Author Notes:
Well, that came together quickly. Though it's not like I've been thinking about it for nearly a third of my life or anything…
Oh wait. Yes, I have. And trust me, O readers, that cannot possibly spook you any more than it does me.
Was it worth the wait? I certainly hope so, and do again apologize for how ridiculously long it has taken me to get this far. Though I suppose I wouldn't have been a good enough writer to do these moments anything approaching justice, had I been writing them in the timeframe I originally intended. Life is strange that way.
In any case. Please do leave me some review love (even if it's just "OMG OMG OMG I KNEW IT!", and if you think it'll be funny to review just with those words…well, actually you'd be right, but don't everybody do it all at once), don't forget to stay updated on Facebook (facebook.com/annebwalsh.page) or on the website (annebwalsh.com), and I shall see you next week with Chapter 58, "Left, Given, Stolen, Born"!